Philip Sidney was, as we have seen, of a very different
turn of mind. He did not live to read the above wise counsels, but he
had had the opinion of his friend Languet on this subject, and that had
been of no avail. His propensity to overthinking is apparent in many
places in his writings, especially in his "Arcadia," where he made so
little use of the comical elements he had himself introduced into it.
The main incident in his book, the assignation given by Zelmane to both
Basilius and Gynecia and the "mistakes of a night" which follow, would
have been from any other pen, only too comical. It is, in fact, the
character it bears in Shirley's drama, and it has the same in the many
modern plays founded on similar mistakes, plays which serve to improve,
according to Andrew Borde's prescription, if not the morals, at least
the health of the "Palais Royal" audiences of to-day. With Sidney, the
comic is a vulgar style; he very rarely risks any jests, a portrait of
a cowardly peasant, or of an injured husband.[246] One of his best
attempts in this style is a character in his masque of the "Lady of
May," the pedant Rombus, who gives quotations which are always wrong and
like Rabelais' scholar, who belongs to "the alme, inclyte and celebrate
academy, which is vocitated Lutetia," is careful to make use of nothing
but quasi-Latin words. In order to relate how he has been unmercifully
whipped by shepherds he declares: "Yet hath not the pulchritude of my
vertues protected me from the contaminating hands of these Plebeians;
for comming, _solummodo_ to have parted their sanguinolent fray, they
yeelded me no more reverence, than if I had beene some _pecorius
asinus_."[247] But that is an easy way to amuse, and, even at that
epoch, not very new. Rabelais had made a better use of it before Sidney,
and after him, without mentioning Shakespeare, Cyrano de Bergerac
furnished more laughable specimens. No phrase of Rombus equals the order
given by the Pedant to his son when sending him to Venice to engage in
commerce: "Since thou hast never desired to drink of the pool
engendered by the hoof of the feathered horse,[248] and as the lyric
harmony of the learned murderer of Python has never inflated thy speech,
try if in merchandise Mercury will lend thee his Caduceus. So may the
turbulent AEolus be as affable to thee as to the peaceful nests of
halcyons. In short, Charlot, thou must go." Sidney kept entirely to
these ineffectual attempts, and had