Sidney was remarkable for his strong personal attachments. Chief among his allies were his school-mate and distant relative, Fulke Greville (born in the same year as himself), and his college friend Edward Dyer (also about his own age). He wrote youthful verses to both of them. The following, according to the fashion of the age, are in the form of an invocation to the pastoral god Pan -

Only for my two loves' sake,
In whose love I pleasure take;
Only two do me delight
With their ever-pleasing sight;
Of all men to thee retaining
Grant me with these two remaining.

An interesting friendship existed also between Sidney and the well-known French Protestant, Hubert Languet - many years his senior - whose conversation and correspondence helped much in the formation of Sidney's character. These two had shared together the perils of the massacre of S. Bartholomew, and had both escaped from France across the Rhine to Germany, where they lived in close intimacy at Frankfurt for a length of time; and after this a warm friendship and steady correspondence-varied by occasional meetings - continued between the two until Languet's death. Languet had been Professor of Civil Law at Padua, and from 1550 forwards was recognized as one of the leading political agents of the Protestant Powers.

"The elder man immediately discerned in Sidney a youth of no common quality, and the attachment he conceived for him savored of romance. We possess a long series of Latin letters from Languet to his friend, which breathe the tenderest spirit of affection, mingled with wise counsel and ever watchful thought for the young man's higher interests.... There must have been something inexplicably attractive in his [Sidney's] person and his genius at this time; for the tone of Languet's correspondence can only be matched by that of Shakespeare in the sonnets written for his unknown friend."

"Sir Philip Sidney", in English Men of Letters Series, pp. 27, 28

Of this relation Fox Bourne says:

"No love-oppressed youth can write with more earnest passion and more fond solicitude, or can be troubled with more frequent fears and more causeless jealousies, than Languet, at this time 55 years old, shows in his letters to Sidney, now 19."