Part 8

The sonnet, so frequently used by Surrey, and after him by Shakspeare and nearly every other English poet, was (according to Sir W. Jones,) introduced from Arabia into Italy: thence, with other stanzaic structures into England by Chaucer, who in one of his visits to the south, is reported to have met Petrarch and made his friendship, in Genoa. Surrey was doubtless the most skilful sonnet-weaver of his day, and though too fond of the inversion, for which Milton is so much blamed, for the most part pleases both ear and understanding. His end was an unfortunate one. Henry VIII added the poet lover to the list of those whom tyranny brought to the scaffold. He was beheaded in the year 1500.

IV. Sir Philip Sidney was famous throughout all Europe for his intellectual and personal accomplishments. He was spoken of as a candidate for the throne of Poland on the death of Sigismond Augustus, but Elizabeth was unwilling to lose the "prime jewel of all England," and retained him at the English court. It is more than probable that he would have been defeated; for the claim of a Duke of Anjou, pleaded by so wily an advocate as Montluc, "the happy embassador," would have been more than strong enough to vanquish that of an honest, open-minded British gentleman.

The character of Sir Philip Sidney was without reproach. Not unlike Lord Surrey in his renown, he was yet more a hero than his illustrious precursor. Lord Surrey was an accomplished and illustrious patrician, the first of his age; but Sidney was a refinement upon nobility. He was like the abstract and essence of romantic fiction, having the courage (but not the barbarity) of the _preux chevaliers_ of ancient time--their unwearied patience--their tender and stainless attachment. He was a hero of chivalry, without the grossness and frailty of the flesh. He lived beloved and admired, and died universally and deservedly lamented. He is the last of those who have passed into a marvel; and he is now remembered almost as the ideal personification of a true knight.

Sir Philip Sidney's poetry was not without the faults of his time. It abounds with conceits and strained similes, and the versification is occasionally cramped. Nevertheless, many of his sonnets contain beautiful images and deep sentiment, (such as the 31, 82, 84, and others,) though a little impoverished by this alloy. But Sidney's reputation was won upon crimson fields, as well as upon poetic mountains. He wooed Bellona, as well as the Muses; and his last great act, when dying at Zutphen, is of itself enough to justify the high admiration of his countrymen.[7]

[Footnote 7: Vid. article "_Poetry_," in No. LXXXIII of Edin. Review, April 1825.]

V. Edmond Spenser--Dryden's "father," and Southey's "dear master"--the poet who "threw a rainbow across the heaven of poetry," was born in London. He found, at the age of eighteen or thereabout, that a cousin whom he loved would not receive his suit, and went into Cumberland, where, to pour out his sorrow, he wrote the most mournful portions of the "Shepherd's Calendar." He was for some time Secretary in Ireland,[8] under Lord Grey de Wilton, where his Fairy Queen was conceived and partly written; and died A.D. 1598, aged forty-five years.

[Footnote 8: If I mistake not, Edmund Burke spent a portion of his boyhood within sight of the garden where Spenser composed much of his Fairy Queen. What better spot could there be for the education of genius? This life, among scenes constantly exciting associations of the most poetical and refined nature, may have assisted in giving Burke's mind the poetic coloring for which it was so remarkable.]

Spenser and the other "fathers" of the English schools of poetry should rather be called "masters of ceremonies," for they certainly did not _beget_ their different orders of composition. Italy was the cradle of these orders, not England. I will however adopt the first and common title, and call Spenser father of the English allegorical and pastoral poetry. And on these I will say a few words before I proceed to his more striking excellencies.

The ancients were particularly fond of allegory. A field as vast as could be desired was here opened for their poets. The whole heathen mythology was a splendid allegory. Virgil's Ænead may be called an allegory. As Eneas conducted the remnant of his countrymen from the Trojan ruins to a new settlement in Italy, so Augustus, from the ruins of the aristocracy, modelled a completely new government. I have not leisure to pursue the parallel. Homer has in the Odyssey many allegorical fables; as for instance those of Circe and Calypso. In imitation of these, Virgil introduced his Dido. Going farther on we find the love of allegory increasing in Italy. Ariosto's Alcina and the Armida of Tasso are "copies from the copy" of Virgil; and coming on English ground we find Spenser stealing from Tasso. As for the kinds of poetry in which allegory should be used--In an epic, persons of the "imaginary life," such as Virgil's

"_Strife_ that shakes Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes,"

and Spenser's "gnawing JEALOUSY sitting alone and biting his bitter lips"--should by no means enter into the action of the poem. Virgil knew this and made them nothing more than "_gate posts to his entrance into Hades_."[9] The introduction of allegorical personages into the drama is unpardonable. Even in ages when men were laid open by superstition to the insinuating beauty of allegory; when the ignorant imagined every rock to be the pent-house of some spirit; when the timid walked abroad in fear and trembling, and when in consequence of this feeling allegorical paintings even of a wild sort seemed natural and agreeable to truth, its introduction into the drama met with but little applause. Æschylus has often been criticised severely for his frequent errors of this sort; one of which is his introduction of STRENGTH, as a character who assists Vulcan in binding Prometheus to his rock.

