Part 2
Of the first edition of _Alcilia: Philoparthen's Loving Folly_, 1595 (pp. 319-362), only one copy is known, preserved in the public library at Hamburgh. On the last page are subscribed the author's initials 'J.C.', which have been altered in ink to 'J.G.' in the Hamburgh copy. The poem was reprinted in London in 1613, 1619, and 1628, being accompanied by Marston's _Pygmalion's Image_ and Samuel Page's _Amos and Laura_. Who 'J.C.' may have been is unknown; for the wild conjecture that he was John Chalkhill, author of _Thealma and Clearchus_ and friend of Izaak Walton, is chronologically untenable. For the space of two years the unknown poet had pressed his attentions upon the lady whom he called Alcilia. She finally rejected his addresses, and young 'J.C.' was not sorry to escape from bondage. Hardly a trace of genuine passion can be found in _Alcilia_, which is merely (as the author freely admits) a collection of odds and ends written 'at divers times and upon divers occasions.' It is somewhat surprising that there was a demand for new editions. 'J.C.' wrote with elegance and facility, but the note of originality is wanting. Had the poem appeared a few years earlier, it would have been entitled to more consideration; but the achievements of Greene, Lodge, and others had made it possible in the closing years of the sixteenth century for any young writer of respectable talents to compose such verse as we find in _Alcilia_.
_Daiphantus_, or _The Passions of Love_, 1604 (pp. 363-404), is described on the title-page as 'By An. Sc. Gentleman,' assumed to stand for Antony Scoloker. In the days of Henry VIII there was an Antony Scoloker, a printer and translator, with whom 'An. Sc.' was doubtless connected In the humorous prose address there is an interesting reference to Shakespeare:--'It should be like the never-too-well-read _Arcadia_ where the Prose and Verse, Matter and Words, are like his Mistress eyes, one still excelling another and without corrival; or to come home to the Vulgar's element, like friendly Shake-speare's _Tragedies_, where the Comedian rides when the Tragedian stands on tiptoe. Faith it should please all like Prince HAMLET. But, in sadness, then it were to be feared he would run mad. In sooth I will not be moonsick to please, nor out of my wits though I displease all. What? Poet, are you in passion or out of Love? This is as strange as true.' In the poem itself there is another reference to 'mad Hamlet,' though Scoloker there seems to be glancing at the older play on the subject of Hamlet. For the reader's guidance an 'Argument' is obligingly prefixed, but it is to be feared that even with the help of this Argument he will not find the poem very intelligible or of engrossing interest. _Daiphantus_, of which only one copy (in the Douce Collection) is known, was perhaps intended merely for circulation among the author's friends, who may have been able to read between the lines. Appended is the fine poem, 'The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage,' beginning:--
'Give me my Scalop Shell of quiet, My Staff of faith to walk upon, My Scrip of joy, immortal diet, My Bottle of salvation, My Gown of glory, hope's true gage, And thus I'll take my Pilgrimage,' etc.
Possibly the publisher tacked on these verses without Scoloker's knowledge. It is quite certain that they were not written by the author of _Daiphantus_, and there are good reasons for assigning them to Sir Walter Ralegh (_see_ Hannah's edition of Ralegh's _Poems_, 1885).
The 'Odes' of Michael Drayton (pp. 405-441), drawn from _Poems Lyrick and Pastorall_ (1606?), and the later collection of 1619, contain some of his best writing. There is no need to praise the glorious 'Ballad of Agincourt,' but it may be noted that Drayton spent considerable pains over the revision of this poem. It was fine in its original form, but every change found in the later version was a clear improvement. No signs of the file are visible, and we should certainly judge--unless we had evidence to the contrary--that this imperishable 'ballad' had been thrown off at a white heat. Only inferior to 'Agincourt' is the stirring ode 'To the Virginian Voyage.' Professor Arber, a high authority, is of opinion that it was composed some time before 12th August 1606, on which day the Plymouth Company despatched Captain Henry Challons' ship to North Virginia. In this valedictory address Drayton writes:--
'Your course securely steer, West-and-by-South forth keep! Rocks,[7] Lee-shores, nor Shoals, When Æolus scowls, You need not fear: So absolute the deep.'
