Arcadia. Sir Philip Sidney

      Chapter 4

      Philanax’ Letter

      Kalander continues. He does not know what the oracle said to make Basilius retire to the country. He tells Palladius how his son Clítophon had found a letter from Philanax, a nobleman whom Basilius assigned to take his place during his retirement. In the letter Philanax urges Basilius not to give his daughters the feeling that he does not trust them, and not to put Pamela in the hands of such a person as Dametas. (1593 ed. 6v.13)

      “What I have told you now is no more than every Arcadian knows. But I have determined there is only one living person to whom the prince has imparted what moved him to this strange solitariness. This I conjecture, and indeed more than conjecture, from an accident which I will now recount to you.

      “My only son, Clitophon, is absent now preparing for his marriage, which we soon will celebrate here. This son of mine was a gentleman of the bedchamber when my master Basilius still kept his court. After it was disbanded, my son returned home and showed me a paper among other things that he had gathered. It was a copy of a letter that the prince had read and laid afterwards on a window seat, presuming that nobody would dare to look at his correspondence. Yet my son not only took the time to read it but to copy it. In truth I blame Clitophon for the curiosity that made him forget his duty. Kings’ secrets should not be revealed. However, since it was done, I was content to take whatever profit would come thereby.

      “Here is the letter, which I have carried with me ever since. Before I read it to you, I must tell you from whom it came; a nobleman of this country named Philanax, appointed regent by the prince during his retirement, and most worthy to be so, for there lives no man whose excellent wit more simply embraces integrity. No one can question his unfeigned love for his master except to wonder whether he loves Basilius better as a man or as a prince. He has a rare temperament, unlike most men, who either servilely yield to all appetites or, fancying good in obstinate austerity, neglect the prince’s person. This, then, is the man who, above all (and most worthy) the prince chiefly loves. Philanax was lying sick, and the prince must have written to him upon his return from Delphos, disclosing his growing determination to act upon some oracle that he had received there. Whereupon Philanax replied:

      Philanax’ Letter to Basilius

      Most respected and beloved prince! If at your going to Delphos you had been as pleased to use my humble service as you are now, I should have spoken in better season and to better purpose. If my speech had prevailed, you would now be far less in danger, and much more in quietness. I would then have said that wisdom and virtue being the only destinies appointed to man to follow, we should in them seek all our knowledge since such guides cannot fail us. Besides inward comfort, knowledge and virtue also lead directly to prosperity. Even at a time when wickedness prevails in the world, evil never happens to one who is in the company of virtue.

      I would also have said that the heavenly powers are to be reverenced rather than used. Instead of searching out hidden counsels to determine our future, we should seek mercies through prayer; the heavenly powers have left us better guides in ourselves. Prophecies are but fancies, either vain or infallible, not to be respected or else not to be prevented. But since it is weakness to recall what should have been done, and since your command embraces what will be done, I do (most dear lord) with humble boldness say that your going pleases me no better than the cause of your going.

      These thirty years you have governed this region in such a way that neither your subjects have lacked justice in you nor you obedience in them, and your neighbors have found you so hurtlessly strong that they thought it better to rest in your friendship than make new trial of your enmity. If order thus arises from the good constitution of your state, and from your wise providence, which has prevented all those things that might encumber your happiness, why should you now seek new courses? Your own example should comfort you to continue as you were; to me it is most certain that no destiny nor influence whatsoever (though it has not pleased you to tell me the oracle’s exact words) can bring man’s wit to a higher point than can wisdom and goodness.

      Why should you deprive yourself of government for fear of losing your government, like one that kills himself for fear of death? Nay, rather, if this oracle is worthy of account, arm your courage the more against it, for who will stick to him that abandons himself? Let your subjects have you in their eyes, let them see the benefits of your justice every day; they prefer present sureties to uncertain changes. Lastly, whether your time call you to live or die, do it like a prince.

      Now for your second resolution, which is to suffer no worthy prince to be a suitor to either of your daughters, but while you live, to keep them both unmarried and to kill the joy of posterity, as it were, which in your time you may still enjoy, moved perchance by a misunderstood oracle. If the affection of the father to his own children cannot plead sufficiently against such fancies, what shall I say? Certain it is that the God who is God of nature never teaches unnaturalness. And I hold the same mind touching your banishing your daughters from company, lest strange loves—I know not what—should follow. Certainly, sir, nature promises nothing in my ladies (your daughters) but goodness. Their education by your fatherly care has been till now most fit to restrain all evil, giving them virtuous delights for their minds and not making them grieve for lack of well-ruled liberty. Now you suddenly constrain them, and what can that do but argue suspicion?—no more unpleasant than unsure for the preserving of virtue.

      That is the surest way to untame a woman’s mind. How can a cage please a bird; how cannot a dog but grow fiercer with tying? Rage stirs the mind to think, and to think about that from which she is restrained. If you hide something, it becomes a treasure or a thing of great delight, and catches people’s fancies. And thoughts, once awakened, are surely harder to keep from accomplishment than before to have kept the mind—as yet undefiled—from thinking.

      Lastly, consigning so principal a charge as the princess Pamela (whose mind goes beyond the governing of many thousands such) to such a person as Dametas, besides being strange, comes from a very evil ground, that ignorance should be the mother of faithfulness. O no! He cannot be good that knows not why he is good, but is good only insofar as fortune may keep him unassayed. For coming once to trial, his rude simplicity is either easily turned or easily deceived. Thus what had seemed the first foundation of his faith becomes the last excuse of his fault.

      Thus far has your commandment and my zeal drawn me that I—like a man in a valley who may discern hills ahead, or like a poor ferryman who may spy a rock—humbly submit to your gracious consideration, beseeching you again to stand wholly upon your own virtue, as the surest way to maintain you in what you are and to avoid any evil which may be imagined.

      “By the contents of this letter,” Kalander said, “you may perceive that the cause of all was vanity, which possesses many who, seeing our poor waystation of life as a perpetual mansion, crave the certainty of knowing things to come, wherein nothing is so certain as our continual uncertainty.

      “In