A History of Elizabethan Literature Part 7

Constable's sonnets had appeared partly in 1592, and as they stand in fullest collection were published in or before 1594. Afterwards he wrote, like others, "divine" sonnets (he was a Roman Catholic) and some miscellaneous poems, including a very pretty "Song of Venus and Adonis." He was a close friend of Sidney, many of whose sonnets were published with his, and his work has much of the Sidneian colour, but with fewer flights of happily expressed fancy. The best of it is probably the following sonnet, which is not only full of gracefully expressed images, but keeps up its flight from first to last--a thing not universal in these Elizabethan sonnets:--

"My Lady's presence makes the Roses red, Because to see her lips they blush for shame.

The Lily's leaves, for envy, pale became; And her white hands in them this envy bred.

The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spread; Because the sun's and her power is the same.

The Violet of purple colour came, Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed.

In brief all flowers from her their virtue take; From her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed; The living heat which her eyebeams doth make Warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed.

The rain, wherewith she watereth the flowers, Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers."

Samuel Daniel had an eminently contemplative genius which might have antic.i.p.ated the sonnet as it is in Wordsworth, but which the fas.h.i.+on of the day confined to the not wholly suitable subject of Love. In the splendid "Care-charmer Sleep," one of the tournament sonnets above noted, he contrived, as will be seen, to put his subject under the influence of his prevailing faculty.

"Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my anguish, and restore the light, With dark forgetting of my cares, return; And let the day be time enough to mourn The s.h.i.+pwreck of my ill-adventured youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.

Cease, Dreams, th' imag'ry of our day-desires, To model forth the pa.s.sions of the morrow, Never let rising sun approve you liars, To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain; And never wake to feel the day's disdain."

But as a rule he is perhaps too much given to musing, and too little to rapture. In form he is important, as he undoubtedly did much to establish the arrangement of three alternate rhymed quatrains and a couplet which, in Shakespere's hands, was to give the n.o.blest poetry of the sonnet and of the world. He has also an abundance of the most exquisite single lines, such as

"O clear-eyed rector of the holy hill,"

and the wonderful opening of Sonnet XXVII., "The star of my mishap imposed this pain."

The sixty-three sonnets, varied in different editions of Drayton's _Idea_, are among the most puzzling of the whole group. Their average value is not of the very highest. Yet there are here and there the strangest suggestions of Drayton's countryman, Shakespere, and there is one sonnet, No. 61, beginning, "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part," which I have found it most difficult to believe to be Drayton's, and which is Shakespere all over. That Drayton was the author of _Idea_ as a whole is certain, not merely from the local allusions, but from the resemblance to the more successful exercises of his clear, masculine, vigorous, fertile, but occasionally rather unpoetical style. The sonnet just referred to is itself one of the very finest existing--perhaps one of the ten or twelve best sonnets in the world, and it may be worth while to give it with another in contrast:--

"Our flood's Queen, Thames, for s.h.i.+ps and swans is crowned; And stately Severn for her sh.o.r.e is praised.

The crystal Trent for fords and fish renowned; And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised; Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee; York many wonders of her Ouse can tell.

The Peak her Dove, whose banks so fertile be; And Kent will say her Medway doth excel.

Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame; Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood Our western parts extol their Wily's fame; And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.

Arden's sweet Ankor, let thy glory be That fair Idea only lives by thee!"

"Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part!

Nay, I have done. You get no more of me And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, Pa.s.sion speechless lies; When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes: Now, if thou would'st, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!"

1595 chiefly contributed the curious production called _Alcilia_, by J. C., who gives the name of sonnets to a series of six-line stanzas, varied occasionally by other forms, such as that of the following pretty verses.

It may be noted that the citation of proverbs is very characteristic of _Alcilia_:--

"Love is sorrow mixed with gladness, Fear with hope, and hope with madness.

Long did I love, but all in vain; I loving, was not loved again: For which my heart sustained much woe.

It fits not maids to use men so, Just deserts are not regarded, Never love so ill rewarded.

But 'all is lost that is not sought,'

'Oft wit proves best that's dearest bought.'

"Women were made for men's relief; To comfort, not to cause their grief.

Where most I merit, least I find: No marvel, since that love is blind.

Had she been kind as she was fair, My case had been more strange and rare.

But women love not by desert, Reason in them hath weakest part.

Then henceforth let them love that list, I will beware of 'had I wist.'"

1596 (putting the _Amoretti_, which is sometimes a.s.signed to this year, aside) was again fruitful with Griffin's _Fidessa_, Lynch's _Diella_, and Smith's _Chloris_. _Fidessa_, though distinctly "young," is one of the most interesting of the clearly imitative cla.s.s of these sonnets, and contains some very graceful poetry, especially the following, one of the Sleep cla.s.s, which will serve as a good example of the minor sonneteers:--

"Care-charmer Sleep! sweet ease in restless misery!