Captain Challons sailed to Madeira, St. Lucia, Porto Rico, and thence towards North Virginia. His little ship of fifty-five tons, with a crew of twenty-nine Englishmen (and two native Virginians), had the ill-luck on 10th November to fall in with the Spanish fleet of eight ships returning from Havanna. It was captured by the Spaniards and the crew were taken prisoners to Spain.
In a lighter vein, the ode beginning 'Maidens, why spare ye,' was worthy to have been set to music by Robert Jones. The seventh ode was written from the Peak in winter--
'Amongst the mountains bleak, Exposed to sleet and rain'--
where Charles Cotton afterwards resided. Drayton's statement in the ninth ode--
'My resolution such How well and not how much To write'--
will draw a smile from any reader who has ever seriously attempted to grapple with his multitudinous works. But in these odes, and in the other 'lyric poesies' added in the 1619 edition, he was careful to curb his tendency to diffuseness. He employed a variety of metres, and his experiments were not always happy. Ode 5, 'An Amouret Anacreontic,' cannot be unreservedly commended, and Ode 9, 'A Skeltoniad,' could be spared. One of the most attractive poems is the address 'To his Rival,' a capital piece of good-natured raillery. In his early work Drayton frequently taxes the reader's patience by his disregard for grammatical proprieties, and some of these maturer Odes are so ineptly harsh that one has to grope for the writer's meaning (while one bans the punctuation of old printers and modern editors alike). Hence it is particularly pleasant to meet such a poem as 'To his Rival,' which never swerves awry, but runs on blithely without an encountering obstacle. The 'Hymn to his Lady's Birthplace' is a polished compliment, and very charming is the canzonet 'To his Coy Love.' I end with expressing a hope that the extracts here given from Michael Drayton may induce the reader to make further acquaintance[8] with the writings of one of the most lovable of our elder poets.
A.H. BULLEN.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Ben Jonson (_Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden_) took exception to the opening lines:--
'He scorned such verses as could be transponed-- Where is the man that never yett did hear Of faire Penelope, Ulisses Queene? Of faire Penelope Ulisses Queene, Wher is the man that never yett did hear?' ]
[Footnote 2: The passage is thus rendered by Jasper Mayne (_Part of Lucian, made English ... in the year 1638_):--'Nor were it amiss, having passed through India and Aethiopia, to draw our discourse down to their neighbouring Aegypt. Where the ancient fiction which goes of Proteus, methinks, signifies him only to be a certain dancer and mimic; who could transform and change himself into all shapes, sometimes acting the fluidness of water, sometimes the sharpness of fire, occasioned by the quickness of its aspiring motion, sometimes the fierceness of a lion, and fury of a libbard, and waving of an oak, and whatever he liked.']
[Footnote 3: Cf. also Arnold's "Obermann once more":--
'"Poor World," she cried, "so deep accurst, That runn'st from pole to pole To seek a draught to quench thy thirst, Go seek it in thy soul."' ]
[Footnote 4: The poems of Barnfield were not in the original _Garner_ and are now incorporated for the first time.]
[Footnote 5: Prince in his _Worthies of Devon_(1701) quotes this couplet as an epitaph, by an anonymous writer, on Drake.]
[Footnote 6: There is a better epitaph on Drake in _Wit's Recreations_(1640):--
'Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knew, Which thou didst compasse round. And whom both Poles of Heaven once saw, Which North and South do bound: The Stars above would make thee known If men here silent were: The Sun himselfe cannot forget His fellow-passenger.' ]
[Footnote 7: On March 31, 1605, Captain George Weymouth started from the Downs with a crew of twenty-nine to discover a North-West Passage to the East Indies. On May 14 he 'descries land in 41° 30' N. in the midst of dangerous rocks and shoals. Upon which he puts to sea, the wind blowing south-south-west and west-south-west many days' (Prince's _New England Chronology ap._ Garner, ii. 356). Drayton advises the Virginian voyagers to keep the west-by-south course and so avoid misadventures. He had not reckoned on the Spanish fleet.]
