… "Do as I Say, Not as I Do": Sidney's Letters and the Apology

On May 22, 1580, a few months after he (probably) completed the Apology and at approximately the same time that he was also occupied by the Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella, Sidney answered a request from his friend, Edward Denny, for a list of books that an educated man should read.²⁵ On October 18, 1580, Sidney wrote a similar, though less formal letter to his brother Robert that deals with the same issues.²⁶

Taking the Denny letter first, the key difference between the Denny letter and the Apology is that Sidney excludes poetry entirely from his list. Even though in the Apology Sidney strenuously argues that poetry teaches virtue better than any other discipline, Sidney recommends no poetry whatsoever to his friend. Homer and Vergil, Petrarch and Sannazaro, Chaucer, Gower, Dante, Amadis de Gaul, the Mirrour For Magistrates, and the Earl of Surrey's lyrics, even the Arthurian legends, all are conspicuously absent.

Even further, Sidney transfers to philosophy and to history precisely those qualities which in the Apology assured poetry's superiority to its competitors. Sidney commences his letter by dividing the pursuit of knowledge into two parts: "the one as concerninge our selves, the other an outward application of our selves" (538). For spiritual knowledge, Sidney recommends that Denny read the Bible and "some parts of morall philosophy" (538), especially Aristotle's "Ethickes." Recognizing that Aristotle (then as now) "is something darke and hath need of a Logicall examination" (538), Sidney directs his friend to Cicero's De Officiis and to some of Plutarch's discourses.²⁷ Although Sidney clearly approves of Plutarch, his passion for Cicero is such that he ranks him (not Vergil or Homer) second only to the Bible: "But let Tully be for that mater your foundation, next to the foundation of foundations, and wisdome of wisdomes, I mean the holy scripture" (539). This evaluation of Cicero and Plutarch radically differs from his dismissal of philosophy in the Apology as "hard of utterance and … misty to be conceived" (27) and of philosophers as: "coming towards me with a sullen gravity, as though they could not abide vice by daylight, rudely clothed for to witness outwardly their contempt of outward things, with books in their hands against glory, whereto they set their names, sophistically speaking against subtlety" (23-24).

The divergences between these texts can be partially (but only partially) resolved through Sidney's implicit distinction in the Denny letter between the moral philosophy of antiquity and their scholastic followers ("these men casting largesse as they go of definitions, divisions, and distinctions" [24]). He mentions the former, but not the latter. Even so, Sidney declines to make this distinction in the Apology. Furthermore, even though Sidney claims in his defense that Alexander "received more bravery of mind by the pattern of Achilles than by hearing the definition of fortitude" (61), Sidney urges his friend—a soldier—to read Aristotle's Ethics, Cicero's De Officiis, and Plutarch's discourses for images of "what [it] is to be truly iuste, truly vallyant, rightly temperate, & rightly friendly, with their annexed quallityes and contraryes" (538), not the Odyssey, the Illiad, or Aeneid.

In the next section, Sidney prescribes the books appropriate for "the trade of our lives," and since his friend has chosen the military life, Sidney recommends that he read books "that profess the arte [of soldiery], & in historyes" (539), that is, "Langeai in french, and Machievall in Italian" (539), but he quickly breaks off discussion since, as he freely admits, he has very little expertise in this area: "Of [other books] I will say noe further, for I am witness of myne owne ignoraunce" (539). The latter category commands more of Sidney's attention, and his bibliography stretches from antiquity to the Renaissance:

[Y]ou shoold begin with Philip Melanchthons Chronolgy, so to Justine, then to Herodotus, Thucidides, Xenophon, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, Polybius, Lyvy, Dionisius, Salust, Ca'sar, Dion, Tacitus, & then the Emperours lyves, gathered together in a volume by Henricus Stephanus. Then to take Zonaras, & Nicetas, for the Greek parts, & Procopius; and from thence to fall lower, to the particular chronicles of eche country, as Paulus Aemilius for France, Polidore for Englande, and soe of the rest. But because this might seeme too longe, though in deed not soe longe, as a man woold thinke, my councell to you is even to being with our english Cronicle, sett out by Hollinshead; which you shoold reed thorow till you came to Edwarde the thirdes lyfe, then to take Froyssart. After him Anguetard of Monstrelett, written in old frenche, after him Philip de Commines, & then Guicciardin who reach almost to our tyme. And these will serve your turne for historicall matters. (539)

