The note is to the following effect: "Another original portrait of this great poet was known to have been at Castle Saffron in the county of Cork, Ireland, situated in the neighbourhood of Kilcolman Castle, the residence of Spenser, which was destroyed by fire before his death. This picture, in consequence of the roof of Castle Saffron falling in from neglect, was utterly destroyed, a fact ascertained by Admiral Sir Benj. Halliwell, during the period of his command in chief of the port of Cork in 1818, at the request of George John Earl Spencer, K.G." Perhaps the chief evidence for the authenticity of the portrait accompanying these pages is the surprising manner in which it harmonises with the character of Spenser. This, at any rate, is a man of whom the "Faerie Queene" might be expected. There is an aloofness in the expression which may well have mirrored to the outward world the spirit of one who dwelt apart in a "happy land of Faerie." "For a dearer life Never in battle hath been offered up, Since in like cause and in unhappy day, By Zutphen's walls the peerless Sidney fell." ROBERT SOUTHEY. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY is the enigma of the Elizabethan age. His span of life was but a brief thirty-two years, and as the first twenty years of any man's career are but a preparation for the activities of after-life, Sidney had only twelve years in which to impress himself on English history and win his renown. But they sufficed. After the lapse of more than three centuries his fame shines as brightly in the annals of England as that of Spenser, of Raleigh, of Drake, of Shakespeare, and of other Elizabethan immortals, against whose names there are recorded achievements far surpassing anything Sidney ever accomplished. As great deeds went in England in the closing half of the sixteenth century, Sidney did nothing |