[Footnote 8: Several of Drayton's works have been reprinted by the Spenser Society, and an excellent Introduction to them has been written by Professor Oliver Elton (1895).]
_ORCHESTRA_,
or,
A Poem of Dancing.
Judicially proving the true observation of Time and Measure, in the authentical and laudable use of Dancing.
OVID, _Art. Aman._ lib. I. _Si vox est, canta: si mollia brachia, salta: Et quacunque potes dote placere, place._
_At London_, Printed by J. ROBARTS for N. LING. 1596.
[The following entries at Stationers' Hall prove that this Poem, composed in fifteen days, was written not later than June, 1594; though it did not come to the press till November, 1596.
25 Junif [1594].
Master HARRISON. Entred for his copie in Court holden this day/ a _Senior._ booke entituled, _Orchestra, or a poeme of Daunsing_. vjd. _Transcript &c._ ii. 655. _Ed. 1875._
xxj° Die Novembris [1596].
NICHOLAS LYNG/ Entered for his copie under th[e h]andes of Master JACKSON and master Warden DAWSON, a booke called _Orchestra, or a poeme of Dauncinge_. vjd.
_Transcript &c._ iii. 74. _Ed. 1876._ ]
To his very friend,
Master RICHARD MARTIN.
_To whom, shall I, this Dancing Poem send; This sudden, rash, half-capreol of my wit? To you, first mover and sole cause of it, Mine own-self's better half, my dearest friend! Oh would you, yet, my Muse some honey lend From your mellifluous tongue (whereon doth sit_ Suada _in majesty) that I may fit These harsh beginnings with a sweeter end! You know the modest sun, full fifteen times, Blushing did rise, and blushing did descend, While I, in making of these ill made rhymes, My golden hours unthriftily did spend: Yet if, in friendship, you these Numbers praise, I will mispend another fifteen days._
[The following Dedication was substituted in the edition of 1622.
To the Prince.
[_i.e._, CHARLES, _Prince of_ WALES.]
Sir, whatsoever You are pleased to do, It is your special praise, that you are bent, And sadly set your Princely mind thereto: Which makes You in each thing so excellent.
Hence is it, that You came so soon to be A Man-at-arms in every point aright, The fairest flower of noble Chivalry, And of Saint GEORGE his Band the bravest Knight.
And hence it is, that all your youthful train In activeness and grace You do excel, When You do Courtly dancings entertain: Then Dancing's praise may be presented well
To You, whose action adds more praise thereto Than all the Muses, with their pens can do.]
ORCHESTRA,
or,
A Poem of Dancing.
1.
Where lives the man, that never yet did hear Of chaste PENELOPE, ULYSSES's Queen? Who kept her faith unspotted twenty year; Till he returned, that far away had been, And many men and many towns had seen: Ten year at Siege of Troy, he ling'ring lay; And ten year in the midland sea did stray.
2.
HOMER, to whom the Muses did carouse A great deep cup, with heavenly nectar filled; The greatest deepest cup in JOVE's great house (For JOVE himself had so expressly willed): He drank of all, ne let one drop be spilled; Since when, his brain, that had before been dry, Became the Wellspring of all Poetry.
3.
Homer doth tell, in his abundant verse, The long laborious travails of the Man; And of his Lady too, he doth rehearse, How she illudes, with all the art she can, Th'ungrateful love which other Lords began; For of her Lord, false Fame, long since, had sworn That NEPTUNE's monsters had his carcass torn.
4.
All this he tells, but one thing he forgot, One thing most worthy his eternal Song, But he was old, and blind, and saw it not: Or else he thought he should ULYSSES wrong, To mingle it his tragic acts among: Yet was there not, in all the world of things, A sweeter burden for his Muse's wings:
5.
The Courtly love ANTINOUS did make, ANTINOUS, that fresh and jolly Knight, Which of the Gallants that did undertake To win the Widow, had most Wealth and Might, Wit to persuade, and Beauty to delight: The Courtly love he made unto the Queen, HOMER forgot, as if it had not been.
6.
