This selection includes the full text of the "Defence of Poetry" and "Astrophil and Stella", fully annotated, with a selection of the other poems. "When Sidney died," writes Richard Dutton, "those who mourned him did so as a hero of Protestant Europe, a model of Christian virtue, of the Renaissance scholar-poet, of the true knight." Dutton corrects the exaggerations in the popular view, painting a human, fallible and credible figure. He also emerges as a more sympathetic writer, losing the coldness of the heroic gloss that normally accompanies him.