17. +Hooker’s Style.+-- His writings are said to “mark an era in English prose.” His sentences are generally very long, very elaborate, but full of “an extraordinary musical richness of language.” The order is often more like that of a Latin than of an English sentence; and he is fond of Latin inversions. Thus he writes: “That which by wisdom he saw to be requisite for that people, was by as great wisdom compassed.” The following sentences give us a good example of his sweet and musical rhythm. “Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.” 18. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (+1554-1586+), a noble knight, a statesman, and one of the best prose-writers of the Elizabethan age, was born at Penshurst, in Kent, in the year 1554. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and then at Christ Church, Oxford. At the age of seventeen he went abroad for three years’ travel on the Continent; and, while in Paris, witnessed, from the windows of the English Embassy, the horrible Massacre of St Bartholomew in the year 1572. At the early age of twenty-two he was sent as ambassador to the Emperor of Germany; and while on that embassy, he met William of Orange-- “William the Silent”-- who pronounced him one of the ripest statesmen in Europe. This was said of a young man “who seems to have been the type of what was noblest in the youth of England during times that could produce a statesman.” In 1580 he wrote the +Arcadia+, a romance, and dedicated it to his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. The year after, he produced his +Apologie for Poetrie+. His policy as a statesman was to side with Protestant rulers, and to break the power of the strongest Catholic kingdom on the Continent-- the power of Spain. In 1585 the Queen sent him to the Netherlands as governor of the important fortress of Flushing. He was mortally wounded in a skirmish at Zutphen; and as he was being carried off the field, handed to a private the cup of cold water that had been brought to quench his raging thirst. He died of his wounds on the 17th of October 1586. One of his friends wrote of him:-- “Death, courage, honour, make thy soul to live!-- Thy soul in heaven, thy name in tongues of men!”