SOURCE: Smith, Nowell. Introduction to Sir Fulke Greville's Life of Sir Philip Sidney, pp. v-xxi. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

In the following essay, Smith offers an overview of the publication history of Greville's study of Sidney, along with a critical evaluation of this work.

Sir Philip Sidney is so familiar and so attractive a name, and Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, so little known outside the libraries of scholars, that the book which is here republished requires a word or two of introduction for the reader who is not already versed in the subject. It was first published in 1652, twenty-four years after its author's death; and the title, The Life of the renowned Sir Philip Sidney (with other matters; see the title-page), was given to it presumably by the unknown P. B., the editor, certainly not by Greville himself. In a manuscript copy of the work, of which we shall...