exchanged compliments with an energy which showed that one at least
of them had not in vain graduated in "the school of abuse". "Raw
devises", "hudder mudder", "guts and garbage", such are the phrases
hurled by Gosson at the arguments and style of his opponents; "bawdy
charms", "the very butchery of Christian souls", are samples of the
names fastened by him upon the cause which they defended. [Footnote:
Lodge, in his _Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays_ (1579 or
1580), is hardly less scurrilous. "There came into my hand lately a
little (would God a wittye) pamphelet.... Being by me advisedly wayed,
I find it the oftscome of imperfections, the writer fuller of words
than judgement, the matter certainely as ridiculus as serius."--In
_Ancient Critical Essays_, ii. 5.]

From this war of words Sidney turned loftily aside. Pointedly challenged
at the outset--for the first and second pamphlets of Gosson had, without
permission, been dedicated to "the right noble gentleman, Maister
Philip Sidney"--he seldom alludes to the arguments, and never once
mentions the name of Gosson. He wrote to satisfy his own mind, and not
to win glory in the world of letters. And thus his _Apologie_, though
it seems to have been composed while the controversy was still fresh
in men's memory, was not published until nearly ten years after his
death (1595). It was not written for controversy, but for truth. From
the first page it rises into the atmosphere of calm, in which alone
great questions can be profitably discussed.

The _Apologie_ of Sidney is, in truth, what would now be called a
Philosophy of Poetry. It is philosophy taken from the side of the
moralist; for that was the side to which the disputants had confined
themselves, and in which--altogether apart from the example of
others--the interest of Sidney, as man of action, inevitably lay. It