[Footnote 9: All lavish embellishment--such as Tasso's description of the bower of bliss, in his "Jerusalem," which the reader will find transplanted into the second book of Spenser's Fairy Queen--should likewise be excluded from the epic. This species of poem--the grandest of _all_ species--should be superior to such embellishment.]

Though excluded from epic and dramatic poetry, it may be used with great aptness in poems of a descriptive nature. We thus find that pastoral poetry often admits of an allegorical vein. Spenser knew this, and has given us a happy instance in that eclogue of his Shepherd's Calendar, in which he represents the union of the rivers Briqoq and Mulla. He has still happier instances in _Æcloga tertia_ and in _Æcloga quinta_.

Spenser likewise acted as master of ceremonies to pastoral poetry in its introduction to English literature. The great father of this order was Theocritus. His follower was Virgil, who combined very skilfully the _merum rus_ of the Idyllia with his own courtly grace. Tasso in his Aminta imitated Virgil, and was in turn imitated by a host of contemporary and subsequent poets among his countrymen. Without copying Tasso in this as in other things, Spenser became the head of English pastoral poetry, and has never yet been excelled.

Mr. Pope's remarks in the preface to his pastorals are evidently correct. "The simplest states of life and feeling best suit this style of poetry." Spenser's early pastorals, written

"amongst the cooly shade Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore,"

are minute and beautiful pictures of the country and of country life. Indeed, one of his poems may be likened to a country scene. Here are musical brooks; there old woods cloaked in ornamental foliage; here a succession of bold thoughts shaped into a chain of tall hills; there the low vale of quiet unobtrusive beauty--all this, too, mellowed by the gawsy twilight of love. Such are Spenser's early pictures, but after mingling with the world, and losing his primitive simplicity of temper, the elegance and refinement which gave such a charm to the "Fairy Queen," spoiled his rural poetry. It was no longer a picture of nature: his plant was a hot house one: his fruit had the _hortus siccus_ flavor: his nightingales were caged, and sang from an embayed window. This difference may be seen by comparing "Colin come home again" with its predecessors.

But the Fairy Queen is his wonderful work. The elegant and sometimes magnificent beauty of that lay, where the "great bard"

"In sage and solemn tunes hath sung Of tourneys and of trophies hung, Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear"--

has elevated his name to the high place which it fills with such brilliancy. Every poetic palate will relish "the grapes of hidden meaning so abundant under the vine-leaves of his exquisite allegory."

On the whole, as for Spenser as a _natural_ poet, all unite in pronouncing him imaginative, bold, and even witty: as an artist, or _educated_ poet, skilful, elegant, and full. His language is, for the most part, rich and expressive; his verse (remarkably various in arrangement) could scarcely be more melodious and pleasing. I will close this portion of my remarks with a quotation, the source of which I forget, but which I find pencilled upon the margin of my Chaucer.

"Spenser and Chaucer, instead of being forced into death by their antiquated language, will, by their use of it, perpetuate its remembrance. The ancient English is their servant. They are not and never will be its victims."

VI. These are biographical times. A moiety of centuries ago, not even a Shakspeare could find a biographer willing to follow the windings of his career. We know nothing more of him _certainly_ than that he remained on the Avon with his wife Anne Hatheway--his senior by eight years--and three children, the last two of which were twins--until ambition led him to London. That there his plays were written; and his evenings spent with Ned Alleyne, Ben Jonson, Marlow and others, in drinking canary wine, and in "tilting in the lists of literary controversie." We have little knowledge of their pleasant discussions--

"words-- Spoke in the mermaid"--

but in such a company, wit and humor must have been gods of the entertainment. We are told that in table debate, "Jonson was like a great Spanish gallion, and Shakspeare an English man of war. Master Jonson was built far higher in learning; solid but slow in his performances. Shakspeare lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." We can easily fancy the plethoric Ben writhing and chafing under the quickness of his adversary's attacks.

