literature which the countess may reasonably be supposed to have shared; but Sidney himself, although he was no friend to euphuism, was evidently indulging his own mood in this highly decorative prose. The main thread of the story relates how the princes Musidorus and Pyrocles, the latter disguised as a woman, Zelmane, woo the princesses Pamela and Philoclea, daughters of Basilius and Gynaecia, king and queen of Arcady. The shepherds and shepherdesses occupy a humble place in the story. Sidney used a pastoral setting for a romance of chivalry complicated by the elaborate intrigue of Spanish writers. Nor are these intrigues of a purely innocent and pastoral nature. Sidney described the passion of love under many aspects, and the guilty queen Gynaecia is a genuine tragic heroine. The loose frame- work of the romance admits of descriptions of tournaments, Elizabethan palaces and gardens and numerous fine speeches. It also contains some lyrics of much beauty. Charles I. recited and copied out shortly before his death Pamela's prayer, which is printed in the Eikon Basilike. Milton reproached him in the Eikonoklastes with having " borrowed to a Christian use prayers offered to a heathen god . . . and that in no serious book, but in the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia." Professor Courthope (Hist. of English Poetry, i. 215) points out that the tragedy of Sidney's life, the divorce between his ideals of a nobly active life and the enforced idleness of a courtier's existence, is intimately connected with his position as a pioneer in fiction, in which the life represented is tacitly recognized as being contrary to the order of existence. Sidney's wide acquaintance with European literature is reflected in this book, but he was especially indebted to the Arcadia of Jacopo Sannazaro, and still more to George Montemayor's imitation of Sannazaro, the Diana Enamorada. The artistic defects of the Arcadia in no way detracted from its popularity. Both Shakespeare and Spenser were evidently acquainted with it. John Day's He of Guls, and the plots of Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge, and of James Shirley's Arcadia, were derived from it. The book had more than one supplement. Gervase Markham, Sir William Alexander (earl of Stirling) and Richard Beling wrote continuations.
The series of sonnets to Stella were printed in 1591 as Sir P.S.: His Astrophel and Stella, by Thomas Newman, with an introductory epistle by T. Nash, and some sonnets by other writers. In the same year Newman issued another edition with many changes in the text and without Nash's preface. His first edition was (probably later) reprinted by Matthew Lownes. In 1598 the sonnets were reprinted in the folio edition of Sidney's works, entitled from its most considerable item The Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia, edited by Lady Pembroke, with considerable additions. The songs are placed in their proper position among the sonnets, instead of being grouped at the end, and two of the most personal poems (possibly suppressed out of consideration for Lady Rich in the first instance), which afford the best key to the interpretation of the series, appear for the first time. Sidney's sonnets adhere more closely to French than to Italian models. The octave is generally fairly regular on two rhymes, but the sestet usually terminates with a couplet. The Apologie for Poetrie was one of the " additions " to the countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1598), where it is entitled " The Defence of Poesie." It first appeared separately in 1594 (unique copy in the Rowfant Library, reprint 1904, Camb. Univ. Press). Sidney takes the word " poetry " in the wide sense of any imaginative work, and deals with its various divisions. Apart from the subject matter, which is interesting enough, the book has a great value for the simple, direct and musical prose in which it is written. The Psalmes of David, the paraphrase in which he collaborated with his sister, remained in MS. until 1823, when it was edited by S. W. Singer. A translation of part of the Divine Sepmaine of G. Salluste du Bartas is lost. There are two pastorals by Sidney in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody (1602).