Sing then, TERPSICHORE, my light MUSE, sing His gentle art and cunning courtesy! You, Lady, can remember everything, For you are daughter of Queen MEMORY: But sing a plain and easy melody, For the soft mean that warbleth but the ground, To my rude ear doth yield the sweetest sound.
7.
Only one night's Discourse I can report: When the great Torchbearer of heaven was gone Down, in a masque, unto the Ocean's Court, To revel it with TETHYS, all alone; ANTINOUS disguised, and unknown, Like to the Spring in gaudy ornament, Unto the Castle of the Princess went.
8.
The sovereign Castle of the rocky isle, Wherein PENELOPE the Princess lay, Shone with a thousand lamps, which did exile The dim dark shades, and turned the night to day. Not JOVE's blue tent, what time the sunny ray Behind the bulwark of the earth retires, Is seen to sparkle with more twinkling fires.
9.
That night, the Queen came forth from far within, And in the presence of her Court was seen. For the sweet singer PHŒMIUS did begin To praise the Worthies that at Troy had been: Somewhat of her ULYSSES she did ween, In his grave Hymn, the heavenly man would sing, Or of his wars, or of his wandering.
10.
PALLAS, that hour, with her sweet breath divine, Inspired immortal beauty in her eyes, That with celestial glory she did shine Brighter than VENUS, when she doth arise Out of the waters to adorn the skies. The Wooers, all amazèd, do admire And check their own presumptuous desire.
11.
Only ANTINOUS, when at first he viewed Her star-bright eyes, that with new honour shined, Was not dismayed; but therewithal renewed The _noblesse_ and the splendour of his mind: And, as he did fit circumstances find, Unto the throne, he boldly 'gan advance, And, with fair manners, wooed the Queen to dance.
12.
_Goddess of women! sith your heavenliness Hath now vouchsafed itself to represent To our dim eyes; which though they see the less, Yet are they blest in their astonishment: Imitate heaven, whose beauties excellent Are in continual motion day and night, And move thereby more wonder and delight._
13.
_Let me the mover be, to turn about Those glorious ornaments that Youth and Love Have fixed in you, every part throughout: Which if you will in timely measure move; Not all those precious gems in heaven above Shall yield a sight more pleasing to behold With all their turns and tracings manifold._
14.
With this, the modest Princess blushed and smiled Like to a clear and rosy eventide, And softly did return this answer mild: _Fair Sir! You needs must fairly be denied, Where your demand cannot be satisfied. My feet, which only Nature taught to go, Did never yet the Art of Footing know._
15.
_But why persuade you me to this new rage? For all Disorder and Misrule is new: For such misgovernment in former Age Our old divine forefathers never knew; Who if they lived, and did the follies view, Which their fond nephews make their chief affairs, Would hate themselves, that had begot such heirs._
16.
_Sole Heir of Virtue, and of Beauty both! Whence cometh it_, ANTINOUS replies, _That your imperious Virtue is so loath To grant your Beauty her chief exercise? Or from what spring doth your opinion rise That Dancing is a Frenzy and a Rage, First known and used in this new-fangled Age?_
17.
_Dancing, bright Lady! then, began to be, When the first seeds whereof the world did spring; The Fire, Air, Earth, and Water did agree By LOVE's persuasion (Nature's mighty King) To leave their first disordered combating; And, in a dance, such Measure to observe, As all the world their motion should preserve._
18.
_Since when, they still are carried in a round; And changing come one in another's place: Yet do they neither mingle nor confound, But every one doth keep the bounded space, Wherein the Dance doth bid it turn or trace: This wondrous miracle did LOVE devise, For Dancing is LOVE's proper exercise._
19.
_Like this, he framed the gods' eternal bower, And of a shapeless and confusèd mass, By his through-piercing and digesting power, The turning Vault of Heaven formèd was; Whose starry wheels he hath so made to pass As that their movings do a Music frame, And they themselves still dance unto the same._
20.
_Or if_ "_this All, which round about we see_" _As idle MORPHEUS some sick brains hath taught,_ "_Of undivided motes compactèd be,_" _How was this goodly architecture wrought? Or by what means were they together brought? They err, that say,_ "_they did concur by Chance!_" _LOVE made them meet in a well ordered Dance!_
21.
