Arcadia, a pastoral romance in prose and verse by Sir Philip Sidney. Tragic images, shipwrecks, attacks by pirates, fights, and abductions, are interwoven with scenes of piping shepherds, gaily dressed ladies in daisy-studded fields, masquerading princes, and songs and dances innumerable. Sidney himself said of it, "It is a trifle, my young head must be delivered." See SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP. Live ever, sweete booke; the simple image of his gentle witt, and the golden pillar of his noble courage; and ever notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honeybee of the daintyest flowers of witt and arte, the pith of morall and intellectual virtues, the arme of Belonna in the field, the tongue of Suada in the chamber, the sprite of Practise in esse, and the paragon of excellency in print.--Harvey's Pierce's Supererogation. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, the immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers, and which, in truth, is full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned.--Irving, The Sketch Book. FROM THE ARCADIA. They are termed shepherds,--a happy people wanting little because they desire not much. Provision is the foundation of hospitality, and thrift the jewell of magnificence. His word was ever led by his thought and followed by his deed. Who only sees the ill is worse than blind.