Underneath this sable herse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother;
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Learn'd and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

Sidney's _Defense of Poesy_ composed in 1581, but not printed till 1595,
was written in manlier English than the _Arcadia_, and is one of the
very few books of criticism belonging to a creative and uncritical time.
He was also the author of a series of love sonnets, _Astrophel and
Stella_, in which he paid Platonic court to the Lady Penelope Rich
(with whom he was not in love), according to the conventional usage of
the amourists.

Sidney died in 1586, from a wound received in a cavalry charge at
Zutphen, where he was an officer in the English contingent sent to help
the Dutch against Spain. The story has often been told of his giving his
cup of water to a wounded soldier with the words, "Thy necessity is yet
greater than mine." Sidney was England's darling, and there was hardly a
poet in the land from whom his death did not obtain "the meed of some
melodious tear." Spenser's _Ruins of Time_ were among the number of
these funeral songs; but the best of them all was by one Matthew Royden,
concerning whom little is known.

Another typical Englishman of Elizabeth's reign was Walter Raleigh, who
was even more versatile than Sidney, and more representative of the
restless spirit of romantic adventure, mixed with cool, practical
enterprise that marked, the times. He fought against the queen's enemies
by land and sea in many quarters of the globe; in the Netherlands and in
Ireland against Spain, with the Huguenot army against the League in
France. Raleigh was from Devonshire, the great nursery of English
seamen. He was half-brother to the famous navigator, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, and cousin to another great captain, Sir Richard Grenville. He
sailed with Gilbert on one of his voyages against the Spanish treasure
fleet, and in 1591 he published a report of the fight, near the Azores,
between Grenville's ship, the _Revenge_, and fifteen great ships of
Spain, an action, said Francis Bacon, "memorable even beyond credit, and
to the height of some heroical fable." Raleigh was active in raising a
fleet against the Spanish Armada of 1588. He was present in 1596 at the
brilliant action in which the Earl of Essex "singed the Spanish king's
beard," in the harbor of Cadiz. The year before he had sailed to Guiana,
in search of th