Introduction
This essay, the first entry in
The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,
is
by Wilfred Heeley (1833-1876). Heeley knew the Morris brotherhood through Henry
MacDonald, and was the main Cambridge contributor to the magazine.
Even before the first issue was published Heeley was preparing for the India Service
exam, and though he contributed two pieces to the January issue, his
only other contribution is the essay on
Macaulay in March. He married in the summer of 1856, and he
and his wife left for India in September, while the magazine was still
in print.
Heeley’s article is unique among the essays in
The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
.
The majority of the essays discuss contemporary figures, like
Carlyle, Tennyson, and Alexander Smith, but Heeley
deliberately chooses to look to the past. The opening paragraphs of
the essay lament the nineteenth century’s “whirl of conflicting
principles [and] tossing sea of theories and anachronisms” (1), and
Heeley looks back to Elizabeth’s reign for a true English identity.
This essay is also unique in its focus. The other entries
about earlier writers, like the essay on Robert Herrick and the
four pieces on Shakespeare (1
2
3
4 ), focus on their works, but
Heeley doesn’t even mention Sidney’s poetry. F.W. MacDonald tells of Heeley’s grand plans for this
essay, which was “laid out on a scale that would seem to requite half a dozen others to bring
it to completion.” MacDonald copied the second chapter of the essay for the press. (219).
The first part of the essay, published in January, gives a detailed genealogy of Sidney, and the
second part tells of his boyhood, pausing to criticise contemporary
education. It is unclear why the second part of this essay appeared in the March
issue, rather than in February, though one supposes it was because Heeley did not write it
fast enough. A note at the end of the February issue
assures readers that the essay on Sidney will be continued in March.