Within the last twenty years Shakspeare has become popular with the German critics--the best perhaps of the age. The critical mania has been imparted to the English, and I have observed lately in the English Magazines several articles pretty much in the German tone. One writer, for example, is engaged in building up a "life" of the poet from rather strange _materiel_--his sonnets. This idea was started by Schlegel, I believe--and is certainly a happy one: for all authors have sorrows, and at times must seek relief by giving them utterance. Indeed the works of an author's leisure moments are usually all of one piece--all of the same tone--all harping upon the one black thread in his fortune. Shakspeare asks in one of his sonnets--

"Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed That every word doth almost tell my name Showing their birth and where they did proceed? O know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument."

This brooding and inward looking is a common habit.[10] Chatterton, Kirk White, and Dermody, have dissected their very hearts. Byron lives in his vagrant "Childe," and bating some most disgusting affectation in his Corsair--Lara--Giaour. Shelley groans with his Prometheus--breathes in his Laon--and draws his own image with the life of his Helen.[11] This may have been the case with Shakspeare. Giving free scope to his heart's inmost workings, he has given posterity, in his sonnets, a record of feeling so expressed as to render it easy to build upon it a fabric of fact--a true and accurate 'life.'

[Footnote 10: Bulwer says in the Disowned, that his _effort_ is, at all times to "avoid a self-picture in his writings." The very fact that an _effort_ must be made, proves the existence of this yearning egotism. In writings never intended for the world's eye there is no drawback to the inclination, and it is followed. Shakspeare's sonnets were not "writ for the world."]

[Footnote 11: This self-identity is not so visible in the tragedies of Byron and Shelley, for the simple reason, perhaps, that these are more the works of art--more the creatures of the brain than heart--abound more in skill than feeling.]

His sonnets, as they now stand, are hardly intelligible, but when placed in proper order, tell one unbroken story. We learn, _inter alia_ that Shakspeare had a _male_ friend whom he loved most dearly: that this friend "broke a two-fold truth"--and the question is, in what manner. Searching farther we gain the clew, and find that the poet had imbodied his vision of poetic loveliness--his _Iris en air_--in one, whom in the midst of his dream of purity and beauty unearthly, he found "as black as hell and as dark as night." That friend wins her to his arms, and this is where he is "led to riot" and to break a "two-fold truth." The poet finally discovers her wretched nature and asks--

"Why should my heart think that a several plot Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?"

Then pauses in the midst of the deeply affecting portraiture of self-feeling, to whisper the exquisite self-excuse: "How could

Love's eye be true That is so vexed with watching and with tears."

Perhaps self-portraiture might be even detected in his plays. Goethe's comprehension of the incomprehensible Hamlet, (viz. That with a great and philosophic mind he was too shrinking and sensitive for the execution of his high resolves--in a word, that like a porcelain jar attempting to enfold the roots of an oak, until shattered in the attempt, his shrinking nature tottered under the pressure of a purpose too mighty,) may have been a picture of Shakspeare's self: violent ambition acting upon the poet's fine nature, as other passions did upon that of Hamlet.

I have occupied so much space with that part of Shakspeare's history little known, that it has given me an excuse for shunning the beaten track altogether. I will however quote Dryden's eulogy, as it is short and famous for its pith.[12]

"He was the man who of all modern and perhaps all ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clinches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

'Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cupressi.'"

[Footnote 12: Dryden lauds the "commixture of comedy and tragedy," of which Shakspeare has been so often guilty. This always seemed to me unhappy. The "tragi-comic feeling" is at best an April day matter--a fit of the hystericks--neither downright weeping, nor hearty laughter. Or, yielding that sorrow is deeply impressed on the mind by the melancholy pictures of the one portion, will a sudden transition to merriment wipe it away? Dryden says, "why should we imagine the soul of man more heavy than his senses? Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant object to a pleasant in a very moment?" Receiving this sophistry as genuine wisdom, it follows of course, that all actual grief is transient. I would it were so. There would _then_ be no need for the fountain of Lethe or the poppies of Ennor. One does not forget the fall of the sod when his _eye_ turns from the newly covered grave to the glitter and glare of life.

The mixture certainly is unhappy. Perhaps, as Coleridge has surmised, it was the fruit of a proud carelesness. The poet, in the hour of composition, feels that he has just written successfully. He is elated and runs riot for awhile heedless, or, it may be, scarcely conscious of what he writes. On this principle we may account for a prodigious deal of extravagance, otherwise unaccountable.]