Sidney's treatment of history in this passage departs in two important ways from the Apology. First, in the Apology Sidney undermines the authority of historians by asserting that they rely "upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay" (24); but in the Denny letter no trace remains of these doubts over the historians' ability to accurately recover the past. Quite the opposite, for Sidney urges Denny to read military handbooks and history along-side each other because the gnosis of the former complements the praxis of the latter: "The first [military manuals] shewes what should be done, the other [histories] what hath bene done" (539; my emphasis). Works on military science and philosophy may have replaced poetry as sources of images depicting ideal behavior, but the ideal must be balanced with reality, and for that Denny must turn to history.

Regardless of Sidney's deconstruction of the historians' claim to firm grounding, he argues throughout the Apology that the historian is bound "not to what should be but to what is" (27). But in the Denny letter, the historian combines accurate reports of past events with idealized patterns of behavior: "[the Greek and Roman historians] were the wisest, and fullest of excellent examples, both of discipline & strategems" (539). This sentence, on which Sidney does not dwell, effectively collapses poetry into history, for the historian now provides models of good behavior as well as preserves the past. In a sense, poetry does not have to be mentioned because Sidney has so redefined history that it almost becomes poetry insofar as it teaches virtue, presents models, and gives helpful hints on military strategy. Significantly, this is exactly how Sidney characterizes Homer in the Apology (6, 62, 88). There are only two differences between Sidney's description of history in the Denny letter and his description of poetry in the Apology. First, the historian does not delight his reader; second, the historian does not create "forms such as never were in nature" (14). But given the practical bent of Sidney's letter, these are negligible qualities next to the historian's ability to combine factual detail with idealized portraiture.

The omission of poetry from the list of recommended subjects might be explained by assuming that Sidney, like a good orator, considered the nature of his audience before launching into his argument, and consequently tailored his list to fit Denny's specific needs. In other words, the Denny letter does not represent an ideal program of study (which presumably would include poetry), but a curtailed list meant to have no application to anyone other than Edward Denny. This view receives some support from Sidney's admission towards the beginning of his letter that "one thinge is fitte to be knowne by a scoller that will reed in the schools and an other by Ned Denny" (538), and that "thinge" happens to be soldiery, not poetry. Therefore, one might assume that Sidney recommends what Denny needs to know, not what Denny ought to know.

If, however, we choose to privilege the Apology as more representative of Sidney's "true" feelings towards literature, then we must confront the fact that Sidney himself discredits this explanation. He lavishes scorn upon the notion that soldiers do not need to read Homer, calling it "the ordinary doctrine of ignorance" (61). Active men "took their first motions of courage" from the poets, and as proof he gives the example of Alexander, "the phoenix of warlike princes": "This Alexander left his schoolmaster, living Aristotle, behind him, but took dead Homer with him. He put the philosopher Callistenes to death for his seeming philosophical, indeed mutinous, stubbomess; but the chief thing he ever was heard to wish for was that Homer had been alive" (61).

Even though Sidney states that "poetry is the companion of the camps" (61), when someone from the camps asks for aid in "directinge [his] studyes" (537), Sidney declines to mention poetry. Even further, he recommends philosophy to his soldier friend, which contradicts his assertion that "the quiddety of ens and prima materia will hardly agree with a corselet" and that Alexander "well found he received more bravery of mind by the pattern of Achilles than by hearing the definition of fortitude" (61).

