The Later Renaissance

DER OF HIS WORK-HIS METRE-CHARACTER OF HIS POETRY-SIR P. SIDNEY-THE 'APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE'-HIS SONNETS AND LYRICS-WATSON-THE SONNETEERS-OTHER LYRIC

arting

ng-point is arbitrary, because Spenser was already recognised by his friends as the "new poet," and his work was known among them in manuscript. It had therefore begun to live, and to exercise an influence, before it was given to the world. But the convention which t

n infl

us as it did on Spain, all along the line. There was not the same proximity, nor had there been an equally close previous relationship of pupil to master stretching far back into the Middle Ages. The Italian influence in England was rather an incitement to independent effort than a mere pattern to be copied, as it was to the Spaniard. The opposition to rhyme. Nor were the Greek and Latin models more, though in this case a deliberate effort was made to bring English verse into subjection to ancient prosody. Much ridicule was shed then, and has been poured since, on those who endeavoured to write English verse by quantity only. The quaint pragmatic figure of

esound with grasshops

mproved Spenser, whom he admired and recognised as the new poet

in this blessed brooke

o t

st fine who reso

ur pretty breas

sh bowers hythe

reques

were no[188] native models newer than Chaucer to follow, and when the splendour of classic literature was just being fully recognised, it was not wonderful that men who were in search of a poetic form should have been deluded into thinki

ttle e

ure of our language and wordes not permitting it), we have instead thereof twentie other curious points in that skill more than they ever had, by reason of our rime, and tunable concords, or simphonie, which they never observed. Poesie therefore may be an arte in our vulgar, and that very methodicall and commendable." The Arte of English Poesie was published in 1589. Webbe's discourse had appeared three years before. The conflict, such as it was, was really over, though the superiority of "

t half of Eliz

the troubled times which followed the death of Henry VIII. But the return of peace and security with the accession of Elizabeth brought no change. The first twenty years of her reign were as barren as the disturbed years of Edward or Mary. Indeed they were even poorer, for Sackville's Induction to The Mirror of Magistrates and his Complaint of Buckingham, which have been recognised as the best verse[190] written in England between Chaucer and Spenser, though not published till Elizabeth was on the throne, had been written before 1559-in the reign of Mary. Between this year and the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar (1579) the voice of poetry was not mute in

yet but rude th

rbarism with

tt, and Sackville diminishes the

ted in lines of eight and six, but which, in whatever way it was arranged, had a fatal t

1

verse that

e to won

e none for

htynes w

n judged Pa

herselfe

orth one that

Minervaes

rse of the first half of the reign. These men are entitled to their own honour. They rough-harrowed the ground. George Turberville, who was born about 1530 and died about 1594; George Gascoigne, whose dates are 1535 or thereabouts to 1577; and Barnabe Googe, born in 1540, who died in 1594, tried many things; and if they did nothing else, they helped to extend the knowledge of the average Englishman, and to give practice to the language by their translation

en

ss of powerful patrons to see him provided for because he was a poet. Spenser was not without friends who might have been useful. At Cambridge he had become known to Gabriel Harvey, who, as the older man, a good scholar, and perhaps also as a person of pragmatical[193] self-confidence and indomitable pertinacity, exercised a certain limited influence over him. Harvey introduced Spenser to Leicester and Leicester's kinsman, Sir Philip Sidney. His undoubted Puritanism was, it may be, in part learnt from the equally undoubted though very different Puritanism of the queen's favourite. But Leicester did, and it may be could do, little for his client. The Shepherd's Calendar was published in 1579, a year or two after Spenser came to London, but he had no share in "the rich fee which poets won't divide." There is no need to look far for the causes of his disappointment. Elizabeth had little money, and much to do with it, while her Lord Treasurer, Burghley, wh

of his

89, and appeared in the following spring. Next year-1591-appeared the minor poems, under the name of The Complaints (The Ruins of Time, The Tears of the Muses, Virgil's Gnat, Mother Hubberds Tale, The Ruins of Rome, Muiopotmos, and The Visions). The address to the reader gives a promise of other poems, which have been lost; and it may be noted that the same thing had happened with The Shepherd's Calendar. The Daphnaida followed. In 1596 the Amoretti, the Epithalamium, Colin Clout's Come Home Again, the fourth,

