The Relations of Spenser and Sidney

NTIL further biographical information is disclosed the problem of the personal relations of Spenser and Sidney remains open to conjecture. Mainly two objections oppose the natural assumption that the two men were intimate in personal and literary matters: first, Spenser's vagueness, or perhaps reticence, when in a letter to Harvey, October, 1579, he speaks of being "in some use of familiarity" with Sidney; and second, his unaccountable delay in joining the chorus of grief at Sidney's death. These facts, and others less important, have been cited as indicating the absence of intimacy; while on the other hand effort has been made to explain them in such a way that the pleasing picture of friendship might not be damaged.1 In the absence of biographical data, a limited answer may be obtained by comparing the literary work of Spenser and Sidney. Remembering the facts of their association and eliminating the fiction of an established intimacy, one may inquire to what extent their literary projects and methods were alike and perhaps in how far their writings embody the same philosophical and political attitudes.2 The present writer expects to do no more than to try to bring together thevarious opinions of Spenser's and Sidney's work and, by supplementing and modifying them, to clarify rather than to settle a problem which has suffered much from dogmatic assertion. The approach to the study of Sidney and Spenser is interesting in view of a marked similarity in the chronology and general character of