position, stately buildings, earthly pleasures, bodily strength, and
works of beauty and magnificence, admit of an easy application to the
splendid career of the Earl of Leicester,--his favor and influence with
the Queen, his enlargement of Kenilworth, his princely style of living,
and particularly (IV.) his military command in the Low Countries. The
sixth of these "tragick pageants" strongly confirms this
interpretation. The two bears are Robert and Ambrose Dudley. While
Leicester was lieutenant in the Netherlands, he was in the habit of
using the Warwick crest (a bear and ragged staff) instead of his own.
Naunton, in his Fragmenta Regalia, calls him _Ursa Major_. C.

Ver. 497.--_The holie brethren_, &c. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Daniel, ch. iii. C.

Ver. 582-586.--A paraphrase of Sir Philip's last words to his brother.
"Above all, govern your will and affection by the will and word of your
Creator, in me beholding the end of this world with all her vanities."
This is pointed out by Zouch, Life of Sidney, p. 263. C.

Ver 590.--This second series of pageants is applicable exclusively to
Sir Philip Sidney. The meaning of the third and fourth is hard to make
out; but the third seems to have reference to the collection of the
scattered sheets of the Arcadia, and the publication of this work by
the Countess of Pembroke, after it had been condemned to destruction by
the author. The fourth may indeed signify nothing more than Lady
Sidney's bereavement by her husband's death; but this interpretation
seems too literal for a professed allegory. The sixth obviously alludes
to the splendid obsequies to Sidney, performed at the Queen's expense,
and to the competition of the States of Holland for the honor of
burying his body. C.