The captive's liberty, and his freedom's song!

Balm of the bruised heart! man's chief felicity!

Brother of quiet Death, when Life is too too long!

A Comedy it is, and now an History; What is not sleep unto the feeble mind?

It easeth him that toils, and him that's sorry; It makes the deaf to hear; to see, the blind; Ungentle Sleep! thou helpest all but me, For when I sleep my soul is vexed most.

It is Fidessa that doth master thee If she approach; alas! thy power is lost.

But here she is! See, how he runs amain!

I fear, at night, he will not come again."

_Diella_, a set of thirty-eight sonnets prefixed to the "Amorous poem of Diego and Genevra," is more elaborate in colouring but somewhat less fresh and genuine; while _Chloris_, whose author was a friend of Spenser's, approaches to the pastoral in the plan and phrasing of its fifty sonnets.

Such are the most remarkable members of a group of English poetry, which yields to few such groups in interest. It is connected by a strong similarity of feeling--if any one likes, even by a strong imitation of the same models. But in following those models and expressing those feelings, its members, even the humblest of them, have shown remarkable poetical capacity; while of the chiefs we can only say, as has been said more than once already, that the matter and form together acknowledge, and indeed admit of, no superior.

In close connection with these groups of sonnets, displaying very much the same poetical characteristics and in some cases written by the same authors, there occurs a great body of miscellaneous poetical writing produced during the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, and ranging from long poems of the allegorical or amatory kind to the briefest lyrics and madrigals. Sometimes this work appeared independently; sometimes it was inserted in the plays and prose pamphlets of the time. As has already been said, some of our authors, notably Lodge and Greene, did in this way work which far exceeds in merit any of their more ambitious pieces, and which in a certain unborrowed and incommunicable poetic grace hardly leaves anything of the time behind it. Shakespere himself, in _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_, has in a more elaborate but closely allied kind of poetry displayed less mature, but scarcely less, genius than in his dramatic and sonnet work. It is my own opinion that the actual poetical worth of Richard Barnfield, to whom an exquisite poem in _The Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_, long ascribed to Shakespere, is now more justly a.s.signed, has, owing to this a.s.signment and to the singular character of his chief other poem, _The Affectionate Shepherd_, been considerably overrated. It is unfortunately as complete if not as common a mistake to suppose that any one who disdains his country's morality must be a good poet, as to set down any one who disdains it without further examination for a bad one. The simple fact, as it strikes a critic, is that "As it fell upon a day" is miles above anything else of Barnfield's, and is not like anything else of his, while it is very like things of Shakespere's. The best thing to be said for Barnfield is that he was an avowed and enthusiastic imitator and follower of Spenser. His poetical work (we might have included the short series of sonnets to _Cynthia_ in the division of sonneteers) was all written when he was a very young man, and he died when he was not a very old one, a bachelor country-gentleman in Warwicks.h.i.+re. Putting the exquisite "As it fell upon a day" out of question (which, if he wrote it, is one of the not very numerous examples of perfect poetry written by a very imperfect poet), Barnfield has, in no extraordinary measure, the common attributes of this wonderful time--poetical enthusiasm, fresh and unhackneyed expression, metrical charm, and gorgeous colouring, which does not find itself ill-matched with accurate drawing of nature. He is above the average Elizabethan, and his very bad taste in _The Affectionate Shepherd_ (a following of Virgil's Second Eclogue) may be excused as a humanist crotchet of the time. His rarity, his eccentricity, and the curious mixing up of his work with Shakespere's have done him something more than yeoman's service with recent critics. But he may have a specimen:--

"And thus it happened: Death and Cupid met Upon a time at swilling Bacchus' house, Where dainty cates upon the board were set, And goblets full of wine to drink carouse: Where Love and Death did love the liquor so That out they fall, and to the fray they go.

"And having both their quivers at their back Filled full of arrows--the one of fatal steel, The other all of gold; Death's shaft was black, But Love's was yellow--Fortune turned her wheel, And from Death's quiver fell a fatal shaft That under Cupid by the wind was waft.

"And at the same time by ill hap there fell Another arrow out of Cupid's quiver; The which was carried by the wind at will, And under Death the amorous shaft did s.h.i.+ver.[27]

They being parted, Love took up Death's dart, And Death took up Love's arrow for his part."

[27] Not, of course = "break," but "shudder."

