If poetry nourished the love of valorous knighthood, learning was equally its friend; and when Spenser addressed Sidney as the noble and virtuous gentleman, and most worthy of all titles of learning and chivalry, he spoke the feeling of his age, that the accomplishments of the mind were best displayed in martial demeanour. At the birth of Sidney, as Ben Jonson says, all the muses met. In reading the Arcadia, it is impossible to separate the author from the work, or to think that he has not poured forth all those imaginings of his fancy which his heart had marked for its own. He has pourtrayed knights and damsels valiant and gentle, placing all their fond aspirations of happiness in a rural life, and despising the pageantry of courts for the deep harmonies of nature. But Sidney's mind was chivalric as well as romantic; and he was so fond of reverting to the fabled ages of his country, that it was his intention to turn all the stories of the Arcadia into the admired legends of Arthur and his knights.[116] To modern taste the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney presents no charms: yet, by a singular contradiction, the author, who was the personification of his book, is regarded as the model of perfection. "The plume of war! with early laurels crown'd, The lover's myrtle, and the poet's bay."[117] The popularity, however, of the Arcadia, in the Elizabethan age[118], and the high reputation of the author, showed the sympathy of the world in those days for the romance of chivalry. [Sidenote: Allusions to his life.] The few circumstances in the brief life of Sidney are too well known for me to be justified in detailing them: but I may remind my readers that he was born at Penshurst in Kent, in the year 1544; that he was accomplished in literature and chivalry by study and travel; that he was a courtier of Elizabeth, and yet could oppose her dearest fancies, if they were hostile to the interests of his country; that his opposition to her projected union with Anjou was spirited and well reasoned; that his love for his sister and his wife was the softening grace of that desire for chivalric valour which carried him with his uncle the Earl of Leicester to the plains of Flanders, in the year 1586; and when he received his mortal wound before the town of Zutphen, that he resigned a cup of water to the poor soldier whose lot he thought was more distressing than his own. His courage, his gallantry, and grace were his best known qualities, and those for which England and, indeed, Europe, lamented his death. His funeral in St. Paul's was a national one, the first instance in our history of honours of that description; and for many months afterwards not an individual in the court or city appeared in public, except in a garment of black:--in such high account were chivalric virtues held in the days of Elizabeth. [Sidenote: Particularly his kindly consideration.]