_As when AMPHION with his charming Lyre Begot so sweet a Siren of the air, That, with her rhetoric, made the stones conspire, The ruins of a city to repair (A work of Wit and Reason's wise affair): So LOVE's smooth tongue the motes such measure taught, That they joined hands; and so the world was wrought!_
22.
_How justly then is Dancing termèd new, Which, with the world, in point of time began? Yea Time itself (whose birth JOVE never knew, And which is far more ancient than the sun) Had not one moment of his age outrun, When out leaped Dancing from the heap of things And lightly rode upon his nimble wings._
23.
_Reason hath both their pictures in her Treasure; Where Time the Measure of all moving is, And Dancing is a moving all in measure. Now, if you do resemble that to this, And think both One, I think you think amiss: But if you Judge them Twins, together got, And Time first born, your judgement erreth not._
24.
_Thus doth it equal age with Age enjoy, And yet in lusty youth for ever flowers; Like LOVE, his Sire, whom painters make a boy, Yet is he Eldest of the Heavenly Powers; Or like his brother Time, whose wingèd hours, Going and coming, will not let him die, But still preserve him in his infancy._
25.
This said, the Queen, with her sweet lips divine, Gently began to move the subtle air, Which gladly yielding, did itself incline To take a shape between those rubies fair; And being formed, softly did repair, With twenty doublings in the empty way, Unto ANTINOUS' ears, and thus did say.
26.
_What eye doth see the heaven, but doth admire When it the movings of the heavens doth see? Myself, if I, to heaven may once aspire, If that be Dancing, will a dancer be; But as for this, your frantic jollity, How it began, or whence you did it learn, I never could, with Reason's eye discern?_
27.
ANTINOUS answered, _Jewel of the earth! Worthy you are, that heavenly Dance to lead; But for you think our Dancing base of birth, And newly born but of a brain-sick head, I will forthwith his antique gentry read, And (for I love him) will his herald be, And blaze his arms, and draw his pedigree._
28.
_When LOVE had shaped this world, this great fair wight,_ (_That all wights else in this wide womb contains_), _And had instructed it to dance aright A thousand measures, with a thousand strains, Which it should practise with delightful pains, Until that fatal instant should revolve, When all to nothing should again resolve:_
29.
_The comely Order and Proportion fair On every side did please his wand'ring eye; Till, glancing through the thin transparent air, A rude disordered rout he did espy Of men and women, that most spitefully Did one another throng and crowd so sore That his kind eye, in pity, wept therefore._
30.
_And swifter than the lightning down he came, Another shapeless chaos to digest. He will begin another world to frame_ (_For LOVE, till all be well, will never rest_). _Then with such words as cannot be expresst, He cuts the troops, that all asunder fling, And ere they wist, he casts them in a ring._
31.
_Then did he rarify the Element, And in the centre of the ring appear; The beams that from his forehead shining went Begot a horror and religious fear In all the souls that round about him were, Which in their ears attentiveness procures, While he, with such like sounds, their minds allures._
32.
"_How doth Confusions's Mother, headlong Chance, Put Reason's noble squadron to the rout? Or how should you, that have the governance Of Nature's children, heaven and earth throughout, Prescribe them rules, and live yourselves without? Why should your fellowship a trouble be, Since Man's chief pleasure is Society?_
33.
"_If Sense hath not yet taught you, learn of me A comely moderation and discreet; That your assemblies may well ordered be, When my uniting power shall make you meet, With heavenly tunes it shall be tempered sweet; And be the model of the world's great frame, And you, Earth's children, Dancing shall it name._
34.
"_Behold the world, how it is whirlèd round! And for it is so whirlèd, is namèd so: In whose large volume, many rules are found Of this new Art, which it doth fairly show. For your quick eyes in wandering to and fro, From East to West, on no one thing can glance; But (if you mark it well) it seems to dance._
35.
"_First, you see fixed, in this huge mirror blue, Of trembling lights a number numberless; Fixed, they are named but with a name untrue; For they are moved and in a dance express The great long Year that doth contain no less Than threescore hundreds of those years in all, Which the Sun makes with his course natural._
36.