There is perhaps more genuine poetic worth, though there is less accomplishment of form, in the unfortunate Father Robert Southwell, who was executed as a traitor on the 20th of February 1595. Southwell belonged to a distinguished family, and was born (probably) at Horsham St. Faiths, in Norfolk, about the year 1560. He was stolen by a gipsy in his youth, but was recovered; and a much worse misfortune befell him in being sent for education not to Oxford or Cambridge but to Douay, where he got into the hands of the Jesuits, and joined their order. He was sent on a mission to England; and (no doubt conscientiously) violating the law there, was after some years of hiding and suspicion betrayed, arrested, treated with great harshness in prison, and at last, as has been said, executed. No specific acts of treason were even charged against him; and he earnestly denied any designs whatever against the Queen and kingdom, nor can it be doubted that he merely paid the penalty of others' misdeeds. His work both in prose and poetry was not inconsiderable, and the poetry was repeatedly printed in rather confusing and imperfect editions after his death. The longest, but by no means the best, piece is _St. Peter's Complaint_. The best unquestionably is _The Burning Babe_, which, though fairly well known, must be given:--

"As I in h.o.a.ry winter's night stood s.h.i.+vering in the snow, Surpris'd I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright, did in the air appear, Who scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed, As though His floods should quench His flames which with His tears were fed; 'Alas!' quoth He, 'but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel My fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals; The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good So will I melt into a bath to wash them in My blood:'

With these He vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas Day."

Something of the glow of this appears elsewhere in the poems, which are, without exception, religious. They have not a little of the "hectic" tone, which marks still more strongly the chief English Roman Catholic poet of the next century, Crashaw; but are never, as Crashaw sometimes is, hysterical. On the whole, as was remarked in a former chapter, they belong rather to the pre-Spenserian cla.s.s in diction and metre, though with something of the Italian touch. Occasional roughnesses in them may be at least partly attributed to the evident fact that the author thought of nothing less than of merely "cultivating the muses." His religious fervour is of the simplest and most genuine kind, and his poems are a natural and unforced expression of it.

It is difficult in the brief s.p.a.ce which can here be allotted to the subject to pa.s.s in review the throng of miscellaneous poets and poetry indicated under this group. The reprints of Dr. Grosart and Mr. Arber, supplemented in a few cases by recourse to the older recoveries of Brydges, Haslewood, Park, Collier, and others, bring before the student a ma.s.s of brilliant and beautiful matter, often mixed with a good deal of slag and scoriae, but seldom deficient in the true poetical ore. The mere collections of madrigals and songs, actually intended for casual performance at a time when almost every accomplished and well-bred gentleman or lady was expected to oblige the company, which Mr. Arber's invaluable _English Garner_ and Mr. Bullen's _Elizabethan Lyrics_ give from the collections edited or produced by Byrd, Yonge, Campion, Dowland, Morley, Alison, Wilbye, and others, represent such a body of verse as probably could not be got together, with the same origin and circ.u.mstances, in any quarter-century of any nation's history since the foundation of the world. In Campion especially the lyrical quality is extraordinary. He was long almost inaccessible, but Mr. Bullen's edition of 1889 has made knowledge of him easy. His birth-year is unknown, but he died in 1620. He was a Cambridge man, a member of the Inns of Court, and a physician in good practice. He has left us a masque; four _Books of Airs_ (1601-17?), in which the gems given below, and many others, occur; and a sometimes rather unfairly characterised critical treatise, _Observations on the Art of English Poesy_, in which he argues against rhyme and for strict quant.i.tative measures, but on quite different lines from those of the craze of Stanyhurst and Harvey. Some of his ill.u.s.trations of his still rather unnatural fancy (especially "Rose-cheeked Laura," which is now tolerably familiar in anthologies) are charming, though never so charming as his rhymed "Airs." The poetry is, indeed, mostly in flashes, and it is not very often that any song is a complete gem, like the best of the songs from the dramatists, one or two of which will be given presently for comparison. But by far the greater number contain and exemplify those numerous characteristics of poetry, as distinguished from verse, which at one time of literary history seem naturally to occur--seem indeed to be had for the gathering by any one who chooses--while at another time they are but sparingly found in the work of men of real genius, and seem altogether to escape men of talent, accomplishment, and laborious endeavour. Here are a few specimens from Peele and others, especially Campion. As it is, an exceptional amount of the small s.p.a.ce possible for such things in this volume has been given to them, but there is a great temptation to give more. Lyly's lyrical work, however, is fairly well known, and more than one collection of "Songs from the Dramatists" has popularised others.

_ae._ "Fair and fair, and twice so fair, As fair as any may be; The fairest shepherd on our green, A love for any lady.

_Par._ Fair and fair, and twice so fair, As fair as any may be: Thy love is fair for thee alone, And for no other lady.

_ae._ My love is fair, my love is gay, As fresh as bin the flowers in May, And of my love my roundelay Concludes with Cupid's curse, They that do change old love for new Pray G.o.ds, they change for worse!

_Ambo, simul._ They that do change, etc., etc.

_ae._ Fair and fair, etc.

_Par._ Fair and fair, etc.