metre. He is great by what was wholly his own, both in form and spirit. The Shepherd's Calendar may be called the work of his prentice hand, done when he had not attained complete control of his own vast powers. Yet it is not so far below the impeccable verse of his later years as it is above the level of his immediate predecessors in Elizabeth's reign. The part of imitation which there is in it is the weakest. What he inherited from nobody was the new melody he imparted to English poetry. It[196] is out of his own genius that he perfected the form in which that melody found its full expression. The Spenserian stanza does not appear in The Shepherd's Calendar; but it had been constructed, and was being used in the earlier cantos of The Fa?rie Queen at least immediately after the earlier work was finished. It is surely no longer necessary to argue that this form was not imitated from the Italians.

cter of h

are one, and by singing a Puritanism which is the poetic expression of the Englishman's innate conviction that the religion which is not interpreted into conduct is an empty hypocrisy. But all this didactic side of Spenser is the side which was not necessarily poetic. In so far as the Hymns merely teach a Platonist doctrine, they do not surpass the final pages of Castiglione's Courtier. In so far as The Fa?rie Queen is an allegory, it is no more consistent, ingenious, or perfectly adapted to its purpose than The Pilgrim's Progress. But over all that could be adequately expressed in prose Spenser cast a spell which carried it into the realm of fancy-that golden world of the poet which Sir Philip Sidney contrasted wi

e. Moreover, where the external evidence is naught, and the internal evidence is subject to various interpretations, which is always the case, comment on the inner meaning of the sonnets must always be more or less guesswork. To start from arbitrary premisses, with the certainty of arriving at no definite conclusion, ought to be considered[199] a waste of time. Sidney may have decided to leave it on record that he found out his love for Penelope Devereux too late, and that he then hovered round the thought of adultery. Shakespeare may have made poetry out of his friendship and his love. If so, the passions which left them so much masters of themselves as to be able to produce these artistic forms of verse cannot have been very absorbing. Finished sonnets do not come to men either in their sleep or in anguish. What we know for certain of Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, and others is, that they lived active lives in the world, and that

P. S

ime, his amiable personal character, and the heroic circumstances of his death in a skirmish fought to prevent a Spanish convoy from entering the besieged town of Zutphen in 1586, have combined to make Sir Philip Sidney a very shining figure. It is possible that he is more conspicuous than his intrinsic power would have made him without the gifts of fortune. Yet ther

ogie for

urdly dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney without his consent, and perhaps because he was the nephew of the chief protector of the Puritans, is in itself insignificant, except in so far as it contains a statement of the narrow puritan view that all modern poetry was wicked, and that the theatre was the home of every corruption. It is chiefly worth naming now because Sidney did it the signal honour to give it an answer. The Apologie for Poetrie is in no sense an Ars Poetica. Sidney does not deal with the formal part of poetry. He replies to those who belittle it by an emphatic assertion that it is the noblest of all things. The view and the spirit of the Elizabethan time are nowhere more clearly shown than in the Apologie. That Sidney fell into one gross heresy is true. He said that poetry was independent of metre. But that was not an error likely to mislead either himself or others. Against it has t

first to sound the high note o

cent verse-writer of the stamp of Churchyard, represented English poetry, was over. The sonnets are not all on the same high level. The epithet of "jejune" which Hazlitt applied to Sidney cannot be justly used of any of them; but the sonnet beginning, "Ph?bus was judge betweene Jove, Mars, and Love," or the other which has for first line, "I on my horse and love on me, doth try," or the third, "O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show," are not equally safe against the other epithet "frigid." They are at least more marked by laboured and cold-blooded conceit than by passion or fancy. Yet even these have an accomplishment of form which was new, and in the others the greater qualities are by no means rarely shown. The first in the accepted order-"Loving in truth and faine in verse my love to show,"-with its ringing last line, "'Foole,' said my Muse to me, 'looke in thy heart and write,'" and the last, "Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust," are abundantly lofty and passionate; and were, in the sense in which the word was used, "insolent"-that is, unprecedented-in the English poetry of that generation. To these it would be easy to add many others.[20

ts

a glimpse into the workshop of a sonnet-cycle maker. Watson candidly confesses, in a "Letter to the Friendly Reader," that his pains in suffering the pangs of love which his sonnets record are "but supposed." His less ingenuous followers leave us to guess as much concerning them. But in addition to this there is an apparatus criticus which in everything except bulk bears a very close resemblance to the pedantic commentaries added by his admirers to the early editions of the Spaniard Góngora. Each sonnet is introduced, explained, annotated, and the passion it is to express described, and we are shown the machinery at every stage. One of these introductions contains what is, in fact, a by no means bad criticism on the whole bo

onnet

liam Percy, Constable's Diana, Daniel's Delia, and Drayton's Idea. To these may be added the names of Willoughby's Avisa, which, however, does not consist of sonnets, and the anonymous Zepheria. Spenser's Amoretti, or love sonnets, belong in date of publication to 1595. Three other collections-the Fidessa of Griffin, Lynch's Diella (thirty-eight sonnets, prefixed to the amorous poem of Diego and Genevra), and the Chloris of W. Smith, belong to 1596. The sonnet, too, was written by others who did not construct cycles. Every reader of The Fa?rie Queen knows the splendid "Me thought[207] I saw the grave where Laura lay," by Sir W. Raleigh, and its less legitimately built successor, "The prais

lyric

ngs, than in any other of its manifold activities. But this very extension of the lyric faculty, and the number of the[208] singers, makes it not merely difficult but impossible to deal fully with the subject within the limits of our space. Of the sonnet writers we can speak with some approach to completeness, for there the field, though large, is not boundless. But the freer forms of lyric spread over all the life and literature of England. Raleigh, who was a soldier, politician, discoverer, colonist, historian, pol

tions and

tical Rhapsody, 1602; England's Parnassus, 1600; and Belvedere, or the Garden of the Muses, in the same year, are the names of some of them. To these are to be added the list of song-books collected or written by Byrd, Yonge, Campion, Dowland, Morley, Alison, Wilbye, and others.[65] Some of the poems in these collections have always been known, but they contain many which had fallen entirely into obscurity. There can have been very few readers to whom Mr Bullen's collection, made from a class of books which in most ages are full of mere insipidities, was not a revelation. The point is that it represents not the exceptional work of the time, but the average production, which we may

2

torical

and the history is tiresome to those who read for the romance. Our own historical poems are commonly the more subject to the danger of dulness, because the authors, unlike the Spaniards, did not, as a rule, choose the great events of their own time, or of the previous generation, of which the memory was still fresh. They went back to the past, which they could only know through books. This would have done no harm if they had used their authorities only to find "local colour" for their romance. But t

ffrey an

yton, after first trying it, renounced as too soft for the subject of his Barons' War. Fitz-Geoffrey wraps up the substantial figure of Sir Francis in clouds of hyperbole, and makes a terrible abuse of the figure called "by the Latines Reduplicatio." We see the great corsair only in glimpses through the very smoky flames of Fitz-Ge

rn

y an order of the Star Chamber.[66] If this date is correct, the decidedly jejune account of the defeat of the Armada, and the most unfriendly passage on the execution of Queen Mary, must have been added later. Warner had written a collection of prose stories called Syrinx, as he says, "with acceptance." But his claim to be remembered rests on his Albion's England, a long poem in the old seven-foot or fourteen-syllable metre, on the history, and more particularly on the legends of the history, of England. His well-established reputation as "a good, honest, plain writer" is fully deserved. Warner, indeed, carries plainness so far that in the mo

l servants did she

r crucifix, unto t

glad to dye, did d

er errors (who in

mercie and of ju

onspirator of

-scooled so, that

ived did dye a pa

But so or not, it

rous a foe we ar

ildish downrightness, make Warner easier reading than much better poets. Although Warner adhered to the fourteener in the face of Spenser and S