VII. Of Ben Jonson I will hardly say much. His "learning and heavy-headedness" would scarcely render him the 'rare Ben' that he once was, in this age of _learned professors_ and _profound scholars._

His learning gave him an undue admiration of Aristotle, and in his plays he has followed the Grecian model too closely. Unity of time and place is particularly inculcated in the rules of the Grecian schools; and in France this had long been strictly observed. It was made matter of minute inquiry in tragedy, whether such and such transactions could be gone through while a talkative hero ranted so many verses. Or, in comedy, whether an unfortunate shepherdess could go through the _Juno Lucina fer opem_ ceremony, while a lewd city clerk stood by, and made so many studied surmises--_sotto voce_. Unless unity of time and place was observed in a drama, these 'line and rule Greekling Franks' damned it. The consequence was that one plot--one method--Aristotle's [Greek: go êythos]--was worked upon by successive dramatists, too timid to 'blanch the beaten track,' until it was threadbare. These fetters which Shakspeare snapped, Jonson hugged.

Old Ben, as he was called, was once young, but the history of his youth is rather cloudy. It seems probable, however, that the accounts delivered us by his contemporaries, are true, notwithstanding Mr. Gifford's sweeping denial. Following them, we learn, that Ben's step-father was a bricklayer; that Ben himself "served at the trade," until he left it from weariness, and joined a company of strolling players: that he enlisted and went with the English army into Flanders, where he "killed his man, and bore off the spoils." His prime and after life were spent in literary pursuits.

Old Ben was a quarrelsome, peevish companion; his body that of a bloated giant; his face filthy, with a scorbutic affection, or, as Decker quaintly says, "a face par-boiled, punched full of eyelet holes, like the cover of a warming pan." His literary quarrels with Decker, Marston, and other "men of London," eventuated in a surly retreat on the part of Jonson. He was driven from comedy to Tragedy, and we find him closing one of his poetic defences with the consoling reflection, that

"There's something come into my thought, That must and shall be sung, high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof."

But the poet "died of sack," and lies in Westminster with a plain slab above him, on which are these words:

"O RARE BEN JONSON!"

VIII. I pass with reluctance over the contemporaries of Spenser and Shakspeare; contemporaries who aided in gaining for the Elizabethan age the title of "_Augustan_."[13] I will not, however, leave this ground, without quoting a few verses, imitated from the Italian of Petrarch, by Elizabeth herself. The lines begin a little poem, composed by the queen, "upon Mount Zeur's departure."[14] They are not wanting in music:

"I grieve, yet dare not shew my discontent; I love, and yet am forst to seem to hate; I doe, yet dare not say I ever meant; I seeme starke mute, but inwardly do prate; I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself my other self I turned."

[Footnote 13: It was for wit that the reign of Augustus was celebrated. The age preceding, was that of strength. The Elizabethan age combined these.]

[Footnote 14: Ashmol. muss. MSS. p. 142.]

Passing on, we find "the melancholy Cowley." Cowley has ever been a favorite with lovers; for love maddens men, and madness will always find pleasant aliment in the metaphysical and metaphorical love verses of this unnatural poet. The following is a loose paraphrase of one of Anacreon's wine songs; so loose that we may as well style it original, and adduce it as a specimen not only of Cowley's strange conceits, but also of all the poetry in England, or rather at the court of the King, during the reign of Charles II.[15] The sample is a happy one.

[Footnote 15: Cowley died in 1667, too early to have thoroughly imbibed the peculiarities of the "poets of the restoration," if he had remained in England before. But this was not the case; he was secretary to the Earl of St. Albans, in Paris, during the Protectorature, and there acquired these peculiarities.]

"DRINKING.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks and gapes for drink again; The plants suck from the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh and fair; The sea itself, (which one would think, Should have but little need of drink,) Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up, So filled that they o'erflow the cup. The busy sun, (and one would guess By his drunken, fiery face no less,) Drinks up the sea; and when he's done, The moon and stars drink up the sun: They drink and dance by their own light; They drink and revel all the night. Nothing in nature's sober found, But an eternal health goes round; Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high; Fill all the glasses there; for why Should every creature drink but I? Why, man of morals, tell me why?"

The question in the last line, is easily answered. If in no other way, by the ridiculous death of Polycrates' minion, the immortal Anacreon, who lost his mortality through the agency of an ingrate grape stone.

IX. To praise such men as Shakspeare and Milton, is like praising Hercules. However, I am not one of those who think it idle to cry out "O deare moon, O choyce stars!" when we look upon these in their loveliness. And, leaving this question of the utility or inutility of panegyric, to be discussed elsewhere, I will continue _pari passu_ upon the same track which I have hitherto pursued.--Of,

"A genius universal as his theme; Astonishing as chaos; as the bloom Of blowing Eden, fair; as heaven, sublime,"