Very rarely now does any one ask if perchance some of these "Arcadias," so cherished by our fathers, contained their share of enduring beauty, or if their lasting success is to be explained otherwise than by their improbabilities and their artificial embellishments. Nevertheless the study might be profitable, for it must be borne in mind that the readers of these romances went in the afternoon to the "Globe" to see Shakespeare play his own pieces, and that, admitting their fondness for such dramas, in which, without speaking of other merits, the kitchen is sometimes the place represented, it would be surprising to find only mere nonsense in the whole collection of their favoured romances. Let these suggestions justify us at need in examining one more Arcadia: besides, it is not that of a penniless Bohemian; it is the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, the pattern of chivalrous perfection under Elizabeth. His life is not, in its way, less characteristic of his time than that of starving Robert Greene, or of Thomas Lodge the corsair. I. Born in 1554, in the noble castle of Penshurst in Kent,[168] Sidney passed a part of his childhood in Ludlow Castle, where in the next century Milton's "Comus" was to be represented. At college he was famous for his personal charm, his knowledge, and the thoughtful turn of his mind. "I knew him," wrote in later years his friend and companion Fulke Greville, "with such staiednesse of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years."[169] During the year 1572 he was staying in France, where he had been appointed by King Charles IX. one of the gentlemen of his chamber. It was the time of the St. Bartholomew massacre, and Sidney, who belonged to the English mission, remained in the house of Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's ambassador, and escaped the perils of that terrible day.