Nothing could have been more humiliating to Sidney's highstrung and sensitive temperament than to be kept dangling about a court where the queen turned but cold glances upon him, and where her nobles were permitted to slight him, after the usual manner of courtiers who "kick whom royalty kicks, and hug whom royalty hugs."
Philip Sidney was a most unusual courtier. He had more than once held out a manly hand to one who had come under her Majesty's disfavor, but whom he regarded as stanch and deserving; and he had not failed to condemn where she smiled, if he felt that condemnation was deserved.
With his great patron dismissed from royal favor, and London full of gay French and English courtiers who looked upon him as an enemy, Philip Sidney stood almost alone. Yet was he in no whit daunted, nor did he yield one hair's breadth of the high ground he had taken. His was that finer courage that can dare the whole world for a principle and stand alone upon the right.
As may be imagined, this independence of spirit was most distasteful to the vain and fickle queen; but Sidney's grace and talents and personal beauty rendered him a courtier with whom she was unwilling to dispense. The queen had favored him for these lesser gifts, but the great heart of the English people loved him for the chivalric spirit _she_ valued not, and for the indomitable manliness that would not truckle--not even to the queen.
During this period of her Majesty's displeasure toward him, Sidney was often stung to the quick by petty slights from his fellow-courtiers, but on one occasion the offender went too far. The brutal but powerful Earl of Oxford--head of the party who favored the proposed marriage--had long been a rival of Sidney's in the queen's favor, and there was no love lost between them.
One day at Whitehall, as Philip Sidney and some of his friends were engaged in a game of tennis, the Earl of Oxford entered the court, uninvited, and demanded a part in the game. The presence of a number of French courtiers as lookers-on and listeners led him to assume a tone that was even more arrogant and offensive than was usual with him.
At first, Sidney took no notice of the intrusion; but the studied rudeness becoming unbearable, he at length reproved the offender firmly. At this, Oxford fell into a rage, and ended by ordering the players out of the tennis-court. Sidney met the earl's haughty gaze with one of proud defiance, and answered,--