Arcadia. Sir Philip Sidney
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therefore framed his answer nearest to the humor that would soonest draw out Pyrocles’ secret. While Pyrocles had defended his solitariness at the beginning of his speech, Musidorus had framed in his mind a reply against it, praising honorable action and showing that contemplation is but a glorious excuse for idleness, that in action a man did not only better himself but benefit others, that the gods would not have delivered a soul into a body with arms and legs unless they intended the mind should employ them as instruments for doing, and that the mind should best know its own good or evil by practice, whose knowledge was the only way to increase the one and correct the other. He had besides many other arguments, because the sharpness of his wit found plenty of material to work with.
But when he found that Pyrocles left his praise of the contemplative life and fell into an affected praising of the place, Musidorus left it too and joined with him in that, because he found him in that humor to utter more store of passion. And even thus, kindly embracing him, he said:
“Your words are such, noble cousin, so sweetly and strongly handled in praise of solitariness that they would make me likewise yield myself up to solitude, except that the same words make me know that it is more pleasant to enjoy the company of someone who can speak such words than it is pleasant to be persuaded by such words to choose solitariness. I give you leave, sweet Pyrocles, ever to defend solitariness, so long as to defend it, you ever keep company.
“But I marvel at the excessive praises you give to this country. In truth it is not unpleasant, but yet if you would return to Macedonia, you should either see many heavens or find this no more than earthly. And even Tempe in my Thessalia (where you and I, to my great happiness, were brought up together) is nothing inferior to Arcadia. But I think you will make me see that the vigor of your wit can show itself in any subject. Or else you feed sometimes your solitariness with the conceits of the poets, whose liberal pens can travel over mountains as easily as molehills. Like well-disposed men, these poets set up everything to the highest note, especially when they put words in the mouths of one of these fantastical mind-infected people that children and musicians call lovers!”
This word lovers no less pierced poor Pyrocles than the right tune of music touches him whom a tarantula has poisoned. There was not one part of his body that did not feel a sudden motion. He panted, and his heart seemed to dance to the sound of that word. After some pause he lifted his eyes a little from the ground, not yet not daring to place them in the eyes of Musidorus, and, armed with the very countenance of a poor prisoner at the bar whose answer is nothing but guilty, with much ado he brought forth this question:
“Alas, dear cousin, what if I be not so much the poet (the freedom of whose pen can exercise itself in anything) as even that miserable subject of his cunning whereof you speak?”
“Now the eternal gods forbid,” cried out Musidorus, “that ever my ear should be poisoned with so evil news of you! Oh, never let me know that such a base affection should get any lordship over your thoughts!”
But as he was speaking more, Kalander came and broke off their discourse by inviting them to the hunting of a goodly stag, which harbored in a wood thereby. He hoped it would make them good sport and drive away some part of Daiphantus’ melancholy. They condescended, and so, going to their lodgings, furnished themselves as liked them, while Daiphantus wrote a few words, which he left sealed in a letter against their return.
Chapter 10
Hunting the Hart
During Kalander’s hunt, a stag is slain and Pyrocles disappears after leaving a letter that explains little. Musidorus searches for him throughout Arcadia, accompanied only by Clitophon, who, after some unrecorded adventures, recognizes the black armor of his own cousin Amphialus. Musidorus puts on the black armor and is forthwith attacked by men who escort the black-and-white coach of Queen Helen of Corinth. (1593 ed. 17v.39)
Musidorus and Pyrocles then went together abroad, and the good Kalander entertained them with pleasant discoursing. He told them how well he loved the sport of hunting when he was a young man and how much, by comparison, he disdained all chamber delights. The sun (howsoever great a journey it had to make) could never prevent him with earliness, nor the moon with her sober countenance dissuade him before midnight, from watching for the deer’s feeding.
“O,” said he, “you will never live to my age, unless you keep yourselves in breath with exercise and in heart with joyfulness: too much thinking consumes the spirits, and often it falls out that while one thinks too much of his doing, he neglects to do the effect of his thinking.”
Then spared he not to remember how much Arcadia had changed since his youth. Activity and good fellowship were now nothing valued as they were then, but according to the nature of the old-growing world, still worse and worse. Then he would tell them stories of such gallants as he had known.
And so with pleasant company he beguiled the time’s haste and shortened the way’s length, until they came to the side of the wood where the hounds were in couples awaiting their coming, but with a whining accent craving liberty. Many of them in color and marks so resembled each other that it showed they were of one kind. The huntsmen were handsomely attired in their green liveries, as though they were children of summer. They held staves in their hands to beat the guiltless earth when the hounds were at a fault, and they wore horns about their necks to sound an alarum upon a silly fugitive.
The hounds were straight uncoupled, and ere long the stag thought it better to trust to the nimbleness of his feet than to the slender fortification of his lodging. But even his feet betrayed him, for howsoever they went, they themselves uttered themselves to the scent of his enemies. The hounds took the scent one from another, sometimes believing the wind’s advertisement, sometimes the view of their faithful counselors—the huntsmen. With open mouths they then declared war when the war was already begun, and their cry was composed of so well-sorted mouths that any man would perceive some kind of proportion, but the skillful woodmen found music.
Delight and a variety of opinions drew the horsemen sundry ways, yet cheering their hounds with voice and horn, they nonetheless kept together. The wood seemed to conspire with them against its own citizens, deciphering their noise through all its quarters. Even the nymph Echo ceased to bewail the loss of Narcissus and became a hunter. The stag was in the end so hotly pursued that (leaving his flight) he was driven to make courage of despair, and so, turning his head, made the hounds testify by change of speech that he was at a bay—as if from hot pursuit of their enemy, they were suddenly come to a parley.
Kalander (by his skill of coasting the country) was amongst the first that reached the besieged deer. Some of the younger sort would have killed it with their swords, but he would not suffer that and instead with a cross-bow sent a death to the poor beast, who with tears showed the unkindness it took of man’s cruelty.
By the time that the whole company was assembled, and the stag had bestowed himself liberally among them that had killed him, Daiphantus was missed. Palladius carefully inquired, but no news could be given him, except for one man who said he thought he had returned home, because he marked him, in the chief of the hunting, take a by-way, which might lead to Kalander’s house. That answer for the time satisfying, and they having performed all duties, as well for the stag’s funeral as the hounds’ triumph, they returned home. Some talked of the fatness of the deer’s body, some of the fairness of his head, some of the hounds’ cunning, some of their speed, and some of their cry, till coming home (about the time that the candles begin to inherit the sun’s office) they found Daiphantus was not to be found.
Palladius greatly marveled, and a day or two passed, while neither search nor inquiry could help him to knowledge, until at last he lighted upon the letter that Pyrocles had written before he went a-hunting and left in his study among his other writings. The letter was directed to Palladius himself, and contained these words:
“My only friend! Violence of love leads me into such a course, whereof your knowledge may much more vex you than help me. Therefore pardon my concealing it from you since then. If I wrong you, it is in the respect I bear you. Return into Thessalia, I pray you, as full of good fortune as I am of desire: