Chapter 8

NEAR Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found, But so confused, that neither any eye Can count them just, nor Reason reason try, What force brought them to so unlikely ground.

To stranger weights my mind’s waste soil is bound, Of passion-hills, reaching to Reason’s sky, From Fancy’s earth, passing all number’s bound, Passing all guess, whence into me should fly So mazed a mass; or, if in me it grows, A simple soul should breed so mixéd woes.

II.

The Bruertons have a lake, which, when the sun Approaching warms, not else, dead logs up sends From hideous depth; which tribute, when it ends, Sore sign it is the lord’s last thread is spun.

My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run But when my sun her shining twins there bends; Then from his depth with force in her begun, Long drownéd hopes to watery eyes it lends; But when that fails my dead hopes up to take, Their master is fair warned his will to make.

III.

We have a fish, by strangers much admired, Which caught, to cruel search yields his chief part: With gall cut out, closed up again by art, Yet lives until his life be new required.

A stranger fish myself, not yet expired, Tho’, rapt with Beauty’s hook, I did impart Myself unto th’ anatomy desired, Instead of gall, leaving to her my heart: Yet live with thoughts closed up, ’till that she will, By conquest’s right, instead of searching, kill.

IV.

Peak hath a cave, whose narrow entries find Large rooms within where drops distil amain: Till knit with cold, though there unknown remain, Deck that poor place with alabaster lined.

Mine eyes the strait, the roomy cave, my mind; Whose cloudy thoughts let fall an inward rain Of sorrow’s drops, till colder reason bind Their running fall into a constant vein Of truth, far more than alabaster pure, Which, though despised, yet still doth truth endure.

V.

A field there is, where, if a stake oe prest Deep in the earth, what hath in earth receipt, Is changed to stone in hardness, cold, and weight, The wood above doth soon consuming rest.

The earth her ears; the stake is my request; Of which, how much may pierce to that sweet seat, To honour turned, doth dwell in honour’s nest, Keeping that form, though void of wonted heat; But all the rest, which fear durst not apply, Failing themselves, with withered conscience die.

VI.

Of ships by shipwreck cast on Albion’s coast, Which rotting on the rocks, their death to die: From wooden bones and blood of pitch doth fly A bird, which gets more life than ship had lost.

My ship, Desire, with wind of Lust long tost, Brake on fair cliffs of constant Chastity; Where plagued for rash attempt, gives up his ghost; So deep in seas of virtue, beauties lie: But of this death flies up the purest love, Which seeming less, yet nobler life doth move.

VII.

These wonders England breeds; the last remains— A lady, in despite of Nature, chaste, On whom all love, in whom no love is placed, Where Fairness yields to Wisdom’s shortest reins.

A humble pride, a scorn that favour stains; A woman’s mould, but like an angel graced; An angel’s mind, but in a woman cased; A heaven on earth, or earth that heaven contains: Now thus this wonder to myself I frame; She is the cause that all the rest I am.

* * * * *

THOU blind man’s mark; thou fool’s self-chosen snare, Fond fancy’s scum, and dregs of scattered thought: Band of all evils; cradle of causeless care; Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought:

Desire! Desire! I have too dearly bought, With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware; Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought Who shouldst my mind to higher things prepare;

But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought; In vain thou mad’st me to vain things aspire; In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire: For Virtue hath this better lesson taught, Within myself to seek my only hire, Desiring nought but how to kill Desire.

FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN.

LEAVE me, O love! which reachest but to dust; And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things: Grow rich in that which never taketh rust; Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be, Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light That doth both shine, and give us sight to see.

O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide, In this small course which birth draws out to death, And think how evil becometh him to slide, Who seeketh heaven, and comes from heavenly breath. Then farewell, world, thy uttermost I see, Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

SPLENDIDIS LONGUM VALEDICO NUGIS

FOOTNOTES.

{1} _Edward Wotton_, elder brother of Sir Henry Wotton. He was knighted by Elizabeth in 1592, and made Comptroller of her Household. Observe the playfulness in Sidney’s opening and close of a treatise written throughout in plain, manly English without Euphuism, and strictly reasoned.

{2} Here the introduction ends, and the argument begins with its § 1. _Poetry the first Light-giver_.

{3} A fable from the “Hetamythium” of Laurentius Abstemius, Professor of Belles Lettres at Urbino, and Librarian to Duke Guido Ubaldo under the Pontificate of Alexander VI. (1492–1503).

{4} Pliny says (“Nat. Hist.,” lib. xi., cap. 62) that the young vipers, impatient to be born, break through the side of their mother, and so kill her.

{5} § 2. _Borrowed from by Philosophers_.

{6} Timæus, the Pythagorean philosopher of Locri, and the Athenian Critias are represented by Plato as having listened to the discourse of Socrates on a Republic. Socrates calls on them to show such a state in action. Critias will tell of the rescue of Europe by the ancient citizens of Attica, 10,000 years before, from an inroad of countless invaders who came from the vast island of Atlantis, in the Western Ocean; a struggle of which record was preserved in the temple of Naith or Athené at Sais, in Egypt, and handed down, through Solon, by family tradition to Critias. But first Timæus agrees to expound the structure of the universe; then Critias, in a piece left unfinished by Plato, proceeds to show an ideal society in action against pressure of a danger that seems irresistible.

{7} Plato’s “Republic,” book ii.

{8} § 3. _Borrowed from by Historians_.

{9} § 4. _Honoured by the Romans as Sacred and Prophetic_.

{10} § 5. _And really sacred and prophetic in the Psalms of David_.

{11} § 6. _By the Greeks_, _Poets were honoured with the name of Makers_.

{12} _Poetry is the one creative art_. _Astronomers and others repeat what they find_.

{13} _Poets improve Nature_.

{14} _And idealize man_.

{15} _Here a Second Part of the Essay begins_.

{16} § 1. Poetry defined.

{17} § 2. _Its kinds_. _a._ _Divine_.

{18} _b._ _Philosophical_, _which is perhaps too imitative_.

{19} Marcus Manilius wrote under Tiberius a metrical treatise on Astronomy, of which five books on the fixed stars remain.

{20} _c._ _Poetry proper_.

{21} § 3. _Subdivisions of Poetry proper_.

{22} _Its essence is in the thought_, _not in apparelling of verse_.

{23} _Heliodorus_ was Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and lived in the fourth century. His story of Theagenes and Chariclea, called the “Æthiopica,” was a romantic tale in Greek which was, in Elizabeth’s reign, translated into English.

{24} _The Poet’s Work and Parts_. § 1. WORK: _What Poetry does for us_.

{25} _Their clay lodgings_—

“Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”

(Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice,” act v., sc. 1)

{26} _Poetry best advances the end of all earthly learning_, _virtuous action_.

{27} _Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy_.

{28} _Its advantage herein over History_.

{29} “All men make faults, and even I in this, Authórising thy trespass with compare.”

Shakespeare, “Sonnet” 35.

{30} “Witness of the times, light of truth, life of memory, mistress of life, messenger of antiquity.”—Cicero, “De Oratore.”

{31} _In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher_, _Historian_, _and all others_ (_bating comparison with the Divine_).

{32} _He is beyond the Philosopher_.

{33} Horace’s “Ars Poetica,” lines 372–3. But Horace wrote “Non homines, non Di”—“Neither men, gods, nor lettered columns have admitted mediocrity in poets.”

{34} _The moral common-places_. Common Place, “Locus communis,” was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., “Because it is impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobæus out of Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled ‘Polyanthea,’ provides short and effective sentences apt to any matter.” Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, “a common-place,” came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting, and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but commonly without wit in it.

{35} _Thus far Aristotle_. The whole passage in the “Poetics” runs: “It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet are distinguished. The work of Herodotus might be versified; but it would still be a species of History, no less with metre than without. They are distinguished by this, that the one relates what has been, the other what might be. On this account Poetry is more philosophical, and a more excellent thing than History, for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general truth; History about particular. In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably or necessarily, this is general; and this is the object of Poetry, even while it makes use of particular names. But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him, this is particular truth.”

{36} Justinus, who lived in the second century, made an epitome of the history of the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires, from Trogus Pompeius, who lived in the time of Augustus.

{37} _Dares Phrygius_ was supposed to have been a priest of Vulcan, who was in Troy during the siege, and the Phrygian Iliad ascribed to him as early as the time of Ælian, A.D. 230, was supposed, therefore, to be older than Homer’s.

{38} _Quintus Curtius_, a Roman historian of uncertain date, who wrote the history of Alexander the Great in ten books, of which two are lost and others defective.

{39} Not knowledge but practice.

{40} _The Poet Monarch of all Human Sciences_.

{41} In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” a resemblance has been fancied between this passage and Rosalind’s description of Biron, and the jest:—

“Which his fair tongue—conceit’s expositor— Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That agéd ears play truant at his tables, And younger hearings are quite ravishéd, So sweet and voluble is his discourse.”

{42} Virgil’s “Æneid,” Book xii.:—

“And shall this ground fainthearted dastard Turnus flying view? Is it so vile a thing to die?”

(Phaer’s Translation [1573].)

{43} _Instances of the power of the Poet’s work_.

{44} _Defectuous_. This word, from the French “defectueux,” is used twice in the “Apologie for Poetrie.”

{45} § II. _The_ PARTS _of Poetry_.

{46} _Can Pastoral be condemned_?

{47} The close of Virgil’s seventh Eclogue—Thyrsis was vanquished, and Corydon crowned with lasting glory.

{48} _Or Elegiac_?

{49} _Or Iambic_? _or Satiric_?

{50} From the first Satire of Persius, line 116, in a description of Homer’s satire:

“Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit,” &c.

Shrewd Flaccus touches each vice in his laughing friend. Dryden thus translated the whole passage:—

“Unlike in method, with concealed design Did crafty Horace his low numbers join; And, with a sly insinuating grace Laughed at his friend, and looked him in the face: Would raise a blush where secret vice he found; And tickle, while he gently probed the wound; With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled, But made the desperate passes while he smiled.”

{51} From the end of the eleventh of Horace’s epistles (Lib. 1):

“Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt, Strenua nos exercet inertia; navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis, hic est, Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus.”

They change their skies but not their mind who run across the seas; We toil in laboured idleness, and seek to live at ease With force of ships and four horse teams. That which you seek is here, At Ulubræ, unless your mind fail to be calm and clear.

“At Ulubræ” was equivalent to saying in the dullest corner of the world, or anywhere. Ulubræ was a little town probably in Campania, a Roman Little Pedlington. Thomas Carlyle may have had this passage in mind when he gave to the same thought a grander form in Sartor Resartus: “May we not say that the hour of spiritual enfranchisement is even this? When your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed and thrown open, and you discover with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your America is here or nowhere. The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable hampered actual wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere, is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself. Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of. What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, couldest thou only see.”

{52} Or Comic?

{53} _In pistrinum_. In the pounding-mill (usually worked by horses or asses).

{54} _Or Tragic_?

{55} _The old song of Percy and Douglas_, Chevy Chase in its first form.

{56} _Or the Heroic_?

{57} Epistles I. ii. 4. Better than Chrysippus and Crantor. They were both philosophers, Chrysippus a subtle stoic, Crantor the first commentator upon Plato.

{58} _Summary of the argument thus far_.

{59} _Objections stated and met_.

{60} Cornelius Agrippa’s book, “De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium,” was first published in 1532; Erasmus’s “Moriæ Encomium” was written in a week, in 1510, and went in a few months through seven editions.

{61} _The objection to rhyme and metre_.

{62} The first of these sentences is from Horace (Epistle I. xviii. 69): “Fly from the inquisitive man, for he is a babbler.” The second, “While each pleases himself we are a credulous crowd,” seems to be varied from Ovid (Fasti, iv. 311):—

“Conscia mens recti famæ mendacia risit: Sed nos in vitium credula turba sumus.”

A mind conscious of right laughs at the falsehoods of fame but towards vice we are a credulous crowd.

{63} _The chief objections_.

{64} _That time might be better spent_.

{65} Beg the question.

{66} _That poetry is the mother of lies_.

{67} _That poetry is the nurse of abuse_, _infecting us with wanton and pestilent desires_.

{68} _Rampire_, rampart, the Old French form of “rempart,” was “rempar,” from “remparer,” to fortify.

{69} “I give him free leave to be foolish.” A variation from the line (Sat. I. i. 63), “Quid facias illi? jubeas miserum esse libenter.”

{70} _That Plato banished poets from his ideal Republic_.

{71} Which authority certain barbarous and insipid writers would wrest into meaning that poets were to be thrust out of a state.

{72} Ion is a rhapsodist, in dialogue with Socrates, who cannot understand why it is that his thoughts flow abundantly when he talks of Homer. “I can explain,” says Socrates; “your talent in expounding Homer is not an art acquired by system and method, otherwise it would have been applicable to other poets besides. It is a special gift, imparted to you by Divine power and inspiration. The like is true of the poet you expound. His genius does not spring from art, system, or method: it is a special gift emanating from the inspiration of the Muses. A poet is light, airy, holy person, who cannot compose verses at all so long as his reason remains within him. The Muses take away his reason, substituting in place of it their own divine inspiration and special impulse . . . Like prophets and deliverers of oracles, these poets have their reason taken away, and become the servants of the gods. It is not they who, bereft of their reason, speak in such sublime strains, it is the god who speaks to us, and speaks through them.” George Grote, from whose volumes on Plato I quote this translation of the passage, placed “Ion” among the genuine dialogues of Plato.

{73} _Guards_, trimmings or facings.

{74} _The Second Summary_.

{75} _Causes of Defect in English Poetry_.

{76} From the invocation at the opening of Virgil’s _Æneid_ (line 12), “Muse, bring to my mind the causes of these things: what divinity was injured . . . that one famous for piety should suffer thus.”

{77} The Chancellor, Michel de l’Hôpital, born in 1505, who joined to his great political services (which included the keeping of the Inquisition out of France, and long labour to repress civil war) great skill in verse. He died in 1573.

{78} Whose heart-strings the Titan (Prometheus) fastened with a better clay. (Juvenal, _Sat._ xiv. 35). Dryden translated the line, with its context—

“Some sons, indeed, some very few, we see Who keep themselves from this infection free, Whom gracious Heaven for nobler ends designed, Their looks erected, and their clay refined.”

{79} The orator is made, the poet born.

{80} What you will; the first that comes.

{81} “Whatever I shall try to write will be verse.” Sidney quotes from memory, and adapts to his context, Tristium IV. x. 26.

“Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, Et quod temptabam dicere, versus erat.”

{82} _His_ for “its” here as throughout; the word “its” not being yet introduced into English writing.

{83} _Defects in the Drama_. It should be remembered that this was written when the English drama was but twenty years old, and Shakespeare, aged about seventeen, had not yet come to London. The strongest of Shakespeare’s precursors had not yet begun to write for the stage. Marlowe had not yet written; and the strength that was to come of the freedom of the English drama had yet to be shown.

{84} There was no scenery on the Elizabethan stage.

{85} Messenger.

{86} From the egg.

{87} _Bias_, slope; French “bìais.”

{88} Juvenal, _Sat._ iii., lines 152–3. Which Samuel Johnson finely paraphrased in his “London:”

“Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.”

{89} George Bachanan (who died in 1582, aged seventy-six) had written in earlier life four Latin tragedies, when Professor of Humanities at Bordeaux, with Montaigne in his class.

{90} _Defects in Lyric Poetry_.

{91} _Defects in Diction_. This being written only a year or two after the publication of “Euphues,” represents that style of the day which was not created but represented by the book from which it took the name of “Euphuism.”

{92} Nizolian paper-books, are commonplace books of quotable passages, so called because an Italian grammarian, Marius Nizolius, born at Bersello in the fifteenth century, and one of the scholars of the Renaissance in the sixteenth, was one of the first producers of such volumes. His contribution was an alphabetical folio dictionary of phrases from Cicero: “Thesaurus Ciceronianus, sive Apparatus Linguæ Latinæ e scriptis Tullii Ciceronis collectus.”

{93} “He lives and wins, nay, comes to the Senate, nay, comes to the Senate,” &c.

{94} Pounded. Put in the pound, when found astray.

{95} _Capacities of the English Language_.

{96} _Metre and Rhyme_.

{97} _Last Summary and playful peroration_.