ni

590. Although Daniel wrote two tragedies-Cleopatra and Philotas-they were on the classical model, which our stage has never tolerated, and he therefore could not live by literature, since it was then only the theatre which paid. It was necessary for him to seek support in the service of rich people. He found it in the patronage of the Pembroke family, and was afterwards tutor t

ry Drayton, who said that "his manner better fitted prose." This would be a very unfair judgment if it were applied to all his work without qualification. The Complaint of Rosamonde, his first considerable poem, published in 1592, is neither in manner nor matter better fitted for prose. It is a very poetic retelling of the legend of Henry II.'s mistress in the favourite seven-line stanza. His moral epistles in verse escape the vice of mere moralising by

all be read

n speak Engli

virtue shall

honest indus

hanges were commonly for the better is proof of his judgment. It is mainly the beauty of his English which will cause him to be read for ever among the rest. If it never has the splendour of the greatest Elizabethan poetry, neither does it fall into "King Cambyses' vein," into the roaring fury which gave an outlet to the exuberant energy of that t

n of Charles I. If confidence can be placed in the jottings of Drummond of Hawthornden, there was at one time an armed neutrality between Jonson and Drayton; but Jonson wrote some highly laudatory verses on the Polyolbion, and we need not place too much reliance on casual remarks he threw out in conversation when he had no knowledge th

ay

t the famous sonnet beginning, "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part," which is so superior to the others, and so like Shakespeare's, was first included in the edition of 1619. Drayton, like Daniel, was much in the habit of revising his work. He not uncommonly incorporated his earlier poems in his later with great changes. In 1596 appeared the awkwardly named Mortimeriados, in the seven-line stanza, recast and republished in ottava rima in 1603 under the title of The Barons' Wars. Between these two came the Heroical Epistles in 1597. In 1604 Drayton made a most unfortunate attempt to win the favour of James I. by flattery, and he also published a satirical poem, The Owl, and his Moses in a Map of his Miracles.

n indeed tempted dulness when he chose for subject the Barons' War of Edward II.'s reign, and did not also decide to make the "she-wolf of France" his heroine and to throw history to the winds. Yet even in these the strong poetical faculty of the writer can never be forgotten. The longest of all his poems-the Polyolbion, or "Chorographical Description of all the Tracts, Rivers, Mountains, Forests, and other parts of Great Britain," which may be described as a poetical guide-book to his native country-is not dull, though it cannot be praised as exciting. Drayton may have made an error when he decided to write it in the long twelve-syllable line, and not in his favourite eight-line sta

tiric

prose pamphlet literature of the time. Between this and the help afforded by the Latin models, who supplied the ready-made mould, the poetic satirists were led forward by the hand. As a class, and in so far as they were satirists, they were the least interesting body of writers of their time. It is very necessary to limit this estimate to their satires; for the four who may be mentioned here are all, for one reason or another, notable men, or even more. Lodge, without ever att

in the Prologu

nture, follow

econd Englis

claim of Lodge, whose Fig for Momus appeared in 1595, two years before the first six books of Hall's Virgidemiarum. But it may be that he wrote long before he printed, and in any case the originality is not great enough to be worth fighting over, since both were followers of Latin originals; while it appears

2

a

itorious then than it would be now, when there is so much more in English to copy. In "A Postscript to the Reader," printed with the first issue of the Virgidemiarum (a pedantic title taken from Virgidemia, a gathering of rods), he states what undoubtedly was the literary faith of the satirists of the time: "It is not for every one to relish a true natural satire, being of itself, besides the nature and inbred bitterness and tartness of particulars, both hard of conceit and harsh of style, and therefore cannot but be unpleasing both to the unskilful and over-musical ear." In other words, a rough form and a deliberate violation of melody were proper to satire. Marston and Donne acted on that rule. But Hall in his own verses is not markedly hard

rs

ourge of Villainy. There was not much villainy to which Marston had better call to apply the scourge than the greasy lubricity of Pygmalion's Image. He preferred to scold at his contemporaries in verse which is as pleasant to rea