Equally important, by omitting poetry Sidney contradicts the advice of such highly influential writer/pedagogues as Castiglione, Sir Thomas Elyot, and Roger Ascham. All three concerned themselves with investigating, in Elyot's words, "the order of learning apt for a gentleman" such as Denny, and all three insist upon the centrality of poetry.²⁸ In addition, the letter of advice about education constituted an important subgenre of humanist discourse. Rabelais, Ariosto, and Montaigne wrote one, and in each case the author includes poetry among the disciplines essential to a gentleman's education.²⁹

Consequently, poetry's absence in the Denny letter makes it a highly unconventional document, and we should not try to blunt its significance by either assuming that Denny need not have read Homer or Vergil or that Sidney merely adapted his advice to fit his audience. All Renaissance pedagogues would have disagreed with poetry's omission, and we need to attend to the disparity between the Denny letter and the Apology, not explain it away or diminish its significance.

Sidney does not make clear if his younger brother Robert asked for advice or, as older siblings often do, he spontaneously offered his advice on which disciplines best "teach profit."³⁰ Whatever its origin, the resulting letter (dated 18 October 1580) generally follows the same outlines as the Denny letter, although with some significant modifications.³¹ Perhaps assuming that Robert already recognized the importance of the Bible, Sidney begins with history, recommending Jean Bodin "for the method of writing history" (219). Sidney gives the "chronologies of Melanchthon, Tarchagnota, Languet, and such others" as examples of "narrations of things done" (220), and he suggests that Robert read the ancient histories chronologically: "Xenophon to follow Thucydides, so doth Thucydides follow Herodotus, and Diodorus Siculus follow Xenophon; so generally do the Roman stories follow the Greek, and the particular stories of present monarchies follow the Roman" (220).

Sidney also strongly recommends that Robert attend to the "discoursers," whom he defines as anyone who writes "non simpliciter de facto, sed de qualitatibus et circumstantiis facti" (221)—not simply of the facts (i.e, the historians?), but of the qualities and circumstances of the fact. Sidney gives as examples the divine, "in telling his opinion and reasons in religion"; the lawyer, in "in showing the causes and benefits of laws"; and the "natural philosopher," "in setting down the causes of any strange thing."

As in the Denny letter, Sidney stresses that he particularly wants Robert to read the works of the "moral philosopher" in all his varieties: "either in the ethic part, when he sets forth virtues or vices, and the natures of passions, or in the politic, when he doth (as he often doth) meddle sententiously with matters of estate" (221).

The philosophers, not the poets, provide ideal models of actions (although Sidney does not specify, we may assume that he has in mind Aristotle and Cicero). Sidney's theoretical treatment of historians similarly follows the Denny letter, not the Apology. Sidney grants that the historian can reproduce the past accurately and, perhaps more importantly, it is the historian, not the poet, who provides ideal models for emulation, "examples of virtue and vice, with their good or evil successes": "the establishment or ruins of great estates, with the causes, the time, and the circumstances of the laws then written of, the enterings and endings of wars, and therein, the strategems against the enemy, and the discipline upon the soldier, and thus much as a very historiographer" (220).

Nonetheless, Sidney's treatment of history differs subtly from the other two texts. In the Denny letter, Sidney collapses poetry into history, and in the Apology, he rigorously insists upon the boundary separating poetry from history. The historian, tied "not to what should be but to what is" (27), cannot but include the good with the bad: "But as in Alexander or Scipio himself, show doings, some to be liked, some to be misliked" (32-33). Sidney grants that occasionally the historian "must tell events whereof he can yield no cause," but when this happens, he ceases to be an historian and becomes "poetical" (32, 33). In neither text does Sidney admit the possibility of any middle ground.

Sidney allows precisely this excluded option in the letter to Robert. He admits poetry's existence, which he does not do in the Denny letter, and he grants history much greater leeway in adapting the method of poetry (feigning) without actually becoming poetry than he does in the Apology:

Besides this, the historian makes himself a discourser for profit, and an orator, yea a poet, sometimes for ornament. An orator, in making excellent orations "e re nata," which are to be marked, but marked with the note of rhetorical remembrances: a poet, in painting forth the effects, the motions, the whisperings of the people, which though in disputation one might say were true, yet who will mark them well, shall find them taste of a poetical vein, and that kind are gallantly to be marked: for though perchance they were not so, yet it is enough they might be so. (220-21)

