Before turning to the treasury of his noblest verse, I shall give six
lines from a poem in the _Arcadia_--chiefly for the sake of instancing
what great questions those mighty men delighted in:

What essence destiny hath; if fortune be or no;
Whence our immortal souls to mortal earth do stow[64]:

What life it is, and how that all these lives do gather,
With outward maker's force, or like an inward father.
Such thoughts, me thought, I thought, and strained my single mind,
Then void of nearer cares, the depth of things to find.

Lord Bacon was not the only one, in such an age, to think upon the mighty
relations of physics and metaphysics, or, as Sidney would say, "of
naturall and supernaturall philosophic." For a man to do his best, he
must be upheld, even in his speculations, by those around him.

In the specimen just given, we find that our religious poetry has gone
down into the deeps. There are indications of such a tendency in the
older times, but neither then were the questions so articulate, nor were
the questioners so troubled for an answer. The alternative expressed in
the middle couplet seems to me the most imperative of all questions--both
for the individual and for the church: Is man fashioned by the hands of
God, as a potter fashioneth his vessel; or do we indeed come forth from
his heart? Is power or love the making might of the universe? He who
answers this question aright possesses the key to all righteous
questions.

Sir Philip and his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, made between them a