Letters and Memorials of State . . . (1746) is the title of an invaluable collection of letters and documents relating to the Sidney family, transcribed from originals at Penshurst and elsewhere by Arthur Collins. Fulke Greville's Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney is a panegyric dealing chiefly with his public policy. The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet was translated from the Latin and published with a memoir by Steuart A. Pears (1845). The best biography of Sidney is A Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney by H. R. Fox Bourne (1862). A revised life by the same author is included in the " Heroes of the Nations " series (1891). Critical appreciation is available in J. A. Symonds's Sir Philip Sidney (1886), in the " English Men of Letters " series; in J. J. A. Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (1890) ; and in modern editions of Sidney's works, among which may be mentioned Mr A. W. Pollard's edition (1888) of Astrophel and Stella, Professor Arber's reprint (1868) of An Apologie for Poetrie, and Mr Sidney Lee's Elizabethan Sonnets (1904) in the re-issue of Professor Arber's English Garner, where the sources of Sidney's sonnets are fully discussed. See also a collection of Sidneiana printed for the Roxburghe Club in 1837, a notice by Mrs Humphry Ward in Ward's English Poets, L 341 seq., and a dissertation by Dr K. Brunhuber, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia und ihre Nachläufer (Nürnberg, 1903). A complete text of Sidney's prose and poetry, edited by Albert Feuillerat, is to be included in the Cambridge English Classics.
SIDNEY, a city and the county-seat of Shelby county, Ohio,
U.S.A., on the Miami river, about 33 m. S. by W. of Lima.
Pop. (1890) 4850; (1900) 5688, including 282 foreign-born and
108 negroes; (1910) 6607. Sidney is served by the Cleveland,
Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Cincinnati, Hamilton &
Dayton, and the Western Ohio (electric) railways. The city is
situated on an elevated tableland, in an agricultural region.
Sidney has a public library, and a monumental building, a
memorial, erected in 1875, to the soldiers in the American Civil
War, and now devoted to various public uses. The river here
provides some water-power, and the city has various manufactures. Sidney was laid out as the county-seat in 1819, was
incorporated as a village in 1831 and first chartered as a city
in 1897.
SIDON (Phoen. ער, Hebrew עיר, Assyr. Ṣidunnu, Egypt. Diduna), formerly the principal city of Phoenicia, now a small town of about 15,000 inhabitants, situated on the Syrian coast between Beirūt and Ṣūr (Tyre). The name, which the Arabs now pronounce Ṣaida, has been explained as meaning " fish-town " (cf. Hebr. צַיִד " to hunt," in Phoen. perhaps " to fish "); more likely it is connected with the god Ṣid, who is known only as an element in proper names (see Cooke, North-Sem. Inscrr. p. 91); possibly both town and people were named after him. The ancient city extended some 800 yds. inland from the shore over ground which is now covered by fruit-gardens. From a series of inscriptions, all giving the same text, discovered at Bostan esh-Shēkh, a little way to the N. of Ṣaida, we learn that the ancient city was divided into three divisions at least, one of which was called " Sidon by the sea," and another " Sidon on the plain " (?) (see N.-Sem. Inscrr. App. i.). In front of the flat promontory to which the modern Sidon is confined there stretches northwards and southwards a rocky peninsula; at the northern extremity of this begins a series of small rocks enclosing the harbour, which is a very bad one. The port was formerly protected on the north by the Qal'at el-Baḥr (" Sea Castle ";, a building of the 13th century, situated on an island still connected with the mainland by a bridge. On the S. side of the town lay the so-called Egyptian harbour, which was filled up in the 17th century in order to keep out the Turks. The wall by which Sidon is at present surrounded is pierced by two gates; at the southern angle, upon a heap of rubbish, stand the remains of the citadel. The streets are very narrow, and the buildings of any interest few; most prominent are some large caravanserais belonging to the period of Sidon's modern prosperity, and the large mosque, formerly a church of the knights of St John. The inhabitants support themselves mainly on the produce of their luxuriant gardens; but the increasing trade of Beirūt has withdrawn the bulk of the commerce from Sidon. In earlier days Phoenicia produced excellent wine, that of Sidon being specially esteemed; it is mentioned in an Aramaic papyrus from Egypt (4th century B.C., N.S.I., p. 213). One of the chief industries of Sidon used to be the manufacture of glass from the fine sand of the river Belus. To the S.E. of the town lies the Phoenician necropolis, which has been to a great extent investigated. The principal finds are sarcophagi, and next to these sculptures and paintings. It was here that the superb Greek