One could say that Sidney so valorizes those parts written in "the poetical vein" that they become the most valuable feature of history, thus coming very close to his statement in the Apology that "the best of the historian is subject to the poet" (34). Nonetheless, poetry is still subordinate to history, for if Sidney allows the historian to use "poetry" in order to teach virtue more effectively, he also says that the historian becomes an orator at other times. Although Sidney proposes an interdisciplinary approach in this passage, there is no doubt that history remains the preeminent science; poetry is a tool, not an equal partner. And so, Sidney does not recommend that Robert follow Alexander and read Homer. Using the example that Sidney gives in the Apology, this letter recommends that Robert spend his time reading Herodotus, not Xenophon, the fate of Zopyrus' nose notwithstanding. Even so, Sidney's theory of history in the Robert letter constitutes a compromise position between the unqualified denial of poetry in the Denny letter and the unqualified praise of poetry in the Apology.

The gulf between the Apology and the letters demonstrates that the Apology does not constitute an unambiguous, public statement of Sidney's poetics, but rather one statement among three, and which one we decide to privilege will reveal much about our preferences.³² If, however, we give each text equal weight, not assuming that the Apology represents Sidney's "true" feelings, then Sidney's unsureness of poetry's place in the public and the private spheres becomes clearer. The Apology, we should remember, was not written for public consumption, but for a coterie audience, which Sidney knew was largely, but not exclusively, sympathetic towards literature. As for the letters, such texts were by convention semi-public documents (indeed the Denny letter survived only because a student copied it out as an exercise). Privately, Sidney allowed himself, however problematically, to defend poetry. But for public consumption, Sidney either ignores poetry altogether or subordinates it to a more respectable discipline. To borrow Greenblatt's terms, it would appear that Sidney wrote his letters with an eye towards fashioning and maintaining his public self, and as we know from Moffett's adjustments to Sidney's literary career, a sympathy for poetry did not jibe with maintaining an image as the leader of international Protestantism.

Notes

…²⁵ Sir Edward Denny (1547-99) led a highly successful career as a soldier-courtier. All we know of his education is that Denny attended Merton College, Oxford, but his military career is more fully documented. He accompanied the Earl of Essex to Ireland in 1573, went on a number of highly profitable privateering ventures between 1577 and 1578, and toward the end of 1588 accompanied his cousins Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh on their unsucessful expedition to the New World. Denny and Sidney probably had known each other for some time before 1580, when Denny participated in a tournament officiated by Queen Elizabeth in which he and two other companions-at-arms, Philip, Earl of Arundel and Sir William Drurie, held the field against all challengers, including the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, and Sir Philip Sidney. That same year Denny, upon the recommendation of Sir Philip's father, Sir Henry Sidney, who called him "my deere friend," accompanied Lord Grey de Wilton (his secretary was Edmund Spenser) on his mission to Ireland, where he distinguished himself in a number of military engagements. After Ireland, Denny and Sidney's friendship continued to thrive. In a 1581 letter to Walsingham, Denny calls Sidney "the most worthy young man in the world." Elizabeth frequently employed Denny as a private messenger, and for his distinguished service over the years she knighted him in 1588. Denny died in 1599, and his epitaphs depict a man who exemplified the Elizabethan ideal of a courtier: "religious, wise, just, liberall, right valiant, most active, learning friende, prides foe, kindly, lovinge, mutch beloved, was honoured w^th y^t dignitie of knighthood by due deserte in y^e field." A poem inscribed on a pillar next to his tomb sums up his life thus: "A courtier in the chamber, / A soldier in the fielde / Whose tongue could neuer flatter / Whose heart could neuer yield."

Did Denny follow Sidney's advice? Probably not, as he would have been too busy with the sordid details of fighting. Denny's sense of warfare was very much grounded in the traditions of chivalry, and he quickly became disillusioned with the Irish campaign. He complained that he had to fight in "boggs, gllimmes, and woods, as in my opinion it might better fit mastives than brave gentlemen that desier to win honour." The above information is summarized from H. L. L. Denny, "Biography of Sir Edward Denny," East Herts Archaeological Society: Transactions 2 (1902-1904): 248-49.

²⁶ Sidney's letter to Denny remained unknown to twentieth-century critics until a Renaissance transcript of it turned up at a 1971 auction at Sotheby's (London). Later that year, English Literary Renaissance reprinted a portion of the letter in holograph (ELR 2 [1971]) with an introduction by John Buxton. In Young Philip Sidney: 1572-1577, James M. Osborn reprints the entire letter. All further references to the Denny letter are to Osborn's edition and cited parenthetically in the text. Although these letters have been known for some years, their relationship to Sidney's poetics has escaped scrutiny. Elizabeth Story Donno ("Old Mouse-Eaten Records: History in Sidney's Apology," in Sir Philip Sidney: An Anthology of Modern Criticism, ed. Dennis Kay [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987], 149-50) and Dorothy Connell (Sir Philip Sidney: The Maker's Mind) mention the Denny letter, and Katherine Duncan-Jones gives an extended summary of it in Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 171-74. No one, however, mentions the discrepancies between the letter and the Apology.

²⁷ Sidney's choices are as follows: "of Refreining anger, of curiosity, of the Tranquility of the minde, of the Flatterer, & the friende, [and] of Morall vertew" (539).

²⁸ Elyot calls Homer "a fountain" from which proceeds "all eloquence and learning." Because the Iliad presents the best examples of both political and military behavior, "there is no lesson for a young gentleman to be compared with Homer," and Elyot gives the Aeneid similar praise (The Book Named the Governor, ed. S. E. Lehmberg [New York: Everyman's Library, 1966], 30). Ascham also deems Homer "learned" and "divine." He has "so much learning in all kind of sciences as, by the judgement of Quintillian, he deserveth so high a praise that no man yet deserved to sit in the second degree beneath him" (Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster, ed. Lawrence V. Ryan [Ithaca: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1967], 54-55. Castiglione has Count Ludovico pepper his talk with brief encomia of poets ancient and contemporary, and his declaration that courtiers should also be poets is famous: "Let [the ideal courtier] be versed in the poets, as well as in the orators and historians, and let him be practiced also in writing verse and prose" (The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles Singleton [New York: Anchor Books, 1959], 70). He should not only emulate Alexander's respect for Homer's art, but, like Unico Aretino, be prepared to recite a "spontaneous" sonnet so accomplished that his audience wonders if he composed it the night before.

²⁹ As Claudio Guillen reminds us, "the letter may be regarded as one of the classical genres that are cultivated again or resurrected during the Renaissance" ("Notes toward the Study of the Renaissance Letter," Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation [Harvard English Studies 14 (1986)], 71). Rabelais, for example, "copies" Gargantua's letter to Pantagruel advising his son to become "a veritable abyss of learning," and Ariosto, in his sixth satire, a verse-epistle addressed to Pietro Bembo, details the humanist program of study he wants his son to follow. Montaigne casts the essay "Of the Education of Children" as a letter to the Comtesse de Gurson advising her upon the education of her progeny.

³⁰ Robert Sidney's life more or less followed the same path as his brother's. The younger Sidney even wrote poetry, although his competent verse does not compare to the splendors of Astrophil and Stella. Like Denny, Robert Sidney was a soldier (he served in the same Dutch campaign that proved fatal to his brother) and, like his older brother, Robert served his queen as a relatively high-level diplomat. In the face of the Spanish threat, Elizabeth sent Robert to Scotland in 1588 in order to secure James's loyalty as well as to "back the queen out of some intemperate promises" committed by William Asheby," of awarding James' an English duchy with accompanying revenues, five thousand pounds, and a force of fifty gentelman, one hundred foot, and one hundred horse to be maintained at the queen's expense. Not only did Robert Sidney succeed at nullifying Asheby's promises while still ensuring James's loyalty, he did so while earning James's affections" (Millicent V. Hay, The Life of Robert Sidney [Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, Associated University Press, 1984], 61-69).

³¹ All references to Sidney's letter to Robert are from The Correspondence of Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, ed. William A. Bradley (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1912), 219-25.

³² For proponents of this view, see Neil Rudenstine, Sidney's Poetic Development (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1967), 51-52; A. C. Hamilton, Sir Philip Sidney: A Study of His Life and Works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 107-9; and Forrest G. Robinson, "Introduction," xxiii….