It partakes of the nature of the
practical joke, and though it no doubt amused the courtiers of
Elizabeth, is too clumsy for a more cultivated taste. But although
Sidney's comic scenes may no longer amuse, it must be said that they
are free from the low coarseness and ribaldry which have furnished
merriment to times which pretended to a much higher standard of wit and
education than his own. An interesting contrast may be made between a
comic passage of the "Arcadia,"[79] representing a fight between two
cowards, and perhaps the only scene in the "Morte d'Arthur" of
humorous intent,[80]--that in which King Mark is ignominiously put to
flight by Arthur's court fool disguised in the armor of a knight.
In the history of English literature, Sir Philip Sidney's romance will
always have a prominent place as the first specimen of a fine prose
style. The affectations and mannerisms which are its chief defect were
due to the unsettled condition of the language, and to the influence of
foreign works, which the general love of learning had made familiar to
cultivated Englishmen. The position of the "Arcadia" in fiction is
established by the exquisite descriptions of nature and the life-like
sketches of character which will often reward the patient reader. That
prolixity, which more than any other cause has made the work obsolete,
and, as a whole, unreadable, was a recommendation rather than an
objection at the time of publication.
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