In the following century Sidney was still remembered in France. In his "Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de la Republique des lettres," Niceron mentions the "Arcadia" as "a romance full of intelligence and very well written in the author's language."[243] Florian knew him and held him in great honour; he names him with D'Urfe, Montemayor, and Cervantes, as being, as it were, one of his literary ancestors,[244] and the fact is not without importance; for Florian, continuing, as he did, Sidney's tradition, and trying in his turn to write poems in prose, stands as a link between the pastoral writers of the sixteenth century and the author who was the last to compose prose epics in our time: the author of "Les Martyrs" and of that American Arcadia called "Atala"--Chateaubriand. [Illustration: SAGITTARIUS.] [Illustration: AN INTERIOR VIEW OF A THEATRE IN THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. THE SWAN THEATRE, 1596.] FOOTNOTES: [167] And which has been faithfully and touchingly described in Dr. Jessopp's book: "Arcady: For better, for worse," recently published in London. [168] Besides its fine collection of family portraits, one of which is reproduced in this volume, by the kind permission of Lord de l'Isle and Dudley, Penshurst is remarkable because it offers to this day a perfect example of a fourteenth-century hall with the fireplace in the middle. [169] "Life of the renowned S^r Philip Sidney," London, 1652, 12mo. [170] "The Correspondence of Sir Ph. Sidney and Hubert Languet," ed. Pears London, 1845, 8vo, Appendix; A.D. 1579(?). [171] "Vindictae contra tyrannos," Edinburgh, 1579, part iii. [172] Padua, February 4, 1574, "Correspondence," p. 29. [173] A.D. 1575, "Correspondence," p. 94. [174] "Arcadia," bk. iii. [175] "Captain Cox his ballads ... or Robert Laneham's Letter, 1575," ed. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1871, 8vo, p. 53. [176] "Correspondence," _ut supra_, March 1, 1578. [177] "Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella ... edited from the folio of 1598," by Alfred Pollard, London, 1888, 8vo, sonnet 33. Penelope's marriage with Lord Rich seems to have taken place in April, 1581. [178] "Astrophel and Stella," _ut supra_, pp. 170 and 72 (sonnet 69). [179] "Goe little booke! thy selfe present As childe whose father is unkent To him that is the President Of noblenesse and chevalree...." Dedication of the "Shepheardes Calender." Sidney seems to have had a right and not over-enthusiastic appreciation of Spenser's eclogues; in his "Apologie for Poetrie" he is content to say that "the Sheapheardes Kalender hath much poetrie in his eglogues: indeede worthy the reading if I be not deceived" (Arber's reprint, p. 62). [180] The elegies written on this occasion are counted by the hundred. A splendid series of engravings were published by T. Laut to perpetuate the memory of Sidney's funeral, London, 1587 [181] London, 1598, fol.