at she will put all pride out of countenance; in
summe, such proceeding as will stirre hope, but teach hope good
maners. Pamela of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not
knowing her excellencies, but by my making that one of her
excellencies to be void of pride: her mother's wisdome, greatnesse,
nobilitie, but (if I can guesse aright) knit with a more constant
temper.[71]

The description of an envious man in the second book,[72] which
suggested to Sir Richard Steele his essay in the nineteenth number of
the _Spectator_, is another good example of Sidney's ability in
delineating character. The passage in which Musidorus is represented
showing off the paces of his horse,[73] a subject especially adapted to
excite the best effort of the author, is a very remarkable effort of
descriptive power, for the insertion of which, unfortunately, space is
wanting here. Sidney might have quoted his description of Pamela
sewing, to justify his belief that "It is not rhyming and versing that
maketh poesy":

Pamela, who that day having wearied her selfe with reading, * * * was
working upon a purse certaine roses and lillies. * * * The flowers
shee had wrought caried such life in them, that the cunningest
painter might have learned of her needle: which, with so pretty a
manner, made his careers to & fro through the cloth, as if the needle
it selfe would haue been loth to haue gone fromward such a mistresse,
but that it hoped to returne thitherward very quickly againe; the
cloth looking with many eyes vpon her, and louingly embracing the
wounds she gaue it: the sheares also were at hand to behead the silke
that was growne too short. And if at any time shee put her mouth to
bite it off, it seemed, that where she had beene long in making of
a rose with her hands, she would in an instant make roses with her
lips; as the lillies seemed to haue their whitenesse rather of the
hand that made them, than of the matter whereof they were made;
& that they grew there by the suns of her eyes, and were refreshed
by the most * * * comfortable ayre, which an unawares sigh might
bestow upon them.[74]

Charles I. passed many hours of his prison life in reading the
"Arcadia," and Milton[75] accused him of stealing a prayer of Pamela
to insert in the "Eikon Basilike": "And that in no serious book, but
the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia';