^5 V. ->- CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDO'WMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 1 Date Due Jli^^^^gA^^ ltiMmi¥(ie/i\i''u, "^ w ' ■ li:imm liaLiiiftiii' \ , j ' Cornell University Library i PR 83.G23 1903 V 2 J 1 ■ English literature; an illustrated record 3 1924 013 348 341 .......i ENGLISH LITERATURE AN ILLUSTRATED RECORD BY RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. AND EDMUND GOSSE, M.A., LL.D VOL. II f^^ ENGLISH LITERATURE AN ILLUSTRATED RECORD IN FOUR VOLUMES VOLUME II FROM THE AGE OF HENRY VIII TO THE AGE OF MILTON BY RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. "^ AND EDMUND GOSSE, M.A., LL.D. SHAKESPEARE'S ARMS Ncto gorfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1904 Aii rights reserved T 'i-io. Copyright, 1904, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up, electrotyped, and published January, 1904. Berwick it Smith, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME The first volume of this work covered more tiian seven centuries of literary history ; the second barely covers seventy years. The first was occupied to a considerable degree with the records of important literary movements enlisting numerous and nameless participators — such as the religious drama and ballad poetry — rather than with the individual authorship which almost engrosses the second. The first dealt With a time when British literature neither extended, nor was fitted to extend, beyond the British borders ; the second treats of a period when, though still confined within insular limits, it possessed the power and awaited the opportunity of exerting a deep influence on the world. The historical treatment of epochs so contrasted cannot be exactly the same. The chief divergence will be found in the slighter notice accorded to inferior writers who would have been welcome, if they had come sooner, and the ample space devoted to those who have made the British literature of the age European, especially its two pre-eminent representatives, Bacon and Shakespeare. This volume, to the end of the chapters on Shakespeare, is written by the author of vol. i., and thence to the conclusion by the author of vols iii. and iv. The writers desire to record their obligations for literary assistance to Mr. A. W. Pollard and Mr. A. H. BuUen, and for aid in the department of illustration to Mrs. Christie-Miller, of Britwell Park ; to Mrs. Sydney Pawling ; to R. R. Holmes, Esq., King's Libra- rian, Windsor Castle ; and to S. Arthur Strong, Esq., Librarian to the Duke of Devonshire. R. G. E.G. November 1903. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN PROSE-WRITERS Political and Literary Outlook at Elizabeth's Accession — Reformation and Renaissance — The Four great Prose-writers — Bacon — Hooker — Sidney — Raleigh — Bacon's Relations with Essex — Bacon as Statesman and Author — His Rise and Fall — Retirement and Death — Hooker — The Ecclesiastical Polity — Sidney — His Life and Character — His Poetry — The Arcadia — Raleigh— His Life — The Expedition to Guiana— His Imprisonment — The History of the World — His Minor Works Pp. 1-62 CHAPTER II THE LESSER LIGHTS OF ELIZABETHAN PROSE Special Characteristics of the Age — Queen Elizabeth — Edward Hall — Grafton — Stow — Holinshed — Harrison — Foxe — Camden — Speed — Bodley — Cotton — John Knox — George Buchanan — Hakluyt — Purchas — Knolles — Rycaut — Gerard — Reginald Scot — The Art of English Poetry — Webbe — Harvey — Meres — Gosson — John Lyly — Lodge — Robert Greene — Nash — Translation of the Scriptures— The Bishops' Bible — Sir Thomas North — John Florio — The English Mercuric ......... Pp. 63-108 CHAPTER III SPENSER AND MINOR ELIZABETHAN POETS Edmund Spenser — The Faerie Queene — The Shepherd's Calendar — Minor Poems — Thomas Sackville — Gascoigne — Tusser — Minor Translations — Clement Robinson — Thomas Watson — Bartholomew Yong — Constable — Barnes — Lok — Southwell — Barnfield — Ettgland's Helicon — Lyly, Greene and Lodge as Lyric Poets — Edward de Vere — Dyer — Warner^Fraunce — Edwards — Alexander Hume — Ballads, Carols and Catches Pp. 109-153 CHAPTER IV THE PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE The Development of Elizabethan Drama — The Moralities — Everyman — Hickescorner — Skelton — Lindsay — The Early Plays — Udall — Ralph Roister Doister — Gammer Gurton's Needle — viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Gorboduc — The first regular English Tragedy — Richard Edwards — Early Theatres and Representatives — Actors — Alleyn — Tarleton — Marlowe — The Regenerator of the Drama — What we know of his Life — Tamhiiilame — Fiiustus — The Jew of Malta — Hero and Leander — Kyd — Peele — Greene — Chettle — Munday — The Misfortunes of Arthur Pp. 154-190 CHAPTER V SHAKESPEARE His absolute Supremacy — His consummate Art and Genius— The overawing Vastness of Shakespeare— Obscurity of his Ancestors— Early Life at Stratford — His Marriage — His Departure from Stratford — His Earliest Productions — The Shakespeare-Bacon Question — His First Play probably Love's Labour's Lost — The different Plays discussed — His Return to Stratford — The Earls of Southampton and Pembroke — The Sonnets — Their Importance in Connection with Shakespeare's Life — Their poetic Merit — Romantic Comedies — Shakespeare's Position at the End of the Sixteenth Century Pp. igi-222 CHAPTER VI SHAKESPEARE— (continued) Shakespeare's Affairs not so bright — Disgrace of Essex, Southampton and Pembroke — Julius Casar — Hamlet -Its Stage History — Discussion of the Play and the Characters — Shake- speare's Prospects improving — Death of Elizabeth — Privileges given to Shakespeare's Company of Actors — The Chronology of the Plays — A Difficult Question — Othello — Lear — Shakespeare takes up his Residence again in Stra.tford — A regular Contributor to the Stage — His latest Dramas —His Death and Burial — His unassailable Position far apart from all other Poets ... Pp. 223-256 CHAPTER VII THE JACOBEAN POETS The Death of Elizabeth — Its Influence on Letters — Distinction between Elizabethan and Jacobean — James I. — Basilikon Doron — The Sonneteers — Daniel — Delia — The Civil Wars — Sir John Davys — Drayton — A prosaic Poet — Polyolhion — The Satirists — Parnassus — The Song- writers — Campion — Dowland— Breton — The School of Spenser — Giles and Phineas Fletcher — William Browne — Wither — Quarles — Lord Brooke— John Taylor — Patrick Hannay — A greater Poet than any of these — Donne — The great Merits and great Faults of his Style — Drummond of Hawthornden — Harington — Richard Carew — Fairfax — Sylvester — Chapman — The Odyssey and the Iliad Pp. 257-306 CHAPTER VIII JACOBEAN DRAMA The immeasurable Difference between Shakespeare and the other Dramatists — Difficulty of treating them fairly — Ben Jonson — Every Man in His Humour — Volpone — Genius and Character of Jonson— Beaumont and Fletcher— TAc Maid's Tragedy — The Faithful TABLE OF CONTENTS ix Shepheardess — Chapman — Dekker — Webster — Marston — Cyril Tourneur — Hey wood — Middleton — Rowley — John Day — Nabbes — Massinger — Nathaniel Field — Ford — Shirley — Extinction of the Drama Pp. 307-363 CHAPTER IX JACOBEAN PROSE The Historians — Sir John Hay ward — Sir Henry Spelman — Richard KnoUes — Theology — Lancelot Andrewes — Thomas Morton — George Hakewill — Donne — Joseph Hall — Sir Thomas Overbury — Pamphleteers — Dekker — Sir Henry Wotton — John Hales — Criticism — C>-K(i(fes of Thomas Coryat — Gervase Markham — John Selden . . Pp. 364-389 LIST OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME AVilliam Shakespeare (Bust) . Frontisfiece Shakespeare's Coat of Arms . . Title-page Queen EUzabeth .... page i Launceston Church ... ,, 2 Sir Nicholas Bacon ... ,, 3 York House ..... ,, 4 Lord Burghley .... ,, 5 Francis Bacon .... ,, 6 Sir Francis Walsingham . . ,, 7 Robert Uevereux, Earl of Essex . , , 8 Title-page of Bacon's "Essays, " isted. ,, 9 Title-page of "Advancement of Learning," 1605. ... ,, 10 Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury . ,, 11 Sir Edward Coke . . . . ,, 12 Title-page of Bacon's "Novum Organum," 1620 . . ■ ,, 13 Facsimile page from Bacon's Note- Book ,, 15 Monument to Bacon, St. Alban's . ,, 17 Title-page of " The Advancement of Learning," 1633 .... ,, 21 Prancis Bacon (Van Somer) . . ,, 23 Title-page of Bacon's "Reign of Henry Vn." 25 Richard Hooker .... ,, 29 ■Corpus Christi College, Oxford . ,, 30 Archbishop Whitgift . . . ,, 32 Pope Clement VIII. . . . „ 33 Lady Mary Dudley, Wife of Sir Philip Sidney .... ,, 34 Sir Henry Sidney .... ,, 35 Sir Henry Sidney's Return to Dublin after a Victory .... ,, 36 An Irish Chief's last Fight . . ,, 36 Penshurst ,, 37 Mary Sidney, Co'untess of Pembroke ,, 38 "Wilton House, where Sidney wrote the " Arcadia" .... ,, 39 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester . ,, 40 Sir Philip Sidney (Oliver) . to face page 40 Title-page of Sidney's " Arcadia," 1590 /"?« 41 Title-page of Sidney's "Apology for Poetry," 1595 .... .. 42 Initial Letter from Sidney's " Ar- cadia," 1590 .... Zutphen, the Scene of Sidnej's Death Funeral of Sir Philip Sidney . Letter from Sir Philip Sidney to Raleigh's Residence in Ireland Irish Men and Women in Eliza- beth's Reign .... Sherborne Castle .... Sir Walter Ra'eigh (Zucchero) to Facsimile portion of Raleigh's " Journal of a Second Vo3-age to Guiana" Illustration to Raleigh's " Voyage into Virginia," 1585 . Title-page of Raleigh's " History of the World," ist ed. . Sir Walter Raleigh (Knole Portrait) Page from Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-book .... Queen Elizabeth (Zucchero) . to Queen Elizabeth's Signature . John Stow ..... Title-page of Holinshed's ' ' Chron- icles," 1577 John Foxe ..... Title-page of Foxe's " Book of [Mar- tyrs," 1563 Burning of Anne Askew at Smithfield William Camden .... John Speed Sir Thomas Bodley Sir Robert Cotton .... John Knox ..... George Buchanan .... Title-page of Hakluyt's "Voyages," 159S Title-page of " Purchas his Pil- grimage," 1613 .... John Gerard ..... Title-page of Gerard's " Herbal," 1633 Title page of Puttenham's " Arte of English Poesie " page 43 44 45 face page 47 page 48 49 50 face page 50 page 52 53 59 64 face page 64 page 65 67 69 70 73 74 77 78 79 80 Si 82 83 85 86 87 xu LIST OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS Facsimile letter from John L5-ly to Lord Burghley .... Title-page of Lyly's "Whip for an Ape" Title-page of Lyly's "Campaspe," 1584 ' -Title-page of Lodge's ' ' Phillis, ' ' 1593 Illustration from pamphlet "Greene in Conceipte," 159S . Title-page of Greene's " Mena- phon," 15S9 .... Title-pageof Nash's" Four Letters," 1592 Title-page of "Pierce Penilesse," 1592 Lancelot Andrewes Title-page of the " Bishops' Bible," 1611 ...... Title-page of North's translation of " I-'lutarch's Lives," 1579 . John Florio ..... WS. Page of spurious " English Mercurie " . . . . . First page of spurious " English Mercurie " . Schoolroom at Merchant Taylors, where Spenser was educated Edmund Spenser .... Pembroke College, Cambridge Title-page of Spenser's " Shep- herd's Calendar," 1579 Ruins of Kilcolman Castle Title-page of" The Faerie Queene," 1590 Edmund Spenser's Tomb, West- minster Abbey .... Red Cross Knight (The) Mary, Queen of Scots , Document in Spenser's hand From " The Shepherd's Calendar," 1597 From " The Shepherd's Calendar," 1597 Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset Title-page of " The Mirror for Magis- trates" . . . . . Geo. Gascoigne presenting his Book to the Queen .... Title-page of "The Steel Glass, "1576 Title-page of Tusser's " Hundred Good Points of Husbandry " Title-page of Churchyard's " Wor- thiness of Wales," 1587 Title-page of Golding's translation of Ovid, 1567 . . . . Title-page of Robinson's " Hande- fuU of Pleasant Delites," 1584 . Title-pageof Watson's " Hekatom- pathia " . page 91 " 92 ,, •?i " 94 95 ■■ 96 " 97 98 lOI 104 ' 106 .. 107 .' 108 „ no to face page no page III n2 113 n4 115 n? ng to face page 120 page 124 125 130 131 134 135 136 137 137 138 140 Title-page of Bartholomew Yong's "Diana," 1598 .... page I4r Title-page of Constable's " Diana " ,, 142 Robert Southwell . . . . „ 143 Title-pageof" England's Helicon," 1600 ...... , 144 Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford . ,, 147 Title-page of Warner's " Albion's England," 1589 .... ,, 149 First page of " Everyman " . . ,, 155 Title-page of " Hickescorner," 1510 ,, 155 "Verso of title-page of " Hicke Scorner," 1510 .... ,, 158 Title-page of " Gammer Gurton's Needle," 1575 .... ,, 163 K^nole Park, built by Sackville . ,, 165 Old Palace at Greenwich . . ,, 168 Interior of the " Swan Theatre " . ,, 169. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge ,, 171 Memorial to Marlowe at Canterbury ,, 173 Title-page of " Tamburlaine the Great," 1590 . . . . ,, 174 Woodcut of Faustus and Mephis- topheles ..... „ i-jb Title-page of Marlowe's " Ed- ward II.," 1598 .... „ 179 Title-page of Marlowe's " Hero and Leander," 159S . . . . j, 180 Title-page of Kyd's " Spanish Tragedy "..... ,, 182- Title-page of Peele's "Arraignment of Paris,"' 1584 .... „ 183, Title - page of Chettle's " Kind Heart's Dream "... ,, 188 Shakespeare's Birthplace before Restoration Shakespeare (Chandos Portrait) Shakespeare's Birthplace as at present restored .... page Anne Hathaway's Cottage . . ,, Kenilworth Castle (17th Century) . Parish Church, Stratford-on-Avon Nicholas Rowe .... Title-page of " Love's Labour's Lost," 1598 .... Fortune Playhouse (The) Edmund Kean as Richard III. . , Title-page of "Lucrece," 1594 quarto ..... Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South- ampton ..... Charlecote House and Park (iSth Century) ..... David Garrick and Mrs. Bellamy in " Romeo and Juliet " . . ,, 210. Title-page of " Romeo and Juliet," 1597 quarto 211 Edward AUeyn .... 212: >. 192- face page 192 194 195 197 199' 200 202 203 204 2o6' 207- 20S LIST OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS Xlll fa^e 213 214 215 „ 216 217 of of New Place, Stratford-on-Avon Macklin and Miss Pope as Shylock and Portia William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke Title-page of the " Sonnets," 1609 Mrs. Abingdon as Beatrice Elliston as Falstaff in " Henry IV." Richard Burbage . Mrs. Woffington as Mrs. Ford Richard Tarleton, comedy actor of Elizabeth's time . Globe Theatre at Southwark Title-page of First Quarto " Hamlet "... Opening page of First Quarto " Hamlet " . . ■ Fechter as Hamlet Title-page of the 1605 " Hamlet " Duke's Theatre, Dorset Gardens Plan of the Bankside, Southwark in Shakespeare's time Edmund Malone . Stage of the Red Bull Playhouse. Clerkenwell Cooke as lago, in " Othello "' David Garrick as King Lear . Mrs. Gibber as Gordelia in " Kin Lear " .... Macready as Macbeth . Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth Swan Theatre on the Bankside (The) Shakespeare (Droeshout) . to face page 230 Quick as Launce in " Two Gen- tlemen of Verona " Falcon Tavern (The) Miss Yonge and Messrs. Dodd, Waldron and Love in " Twelfth Night " Dunstall as Dromio in " The Comedy of Errors " . Mrs. Wells as Lavinia in " Titus Andronicus " .... Miss Horton as Ariel in " The Tempest " . Title-page of First Folio edition of Shakespeare .... Shakespeare's Signature Inscription on Shakespeare's Grave Inscription on Grave of Shake- speare's Wife . - . . Inscription on Grave of Shake- speare's Daughter Two Views of Shakespeare's Bust Chancel of Stratford Church Title-page of " Works of King James I." 1619 . 21S 219 221 224 225 227 22S 229 230 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 229 page Facsimile page of MS. of " Basili- kon Doron " . . . . Title-page of Bartholomew Griffin's " Fidessa " . Title-page of "The Civile Wares," 1609 ...... Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset Title-page of Samuel Daniel's " Delia," 1592 .... Title-page of Sir John Davys's "Nosce Teipsum," 1599 Michael Drayton .... Title-page of Drayton's " Poems," 1606 ...... Title-page of Drayton's " Poly-Ol- bion," i6t2 .... Title-page of Drayton's "Owle," 1604 Title-page of John Dowland's "Booke of Songes," 1597 Page of Music from Campion's "Book of Ayres." 1601 Title-page of Nicholas Breton's "The Will of Wit," 1599 . Title-page of Nicholas Breton's " A Murmurer," 1607 Title-page of Giles Fletcher's " Christs Victorie," 1610 . Title-page of " Britannia's Pas- torals," 1613 .... George Wither (John Payne) Title-page of Wither's " Shep- heards Hunting," 1615 George Wither (W. Hole) Title-page of Wither's " Juvenilia," page James I. to face page 260 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 272 274 277 279 280 281 283 284 285 1622 , 2S7 240 Francis Quarles .... „ 287 241 Title-page of Quarles's " Argalus and Parthenia," 1629 . 288 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke . 289 242 Title-page of the Works of John Taylor 290 243 Title-page of Patrick Hannay's Poems 291 244 John Donne (Lombart) . Title-page of the " Pseudo-Martyr," 292 245 1610 William Drummond of Hawthorn- 293 246 den (Gay wood) .... 296 247 Hawthornden .... 297 249 William Drummond of Hawthorn- den (Janssen) .... 298 250 Engraved portrait of Chapman Title-page of Chapman's ' ' Homer," 299 252 1616 300 253 Title-page of " Godfrey of Bul- 254 loigne," 1600 .... 301 Title-page of " Orlando Furioso " . 302 259 Letter from Haryngton . 303 260 Joshua Sylvester .... 304 XIV LIST OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS Letter from Sj'lvester to James I. . Title-page of Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas' " Divine Weekes and Workes," 1605 Miniatures of Ben Jonson. Fletcher and Donne . . , . to Title-page of Collected "Works of Ben Jonson. 1616. Title-page of Ben Jonson's " Every Man in fiis Humour," i()oi Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford Title-page of Ben Jonson's " \'ol- pone,'' 1607 .... Inigo Jones ..... Ben Jonson's Tomb in Westminster Abbey ...... Figures designed by Inigo Jcnes for a Masque ..... Ben Jonson . . . . lo Page from Ben Jonson's " ^Masque of Queens " .... Frontispiece to Ben Jonson's "Horace" .... Francis Beaumont Title-page of Beaum.ont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedie." 1622 John Fletcher (National Portrait Gallery) ..... Title-page of "The Faithful! Shep- heardesse " .... John Fletcher (Collected Works) . George Chapman .... Title-page of George Chapman's " Monsieur D'Olive," i6o5 Chapman's Tomb in St. Giles' Church Receipt for 40s., with Chapman's Signature ... Title-page of Dekker's " Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus," 1600 ...... Title-page of Dekker and Middle- ton's " Roaring Girle," 1611 Moll Cutpurse (from the " Roaring Girle'') Title-page of Webster's " Duchess of Malfy," 1623 St. .\ndre\v's Church, Holborn Title-page of Marston's "Antonio and Mellida," 1602 Title-page of Marston's "Tragedies and Comedies," 1633 Title-page of Tourneur's "The Revenger's Tragedy,'' 1607 Title-page of Heywood's "Hier- archy of the Blessed Angels," 16;; page 305 .. 306 face pagi 30S page 311 ■■ 313 •• 314 ,, 315 ,, 316 317 „ 3IS face page 320 page 320 32^ 323 324 325 3 = 6 32S 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 3 38 339 340 Allegorical Plate from the " Hier- archy of the Blessed Angels " . Title-page of Heywood's "Gunai- keion," 1624 .... Thomas Middleton Title-page of Middleton's "Game at Chess," 1624 .... Title-page of ?iIiddleton and Row- ley's " Fair Quarrel," 1617 Title-page of "A New Wonder, a Woman Never "Vexed," 1632 . Woodcut Illustration from John Day's "Parliament of Bees," 1641 ...... Philip ilassinger .... Title-page of "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," 1633 Facsimile Letter from Massinger . Nathaniel Field .... Title-page of Ford's "Broken Heart,'' 1633 .... James Shirley .... Title-page of Shirley's collected " Poems." 1646 .... Sir John Hayward .... Chelsea College .... Sir Henrj' Spelman Title-page of " The History of the Turks," 1603 .... Westminster in the Seventeenth Centur}' ..... Thomas Morton .... Portrait of Donne in his Winding- sheet ...... John Donne (Marshall) . tc Letter from Donne to Sir Robert Cotton ..... Bishop Hall Title-page of Hall's " Virgidemia- rum," 1597 ..... Sir Thomas 0\-erbury Title-page of Overbury's "Wife," 1614 . . .... The Countess of Somerset Title-page of Pamphlet concerning Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury Title-page of Dekker's "Dream," 1620 ...... Title-page of Rowland's "Betray- ing of Christ," 159S Receipt for 20s. with Dekker's signature ..... Sir Henry Wotton .... Title-page of the " Crudities," 1611 Title-page of Markham's " Country Contentments," 1615 . John Selden ..... Title-page of Selden's " Table- Talk," 1689 .... age 341 343 345 „ 346 347 ., 348 349 351 352 353 .. 356 357 ,, 360 ., 3'5i 3f'e 367 368 3*39 371 373 374 fan page iy^ /"«•« 375 376 377 378 379 3S0 3S1 382 3S3 384 385 386 387 388 389 ENGLISH LITERATURE AN ILLUSTRATED RECORD CHAPTER I THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN PROSE WRITERS When, on the memorable November 17, 1558, the tidings came to Queen Ehzabeth, sitting under a tree in Hatiield Park, of the death of her sister and predecessor, notliing seemed to indicate the glories, either ~^~"^ ^ " ^ "^ in arms or arts, of a reign destined to unprecedented glory in both. The last two reigns had been unfortu- nate ; one distracted by the struggles of ambitious min- isters seeking to govern in the name of a boy-king ; the other infamous for cruelty at home, and shameful for disaster abroad. Even in 1553 the sagacious Venetian envoy had noted the alarm of the English at the alliance of France and Scotland, and the national spirit and re- sources had since sunk lower still. Economic causes, in that age hard to compre- hend and harder to remedy, aggravated the general de- pression. The great addi- tions made and daily mak- ing to the world's stock of the precious metals had raised prices, rents, and by consequence taxes, to a degree previously unknown. Henry Vin. had allowed himself to be seduced into the expedient of debasing the currency, a practice continued by his successors, and the state of the finances was now nearly desperate. Since Henry's death, no one with any pretensions tc statesmanship, Cranmer alone excepted, had had a share in the government, except in the most subordinate capacities • the ablest men were merely VOL. II A Political and lili;r- ary out- look at the accrssion cf Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth From a scarce print In' (iri^pin de Passe after a dra-oiiig hi isaac Olkxj' HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Influence of the Refjrma- lion on EHzaltethan litevatuye energetic like Northumberland, or merely astute like Gardiner. The blight on politics had extended to literature. More and Surrey and Wyatt seemed to have left no successors ; at Elizabeth's accession her dominions contained hardly one author of recognised eminence. From every point of view the vessel of State seemed drifting on the rocks, but a breeze was to spring up unexpectedly, and bear her back to prosperous voyage on the open sea. Not less manifest!}' than in the da}' of the Armada, afjiavit Deus. The key to the marvellous change which was to ensue lies in the two watch- words we ha\'e already found so potent. Reformation and Renaissance. Nothing is more undeniably evident than the happy fate of the countries which embraced the Reformation in com- parison with those which rejected it, except the further observation, less agreeable to the reformers, that they were rather in- debted for this felicity to their rulers than to their preachers. Wherever the principles of the Reforma- tion were adopted by the sovereign, the Reformation triumphed ; ^\'here^'er, with the single exception of Scotland, more apparent than real, the monarch sided with the Church, the Reformation was crushed. By virtually adhering to the Reformation Henry VIIL had saved the country from a civil war as terrible as that which, at Elizabeth's accession, was rendering the hereditarj' enemy, France, a cipher in European politics. At the same moment the Reformation gained the upper hand in Scotland, and the alliance of France and Scotland which had occasioned English statesmen so much anxiety fell awa}' of itself. Thus were the two great sources of apprehension removed as though by enchantment, while at the same time England was, as it were, placed under bonds to adhere steadil}? to the Reformation as a condition of the friendship of Scotland, and the sympa- thies of French Huguenots, Dutch Protestants, and wlioever else was helping toward off tlu' attacks which she might apprehend from continental powers. The principles of the Reformation do not here concern us, otherwise than in their connection with literature : but it is manifest that the mere assump- tion of a he stile attitude towards so much that had for centuries passed as Launceston Church From a draloLnf^ by F. Lv^oii REFORMATION AND RENAISSANCE beyond discussion must have been a most potent intellectual stimulus, and provocative of mental activity in every direction. Nor was the influence of the Renaissance less extensive or less salutary. It had not, as in Italy, produced any development of the arts ; no Enghsh- man of the period is remembered as architect, painter, or sculptor. When a great artist was wanted, a Torregiano had to be imported from Italy, or a Holbein from Germany. Even in the thirteenth century the magnificent statuary in Wells Cathedral had in all probabihty been executed by Italian sculptors : what native art could perform in Henry VIII. 's time may be seen in the rude though vigorous exterior sculpture of Launceston Church. Just as little was the re- action towards classical paganism, so conspicuous in Italy, visible in a country united to the ancient world by no affinities of blood, and remote from the silent | reach- ing of ruined temples and monu- ments of ancient worship. The influence of the Renaissance in England was mainly educational, it did not immediately create a school of literature, but prepared the way for a new school uniting the best elements of the Renais- sance school with the romantic. It had thoroughly permeated the upper classes of society, and trans- formed the fighting aristocracy of the Middle Ages, with just enough culture to appreciate the songs of a minstrel, into a society of polite and accomplished ladies and gentlemen. The high standard of cultivation attained in Elizabeth's time by the nobility and upper class of gentry is attested by a witness abo\'e suspicion, the simple and sober-minded William Harrison, author of the invaluable description of England published along with Holinshed's Chronicles in 1577. ^^ is not backward to stigmatise the vices of the court ; but of its merits he says : This further is not to be omitted to the praise of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that there are very few of them which have not their use and slcill of sundry speeches, besides an excellent vein of writing before time not regarded. Troth it is a rare thing with us now to hear of a courtier which hath but his own language. And to say how many gentlemen and ladies there are that beside sound knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongue are thereto no less skilful in the Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not in me, sith I am persuaded that as the noblemen and gentlemen do surmount in this behalf, influeuie of the Krnais- Sir Nicholas Bacon After the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery 4 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE so these come \'ery little or nothing at all behind them in their parts, which industry God continue, and accomplish that which otherwise is wanting. The " excellent vein of writing before time not regarded " was when Harrison wrote on the point of overflowing from literary exercises and private correspondence into published literature. Style had begun to be sought as a distinction in the days of Henry VHL, and by Harrison's time the conception of literarj' merit apart from worth of matter was fully formed, and even carried to extravagant lengths by Lyly and his school. Spenser, Raleigh, and Hooker were then about twenty-four, Baccn sixteen, Shake- speare thirteen. Du Bartas, writing about the same time, could find no Dakr of" BK/ianifAjun trfui rtiui^ U in lAf ma^rjjrijm/ manner aipvr r \ Nnt-iru^ uniJ rkatUfni lU nojnr /kYORH tlOVSK in OL- /-^yn of' Qutm Jamr^I hi^fij I'jyrAan^nf wi/A the frown-ii wn^ i^ranl^tp (rnrrae Ptlhrr^ frrrjrtifrd .-fffn-dir rTff/rrtihjin tt irtu iffLffro^nl and di/- n/c iiiiji ouJ Fonn: T'mjJtS ftSl rfm/riji- and ar^ unircr^aS^ aAniml Birth of illitstrioits rsic7i near thr acLCsion of Elizahi-lh one to extol in contemporary English literature except the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, whom Nash indeed names among " the chief pillars of our English speech," but who does not appear to ha\'e composed anything except speeches and legal arguments. English prose had long been capable of expressing the highest thoughts, but the high thinkers had delayed to appear, and its resources, e\'en in our own land, were comparatively unappreciated. Beyond the British Isles it was an entire dead letter. So, indeed, it was long to remain : but the reproach was about to be transferred from the barrenness of native genius to the stohdity, or rather perhaps the incuriousness, of foreign criticism. No foreigner, at the end of the sixteenth century, had the smallest idea that in the middle period of that century, within twelve vears of each other (1552- 1564), six men had been born in England, two of whom greatly surpassed, wliile the others full\- rivalled, the genius, and in the long run the "fame, of any OUTBURST OF GENIUS UNDER ELIZABETH 5 European contemporary, Cervantes alone excepted. It is remarkable that this great period is exactly bisected by the accession of the great Queen, who cannot, indeed, be reckoned among the especially muniticent, or the especially discern- ing, patrons of literature, but without whom it may well be doubted whether Shakespeare would have written, or Bacon meditated, or Spenser sung. Circumstances, rather than deliberate intention, made her and her country the standard-bearers of the cause of freedom in Europe, and the most effi- cient instruments of the choice which Europe was called upon to make between the mediaeval and the modern spirit. The perception of issues so momentous could in that age be but dim ; yet its influence is shown by the vast development of men's con- ceptions, and the sudden outburst of original genius. Retracing the period, we ourselves are distinctly conscious of an atmosphere never breathed before, of a great eleva- tion of ideals, public and pri\'ate, and at the same time of tangible objects of ambition tending in the direction of national glory and aggrandisement. This alliance of the practical and the romantic is the special charm of the age, and not merely in England ; but it was the peculiar happiness of England to be contending in the cause of the world as well as her own. Something not very dissimilar was seen at a later day when she ^°''^ Burghley fought single-handed against Napo- '^^'"' " f''*''"' oimiudai to Mark ohm-aedts leon, and this period also was signahsed by an extraordinary outburst of original genius. It is, nevertheless, a remarkable fact that this later outbreak The four was confined to poetry and its ally fiction. Apart from Scott and Miss 'l^^lfr" Austen, not a single prose writer deserving to be accounted great ap- peared in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, while the blaze of poetical genius, leaving Shakespeare and Milton out of the question, sur- passed everything that England had pre\'iously known. It was far other- wise in the reign of Elizabeth, whose highest literary glory indeed is to have given the world its greatest dramatic poet, but whose four great prose writers would alone have rendered it illustrious in the history of letters. Bacon and Raleigh's most important productions belong to the reign of Jam.es, but the men had not only grown but ripened as Elizabethans. Hooker and Sidney fall entirely within Queen Elizabeth's period. To treat these HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Fraiu'is Ha>:on. four illustrious writers together involves some departure from strict chron- ological order, but seems preferable to mingling them with lesser men. Isolated from their contemporaries thej' proclaim more eloquently what is, after all, the dominant note of the time, the immense stride forward which England, so long hemmed and fettered, was making at last. Shake- speare, a world in himself, ob- viously requires independent treatment ; as also does the rival \\ hom Ariosto, Tasso, and Camoens found in Edmund Spenser. Francis Bacon was born on January 22, 1561, at York House, Charing Cross, the official residence of his father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who ever since Elizabeth's accession had held the office of Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, which he retanied until his death in 1579. Few of Elizabeth's counsellors held a higher place in her esteem, or had a larger share in affairs of State, especially in connection with ecclesiastical matters ; nor could the future statesman and philosopher have been brought up under more fa- vourable auspices. It is indeed unlikely that a man so occupied with judicial and political business as the Lord Keeper can have devoted much personal attention to the edu- cation of his son, but the want 0^ratiasc ^ 'Baron ^ "Enro {fe 'Vei u .^^ 'm^y S''U/6ai7i.(martljiiJ ^^/far/fij, 2^7h' . I 6 ■2.6. ^nnoa Jictat 66 M.) ..>< A ' his Francis Bacon " PiS/hii mom Works,' 1657 must have been well supplied, and probably in great measure by the care of his mother, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, and sister-in-law of Burghley, who is described as a woman of strong character and convictions. Bacon must have been a youth of most precocious abilities, since we find him proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, at what now appears the preposterous age of twelve 3'ears and three months. Queen Elizabeth, indeed, is said to have been so much impressed by his early promise as to have pla\'fullv called him her young I^ord Keeper, and the dissatisfaction which he afterwards represented himself at having felt with his Cambridge studies, which probabh" contributed to shorten his stav at the L'niversitv, was a remarkable jjroof of mental independence. It was not, as might have been the case with manv a youth of lively parts, founded upon dis- YOUTH OF BACON taste for the dryness of logical and philosophical studies, but upon the perception which few of the wisest of that age had yet attained, that the scholastic philo- sophy of the time was mere barren logomachy, and imparted at most the skill to juggle with words, leaving the pupil uninformed as to the nature of things. Partly for this cause, and partly, it may be conjectured, from the anxiety of his father, now above sixty, to push him on in his destined profession while parental interest could yet avail, Bacon left the University in 1575, and commenced the study of the law at Gray's Inn at fourteen, the age at which, in the nineteenth century, it was deemed little short of a miracle that one of the most illustrious of his successors in the Chancellorship should have been admitted to matriculate at Oxford. The study of jurispru- dence must have been in every way congenial to him, and he had doubt- less made much progress when, in 1576, it was interrupted by a sum- mons to study the great world in the capacity of attache to the French embassy of Sir AmiasPaulet. Paulet, a man of inflexible virtue, possessed few of the characteristic merits of the diplomatist, but the observation of the society and the politics of that brilliant but distracted court and epoch must have been invaluable to Bacon, and goes far to account for the entire absence from him of that pedantry and self-sufficiency from which the studious and precocious, especially when mainly self-taught, find it so hard to free themselves. With the possible exception of his parents, no one, it may be remarked, can be cited as having exercised any direct personal influence on the for- mation of Bacon's mind, nor does he appear to have belonged to any chque or union of sympathetic persons. Even more than Milton's, " his soul was hke a star and dwelt apart." In 1579 he was recalled to England by the death of his father, from whom the claims of his mother, brother, half-brothers and sisters, besides the great expense Sir Nicholas had incurred in building his mansion at Gorham- bury, prevented his inheriting much. He sought the protection of his uncle Burghley, and, having been called to the bar in 1582, was returned to Parha- ment for Melcombe Regis in 1584. In 1585 he addressed to the Queen a " letter of advice " on the state of public affairs, remarkable for its maturity of wisdom and the expediency of the conduct it recommends to be observed both towards malcontent Roman Catholics and loyal but dissatisfied Puritans. It reveals at once the magnificent intellectual power which constituted Bacon's strength and the insensibility to emotional sympathies which became the chief Sir Francis Walsingham After a portrait by /Aiccero HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE source of his weakness. His advice as regards both Romanists and Puritans is entirely sound, but his conchisions are reached by regardnig Romanism and Puntanism mainly as political forces. Upon his own plane he is omniscient, but there is a plane above his of which he has no perception. Respecting the vexed question of his character, we may sa}' at once that we find no symptom of moral obliquit\' in him ; but we cannot help being conscious of a certain deadness towards exalted moral sentiment. No action of his life is incapable of defence, or at least of palliation ; but, whenever two courses of action are pre- sented for his acceptance, he is almost sure to select the one which, whatever other reasons ma}' be alleged in its favour, has least to recommend it upon the score of generosit)'. Although Bacon's moderate and far-seeing views were in advance of Elizabeth and her chief counsellors, thev could not fail to recommend him as a man of mark. He began to be noticed, was made a bencher of his Inn, and became a leading member of the House of Commons. " His hearers," sa^'s Ben Jonson, " could not cough or look aside from him without loss ; " and his readers may observe that his rhetorical skill is not inferior to his argumentative power. Within five years of the composition of the " Letter of Ad- vice " he was emplo\'ed to write pamphlets in the name of \\'alsingham. " It was Bacon's fate through life," writes Mr. Gardiner, " to give good advice only to be rejected, and yet to impress those who received it with a sufficientlv good opinion of his intellectual capacity to gain emplov- ment in work which hundreds of other men could have done as well." The first important incident in Bacon's life after he had fairlv assumed this character of the valued and not unheeded and vet commonly ineffectual counsellor of sovereigns and statesmen was his friendship with Essex, which began in 1501. On Essex's side this was an ardent attachment, indissoluble save by the infidelity, real or supposed, of the other party ; on Bacon's it was the regard of a tutor for a promising pupil. Hable therefore to extinction if the promise should be falsified. There is no reason to mistrust Bacon's own subsequent account of it. " I held at that time my lord to be the fittest instru- ment to do good to the State ; and therefore I apjilied myself to him in a manner which I think happeneth rarelv among men." This was probablv as high an ideal of friendship as Bacon was capable of attaining ; he could not entertain an entirely disinterested affection, but could love for a consideration, which need not be, and in this instance was not. of a sordid or self-interested Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex After the portrait in the Xational Portrait (iattery BACON AND ESSEX Eff character, but might be the service of the State, and the triumph of his own ideas. That these were serious motives with him was soon (1594) shown by one of the most honourable actions of his life, his resistance to the demand of the Queen and his own uncle Burghley that the Commons should consent to join with the Lords in a conference respecting the grant of a subsidy to the Government. The subsidy itself was not in question, but Bacon objected to the Commons' sacrifice of privilege in consenting to discuss questions of supply with the other house, and, to the great advantage of the country, carried his point to the frustration of his hopes of the Attorney- Generalship for which he was then a candidate. The moral conscience mayhave been weak, or rather undeveloped in him ; the intellectual conscience was strong. The history of his con- nection with Essex is entirely in harmony with this view. So long as eminent public ser- vice could be expected from Essex, their union was perfect. With all the generous ardour of his nature, Essex exerted him- self to procure office for Bacon, and, when his efforts failed, made him liberal gifts. Bacon on his part, fulfilled the func- tions of a wise counsellor until Essex's indiscreet conduct in his Irish government and after his return from it showed beyond dispute that he was incapable of justifying Bacon's hopes of him, when the latter did not hesitate to appear against him as one of the Queen's counsel. The situation was repeated with intense ayes. Religious Meditations. Places of perfwafionand difTwafion. Scene and allowed. At L o n DON, Printed for Humfrey Hooper , and arc to be fold at the blackc Beacc in Chaunccry Lane. i ^ 9 7- Title-page of the First Edition of Bacon's Essays aggravation when, after Essex's frantic attempt at insurrection in 1601, Bacon, appearing against him as one of the })rosecuting counsel, contributed to bring him to the block. Here, it is obvious, the intellectual conscience entirely acquitted him. Essex's offence was notorious ; his punishment, if severe, was just ; it is the duty of a queen's advocate to prosecute rebels. But it is equally plain that if Bacon had been endowed with fine sensibilities, such conduct towards his benefactor would have been impossible. One thing alone could really justify it, the apprehension of a failure of justice if he refused lO HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Bacon s ap- pta>ance as an antho) Bacon and fames I. of THE Tvvoo Bookes Francis Bacon. O^ the proficience and aduance i the Xatioiie:! Portrait Gallery 12 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE thirty-eight in a new edition. A Latin treatise, more esteemed in his day than in ours, the Dc Sapientia Vctcrum. an ingenious but fanciful attempt to penetrate the profound meanmg supposed to be latent in ancient myths, had been published in 1610. Biii-on's rise Bacon had married in 1606. Little is known of his wife excepting her respect- aiid tall g^^jg middle-class extraction, and that some dissatisfaction with her in his later years led him to revoke the will he had made in her favour. He had no family. In 1607 he became Solicitor-General. Further promotion seems to have been barred for the time bj' the hostility of Cecil, the real prime minister, whose experience, sagacity, industry, and above all financial ability, made him indis- pensable, and who, though Bacon's cousin, had no intention of encourag- ing so formidable a rival. On Cecil's death in 1612, Bacon discerned his opportunity, and sought the King's leave to address to him a series of memorials on affairs of State. His starting-point was to be the expecta- tion that a new parliament was shortly to be convoked, the domi- nant thought the effectual reconcilia- tion of King and Parliament, and the establishment of an understand- ing for preventing future controver- sies. James permitted Bacon to write, and the result was a series of State-papers drawn up in 1613, of which Mr. Gardiner says : "To carry out this programme would have been to avert the evils of the next half -century ; " regarding, that is, the religious toleration elsewhere advocated by Bacon as a portion of it. His enlightened views found but partial acceptance with either King or Parliament, each being willing to accept the part which suited themselves, but disinclined to concede anything to the other side. The King, nevertheless, showed his appreciation of Bacon by making him Attorney-General in 1613 ; and the Commons, to whom his private communications to the King were unknown, marked their approbation of his public conduct by relaxing in his favour their prohibition of the Attorney- General's sitting in the House. Had the management of the Parliament rested with Bacon, it might not have been necessary to dissolve it shortly afterwards. Its sittings were suspended for seven years, and when it met again it was to hurl Bacon from office. Bacon's political conduct during the interim had necessarily been that of a courtier rather than of a statesman. As Attorney-General it was his duty to conduct prosecutions ordered by the crown ; in this he was zealous and effi- cient, and he began to see his wa\- to the Chancellorship. Convinced that, in Sir Edward Coke After the portrait by Cornelius Jan^en BACON AS CHANCELLOR 13 > his own words, " by indignities men rise to dignities," he was not averse to flatter the favourite, Somerset, whom he was afterwards to prosecute for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury ; upon Somerset's fall he turned to the new favourite Villiers. Yet, considering the important part which Villiers was called upon to play, Bacon can hardly be censured lor having advised him, and must be commended for advismg him well. His private relations both with Villiers and the King were less defensible, they reveal no moral obliquity, but a ser- vility excusable in an or- dinary courtier, humiliat- ing in the greatest intellect of his age. He had now (January 16 r8) gained the object of his ambition, the Chancellorship, having been Lord Keeper since Elles- mere's death in the pre- vious year, and in the fol- lowing July was raised to the peerage as Baron Verulam. He approved himself rapid beyond pre- cedent in the despatch of justice ; and so little com- plaint was made of his decisions that they must be assumed to have been sound. Politically he was a cipher ; the questions of the day related to foreign policy, and Bacon's states- manlike and courageous advocacy of the cause of Protestantism all over Europe was unpalatable to a court bent upon political and matrimonial alliance with Spain. Bacon found consolation in the establishment of his philosophical fame by the publication of his Novum Orgamtm, described as the second part of the Instauratio Magna, in 1620. His position seemed perfectly secure when, within a few days of the attack which overthrew him, he gained a step in the peerage as Viscount St. Albans, but he was now to expiate the great error of his life in having built his worldly great- ness not upon merit but upon court favour. James's entire policy was distasteful to the nation, and the Commons met in 1621 determined to visit it upon his favourite Villiers. Villiers and the King had been concerned in granting certain obnoxious monopolies in the guise of patents, which Bacon, in his official Title-page of Bacon's "Novum Organum," 1620 (4 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE character, had approved, probably almost as a matter of course. The attack upon patents and patentees was checked by the interposition of the King, and the Commons, willing to strike at Villiers through Bacon, whom they regarded as his creature, turned unexpectedly upon the latter with a totally unforeseen charge of judicial corruption, he havmg, it was affirmed, systematically accepted bribes from suitors. It seems almost incredible, but is certain, that the morahty of that day permitted the judge to receive presents from litigants after he had decided in their favour. Bacon himself allowed this, but had laid it down that a judge must on no account accept gifts during the hearing of a case. It was, however, but too clearly proved that he had infringed his own rule ; and although he was able to show that in most instances he had decided against the tempter, and could not therefore be said to have sold justice, the scandal was undeniable. Though conscious to himself that his integrity was really unstained. Bacon could not assume the haughty attitude of injured innocence ; nor in any case was he the man to maintain such an attitude in the face of irritated public opinion. He adopted the wisest course in a worldly point of view by con- fessing his fault and throwing himself upon the mercy of the peers, his judges. A high-minded sovereign would have accepted his resignation and stopped further proceedings ; but James and Villiers were without doubt heartily glad to find so convenient a scapegoat, and thought they did enough by practically remitting the very severe penalties pronounced by the judgment of the Peers, whose final decision is thus recorded : The Lords having agreed upon the sentence to be given against the Lord Chancellor, did send a message to the House of Commons, That the Lords are read)' to give judgment against the Lord Viscount St. Albans, Lord Chancellor, if they, with their Speaker, will come to demand it. In the mean time, the Lords put on their robes ; and answer being returned of this message and the Commons come ; The Speaficr came to the Bar, and, making three low obeisances, said : The Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of the Commons House of Parliament have made complaint unto your Lordships of many exorbitant offences of briberv and corruption committed by the Lord Chancellor. We understand that your Lordships are ready to give judgment upon him for the same. Wherefore I, their Speaker, in tlicir nnme, do humbly demand and pray judgment agamst him the Lord Chancellor, as the nature of his offence and demer'ts do require. The Lord Chief Justice answered, Mr. Speaker, upon the complaint of the Commons against the Lord Viscount St. Albans, Lord Chancellor, the High Court hath thereby, and of his own confession, found him guilty of the crimes and corruptions complained of by the Commons, and of sundry other crimes and corruptions of like nature. And therefore this High Court (having first summoned him to attend, and ha\mg received his excuse of not attending by reason of infirmity and sickness, which he protested was not feigned, or else he would most willingly have attended) doth nevertheless think fit to proceed to judgment ; and therefore this High Court doth adjudge : 1. That the Lord Viscount St. Albans, Lord Chancellor of England, shall undergo fine and ransom of forty thousand pounds. 2. That he shall be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure. 3. That he shall for e\er be incapable of any office, place, or employment in the State or Commonwealth. 4. That he shall never sit in Parliament, nor come within the verge of the Court. This is the judgment and resolution of this High Court. BACON'S FALL 15 The Prince his Highness was entreated by the House, that, accompanied with divers of the Lords of this House, he would be pleased to present this sentence c\> vv9^ A/'i-enA '^ Jin P'fo^,^^ y^lUj J^^c^ /liyyfk rvp^ XIh-_ i^c^C^ nJ '^ Facsimile page from a MS. Note-book of Bacon's, preserved in the British Museum given against the late Lord Chancellor to His Majesty. His Highness was pleased to yield unto this rec|ue6t The animosity, almost amounting to malignity, of Southfrnpton throughout Bac, on in His death i6 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the proceedings is very noticeable ; he clearly remembered Bacon's share in the proceedings against himself and Essex. Judged by the standard of our day Bacon's conduct appears flagitious ; according to that of his own it amounted at most to culpable disregard of appearances, for clearly the gift which the judge was permitted to accejit after trial might have been the fulfilment of a corrupt bargain entered into previously. Bacon must here as elsewhere be acquitted of deliberate wrong doing, but here as elsewhere censured or compassionated for a deplorable lack of moral sensitiveness. It is characteristic of the duahty of his nature that his intellectual conscience did not mislead him, and even gave him strength to rejoice at the purification of justice, though to his own shame and detri- ment. " I was," he said, " the justest judge that was in England these fifty years ; but it was the justest censure that was in Parliament these two hundred years." It is gratifying to be able to believe that Bacon's spirit was by no means etireiiuiit. crushed by his fall. He turned immediately to his History of Henrv ]'II., which was completed by October, published in the following year, and trans- lated into Latin bv the author. It proves that he might have been a great his- torian, and excites lively regret that the merest fragment was written of the life of Henry VIII. which was to have followed it. Bacon's judgments on the men and affairs of that eventful reign would have been invaluable. The rest of his life is too justh- described by Mr. Spedding as " a continual struggle to obtain b}' the help of others the means of pursuing the great purpose for which he lived, and generally a losing struggle." James applauded the resolution of " our cousin," " degere vitam quietam et tranquillam in studiis et contemplatione rerum, atque hoc modo etiam posteritati inservire," but, under the sinister influence of Buckingham, as is probable, refrained from aiding him to carry it out. Like his successor, Lord W'estbury, under somewhat similar circumstances, he offered to devote his leisure to codifying the law. The offer was not accepted, nor could he obtain the provostship of Eton for which he applied, or prevail upon Charles I. to recall him to the House of Lords. That he did not feel himself estranged from politics may be gathered from his Considerations touching a War with Spain, written when the failure of the Spanish match had established the soundness of his views on foreign policy. His main attention, nevertheless, was devoted to natural philoso])hy. The Advancement of Learning was repub- hshed in 1623 m a Latin form and with most extensive additions, as De Aiigmentis Scientiaruin. For the rest of his life Bacon was active in the observations and experiments designed to confirm the truth of his great prmcijile that knowledge comes from the study of Nature. Some of these were published by himself, others appeared after his death under the title of Svlva Svlvaruni. He may be said to have laid down his life in the cause. A chill caught in a trivial experiment upon the antiseptic properties of snow brought him to the tomb on April q, 1626. Even after his fall he had aft'ected a magnificent style of living, and he died deeply in debt. But he had other possessions to bequeath than the goods of this world. A few months previously he had written in his will the oft-quoted words : " For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches and to foreign nations and the next ages." Merits of As an author, Bacon is a representative of his age, but surpasses it where Bacon' s siyte ^^ jg strongest, and a\'oids in great measure its characteristic defects. The prose of the period has a general air of loftiness and magnanimity, and BACON AS AUTHOR ^1 Bacon's communicates this impression more impressively tlian any other. Wliate\'er may be Ivnown or surmised against Iris cliaracter, no reader while reading him can conceive of him as other than a magnanimous man. It was an age of metaphors and similes, and Bacon's are more nu- merous and more striking than those of any prose contemporary. In truth, his vivid perception of what might be but superficial analogies sometimes misguided his judgment, though it never preju- diced him his style. Perspicuity of style and methodical arrangement of matter are not conspicuous among the literary virtues of the period, but Bacon possessed both. As with Chaucer, his genius is attested by his perennial freshness. Representa- tive as he is of his own time, no contemporary has so much the air of a modern. It is remarkable that none of the four great writers whom we have selected as the four dominant figures of Elizabethan prose were, strictly speaking, men of letters. Hooker never affected any character but that of the divine ; Raleigh's principal works were composed to record his own exploits, or solace his captivity ; banishment from court produced Sidney's Arcadia, and amorous disappointment his Astro- phel and Stella ; while the motive of most of Bacon's works is not literary but scientific. That they should nevertheless have so greatly excelled professed authors is an indication that the man of thought was not so widely severed from the man of action as in our day, and that Captain Sword and Captain Pen kept closer company then than now. Bacon comes nearer to the modern ideal than his contemporaries, his ordinary pursuits having a nearer affinity than theirs to the literary life. Yet even the most literary of his works, the Essays, does not VOL. II B Bacon s " Essay i Monument to Bacon in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans 1 8 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE read like the production of a professional author. Much of it might well pass for registered self-communings or memoranda for his own guid- ance in his pursuit of power, and wealth, and fame. The extraordinary point, which gives it a piquancy far surpassing that of any other work of precepts, is the alliance of this mere self-seeking with so ample an endow- ment of the wisdom from above. There is little to condemn absolutely, but much that savours rather of the counsel of Ahithophel than of the schools of the prophets ; much again that could hardly be refined upon by Ideal Virtue This duality is one secret of the perma- nence and immense popularity of the book, equally acceptable to the children of this world and to the children of light. It is but natural that one of the least satisfactory of the Essays should be that on Lo^'e, which, compared with the discourse of other great men upon this immortal theme, seems carbo pro thesauro. Yet it is most characteristic ; for Bacon, the man of intellect, sees above all things in love the perturbing force that overthrows wisdom and turns counsel into foolishness. Characteristic it is, therefore, that he should regard Love as an inconvenient, almost an inimical pheno- menon : what is really disappointing is that he should appear able to con- ceive of him merely as an extravagant and irrational passion. With friendship he is more at home ; friendship is really in his mind when he eulogises love. " A crowd is not company ; and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love." Yet throughout his Essay on Friendship the note is pitched disappointingly low : we hear far more of the advantages and commodities of friendship than of its divinity. In both these essays Bacon creeps where Emerson soars : yet in the parts of the subject which come within the domain of the intellect his wisdom is supreme and authoritative. These are indeed golden words : Friendship maketh a fair day in the affections from storms and tempests : but it maketh dayhght in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel which a man receiveth from his friend ; but before you come to that certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and discoursing with another. He tosseth his thoughts more easily ; he marshalleth them more orderly ; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words ; finally he waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas ; Dry light is ever the best. And certain it is that the light that a man receiveth bv counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comcth from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difl^erence between the counsel that a friend giveth and that a man giveth himself as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. How many things are there which a man cannot with any face or comeliness say or do himself ! A man can scarce allege his own merits with modest)', much less extol them. A man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg : and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth which are blushing in a man's own. None of Bacon's Essays are more interesting than those in which he affords us glimpses of himself. The essay on masques, for example, although he BACON'S "ESSAYS" 19 somewhat contemptuously dismisses the subject with, " Enough of these toys," acquires extraordinary interest when it is remembered how actively he was himself at various times concerned in the production of such enter- tainments at the Inns of Court. The Essay on Gardens is a mirror of his taste m gardening ; the Essay on Plantations shows the attention he had given to questions of colonisation, in which he had a personal con- cern : his admirable advice to judges and advocates bespeaks the decorum of his own court. Ere he has yet been called to the chancellorship he here gives himself counsel, to have followed which would have averted his ruin : Do not only bind thine own hands, or thy servants' hands from taking ; but bind the hand of suitors also from offering. For integrity used doth the one ; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other. And avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion. In great part the Essays are a very enchiridion of generous sentiment : yet indications are not wanting that the writer's moral nature was not of the most exalted : Certainljr there be not two more fortunate properties than to have a little of the fool, and not too much of the honest. Therefore extreme lovers of their country or masters, were never fortunate, neither can they be. For when a man placeth his thoughts without himself, he goeth not his own way. This is wisdom, but assuredly not the wisdom from above. If affection lead a man to favour the wrong side in justice, let him rather use his countenance to compound the matter than to carry it. If affection lead a man to favour the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving or disabling the better deserver. This is indeed the attitude of him who — Would not play false, And yet would wrongly win. Although Bacon's Essays in form correspond to his definition of an essay as "a dispersed meditation," in substance they are concentrated wisdom. It is, therefore, needful that they should be pregnant and pithy. It is consequently difficult to find elaborate passages available for quotation. They cannot, like Emerson's, be criticised as discontinuous : but the transi- tions frequently appear abrupt, from no want of art in the writer, but simply because an artful concatenation of thoughts would have required many words, and destroyed the aphoristic character of the piece. The perfect success of the author's method is evinced by the nunrber of phrases which have found their way into literature as familiar quotations, selected by a process no less conclusive as to the infallibility of the general judgment in the long run than as to the merit of the sayings themselves. Whatever is most familiar is also best : Revenge is a kind of wild justice. The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. It is the weaker sort of politicians that are the great dissemblers. 20 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE It is a sure sign of a worthy and generous spirit whom honour amends. A Uttle philosophy incUneth man's mmd to atheism ; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to reUgion. Money is hke muck, not good except it be spread. All rising to a great place is b^- a winding stair. Suspicions among thoughts are hke bats among birds, they ever fly to twilight. It breeds great perfection if the practise be harder than the use. God Almighty first planted a garden. Some books arc to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. A mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolors of death. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A painter may make a better face than ever was ; but he must do it by a kind of fehcity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music) and not by rule. These latter remarks prove Bacon's insight into ;esthetics to have been no less than his insight into moral and natural philosophy. It is to be regretted that he wrought so little in this department. His reading in Latin, French, and Italian literature seems to have been very extensive : but it may be doubted whether the modern poets of any nation were much in his hands, and he probably read Greek only in Latin translations, a great misfortune, as it would disable him from gaining any real acquaintance with the Greek drama. Had this been otherwise the drama might not have been such a dead letter to him, as, but for his frequent concern with masques and pageants, would seem to have been the case. He derives striking similes from theatrical representations, and it seems impossible that he should not have highly appreciated Ben Jonson, the bent of whose genius must have been so much to Iiis own taste, with whom he had much familiar intercourse, and who would certainly expect the high estimation in which he himself held Bacon to be repaid in kind. There are nevertheless few symptoms of Bacon ha\-ing realised the importance of the drama either as an intellectual achievement or as a social force. In his essay on Travel he does, indeed, advise the young voyager to attend, with many similar gatherings, the representation of comedies, but only " such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort ; " and he evidently has chiefl}^ in view the opportunities thus afforded for making acquaintances, and learning the language of the countr\'. '• r/u- Ad- The history of The Advancement of Learning (1605) is remarkable as that -•ancciiintof ^j ^ prj-cat and epoch-making book swallowed up in one more extensive, much as Wordsworth's Excursion would have disappeared as an independent poem if the author's design had been fully carried out. The republication, how- e\'er, of The Advancement af Learning in 1623, greatly enlarged, under the title, De Augmentis Scienticv, is in Latin, and The Advancement still stands as the author's chief contribution to science in his native tongue. It consists of two parts, the nature and design of which are thus stated by the author himself : The former concerning the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof, the latter, what the particular acts and works are which have been embraced and "THli ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING" 21 undertaken for the advancement of learning, and again what defects and under- values I find in such particular acts. Bacon accordingly passes the condition of the various sciences in review, and his survey is most instructive. Some omissions, such as those of painting and music, were afterwards supphed in tlie De Augmentis, where he also expresses a less absolute satisfaction with mathematical science. The great- ness of the book, however, consists in its being the first serious attempt to enthrone the empirical principle in THE TWO BOOKESOF S^FRANCIS BACON, OF THE PROFICIENCE and Advancement of Learning, D I V I N 1 and Hv ma n e. To the KING. natural philosophy. " Not," says Bacon's candid expositor, Dr. Fow- ler, " that the writers and teachers of his time had no recourse to the observation of facts at all, but that they only looked out for facts in support of preconceived theories, or constructed their theories on a hasty and unmethodical examination of a few facts collected at random." Experiment and observation could never be entirely neglected, but always had to give way when appa- rently at variance with the investi- gator's notions of the eternal fitness of things. " The handling of final causes," Bacon proclaimed, " hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, to the great arrest and pre- judice of further discovery." It may be safely affirmed that, next to the perfecting of scientific instru- ments, nothing has so greatly enlarged man's knowledge of the universe as the general adherence of natural philosophers to Bacon's method of investigation, compared with whose grandeur and fruit fulness the continual errors into which he fell in its application appear as nothing. Buddhism sums up all wisdom in " the Way," and natural science might imitate her. The noble and flowing periods of The Advancement exhibit Bacon's style at its best. He is no longer cramped by the need for pregnant conciseness as in the Essays. The following is from his scheme, partly executed by himself, for the improvement of English history : And if it shall seem that the greatness of this work may make it less exactl;' performed, there is an excellent period of a much smaller compass of time, as to the story of England ; that is to say, from the Uniting of the Roses to the Uniting OXFORD, Printedby/. i. Printcrtothe Vniverfity.ior Thomtu Huggwt. i 6 j j. With pOTDilfioDof B. Fiflxr. Title-page of "The Advancement of Learning," 1633 22 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of the Kingdom, a portion of time wherein, to my understanding, there hath been the rarest varieties that in Uke number of successions of any hereditary monarchy hath been known. For it beginneth with the mixed adeption of a crown by arms and title ; an entry by battle, an establishment by marriage ; and therefore times answerable like water after a tempest, full of working and swelling, though with- out extremity of storm ; but well passed through by the wisdom of the pilot, being one of the most sufficient kings of all the number. Then followed the reign of a king whose actions, however conducted, had much intermixture with the affairs of Europe, balancing and inclining them variably ; in whose time also began that great alteration in the State ecclesiastical, an action which seldom cometh upon the stage : then the reign of a minor ; then an offer of an usurpation, though it was but fehris ephemera : then the reign of a queen matched with a foreigner : then of a queen that lived soUtary and unmarried, and yet her government so masculine as it had greater impression and operation upon the states abroad than it any ways received from thence : and now last, this most happy and glorious event that this Island of Britain, divided from all the world, should be united in itself ; and that oracle of rest given to yEneas, Antiquam exqiiirite matrem, should now be performed and fulfilled upon the nations of England and Scotland, being now reunited in the ancient mother name of Britain as a full period of all insta- bilitv and peregrination ; so that as it cometh to pass in massive bodies, that they have certain trepidations and waverings before they fix and settle ; so it seemeth that by the providence of God this monarchy, before it was to settle in your Majesty' and vour generations (in which I hope it is now established for ever) it had then prelusive changes and varieties. The" Novum In the Novuiu Organum, which, being written in Latin, does not strictly Orsaniim j:,-^j]^ within our province. Bacon returns in a measure to the aphoristic character of the Essays. " Maxims such as these," says Dr. Fowler, citing a few of the more remarkable, " live long in the memory, and insensibly influence the whole habit of thought. What Bacon says of Plato is pre- eminently true of himself ; " he was a man of sublime genius, who took a view of everything as from a high rock." While, however, he had the genius to perceive the necessity of basing natural philosophy upon experiment, he attempted few experiments himself except such as were short and easy, and lacked the power of appreciating the researches of others. He disbelieved the Copernican theory ; and failed to recognise the importance, not only of Gilbert's abstruse investigations in magnetism, but of Galileo's telescope, which must surely have captivated his imagination could he ha\-e known it otherwise than by report. ' De Sapientia The Be Sapiciitia Vcierum (1609), though originallv written in Latin, ranks among English books through the contemporary translation of Sir Arthur Gorges. It brought Bacon more immediate reputation than any of his works, except the Essays, but has little significance for the present age, being at most an ingenious attempt to educe imaginary meanings from classical myths. ' The New The New Atlantis may be regarded as an appendix to The Advancement of Learning, and at the same time as an attempt to present Bacon's ideas in a more popular form. It also aims at externalising them, and is thus the only example of Bacon's assuming the character of a creator, and depicting imaginary persons and things. The machinery, being the conception of the discovery of an unknown country by mariners driven out of their J 'eUrurn Atlantis ' THE NEW ATLANTIS '-3 course, invites comparison with The Tempest, and the parallel suffices to display the ludicrousness ot the identification of Bacon with Shakespeare. Shakespeare waves his wand, and a new world starts up around him. Bacon transplants the world he knows to an imaginary locality. So little of the wild and wonderful is there in his work that one of the chief merits claimed for it is to have prefigured the institution of the Royal Society, and to have not improbably influenced its founders. Yet, if Bacon could not " pass the flaming bounds of Space and Time," he could work to excellent purpose within them, and his work is doubly interesting as a revelation of his own inner mind, and as a testimony of the strength of the en- thusiasm which could impel so sedate a personage into fiction. It might not have been written but for the example of More's Utopia, to which, nevertheless, it presents an entire contrast. More's Utopia is ethical and political. Bacon's in its present fragmentary condition, for the moral sciences were never handled in it according to the author's original design, scientific. He had already established that the ad- vancement of knowledge must come from the inter- rogation of Nature, and Francis Bacon he now essays, by the A//er /Ae ^or^rai/ ^y Pa,,/ van Somer example of an imaginary nation, to show how this may be conducted, more effectually, because systematically, than hitherto, under Government control. " Solomon's House, or the College of the Six Days' Works," is founded by the people of the New Atlantis " for the interpreting of nature, and the producing of great and marvellous works for the benefit of men." Whatever exception may be taken to details, the idea in itself is fine and fruitful, and eminently worthy of Bacon. The conduct ot the fiction, also, merits the praise of ingenuity, in so far as the difficulties incident to the exist- ence of the New Atlantis, and the scientific proficiency of the inhabitants are avoided. The fragment was written between 1614 and 1617, as appears from allusions in Bacon's own manuscripts. It was first printed after his death. 24 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE The iollowing is a good specimen of the easy level narrative of The New Atlantis, as little like Shakespeare as can be conceived, but with a certain Defoe-like power of compelling credence : It came to pass that the next daj-, about evening, we saw within a kenning before us, to the north, as it were thick clouds, which did put us in some hope of land ; knowing how that part of the South Sea was utterly unknown, and might have islands or continents that hitherto were not come to light. Wherefore we bent our course thither where we saw the appearance of land all that night ; and in the dawning of the next day we might plainly discern that it was a land, flat to our sight, and full of boscage, which made it show the more dark. And after an hour and a half's sailing we entered into a good haven, being the port of a fair city ; not great indeed but well built, and that gave a pleasant view from the sea : and we thinking every minute long till we were on land, came close to the shore, and offered to land. But straightway we saw divers of the people with bastons in their hands, as it were forbidding us to land ; j'et without any cries or fierceness, but only as warning us off bv signs that they made. Wherefore, being not a little discomforted, we were advising with ourselves what we should do. During which time there made forth to us a small boat, with about eight persons in it ; wherein one of them had in his hand a tipstaff of a yellow cane, tipped at both ends \vith blue, who came aboard on ship without any show of distrust at all. And when he saw one of our number present himself somewhat afore the rest, he drew forth a httle scroll of parchment, somewhat yellower than our parchment, and shining like the leaves of writing-tables, but otherwise soft and flexible, and dehvered it to our foremost man. Tlie Xew Atlantis was published in 1627, at the end of the Sylva Sylvaruui, by Bacon's literary executor, Rawley. The reco\-erer of A^ova Solyma points out its influence on that remarkable work, and it had several professed continuations. It seems to be ridiculed in Swift's Voyage to Lapiita. For some reason not easily fathomed, satirists, from Aristophanes to Dickens, have usually been inimical to physical science. Rabelais is an exception. The " History Bacon's pohtical writings are numerous, and his historical compositions maj' be included among them. By much the most important of these is his History of Henry VII., written, as we have seen, immediately after his disgrace in 162 1. He had, no doubt, reason to know that the under- taking would be acceptable to James I., but there is no ground to suppose that he intended to ideahse either James or himself in Henrv : and, since we ha\-e seen that he had already indicated the history of England from the battle of Bosworth Field to the death of Elizabeth as an historical desideratum, it is most probable that he took ad\-antage of his unwonted leisure to execute a favourite plan. The work does him the highest honour for its ease and breadth of execution, and perfect penetration of the motives of the leading actors. " He gives," says Bishop Nicholson, " as sprightly a \-iew of the secrets of Henry's Council as if he had been president of it." It is entirely a pohtical history, the life of a statesman by a statesman, and may in this respect be compared to the histories of Ranke, but is not, like these, based upon the evidence of State Papers. The author's complete knowledge of the period must have enabled him to dispense with documentary research, for, although minor errors have been discovered, such as attributing to Pope Alexander an action of his pre- (V Henry ;■//"■ Title-page of Bacon's " History of the Reign of Henry VII.," 1623 26 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE decessor, no more recent writer has been able to vary Bacon's portrait of Henry to any appreciable extent. The tone is in general cool and unim- passioned, moral judgment remains in abeyance, and little use is made of the picturesque passages from the chroniclers, in which Shakespeare would have luxuriated; but the dryness which might have been the result of this sobriety is avoided by a frequent employment of quaint, brilliant, and striking metaphors and comparisons, some of which would in our day be thought below the dignity of history : She began to cast within herself for what coast this blazing star should first appear, and at what time. Upon the first grain of incense that was sacrificed upon the altar of peace at BuUoigne, Perkin was smoked away. These fames grew so general as the authors were lost in the generality of speakers ; they being hke running weeds that have no certain root, or like footings up and down impossible to be traced. For profit, it was to be made in two ways, upon his subjects for the war, and upon his enemies for the peace ; like a good merchant that makes his gain both upon the commodities exported and imported back again. The following is a good a\erage specimen of Bacon's narrative : The King went forwards on his journey, and made a joyful entry into Exeter, where he gave the citizens great commendations and thanks ; and taking his sword he wore from his side, he gave it to the Mayor, and commanded it should for ever after be carried before him. There also he caused to be executed some of the ring- leaders of the Cornishmen, in sacrifice to the citizens, whom they had put in fear and trouble. At Exeter the King consulted with his counsel whether he should offer life to Perkin if he would quit the sanctuary and voluntarily submit himself. The counsel were divided in opinion. Some advised the King to take him out of sanctuary perforce, and put him to death, as in a case of necessity, which in itself dispenses with consecrated persons and things ; wherein they doubted not also but the King should find the Pope tractable to ratify his deed, cither by declaration or at least by indulgence. Others were of opinion, since all was now safe and no further hurt could be done, that it was not worth the exposing of the King to new scandal and cnvv. A third part fell upon the opinion that it was not possible for the King ever either to satisfy the world well touching the imposture or to learn out the bottom of the conspiracy, except by promise of life and pardon and other fair means he should get Perkin into his hands. But they did all in their preambles much bemoan the King's case, with a kind of indignation at his fortune ; that a prince of his high wisdom and virtue should have been so long and so oft exercised and vexed with idols. But the King said that it was the vexation of God Almighty himself to be vexed with idols, and therefore that was not to trouble any of his friends : and that for himself he always despised them, but was grieved that they had put his people to such trouble and misery. But in conclusion he leaned to the third opinion ; and so sent some to deal with Perkin ; who seeing himself a prisoner and destitute of all hopes, having tried princes and peoples, great and small, and found all either false, faint, or unfortunate, did gladly accept of the condition. The King did also while he was at Exeter appoint the Lord Darcy and others com- missions for the fining of all such as were of any value, and had any hand or par- taking in the aid or comfort of Perkin or the Cornishmen, either in the field or in the flight. These commissions proceeded with such strictness and severity as did much obscure the King's mercy in the sparing of blood, with the bleeding of so much treasure. Perkin was brought unto the King's court, but not to the King's presence ; though the Iving to satisfy his curiositv saw him sometimes out of a window or in passafe. He was in show at liberty, but guarded with all the care and watch that was possible, and willed to follow the King to London. But from phrase of the r salmi BACON AS POET 27 his first appearance on the stage in his new person of a syeophant or juggler, instead of his former person of a Prince, all men may think how he was exposed to the derision not only of the courtiers but also of the common people, who flocked about him as he went along, that one might know afar off where the owl was by the flight of the birds some mocking, some wondering, some cursing, some prying matter out of his countenance and gesture to talk of. So that the false honour and respects which he had so long enjoyed was plentifully repaid in scorn and contempt. As soon as he was comen to London, the King gave also the city the solace of this may- game. For he was conveyed leisurely on horseback, but not in any ignominious fashion, through Cheapside and Cornhill to the Tower, and from thence back again unto Westminster, with the churme ' of a thousand taunts and reproaches. Shakespeare has depicted a similar situation to Perkin's in his Richard II., and the contrast between his profuseness and Bacon's sobriety, as marked as tliat between The New Atlantis and The Tempest, should alone suffice to decide the so-called Baconian controversy. He who can believe the Bacon's para writer of all others most resplendent in thoughts and fancies to have here shone with so dry a light may well believe the rustic merry-making in The Winter's Tale to be the creation of one who lived entirely in cities. The prevalence, nevertheless, of this remarkable delusion justifies a few words upon what might otherwise have been passed over — Bacon's technical claims to the character of poet. That Shelley was justified in claiming this character for him in the largest sense is indisputable ; his errors as a man of science are chiefly due to his sensitiveness to the picturesque aspects of the kingdom of nature. But, considered in the more restricted point of view as a practitioner of the poetical art, in which he must have excelled to have produced but one of the dramas of Shakespeare, his pretensions are but humble. The only poetical production that can with safety be attributed to him is a paraphrase of some of the Psalms, made in 1624, which enshrines with similar felicities this delectable couplet : There hast thou set the great Leviathan, That makes the seas to seeth like boiling pan. The writer who can not only perpetrate but print such a piece of bathos can have but scant claim to the quality of poet : while he may yet be abl to express himself metricaUy with dignity and eloquence when his theme is entirely congenial to him. The following stanzas are from the paraphrase of the ninetieth Psalm : O God, thou art our home, to whom we fly, And so hast always been from age to age, Before the hills did intercept the eye, Or that the frame was up of earthly stage. O God, thou wert and art, and still shalt be : The line of time, it doth not measure thee. Both death and life obey thy holy lore. And visit in their turns as they are sent ; A thousand years with thee, they are no more Than yesterdaj', which as it is, is spent : ' Confused noise. le States rnmt 28 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Or like a watch by night, that course doth keep, And goes and conies unwares to them that sleep. Thou carriest man away as with a tide ; Then down swim all his thoughts that mounted high, Much like a mocking dream that will not bide, But flies before the sight of waking e}'e ■ Or as the grass that cannot term obtain To see the summer come about again. Teach us O, Lord, to number well our days. Thereby our hearts to wisdom to apply ; For that which guides man best in all his ways, Is meditation of mortality. This bubble light, this vapour of our breath. Teach us to consecrate to hour of Death. If this is not poetry of the highest order, it is something more than rhetoric in rhvme. But imagine the author of Hamld and TJic Tempest, with the First Foho under his hand, spending his time o\'er a generally mediocre paraphrase of the Psalms ! Bacon as a Bacon's letters form an extensive collection. The most important are the elaborate considerations on affairs of state, drawn up in epistolary form for the enlightenment of rulers and public men : others refer merely to the events of the day. All are profoundly interesting, not so much on account of the particular themes as from the contact into which they bring us with Bacon himself. We see the man whose outlook is too wide for his time, and whose ideas have far outrun it, striving to obtain recognition by a policy of accommodation and suasion. In an age of liberty he might have led the Commons, and seated himself in power ; in an age of ci\'il discord he might have been chosen arbitrator bv both parties ; the condition of his own times left him no other part than that of a secret counsellor, commonly disregarded. The circumstances of his age also deprived him of much of his legitimate renown : as an English author writing for the world, and not for his own country alone, he was obliged to compose the most important of liis works in Latin. Immense as was his service, immortal as was his meed, it was in him to ha\'e achieved and to have deserved much more. The identification of his person with the author of Shakespeare's plavs, in itself an absurdity, acquires significance if regarded as an instinctive acknowledgment that, but for the faults of our ancestors, our debt to Bacon might ha\e been even greater than it is, an awkward way of formulating the world's consciousness that, although Bacon laboured un- remittingly throughout a life exceeding the average term of human existence, he is, nevertheless, an " inheritor of unfulfilled renown." Before Francis Bacon had taken a leading place in the world's eye save as an ad\'ocate, the second great name in Elizabethan prose literature had accomplished his work and passed away. Richard Hooker occupied by comparison a narrow sphere : he could not, like Bacon, bequeath his memory to foreign nations, while it was destined to be a precious possession Richard Hooker RICHARD HOOKER 29 of his own. On the other hand, his work, regarded as a finished labour, is more complete and durable than Bacon's. Bacon communicated an immense impulse to human thought, destined to result in the greatest achievements, but his own actual achievements were inevitably full of imperfections. Hooker, taking a theme large indeed, but still enclosed bv definite boundaries, so handled it that little remained to be added, and his work is the very last which any successor would dream of superseding. Though professedly a mere expositor of the principles of the Church of England, he has gained the authority of a legislator. His position in intellectual history is akin to that of the great Roman Jurists who, seeming to expound the law, made it : with the dift'erence that while their abhorrence of ornament amounts to repulsiveness, Hooker is one of the greatest examples in our language of ample, stately, and musical expression. The man who erected such a monument for himself, and such a bulwark for his Church, was in his person so quiet and unpretentious that, but for the happy accident of an enthusiastic biographer, almost the only personal pro- blem this " most learned, most humble, most holy man " would have bequeatlred to the world might have been. Was he henpecked ? In the succeeding age, howe\'er, Izaak \A'alton, a man deepl)? imbued with the genius of the Church of England, made it his business to retrieve the minor biographi- cal records of what he regarded as her golden age : and Hooker, at the instance, as is said, of Archbishop Sheldon, received a large share of his attention. Biographer and theme could not be more perfectly in harmony : yet, as Walton's talent was in no sense creative, the charming portrait seems painted on very thin canvas. Richard Hooker was born at Heavitree, near Exeter, probably in March 1554. The family name had originally been Vowell, and he was nephew to the Exeter antiquary, known by both appellations, who revised Holinshed's Chronicles and presided over Exeter Grammar School. Hooker, whose parents seem to have been poor, was educated bv his uncle, and showed such promise that the latter brought him under the notice of Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, the champion of the Church of England in the Roman Catholic controversy, who . bestowed a pension on his parents and obtained for the lad a clerkship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Richard's special abilities obtained for him a scholarship, irregularly bestowed as a mark of special distinction, he being beyond the statut- able age. A Eellowship and a readership in Hebrew followed, and about 1581 Richard Hooker After the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery Life of Kiihard Hooker 30 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Hooker took orders. Going up to London to preach at St. Paul's Cross, and arriving m a condition of exhaustion from fatigue and wet, he was nursed by his landlady into recovery, but less fortunately into a marriage with her daughter, the only person, the good lady declared, who could possibly take care of him. Without adopting all Walton's statements to the disadvantage of this lady, she appears to have been but an unsympathetic mate for her studious husband, who was shortly afterwards discovered by two of his former pupils at his country parsonage of Dra\-ton-Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire, alternately tending sheep and rocking the cradle. Being persons of influence, the young men procured -^-^^ _u Corpus Christi College, Oxford From Loggan'i " Oxonia lllusirata,'^ 1675 for him no less preferment than that of the mastership of the Temple Church, where he became involved in a vehement though not irate controversy with Travers, the afternoon lecturer. " The pulpit," says Fuller, " spoke Canter- bury m the morning and Geneva in the afternoon." In 1501 Hooker, " weary of the noise and opposition of the place," received the living of Boscombe in Wiltshire, and in 1505 that of Bishopsbourne near Cantcrbur}', to allow him leisure to compose his great work, The Ecclesiastical Polity, half of which was written m Wiltshire, and which was left incomplete at his death. Walton depicts him at Bishopsbourne as "an obscure harmless man, a man in poor clothes, his loms usually girt in a close gown or canonical coat ; of a mean stature and stooping, and vet more lowly in the thoughts of his soul ; his body worn out not with age but with stud}' and holy mortifications ; his face full of heat pimples he got by his lnacti^•itv and sedentary life." The characteristic most HOOKER'S " ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY " 31 evident to ordinary observation seems to have been his extreme bashfulness, which injured his effectiveness as a preacher. " His voice was low, stature httle, gesture none at all, standing stone still m the pulpit." His patience and gentleness in controversy, virtues unusual in that age, sufficiently attest his amiability ; he did not suffer his studies to interfere with the less congenial duties of a country clergyman ; and his respect for law is characteristicaUy shown by his insistence with his parishioners to preserve their rights by annually beating their bounds. He died on November 2, 1601, after a month's illness. In this time of his sickness and not many days before his death, his house was robbed ; of which he having notice, his question was, ' Are my books and written papers safe ? ' And being answered that they were, his reply was, ' Then it matters not, for no other loss can trouble me.' " OF THE LAVVES ofEcclefiaflicall Politic. Eyght Bookes. Sj1(ichril Hooker. The first edition of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is not dated, but, ha\'ing been licensed in January 1593, may probably have appeared in the course of that year. It contained the first four books only, with a promise of four more to follow. The fifth book, pub- lished in 1597, is larger than all its predecessors put together. The three remaining books did not appear until the middle of the century, and it seems certain that they were not finished composi- tions, but put together from the author's notes, and that the sixth book does not properly belong to the Ecclesiastical Polity at all. Whether he left the books in a complete form, and they were destroyed by his wife's Puritan relations, is a matter of controversy. Such, according to Walton, was his widow's confession to Archbishop Whitgift, and the assertion was made positively in the preface to the edition of the first five books published in 1604. On the other hand, the illegible penmanship which, according to a sorrowing schoolmaster of the seventeenth century, prevented the publication of Hooker's manuscript sermons, may have had something to do with the matter. Perhaps, when Mrs. Hooker's kinsmen assured her that her husband's posthumous writings " were not fit to be read," Pi mtcd It London by lobii lliaJcl, dwelling at ihe figiK oftbe Crojp k^s utere Votpki yV bar/ft ^aa J are (here to l^c (ouldc Title-page of First Edition of Hooker's " Ecclesiastical Polity " Hooker's " Hie'iesiasti- cal Poliiv " 32 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Character- istics of Hooker they only meant that thej^ could not read them. Nor were the Puritans the only suspected parties. Hooker's moderation in advocating the claims of episcopacy, and the liberality of his sentiments respecting the royal power, were distasteful to High Church and high prerogative men in his own age and ever since, and as the text of the seventh and eighth books in which these subjects are discussed has been prepared, probably by Bishop Gauden, from a number of manuscript copies, what was mutilated in the interest of one party may ha^•e been interpolated in that of another. Hooker, like the Church he adorned and defended, is a remarkable instance of greatness depending upon the equilibrium of qualities apparently contradictory. As a general rule, mastery of a grand style of com- position is found in union with ve- hemence, not to say intemperance, both of character and diction. Here, howe\'er, the finest prose writer of his age is so remote from excess of word or thought that the epithet which especially marks him our for posteritv is not the eloquent but the judicious Hooker. As the cham- pion of the Church of England he might ha\'e been expected to have been before all things a theologian ; a theologian indeed he is, but he is even more of a philosopher. The first three books of his treatise are occupied with a profound investi- gation of the law of the uni\'erse, which the Puritans identified with the revelation of the Scriptures. Hooker maintained that the law was the law of nature, to \\\\\z\\ the Scriptural was merely supplementary. The bearing upon current churcli con- troversies was ob\'ious ; for if Hooker was right, the discipline and cere- monies of the Churcli of England could not be rejected merely for want of direct Scriptural authority in their fa\-our. Tlie hrst three books, in which this argument is expounded, may be regarded as a great treatise on natural law. The third book contends that no s^s^em of Church go\-ernment is enacted in Scripture, but that regard must be had to utility and the autho- rity of antiquity. The remainder of the work, directed to the special vindi- cation of the Church of England on Uie points on which it was especially criticised by Romanists and Puritans, is of less general interest, but was of more practical importance for his own generation. Ceremonies. Presbyterian- ism, Episcopacy came necessarily und'-T review : and in the last book Hooker Archbishop Whitgift After an engraving by G. Verine HOOKER'S STYLE 33 treats of the subject wliicb he has made most peculiarly his own, the Royal Supremacy. Generally speaking, liis efforts in this part of his treatise are directed to show that the compromise between conflicting tendencies which wisdom and policy had effected at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign was not merely a temporary makeshift, but was in accordance with sound principle and right reason. In the course of time. Hooker's work has become more acceptable to the representatives of those against whom he wrote than to many of the representatives of those who in his own day applauded him : but amid all fluctuations of sentiment he will remain the chief doctor of the Church of England so long as she makes it her maxim to maintain a position equally remote from Rome and Geneva. The style of Hooker is in signal contrast to whatever has been recorded respecting the personality of the man. The most remarkable cha- racteristic of the author is repre- sented to have been humility, the leadmg characteristic of his style is indubitably grandeur. He ranks among the very greatest masters of English prose. Less perspicuous than Bacon, he is even more digni- fied ; less overwhelming than Milton, he does not, like Milton, trench on the domain of poetry. Like Burke and Ruskin, he has the art of placing himself at a great height without the semblance of effort, and maintaining himself there as long as pleases him. His diction is certainly too Latinised, but he is treating of subjects usually discussed in Latin, and the atmosphere which surrounds him is one of scholarship. His sen- tences are frequently long and involved, but they never want logic, and seldom harmony. Like all great writers he rises with his theme, and appears to more advantage in declaring what Themis is than in debating what she enjoins : Moses in describing the work of Creation attributeth speecli unto God : " God said, let there be hght ; let there be a firmament ; let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place ; let the earth bring fortli ; let there be lights in the firmament of heaven." Was this the only intent of Moses, to signify the infinite greatness of God's power by the easiness of his accomplishing such effects, without travail, pain, or labour ? Surely it seemed that God had herein besides this a further purpose, namely, first, to teach that God did not work as a necessary but as a voluntary agent, intending beforehand and decreeing with himself that which did outwardly proceed from him ; secondly, to show that God did then institute a law natural to be observed by creatures, and therefore, according to the manner of laws, the institution thereof is described as being established by VOL. II C Pope Clement VIII. One of the greatest admirers of Hooker's style From an en^ravin^ Style of the ^^Ecdesiastifa Polity " 34 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE sclemn injunction. His commanding those things to be which are, and to be in such sort as they are, to keep that tenor and course whicli thejr do, importeth the establishment of Nature's law. This world's first creation, and the preservation since of things created, what is it but only so far forth a manifestation by execution, what the eternal law of God is concerning things natural ? And as it cometh to pass in a kingdom rightly ordered that after a law is once published it presently takes effect far and wide, all states framing themselves thereunto ; even so let us think it fareth in the natural course of the world ; since the time that God did first proclaim the edicts of his law upon it, heaven and earth have hearkened unto his voice, and their labour hath been to do his will. He made a law for the rain, he gave his decree unto the sea that the waters should not pass his commandment. Now if Nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws ; if those principal and mother elementc of the world, whereof all things in tlris lower world are made, should lose the qualities which they now have • it the frame of the heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself ; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn them- selves any way as it might happen ; if the prince of the fights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as it were through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself ; if the moon should wander from her beaten way ; the times and sea- sons of the year blend themselves by disorder and confused mix- ture ; the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mothers, no longer able to yield them relief ; what would become of man himself, whom all these things do now serve ? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole \vorld ? It will be observed how Hooker gathers fire and strength as he proceeds, until what began as an argument ends as a dithyramb, yet remaining noble prose. It is not usual to find such reverence for law in divines, and his argument admitted of being extended to lengths which he never con- templated. Any natural philosopher might have subscribed his final testimon}' to the supremacy of law, but few could have expressed it with equal majesty . Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world : all things in heaven and earth do her homage ; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from Lady Mary Dudley, wife of Sir Henry Sidney and mother of Sir Philip Sidney SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 35 her power ; both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy. The following exposition of the rational grounds of ceremonial usages in worship is an excellent example of Hooker's dexterous manner of urging a point peculiarly distasteful to his adversaries : The end that is aimed at in setting down the outward form of all religious actions is the edification of the Church. Now men are edified when either their under- standing is taught somewhat whereof in such actions it behoveth all men to con- sider, or when their hearts are moved with any affection suitable thereunto ; when their minds are in any sort stirred up unto that reverence, devotion, attention, and due regard which in these cases seemeth requisite. Because therefore unto their pur- pose not only speech, but sundry sensible means besides have always been thought necessary, and espe- cially those means which being object to the eye, the liveliest and most apprehensive sense of all other, have in that respect seemed the fittest to make a deep and a strong impression : from hence have risen not only a number of prayers, readings, questionings, ex- hortings, but even of visible signs also ; which being used in the per- formance of holy actions, are undoubtedly most effectual to open such matter, as men whom they know and remember carefully, must needs be a great deal the better informed to what effect such duties serve. We must not think but that there is some ground of reason even in nature, whereby it Cometh to pass that no nation under heaven either doth or ever did suffer public actions which are of weight, whether they be civil and temporal or else spiritual and sacred, to pass without some visible solemnity : the very strangeness whereof and difference from that which is common doth cause popular eyes to observe and mark the same. Words, both because they are common, and do not so strongly move the fancy of man, are for the most part but slightly heard ; and therefore with singular wisdom it hath been provided that the deeds of men which are made in the presence of witnesses should pass not only with words, but also with certain sensible actions, the memory of which is far more easy and durable than the memory of speech can be. Philip Sidney, of whom we propose to treat third in the list of illustnous rhUip Sidney Elizabethan writers, does not, regarded merely as a man of letters, stand nearly on the level of Bacon and Hooker. The ages have left their renown unimpaired, while Sidney was quickly outstripped on his threefold walk as poet, romancer, and essayist. Yet he is as characteristic a figure as they, and one whose part, while he lived to perform it, seemed more brilliant and Sir Henry Sidney After ihe portrait in tlie National Portrait Gallery 36 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE attractive than theirs. He is the representative of that union of courtly and hterary accomphshment which, while not peculiar to England in Elizabeth's time, is still a special note of her reign. It shines in Raleigh Sir Henry Sidney's return to Dublin after a victory Derrick's " Image of IrelanJ," 15S1 and in many a lesser man, but in Sidney alone does it seem to attain its ideal perfection. To support such a character on the intellectual side, the person must give some proof of intellectual accomplishment, and we find An Irish Chief's last fight Derrick's "Image 0/ Ireland," 1581 Sidney's writings far transcending the merely necessary standard, no mere literary exercises, but standing in a more intimate relation to the writer than can be asserted of most of the work of that time. They are the productions of a man of most distinct ^•ocation, who might, or might not, have performed greater things, but did enough to make himself in letters, as in arms, the LIFE OF SIDNEY 37 most distinguished representative of a class that hves for us in the drama of the age ; but which, so ideally fascinating is it, we might, but for Sidney and men like him, suspect of having existed mainly in the imaginations of the poets. Sidney again, though somewhat younger than both Raleigh and Hooker, has the advantage of coming first in order of time among the great Elizabethan authors, of prefiguring both by example and precept many things yet in the future, and thus being endowed with something of the character of a hierophant. The cavalier in Sidney was hereditary, the poet was the gift of the gods. His parentage was illustrious ; his father. Sir Henry Sidney, afterwards three times Penshurst From an engraving by George Vertue Lord Deputy of Ireland, was one of the first statesmen and soldiers of his time ; his mother was the daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who for a few days made himself all but king ; and his Christian name came from the King of Spain, his godfather. He was born at the family seat, Penshurst, on November 30, 1554. The accident of his father's holding the office of Lord President of the Welsh Marches caused him to be partly educated at Shrews- bury Grammar School, where he received letters of advice from his parent, most admirable in themselves, but which would seem fit for a much older person. Yet they do not seem to have been in advance of Sidney's precocity. Like Bacon, so dissimilar in most other respects, he was distinguished m boyhood by a sweet sedateness. " Though," writes his biographer Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, his schoolfellow at Shrewsbury and friend throughout his life, " though I lived 38 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE with him and knew him from a child, I never knew him other than a man ; with such staidness of mind, lovelj' and famihar gravity, as carried grace and rever- ence above greater years ; his talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind." After spending three years at Oxford, Sidney, like Bacon, went to Paris and lived at the English Embassy, but not like Bacon in a diplo- matic capacity. He was greatly caressed by the French court, Charles IX. actually making him a gentleman of his b;d;himber, but all that he saw conlirmed his atta:hm2nt to Protestantis.n, which could not but be increased by the atrocious massacre of St. Bartholomew, of which he was himself an appalled wit- ness. Hastening from the scene of carnage, he made his way to Germany, where he became acquainted with the eminent Protestant divine, Languet, whose correspond- ence with him is full of in- terest. He spent a long time in Italy, chiefly at Venice ; visited Austria, Hungary, and Poland ; and, notwithstanding his youth, is said to have received and declined an offer of the elective crown of the latter country. Much of his tmie was spent in study, much in amateur diplomacy or writ- ing letters on Continental affairs to Burghley or his uncle Leicester. He returned to England in June 1575. For some years, except for service with his father in Ire- land and a mission to Germany in which he endeavoured to bring about a league among Protestant princes, Sidney remamed at court, one of its chief ornaments, and the patron of men of every kind of desert, among whom Spenser is especially to be named. At the beginning of 1580 his loyal and patriotic opposition to Elizabeth's prepos- terous idea (if her encouragement of it was anything more than a pretence) of marrying the Duke of Anjou, caused him to be banished from court for a time. He retired to Wilton, and wrote the Arcadia for, perhaps in some measure with, his sister, the subject of the famous epitaph disputed between Ben Jonson and William Browne. Hence its title. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. It was first published in 15QO. The poetry in this famous romance is made to order, and inserted in compliance with prescription, but the practice Mary Si>...ey, Countess of PemDroke ^//c-r the porlrtnt a/ti-itiitcJ lo Mark Checrafits SIDNEY'S WRITINGS AND DEATH 39 tVi. it conferred probably helped Sidney when, the next year, true poetry was drawn from him by the marriage of Lady Penelope Devereux, to whom he had regarded himself as in some sense betrothed, to Lord Rich. Sidney's feeling does not seem to have been previously very ardent ; one cannot help suspecting that he could have dropped the lady without much agitation, but to be dropped by her was quite another matter. Piqued into passion, he forgot for a time the strictness of principle which had previously guided him, and composed the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella (first published in 1591), the best of which are truly impassioned, and may be compared with a remarkable sonnet-cycle of our own time, The Love Sonnets.^ tory says little for her morality and in 1583 Sidney contractei Secretary Walsingham. In the' dence of the date, he may ha (published 1598), composed in f liberate a captive princess. As that degree of splendour in Englar-'j. sary. In the following year he of many failings, but the one ma^- inteUectual consequences of the Co^ astronomy in Italy, must have been'aeepiy m-LCrestea, ana nis sympathy the Italian refugee may have contributed to the more ardent part he began to take in matters of State. He vehemently urged an attack on Spain, but, when an expedition to the Low Countries was determined upon, accepted a command under his uncle Leicester. It is needless to repeat the story of his heroic fate at Zutphen, just as he was giving the highest proofs of capacity as statesman and soldier. A wound, due to his own romantic but mistaken spirit of chivalry, resulted in his death on October 17, 1586. The mournful pageant of his funeral procession in the following February remained unrivalled by any similar public display until the funeral of Nelson. " It was accounted a sin for months after- wards for any gentleman of quality to wear gay apparel in London." In Sidney, indeed, Elizabethan literature had lost its morning star ; and arts, arms, and politics their Admirable Crichton. '71 v/i lO 4° HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE " Ai-cadia ' In the Arcadia Sidney shows what he might have done for literature had not his time (most justifiably in his case, his rank in the State con- sidered) been so largely claimed by Courts and camps. In his one brief inter^•al of disgrace and withdrawal from court the activity of his mind, stimulated by his s'ster's companionship and, perhaps, aided by her pen, sufficed to produce this folio volume, the English counterpart of the pastorals of Sannazaro and Montemayor. As such, it necessarily occupies a commandmg position in English literature, and although a most faulty performance, its very faults are the paradoxical condition of its iierits. Its great fault of being far )0 long was no fault in that age leisure, and signifies little in an je when, if ever so much abbre- ated, it still would not be read. n the contrary, this diffuseness is gain to modern readers, who, feel- g themselves dispensed from the )ligation of mastering so intricate I' plot and contending with so super- ; rnian a discursiveness, simply mder through it like wayfarers ; rough a forest, intent solely upon J ithering flowers. These abound, .ough a large proportion must be ( assed with flowers of speech in le less favourable sense, and .dney fatigues like Matho^ by le effort after perpetual glitter, his has been attributed to the ifluence of Lyly, but with all his ffectation his style falls far short .f euphuism, and the attempt to dignify familiar and especially pas- toral su't!)]ects''''Dy ""rg^f-nctwrf'Tpeecn is as old as the Greek romancers, and is very conspicuous in Boccaccio. Sidney offends rather by the constancy of this endeavour than by positi^'e extravagance of diction ; a less con- tinuous and obtrusive deflection from ordinary speech would have been even acceptable, as reminding us that we are and are meant to be denizens of an ideal world. The following, one of many beautiful descriptions, evinces how well Sidney could depict what he had himself seen and known. He was a consummate horseman, the Defence of Poetry begins with the celebra- tion of his Italian riding-master. No doubt he had often " witched the world witli noble horsemanship," as Dorus witches Pamela : ' Omnia vis belle Matho dicere ; die aliquando Vel bene ; die neulrum ; die aliquando male. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. After the Miniature by Isaac Oliver in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. THE "ARCADIA" 41 T H F COVNTESSE OF PEMBROKES ARCADIA, WRITTEN BY SIR PHILIPPE S I D N E I. He stayed till I caused Mopsa bid him do something upon his horse ; which no iZhner said, than witli a kind rather of quick gesture tlian show of violence, you might see him come towards me, beating the ground in so due time as no dancer can observe better measure. If you remember the ship we saw once when the sea went high upon the coast of Argos, so went the beast. But he, as if centaur like he had been one piece with the horse, was no more moved than one with the going of his own legs ; and in effect so did he command him as his own limbs : for though he had both spurs and wand, they seemed rather marks of sovereignty than instruments of punish- ment, his hand and leg, with most pleasing grace, commanding without threaten- ing, and rather remembering than chastising ; at least if sometimes he did, it was so stolen as neither our eyes could discern it, nor the horse with any change did com- plain of it ; he ever going so just with the horse, either forth- right or turning, that it seemed as he borrowed the horse's body, so he lent the horse his mind. In the turning one might per- ceive the bridle hand somewhat gently stir ; but indeed so gently, as it did rather distil virtue, than use violence. Himself, which methinks is strange, showing at one instant both steadiness and nimbleness ; sometimes making him turn close to the ground hke a cat, when scratchingly she wheels about after a mouse : sometimes with a little move rising before ; now like a raven leaping from ridge to ridge, then like one of Dametas' kids bound over the hillocks ; and all so done as neither the lusty kind showed any roughness, nor the easier any idleness, but still like a well obeyed master, whose beck is enough for a discipline, ever concluding each thing he did with his face to me-wards, as if thence came not only the beginning, but the ending of his motions. LONDON Srinted for William Ponfonbi'e, \^nTio Domini , 1 JP 0. Title-pag-e of Sidney's "Arcadia," 1590 It would be fatiguing to unravel the plot of the Arcadia, intricate and remote from the possibilities of life as those of the Greek and Italian romances upon which it is modelled, and pestered with episodes, as the solar system with comets. The characters excite no very lively interest, but are appro- priate to their chivalric and pastoral surroundings. The book can never again be popular, but neither can it ever be forgotten ;■ and a judicious abridgment might even now be a literary success. Most of the poetry would in such a case disappear, as too palpably artificial and mechanical, although it is impossible not to admire the intellectual energy and command of language 42 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE which could produce so much really good writing to order, frequently in interesting though unsuccessful experiments, probably made under the influ- ence of Gabriel Harvey, in the introduction of classical metres into English, and the naturalisation of foreign forms like the terza rima and the sesttne. Sometimes a genuine blossom of song is encountered among the artificial flowers : Get hence, fond Grief, the canker of the mind : Farewell complaint, the miser's ' only pleasure ; Away, vain Cares, by which few men do find Their sought for treasure. APOLOGIE for P octrie. Written by the right noble, vertu- OM , and learned , Sir Phillip Sidney, Kmght. Odi crofantun yulgui,ct arceo. AT LONDON, Printed for Henry Olney, and are to be fold at his fhop in Paulcs Church-vard, at the fignc , of the George, neerc to Cheap gjtc. You helpless sighs, blow out your breath to nought : Fears, drown yourselves for woe your cause is wasted : Thought, think to end ; too long the fruit of thought j\Iy mind hath tasted. But thou, sure Hope, tickle my leap- ing heart : Comfort, step thou in place of wonted sadness : Fore-felt Desire, begin to savour part Of coming gladness. Let \-oice of sighs into clear music run : Eyes, let your tears with gazing be now mended : Instead of Thought, true Pleasure be begun, And never ended. The genuineness of the feeling in Astrophel and Stella has been a subject of discussion, but Mr. Symonds and jMr. Courthope, who represent opposite views on this question, agree that the sonnets must have been written after the marriage of Penelope Devereux, the object of Sidney's too Platonic attachment, to Lord Rich, and consequently must have an autobiographic basis. This seems sufficiently clear from internal evidence. Sonnet 33, for example, manifestly expresses Sidney's remorse for ha^•ing failed to win the lady's hand while it was yet to be won : I might ! — unhappy now ! — O me, I might And then would not, or could not, see my bliss ; Till now, wrapt in a most infernal night, I find how heavenly day, wretch ! I did miss. Heart, rend thyself, thou dost thyself but right ; 1 Wretch. Title-page of Sidney's "Apology for Poetry," 1595 SIDNEY'S POETRY 43 No lovely Paris made thy Helen his : No force, no fraud, robbed thee of thy dehght, Nor fortune of thy fortune author is. But to myself myself did give the blow. While too much wit, forsooth, so troubled me, That I respects for both our sakes must show : And yet could not by rising morn foresee How fair a day was near : O punished eyes. That I had been more foohsh, or more wise ! Sonnet 87, with its speech of duty, affords conclusive proof of Stella having been a married, or at least a betrothed, woman : , . , WTien I was forced from Stella ever dear — ■ ' Etella, food of my thoughts, heart of my heart — ' | Stella, whose eyes make all my tempests clear — • : Ey Stella's laws of duty to depart ; , j Alas ! I found that she with me did smart ; ' 1 saw that tears did in her eyes appear ; ', I saw that sighs her sweetest lips did part, And her sad words my sadded sense did hear. For me, I wept to see pearls scattered so ; \ I sighed her sighs, and wailed for her woe ; Yet swam in joy, such love in her was seen. Thus while the effect most bitter was to me, And nothing than the cause more sweet could be, I had been vexed, if vexed I had not been. If any doubt could remain, it should be sufficient to weigh the poetical ^/dne/. merit of the SteUa sonnets, addressed to the heroine of a real history, against the mere elegance of the verse of the Arcadia, composed to comply with a convention. In Astrophel and Stella Sidney appears for the first time as a true poet, and far in ad- vance of any predecessor in his own hue. It does not thence follow that his passion was of a very intense character. It was genuine while it lasted, but gratification would soon have killed it, and even disappoint- ment could not long keep it alive. It never forbids his helping himself out with an appropriation from a French or Italian poet, or turning aside to mere ingenuities, like the following exceedingly pretty but exceedingly palpable conceit : Morpheus, the lively son of deadly Sleep, Witness of life to them that living die, A prophet oft, and oft an history, A poet eke, as humours fly or creep ; Since thou in me so sure a power dost keep. ^^onnels to Stella Initial Letter from Sidney's "Arcadia," 1590 44 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE That never I ^vith closed-up sense do lie, But by thy work my Stella I descry, Teaching blind eyes both how to smile and weep ; Vouchsafe, of all acquaintance, this to tell, ^\'llence hast thou ivors', rubies, pearl and gold. To show her skin, lips, teeth and head so well ? Fool ! answers he, no Indes such treasures hold ; But from thy heart, while my sire charmeth thee, Sweet Stella's image do I steal to me. Sidney at his best, it will be admitted, is in tlie sonnet no unworthy Form of Sid- ney s SoivitCs Map and View of the Town of Zutphen, the scene of Sidney's death forerunner of Shakespeare. Had he bent himself to acclimatise the Petrarchan form of the sonnet he might have been a precursor of ]\filton also. It will be noticed that the form of sonnet he employs frequently approaches that of Spenser, who begins each quatrain with a rhyme to the last line of the quatrain preceding, in attempting a compromise between the Petrarchan sonnet and the characteristically English succession of three quatrains concluding with a couplet. He clearly recognised the superiority of the Petrarchan form, and would probably have adopted it if he had been able to overcome its diffi- culties. Yet it is hardly a matter for regret that he shrunk from the attempt ; for whfle the Petrarchan form is far more artistic, and fitter for the expression of a single gra\-e or graceful thought, the more rapid flow of the English sonnet often adapts it better for the expression of simple but earnest feeling. SIDNEY'S "DEFENCE OF POETRY 45 Had Sidney set the example Shakespeare might liave followed it, and it is doubtful whether his sonnets would have gained by being Petrarchised. Sidney's Defence of Poetry is a remarkable essay, not a model of close consecutive reasoning, but undertaken in a spirit of love and devotion to what the author has himself found precious, and hence itself in some sort a poem. Sidney does not confine poetry to metrical composition. " It is not riming and versing that maketh poetry. One may be a poet without versing, and a versifier without poetry." Poetry is with him the antithesis of Philistinism, and denotes whatever elevates and purifies the mind, and casts an ideal hue over liie. The poet is to him tlie great enchanter. " Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as many poets have The ^^ Defence of Poetry " A portion of the great Procession at the Funeral of Sir Philip Sidney From Lahfs " Sequitur Celebritas Pompa Pimeris," 1587 done ; neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely ; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden." From his own experience of the effects of poetry he relates : " Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness. I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I felt not my heart moved more than with a trumpet ; and yet it is a song sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style ; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar ? " He admits the inferiority of English poetry to that of other polite nations, and ascribes it to want of encouragement : " That poetry thus embraced in all other places, should only find in our time a hard welcome in England, I think, the very 46 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE earth lamenteth it, and therefore decketh our soil with fewer laurels than it was accustomed." The fault is not in the language, whose fitness for poetry Sidnej' proclaims with no less eloquence than truth. He speaks, nevertheless, with high commendation of Sackville's Gorboduc, and encourag- mgly of Spenser's early efforts. The greatest distinction of Chaucer seems to ha\-e escaped him, though, if the Canterbury Tales were, in general, too famihar for his taste, the Knighfs Tale could hardly fail to attract him. Troiliis and Creseyde, however, is his favourite. " Excellently is his Troihis and Crescide, of whom truly I know not whether to marvel more that he in that misty time could see so clearly, or that we in this clear age walk so stumblingly after him." In Surrey also, in so many respects his own counterpart, Sidney finds "many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind." The weakest part of his criticism is that on dramatic poetry : he disapproves of the mingling of tragedy and comedy to which the drama was to owe its regeneration, and would have confined it, like the drama of Italy, to the narrow limits traced by classical precedent. No doubt the English drama as then performed was infinitely shocking to a refined taste, and the prodigious development it was to receive within ten years was not in mortal to foresee. In so far, moreover, as Sidney is merely a literary critic he writes as the disciple of the Italians ; it is only when, transcending technical rules, he concerns himself with ideas, that he finds his veritable self. Little as Sidney is of a utilitarian, the practical importance of poetry is strenuously asserted by him : Now therein of all sciences I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as \Ni\\ entice every man to enter into it. Nay he doth as if your journey should be through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with inter- pretations, and load the memorjr with doubtfulness. But he cometli to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music ; and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdelh cliildren from plav, and old men from the chimney corner, and, by pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue. The exact date of Sidney's tractate is uncertain, but from the mention of Spenser's first poetical attempts it must be later than 1578 : and as he professes to undertake it in the character of a poet, it may probably have been written after the Arcadia and Astrophcl and Stella had given him an unquestionable claim to this designation. It seems to have been prompted by indignation at the attacks upon poetry made by Stephen Gosson in 1579 ; but Gosson, who had impudently dedicated his libel to Sidney himself, would scarcely have escaped castigation by name if Sidney had written in the first flush of resentmen':. Sir J]'aiicr With Sidney, Sir \\'alter Raleigh ranks among the four great prose- writers of the Elizabethan age. As is so frequently the case with illustrious A'ahii^h /I ' "^ / A^c'U^j ca^/M ^^^p^f ^ /-w ^/y ■'o^L^:^. - if ^& -'Z . /da^ '^ ^ 'K^fyyJL. ^. ^A T^^^ 4^ jiM A. 5^ i- Letter from Sir Philip Sidney to Lord Burghley Lyl X wt-^ j2^ tfe^*. y ^W fif cj^ A ^ %^' ^^^^^ /;^^^ ^T.'VV^ -^^.^ /■'^^ i/i'^J^ ^ M^-y^JC d^ ar»^ O^ne^ • U- LIFE OF RALEIGH 47 contempoiaries, these great men present both close parallels and vivid contrasts, but each is a characteristic representative of his time. Sidney, however, rather mirrors the ideal of the age, Raleigh its actual condition ; for the former, SheUey's impassioned eulogium, " sublimely mild, a spirit without spot," scarcely seems too bold ; while Raleigh, with the highest qualities of the soldier, the statesman, and the gentleman, incarnates the suppleness of the courtier and the unscrupulousness of the adventurer as well. Regarding them simply as men of letters, it appears remarkable that the more original part should have been allotted to the less original mind. Sidney is an innovator and almost a legislator in the romance, the sonnet, and the literary essay. Raleigh follows old paths in composition, and his works are chiefly distinguished by superior merit of execution. Raleigh v/as born in or about 1552, at Hayes, near Budleigh Salterton, Devon. His father was a country gentleman, whose property lay near Plymouth ; his mother, widow of Otho Gilbert, was mother by her first marriage of the famous navigator, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. As the second son of a third marriage Raleigh could be no sharer in the patrimonial estate, but he appears to have been well nurtured, though intercourse with sailors and peasants, destined to become profit- able, gave him the broad Devonshire accent which he never lost. Like Bacon and Sidney, he both sought and left the University at an early age. Like them also, he proceeded to France, not, however, as a diplomatist or a traveller, but as a volunteer with the Huguenots, being, according to his own statement, present at Jarnac and in the disastrous .... hour When the children of darkness and evil had power at Moncontour. This is all that is known of his residence in France, which was probably long, as no trace of him is found in England until 1576, when he prefixed a congratulatory poem to the " Steel Glass '' of George Gascoigne, an intimate friend of his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. It is highly probable that he may have served in the Low Countries, but no record remains. In September 1578 we at last find Raleigh taking a prominent part in a great enterprise as commander of a vessel in his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage of discovery, or rather of intended conquest, to America and the West Indies. It returned unsuccessful in the following May, and Raleigh betook himself to Court, where he appears in the picturesque character of the bearer of a challenge to Sir Philip Sidney from the Earl of Oxford. Similar affairs caused him to be imprisoned on two separate occasions. The Elizabethan courtier was, indeed. Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, but Raleigh proved that he was no less ready to Seek the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth, by accepting a command in Ireland. There is reason to suppose that he in- directly owed this turning-point in his fortunes to the interest of Sidney (whose life he is said to have protected against the machinations of his enemy Oxford) with the all-powerful Leicester and Walsingham. After a year and a half of 48 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE honourable service, during which he was for a time on the Commission for the Government of Munster. he returned to England as the bearer of despatches, and sprang at once into the highest favour with Elizabeth. The anecdote of his having laid down his cloak to help the Queen across a mudd}? path, if not literalh' true, as it well may be, at all events resumes and symbolises the happj? boldness, unfailing presence of mind, and brisk and gallant bearing which won him Elizabeth's affection, ^^'ithin a few years the needy cadet of a family of moderate estate was Caj)tam of the Queen's Guard, Warder of the Stannaries, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Vice-Admiral of Cornwall and Devon, owner of forty thousand acres in Ireland, including the whole town of Youghal, and endowed with a sheaf of lucra- tive patents and monopolies. If, as asserted by the Spanish Ambassador, the recipient of all these favours was an accom- plice in Babington's conspiracj', he must have been the most ungrateful of mankind, but as he must also have been the most foolish we may safely con- clude that his Excellency, then expelled from England and re- sident at Paris, was deceived by his agents at a distance. We may indeed observe bj' the waj' that the ambassadors of the sixteenth century, the Vene- tian excepted, were the greatest gohemouches conceivable, hun- grj' for news " as the Red Sea for ghosts," lest they should be deemed unprofitable servants, and that history will suffer if their assertions are accepted without scrutiny. Raleigh does, however, appear in Mendoza's correspondence as one generally disposed to promote Spanish interests, but King Philip seems to have entertained shrewd suspicions of the genuineness of these professions. If an\' rumours of his complicity in the Babington conspiracy reached Elizabeth's ears, she showed her disregard of them by making him a considerable grant from the forfeited estates. This was in 1587 ; in 1584 Raleigh had obtained the patent which launched him upon the colonial career which, with all his varied activity in arms and letters, constitutes his highest title to fame. In the preceding year he had contributed largely to the voyage of his half-brother. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, which resulted in the settlement of the first Enghsh colony, Newfoundland. Sir Humphre}' having been lost at sea, Raleigh, who had only been prevented Ruins of Collegiate Church and House of the Earl of Desmond at Youghal, the residence of Raleigh in Ireland LIFE OF RALEIGH 49 from accompanying him by the Queen's prohibition, obtained the patent " to discover and conquer unknown lands, and take possession of them in the Queen's name," which eventually led to the occupation of the region to which Elizabeth herself gave the name of Virginia. Raleigh fitted out another expedition, and drew up the constitution of the projected colony. But the enterprise was mis- managed ; a fresh expedition sent out to relieve the colonists could find no trace of them ; and although Raleigh continued his efforts until the forfeiture of his patent in 1603, he achieved no result. The persistency of his endeavours, nevertheless, entitles him to the most eminent place among the founders ol Irish Men and Women in the reign of Elizabeth British Museum, Add. MS. 28330 Britain's colonial empire. The most conspicuous of the immediate results of his labours were the introduction of potatoes and tobacco, both, indeed, previously known, but which he first rendered popular. There is no evidence of Raleigh having taken any personal part in repelling the Armada, and it is probable that his duty of embodying the militia as Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall would detain him on shore. In the latter part of the year, and again in 1589, he was in Ireland, where he formed a friendship with Spenser, who celebrates him as " The Shepherd of the Ocean," and describes him as playing upon Spenser's own pipe, " himself as skilful in that art as any." In 1591 he was to have been second in command of an expedition to intercept VOL. II D 5° HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the Spanish treasure fleet ; but the Queen refused to let him go, and his place was taken by his cousin. Sir Richard Grenville, whose heroic combat and death he celebrated in his first important prose work, Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of the Azores, a noble piece of writing, which forms the groundwork of Tennyson's famous ballad. In the following year he invested all the money he could raise in a naval expedition planned for the capture of a great treasure- laden Spanish carrack, and was putting to sea at the head of it when he was suddenly ordered to return. His davs of favour were over ; he had wounded his roval mistress's sense of decorum, and worse, her vanity, by an intrigue with one of her maids of honour, and was detained in prison till near the end of the year, except for a brief liberation that he might use his local influence to prevent the Devonshire people from plundering the carrack. which had been captured without him. Upon his release he married the object of his attachment. Elizabeth Throgmorton, for whom his affection seems to have been deep and lasting, and settled at Sherborne Castle, spend- ing, however, much time in London in the discharge of f'-*V/^'~«SHKiL;- ''iJc^S' y V ■' ■ ^^^ Parliamentary duties and -i''4\;H^^^^^^j|;^^^*''*^il8^B^^^'' ^^^ ^^^ intimacA' of men of letters and science. He re- sumed his long poem. Cynthia, the Ladv of the Seei. which he must have commenced before receiving from Spenser the title of " The Shepherd of the Ocean." " The Lady of the Sea " is Elizabeth, and the author probably represented his devout obedience to his mistress under the figure of " the moon-led waters." All is lost except the twenty-first book, which reveals little of the plan of the poem, the allegorical machinery being discarded for direct reference to the poet's oftended sovereign, eloquent indeed, but so prolix as almost to justify his naive apiprehension that, instead of softening her heart he will shut her eyes : Lea\'e them ! or lav them up with th\- despairs ! She hath resolved and judged thee long ago. Thy Unes are now a murmuring to her ears, Like to a falling stream, which, passing slow, Is wont to nourish sleep and quietness ; So shall thy painful labours be perused. And draw in rest, which sometime had regard ; But those her cares thy errors have excused. Sherborne Castle From a plioio;^raph The imp>erfect rhymes and frequent gaps show that this part of the poem at least had not received Raleigh's final corrections. The earlier cantos were known to many, and their disappearance is extraordinar}-. Raleigh is almost the only considerable English author who has suffered by the total loss of importaiit RALEIGH'S TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT 51 writings. Not only Cynthia is lost, but many prose works, including, if Ben Jonson is to be believed, a life of Elizabeth. Raleigh's restless spirit soon suggested more active measures for winning The Expedi- distinction and regaining the favour of his sovereign. In 1595 he made his '"'" '" GuJana celebrated expedition to Guiana, misled by reports of the fabulous El Dorado, but right in so far as Guiana was actually a land of gold, whose wealth it was beyond his power to bring to light. His accuracy as respects everything falling under his own observation has been fully confirmed, and nothing discreditable to him appears either in the conception or the conduct of the expedition. England and Spain were at war, and Raleigh had every right to instruct the Indians respecting " Ezrabeta Cassipuna Aquerevana, the great cacique of the North, who had more caciques under her than there were trees in their island," who had sent him to free them from the Castellanos. He showed them her Majesty's portrait ; "it would have been easy to have brought them idolatrous thereof." His narrative was pubHshed in 1596, in which year he also brilliantly distinguished himself in Essex's expedition against Cadiz. Another expedition in the following year, also under Essex's orders, failed in its object of capturing the Spanish treasure-ships, and unhappily laid the foundation of a mortal enmity between Esse.x and Raleigh from Raleigh having taken Fayal without Essex's orders. He was undoubtedly right, but his subsequent conduct to Essex was wanting in generosity. He soon found himself in Essex's situation. For two j'ears before James I.'s accession, the new King's mind had been poisoned against Raleigh by insinuations that he was plotting to bring in Lady Arabella Stuart. The truth is most difficult to ascertain ; if a man of Raleigh's sagacity was seduced into so wild and desperate a course, it is one of the most striking examples on record of the subjugation of judgment by ambition. Deprived as he was of most of his offices upon James's arrival, he may have been led into giving some countenance to Lord Cobham's conspiracy in the summer of 1603, but the only positive evidence is the declaration of Cobham himself, a person worthy of little credit. Raleigh was, nevertheless, indicted, tried, convicted, sentenced to death, reprieved, and imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained fourteen years, solacing his captivity by the composition of his History of the World. Better fitted to command the devotion of inferiors than to conciliate the goodwill of equals, he seems to have entirely failed to obtain the confidence of the leading statesmen of his time, who distrusted him as an adventurer, and whose envy at his promotion had probably been exasperated by his haughty bearing. The popularity which he enjoyed among the commonalty counted for little ; he had built, like Bacon, on Court favour, and when this failed nothing stood between him and ruin. He, nevertheless, began to rebuild his fortunes in a new quarter. The heir-apparent disapproved of his father's policy in most respects, and in none more than the persecution of Raleigh, who might well have become his chief adviser if he had lived to ascend the throne. In Prince Henry's fatal illness, as appears by a letter from Chamberlain to Carleton, in the State Paper Office, a cordial was sent him by Sir Walter Raleigh, " who loses by his death his greatest hope of release." In another letter the same writer says of the Prince : " His papers show that he had many vast conceits and projects " — some of them, in all likelihood, inspirations from Raleigh, who deplores his blighted hopes in the History of the World, published in 1614. James, irritated by the freedom 52 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of Raleigh's criticisms on monarchs, wished to suppress the book, but eventually permitted its circulation. It would have been well for Raleigh if, accepting his captivity as inevitable, Facsimile of a portion of Raleigh's "Journal of a Second Voyage to Guiana" MS. preserved in the British yfuseum he had devoted the remainder of his hfe to the completion of his history. His imprisonment had always been mild, and the copiousness of citation in his history shows that abundance of inteUectual resources were at his command. It is not wonderful, however, that as a man of action he should have pined for freedom, RALEIGH'S WRITINGS 53 but the means he adopted to obtain it, no doubt the only means at his disposal, were tainted with deceit. Persuading the Government to send him out on another expedition to Guiana, he concealed the fact that the mine he undertook to discover was in the territory of Spain, then at peace with England, and, while denying any evil intention, combined his scheme with a projected piratical attack upon the Spanish treasure-galleons. He had fair notice from the Government that an act of piracy would forfeit his life, and when in June i5i8 he returned to England, after a series of disasters which cannot be read without the deepest compassion, no blame could have been attached to the Government if they had brought him to a fair trial and executed a just sentence. Their coward- ice in avoiding the issue, and iniquity in executing him upon the old charge of the Cobham conspiracy, joined to the universal belief that the motive was not the vindication of justice but the propitiation of Spain, made him more than ever a popular hero, a character enhanced bj' his spirited bearing on the scaffold, where his wit and presence of mind emulated Sir Thomas More. As a writer of prose Ra- leigh stands very high ; his diction is elegant and un- affectedly dignified, less magnificent than Hooker's but free from cumbrousness and inversion ; approaching modern ease and lucidity, yet retaining antique stateliness ; the style of a scholar, yet of a courtier and man of the world. Were it not for these recommendations the work upon which his fame as an author principally rests, The History of the World, composed during his captivity in the Tower, would be as unserviceable to his own reputation as to the student, for it is of necessity entirely uncritical. Raleigh can do nothing but follow the Biblical and classical historians along a darkling path, in total ignorance of the floods of light with which it was to be illuminated by science and discovery. But for gleams of genius his book could have been but another RoUin, but it is continually irradiated by striking thoughts and by flashes of digression, as where the author speaks from his An illustration by John White to Raleigh's "Voyage into Virginia," 1585 " The History of the World" 54 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE own observation of South American mangroves laden with oysters, or describes the daring stratagem by which Sark was won back from the French in Queen Mary's tmre, or anticipates Erasmus Darwin by discovering the variability of species, or astonishes us by a passage of .Eschylus felicitously rendered from the Latin version (Raleigh evidently was little versed in Greek) into rhyme royal : — But Fortune governed all their works, till when I first found out how stars did set and rise, A profitable art to mortal men ; And others of like use I did devise ; As, letters to compose and learned pen I first did teach, and first did amphfy The ilother of the Muses, Memory. The work was partly undertaken at the request and for the instruction of Prince Henry, who, Raleigh teUs us, read part of it in MS. with approval. It extends from the Creation to the overthrow of the ^Macedonian Kingdom, B.C. i68. Two more parts of equal extent were designed, but if any more was written it has not been preserved. In his preface Raleigh tells us some- thing of his principles of composition, and explains how he has " followed the best geographers, who seldom give names to those small brooks whereof many joined together, make great rivers, tih such time as they become united, and run in a main stream to the ocean sea." Feeling that the eru- dition required by his comprehensive theme may expose him to the charge of plagiarism, he acknowledges how greatly' he is beholden to the assistance of friends, without on that account abating his just though modest estimate of his qualifications : — I am not altogether ignorant of the laws of histor}^, and of the kinds. The same hath been taught by many, but by no man better, and with greater brevity, than by that excellent learned gentleman. Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon had helped to send Raleigh to the Tower, and was to help to send him to the scaffold, yet we see that his writings had solaced Raleigh's captivitv. " The animosities die, the humanities live for ever." There are other traces of Raleigh's acquaintance with contemporary as well as ancient literature. The celebrated and very fine passage on the influences of the stars is clearly adapted from Du Bai las, yet with a dignity precluding the charge of plagiarism. And if we cannot deny, but chat God hath given virtu to springs and fountains, to cold earth, to plants and stones, minerals, and the excremental parts of the basest Uving creatures, why should we rob the beautiful stars of their working powers ? For, seeing they are many in number, and of eminent beautv and magnitude, we may not think that in the treasury of his wisdom who is infinite, there can be wanting, even for every star, a peculiar virtue and operation ; as every herb, plant, fruit, and flower adorning the face of the earth hath the like. For as these were not created to beautify the earth alone, and to co\er and shadow her dustv face, but otherwise for the use of man and beast, to feed them, and cure them, so were not those uncountable glorious bodies set in the firmament for no other end RALEIGH'S WRITINGS S5 than to adorn it, but for his instruments and organs of his divine providence so far as it has pleased his great will to determine. Du Bartas thus, in Sylvester's translation : — I'll not believe that the Arch Architect With all these fires the heavenly arches decked Only for show, and with these glittering shields To amaze poor shepherds watching in the fields. I'll not behave that the least flower which pranks Our garden-borders, or our common banks. And the least stone that in her warming lap Our mother Earth doth covetously wrap, Hath some peculiar virtue of its own. And that the stars of heaven have none. The History of the World is not sparingly sown with fine passages resem- bling the above, and there is another class of passages not fine but most interesting — descriptions of battles and military operations which bear the impress of the skilful and experienced soldier. Such merits, however, cannot impart vitality to a work so flawed and faulty in the essential basis of all history, accurate knowledge. If, instead of the history of ancient times, Raleigh had written that of his own, he would have conferred a priceless service upon literature, and ranked with the most eminent historians. Nor did this escape him, but he assigns unanswerable reasons why it could not be : — It will be said by many that I might have been more pleasing to the reader if I had written the story of mine own times, having been permitted to draw water as near the well head as another. To this I answer that whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth. There is no mistress or guide than Truth hath led her followers and servants into greater miseries. He that goes after her too far off loveth her sight and loveth himself ; and he that follows after her at a middle distance — I know not whether I should call that kind of course temper or baseness. Raleigh himself cannot be entirely acquitted of flattering James, though most of his eulogy has at least a foundation in truth, and he is a model of reserve compared to Bacon. He seems, indeed, to escape as soon as possible from James's personality to the advantage which the State had undoubtedly derived from his accession. If he is sincere — and it is difficult to think him otherwise — he must have repented having espoused the cause of Arabella Stuart, if he really did so : — Neither might we forget or neglect our thankfulness to God for the uniting of the smaller parts of Britain to the south, viz., of Scotland to England, which, though they were severed but by small brooks and banks, yet by reason of the long continued war, and the cruelties exercised upon each other, in the affection of the nations they were infinitely severed. This, I say, is not the least of God's blessings which his majesty hath brought with him into this land, no, put all our petty grievances together, and heap them up at their height, they will appear but as a molehih, compared with the mountain of this concord. And if all the historians since then have acknowledged the uniting of the red rose and the white, for the greatest happiness (Christian rehgion excepted) whatever this kingdom received from God, certainly the peace between the two lions of gold and gules, and the making of them one, doth by many degrees exceed the former ; for by it, besides the sparing 56 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of our British blood, heretofore and during the differences so often and abundantly shed, the state of England is more assured, the kingdom more enabled to recover her ancient honour and rights, and by it made more invmcible than by all our former aUiances, practices, pohcies, and conquests. W^Wm Title-page of first edition of Raleigh's " History of the World" Towards the close of his work Raleigh resumes and surpasses the grand manner of his introduction. In some measure this ascent to a higher region of thought and expression has impaired the reputation of the book, which has RALEIGH'S WRITINGS 57 been treated as though, hke the glowworm, it carried all its light in its tail. In fact, dry as large portions are, the book is everywhere incandescent with suppressed fire, but it is only at the conclusion that Raleigh shows how great a writer he might have been if he had always written on themes admitting the unrestrained exercise of his eloquence : — By this which we have ah-eadj^ set down is seen the beginning and end of the three first monarchies of the world, whereof the founders and erectors thought that they could never have ended. That of Rome, which made the fourth, was also at this time almost the highest. We have left it flourishing in the middle of the field ; having rooted up, or cut down, all that kept it from the eyes and admiration of the world. But after some continuance it shall begin to lose the beauty it had ; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another ; her leaves shall fall off, her limbs wither ; and a rabble of barbarian nations enter the field, and cut her down. Now these great kings and conquering nations have been the subject of those ancient histories which have been preserved and yet remain among us ; and with them of so many tragical poets as in the persons of powerful princes and other mighty men have complained against infidelity, time, destiny, and, most of all, against the variable success of worldly things, and instability of fortune. To these under- takings these great lords of the world have been stirred up rather by the desire of fame, which plougheth up the air, and soweth in the wind, than by the affection of bearing rule, which draweth after it so much vexation and so many cares : and that this is true, the good advice of Cineas to Pyrrhus proves. And, certainly, as fame has often been dangerous to the living, so is it to the dead of no use at all ; because separate from knowledge. Which, were it otherwise, and the extreme ill bargain of buying this last discourse understood by them which were dissolved, they themselves would then rather have wished to have stolen out of the world without noise, than to be put in mind that they have purchased the report of their actions in the world by rapine, oppression and cruelty ; by giving m spoil the innocent and labouring soul to the idle and insolent, and by having emptied the cities of their ancient inhabitants, and filled them again with so many and so variable sorts of sorrows. The theme is pursued further, and concludes with the famous apostrophe which has been justly described as rivahing the finest passages in Sir Thomas Browne : — It is Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant, makes them cry, complain and repent, yea, even to hate their forepast happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it. O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none have dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the world have flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised ; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words. Hie jacet ! If Raleigh had written his Discoverie of Guiana as a modern traveller of his literary power would have written it, he would have made a great book upon a subject so instinct with romance and appropriate for the embellish- ments of magnificent description. Raleigh, however, could not place himself at Kingsley's point of view ; his object was, and under his circumstances must 58 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LlTERxlTURE have been, utilitarian— his book is not an epic but a prospectus. He preaches th; advantages for England of the colonisation of Guiana, and enforces his argument by glowing descriptions of the wealth of the imaginary Manoa or El Dorado to which Guiana was to be the portal, mainly derived from Spanish sources, and in which th ere is no reason to question his genuine belief. After ilexico and Peru nothing seemed impossible. Raleigh cannot be censured for believing what was told him on apparently good authority, any more than for his beuef in another class of iictions transferred from the Old Worid to the New ; though Shakespeare, a friend of his enemy Essex, may be thought to glance at him when he speaks of travellers' tales of .... men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. When, however, pyrites with a semblance of gold were actually entrusted to him, he recognised them for what they were, and he is careful to point out that his confident belief in the mineral wealth of the country is based upon the testimony of others : "It shall be found a weak policy in me either to betray mvself or m\' country with imaginations, neither am I so far in love with that lodging, watching, care, peril, diseases, ill sa\-oury bad fare, and many other mischiefs that accompany these voyages, as to woo myself again into any there, were I not assured that the sun covereth not so mach riches in anj'partof the earih." The narrative is indeed full of records of hardship in the endless water}? lab\'rinths of the Orinoco, sufficient to deter any but a ^■erv determined adventurer. " What with \-ictuals being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust together and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was ne^-er any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury and loathsome, especially to myself, who had for many years been dieted and cared for in a sort far differing." Passages like the follo\^•ing. gi\'ing the more brilliant side of the pictures, are infrequent in comparison : — When we ran to the top of the first liills of the plains adjoining the river, we beheld that wonderful breach of waters which ran down [the river] Caroli ; and might from that mountain see the river turn, it ran in three parts, about twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve o\-er-falls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain ; and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had risen over some great town. For mine own part I was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but the rest were all so desirous to go near the said strange thunder of waters, as they drew me by little and little, till we came into the next valley, where we might better discern the same. I never saw a more beautiful country', nor more lively prospects, hills so raised here and there over the vallics, the river winding into divers branches, the plains adjoining without brush or stubble, all fair green grass, the ground of hard sand eas}- to march on, either for horse or foot, the deer crossing in every path, the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation perching on the ri\er's side, the air fresh with a gentle easterly wind, and every stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by his comple.xion. RALEIGH'S MINOR WORKS 59 Raleigh is credited with several minor publications, usually of political or ethical character, some of which are certainly spurious. The most impor- tant of these which may be regarded as genuine are Maxims of State and The Prorogation of Parliament, both written during his captivity in the Tower, and Advice to a Son, worldly wise but pitched in the very lowest key of feeling. There is nothing immoral or exactly reprehensible, but the observations on wedlock, for example, are exactly such as might have confirmed Shake- speare in his resolution to bequeath his wife his second best bed. It is remarkable that, until Rousseau's influ- ence became potent, not a single writer from Bacon to Ches- terfield was able to counsel the young without in some mea- sure lowering his own reputation with pos- terity. As a poet Raleigh belongs to the class of wits, of whom he is one of the first a.nd best examples in our literature. Destitute of " the vision and faculty divine," he has esprit, the power of expressing himself with point and liveliness upon anything that has for the moment captivated his interest. Hence, in the pieces of his that have been preserved, he appears almost exclu- sively in the character of an occasional poet. He would probably stand higher but for the loss of his one sustained effort, the Cynthia. Even this was prompted by Elizabeth's disfavour, but the allegorical scheme must have made large demands upon his fancy and constructive faculty. The fragment remaining can convey no just idea of the general character of the poem, and is, moreover, in a most unpolished state. Passages, however, show that it wants neither dignity of thought nor of expression : — If to the living were my muse addressed, Or did my mind her own sprite still inhold ; Raleigh as a Poet Sir Walter Raleigh After the portrait at Knote 6o HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Were not my living passion so repressed, As to tht dead the dead did them unfold. Some sweeter words, some more becoming verse, Should witness my mishap in higher kind. — But my love's wounds, my fancy in the hearse, The idea but resting of a wasted mind, The blossoms fallen, the sap gone from the trees, The broken monuments of my great desires — From these so lost what may the affections be. What heat in cinders of extinguished fires ? No doubt, howe^•er, Raleigh's special field in the domain of poetry was occasional verse, " the casual brilliance of a mind in constant activit3^" His intimacy with Marlowe had been sufficiently close to draw upon him the imputation of free-thinking, and when Marlowe produced his delightful lyric pastoral, '' Come, li\'e with me, and be my lo\-e," it was natural for Raleigh to respond in this half-serious half-mocking strain : — If all the world and love were young. And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures well might move To live with thee and be thy lo\'e. But time drives flocks from field to fold, When rivers rage and rocks grow cold ; And Philomel becometh dumb ; The rest complain of cares to come. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields. A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. Thv gowns, thy shoes, thy buds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten. In folly ripe, in reason rotten. rhy belt of straw and ivy buds, Ihy coral clasps and amber studs. All these in me no means can move To come to thee and be thy love. But could youth last, and j'outh still breed. Had joys no date, nor age no need. Then these delights my mind might move To live with thee and be thy love. It should be remarked that the authorship of many lyrics ascribed to Raleigh is not entirely certain. None were printed as his in his lifetime, except complimentary verses prefixed to his friends' books. Several are attributed to other writers in MS. copies, and his editor. Dr. Hannah, has eliminated twenty-five on sufficient grounds. The reply to IMarlowe, however, appears sufficiently authenticated not only by the friendship of the poets but by the testimony of Izaak ^^'alton ; and if it is Raleigh's, so must be the RALEIGH'S POETRY 6i equally celebrated lyric Passions, which displays the same intellectual bright- ness and nimbleness. The complimentary verses are, of course, genuine, and if Raleigh had written nothing but the sonnet prefixed to Sir Arthur Gorges' Lucan he would have proved his ability to achieve a grave and stately strain. It is the more interesting as Gorges had served under Raleigh in the voyage of 1597, of which he was also the historian, and because, being written in the Tower in 1614, it is fraught with an undercurrent of reference to Raleigh himself : — Had Lucan hid the truth to please the time, He had been too unworthy of thy pen, Who never sought nor ever cared to climb By flattery or seeking worthless men. For this thou hast been bruised, but yet those scars Do beautify no less than those wounds do. Received in just and in religious wars ; Though thou hast bled by both, and bearest them too. Change not ! to change thy fortune 'tis too late ; Who with a manly faith resolves to die May promise to himself a lasting state. Though not so great, yet free from infamy ; Such was thy Lucan, whom so to translate. Nature thy Muse like Lucan's did create. If poems have been attributed to Raleigh without warrant, it is also possible that poems really by him circulated without his name. This may perhaps be the case with the graceful lines to Cynthia, Raleigh's poetical name for his royal mistress, lamenting the withdrawal of her favour, printed in Dowland's Music Book of 1597, even though in a copy found in an album of James I.'s time and translated by Goethe and printed in the correspondence of Thomas Lovell Beddoes the initials appended are not W. R. but W. S. It is such a piece as Raleigh might well have composed, and its elegant finish seems to indicate a practised hand : — My. thoughts are winged with hopes, my hopes with love; Mount, Love, into the Moon in clearest night, And say, as she doth in the heaven move, In earth so wanes and waxes my delight ; And whisper this but softly in her ears. How oft Doubt hang the head and Trust shed tears. And you, my thoughts that seem mistrust to carry, If for mistrust my mistress do you blame. Say, though you alter yet you do not vary. As she doth change and yet remain the same. Distrust doth enter hearts but not infect, And love is sweetest seasoned with suspect. If she for this with clouds do mask her eyes. And make the heavens dark with her disdain, With windy sights ' disperse then in the skies. Or with thy tears dissolve them into rain. Thoughts, hopes, and love return to me no more, Till Cynthia shine as she hath done before. ^ Sighs : so writLen to avoid collision with " skies." 62 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Raleigh's place in the literature of England resembles that of Csesar in the literature of Rome — that of a well-nigh universal genius, excellent alike in prose and verse, who might have attained the highest place in the former at least if the man of letters had not with him been subordinate to the man of action. It says much for the era of Elizabeth that so brilliant a personage should at the same time be so much the man of his age. For this he is great, rather than for his adventurous exploits or his literary per- formances ; even though these suffice to place him in the leading rank of both the doers and tlie writers of his time. Elizabethan CHAPTER II THE LESSER LIGHTS OF ELIZABETHAN PROSE In our last chapter, with some violence to strict chronological accuracy, we special have treated of the four great prose-writers of the Elizabethan and, in the 'oftL case of two of them, of the Jacobean era also, who stand forth conspicuously from the contemporary throng. These eliminated, we discern the better the affluence of the period in literary talent when we perceive how much remains after so vast a deduction. There is hardly any department without some representative with merit sufficient to have brought him down to our day AS a writer to be remembered, and even consulted on other accounts than his relation to his time, or as an illustration of contemporary manners or of the progress of the language : and this after abstracting the poetry and drama which, apart from the four great writers considered separately, invest the age with its most signal literary distinction. The age of Elizabeth is as much in advance of that of Henry VIII. as this was of the fifteenth century. Tenny- son has admirably characterised the special distinction of the Elizabethan age by a single epithet, " The spacious times of great Elizabeth." The world had grown wider everywhere, but most of all in England. England was better able than any other country to take advantage of the three great events which had so vastly expanded the intellectual horizon, the revival of classical literature, the publication of the Scriptures in the vernacular, and the discovery of the New World. The impulse communicated by the first of these was indeed common property, but Protestant countries alone could profit by the second, and no Protestant country but England and Holland could take advantage of the third. Had England not embraced the Reformation, she could have had no justification for those wars in the Low Countries and those expeditions to the Spanish Main which probably contributed more than anything else to kindle the national imagination to the point at which all enterprise, whether of a material or intellectual order, seems the fulfilment of manifest destiny. The extravagance of the inferior writers, no less than the grandeur of the higher, attests the prevalent temper of animation and excitement. The aether was ampler, the air diviner than of yore ; the fields alike of action and of thought were indeed " invested with purpureal gleams." The era of Elizabeth was thus one of those, of which human history counts its general some six or seven, in which the mind of man was suddenly expanded by being introduced to a more extensive area, whether through the operation of con- picturesque- ness 64 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE quest, as in the ages of Alexander the Great and the Crusades ; or of discoveries, as in that of Cokimbus ; or of new ideas, as in those of the Reformation and the French Re^•olution. Such periods must be favourable to hterature and art, supposing the requisite conditions to exist, which is not always the case. In the Elizabethan age itself, for example, while the hterary conditions were most favourable, interest in art languished, except as regarded music. With every aUowance, it seems remarkable that the age should have achieved so little in fine art, domestic architecture excepted. So far from being an unpicturesque generation, it par dcfsus toutcs chofcs mon daincs affw qi '/ m daiqncs mc vi filer ainfy (juc tu Yiftcs tcs plus loyaulxawans hhmicnant.clfouiaLnticmc a; dmlx,d cowplams a caufc dcs mijarcs dccc wondcxt IcsfcaJ fn m qrant. doulcur ct anmfsc Car pluficujs cas loumdlcmcl ^s ^f^^ ynadmcnncni IcfLjudTfouacn^^ t^ois mc twuhlcnt,immcfan ■■ tifcnt ct ohjufqu.aii icntcacmt lu mc mulmf arandcnfct. ct ^ < A page from Queen Elizabeth's Book of Private Prayers From a MS- in (he British Museum was one of the most picturesque in English history, whether with regard to the characters of its leading personages, the incidents of their lives, the costumes in which they arrayed themselves, or the magnificence of shows and entertainments. This general pic- turesqueness communicated itself to the literature. The authors of the time are resplendent with glowing tints, and in this point of view resemble even the most uresque of those among those their successors who have not, like Byron and Shelley, led lives of adventure, as a picture re- sembles an engraving. It may justly be said that there is not one among the leading authors, statesmen, commanders, or voy- agers of the age whom it is possible to represent in a mean or prosaic light. All the artistic feeling of the period seems to have been absorbed into its daily life : the men do not make, but are pictures. The energy and undoubting self-confidence of the age are shown by the scale on which its works are undertaken. The plan of Spenser's Faery Quccne is as much grander than Ariosto's as his Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, is higher than the house of Ferrara. Raleigh cannot get away from the same sovereign under twL-nty books ; and \\']ien seeking a subject for his pen in the Tower, nothing will serA'e him but the history of the world. Sidney found the volu- minous Arcadia a pretty amusement for a summer. ]\Iarlowe condenses the morals of all miracle and myster}- plays mto one drama. Xo English writer, imtil the great re\aval after the French Revolution, has since shown an equal courage in ^xnturing upon colossal themes, except i\Iilton, and e^'en he QUEEN ELIZABETH ^S seems to have gauged the measure of his powers with more nicety tlian the Elizabethans ; he is nearer perfection, but wants their exuberance. In the present chapter we liave not to deal with Titans, but still with men of fair stature. The first person to be mentioned is Queen Elizabeth her- self, though her pen would scarcely have gained her a place in literary history if her sceptre had not made her the centre of the literary movement of her time. If she ever penned anything with the remotest view to publication it was the translations of Sallust and Boethius which she left in MS. She was admirably educated, a perfect mistress of Latin and French, as those foreign ambassadors knew at whose heads she would occasionally hurl scath- ing orations in these languages. She also spoke Italian and was not ignorant of Greek. But, with all her accomplishments, she was destitute of the taste for literature which her father and brother had possessed, and did little for the encouragement of learning or authorship in England. She kept her library up well, but chiefly by importations from abroad. She had no idea that the literary glories of her reign rivalled the political, and no appre- ciation of the honour Spenser did her by making her the central figure of the Faery Queene. A writer not far from her time does indeed affirm that Shakespeare's plays "took" her; the tradi- tion that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written at her desire is not wholly disentitled to credence •, one or ' wo pieces of verse are dubiously attributed to her ; and Raleigh really seems to have thought that he could sing himself back into her good graces. In the main, however, the bent of her mind was entirely practical, and she appears to most advantage in her letters on affairs of state. Nothing, for example, could be better than this admonition of a past-mistress in state- craft to a neophyte, the King of Scots, that if he desires to retain her friend- ship he must take heed to his ways : Right dear Brother, — Your gladsome acceptance of my offered amity, together with the desire you seem to have engraven in your mind to make merits corre- spondent, makes me in full opinion that some enemies to our good will shall lose much travail, with making frustrate their baiting stratagems, which I know to be many, and by sundry means to be explored. I cannot halt with you so much as to deny that I have seen such evident shows of your contrarious dealings that if I made not my reckoning the better of the months, I might condemn you as unworthy of such as I mind to show myself toward you, and therefore I am well pleased to take any colour to defend your honour, and hope you will remember that who seeketh two strings to one bow, he may shoot strong, but never straight ; and if you suppose that princes' causes be veiled so covertly that no intelligence may bewray them, deceive not yourself ; we old foxes can find shifts to save ourselves VOL. II E Queen Elizabeth's Signature From a MS. in the British Museum Queen Elizabeth 66 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE by others' malice, and come by knowledge of greatest secret, specially if it touch our freehold. It becometh therefore all our rank to deal sincerely, lest, if we use it not, when we do it, we be hardly believed. I write not this, my dear brother, for doubt but for remembrance. 1585. English His- One of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of Britisli hterature 'EHzab^thin ^^ ^^^ backwardness of the Britons in learning to write history. Scotland period certainly produced a distinguished historian in the days of Ehzabetli, but George Buchanan wrote in Latin, and the merit of Camden's Annals is largely due to their having been originally composed in that language. Many of the reflections in Raleigh's History of the World are worthy of any his- torian : but his narrati^•e is undertaken on too large a scale to be much more than an imperfectly digested compilation. In the middle ages English his- torians had \-ied with the best of any nation ; but now that the facilities for writing history were abundantly multiplied ; now that Machiavelli and Guicciardini and Bembo in Italy, Barros in Portugal, and somewhat later the Spaniard Mariana and the Italian Davila, were producing perfect models of history from the literary point of view, England, with the signal excep- tion of Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh, could show no admirable historical composition, originally written in the vernacular, until the time of Clarendon and Burnet, whose works, with all their excellences, partake largely of the nature of memoirs. And yet one of the earliest of English chroniclers after the invention of printing (most conveniently, however, considered here) but narrowly misses the character of an eminent historian. Edward Hall (1498 ?-i547) was a lawyer and a man of superior education. He was attached to the Reformation, and made it his especial business to panegyrise the house of Tudor in a histor}' extending from the accession of Henry IV. to the death of Henry VUL, but only fully completed by the original author to 1532. The political tendency of his book is shown by the original title. The Union of the Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York. There is a remarkable diversity in his work according as he writes as an eye-witness or otherwise. The earlier part, where he merely follows other historians, is the best in point of com- position, fluent, stately, and sonorous, though infected with an unusual number of Latin and French expressions. When writing of his own times he appears in comparison cramped and pedestrian, but shows an insight for which the former period of his history had afforded little scope ; and he is an invaluable index to the public feeling of his day. Whether applied to the dignity of the former or to the sagacity of the latter portion of his work. Bishop Creighton's dictum that his merits have hitherto met with scanty recognition is entirely correct. With less partiality and more respect for the purity of English speech he might have been our first great historian. Shakespeare has made considerable use of him. His predecessor, Robert Fabyax (died 1513), deserves remembrance as the first who attempted to reduce the narratives of his predecessors into a general history, but he has neither Hall's style nor his judgment, and is chiefly valuable from the attention which his position as an alderman led him to devote to municipal matters. His chronicle was brought down by him to the death of Henry VH. and con- tinued by anonymous writers. THE CHRONICLERS 67 The following passage is a fair example of Hall's style when he writes as an historian : Henry VI. and Queen Margaret. King Henry which reigned at this time was a man of a meek spirit and of a simple wit, preferring peace before war, rest before business, honesty before profit, and quietness before labour. And to the intent that all men might perceive that there would be none more chaste, more meek, more holy, or a better creature : in iiim reigned steadfastness, modesty, integrity, and patience to be marvelled at, taking and suffering all losses, chances, displeasures, and such worldly torments in good heart and with a patient manner as though they had clranced by his own fault and negligent oversight ; yet he was governed by those whom he should liave ruled, and bridled of such as he should sharply have spurred. He gaped not for honour, nor thirsted for riches, but studied only for the health of his soul, the saving whereof he esteemed to be the greatest wisdom, and the loss thereof the extremest folly that could be. But on the other part the Queen his wife was a woman of a great wit, and yet of no greater wit than of a liault stomach, desirous of glory, covetous of honour, and of reason, policy, counsel, and other gifts and talents be- longing to a man, full and flowing ; of wit and wili- ness she lacked nothing, nor of diligency itself and business she was not un- expert ; but yet she had one point of a very woman, for oftentime when she was fully bent on a matter she was like a weather-cock, mutable and turning. This was more perceiving that her husband did not frankly rule as he would, but did all things by the advice and counsel of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and that he pressed not much on the authority and governance of the realm, determined with herself to take upon her the rule and regiment both of the King and his kingdom, and to deprive and evict out of all authority the said Duke, then called the Lord Protector of the realm ; lest men should say and report that she had neither wit nor stomach which would permit and suffer her husband, being of perfect age and man's estate, like a young scliolar or innocent pupil to be governed by the disposition of another man. Hall's work was continued by Richard Grafton {d. 1572) and John Stow (1525 ?-i6o5). Their labours as historians are not important, except for the curious documentary information which they have preserved, but Grafton was an eminent printer and publisher, who began to print the Great Bible at Paris in 1538, and completed it in England in the following year. He was for several years printer to the Crown, and lost his post for printing the procla- John Stovy From his moimmeni in the Church of St, Andrew, Under^haft The Chro- niclers 68 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE mations of Lady Jane Grey. Stow was, after Camden and Speed, the chief antiquary of his time, and his Survey of London (1598) is a work of the highest vahie. It is a curious proof of tlie esteem in which he was held tliat tire poverty into which he fell in his latter years was mitigated by a special licence to beg. Stow's Survey has made his name a household word. Another chronicler, Hoiiitshcd Raphael Holixshed {d. 1580 ?), has obtained the same distinction on a ground which he ne^•er designed and could not foresee — the use made of his Chronicle by Shakespeare, who follows it closely throughout his historical plays, some- times merely turning it into verse. It has thus become the basis of a true national epic, a destiny of which it gave few tokens when it left the author's hands, its jortc being rather the mass of authorities adduced than dramatic liveliness or epic dignity. The literary execution is nevertheless commend- able, and there is an invaluable repertory of official documents. In partly writing, partly superintending the work, Holinshed, whose early history and connections are unknown, was labouring to carry out the plan of his deceased employer, the printer Reginald Wolfe, who had designed an encyclopsedic work on the history and geography of the world, contracted after his death to more modest proportions. Holinshed found business and literary coad- jutors, and brought out the work in 1576, complete to the previous year. After his death the book was re-edited with a continuation to 1586 by John Vowell, uncle of Richard Hooker. The freedom of speech in both issues caused friction with the powers that were, and although the original text has been restored in modern editions, unmutilated copies of the original ones are very scarce. .'/arn'son Holiushed had a valuable coadjutor in William Harrison (1534-1593), an Essex clergyman, and after 1586 a canon of Windsor, whose Description of England precedes the Chronicle. The testimony of this highly trustworthy work to the general improvement in the education of the upper classes has already been quoted, and Harrison is equally instructive upon all the multi- farious topics touched by him. We are indebted to him for a more compre- hensi\-e and accurate view of the general tendencies of the Elizabethan era than would otherwise have been possible, and his style is invariably lively and pleasant. He also turned Bellenden's translation of Hector Boece's Latin history of Scotland from Scottish speech into English, and left behind him a \-oluminous chronology and a treatise on weights and measures, which still exist in MS. John Fo.xe It maybe doubted whether John Foxe, the Martyrologist (1516-1587), can, any more than the chroniclers, be properly reckoned among historians. As their works are merely annals, deficient in the polish and finish befitting history ; so his is a collection of narratives, rather the material of history than history itself, yet almost a connected whole in virtue of unity of subject and the pervading spirit of the writer. No subject could be better adapted to call forth strength of feeling ; and if The Book of Martyrs is grie\'ously deficient in the calm moderation and impartiality essential to the accomplished Title-page of Holinshed's "Chronicles," i577 7° HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE historian, such dispassionate treatment is not to be expected from one upon whose garments is still the smell of fire. Foxe might claim with ^Eneas to have himself been a portion of his record. The Reformation had no more convinced or stalwart champion. Born at Boston in 1516, distinguished in boyhood for a studious turn, and sent to Oxford by friends about 1532, he soon took his place among the members of the most advanced reforming party, and in 1545 resigned the fellowship which he had gained at Mag- dalen in 1539 on account of his indisposition to submit to celibacy, attend chapel regularly, or take orders. Five other fellows imitated his example. They were not, as frequently stated, ex- pelled, but, according to the record in the college register, ex honesta causa sponte reces- seruHi. As so frequently the case since, the exile for con- science' sake found a refuge in private tutorship. He appears to ha\'e been for a time in the house of the Lucj's at Charlecote, where he instructed the young man destined to be carried to fame upon the pinions of Shakespeare, and married Agnes Randall, a domestic or dependant. Coming to London to push his fortune, he is represented by a pro- bably apocryphal biography, attributed to his son, to ha^•e experienced great pri\'ations, but ultimately, in 1548, he gained the honourable post of tutor to the orphan children of the legally murdered Earl of Surrey, who had been executed in the pre\'ious year. Surrey's sister, tlie Duchess of Richmond, was a Protestant, and his father, as a prisoner in the Tower, was secluded from all control over his family. When released at the accession of Queen ilary, he immediately dismissed Foxe, who had, however, in the interval gained the affection of his pupils to such an extent that he continued to pay them clandestine visits, and their attachment was not dissoh-ed e^'enby the future Duke of Norfolk's participating in the unhappy conspiracy which brought him to the block in the days of Queen Elizabeth. John Foxe After the port rail in llic Nationc I Portrait Gallery FOXE'S "MARTYRS" 71 Foxe had meanwhile written several Protestant tracts in Latin and English, and received deacon's orders from Bishop Ridley, and shortly after Mary's accession found it advisable to withdraw to the Continent. He first abode at Strasburg, where he published in Latin the first book of his great work, chiefly devoted to the lives of Wycliffe and Huss. He removed to Frankfort, and after a while, finding his residence uncomfortable on account of the quarrels between the different parties among the Reformers, migrated to Basel, where he became a reader of the press in the office of the celebrated printer and publisher Oporinus. After producing an allegorical Latin drama, Christus Trhwiphans, and an append for toleration, addressed to the English Govern- ment, he set to work vigorously to complete his history of religious persecution. The portion dealing with England and Scotland, still in Latin, was published in 1559, under the title Rcruui in ccclesia gestaruin, maximavuinque per Europam perseciitioniun comuiciitarii. An account of the persecutions in other European countries was to have followed, but Foxe relinquished this part of the under- taking, and it was subsequently added by another hand. For some time after his return, Foxe's chief care was the translation of his Latin history into English. The Acts and Monuments, as the vernacular version was entitled, was published on March 20, 1563, the same day as that on which the Latin continuation appeared at Basel. The book immediately gained celebrity, fame and authority under the popular title of The Book of Martyrs, yet no new edition was called for until 1570, when it received the imprimatur of the Church of England in the most unmistakable fashion by a resolution of Convocation that copies should be placed in cathedral churches and in the houses of the superior clergy. Foxe's private influence as an adviser upon religious matters became very great ; beyond this he could not go, for although he had taken priest's orders, scruples as admirable in their dis- interestedness as deplorable for their narrowness, kept him from accepting any other preferment than a prebend at Salisbury. The rest of his life was spent usefully and honourably over various literary and theological perform- ances. He edited the Anglo-Saxon text of the Gospels and the regulations of the reformed Church of England, he preached against the Papal buU depos- ing Elizabeth, he vainly interceded on behalf of victims condemned to death for anabaptism. He died in April 1587, and was buried in St. Giles's, Cripple- gate, the church where Milton also is interred. The Book of Martyrs, as it always will be called, is so thoroughly identi- " The Book ■1-11 • 1 1 /^i" 1 r of Marlvrs fied in the popular mmd with the persecutions undergone by the Church of England in the reign of Mary that few are aware that its real title is The Acts and Monuments, that it professes to record all persecutions since the founda- tion of Christianity, and that of the eight volumes which it occupies in Canon Townsend's edition less than two treat of the persecutions of Protestants. The greater part of the work, consequently, can be little else than a com- pilation, and this character is unfortunately almost as applicable to the transactions of Foxe's own times as to the dim traditions of the ages of Decius and Diocletian. Foxe, having been a fugitive at the height of the Marian 72 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE persecution, had no first-hand knowledge of the course of events, and was obliged to depend mainly upon the information transmitted to him from England. This was necessarily of unequal value, nor were the circumstances of the author himself such as to render him a nice or exacting critic of the materials submitted to him. He could not but write under the influence of intense indignation, and the more he found in his authorities to justify this feeling the better satisfied he was likely to be. This is but human nature ; he could no more be expected to write with studious equity and balanced moderation than, as he said when defending himself from another charge, " to fine and mince my letters and comb my head and smooth myself all the day at the glass of Cicero." It is right to scrutinise his narratives in a critical spirit, but not to prefer charges of deliberate falsification against the narrator. With all its faults. The Book of Martyrs is the epic of the martyr age of the Church of England, the only such age that Church has known since the times of the Danes, whose atrocities fail to impress from the obscurity and imperfec- tion of the record. The vexations suff'ered from the Puritans in the seven- teenth century are far below the pitch of martyrdom, and were in a measure retaliatorj/ : in the Marian persecution, and in that only, English archbishops, bishops, and priests were burned at the instance of a foreign Church. There or nowhere will the epic be found of a Church which has never known a cata- strophe, though scarcely a generation has passed without her being proclaimed to be in danger. Foxe's vigour and pathos are not unworthy of his mission ; his work has gained by the use which he has made of the simple narratives of homely men. The following are characteristic examples. Dr. Rowland Taylor. After two days, the sheriff and his company led Dr. Taylor towards Hadley ; and coming within two miles of Hadley he desired to light off his horse, which done, he leaped, and set a frisk or twain, as men commonly do in dancing. " Why, master doctor," quoth the sheriff, " how do you run ? " He answered, " Well, God be praised, good master sheriff, never better : for now I know I am almost at home. I lack not past two stiles to go over, and I am even at my Father's house. But, master sheriff," said he, " shall we not go through Hadley ? " " Yes," said the sheriff, " you shall go through Hadley." " Then," said he, " O good Lord ! I thank thee, I shall yet once ere I die see my flock, whom thou, Lord, knowest I have most heartily loved, and truly taught. Good Lord ! bless them, and keep them steadfast in thy word and truth." When they were now come to Hadley, and came riding over the bridge, at the bridge-foot waited a poor man with five small children ; who when he saw Dr. Taylor, he and his children fell down upon their knees, and held up their hands, and cried with a loud voice, and said, " O dear father and good shepherd Dr. Taylor, God help and succour thee, as thou has many a time succoured me and my poor children." Such witness had the servant of God of his virtuous and charitable alms given in his lifetime : for God would the poor should testify of his good deeds, to his singular comfort, to the example of others, and confusion of his persecutors and tyrannous adversaries. So the sheriff and others that led him to death were wonderfully astonished at this : and the sheriff sore rebuked the poor man for so crying. The streets of Hadley were beset on both sides the way with men and women of the town and country who waited to see him ; whom when they beheld so led to death, with weeping -5 ^Ajl and Monuments of tijcfe latter anti prnlloas; liapcfi, touftjingmattergoftljeCiiiicc&.totietein attompjcbcnUcD ano 0cTcnlicBtl)cgtcatptrr;:ti5 tions d bofnble tcoubles, ibat banc bcirttmoug:! t ana pfactifcti b? tbe iAomiOjc 0iclatc3,rpecialj IjE m tbis Ucalrac of CiiglanD ana «Mai; lanDc . fcom tbt peace of our iLojDc a tboufanBc , tmco tbc cyme iiotDC pfcicnt. Gatlicrcdaiid coUcfted accordint^ to the rcBE copice j toiytmgcB ccctificatoiic aa mrl of tbc panics tbtmfclucstt)atruffccc£i.,a!j al(o cut of tbc iBifljopB ucgiBtcs, tobitb vccc tbc D0CC3 lijccof, b^ hhn Faxc. f Imprinted at London by lohn Day^ OvcUvns ouer aiDcrfgate. Cuin pnuiicgioR-cgi^ Mjicftiti), Title-page of Foxe's " Book of Martyrs," 1563 74 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE eyes and lamentable voices they cried, saying one to another, "Ah, good Lord! there goeth our good shepherd from us, who so faithfully hath taught us, so fatherly hath cared for us, and so godly hath governed us. O merciful God ! what shall we poor scattered lambs do ? What shall come of this most wicked world ? Good Lord, strengthen him and comfort him," with such other most lamentable and piteous voices. Wherefore the people were sore rebuked by the sheriff and the catchpoles his men, that led him. And Dr. Taylor evermore fj^The defcription of Smythfielde mth the order and manor ofccrtaj»neoftljECo«nceH,fyttmgtljcrcattI)c biirnftig ofannc .IflicUJcanoLacclsujitljttjtotbsrj. The Burning of Anne Askew at Smithfield From " The Book of Marfyrs^' said to the people, " I have preached to you God's word and truth, and am come this day to seal it with my blood.''' The Martyrdom of Thom.as Haukes. A little before his death, certain there were of his familiar acquaintance and friends, who frequented his company more familiarly, who seemed not a little to be confirmed both by the example of his constancy and by his talk ; yet notwithstanding, the same again, being feared with the sharpness of the punish- ment which he was going to, privily desired that in the midst of the flames, he would show them, if he could, some token whereby they might be the more certain whether the pain of such burning were so great that a man might not therein keep his mind quiet and patient. Which thing he promised them to do, and so, secretly between them, it was agreed that if the rage of the pain were tolerable and might be suffered, then he should lift up his hands Church of En^rland FOXE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 75 above his head towards heaven before he gave up the ghost. Not long after, when the hour was come, Thomas Haukes was led away to the place appointed for the slaughter, by the Lord Riche and his assistants, who, being now come unto the stake, mildly and patiently addressed himself to the fire, having a strait chain cast about his middle, with no small multitude of people on every side compassing him about : unto whom after he had spoken many things, especially unto the Lord Riche, reasoning with him of the innocent blood of the saints ; at length after his fervent prayers first made and poured out unto God, the fire was set unto him. In the which when he continued long, and when his speech was taken away by violence of the flame, his skin also drawn together, and his fingers consumed with the fire, so that now all men thought certainly that he had been gone, suddenly, and contrary to all expectation, the blessed servant of God, being mindful of his promise afore made, reached up his hands burning on a light fire, which was marvellous to behold, over his head to the living God, and with great rejoicing, as it seemed, struck or clapped them three times together. At i he sight whereof here followed such applause and outcry of the people, and especially of them which understood the matter, that the like hath not commonly been heard, and you would have thought heaven and earth to have come logethe . And so the blessed man, martyr of Christ, straightway sinking down inlo the fire, gave up his spirit, a.d. 1555, June 10. And thus have you plainly and expressly described unto you the whole story as well of the life as of the death of Thomas Haukes, a most constant and faithful witness of Christ's holy gospel. Besides its other claims to notice, Foxe's book is remarkable as, with the Foxeandthe exception of Hooker's, the one theological work of the age which has a place in literature. In scarcely any other period of our history has religious con- troversy aroused more interest, or the proportion of theological publications been so considerable ; but the controversialists were too strictly professional, and sermons and devotional works fell below the level of literature. Bishop Jewel's Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana was indeed a great work, but as the gainsayers wrote in Latin, the apologist must imitate them, and the trans- lation, by Lady Bacon, mother of the Chancellor, failed to obtain the classical position in English literature which the original had acquired in divinity. The theological unrest, nevertheless, was indirectly of great service to literature by the spirit of keen inquiry which it fostered and the patriotic scorn of Roman pretensions which inspires so much of our contemporary literature, and finds poetical expression in Shakespeare's King John. It has been well said that Pope Pius V.'s deposition of Elizabeth in 1570 signalises the liberation of the English mind in every department of the intellectual life. A very few years previously the ecclesiastical authorities had issued a thanksgiving for the relief of Malta, without a word to indicate consciousness of any difference between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Churches of the Continent, but after Pius's ill-advised step, promptly followed by Babington's conspiracy and the St. Bartholomew, nothing of the kind is to be found. It could not be supposed, however, that the spirit of inquiry would be satisfied with the repudiation of Papal pretensions. Ere long, the conflict between Anglican and Puritan became still more lively, pene- trating every university college, and producing shoals of Marprelate tracts and similar scurrilities, far below literary rank, yet not unimportant as preludes to the free newspaper press of later generations. The publication abroad William Camden 76 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of Roman Catholic writings, especially by Cardinal Allen and the Jesuit Parsons, contributed towards the same end. On the whole, however, the di\'ines of the sixteenth centurv, except in zeal and erudition, rank below their successors of the next age. Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504-1575) is, indeed, entitled to the highest praise as the munificent and enlightened patron of learning, the principal agent in the production of the Bishops' Bible, and the preserver of much Anglo-Saxon and other ancient literature ; but his chief work, De Antiquitate Ecclesice et Privilegiis Ecclesia Cantuariensis, is in Latin. Nor were the departments of literature most nearly allied to theology fertile in eminent writers. Richard Mulcaster, successively headmaster of Merchant Tajiors' and of St. Paul's {1530 ?-i6ii), was probably a better prac- tical educationist than Roger Ascham, but ranks much lower as an author. As a rule, an author whose works have been originally composed in Latin, and subsequently rendered into English, cannot claim to be accounted an English author, unless the translation has been made b}' himself. We have had, nevertheless, to recognise exceptions to this rule in Mandeville and Sir Lhomas ;\Iore, and a third and hardly less important one must be made in the person of ^^'ILLIAM Camden, whose Britannia and Annals, though written in Latin, are so intensely English in spirit that the question of language becomes of minor importance. There is, moreover, reason to believe that the translation of the former by Philemon Hohand, though not Camden's own, was made under his direction. It is, at all events, certain that Camden's work as a topographer was more important than that which had gained an honourable place in literature for his predecessor Leland ; and that he was the first English historian of contemporary events who rose above the grade of a chronicler. Camden's life was that of a schoolmaster and an antiquary. He was born in London on May 2, 155 1 ; his father, a native of Lichfield, is described as a painter, but seems to have followed his profession rather as a trade than as an art. Camden was educated at Christ's Hospital and at St. Paul's School, and seems to have been helped through Oxford partly by friends, partly as a servitor or chorister at ]*Iagdalen College. He afterwards studied at Pembroke and Christ Church, but did not obtain a degree. Even then he showed a strong inclination to antiquarian pursuits, in which he was en- couraged by a fellow student at Christ Church, Philip Sidney. After leaving the University he tra\-elled much through the country, coUecting antiquarian particulars, but his means of support seem obscure until, in 1575, he was appointed assistant-master at Westminster School. He became headmaster in 1593, but in 1597 retired upon being appointed Clarenceux King-of-Arms, which seems to have been considered the higher dignity, and was certainly more congenial to one who had spent all his holiday time in antiquarian journeys- He, nevertheless, distinguished himself as a schoolmaster by the production of a Greek grammar, which continued in use at ^^'estminster for more than two centuries. The first edition of his Britannia had been published in 1586, the last published in his lifetime appeared in 1607. His other great work, WILLIAM CAMDEN 77 the Annals of the reign of Ehzabeth, was pubhshed down to 1589 in 1615 ; the second part, completing the book, did no^ appear till after the author's death. Both these great works were in Latin, but translations were speedily provided, and the former has had three, the standard version by Gough, with copious additions, appearing in 1789. Camden also collected the epitaphs in Westminster Abbey, edited Asser and other ancient historians, and per- formed much other antiquarian work. In personal character he was gentle, simple, and unworldly, and his industry was prodigious. In his latter years he resided principally at Chislehurst, where he died on November 9, 1623. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Of Camden's two chief works, XhtBritannia belongs to the class of monumental achievements which form great literary landmarks without being in themselves literature. Continuing the succession of Leland, it marks the definitive accept- ance of antiquarianism as a branch of culture, while its own spirit is rather scientific than literary. The essence of literary grace is tasteful selection, but the topographer must be ex- haustive. Pausanias pro- bably provided but dry reading for his own age : if it be otherwise now, it is from the conscious- ness that so much of what he saw can never be seen again. The piety of Pausanias was piety in the strictest sense of the term : Camden treads in the vestiges, not of the gods, but of the historians. " My first and principal design," he says, " was to trace out and rescue from obscurity those places which had been mentioned by Cjesar, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Antoninus Augustus, the Notitife Provinciarum, and other ancient writers." He also confined himself to the most illustrious families, thus incurring the displeasure of upstarts. Altogether, he left so much untold that his translator, Gough, sjient seven years in rendering and supplementing him, and nine more in seeing him through the press. Gough's additions are frequently more in- teresting than the text, but want the charm of Camden's stately diction, a legacy from the original Latin. It has rarely happened that a book of worth, not lost or grievously William Camden Af/er the portrait by Mark Ghecraedts Cattidcii's " Britannia ' 78 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE " Afiuals ' mutilated, has failed of meet recognition from posterity- If tliere ever has been such a case, it lias been that of Camden's second great work, the Annals of Qiiccii Elizabeth. All circumstances miglrt have seemed to conspire in its fa\'our : the theme, whicli miglrt confer the distinction of a national prose epic upon a book of less worth ; the real merit of the execution ; the very fact of its being a translation from the Latin, which brings the style nearer to that of our own day. England might have been thought the least likely of all nations to neglect a relation of one of the most glorious epochs of her history ; or at least, had the muta- tions of taste brought about a temporary eclipse, Camden might have been expected to have shared in the great Elizabethan revival of the nineteentli century. On the contrarv, there has been no edition of the Latin original since 1717, or of either of the English translations since a still earlier period. Few Englishmen know that the patient antiquary produced a book worthy to rank with Sliakespeare's histor- ical plays and Hakluyt's records of voyages as a true prose epic. ]ilerely considered as an historian, Camden is far above mediocritj' ; his work, but for the excessive space accorded to the trial and execution of INlary Stuart, is well proportioned, and shows acquaintance with the best models ; few annalists have so suc- cessfully avoided the annalist's habitual drjmess. The merit, nevertheless, is rather moral than literary, con- sisting in the tine glow of patriotic feeling which throughout maintains the narrati%-e at epical height, while the treatment of enemies is fair and courteous. The work has the inestimable advantage of being composed at a period neither too near to nor too remote from the transactions described ; written under James, it is a retrospect taken when calm judgment had ceased to be obscured by contemporarv passions. The execution is singularly even, there are few great passages, but there is the cumulative charm of the ceaseless and orderly procession of picturesque details, the glory of the times rather than of the author, whose skill is mainlv conspicuous in the judicious marshalling of them, and in the skill with which Elizabeth, with more poetical than historical truth, is made throughout the dominant figure, the life and soul of every undertaking. One reason of the neglect of the work may be its character as a translation, although its adoption into the national literature proves John Speed After the portrait in the Xational Portrait Gallery CAMDEN'S "ANNALS" 79 that a foreign origin need be no insuperable bar. Tlie existing versions, one of which is made from the French, are respectable rather than brilliant ; a new translation, conformable to the best modern standard, would be an midcrtaking worthy of a scholar and a patriot. The following extracts are fair examples of Camden's style, as he appears in his translator Norton : The Taking of Calais by the Spaniards. In the midst of these tumults of Ireland, Albert, Archduke of Austria and Cardinal, whom the Spaniard had made Governor of the Netherlands, suddenly withdrew the Queen's mind from Irish matters. For as soon as he had taken upon him the government, he gathered together the Spania ds' forces as if he proposed to raise the siege at La Fere, a town of Picardy, and beyond the opinion of all men turned aside to Calais and besieged it, and having the first day taken the castle of Newenham, became master of the haven. As soon as the Queen heard by the fearful messenger of the French king that Calais was be- sieged, she commanded a power of men to be gathered, that very day being Sunday, while men were at divine service, to aid the French king, and in that provide for the safety of England. For she could not but suspect that England might be burned with the fire in her neighbour's country. This army hastily raised she committed to Essex. But before they were shipped, she had certain advertise- ment that both the town and the castle were yielded up into the Spaniards' hands, for when with the mutual thundering of the ord- nance, the report of which was heard as far as Greenwich, the Archduke Albert had shaken the walls, the townsmen withdrew themselves to the castle, which within few days also was easily taken with great slaughter of the Frencli. Hereupon was the English army presently discharged, and some money lent unto the French king, the Dukes of Bouillon and Sancy passing their words for the same. Character of Burghley. When she was Queen, he was made a privy counsellor and secretary : and after the decease of Sir Thomas Parry she gave him the office of JNIaster of the Wards in the third year of her reign. Which place he executed, as he did all his other, providently for the benefit of his prince and the wards, for his own profit moderatelv, and for the benefit of his own followers bountifully, yet without offence, and in all hings with great commendation for his integri y, insomuch that the Queen admiring his wisdom committed in a manner the managing of the whole state unto him. His prudence and fidelity in the weightiest businesses having been approved the space of full thirteen years, the Queen honoured him with the title of Baron of Burghley, and then made him Lord High Treasurer of England. In which office, detesting to scrape money together by bad practices. Sir Thomas Bodley HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Othcy Anti- quaries he increased, as his private estate, so also the pubhc treasure, bv his industry and parsimony. For he hardly suffered anything to be expended for the Queen's ^lajesty's honour and the defence of the realm, or the relieving of our neighbours. He looked strictly, ^-et not roughly, to the farmers of the customs. He never liked, as he was wont to say, that the treasury should grow as the spleen, and the rest of the members languish, and herein he happily bent his best endeavours that both prince and people might grow rich together, saying oftentimes that nothing is profitable to a prince which is not joined with honour. Wherefore he would have no rents raised upon lands, nor old farmers and tenants put out. Which also he obser\"ed in his own private estate, which he managed with that integrity that he never sued any man, and no man ever sued him. But I will not go too far in his praises, yet may I say truly that he was in the number of those few who have both li\-ed and died with glory. In the realms of Sir Robert Cotton From a print after tlie portrait by Paul var. Sovicr antiquariaiiism Camden had in his day no competitor, but he did not stand alone. The painstaking Stow has already been mentioned along \vith the chro- niclers, and his archjeology \vas better than his history. John Speed (1552? -1629) raised anti- quarianism more nearly to the dignity of history, and, having anticipated Camden's Annals by four j-ears by the publication of The History of Great Britain in 161 1, has some claim to rank as the first English historian. He also had great merit as a charto- grapher. Sir Thomas Bodley and Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, though not eminent as writers, immor- talised their names as benefactors to learning. The great scientific glories of their country in this age, \\'iLLi.\M Gilbert, the discoverer the discoverer of the circulation of of magnetism, and \\'illiaji Harve\ the blood, \vrote entirely in Tatin. It has been already remarked that the first standard histories produced in England partake largely of the nature of memoirs. The same is true of one of the two chief contributions to Scottish history produced in the reign of Elizabeth, both works never to be forgotten, but only in one instance claiming a place in British hterature. " Charm " is not a term frequently John Kno.x applicable to iconoclastic John Knox (1505-1572), but it is fuUy merited by the autobiographic portion of his History of the Reformation in Scotland. In general this celebrated book cannot be other than a party manifesto, and few such manifestoes have been more virulent and abusive. It is not on that account to be deemed unveracious. It bears throughout the impress of JOHN KNOX 8i entire conviction ; its vivid portraits of tlie autlior's adversaries no less tlian of Iris friends bear every internal evidence of accuracy ; and, without effort or conscious intention, the author is especially successful in painting liimsclf to the life. His celebrated account of his discourse to Mary, Queen of Scots, for example, depicts the man who united the statesman to the prophet, a John the Baptist who would have been a match for Herod and Herodias together, and in whom the iron rigour of a Calvin was tempered by some- thing of the geniality of a Luther : The Queen looked about to some of the reporters, and said, " Your words are sharp enough as you have spoken them, but yet they were told to me in another manner. I know that my uncles and you are not of one religion, and therefore I cannot blame yo i albei", you have no good opinion of them. But if you hear anything of myself that mishkes you, come to myself and tell me, and I shall hear you." " Madam," quoth he, " I am assured that your uncles are enemies to God and unto his son Jesus Christ, and that for main- tenance of their own pomp and worldly glory they spare not to spill the blood of many inno- cents ; and therefore I am assured that their enterprises shall have no better success than others have had that before them have done that they do now. But as to your own personage. Madam, I would be glad to do all that I could to 3'our Grace's contentment, provided that I exceed not the bounds of my vocation. I am called, ]\fadam, to a public function within the Kirk of God, and am appointed by God to rebuke the sins and vices of all. I am not appointed to come 1o every man in particular to show him his offence ; for that labour were infinite. If your Grace please to frequent the public sermons, then doubt I not but you shall fully understand both what I like and mislike, as well in your Majesty as in all others. Or if your Grace will assign unto me a certain day and hour when it will please you to hear the form and substance of doctrine which is pro- l)0unded in public to the churches of this realm, I will most gladly await upon your Grace's pleasure, time, and place. But to wait upon your chamber-door, or else- where, and then to have no further liberty but to whisper my mind into your Grace's ear, or to tell to you what others think and speak of you, neither will my conscience nor the vocation whereto God hath called me suffer it. For albeit at your Grace's VOL. II F John Knox After the portrait in llie A'atio/iat Portrait Gallery HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Gi'orffe Buchanan Other Sc'ol/ish historians iihard Ha/:lnyt commandment I am here now, yet cannot I tell what other men shall judge of me, that at this time of day am absent from my book and waiting upon the Court." " You will not always," said she, " be at your book," and so turned her back. And the said John Knox departed with a reasonable merry countenance, whereat some Papists offended said, " He is not affrayed." Which heard of him, he answered, "Why should the pleasing face of a gentle woman affray me ? I have looked into the faces of many angry men, and yet have not been affrayed above measure." And so he left the Queen and the Court for that time. The influence of George Buchanan (1506-1582) upon his country was only second to that of Knox : as lier national historian, ablest political writer, and chief representative of the humanities. In every circumstance of his life he is interesting ; most so, perhaps, as the antagonist of the divine right of kings while directing the education of the future King of Great Britain and Ireland. His honourable poverty leaves no doubt of the sincerity of his convictions ; whether he did or did not pro- mote good ends by wicked means is a pro- blem no nearer solution than when it was first broached. Had he written his History and his De Jure Rcgni in the Scotch ver- nacular he might have given this racy dialect permanent rank as a literary language ; but he was too proud of his consummate Latin, and, perhaps, judged wisely in resolving not to forfeit his fame and influence upon the Continent. Take him altogether, in his scholarship, his wanderings, his perils from George Buchanan the Inquisition, his free thought in politics From an oij aigraving and, pcrhaps, in religion, his studious life and loose verses, he is as perfect a type of the Renaissance man of letters as the Renaissance can show. Contemporaneously with Buchanan, Scotland had a delightful gossiping chronicler in Robert Lyndesay of Pitscottie ; a fair historian of modern times in Bishop John Leslie of Ross ; and a lively memoir-writer in Sir John Melville, gentleman of the chamber to Mary Stuart, whose graphic account of Queen Elizabeth's inquisitiveness about his mistress is familiar to most readers. Few writers of the age of Elizabeth have left a more enviable reputation than one who, though endowed with a fine style and a weighty cast of thought^ wrote httle, but edited much. The life of Richard Hakluyt (155:^ ? -1616) was consecrated to two purposes equally patriotic : that of preserving the memory of his countrymen's exploits in fields of travel and adventure, and of indicating further means for the promotion of the wealth and commerce of the nation. These he sought to promote by collecting and printing the unpublished narratives of English explorers of all parts of the world, adding translations by himself and others of the relations of foreign voyagers where PRINCIPAL NAVI- GATIONS, VOIAGES, TRAFFIQVESAND DISCO- uenes of the Englifti Nation, made by Sea or oucr-land , to the remote and fartheft di- ftanc quarters of the Earth, at any time within thccompafTeofihefc 1500. yccrcs: Dcu.dcd into three fcuerall Volumes, according lo the poiidons of the Rcgtons,whcrcumo they were dircfcei This firft Volume containing the woorthy DifcouerieSj &c. of the Englifli toward the North and Northeaft by Tea, as of Lapknd,Scrikfnu,Corelti,the Baie of S. Nicolas, the Iflcs of Col- go/eue,yaJgat^Sind Noaa Zemhla, toward the great riuerO^, with the mighty Empire pf Rujisa,tht CtJ^ian kifieor- git, Ky^rmenia, Media, Pcrjit, Boghar in Ba^ria, and diucrs kingdoms oiTartaria : Together with many notable monuments and teftimo. nics of the ancient forren trades, and of the warreUke and othetniippingofthisrcalmcof£»(;/<*^ — -^--^^ ^ A^Pt*A/'^ '^^^c^^ ,«^^^.. -. /k^cKi^ UMi/Ly Facsimile of a portion of the MS. of the spurious "English Mercurie' British Museum, Bireh MS. 4106 chronology, on account of the claim set up and long admitted for England as the nation which first gave newspapers to the world. "By the wisdom of Elizabeth and the prudence of Burleigh," it was affirmed, the English Mer- curie had been established in 1588, to convey official intelligence respecting loS: HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the THE N' 51- the progress of tlie Spanish Armada. Who could doubt this when the paper was in the Alanuscript Department of the British Museum, open to the inspection of all the world ? So it was, but nobodv inspected it, and statement was repeated unchallenged in a hundred places between 1794 and 1839, when Vlt. Thomas \\'atts, after- wards Keeper of Printed Books at the iMuseum, had the curiosity to look at it, and " the success- ful imposition of fifty years was shattered to pieces in fiye minutes." Paper and J,,, ,^ , ^, , , T^, , . r , , ■ T, r • print were of the L/L/ 2 2d. The whole Fleete being come up,weefayled in PurlLiUe . of the Enemie, who bore along by the Starte; a large Ship be- eighteenth century, longinge to the G/yyiw/iToanSqiiadrOne having beenefet onFire by a and two ilS. copies of numbers, from the numerous corrections eyidentl}/ the first drafts of the author, are eighteenth cen- ivay also. It is almost certain that the fabricator was Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hard\\icke, who had already' essayed a more inno- cent mj'stification as the writer of The At lie 11 i a 11 Letters. News-letters register- ing particular occur- rences circulated wideh' both in nianuscript and print m most European countries during the early ])art of tlie se\'enteentli century ; but no periodical deyoted to news appeared in England until, on Alay 23, 1622, Nathaniel Butter, Nicholas Bunne, and Thomas Archer issued the ]]'eckly A^ews from Italy, Germany, &c. German}-, howe\er, had been beforehand with England, the Frankfurter Journal lia\-ing been commenced m 1615. Publillied by A U T H O R I T I E, For the Prevention of falfe Reportcs. TVhilehall, July z6th 1588. ji 'Journal of vihiit ha! pa/pJ fince the zi^ of this Month, betweiti her Majcjlie's Fleetc and that of Spayne ; tranfmitted by the horde Highe yldmirall to the Lordes of the Council!. 'ULT 2 2d. The whole Fleete being come up,weefayled inPurfuite of the Enemie, who bore along by the Starte; a large Ship be- longinge to the Guypufcoan Sqiiadrone having beene fet onFire by a DutchGunnz!, that thought himfelf ill ufed, and very much da-, maged, the Enemie were forced to abandon and turne her a drift. The Lnrde Thomas Howard and Capt. Hawkins were by the Admirall's ordfflr fente on board her; they toundelhe Dooks r»lkn i», ihc Steerage- broken, the Stern blowne out,and fifty poore Saylors bumte with Powder in a moft terrible Manner. In this inyferable Condition, fhe was immediately fente into fi^eymouth. This Galleon had the Enemie's niilitarie Chefte on board, which they removed into another Ship, before we tooke her. The following NighteprovingcaJme.thefoureGalleafles of TV^z^Vi'j fingled themfelves out, as if they woulde fall upon feme of our Ships, which had advanced too farre from the Line, but they attempted noething. ytify 23d. The 'Sfanif Armado, which was now come over againft Portland, tacked about, and ftoode in towardes theShoare, which wa likewife did. After feverall Attemptes to get the Winde of each other, a fmart Engagement began: ThtTriumph, (commaunded by Rear-Ad- m\xd\\ Forbijt.vr), with the Reft of his E)ivifione, having fallen to Lee- ward were brifkly attacqued by Don Juan de Reca'de: Tliey had warme Worke for an Houre and halfe, when the Lorde Admiral oblerved them to be in feme Diftrefle,and bore downe with his owne Ship,thc Elizabeth C Jonas, A page of the spurious " English Mercurie" CHAPTER III SPENSER AND MINOR ELIZABETHAN POETS An ancient emblem, recalled to the recollection of the present time by the genius of Burne-Jones, expresses the inexorable revolution of the Wheel of Fortune. As originally conceived, three kings are represented revolving along with the fateful wheel. From the mouth of the one who is descending proceeds the legend, " I have been " ; another, surmounting the summit of the circumference, proudly declares, " I am " ; a third, ascending, yet more proudly announces, " I am to be." The representation might serve for an allegory of the condition in the middle of the sixteenth century of the three countries, Italy, Portugal, and England, each of which enriched the later Renaissance with a national epic poet. Tasso was driven to seek a theme in the past. The subject of his epic is not national, except in so far as he has contri\'ed to connect it with the House of Ferrara, but he is only too faithful a representative of his country, still teeming with beauty, but deeply infected with that poison of the Counter Reformation which ultimately so nearly destroyed her intellectual life. We blush to be told that the Jeru- salem Delivered was revised by ecclesiastics with the full assent of the author. Milton's licenser at one time would fain have silenced him, but never presumed to mend him. Camoens — though the symptoms of decay were already be- ginning to appear — celebrates his country at the height of her fame and glory. Spenser, like the third king in the emblem proclaiming what is not yet but is to be, sets forth the coming glories in a majestic but obscure allegory. The three poets whom we have thus brought together do indeed wear a family likeness, only to be explained by the degree in which they are repre- sentatives of their age. Perhaps in no age have the characters of cavalier and poet been so perfectly united as in the sixteenth century. Poets continue to be usually men of breeding, but, as is inevitable from the great development of literature, the man of letters has encroached upon the courtier and the soldier. In the sixteenth century it is often difficult to decide which type is more prominent in the individual. In Tasso the scholar, in Spenser the courtier, in Camoens the soldier almost rival the poet ; but all characters blend together to compose a singularly attractive personality. We shall have to speak further of Spenser's relation to the great contemporary poets of the Continent, and here only note the remarkable circumstance that, while Tasso and Camoens and Ariosto are famous all over Europe, Spenser, except to the English-speaking peoples, is almost unknown. This is no isolated phe- nomenon ; with the exception of Shakespeare and Milton, our most exquisite singers are far less appreciated abroad than those whom we should place in the I lO HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Edmund Spenser second rank. If our Wordsworths and Shellevs and Spensers should ever force themseh-es upon recalcitrant Europe as Shakespeare and Scott and Byron have done, we shall see another literary revolution and a second Romantic School. Edmund Spenser, though born in East Smithfield, probably in 1552, was of Lancashire extraction, liis father having migrated to London from the neighbour- hood of Burnlev. The familv was weU connected, but Spenser's father, like many another cadet of a good house, was compelled to resort to trade, and several years after the poet's birth is found exercising " the art and mystery of clothmaking '' in the service of N.cholas Peele, whom, remembering Robert Peel, we must con- One of the School-rooms at Merchant Taylors, where Spenser was educated elude to have been a Lancashire man also. It was but natural that the younger Spenser, doubtless a youth of promise, should obtain admittance to Jlerchant Taylors' School, just founded, and the rather as the warden of the Company at the time was a namesake, and probably a relation. In due time Spenser went tj Pembroke Hall, afterwards College, at Cambridge, and is mentioned among thirtv-one scholars from London grammar schools admitted to the L'niversity in 1569. In the same year he anonymouslv translated poems from Du Bellay and Petrarch as letterpress for woodcuts introduced to enliven A Theatre ]or Worldlings, a moral tract translated from the Flemish. He must, therefore, have studied modern as well as classical languages, and his Lmiversity career, though frequentlv interrupted by ill-health, was distinguished and profitable. He contracted manv friendships, the most important being that with the sour and rancorous, but able and learned. Gabriel Harvey, the " Hobbinol " of The SPENSER 1 1 1 Shepherd's Calendar. After quitting Cambridge in 1576 he repaired for a while to the original abode of his famil}' in the North, and conceived an unreturned passion for the nymph whom he celebrates as Rosalind, in which name, he tells us, the lady's actual appellation is concealed. She is usually thought to have been Rose Dyneley, the daughter of a yeoman near Clitheroe. She appears in his writings as late as Colin Clout's Come Home Again (1591) Rose, and twitched his mantle blue ; At length the disconsolate swain In 1577 or 1578 he became a member of the household of the Earl of Leicester, perhaps the best position he could have forsaking his Lancashire witch for I ondon Pembroke College, Cambridge From I.oogiut's " Cantabri^id /Ih/strata,^' i683 found for the development of his genius by intercourse with kindred minds and initiation into the affairs of the world. Above all, he there formed a close friend- ship with Philip Sidney, Leicester's nephew and especial favourite, with whom, in conjunction with Sir Edward Dyer and others, he formed a literary society entitled " The Areopagus." Nor did he intermit his former literary friendship with Gabriel Harvey, which, from Harvey's residence at the University, had to be maintained by correspondence. Portions of letters from both correspondents are pre- served, and attest Spenser's remarkable literary activity at the period, though most of the works which seem to be indicated as actually written are either lost or have been incorporated with subsequent productions. It is remarkable that he should have written no fewer than nine comedies on the Italian model, not a line of which is preserved. It appears that The Faerie Queene was commenced by 1579. 112 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Harvey continually besieged Spenser with importunities on his favourite crotchet of the employment in English of classical metres, regulated bv quantit\- instead of accent, and actually beguiled one of the greatest masters of melody in our language not merely to experiment in this style, but to express a preference for it. The aberration was of short continuance. Spenser's literary energv at this date was the more remarkable as his especial duty in Leicester's service would seem to have been the convej'ance of secret despatches. From allusions in his works, he appears to have \-isited Ireland on this errand, and to have gone, or to have expected to go, as far as Rome. This expedition, if it took place, oc- curred between October 1579 and April 1580. The Shepherd's Calendar was published in the December of the former year, and was at once recognised as raising Spenser to the highest rank among contemporary jioets. The favour of Teicester and the friendship of Sidnev probablv con- tributed more than his poetical deserts to obtain Government re- ward for Spenser, but Government patronage took a form more suit- able for a civil officer than a poet. Like many another promising youth, Spenser was quartered upon Ire- land, and. as Secretarv to the Lord Deputy, Lord Grev de Wilton, en- listed in the crusade which England, compelled by the absolute necessity of preventing Spain from obtaining a foothold in the countrv, was THE Shepheardes Calender Coiitcymng tv\-clue f glogues proporaonabk to [i]c cuitluj monstBea. EntitUi TO THE NOBLE AND VERTV- CUl CfntUmun mo^ -inrtby of all tttlti both o( learning sod chcualnc M. Pliilip Sidrcy. >i^ mm AT LONDON. T rimed hy Hugh Singleton Jmvllingin Crccde Lane nccrc vntolcdgatf at the Bgjic of tlif Bf Iccn ZuniiCjatiO arc there to be loldc. Title-page of Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar," 1579 tardily undertaking against Irish barbarism. Even in the ages of faith, it may be doubted whether many champions of the Cross would have followed Godfrey without S3Tian castles and vineyards in perspec- tive, and althougn, as Dean Church eloquently points out, Elizabeth's servants in Ireland actually did feel as knights-errant contending for religion and lo\'alt\- against monsters, giants, and enchantments, it can be no reproach to them if they expected the State they served to provide for them. Spenser's opinion of the Irish of his da\- exactly corresponded with that of the Spanish officers who sought refuge among them after the shipwreck of the Armada : and the friendship and encouragement of Raleigh, and the more substantial consolations of the clerkship to the Court of Chancer}' in Dubhn, the clerkship to the Council of iVIunster (which, however, he had to purchase), the estate of Kilcolman in Cork, subject to a Crown rent, and various leases of abbey-lands on advantageous terms, made insufhcient amends for the uncongenial environment. At the prompting. THE FAERIE OUEENE " PUBLISHED 113 as he declares, of Raleigh, he returned to England in 1589, resolved to use all his influence for his return to his native land. He arrived in London in November, bringing with him the first three books of The Faerie Queene. These were published in the following year, and raised him at once to a position of unchallenged supremacy, not only among the poets of his day but among all English poets. The poem, an allegory of Oueen Elizabeth, was naturally dedicated to her, " to hve," it was grandly added, " with the eternity of her fame." Commendatory poems by Raleigh, Harvey, and others accompanied the text, and, after some delay, genius and interest in union prevailed to procure the author a pension, said to have been cut down by one-half through the economy of Burleigh, as much the father of all Treasury officials as Eranklin, according to Carlyle, is " the father of all the Yankees." All the ]ioet's efforts, however. Publication of ' ' 71ie Faerie Queene " The Ruins of Kilcolman Castle From a draiv'uii^ by W. H. Bartlctt could not obtain his transference to England, and he returned in 15QI to his hovise at Kilcolman, where he produced, under the title of Colin Clout's Come Home Again, a record of his expedition, with portraits of his literary friends under assumed names. In 1591, also, a number of his early productions were published under the title of Complaints. The personal allusions discovered in some among them are said to have led to the temporary suppression of the book. The Ireland of Ehzabeth's time contributed much to steep Spenser's jioem in the hues of crusading emprise, and so far helped him, but debarred him from literary intercourse and sympathy. It may have been a suitable abode for the man of letters who, like Raleigh, united the sword to the pen ; to the gentle and scholarly Spenser it must have been far otherwise. His residence, Kilcolman Castle, on the high road between Mallow and Limerick, was a small dark tower by the margin of a miniature lake, in our time overlooking a dreary waste, but in his surrounded by wood. Its solitude had at least the advantage of shielding the poet from inter- ruption, and so compensating him for the time which he was compehed to devote to official duties ; he may also have been the more disposed to labour assiduously VOL. II H Spenser s life in Ireland 114 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE THE FAERIE QVEENE. Difpofed intotwelue books, Falhioning XII. Morall vertues. upon the poem from which he expected dehverance. He further sought, and it is to be hoped found, solace in love-making, having become enamoured of a lady whose hand he obtained after a year's wooing, signahsed by the composition of his Amoretti, a kind of sonnet-diary. The lady has not been identified with entire certainty, but is believed to have been Eliza- beth Boyle, a member of the Earl of Cork's family. Little is known of her person and disposition, but inferences more favourable to her charms than her constancy may be derived from the fact that she found two husbands after Spenser's death. The mar- riage, which took place at Cork or Youghal on June ii, 1594, was celebrated in Spenser's Epithalamion, the noblest of his lyrics, and one of the highest flights of English poetry. In the same ^-ear he resigned his clerkship to the Council of Munster in favour of a relative of his wife, and ])erha])s in consequence of unsuccessful litigation with his troublesome neighbour. Lord Roche. At the end of 1595 he was again i.i London with three more books of The Faerie Qitcem, which were published early in the following year. They found no less acceptance than the former with the public at large, and gained him the applause of all Title-pageof "The Faerie Queene" 1590 men of letters. It may, indeed, be remarked that no illustrious author seems to have suffered less than Spenser from env}' and detraction, a circumstance perhaps even more significant of the sweetness of his nature than of the merit of his verse. The caresses of high societv were abundantly bestowed upon him. His next pubhcation, the Hymns, was dedicated to two countesses. The Queen turned a deaf ear to the complaints of James VL of Scotland, who, with more truth than dignity, accused Spenser of having depicted his mother in the character of the witch Duessa. Essex LONDON Printed for William Ponfonbie. 1590. SPENSER AND IRELAND 115 welcomed Spenser to his house, and a double marriage there celebrated was the theme of the poet's beautiful Prothalamion, praised by Coleridge for " the swan-like movement of the lines." But the great business to which the poetry ought to have conduced, Spenser's repatriation in England, made no progress. Perhaps he stood in his own light by composing, though he did not at the time publish, his View of the Present State of Ireland, Discoursed by Way of a Dialogue between Eudoxus and IrencEus, which may well have convinced the Government that he was the right sort of man for Munster. The entirely unsympathetic tone of this able tract as regards the native Irish has been made a _^ subject of reproach to Spenser, and justly so from the point of view both of abstract right and of abstract policy. He merely feels, however, as colonists always feel who find themselves confronted with a hostile indigenous population, with what seems to them insufficient support from the mother country, and are naturally impatient of criticism from ' ' the gentlemen who sit at home at ease." Ireland, in fact, had dealt a much heavier blow at her nation- ality than any Spen- ser could devise by her rejection of the Reformation. Had she become Protestant, the Bible and Prayer-book would have been read in the vernacular by all who could read at all ; the ancient language, as in Wales, would have been kept alive by the services of the Church ; ' and Erse literature, far from needing any artificial revival, would have come down to our days in a continuous stream. In such a case the distinction between the Anglo- Scotch and the Irish elements of the population would hardly have existed. It needed religious differences to keep them apart, and prevent the Elizabethan or Jacobean settler from becoming, like his Anglo-Norman predecessor, Hibernis ipsis Hibernior. 1 The writer can never forget the energy with which he has heard Mr. Gladstone descant on tlris theme in its relation to Wales. The Tomb of Edmund Spenser in Westminster Abbey ii6 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Miifortiiiic^ Dejected in spirits, and failing in health, Spenser returned to Ireland early and Dcaili oj in I5()7. Little IS recorded of his history until, in September 1508, he was made Sheriff of the county of Cork, with many expressions of appro\'al of his valuable services. The moment was most critical. The insurgent Irish, temporarily victorious, were at the very time j)lanning an expedition against the English colonists of Cork. The storm burst in October, and carried all before it. Spenser's mansion at Kilcolman was sacked and burned. He and his \\ife escaped to Cork with four children — a fifth is said by Ben Jonson to have perished in the flames, but. unless there had been a birth of twins, Spenser's family can hardly have been so numerous. In December, Sir Thomas Norris, the President of Munster, shows confidence in Spenser by sending him to London with desf)atches, including, no doubt, instructions to make a private report. But grief and hardship had under- mined his constitution, and he died at his lodgings in King Street, Westminster, on Januar\'i6, i500- The stories of the privations he underwent must be greatly exaggerated, including as the\- do the statement that Essex offered him bounty which he declined. He had never been wealth\-. and his personal property had probal)h' perished in the burning of his house, but it cannot be believed that he would have been sent on an important mission in a state of destitution, or that read^• aid would not have been forthcoming from liis London friends. The general appreciation of his greatness was shown by his interment, at the expense of Essex, in ^^'estminster Abbey, within a few yards of the grave of Chaucer ; poets. saA's Camden, thronging to the funeral, and casting their elegies and the pens that had written them into the tomb. A monument intended h\ Elizabeth was frustrated by a greedy courtier, but one was eventually erected by the Countess of Dorset. Speiis,-i-i S])enser's widow soon married again. His Munster property, recovered by 1-«iiiiIy Essex's campaign in 1500- passed to his eldest son Sylvanus. whose Roman Catholic wife seems to have brought up her son William in her o\mi religion, wherefor. under the Draconic legislation of Cromwell, he incurred the penaltx' of transplantation into Connaught. This was remitte'd upon his giving proof of his return to Protes- tantism, but the forfeited estate was not recoA-ered until after the Restoration. Having thus cast his lot with the Protestant interest, ^^'illiam Spenser rendered such services to William III. as to acquire extensive possessions in GahvaA- and Roscommon, as well as the estates of an unlucky cousin who had taken the wrong , side. The family is now extinct in the male line, but man\' living persons claim descent from William Spenser's granddaughter Rosamond. Spnis.r's The character, fortunes, and genius of Sjienser present a striking affinity to Ch.-ira,-i,:r thosj of his great contemporar\- Camoens. Both united the soldier and the man a}!d UcJims of affairs to the scholar : Init Camoens was more of the soldier than Spenser, and Spenser more of the scholar than Camoens. Both were unhappy in tlieir attachments : each left his native country in the vain hope of fortune, and ever sighed to return : each was unanimoush' acclaimed in his lifetime as the greatest jioet his countr\" had \et produced. \-et neither reaped the reward tliat such an acknowledgment should haA-e brought : and each, if tradition might be im- plicitly trusted, died in absolute want. Each early conceived the design of exalting his countr\' li\' an immortal poem, and each owes the greater part of Ins fame to its more or less com]ilete accomplishment : while at the same time each gained "THE FAERIE OUEENE " 117 such eminence in lyric and pastoral that, had every line of his epic perished he would still have been a very considerable poet. In character Spenser is more amiable and attractive than the irascible and frequently wrong-headed Portuguese ; while the latter occasionally reveals a tragic grandeur of soul to which Spenser could never have attained. Spenser was essentially a man of refinement, of culture, of urbanitj' ; a chivalrous idealist, a Platonist by force of natural affinity : his transference to the stormy arena of Ireland was a misfortune for poetry as well as for the poet. Representative of the age of Elizabeth as he was, he would have been even more at home in the age of Victoria. Keats, complimenting his friend Cowden Clarke on his acquaintance with Spenser, describes him as " a forester deep in thy midmost trees." The phrase is felicitous, for Spenser's poetical domain resembles a forest more nearly than it resembles a champaign, or a moun- tain, or an ocean. Its attributes are neither those of well-ordered cul- ture nor of wild sub- limity ; rather those of rich woodland, full of beautiful products and beautiful creatures, yet The Red Cross Knight withal pathless and diffi- ' Fromthc^i^Zcdziu,„of"ThcFac,-icQu,r„e" cult of access in many parts, and not to be comprehended at one view from any quarter. Add that, like a forest, with its secular growths and growths of yesterday, it is at once old and young — young with its fresh poetical spirit, old with its obsolete diction and general aspect of a bygone age. If we are to have a guide through this enchanted region we must find a trusty one, for perhaps no other great poem with a great purpose sd conceals this purpose as The Faerie Queene. It is, in the first place, unfinished, and the argument must be sought outside the poem. Homer gives us the subject " The Faerie Queene '' ii8 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of the Iliad in the verv first fine : " Sing, Muse, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus.'" ^lilton, like a stately argosv, is some time in getting under way ; yet the first fi\'e lines of Paradise Lost explain the purpose of the poem. But though Spenser gives a general definition of the theme of The Faerie Queene, " Fierce wars and faithful lives shall moralise my song," he nowhere in the poem discloses the reason, apart from the delightful exercise of the imagination, which made him create so manv chivalrous champions and beautiful ladies, and uncouth giants and unshapely monsters, and wily enchanters and alluring sorceresses, and devise such an interminable series of adventures. Elizabeth as \\'e shall not find a more trustworthy guide than Dean Church, who, ^'''"'"""' putting into few words Spenser's own somewhat confused explanation in his letter to Raleigh, tells us that " he meant to shadow forth, under the figure of tweh'e knights and m their various exploits, the characteristics of a gentleman or noble person fashioned in virtuous and gentle discipline. He took his machinery from the popular legends about King Arthur, and his heads of moral philosophy from the current Aristotelian Catalogue of the Schools." The Faerie Oueene herself, says Spenser, is meant " for glory in general in- tention," but in particular for Elizabeth, and Faery Land for her kingdom. Remote, therefore, as Spenser's verse seems from ordinary human affairs, he* emulated Virgil, who, seeming merely to tell a romantic story, has expressed the innermost idea of Roman nationality as it was expressed in the best minds of Rome in the Augustan age. But this Spenser has not achieved, principally because his allegory is so loose and so devoid of obvious connection with the personage whose pre-eminence it professes to shadow forth. How can it be otherwise when the august Gloriana, Queen of Faerie, the alleged centre and animating spirit of the action, does not appear in the poem at all ? It begins: A gentle knif^ht was pricking in the plain, Y-cladd in mighty arms and sih'er shield. In the third stanza we learn that this champion is bound upon a great adventure : That greatest Gloriana to him gave, That greatest glorious Queen of Faervland. This is all : nothing to show that Gloriana is Elizabeth. When, therefore, we b\'-and-by encounter other allegorical figures, we have no means of identify- ing them. Knowing so little of Gloriana, we could not, but for the above- mentioned letter to Raleigh, ha\'e been sure that the Faerie Oueene's enemies represented actual antagonists of Elizabeth. They seem just such uncomely and uncanny creatures as the romancer provides for the knight-errant. With, the clue aftorded by the letter we may, indeed, finding that the enchanter Archimago Told of saints and Popes, and evermore He strewed an Ave Mary after and before, surmise in him no other than the Pope himself. And we can then see that the witch Duessa, beautiful in semblance, foul in fact, the ruin of the young PURPOSE OF "THE FAERIE OUEENE" 119 knights whom she seduces, is the very counterfeit presentment of Mary Queen of Scots as slie appeared to a loyal subject of Elizabeth. But these figures are brought into no vital connection with Gloriana, who comes to light regularly in the dedication to each successive book, and then goes to sleep like old Barbarossa in the Kyffhauser Mountain. She is made a heroine on far too easy terms ; she should have been what Una is, a living, moving, suffering personage. It is, no doubt, perfectly true that the respect due to his sovereign would have prevented Spenser from exhibiting Elizabeth in any perilous or equivocal situation, and hence that he cannot, as a courtier, do his part as a poet. But whatever the cause, the effect is the same ; his poem's rela- tion to the times is not sufficiently distinct ; hence, with all its innu- merable beauties, it is not an epic. Spenser has succeeded better in another part of his plan — the em- bodiiuent of the perfect gentleman. Unfortunately, the exhibition is not complete. Twelve special virtues, each deemed essential to this cha- racter, were to have been set forth in a corresponding number of books, each divided into twelve cantos. The portion completed embraces Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesj? ; a fragment of the lost or unfinished book of Con- stancy is also preser\'ed. The plan is more consistently carried out in the first books than in their SUCCes- Mary, Queen of Scots SOrS, in which, as Dean Church says, Prom •• Insmptiones Hhlorictz Regnm Scotorum " the poem becomes an elastic framework, into which Spenser puts whatever interests him and tempts him to composition." One effect of this is to bring the poem nearer to actual life. We still need a clue, but if we compare it with con- temporary history we shall see that Spenser's head is beconnng fuller of what is going on around him ; and, writing as he is in Ireland, alone with his own fancies, he gives himself the rein, and introduces contemporary transactions with less disguise than he thought needful in the earlier books. The Legend of Justice, in the fifth book, for instance, shadows forth the pacification of Ireland by Lord Grey de Wilton, figured by the hero Artegall. Mary Stuart reappears as Florimel and Radegund ; Elizabeth, though still addressed as Gloriana, is Britomart, and several other characters besides. These things should be known, else part of the poet's intention escapes us, and he seems a mere melodious voice. We must clearly understand that in reading hmi we are not only drawing from a fountain of fancy, imagination, and music, 1602 The ideal Gentleman in " The Faerie Qjieenc " iieiilal rivals 1 20 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE but are conA-ersing with the soldier, courtier, and man of affairs, the loyal Ser\-ant of his idolised Queen, the friend of Leicester, Sidney, and Raleigh, himself a sentinel on one of the most vulnerable frontiers of tlie empire, the half-conquered and quarter-civilised province of ^funster — anything rather tliaii the idle singer of an emptv dav whom he so much resembles at first sight, ^^'e are further imbibing the spirit and seeing with the eyes of a Puritan, although one of most gentle tvpe, a supporter of Leicester's " Xo peace with Spain " policw in strictness of morals and in the culture of high scholarship a forerunner of Milton, whose place he would in the main ha\-e filled could they ha\"e exchanged epochs. Spenser and As a poct Speuscr Jrced fear no comparison with his great contemporaries Tasso and Camoens : l^ut the one point where they haA'e most conspicuously succeeded is that where he has most conspicuously failed : he has not, like them, achie\-ed an epic. If not quite an epic poet, however, he is much more than a mere romancer; his place is rather with the special objects of his emula- tion, Boiardo and Ariosto. These poets, Ariosto at least, ha^'e undoubtedly succeeded better in their object of glorifying the petty House of Este than Spenser has in glorif\'ing the great Elizabeth, vet this is not entirely gain. Ariosto pt-rpetually dispels the glamour of his romance by dragging in his patrons, and his panegyric wears the aspect of adulation. His real advantages o\-er Spenser are the point Lind clearness of his stvle, and his great superioritv as a narrator. In invention the two poets are much upon a par, but in moral dignitv Spenser stands on a far higher plane. Ariosto was indifferent to the great wa\"e of new light and new truth which even in his day was breaking upon the world, but which in Spenser's had mounted far higher, and so upbears him that his blemishes seem little more than drift and wrack lightly borne on the crest of the billow. He owes niucli to the noble stanza which he elaborated from the hints of the Italians — a stanza which allows of the most majestic \'olume of sound and the greatest variety of musical effects of any in our language, and so far bevond the resources of other languages that e\-en the German translator, whom the Sanskrit doka does not daunt, comnionlv Duts the reader off \\'itli an inferior substitute. Even when the external form is successfullv copied, the inner melody of stanzas like these must be the despair of eA'ery translator : Eftsoons thev heard a most melodious sound Of all that mote delight a dainty car, Such as attonce might not on living ground Sa\e in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere : Right hard it was for wight which did it hear To rede what manner music that mote be ; For all that .pleasing is to Ining ear Was there consorted in one harnionv ; Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree. The jovous Ijirds, shrouded in cheerful shade, Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet : The angelical soft trembling voices made To the instruments di^•ine respondencc meet ; f,..^ /^A ^-^'^ "^^ >'^'^ "^r ^*'^y '^' ^^-^ f Document in the handwriting of Edmund Spenser SPENSER'S ARCHAISMS AND NEOLOGISMS 121 The silver sounding instruments did meet With the bass murmur of the waters' fall ; The waters' fall witli difference discrete, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; The gentle warbling wind low answered to all. In one respect Spenser's example might have been injurious — his abuse of His obsolete the poet's privilege of enriching his mother tongue. " In my opinion," says ^fj^5"X;,^" Kirke in his preface to The Shepherd's Calendar, " it is one special praise of many which are due to this poet that he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited." The doctrine of the survival of the fittest was not well understood in Spenser's day, and he went so far not only in vain attempts at restitution but in needless innovation as to raise up formidable difficulties both for himself and his reader, augmented by the obsti- nate conservatism of his editors, who, if they could not meddle with his adaws and singulis, might at least have modernised his orthography. It is indeed proof of his greatness that neither an unfinished poem, nor a faulty plan, nor an uninterpreted allegory, nor monotony of incident, nor inability to depict character, nor obsolete language, nor antiquated spelling, should have kept him out of the hands of the lovers of poetry. But he has not, like Shakespeare and Milton, been able to subjugate those who do not love poetry for its own sake. Spenser's amplitude of detail, partly cause and partly consequence of his His special stanza, renders it difficult to illustrate him by quotation, for his choicest passages are long. The two following, briefer than usual with him, afford magnificently contrasted examples of splendid description, the one all gloom the other all glory : The House of Pride High above all a cloth of State was spread, And a rich throne, as bright as sunny Day ; On which there sate, most brave embellished With royal robes and gorgeous array, A maiden Queen that shone as Titan's ray In glistening gold and peerless precious stone ; Yet her bright blazing beauty did assay To dim the brightness of her glorious throne As envying herself that too exceeding shone ; Exceeding shone, like Phosbus' fairest child, That did presume his father's fiery wain, And flaming mouths of steeds, unwonted wilde, Through highest heaven with weaker hand to rein : Proud of such glory and advancement vain. While flashing beams do dim his feeble eyen, He leaves the welkin way most beaten plain. And rapt with whirling wheels, inflames the skyen, With fire not made to burn, but fairly for to shine. So proud she shined in her princely state, Looking to heaven, for earth she did disdain. beauties 122 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE And sittins; high for lowlv she did hate : Lo ! underneath lier scornful feet was lain A dreadful Dragon with a hideous train ; And in her hand she held a mirror bright, M'herein her face she often viewed fair, And in her self-lo\'ed semblance took delight, For she was wondrous fair, as anv living wight. The Ca\'e of ^Mammon The house's form withm was rude and strong, Like an huge cave hewn out of rock}- clift. From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hong, Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift. And with rich metal loaded e\ ery rift, That heavy ruin they did ^cem to threat ; And over them Arachne high did lift Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, Ennrapt in foule smoke and clouds more black than jet. Both roof and floor and walls were all of gold. But overgrown with dust and old decay, And hid in darkness ; that none could behold The view thereof ; for light of cheerful day Did never in that house itself display But a faint shadow of uncertain light ; Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away. Or as the Aloon, clothed with cloudy night, Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright. In all that room was nothing to be seen But huge great iron chests, and coffers strong, All barred with double bands, that none could ween Them to efforce by \'iolence or wrong. On e\-er\- side they placed were alont; ; But all the ground with skulls was scattered. And dead men's bones, which round about were flong ; Whose lives, it seemed, whilom there were shed^ .A.nd their vile carcases now left unburied. The following is a good e.xample of Spenser's more soft and lu.xurious style of description, and his power of allying pageantry with poetry : Soon as she up out of her deadly fie Arose, she bade her chariot to be brought ; And all her sisters that with her did sit Bade eke attonce their chariots to be sought Tho full of bitter grief and pensive thought, She to her wagon clomb ; clomb all the rest, And forth together went with sorrow fraught. The waves, obedient to their behest, Tlicm yielded ready passage, and their rage surceassf. Great Neptune stood amazed at their sight, While on his broad round back they softly slid, And eke himself mourned at tiieir mournful plight, Yet wist not what their wailing ineant, ^ et did, POETRY OF "THE FAERIE QUEENE " 123 For great compassion of their sorrow bid His mighty waters to them buxom be ; Hftsoons the roaring billows still abid, And all the grislv monsters of the sea Stood gaping at their gait, and wondered them to see. A team of dolphins ranged in array Drew the smooth chariot of sad Cymocnt : Thev were all taught by Tritons to obey To the long reins at her commandement : As swift as swallows on the waves they went, That their broad flaggy fins no foam did rear, Nor bubbling roundel they behind them sent. The rest of other fishes drawen were, "Which with their finny oars the swelling sea did shear. Soon as they bin arrived upon the brim Of the rich strand, their chariots they foiiore, And let their temed fishes softly swim Along the margent of the foamy shore. Lest they their fins should bruise, and surbate sore Their tender feet upon the stony ground : And coming to the place where all in gore And crudelv blood enwallowed they found The luckless Marinell lying in deadly swound. In this beautiful piece of pageantry tliere are few features unborrowed from the general repertory of poets : but Spenser excels all by his consummate ease of handling, as though he saw Proteus and Triton not by glimpses, as Wordsworth was fain to do. but habitually : and by the singular fitness of his ample, liquid, booming verse to describe the sea and the things of the sea. He neither attains the sublime nor astonishes by originality of observation or intensity of description, but lavishes beauties of the strictty poetical order as from a horn of plenty. His effects are broad and general ; he disregards minutite, and cannot sustain searching criticism. He makes Neptune still the waves for the nymphs, forgetting that thev had already done this for them- selves. He could not well have found epithets less descriptive of dolphins' lins than " broad " and " flaggy " ; and the nymphs' solicitude lest the fishes should hurt their feet seems, to say the least, superfluous.. The most considerable of Spenser's minor works, and the first that gained " riw him reputation, is liis Shepherd's Calendar. Tliis was published in 157c), under -V''.^^" ,''"' f, the modest pseudonym " Immerito," and under the ftgis of " E.K.," probably Edward Kirke, who provides the twelve eclogues, each corresponding to a month in the vear, with pithy arguments, and in a diplomatic preface, which is also a model of good writing and sound criticism, " smooths the ra\'en down " of the crabbed Gabriel Harvey, who is soothed by an appeal " to pluck out of the hateful darkness those so many excellent English poems " of his own. The extraordinary success of these pastorals might seem surprising if it were not remembered that three of them are satires on the corruptions of the clergy^ and if the state of English poetrj^ in their day were not taken into account. Surrey and Wj/att had written excellent lyrics, but no long poem of merit — 124 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE scarcely CA-en of high aim — had been produced by any natiA'c poet south of the Tweed since the days of Chaucer. It was much to show that such work was possible, and at that time the pastoral was an admitted convention. The present age demands realit}', and as peasants are better portrayed in prose than in verse, George Sand and Thomas Hardy have dethroned Theocritus, and the metrical pastoral only sur\i\-es as a jcn d'csprit or representation of idyllic existence in an imaginary paradise or an imaginary past. Spenser's contemporaries found nothing obsolete or tiresome in his machinery ; he was, indeed, better equipped than most b}^ being actually provided with a faithless or obdurate mistress. Even so, not much of his work is really devoted to the plainings of unsuccessful love. His shepherds discourse rather of politics ^anuarjt^. From ''The Shepherd's Calendar" 1507 than theologj', and he even extols Bacchus above Venus as a source of poetical inspiration : All otherwise the state of Poet stands ; For lordly love is such a tjTant fell, That where he rules all power he doth expel ; The vaunted verse a vacant head demands, Ke wont with crabbed care the Muses dwell : Unwisely weaves, that takes two webs in hands. Whoever casts to compass weight}' prize, And thinks to tlirow out thundering words of threat, Let pour in lavish cups and thrifty bits of meat, For Bacchus' fruit is friend to Phoebus wise ; And -when with wine the brain begins to sweat. The numbers flow as fast as spring doth rise. Thou kenst not, Percv, how the rhyme should rage, C) ! if mv temples were distained with wine. And girt in garlands of wild ivy twine. How I could rear the Muse on stately stage, And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine, With quaint Bellona in her equipage ! "THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR" 125 This seems to evince Spenser's impatience to de\'ote his full powers to The Facric Quccnc, which we know that he was contemplating. Notwithstanding the humility of the conclusion (imitated from Statins), where he disclaims rivalry not only with Chaucer but with Piers Plowman, he evidently did not want a high and just confidence in himself, though he modestly expresses it through the mouth of another : Colin, to hear thy rhymes and rondelays, Which thou wert wont on wasteful hills to sing, I more delight than lark m summer dajs, Whose echo made the neighbour groves to ring, !J\(£uemher. From " The Shepherd's Calendar " 1597 And taught the birds, which in the lower spring Did shroud in shady leaves from sunny rays, Frame to thy song their cheerful chirruping. Or hold their peace for shame of thy sweet lays, I saw Calliope with Muses mo, Soon as thy oaten pipe began to sound. Their ivory lutes and tamburins forego, And from the fountains where they sat around Run after hastily thy silver sound ; But, when they came where thou thy skill didst show. They drew aback, as half with shame confound, Shepherd, to see them in their art outgo. Here is the germ of the Spenserian stanza, and the same rich volume of melody streams forth whenever Spenser writes in decasyllabics. The language has become more opulent and flexible than when the rhyme royal represented the nc phcs ultra of the metrical art, and enhanced power of verbal music only corresponds with enhanced powei of veibal expression. In presence of these gains, we may well overlook the artificiality of pseudo-pastoral mannerism, not more conspicuous in Spenser than in the rest of the successors of Theocritus. 126 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE sj'L'iisers An artificial style, indeed, suited Spenser. Like Ariosto, but unlike Camoens ; nup la cs yj^ijj^g j^jgQ j^jg gj-eat successor Milton, he is unvisited by any snatch of song. It can never be said of him that he sings as the bird sings. He can marshal grand harmonies, but is never himself enthralled by a simple spontaneous melody. He would ha\'e found it easier to create Ariel than to write Ariel's song. This is remarkable, as no period of English literature has been so rich in light melodious carols as the age of Elizabeth and James, but he is entirely unaffected by the pervading atmosphere. He is at his very best as a lyric poet in his two nuptial odes, the Epithalamion on his own marriage, the Pro- thalainion on the double wedding at Essex House in 1596, when the nature of the subject invited strains voluminous, intricate, and majestic. These are like grand performances on the organ, in which all less sonorous instruments, if such there be, are swallowed up and lost. The Epithalamion in particular is a performance of the class of Milton's At a Solemn Music and Dryden's great pair of odes. If nowhere quite attaining the splendour of Milton's ode or of the opening stanza of the monody on Mistress Killigrew, the poetic flight is longer than the first and more equable than the second ; if it impresses the mind less powerfully than Alexander's Feast, the cause is Dryden's not wholly legitimate employment of objective description and scene-painting. Neither Milton nor Dryden appears indebted to it, but it has manifestly influenced another great English ode, Tennyson's on the death of the Duke of Wellington. There is, perhaps, no poem of equal extent in the language of such level merit where the poet, rising from the first to a lofty height, remains poised so long on steady wing without appreciable rise or descent. Two stanzas, nevertheless, must content us : Now is my love all ready forth to come : Let all the virgins therefore well await ; And ye, fresh boys, that tend upon her groom, Prepare yourselves, for he is coming straight. Set all your things in seemly good array, Fit for so joyful day ; The joyfuUest day that ever Sun did see. Fair Sun ! show forth thy favourable ray, And let thy lifefull heat not fervent be, For fear of burning her sunshiny face, Her beautv to disgrace. O fairest Phoebus ! father of the Muse ! If ever I did honour thee aright, Or sing the thing that mote thy mind delight, Do not thy servant's simple boon refuse ; But let this day, let this one day, be mine ; Let all the rest bo thine : Then I thy sovereign praises loud will sing, That all the woods shall answer, and their echo ring Hark ! how the minstrels 'gin to shrill aloud Their merry music that resounds from far The pipe, the tabor, and the trembling croud,' That wcH agree withouten breach or jar, 1 Fiddle. SPENSER'S MINOR POEMS 127 But most all the damsels do delight When they their timbrels smite. And thereunto do dance and carol sweet, That all the senses they do ravish quite ; The whiles the boys run up and down the street. Crying aloud with strong, confused noise As if it were one voice. Hymen ! io Hymen ! Hymen ! they do shout , That even to the heavens their shouting shrill Doth reach, and all the firmament doth fill ; To which the people standing all about. As in approvance, do thereto applaud, And loud advance her laud ; And ever more they Hvmen ! Hymen ! sing That all the woods them answer, and their echo ring. These stately strophes would not have existed without Italian precedents ; but the form is not precisely that of any Italian canzone, and the thoughts are entirely Spenser's. Among Spenser's other minor poems, perhaps the most remarkable are his The Hymns four Hymns, especially the first two, addressed respectively to Love and Beauty, poems such as Plato might have written if he had persevered in his youthful endeavours to win renown as a poet. The first celebrates the ancient myth of Lo\'e the Demiurgus, the orderer and fashioner of the chaotic uni\'erse : For ere this world's still moving mighty mass Out of great Chaos' ugly prison crept. In which his goodly face long hidden was From heaven's view, and in deep darkness kept, Love, that had now long time securely slept In Venus' lap, unarmed then and naked, Gan rear his head, by Clotho being waked. And taking to him wings of his own heat. Kindled at first from heaven's life-giving fire, He gan to move out of his idle seat ; Weakly at first, but after with desire Lifted aloft, he gan to mount up higher. And, like fresh eagle, made his hardy flight Through all that great wide waste, yet wanting light. The second hymn is no less Platonic, praising ideal Beauty, the only true reality : How vainly then do idle wits invent That beauty is nought else but mixture made Of colours fair, and goodly temperament Of pure complexions that shall quickly fade And pass away, like to a summer's shade ; Or that it is but comely composition Of parts well measured with meek disposition. . . , But ah ! believe me, there is more than so, That works such wonders in the minds of men ; I, that have often proved, too well it know, 128 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE And whoso list the Hke assays to ken, Shall find bv trial, and confess it then, That Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, An outward show of things that only seem : For that same goodly hue of white and red With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay ; And those sweet rosy leayes, so fairly spread Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away To that they were, e'en to corrupted clay : That golden wire, those sparkling stars so bright, Shall turn to dust, and lose their goodly light. But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray That light proceeds which kindleth loyers' fire, Shall neyer be extinguished nor decay ; But, when the yital spirits do expire, Unto her native planet shall retire. For it is heayenly born and cannot die. Being a parcel of the purest sky. '' The Tears ^ Tlic Tciivs of tlic Mii3:s coiitains much fine and even splendid \yriting, but, 'V'"-' ""^ put forth as it was when Marlo\ye was flowering and Shakespeare blossoming, and Spenser himself had just published with universal applause the first part of The Faerie Qitecne. it would appear ridiculous but for the strong probability that it was an earh' composition dragged forth to eke out the ^'olume of Com- plaints, in which it appeared in 1591. Spenser's ?\Iuses are indeed doleful creatures ! There seems some hope of Urania, who obser\-es that, although the stud}- of astronomy is now greatly neglected, I feed on sweet contentment of my thought ; but " the contented mind " seems far from being " k continual feast " in her case : With that she wept and wailed so piteously As if her eyes had been two springing wells, -- - And all the rest, her sorrow to supply, [As if it needed any supplement 1] Did throw forth shrieks and cries and dreary yells. Elegies and A performance eight times repeated. There is no good reason for connecting j/nmi /iLiLS ^j^^ poem with Shakespeare's Thrice Three Muses ^T'Jurn^ng■ for the death Of Lcarniiii^, late deecased in beggary. Spenser's turn for elegy was more happily exercised m liis Daphnaida, an eleg}' on the death of Lady Gorges, and AstropheL a tribute to Sidney. Colin Clnufs Come Home Again is eminent for fine marine painting, and affords interesting glimpses of the author and his circle, especially Raleigh, " the Shepherd of the Ocean," to whose persuasion he attributes his visit to England. Mitiopotmos. a poem on the fate of a butterfly, is an elegant SPENSER'S MINOR POEMS 129 trifle, and Mother Hubbard's Talc, a piece in the spirit of Cliaucer, evinces a genuine talent for satire, and is a masterly example of the heroic couplet. Spenser's sonnets (Atnorctti), composed while he was wocing the second object of his affections, who became his wife, are, neither like those of the Italian masters' embodiments of a single thouglit carved and chiselled to perfection, nor streams of overmastering emotion like the best of Shakespeare's. The metrical form is a compro- mise with the difficulties of the Italian, and, while more artificial than Shake- speare's, lacks Iris fluent strength. Spenser's genius was, no doubt, too exu- berant for the severe restraint of the sonnet, and the glory of natural- ising the Italian form was reserved for the more con- densed and pregnant Mil- ton. Yet, though his sonnets generally want the needful weight and con- centration, few are devoid of charm : Like as the culver on the bared bough Sits mourning for the ab- sence of her mate, And in her songs sends man\- a wishful vow For his return that seems to linger late ; So I alone, now left dis- consolate, Mourn to myself the absence of my love, And wandering here and I there all desolate. Seek with my plaints to match that mournful dove. Title-page of the "Complaints," 1591 Ne joy of aught that under heaven doth hove Can comfort me, but her own joyous sight ; Whose sweet aspect both God and man can move In her unspotted pleasance to delight. Dark is my dav whiles her fair light I miss, And dead mv life that wants such lovely bliss. Spenser's translations are not the least remarkable of his works. His fecundity of diction would ha^'e unfitted him for literal translation, but renders him admirable in paraphrase, whether of the dignified rhetoric of VOL. II 1 of the Muses'* 130 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Du Bellay's Ruins of Rome or the li\-ely mock heroic of the pseudo-Virgilian Ciilcx, though one wishes that among the hberties he took with this had been the hberty of abbreviating it. The anonj^mous author of Britain's Ida has been defrauded of the reputation due to a prettv poem, but at the same time has vastly multiplied the number of his readers by the freak of an editor who . j^ ^T thought fit to publish it under the name of Spenser, among whose works it .^^ 4|S^, has continued to find a place. ^f>^^'^\'v^ Upon a general review of Spenser's achie\-ement, and regarding poetry ^fX^- sinrplv a s noptrT^ "ji+ij ojc-t^.--:-".—] t-c+K- +t"+1tc qf which it may be made the vehicle, Shall turn to dust, and lose th..^ ^^^^^^ ^.^^^^^ ^^.^^ Professor But that fair lamp, from whose'aintsbury's judgment that, "put- That light proceeds which kiiing Shakespeare aside, only two Shall ncN-er be extinguished nor^j^ j^gj^ ,.g ^^^ challenge Spenser But, when the \-ital spirits d . -,r-i 1 Unto her native planet shall or the primacy : these are Milton and For it is heavenly born and cajhelley." If we deem, as we do, that Being a parcel of the purest skhg challenge can be Successfully sus- ained in both instances, the ground T/>e7\-ars^ TIic Tcais of tkc sMii-ss contauis much ig^ ^s appears to us, Spenser's de- "" """" put forth as it was when :Marlowe was iioviciency in the highest and rarest and Spenser himself had just published windowment of the poet, sublimity, of The Faerie Qiteene, it would appear ridicijiiton almost dwells in the region that It was an early composition dragged f( f the sublime, Shelley treads it ■plaints, in which it appeared m 159 1. S-gqugntly, Spenser enters it but creatures ! There seems some hope of Ui^idom. The conception of the two the stud_\- of astronomy is now greatly negl^ntos on Mutability appended to lie Faerie Queene is undoubtedly I feed on sweet contentment of . , ,■ ■ ublime, but its sublimity does not but •■ tlie contented mmd " seems far froir^^end to the verbal expression, -s would have been the case With that she wept and wailedvith Shelley or :Milton. Nor does As if her eyes had been tiv^^T delineating tragic emotion. These utiJuctioiiS^'liiaue, inere is scarcely any strictly poetical excellence which it is possible to refuse him. Spenser's appearance in the domain of English poetry is most striking from its suddenness audits immediate recognition as the phenomenon of which all who were jealous of the honour of English literature had been rather desirous than expectant. It came just at the time when Sidney was with reason deploring the barrenness of the poetical field in England, and the instant acclamation of Spenser as the man who had taken away that reproach, and again given England a place among the lands of the Muses, is creditable to the intelligence and patriotism of the time. It maj' almost be said that night co\'ers all performances in English poetry from the deaths of Surrey and Wyatt Thomas to the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar in 1579 > Y^t upon careful ^Eari'of' retrospecti\"e scrutiny we may discover that the continuity, pointed out with Dorset admirable perception by Shelley as one of the main characteristics of English case THOMAS SACKVILLE 131 poetry, had not ceased ; and that, in j)articu]ar, Spenser had had one pre- decessor who wanted nothing but perseverance to have enacted Varius to his Virgih This was Thomas Sacicvtlle, Earl of Dorset (1536-1608). He was the son of Sir Richard Sackville, a supple and dexterous courtier, who, making it his chief business to stand well with the powers that were, was always filling some lucrative office, but deserves well of literature for having urged Ascham to write the Schoolmaster. His son also had a genius for official life, but the statesman did not extinguish the poet until he had initiated two remark- able works, which he allowed to be completed by inferior hands. About 1557 he formed the idea, partly inspired by Virgil and Dante, partly by Boccaccio and Lydgate, of a visitation of the realms of the shades, where the poet should hold discourse with the most tragic figures of English histor}'. He wrote the induction and the dia- logue with Richard HI.'s Buckingham, " with," says Dean Church, "a pathetic majesty, a genuine sym- pathy for the precariousness of greatness, which seem a prelude to the Elizabethan drama." The task was then handed over to George Fer- rers and William Bald- win, two poets about Court who as minstrels were mere journeymen. The former, however, was thought to have done the State some service by composing inter- ludes and masques to divert Edward VI. 's grief for the execution of the Protector Somerset ; and the latter, in general a persistent baUad-monger, has been recently ascertained to be the author of a witty satire, Beware the Cat. They worked at Sackville's project according to contract, and published it as A Mirror for Magistrates (1559-1561). Sackville, meanwhile, had made an epoch-marking contribution to English literature by his share in the first English tragedy in blank verse, Gorhoduc, acted at the Inner Temple on Twelfth Night, 1561, sixteen days before another epoch-marking For Magiftratcs. crample of ot1)n:,U)irl) tjotoc gte« uous plages bicca act pnniQic&ianli llolDe fraple anD biiCable bio^lol; p;orp:[ltfe li founbe.cben at l!)sre,1]>lioni jfoitnncfec' metl) malt bfgt^EF (0 fauoui. * PocSxtiumfiwuiI'lxndfaiiuUcmtmH Anno .1 ^ 5 9. LONDINI, In xdibm Thonuc Marrh<> Title-page of "A Mirror for Magistrates," 1559 The first editioji. The enlarged edition, ijicluding tJie Induction, appeared in 1563 132 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE e\-ent. the birth of Francis Bacon. This remarkabk" production will be noticed along with dramatic literature. As the trrst three acts are the composition of Thomas Norton it is, perhaps, more reasonable to assign the original con- ception to him than to Sackville, but Sackville's part is much the more poetical. After its representation he bade adieu to poetry altogether, amd was for the rest of his prosperous life the busy, useful, second-class states- man, upon whom a costly duty like the entertainment of the Cardinal de Chatillon, or a disagreeable one like the announcement of her condemnation to ^lary Queen of Scots, could alwa\-s be imposed ; who discliarged diplomatic missions efficienth', and submitted to be disowned when it suited his royal mistress's purpose ; who enriched himself without suspicion of corruption or extortion, and worked lus way up to the great place of Treasurer, which was conferred upon him after the death of Burghley, and which he retained imtil his death. He was also Chancellor of the UniA'ersity of Oxford, and a benefactor to tlie Bodleian Library. The splendid Tudor mansion, Knole Park, Seyenoaks, was built by him, and continues in the possession of his family. Botli as a narrati\-e poet and a dramatist Sackyille exerted a considerable inffuence upon Elizabetlran poetr\', and he must haye gained a great name if his life had been deyoted to literature. He shows no token of lyrical faculty, and the liea\'iness of his blank \-erse in Gorboduc renders it yery doubtful whether he possessed any ; but he wields the rhyme royal with perfect mastery ; and the yigour of his allegorical impersonations reyeals a truly poetical imagina- tion. His great fault is insistence ; he fairly wrings his subject out, and, straining his own imagmation to the uttermost, lea\-es no scope to his reader's. All his subjects are taken from the gate of hell ; it must remain a question wliether tlie same poetical power whicli there stood him m such stead might ha\-e ser^'ed him equally well to depict human action and the joy of life. The following is his impersonation of Old Age, one of a gallery of equally striking pictures of the doleful figures which the poet encounters ere he enters Charon's bark under the guidance of Soi-row : And next, in order sad, Old Age we found, His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind ; Witli drooping cheer still poring on the ground, As on the place where Nature had assigned To rest, when that the Sisters had untwined His vital thread, and ended with their knife The fleeting course of fast declining life. There heard we him with broke and hollow jjlaint Rue with himself his end approaching fast, And all for nought his wretched mind torment With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past, And fresh delights of lusty youth forewast ' ; Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek, And to be young again of Jove beseck ! ' Waited GEORGE GASCOIGNE 133 But an the cruel fates so fixed be That time prepast can not return again, This one request of Jove yet prayed he, That in such withered plight and wretched pain As eld, accompanied with his loathsome train. Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief, He might a while yet linger forth his life. And not so soon descend into the pit. Where Death, when he the mortal corpse hast slain, With reckless hand in grave doth cover it, Thereafter never to enjoy again The gladsome light, but, in the ground y-lain. In depth of darkness waste and wear to nought, As he had ne'er into the world been brought. But who had seen him sobbing how he stood Unto himself, and how he would bemoan His youth forepast, as though it brought him good To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone, He would have mused, and marvelled much wiiereon This wretched Age should life desire so fain. And knows full well life doth but length his pain. Crookbacked lie was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed ; Went on three feet, and sometimes crept on four. With old lame bones that rattled by his side. His scalp all pitted, and he with age forlore. His withered' fist still knocking at Death's door, Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath. For brief, the shape and messenger of Death. The mastery both of verbal and metrical expression in a youth of twenty -one are certainly very remarkable. If Queen Elizabeth had possessed a nice discernment in poetry she would have discovered Sackville's fitness for the •officiar laurcateship for which Spenser was too great and the other contemporary poets too small ; and we should have possessed a series of historical poems of much poetical merit and even greater historical value. Sackville was a born poet, diverted from poetry by the pursuits of states- manship. George Gascoigne (1525 ? -1577) is, on the other hand, an George unusual instance of a poet who wrote, or at least published, nothing until ^"■^'^"'■S'^ past forty. He was the son of a Bedfordshire knight, and a descendant of the Chief Justice who long, though it seems undeservedly, enjoyed the renown of having laid a Prince of Wales by the heels. Choosing the Prince rather than the ancestor for his model, Gascoigne, a gay young Templar, got himself disinherited for his dissolute courses, and spent his life under the pressure of debt, which he only partially relieved b}' marrying a widow in middle life. He was afterwards returned to Parliament for Midhurst, but, perhaps to frustrate the immunity from arrest which he would tlius have obtained, was prevented from taking his seat by the machinations of his adversaries, who accused him, among other heinous offences, of being " a common rhymer." To avoid persecution he went abroad, served with distinction in the Low Countries, was taken prisoner, and returned with dulcc helium inexpcrtis oi\ 134 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE his lips as the sum of his mihtarv experience. His services, it is likely, recommended him to the fa^•our of Leicester, who emplo}'ed him in writing and devising shows for the festivities at Kenilworth. Many of these are included in a volume entitled The Princely Pleasures at the Court of Kenilworth, ISS^:' ' George Gascoigne presenting his Book to the Queen British Museum Reg. MS. i8, .4 48 published in 1576. His prose tale, Hemetes the Hermit, was recited before Queen Elizabeth, and translated by himself into three languages. Onl}' the year before his death he produced his best known work, the satire entitled The Steel Glass. The title is derived from the notion that a mirror of steel reflects objects more faithfully than a mirror of glass, a doctrine most comfort- GEORGE GASCOIGNE ^35 able to English manufacturers, who at that period could make the former but not the latter. He died in October 1577. Gascoigne was certainly not an Mwcommon rhymer, but he holds an important place in Elizabethan literature as a pioneer in many departments. " His Supposes, after Ariosto," says Mr. Sidney Lee, " is the earliest extant comedy in English prose ; his Jocasta, after Euripides, is the second earliest tragedy in blank verse ; his Steel Glass is probably the earliest regular verse satire ; his Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the Making of Verse is the earliest English critical essay ; his Adventures of Ferdinando Jeronimi, translated from Bandello, one of the earliest known Italian tales in English prose." If he had lived later and caught the contagion of enthusiasm from Campion and his contem- poraries, he might have been a lyrical poet of distinction. There is an airy grace in the following stanzas, although the allegory some- what halts, the poet having pro- fessed himself to be condemned by Craft and Falsehood, who should have no place in the Court of Beauty, and admitting the justice of his sentence after all : <^The Steele Glas. ASatyrecopilcd by George Cafccignc Efquirf. Teritljtr^ith Tlie Complaiocc of pi,)!, mine. An Elegie demfedbj die fam€ AUclior. . Ti/n Mdrti.ijuAm Mercurit. Down then I fell upon my knee, All flat before Dame Beauty's face, And cried, " Good Lady, pardon me, Which here appeal unto your grace. You know, if I have been untrue, It was in too much praising you. Trintedfor '^chard Smith. Title-page of "The Steel Glass," 1576 " And though this judge doth make such haste To shed with shame my guiltless blood ; Yet let your pity first be placed To save the man that meant you good. So shall you show yourself a Queen, And I may be your servant seen." Quoth Beauty, " Well, because I guess What thou dost mean henceforth to flee ; Although thy faults deserve no less Than Justice here hath judged thee ; Wilt thou be bound to stint all strife, And be true prisoner all thy life ? " "Yea, Madam," quoth I, "that I shall; Lo Faith and Truth my sureties." 136 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE pomtcsofOnfbanDJic. a t)iinB?ttl7SooDpomt«(,of jooD Ijnrssnt)!?, mamtainetl)gooDl)ourcftolO,u]iil)l)ufuoitT!i. ^ourcfetpinganDtjutbanDjf.itit be gooCr. nmtl lotic oneanott)£r^a coufinfieS inblooB. ^^c iBift to jnuftttutbanD as mellas the mati; oj tertajel tljp^utoanDf p.Doe uo^t tljoii tan. " Why, then," quoth she, " come when I call, I ask no better warrantisc." Thus am I Beauty's bounden thrall. At her command when she doth call. The time for elegant imitations of ihe Georgics was not yet, but Thomas TussER (1524 ? -1580), without intending it, produced a fair English ap- proximation to the more ancient Works and Days of Hesiod. Having been a chorister at St. Paul's, he entered the service of Baron Paget of Baudesert as musician, married, set up as a farmer in Suffolk, failed, went back to music, and returned to farming, and after many vicissitudes died in a debtor's prison, being " more skilful in all than thriving in any vocation." He was. however, no cliarlatan ; his simple and straightforward precepts derive from experience, and he well merits Southey's character of him as " a good, honest, homely, useful old rhymer." His Hundred Good Points of Husbandly (1557) were expanded in successive editions, until by 1573 they became five hundred, united to as many of " good housewifery." Their practical worth has always been admitted, and although there is nothing of poetry in them but the rhyme, their swing, terseness, and pithiness are literary qualities not always found in more pretentious performances. Tusser deser\^es mention from the peculiarity of his subject. Some Title-page of Tusser's " Huntlred Good Points of Husbandry " writers of higher power but more conventional themes and methods would scarcely have merited notice if they had not faintly broken the too general pause of song which prevailed during the first vears of Elizabeth. Perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most \'oluminous, of these is Thomas Churchyard (1520 ? -1604), whose poems are chiefly important in so far as they illustrate contemporary transactions in Ireland and Flanders, and interesting in so far as they record incidents in his own ad^'enturous life. A minstrel by profession, he is now and then a poet by chance. George TuRBER\ ILLE (1540 ? -1610) was esteemed by his contemporaries as a writer on hawking, and as the translator of the Eclogues of Baptista Mantuanus, but is chiefly interesting now from his curious metrical descriptions of Russian manners and customs as observed by him during the mission of Thomas Randolph (1568-1569), to which he was secretarv. The printed volume in which they were collected is lost, but three are preser\'ed by Hakluvt. MINOR TRANSLATIONS 137 Turberville was an accomplished gentleman, and is justly praised by a later writer for having "broken the ice for our quainter poets that now write." Barnabe Googe (1540-1594) made very popular translations of the Zodiacus Vita of Marcellus Palingenius and The Reign of Antichrist of Thomas Naogeorgus, and produced some original verse of no great merit. Nine books of the .Eneid were rendered by Thomas Phaer (1510-1560), and Ovid's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1535-1605 ? ). It seems strange Minor Trans- lations THE Worthines ofWales: yVhereln are more then a thoufand fcucr all things rchearfcd ; fome Tctout in profe totlic picafurc of clic Header , and with fuch varicpc of vcrfe for 1 lie beautifying ofthc Book, as no dbubtllial delight thourand? to vuderltaiid. which 'A'orksff frftfrlarded with many Veonfim^'j^nvh firdnpt irtAfter to confijer of: ^tiihe \fhteh labour AnAdeuictt* drAwne forth iutd fit oM by T\\om^sC\\'^T!i\\. yiXdjiothcglone of Cod, and honour oj hu Prince and Coun{re\\ ^Impn'nted at Lon joii^by G^ RobmfovJ'or Tho-mas Cadmaa, 1587. TJie.xv.Bookes ofP.Oui(diusNarO;i cntytulcd Metamorphofis , tranflated oute of Latin into Snvhjh meeter, by (uf, - . thur GoMing Gentleman, A worJcc very plcafauiit With n£ill,hcctlc,3nd iudgcmcntjthis worke muft tc reaJ, For clfc to thcRcadcr ic lUuJcs jn fmall (lead. Imprynted at London, by JVilljam Seres, Title-page of Churchyard's 'Worthiness of Wales," 1587 Title-page of Golding's translation of Ovid's •' Metamorphoses," 1567 that this piece of work, excellent for its time, should have proceeded from a Puritan and a translator of Calvin. ■ The vear 1557, memorable poetically for the composition of the Induction to A Mirror for Magistrates, was also distinguished by the publication of the first asvlum for English fugitive verse. TottePs Miscellany, in emulation of the volumes in which Lodovico Dolce had long been enshrining the minor productions of the most clamorously vocal period of Italian poetry, gathered up, under the editorship of Nicholas Grimald, the waifs and strays of a poor era. Some aid, nevertheless, was lent by gleaning from the remains of Surrey and Wyatt. The next important anthology. The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576), indicates progress, but affords no token of the surprising development of lyiicai poetry immediately at hand. This may be dated from 1584, when a superior anthology appeared under the editorship of Clement Robinson, 138 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ■^'AHandefuU! ^ofpleafant delices,^ m Conuining lundnenew Sonecs anD Dclibable l^itfozics , m djucrs kindcs of Mccur. and ground was broken in another direction by the songs imbedded in Lyly's plays, Alexander and Campaspe and Sappho and Phaon. Within four years more tlie silent bowers of the English Muses were resounding with melodious song. A more starthng transition is not recorded in literary history than this almost unique instance of the lyrical inspiration occasionally vouchsafed to the individual being suddenly poured out upon a nation. No art, no study, Authoiooies no Conjuncture of favourable circumstances could have brought it about ; iK^it \>(y\. jiKa* ^'^ "taking thought" could have added this cubit to the stature of English poetry. Tlie lyrists of the time may be di^•ided into four classes : (i) Poeti- cal artists, like Watson and Breton, who culti^'ate poetry systemati- cally, and are sometimes lifted high above their ordinary selves , (2) Dra- matists and novelists, like Lyly and Lodge, whose poetry is kept sub- ordinate to their professional pur- suits ; (3) ^len of the world, like Sir Edward Dyer, who occasionally find poetrj' an apter medium than prose to record visitations of serious thought ; {4) Mere singers of tune- ful snatches, a class not created but greatly fostered by the almost uni- versal study of music as a branch of liberal education. The latter class will be best reserved for the period of James, when it attained its highest development. Before speaking of the others, we may pause for a moment upon almost the only lyrical composition of the interval between Surrey and Sidney which has obtained general popularity — the very beautiful Renewing of Love of Rich.\rd Edwards (1523 ? -1566), a professional musician and Court playwright, several of whose songs have reached us. It begins : % Newly dcLufed ro the newefl runes ! tt)atarcnoUiin bfe.tobefnng: ' ciicrjc Sonet ordcriv pointed to Ins ptoper Tunc. I '%^ CCIitb ncUi aBDifions of ccrffltn &onge, ^t;N to vcrie late deuifed Notes , not t^j£^ coiivmonlv knowcn , nor ^^-'-■^ vfcd hcrciofoic, •f^ IBp Clement Robinfon, ^^>i^ itiddiucrs others. ^ fAT LONDON i't^^ Printed by Richard ] hones : dwel- "X^ ling at the figne ot theRofe ... and CrOwre,nearc j ' •^•^ Holburnc Bridge • 5 8 *• fWW Title-page of Robinson's pleasant delites,' ' Handefull of 1584 In going to my naked bed, as one that would have slept, I heard a wife sing to her child, that long before had wept. She sighed sore, and sung full sweet, to bring the babe to rest, That would not caase, but cried still, in sucking at her breast. She was full weary of her watch, and grie\-ed with her child ; She rocked it, and rated it, till that on her it smiled. Then did she sav, " Now have I found this proverb true to prove, The lalliii" out of faithful friends renewing is of love." MINOR ANTHOLOGIES 139 Then took I paper, pen, and ink, this proverb for to write, In register for to remain of such a worthy wight. As she proceeded thus in song unto her little brat. Much matter uttered she of weight in place where as she sat ; And proved plain there was no beast, nor creature having life. Could well be known to live in love without discord and strife. Then kissed she her little babe, and sware by God above. The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love. Of the writers who cultivated poetry as a profession, the oldest was the best. Nicholas Breton will more properly be considered when we reach the Jacobean period, but of his early lyrics it may here be said that their excessive fluency injured his reputation; greatly admired by his con- temporaries, they were soon almost entirely forgotten. Yet one lyric of most admirable pathos and truth to nature is attributed to Breton, although, appearing in an anthology which has contributions from other hands, it is not certainly from his pen : Sweet Lullaby Come, little babe, come, silly soul. Thy father's shame, thy mother's grief. Born as I doubt to all our dole. And to thj'self unhappy chief : Sing lullaby, and lap it warm. Poor soul that thinks no creature harm. Thou little think'st and less dost know The cause of this thy mother's moan ; Thou want'st the wit to wail her woe. And I myself am all alone ; Why dost thou weep ? why dost thou wail ? And know'st not yet what thou dost ail. Come, little wretch — ah, silly heart ! Mine only joy, what can I more ? If there be any wrong they smart. That may the destinies implore : 'Twas I, I say, against my will, I wail the time, but be thou still. And dost thou smile ? O thy sweet face ! Would God himself He thee might see ! No doubt thou would'st soon purchase grace, I know right well, for thee and me : But come to mother, babe, and play, For father false is fled away. Sweet boy, if it be fortune's chance Thy father home again to send. If Death do strike me with his lance. Yet may'st thou me to him commend : If any ask thy mother's name, Tell him by love she purchased blame. Then will his gentle heart soon yield : I know him of a noble mind : Although a lion in the field, A lamb in town thou shalt him find : 140 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Ask blessing, babe, be not afraid ; His sugared words have me betrayed. Thomas Watson Then may'st thou jov and be right glad Although in woe I seem to moan, Thy father is no rascal lad, A noble youth of blood and bone : His glancing looks, if he once smile, Right lioncst women may beguile. "f^^^KT THE v*! rKATo\tnAOiA ^^P ASSIONATE Qciitio e cf Lone, D i dm oh ofitts vj le 0^ tJdr t e'cp>ej;'i/j th Au At tl c s fiffcrami it Lq e tl ^^t /j c itshi^fjrencdtoLu ^ -f 'j djl htstp \tnie "apn^ed b '^bs 11s I ipn cm 11 ^nd rub 1 1 cd at -^'.ittlo cc 4H1C Ocndc 4si ^n \' 'I T. 1 J CT; frend s ^4 ^--s ™>-' %'r: )^J9 L O 11 D O ^^ i Title-page of Watsons Hekatompathia Come, little boy, and rock asleep ; Sing lullaby and be thou still ; I that can do nought else but weep, Will sit by thee and wail my fill, God bless my babe, and lullaby From this th^- father's quality. If Breton \vas the author of this h-ric he had a dramatic force and tlie insight into human nature which should haA'e quali- fied him for greater achievements than he actualh' brought to pass, though several of his songs have true l\-rical quality. The best of his prose performances is 117/' s TrciicJi)iioiir. an id\il of angling which is no iniworth\' precursor of Izaak Walton. Thomas Watson (1557 ■' ^1592) took his art more seriously than Breton, but had much less natural gift. His madrigals are poor ; and the eighteen-lme sonnet monstrosities of his Hccatompathia are chiefly interesting as elaborate contribu- tions to those Elizabethan sonnet- c_vclesof v,-hicli Sidney's Asirophd, Spenser's A iiwrctti , and Shakespeare's ,So;i«t'/s are m.emorable examples. The question how far these cycles were artificial exer- cises and how far expressions of real feeling is one of great interest, but needs to be propounded again with each successive author. There is no reason to think that the sonnet meant much more to \Vatson than a literary exercise; a large proportion of his pieces are translations or imitations from the French or Italian. Translation mto Latni \"erse was his forte, and this gift, rare among Englishmen ol Ins tmie, was successfully exercised upon Tasso's Ainintci. He was a gentleman-author, an amateur of music, and especially patronised by Walsingham, whose fa\Tjur he had gained in Paris. Although Bartholomew Yoxg is principallv known as a translator of Italian and Spanish prose, he lias a claim to a place among poets from CONSTABLE: YONG 141 his twenty-iour contributions to England's Helicon (1600), even thougli these are mostly translations. His best known work is his rendering of the Diana of Montemayor, which may have been seen in MS. by Shakespeare when he wrote The Two Gentlemen of ]'erona. Henry Constable (1562-1613), a man of good family, became a Roman Catholic early in life, and spent many years in Paris, where he played an ambiguous part as agent, perhaps spy, for Pope and Queen at the same time. In 1603 he was imprisoned in the Tower, but was liberated in the following year, and died at Liege ini6i3. His Diana. a collection of sonnets, was published in 1592, and repub- lished in 1594 with additional poems, not all of which are his. In 1600 he appears as a con- tributor of pastoral poems to the celebrated anthology, Eng- land's Helicon. These, though diffuse, evince genuine rustic feeling, and entitle him to a good position among the minor lyrists of his day. Nor are his sonnets devoid of merit. It must be set to the credit of a dubious character to have been the friend of Sidney in early youth, and to have celebrated the publication of Sidney's Apology for Podrv in a sonnet inspired by real emotion : Title-page of Bartholomew Yong's " Diana,'^ Give pardon, blessed soul, to my bold cries, If they, importune, interrupt thy song, Which now with joyful notes thou sing'st among The angel choristers of the heavenly skies. Give pardon, eke, sweet soul, to my slow cries. That, since I saw thee, now it is so long ; And yet the tears that unto thee belong To thee as yet they did not sacrifice. I did not know that thou wert dead before, I did not feel the grief I did sustain ; The greater stroke astonisheth the more. Astonishment takes from us sense of pain. I stood amazed wlien others' tears begun, And now bogin to weep when they have done. Henry Constable 142 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Robert South- well Sonnet-cycles prevailed exceedingly from 1593 to 1596, during which period volumes of sonnets were published by poets of such repute as Chapman, Drayton, and Barnfield, and a number of minor minstrels, among whom Barnabe Barnes holds the first place. After this date the fashion ceased, though there is reason to think that the finest of Shakespeare's sonnets were yet to come. Perhaps the final blow was dealt by the publication in 1597 of three hundred and twenty-six spiritual sonnets at one fell swoop by Henry LoK, who next year is found unsuccessfully suing for the appointment of keeper of the Queen's bears and mas- tiffs. Barnes (1569 ? -1609), a son of the Bishop of Durham, is a sonnetteer of real merit. He wrote two volumes of poetry, one spiritual, the other secu- lar ; and The DeviVs Charter, a tragedy on the history of Pope Alexander VI. Some of his sonnets are almost modern in thought and expression : here is thy mild VIAU^A. O R, The excellent conceitful Sonnets of//. C. Augmented with diuers Quatorzains of honorable and Icrncd pctfonagcs. Deuided intoviij. Decads. AT LONDON, Princed by lames Roberts for Richard Smith. Title-page of Constable's "Diana" Ah ! sweet Content, abode ? Is it with shepherds and light-hearted swains, Which sing upon the downs and pipe abroad, Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains ? Ah, sweet Content, where dost thou safely rest ? In heaven, -with angels that the praises sing Of Him who made, and rules at his behest. The minds and hearts of every living thing ? Ah, sweet Content, where doth thine harbour hold ? Is it in churches with reUgious men Which please the gods with pra^-ers manifold. And in their studies meditate it then ? Whether thou dost in earth or heaven appear. Be where thou wilt, thou wilt not harbour here. ]\Iuch of Barnes's amorous poetrv in his Parthcnophill seems trembling on the verge of excellence, but seldom attains it. He is one of the few English poets \'\ho have essayed the difficult sestine stanza, which he has converted into a lyrical measure by making it octosyllabic. Robert Southwell (1561 ? -1595) has obtained a higher place in EngUsh poetry than strictly his due, on account of the compassion excited by his fate. Belonguig to a Roman Catholic family, he was sent to the Continent for his education, and returned to England ambitious for the crown of martyrdom, ^\■hich, in the opinion of his co-religionists, he obtained by his execution for ROBERT SOUTHWELL 143 -treason in 1595. That he was guilty of treason is unquestionable ; the fault, however, was not his, but that of Pope Pius V., who, by excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth, had rendered every Roman Cathohc ecclesiastic an emissary of conspiracy and rebellion. Every such ecclesiastic was bound, by his allegiance to the Pope, to tell his flock that their Queen was an -usurper — an Athaliah awaiting a Jehoiada. The conduct of the English Govern- ment was that prescribed by the circumstances, and exactly the same as that which any other Government -would have adopted in its place. This in no respect impairs the honour due to Southwell for his single- minded enthusiasm, or for his courage and constancy. Apart from the man, the poet is interesting on two grounds — the rhetorical merit of much of his verse, and the first indications of the far-fetched metaphysical conceit which so marred the poetry of Donne and Crashaw and Cowley in the next century. He has, like these writers, great fertility of con- ception ; ideas throng upon him, and he entertains and arrays all with indiscriminate hospitality. When writing simply and naturally he can be very pleasing, as in the following lines : lEROBERTVS .^OVTHVELU [L-o/ic/im pro Cathjtiie fus ptiisus et SeC; Uis 3. mar. isns Robert Southwell From the portrait in "St. Peter's Complaint,^' 1630 The lopped tree in time may grow again ; Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower ; The sorest wight may find release of pain ; The driest soil suck in some moistening shower. Times go by turns and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow ; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb ; Her time hath equal times to come and go ; Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web. No joy so great but runneth to an end, No hap so hard but may in fine amend. Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring, No endless night yet not eternal day ; The saddest birds a season find to sing. The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all. That man may hope to rise yet fear to fall. Fortune has been most unkind to Richard Barnfield (1574-1627) in 144 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE EH.qLA:h(vs HELICON. Carta placencfuperis, puracumvelle venitc, Et mamhus pun's fumite foncis ac^uam. depri\"ing him for nearly three centuries of the lionour due to his two best poems, but most kmd in bestowing tliis on no less a person tlran Shakespeare. These are the beautiful lines on the song of the nightingale, beginning, " As it fell upon a day," and the sonnet to R. L., " If music and sweet poetry agree," both of which, being printed in The Passionate Pilgrim, were ascribed to Shakespeare, and only restored to Barnfield upon their discover}' in a copy of his then almost unknown writings. The so-called ode is not very Shakespearean, but the authorship of the sonnet would hardly have been questioned upon internal evidence alone : If ilusic and sweet Poetr}' agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ra\'ish human sense ; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As, passing all conceit, needs no defence. Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound That Pha-bus' lute, the queen of music, makes ; And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned When as himself to singing he betakes. One god is god of both, as poets feign ; One knight loves both, and both in thee remain. Barnfield certainly did not encumber himself with poetical baggage for the ascent of Parnassus. The greater part o; iiis slender store of verse was produced by the age of twenty, which may excuse a questionable morality which was probably nothing worse than boyish affectation. Here, as everywhere, he manifests pure poetical quahties, and it wis a loss to English literature when, perhaps upon inheriting a patrimonial estate, he quitted the excellent literary AT LONDON Printed by l.K.ior /ohn f/as^C, and are to be fold in Pa ulcs Church-yard, atchcf^ne of ihc Bearc. 1600. Title-pag-e of "England's Helicon," 1600 LYLY, GREENE, AND LODGE AS LYRISTS '45 society he had enjoyed in London for his native Staffordshire, where lie remained obstinately silent until his death in 1627. The lives and general personal and literary characTers of Lyly, Greene, and Lodge have been treated elsewhere, and in this place it is only necessary to speak of them as lyric poets. In our estimation, Lodge is the truest lyrist among them. The best lyrics of Lyly and Greene are not, strictly speaking, songs, but little poems, musical indeed, but whose length is rather conditioned by the subject than the melody. Lyly's famous song of Apelles on Campaspe is a notable instance. Rather than quote anything so universally known, we give the no less beautiful " Nightingale Song" : What bird so sings, yet so does wail ? O 'tis the ravished nightingale. Jug, jug, jug, jug, teren ! she cries, And still her woes at midnight rise, Brave prick song ! Who is't now we hear ? None but the lark so shrill and clear; How at heaven's gates she claps her wings! The morn not waking till she sings. Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat Poor robm redbreast tunes his note ! Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing Cuckoo ! to welcome in the spring. Cuckoo ! to weloome in the spring. Greene's \'erses are frequently steeped in the richest hues of poetry, but want something- of the easy spontaneity of the lyric. They are rarely snatches of simple melody, but patterns of sonorous stateliness, such as might have passed for examples of an Elizabethan Keats. If they are to be regarded as songs, they are songs for the concert chamber : Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content ; The quiet mind is richer than a crown ; Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent ; The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown. Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bUss, Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss. The homely house that harbours quiet rest ; The cottage that affords no pride nor care ; The mean that 'grees with country music best ; The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare ; Obscured life sets down a type of bliss : A mind content both crown and kingdom is. As Greene rem.inds us of Keats, so Lodge sometimes reminds us of Blake. It is difficult to think that Blake had no knowledge of " Love's Wantonness " when he wrote " How sweet I roamed from field to field " : Love guards the roses of thy lips. And flies about them like a bee ; If I approach he forward skips, And if I kiss he stingeth me. Lyrical Poet)-)' : f. vly, Gret'iie^ Lodsie VOL. II K 146 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Love in thine eves doth build his bower, And sleeps within their pretty shrine, And if I look the boy will hover, And from their orbs shoot shafts divine. Love works thy heart within his fire, And in my tears doth form the same ; And if I tempt it will retire, And of my plaints doth make a game. Love, let me cull her choicest flowers. And pity me, and calm her eye. Make soft her heart, dissolve her lowers, Then will I praise thy deity. The same daring imagination is shown in the gorgeous " Description of Rosalynd," a rare e.xample of continuous h^'perbole never transgressing the hmits allowable to impassioned feeling. The less-known " Hamadryad's Song " is an instance of the power of genuine lyrical emotion to e.xalt what without it would be mere commonpl.ace : Pluck the fruit and taste the pleasure, youthful Lordings, of delight ! While occasion gives you seizure. Feed your fancies and your sight ! After death, when you are gone, Joy and Pleasure is there none. Here on earth no thing is stable ; Fortune's changes well are known. Wliile as Youth doth them enable. Let your seeds of joy be sown. After death, when 3-ou are gone, Joy and Pleasure is there none. Feast it freely with ^our lovers : Blithe and wanton sweets do fade. Whilst that lively Cupid hovers Round about this lovely shade. Sport it freely one to one, After death is pleasure none. Now the pleasant Spring allureth, And both place and time invite. Out ! Alas ! What heart endureth To disclaim his sweet delight ? After death, when we are gone, Joy and Pleasure is there none. The Earl of As already mentioned, another class of lyrical poets was formed by those Oxford men of society who occasionally turned aside from pleasure or business to the solace of poetrv'. After Raleigh, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), is the most perfect type of the poetical courtier. So great was his brilliancy as an ornament of Elizabeth's Court, and so strong his position as the son-in-law of Burghley, that nothing but his perverse wrong-headedness could have prevented his rising to the highest dignities of the State ; but neither his OXFORD AND DYER 147 gallant bearing nor his accomplishments of mind and person could counterweigh the bad impression of his endless escapades and broils ; he lost ah consideration, and died in retirement. It is singular that much of the fugitive poetry which he contributed to the anthologies of the day should be of a religious character. As a lyrist he has considerable merit, and is commended as a dramatist, but his plays are lost. The best-known of his poems, and deservedly so, is his graceful colloquy with Fond Desire : Come hither, shepherd's swain. Sir, what do ye require ? I pray thee show to me thy name. My name is Fond Desire. Where wert thou born, Desire ? In pride and pomp of May. By whom, sweet boy, wert thou begot ? By Self-conceit, men say. Tell me who was thy nurse ? Fresh youth, in sugared joy. What was thy meat and daily food ? Sad sighs and great annoy. What hadst thou then to drink ? Unfeigned lovers' tears. What cradle wert thou rocked in ? In hope devoid of fears. What lulled thee to thy sleep ? Sweet thoughts which liked one best. And where is now thy dwelling-place ? In gentle hearts I rest. What thing doth please thee most ? To gaze on beautj? still. Whom dost thou think to be thy foe ? Disdain of my good will. Doth company displease ? It doth in many a one. Where would Desire then choose to be ? He loves to muse alone. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford From ail engraving of the portrait at Welbeck Will ever age or death Bring thee unto decay ? No, no. Desire both lives and dies A thousand times a day. Then, Fond Desire, farewell. Thou art no mate for me. I should be loth methinks to dwell. With such an one as thee. Sir Edward Dyer {ci. 1607) was in so far the opposite of Oxford as to be Sir Edward a man of weight and character, and the friend, legatee, and pall-bearer of -'" Philip Sidney, whom Oxford wished to assassinate. Like Oxford, however, he was subject to disastrous eclipses of the Royal favour, which he is said to have on one occasion regained by threatening to go into a consumption. 148 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "And hereupon her majestv hath forgiven him." Like Oxford, also, he withdrew much from obser\-ation in tlie latter part of his life, and died in embarrassed circumstances, wliich may ha\'e been owing to his reported partiality to alchemw He was an early friend of Spenser, a man of high culture, and the author of several poems, one which would have made him famous if his name Irad been more generally associated with it. It is hardly necessary to reproduce so well-known a poem as My Mind to inc. a Kingdom is, but one stanza may be quoted to point out the reflection of it in a still better known poem of Shirley's ; Some weigh their pleasure by their lust, Their wisdom by their rage of wiU ; Their treasure is their only trust ; A cloaked craft their store of skill. But all the pleasure that I find Is to maintain a quiet mind. shirley : Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels where they kill : But their strong nerves at last must ^aeld ; Thev tame but one another still. The attribution of a translation of si.x idyUs of Theocritus to Dyer seems extremely uncertain. Three poets of the time stand altogether aloof from the lyric — ^\'ILLI.\^r William Wakxer, A_braham Traunxe, and Thomas Edwards. Of these, Warner Warner obtained much the highest reputation in his own day, being actually paralleled with Spenser. He was probablv mdebted for this unmerited distinction to the national character of his principal work, AlhicnCs England, first published in 1586, and enlarged by successi\-e continuations down to the author's own da^'. It may be compared in design to Ovid's Fasti, being a \'ersified histor}' of England, fabulous in man\' parts tlien deemed true, with an inter- mixture of unquestionable legend. Warner's significance in English literary history )s dcri\-ed less from his sensible and manly, but not very poetical epic, than from his peculiar position as the onl_v considerable poet of his dav who was entirely unaffected by Italian example, and wrote in lines of fourteen svUables as though Surrey, ^^'yatt, and their follo\\-ers had ne^•er existed. The best parts of his poem are the episodes, one of wliicli, Argcnlilc and Ciiran, has been frequently republislied and imitated. He was by profession an attorney, and died at Am well in i6of). Abraham Fraunce (1560 ? -1635 ? ) is onlv remarkable for his persistence in tile tliankless task of composing in hexameters. Thomas Edwards {/?. iSQfi), not to be confounded with the author of Tlic Rencieing of Love, whose Cephalus and Procns, and Xarcissiis, ha\'e lateh' been retrie\'ed from a unique copy, is a \^■riter of a much higher order, who might ha\-e attained distinction if lie had continued to write. At the date of his publication his command of language \\'as e\'identh' imperfect, and hence he is continually obscure, but not with tlie obscurity of affectation. \\'e are continuallv tantalised Edu.'aras SCOTCH POETRY 149 with glimpses of an almost Keatsian beauty, which never become definite. Nothing is known of Edwards's life ; he seems to speak of himself as a poor scholar, and must have had some connection with the family of ArgaU, eminent notaries, to a member of which his volume is dedicated. With the important exception of the Border Ballads, Scotch poetry, so flourishing at the beginning of the century, all but died away during its course. Many of the occasional pieces written under Mary Stuart and James VI. have considerable merit, but this merit is seldom or ne^'er of a poetical order. The poetical ballads and satires, for example, of Robert Sempill (1530 ? -1595) have both vigour and historical value, but can hardly be regarded as poetry. Apart from the curious play of " Philotus," the only regular poems of the time of anj' im- portance are those of Alex.\nder Hume {1560 ? -1609), minister of Logie, near Stirling, a son of Baron Polwarth. The chief cha- racteristics of his poems, which have been recently collected, are a dignified stateliness of manner and a keen eye for the broader effects of natural scenery. The former is especially evinced in his Tviiimph of the Lord, a poem on the discomfiture of the Ar- . „ a.u- . t7 , j ,. o . Title-page of Warner s ' Albion s England, 1589 mada, the latter m his Descrip- tion of the Day Estivall, too long even for the longest day, but a glowing representation of the pomp of summer : The ample heaven of fabric sure In cleanness doth surpass The crystal and the silver pure Or clearest polished glass. The time so tranquil is and still That nowhere shall ye find, Save in a high and barren hill, An air of peeping wind. All trees and simples, great and small, That balmy leaf do bear, THE FIRST and Second parts ofALBIONS ENG. LAND. The former reuiTed and correded, and the Utter ne'^ly continued and added. Containing an Hiftotic.ill Map of the fame Ifland : profcciircd fiom lhtliurs,t^l}a,and Lahori of SaturneJupiUY,HncnleJ^ and/€nc.u:Orig]n,illcsoftbeBrutons,andEnglifh- Tnen,AndGcrdfif frosl, sunshine, wind, and rain. "RALPH ROISTER DOISTER " i6i different kind of weather to serve his own occasions, the chmax being reached by an urchin who would like snow in summer : Forsooth, sir, my mind is this, at few words. All my pleasure is in catcliing of birds. And making of snowballs and throwing the same : For the which purpose to have set in frame,' With my godfather god I would fain have spoken. Desiring him to have sent me by some token Where I might have had great frost for my pitfalls. And plenty of snow to make my snowballs. This once had, boys' lives be such as no man leads. Oh, to see my snowballs light on my fellows' heads, And to hear the birds how they flicker their wings In the pitfall ! I say it passeth all things. Sir, if ye be god's servant, or his kinsman, I pray you help me in this if 3rou can. Jupiter announces his intention of distributing the weather as he may- think fit ; the petitioners thank him effusively, as though they had obtained some enormous concession, and Merry Report sums up : Lo ! how tills is brought to pass ! Sirs, now shall ye have the weather even as it was. "There can be no doubt," Dr. Ward justly observes, "that so soon as ''Ralph the interludes of John Heywood, and compositions more or less resembling ^}^ai!i^" these in kind, had established themselves in popular favour as an accepted dramatic species, the required transition from the moralities to comedy had, to all intents and purposes, been effected." There was, nevertheless, no piece in existence that could claim the title of a comedy. The first example of a play with a regular comic intrigue, worked out by personages discriminated to the best of the author's ability, and divided into acts and scenes, was given by Nicholas Udall in Ralph Roister Doister, and constitutes a landmark in our literature, even though the play be bad and the author not much better. It would be most interesting to be able to date it with precision. It was formerly thought to have been written for Eton boys while Udall was head- master, between 1534 and 1541, but Professor Hales has almost overthrown this opinion. Udall's apparent indebtedness to Heywood's Proverbs, published in 1546, may be explained by supposing both writers to have used the same current popular expressions : but when it appears that there is no allusion to Ralph Roister Doister in the first and second editions of Thomas Wilson's Rule of Reason, published in 1551 and 1552, but that it is quoted in the edition of 1553, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was first performed in one of the two latter years, when Udall had become, or was on the point of becoming, master of Westminster. Whenever first produced, Ralph Roister Doister's freedom from indecency mdwias renders it almost certain that it was written to be acted by boys, and the author was unquestionably a schoolmaster. Udall, born in 1505 or 1506, had distinguished himself at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he is said ^ Made arrangements. VOL. II L Udall i62 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE to have incurred disfavour by his attachment to the doctrines of the Reformers. Any loss he may lia\-e suffered on this account was amply made up to him when, m 1534, he was appointed master of Eton Scliool. He forfeited his position in 1541 from pecuniary irregularities and 3^et more serious imputa- tions, which may have been disproved, since he was paid his salary to the time of his removal and was allowed to retain his li\'ing of Braintree. It is a point in his favour that his troubles coincided with a strong reaction towards Roman Catholicism, following the execution of Cromwell. After a while, Queen Katherine Parr, a supporter of the Reformation, noticed him, and he assisted in translating Erasmus's paraphrase of the Gospels. He did much literary and other work for the Government under Edward VI., but upon the accession of Mary deserted the Reformation with the alacritj' of a \^icar of Bray. Bishop Gardiner, undismayed bv past scandals, made him his own household school- master, and on the strength, as may be supposed, of Ralph Roister Doister, he received a commission to prepare interludes to be acted at Court. In or about 1554 he was made headmaster of Westminster School, which Henry VIII. had founded in 1540. This appointment he lost when, in 1556, Mary delivered the school to the re-established monastery of Westminster, and Udall died almost immediateh' afterwards. He had written a drama on the story of King Hezekiah, extant and acted in Elizabeth's time, and several comedies, now lost. Neither Udall nor his play would have attracted much attention if they had not come at the head of English comic poets and comic pieces. If Ralph Roister Doister could ha\'e liad any literary distinction it would have been as a clever adaptation of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus ; but, in fact, it is a feeble one. One merit it certainly possesses — the easy and natural progress of the scenes; and it may be granted that it is one of those plays which would act better than the}^ read. Much mirth might, no doubt, be derived from the actors' facial expressions and by-play ; and a play acted by boys may generally count upon indulgence. Passing over Jacob and Esau, Queen Hester, and other pieces not unworthy of notice, but belonging to the class of interludes, we find the rank of the second English comedy disputable rather than disputed between Misogonus and the 'Gammer far better known Gammer Gurton's Needle. There is nothing in common between the two plays, the former of which a regular comedy on the classical model, with a gra\-e didactic purpose : the other, if it had not been lengtliened out to the dimensions of a comedy, would have been ranked with farces. Neither possesses much literaiy merit, but the less ambitious is the more interesting ; for Misogonus has no root in the national life, while Gammer Gurton^s Needle really is a leaf from " the short and simjDle annals of the poor." ;\lan\' types of character are presented with vivid truth, from the mischief- making half-«'itted vagrant down to the domestic cat, whose misdeed is the pi\-ot of the action. We learn exactly how an English peasant husband of Elizabeth's time would express himself when put out : Whereto ser\-ed your hands and eves, but this your neelc to keep ? What devil had vou else to do ? ve kept, ich wot, no sheep. iilirhvi s Needle '' GAMMER GURTON 163 Cham fain abroad to dig and delve, in water, mire, and clay, Sossing and possing in the dirt still from day to day. A hundred things that be abroad, cham yet to see them wele. And four of you sit idle at home, and cannot keep a neelo ! The decriers of machinery may be invited to consider the commotion produced in the days of Ehzabeth by the loss of one poor needle, the idea that another might be pro- ducible from the family stores, or obtainable on loan from a neighbour, ne\'er occurring to anybody, even though the integrity of Hodge's breeches is at stake. Gammer Gurton's directions to the serving-boy how to find the family candle cast interesting light on another department of do- mestic economy ; Go, hie thee soon. And grope behind the old brass pan, which thing when thou hast done. There shalt thou find an old shoe, wherein if thou look well, Thee shalt find lying an inch of an old tallow candel. Light it, and bring it tite away. It is not surprising that Gammer has to exclaim : Our candle is at an end, my neele is still where it was. The needle, originally dropped by Gammer in her indigna- tion at the lawless proceed- ings of Gib the cat, is, of course, eventually recovered. Most of the piece is in a West -country dialect, al- though it was written and acted at Cambridge. If we are to infer, as seems reasonable, that West-country was the speech accepted as appropriate to rustics, this seems to imply a number of such comedies now lost. The qitestion of priority between Gammer Gurton and Misogonus must be decided in favour of the former if Mr. Henry Bradley is right, as he probably is, in identifying this production of Mr. S., Master of Arts, as the title-page describes the author, with " Mr. Stevenson's plaie," acted in 1559. The date of Misogomis is fixed by internal evidence at 1560. Stevenson appears Title-page of "Gammer Gurton's Needle," 1575 164 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE to have produced a college play as early as 1553-1554, which may have been Gammer Gurton. On the other hand, the Marprelate tracts state that it was generalU? attributed to Dean, afterwards Bishop, Bridges ; and this the writer evidently does not disbelieve, though he affects to consider the Dean incapable of writing any so clever. The ascription to Bishop Still seems refuted by the gravity of that exemplary prelate. Connecting Before proceeding to an unquestionable tragedv in Sackville and Norton's the mora/ih' Gorboduc. brief reference should be made to a class of composition intermediate and t.ie drama TQQt^yQen the moraht^' and tragedy, as Heywood's interludes form a transition between morality and comedy. The distinguishing mark of such pieces is that while the action and the leading characters are historical, many of the personages are allegorical figures of vices and virtues, or even classes of society, and the " \'ice " of the morality reappears, though he may not bear the name. In Appiiis and Virginia he is called " Haphazard " ; in Cambyses, " Ambi- dexter." These two plaj^s were probably written shortly after Gorboduc. An older member of the class, Bishop Bale's King John, dates from the reign of Edward VI. It is very remarkable as a panegyric of John, of whom so little good has been said, as the representative of English liberties against the encroachments of Rome. Shakespeare took somewhat of a similar line, though he refrained from representing John as the Proto-martyr of the Reformation : Upon a good zeal he attempted very far For wealth of this realm to provide reformation In the Church thereof, but the}' did him debar Of that good purpose ; for by excommunication The space of seven 3'ears they interdict this nation. These bloodsuppers thus of cruelty' and spite Subdued this good King for executing right. " Nature formed the Poet for the King ! " Whenever written or first represented. Gammer Gurton''s Needle was acted at Cambridge in 1563. Two years earlier an epoch had been created in English '• Gorboduc" dramatic history by the performance at the Temple of Gorboduc, the first English tragedy, the joint composition of Thomas Sackville, of whom an account has already been given, and Thomas Norton (1532-1554), like Sackville a man versed in public affairs, and afterwards painfully notorious for his severity in the prosecution of Roman Catholics. It must be remembered that he was the son-in-law of Archbishop Cranmer, who had been treated with even greater severity. \\'arton, whose opinions on matters of taste deserve the utmost respect, attributes the entire plav to Sack\'ille, from the prevailing similarity of style. It appears to us, however, that, granting Norton any poetical gift at aU, which it would be hard to deny him merely because in versifying the Psalms he failed where no one has succeeded, the resemblance in manner is sufficientlv accounted for by the resemblance in poetical form, now the rule in English tragedies, then a daring no^'elty. Gorboduc is not only the first regular English tragedy, but the second important essay in English blank verse after Surrey's specimens of the .Encid. The trick once learned, it was not difficult for accomplished SACKVILLE'S " GORBODUC " 165 men to write with uniformitv of style upon a stately and somewhat monotonous pattern. Their innovation was of momentous importance, providing the digniiied drama, whether tragedy or comedy, at once and for ever with the style that best befitted it. In truth, but for blank verse, the English stage would never have possessed a poetical drama. It will further be observed that Gorboduc is, in fact, two plays, and that Poiuicaiten- the first three acts are but a prologue to the others. These latter are the portion '^"corMuc" of the play attributed to SackviUe, who could not find time or mood to finish his own Mirror for Magistrates, and may well have devolved the less interesting Knole Park, built by Sackville From a picture by Paul Sandby part of his tragedy upon an associate. The story, like Lear, is taken from the fabulous annals of Trojan Britain, and is another version of the same idea. As Lear between his daughters, Gorboduc divides his realm between his sons Ferrex and Porrex. Each aspires to the sole sovereignty. A civil war ensues. Porrex kills Ferrex, and is himself slain by his mother Videna. The exasperated people slay Videna and Gorboduc himself. The line of Brutus thus becoming extinct, the country falls into fearful anarchy between the insurgents, the nobles, and a Scotch invader. The curtain falls upon a scene of utter con- fusion, inconsistent with the precepts of the dramatic art, but conformable to what was then believed to be history. It actually is related that the ex- tinction of the royal line was followed by an anarchy of fifty years, terminated 1 66 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE at last by Dunwallon, Prince of Cornwall, who founded a new dynasty. It is of more importance that this conclusion, so unsatisfactory from the point of view of dramatic art, is needful for the serious purpose of the play. Gorboduc cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it was composed with a direct political obiect. It is the work of two statesmen, who felt, as all statesmen must, the danger to which the realm was exposed throughout Elizabeth's reign by the precariousness of the succession. Tlie object of the piece is to persuade tlie Queen to marry, and the poet's end is gained by a powerful delineation of the universal nrisery consequent upon the absence of legitimate heirs. Nothing can be clearer than the drift of the speech of the wise counsellor Eubulus near the end : And this [ci\-il discord] doth grow, wlicn lo ! unto the prince Whom death or sudden hap of life bcTca\'es, No certain lieir remains : sucli certain lieir As not all onlv is the rightful heir, But to the realm is surely known to be, And truth thereb)' vested in subjects' hearts To owe faith there, where right is known to rest. Alas, in parliament what hope can be, When is of parliament no hope at all ? Which though it be assembled by consent, Yet is not likely with consent to end. The moral is further enforced by the production of a Scotch prince, Fergus, Duke of Alban}', as claimant of the crown and invader of the kingdom, a clear allusion to the danger of the succession of Mary Stuart. There is also a plain hint that the Queen will do well to choose an English consort. The above lines are a fair sample of the diction of the play, rather adapted to command respect than admiration. One passage, however, describing the death of Porre.x, murdered by his mother, attains the elevation of true poetry : His eyes, even now unclosed, Beheld the queen, and cried to her for hero. We then, alas ! the ladies which that time Did there attend, seeing that heinous deed. And hearing him oft call the wretched name Of mother, and to cry to her for aid, Whose direful hand gave him the mortal wound, Pitying, alas ! for nought else could we do, His ruthful end, ran to the woeful bed, Despoiled straight his breast, and, all we might, Wiped in vain with napkins next at hand. The sudden streams of blood that flushed far Out of the gaping wound. O what a look, O what a rueful steadfast eye, methought, He fixed upon m}- face, which to my death Will never part from me, when with a braid ' A deep-fetched sigh he gave, and therewithal, Clasping Iiis hands, to heaven he cast his sight ; And straight, pale death pressing within his face, The flying ghost his mortal corpse forsook. 1 .Slai-t. DEVELOPMENT OF TRAGEDY 167 The relation of the death by a messenger is in the manner of Seneca, to whom, as well as to the Italian tragic writers, also imitators of Seneca, the authors are much indebted. On the other hand, the unities are set at defiance. The use of blank verse was probably suggested by Italian precedent. Classical influence is maniicsted by the Chorus, which sums up and moralises upon the situation at the end of every act. Native talent excogitated the Dumb Show, preceding each act and prefiguring its character ; thus, a representation of the fable of the Bundle of Sticks ushers in the inculcation of political unity, and the Furies are called into requisition when murder has to be done. Cambyses and Appius and Virginia, tragedies of about the period of Gorhoduc, have already been mentioned as remarkable for their carrying over the " Vice " of the moralities to serious tragedy. As specimens of the dramatic art they are extremely rude and primitive. Tancred and Gisniundo, though dealing outrage- ously in horrors, is less in " Cambyses' vein," and was refurbished for representa- tion in 1591. It was the work of ii\'e authors, and is perhaps the first English play taken from an Italian no\'el. Damon and Pythias, by Richard Edwards {1523 ? -1566), is of considerable interest as the first tragi-comedy, the situation being one of tragic suspense until the happy denouement of the return of Pythias. If it had but been in blank verse instead of fourteen-syllable couplets, and it some good genius had frequently whispered to Edwards that he was getting tedious, Damon and Pythias might ha^'e been a good play. The writer has excellent ideas and sound dramatic instincts, but lacks strength to emancipate himself from the conventions of his age, which are most anti-dramatic. In one respect he deserves much credit, his happy in^'ention of a pair of false friends, a philosopher, and a courtier, to heighten the true friendship of Damon and Pythias by the irony of contrast. Edwards would have been a good comic poet with a more liberal endowment of vis comica. He was an Oxford M.A., a student of music, and master of the children at the Chapel Royal. A later tragi-comedy or comedy of his on the story of Palamon and Arcite, now lost, gave great contentment to Queen Elizabeth. Edwards was a Court poet, and the first dramatists who succeeded in achie\'ing a really literary drama, Lyly and Peele, were, in their first efforts at least, Court poets also. Many plays, both by Court poets for the entertain- ment of the Queen and the aristocracy, and by humbler pens for the amusement of the public, doubtless filled up the gap of sixteen or seventeen years, but in general their titles alone survive as tokens of the existence of an active literary industry. We know, for example, that a plav founded on Montemavor's romance of Diana Enamovadaw^s^ptriormed. before Elizabeth in 1584, and may have suggested The Two Gentlemen of Verona, but not a syllable of it is preserved. Almost the only dramatic author of the period who has bequeathed both his name and his work to posterity is George Whetstone, the translator of Cinthio, who in 1578 printed Promos and Cassandra, a rhyming plav of formidable extent, too long and heavy to be acted, but interesting for having afforded the plot of Measure for Measure. Nor should the dramatic translations and imitations of George Gascoigne be overlooked ; his Supposes, after Ariosto, Edwards and other drama- tists Whetstone ana Gascoigne i68 The Theatres HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE is the earliest extant comedy in English prose; and his /ocasi!a, adapted from Euripides through the medium of an Italian imitation, is the second English tragedy in blank verse. Being now arrived at the period of Christopher Marlowe, who first gave the Enghsh drama rank among the great dramatic literatures of the world, a short space may be advantageously devoted to the inquiry how Melpomene and Thalia were housed, and what were the accessories of theatrical repre- sentation. We have seen that the Miracle Play was performed upon huge movable stages, drawn or pushed along upon wheels from one part of the to\vn where Greenwich Palace in the Sixteenth Century Froiii an engraving by Basii'c in " I'etusta Monumenla," 1767 the performance took place to another, the audience standing below in the open air. This may have answered sufficiently well so long as performances took place only once a year, but was evidently inconsistent with daily repre- sentation. Instead of bringing the theatre to the audience it had become necessary to bring the audience to the theatre, but the erection of play-houses, however plainly demanded by the needs of the situation, was long delayed by want of capital and by the opposition of the municipal authorities, who not merely contemned and suspected players as loose characters but dreaded all concourses of people as the means of generating and diffusing contagious disorders. For some time performances were chiefly given in the yards of large inns, to which the actors who gave representations at Court or in the mansions of the great, naturally resorted at the times when their services were not required by their patrons. It was not until 1576 or 1577 that a theatre, called The Theatre, because at the time it was the only one, was erected in THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE 169 Finsbury Fields, followed shortly afterwards by the Curtain, in Shoreditch. The Rose, the Swan, the Globe succeeded, all built on the Bankside, South- vvark, on the south side of the Thames. The pencil of Johannes De Witt, a Dutch visitor to London in 1596, has happily preserved for us the semblance of the Swan Theatre, erected probably in 1593, and according to De Witt much the finest theatre in London at the time of his visit. It could hold, he assures us, three thousand spectators, and was the only theatre in London built of stone. The general aspect of the edifice will be apparent from the accompany- ing reproduction ol the original drawing, brought to light by Dr. Gaedertz, and now preserved in Utrecht. The shape is oval, and if the stage and its appendages of dress- ing-rooms were really en- tirely surrounded by boxes, the performance must have been invisible to a consider- able part of the house. There is no appearance of a seated pit, but chairs and benches were probably brought in when required ; and the stage may have been movable, to allow of the exhibition of bull- and bear-baiting. The spec- tators, it will be observed, are protected from the weather by a tiled roof, but the performers have no shelter ; and the want of covering must have increased the difficulty of effective declamation. De Witt unfortunately tells us nothing respecting the equipment of the actors, or mentions the name of the piece they are represent- ing. The theatre had e\'idently excited his admiration ; it was built, he says, of flints, supported on wooden pillars painted in imitation of marble. He was induced to depict it by its general resemblance to a Roman amphitheatre. Next to the edifices, the performers and the audiences must be taken Performance-: into account. Though a popular, the English theatre was not originally a democratic institution. The phrase, even now surviving, " His Majesty's The Interior of the "Swan Theatre" From a sketch made by J de Witt in 1596, now in the University Library at Utrecht lyo HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Servants."" reminds us how greatly indebted it was in its early days to the patronage ot the Crown, and the aristocracy iollowed the e.\ample of the Oneen. \\'e read of the troops of actors maintained by great nobles lilce Leicester and Pembroke, the former of ^\■hom obtained a special licence for his troop in 1573. Municipal authorities were empowered to grant or refuse licences at tlieir discretion. Tlie Queen's own players passed as tlie Lord Chamberlain's. Tlie partiality of the Crown for dramatic entertainments involved the encouragement of acting in tlie pro\'inces, as plays were given for tlie Queen's amusement in all her numerous progresses, and it was necessary to luu'e actors at hand at least in sufficient numbers to tutor unskilled per- formers. The clisad\-antages of attempting performances with a mere scratch company are, as all know, exhibited to tlie life in A Midsummer Night's Dream. This countenance from the Court enabled the stage to hold its ground against the hostility of serious men and fathers of iamilies, wlio in protecting the com- mnnitv from ph3'sical and moral contagion ran great risk of suppressing Shakespeare. The general body of the people, neither courtiers nor councillors, were no doubt favourable to the drama. \Miate\'er credit may be due to the tradition of Shakespeare ha^•ing at one time gained his livelihood by holding horses at the theatre-door, it eA'inces that the theatre was frequented by people \\'ho could afford to ride to it, wliile, on the other hand, passages from con- temporary satirists establish tliat such people might be jostled by unsa^■oury folk in working dresses. Two of the principal attractions of the stage in our da^• were then lacking — there were no actresses, women's parts being performed bv bo\-s, and there was no scenery. Tlie absence of regular scene-painting mav have been partlv supplied b\' theatrical properties, as inventories mention tombs, beacons, steeples, and the mouth of hell itself. Stains of the HaiTilet's directions to the players afford some insight into the intellectual -^''■-"' status of the a\'erage performers of Shakespeare's day, which Shakespeare does not seem to have rated very highly. Hamlet appears to feel himself dealing with men of some natural aptitude, but devoid of culture and urbanity. Little else could be expected from the low social estimation in which the profes- sion was then held and the conditions under which it was recruited. Lea^'ing Shakespeare's own relation to it for further consideration, it may be said that almost the only actor likely to have had a superior education was Edward AUevn, whose father, though by no means of high station, was apparently well-off. Tarlton and Knill had been ta\-ern-keepers or connected with taverns ; the elJer Burbage had been a joiner: of Heminge and Condell we have no informa- tion. The want of actresses tended to stock the stage with good-looking boys, who might or might not ha\'e a real vocation. Recognition. ne\'ertheless, could not be denied to pre-eminent ability. Scholars declared that Roscius lived again in Allevn ; and the appreciation of the mob kept Tarlton, the genius of low comedy, on sign-boards till the end of the eighteenth century. As a rule, howe\"er. the actor's calling was contemned by men of refinement, a circum- stance with an important bearing on literarv history, as it went near to wreck the drama altogether. When Sidne\' wrote his Apology for Poetry in reply SIDNEY AND THE DRAMA 171 to the railings of Stephen Gosson, he took a grand and a right hne as regarded the general cause of Poetry herself, but he erred with respect to the drama. Disgusted with the low standard of the stage at the time he wrote, alike as concerned the quality of the pieces, the qualit}/ of the performers, and the accompaniments of the drama in general, he misconceived these temporary and accidental defects as the inevitable adjuncts of a false system, and would, as he thought, have effected a radical cure by prescribing a return to the model of the classic stage, unities and all. Had this view prevailed, we should ne\'er ha\'e possessed a national drama. Little as Sidney could imagine it. "'^^s »^mlPh0imS^ iVtlT TT/ Corpus Christ! College, Cambridge I''rom Log^aiLS " Cantabrigia lllmlrala," 1688 he was writing on the brink of a revolution, initiated by several men of genius who were writing nearly at the same time as himself, and especially by one whose first play, it is probable, appeared in the year after he had yielded up his breath at Zutphen. The special importance of Christopher Marlowe as a regenerator of the English drama induces us to name him first, though with some slight dislocation of chronology. Christopher Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker, was born at Canterbury in February 1564, two months before Shakespeare. He was educated at the Canterbury grammar school, and afterwards at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, to which he was probably elected on a foundation of Archbishop Parker's. He Chrislopher Marlowe i-]i HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE probably made his translation of Ovid's A mores while at college, and proceeded to London upon taking his B.A. degree in 1583, since his Tainbiirlaiiie, which could not have been written without some practical acquaintance with theatrical society and dramatic matters, cannot be later than 1587. The story is chiefly taken from Thomas Fortescue's Foreste, a translation from the Spanish of Pedro de Mexia. It is remarkable that there is but one piece of direct evidence — a casual allusion by a contemporary — of Marlowe's authorship of this popular play, from Which the greatness of the Elizabethan drama dates, but the internal evidence is conclusive. Faustus was probably produced in 1588, since a ballad apparently founded upon it was printed early in the following }'ear. The Jew of Malta may be two years later, and Edward II., the most regular of Marlowe's plays, two years later still. A tragedy on the story of Dido, probably an early and discarded work, was completed and published after Marlowe's death by Thomas Nash ; he was author or part-author of The Massacre of Paris, an occasional piece hastily got up on contemporary transactions in France ; and may have had a hand in Titus AndronicHS and Henry VI. His unfinished paraphrase of Musreus's Hero and Leaiider, and his blank verse translation of the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia, were entered for publication in September 1593, but not published for some years afterwards. The former was completed by Chapman. At the period of the entry Marlowe had been dead nearly four months. He had always been noted as a freethinker, and in May 1593 expressions used by or imputed to him attracted the notice of the Privy Council, who issued a warrant for his arrest. He was then at Chislehurst, but avoided ajiprehension, though withdrawing no further than Deptford. where, on June i, he was killed in a tavern brawl. If there was any judicial investigation of the circumstances it has not been preserved, and it is now impossible to decide between conflicting rumours. Heavy imputa- tions were made against Marlowe's moral character by an acquaintance named Baines, but no great credit can be given them when it is considered that Marlowe had no opportunity of vindicating himself, and that Baines was hanged not long after^vards. It is not likely that Marlowe was a very strict liver, but it is certain that he obtained the regard of Raleigh, Chapman, and Sir Thomas Wal- singham, and a peculiar note of affection is traceable in most of the references made to him by contemporaries. The great Italian poet Carducci, penetrated with admiration for the genius of Shakespeare, but not having attained to the recognition of his consummate art, calls him the English ^Eschylus, the very title by which English criticism has with more propriety designated ]\Iarlowe. The character bestowed upon Shakespeare by \'oltaire and writers of the French classical school would have suited Marlowe very fairly. The great characteristic of his genius is audacity : he insists on deahng with the most illustrious persons, the strongest situations, and the most tempestuous passions. The great drawback to such manifesta- tions of tragic force is the tendency to rant and hyperbole. Marlowe does not escape extravagance, but his bombast offends less than milder examples in less animated writers, for it never, as with these, suggests the suspicion of affectation. \Mien Tamburlaine reproaches the captive monarchs yoked to his cliariot : POETICAL CHARACTER OF MARLOWE 173 Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia, What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day ? or Guise thus symbolises his dauntless ambition ; Set me to scale the high pyramides. And thereon set the diadem of France ; I'll either rend it with my nails to nought, Or mount the top with my aspiring wings. Although my downfall be the deepest hell : we feel that they are but speaking as the men conceived by Marlowe must have spoken, and that he is merely fulfilling his promise to his audience : From jigging veins of rhyming mother- wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, AVe'U lead you to the stately tent of war ; Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with high as- tounding terms, And scourging kingdoms with his con- quering sword. Tamburlaine is great enough and proud enough to speak the speeches set down for him, and Faustus is wretched enough to justify the utmost conceivable in- tensity of language. It was other- wise when Marlowe went to the same extremes with the character of a Jewish merchant. Tamburlaine is rather epical than dramatic. There is, properly speaking, no plot ; the action is terminated by Tamburlaine's na- tural death, and the play is but the register of his conquests. There is no attempt at the nice delineation of character : the personages are mostly mere soldiers or feeble monarchs, .< Tambur- men of steel or men of straw. The one interesting figure is that of Tambur- nine" laine himself, the unconscious foreshadowing of Nietzsche's "Overman." In weaker hands than Marlowe's Tamburlaine would have been as incredible ^'^Oto\ \_'^ou:^, Canicrbury Memorial to Marlowe at Canterbury Front !he ilatue by Onsloiu Ford 174 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE as the Moors and ^loguls of Dryden's heroic plays ; but he is saved by his sincerity, and the touch of humility which instructs him that amid aU his triumnhs he is but the instrument of a liig-her Power: IthiWf. the (ir?a irku"'' u f "DcMuied into h^a ^irazicaL •courfe? , a? uk- y v.'eirelu.'Kin.c si- v. ;_.; •n>t''i^5f spoiv^t mi i« the €itk- I'ioi; iiril: , ?nd nf.-v.lic.pubHihr:Ql« ' Title-page oi: " ramburlaine the Great,'' From tkc copy ot Oxford 1590 There is a God, full of reveng- ing wrath, From whom the thunder and the hghtning breaks, Whose scourge I am, and him will I obey. He is b}^ no means in- accessible to the softer emotions, but his love- speeches are " buttered thunder " ; Proud fury and intolerable fit That dares torment the body of m^' love, And scourge the scourge of the immortal gods ! Now are those spheres, where Cupid used to sit, Wounding the world with won- der and with lo\-e, Sadly supplied with pale and ghasth- death. Whose darts do pierce the centre of mv soul. Her sacred beautv hath en- chanted Heaven ; And had she lived before the siege of Trov, Helen, whose beauty sum- inoned Greece to arms. And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos, Had not been named in Ho- mer's Iliad. The other speakers are less liyperbolical, but em- ploy the same magnificent iigurati\'e style, which will not appear other than appropriate when it is con- sidered that tliey are mosth' kings. Thus, the eagle becomes in the mouth of Orchanes, The princely fowl, that in her wings Carries the fearful thunderbolts of Jove. Sigismund's description of his army A'ies with the grandeur of the panorama ■unfolded bv Satan from the specular mount in Paradise Regained : MARLOWE'S "TAMBURLAINE" 175 Afarlowe's ini- prffi'eineiih m versification But now, Orcanes, view my royal host, That hides these plains, and seems as vast and wide As doth the desert of Arabia To those that stand on Bagdet's lofty tower ; Or as the ocean to the traveller That rests upon the snowy Apennines ; And tell me whether I should stoop so low. Or treat of peace with the Natolian king. Passages like these, of which there are multitudes, show how entirely new a spirit had come into the English drama with Marlowe. Peele indeed had shown that poetry might be combined with playwriting, but his treatment was not of the kind that fills theatres. It excited neither pity nor terror, while Marlowe provided his audiences abundantly and even superabundantly with both. Much of his success was also due to his great improvements in blank verse, whose artistic merits might pass unappreciated, but which must have produced an immediately recognisable effect in augmenting the compass of stage declamation. The nature of the modifications introduced by him is ably and accurately stated by Addington Sj^monds, but it need not be supposed that Marlowe scanned his lines as he wrote them, or afterwards. He was simply one endowed with a fine instinct for verbal music, whose feeling and whose metre naturally and inevitably chimed together. Hence the infinite variety of his verse, as pause and stress are continually changing to suit the emotion to be expressed. In Tamburlaine, indeed, the lines too frequently end with a pause, but each has elasticity within itself. The superb resonance and solemn roll so frequently occurring have a deeper root in the mental constitution of the man. Tamburlaine would be the nc -plus ultra of braggadocios if he were not generally able to make his words good. But he is a thinker as well as a conqueror, and embodies the other side of his creator Marlowe's nature, the yearning for infinite knowledge no less than infinite power : The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops To thrust his doting father from his chair And place himself in the empvreal Heaven Moved me to manage arms against thy State. What better precedent than mighty Jove ? Nature, that framed us of four elements Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds ; Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world. And measure every wandering planet's course. Still climbing after knowledge infinite. And always moving as the restless spheres, Wills us to wear ourselves, and never rest. Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicitv, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown. Tamburlaine's summurii bonum seems a sad anti-climax to his spirit of " Faustus" 176 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE aspiration, but is necessitated by the dramatic situation, as he is excusing himself to the King of Persia for having taken tlie hberty to dethrone him. Marlowe's next pla-\' was to prove for how much intellectual conquests counted with him. It is his Faust us, founded on an English translation of the German chap-book in which the history of Faustus is narrated. The chap-book is closely followed, and as ]iIarlowe has not, like Goethe, in^'ented an underplot to knit the action together, the play is little but a succession of disconnected scenes. Faustus appears bemoaning the uncertainty of human knowledge, and the miserable results which the learned professions yield at their best : Philosophy is odious and obscure ; Both law and phvsic are for petty wits ; Divinit}' is basest of the tliree. Woodcut of Faustus and Mephistopheles From Marloi^ei " Faustus," 1631 Bacon at the same time was thinking much the same thing, but he betook himself to the investigation of Nature. Faustus must haA-e a shorter cut ; Those metaphysics of magicians And necromantic books are lieavenly Lines, circles, scenes, letters and characters Aye, these are those that Faustus most desires. O what a world of profit and delight, Ox power, of honour, of omnipotence, Is promised to tlie studious artisan ! Faustus obtains the object of his desire, and now the incurable A'ice of all dramas founded on infernal compacts appears : he does and can do nothing with it. He has been pleasing himself with thoughts of the tasks to which he will set his spirits ; MARLOWE'S "FAUSTUS" 177 I'll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl, And search all corners of the new-found world For pleasant fruits and princely delicatts ; I'll have them read me strange -philosophy, And teU the secrets of all foreign kings ; I'll have them wall all Germany with brass, And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg ; I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, And chase the Prince of Parma from our land. Unquestionably this is precisely what Faustus in his supposed situation would have done, but is precisely what he does not do, for the conclusive reason that magic transcends the resources of the stage. He follows the course pre- scribed for him by the chap-boolv, and, though exercising supernatural power in a small way, finds nothing worthy of himself to be done until he calls up Helen, Fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. Except for an occasional outburst of magnificent poetry like this, the poet's power is reserved for the catastrophe, when, indeed, he surpasses himself : The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike. The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. O, I'll leap up to my God ! Who pulls me down ? See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament ! One drop would save my soul — half a drop, ah, my Christ ! Ah, rend not my heart for naming of mv Christ ! Yet will I call on him : O spare me, Lucifer ! — Where is it now ? 'tis gone, and see where God Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows ! Mountains and hills come, come and fall on me. And hide me from the heavy wrath of God ! No ! no ! Then will I headlong run into th earth ; Earth gape ! O no ! it will not harbour me ! You stars that reigned at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell. Now draw up Faustus hkc a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds. That when they vomit forth into the air. My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven. Ah ! half the hour is past ! 'twill all be past anon ! Milton, who must have recognised in Marlowe a spirit in many respects congenial to his own, probably took from these latter lines the idea of Satan being sped on his inauspicious voyage by — The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud. Instinct with fire and nitre. He is also indebted to his predecessor for a finer thought. The famous " Which way I turn is Hell, myself am Hell," must be a reminiscence conscious or unconscious of Marlowe : VOL. II M 178 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Fausfus. How comes it then that thou art out of hell j" Mephistopheles. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Tiu-j.'i'of Ha\'ing thus depicted the passion for boundless power and the passion Malta ■ for boundless knowledge, it was natural that IMarlowe in his next play, The Jcic of Malta (i5qi or 1592), should depict the passion for boundless wealth. Had this drama but proceeded as it began it would have n\-alled anything he had pre\-iouslv written. The poetical side of money-getting was never so picturesquelv set forth as in the opening sohloquy of Barabas : As for those Sanaites,' and the men of Uz, That Ijought mv Spanish oils and wmes of Greece, Here ha\-c I pursed their paltry silverlings. Fie ! What a troulilc 'tis to count this trash ! Well fare the Arabians, who so richly pay The thmgs thev traffic for with wedge of gold, Whereof a man ma}- easily in a day Tell that which may maintain him all his life. The needy groom that never fingered groat Would make a miracle of this much- coin. But he whose steel-barred coffers are crammed full. And all his lifetime hath been tired, - Wearving his fingers' ends with tellin.g i1, Would in his age be loth to labour so. And for a pound to sweat himself to death. Gi\-e me the merchants of the Indian mines That trade in metal o! the purest mould ; The wealthy ]\Icor that in the Eastern recks Without control can pjick his riches up, And in his house heap pearls like pebble-stones, Recei\-e them free, and sell them hv the weight : Bags of fien,- opals, sapphires, amethvsts. Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds. Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds. And seld-seen costly stones of so .great price As one of them indifterently rated. And of a carat of this quantity, ^lay serve, in peril of calamity. To ransom great kings from captivity. This is the ware wherein consists mv wealth, And thus methinks should men of judgment frame Their means of traffic from the yulsar trade. And as their wealth increa^eth, so inclose Infinite riches in a little room. \\'e ma\- exclaim witli Goethe in a different connection : Doth not Sir IMammon .gloriously illuminate His palace ? The ensuing scenes are highlv spirited. Barabas has hardly finished ^ The old edition.s have " .Saniinte-S " ; m(:)dcrn cdition-s, " Saninite.s," until that of Mr. BuUen, who reads " Sabans," because the Book of Job repre.sents the Sabaf:ans as neighbours of " the man of Uz." Ingenious as the emendation is. it appears to us too violent; "Sabans'' could hardly be misprinted " .Samintes. " Sana was the ancient capital of Sabxa, as it is now of Yemen, and was known to the Western w orlrl by the account of Ludovico di \arthema. who visited it at the beginning of the sixteenth centur}\ '- To he pronounced as a trisyllatile. MARLOWE'S "BARABAS" 179 vaunting ere he is summoned before the Knights of St. John, tire lords of Malta. The Turks have sent in a claim for arrears of tribute, and the Knights are at their wits' end how to meet it, until a happily inspired person suggests that there are Jews in the land. Barabas and his countr^'men are called in and indented upon for half their possessions, most reasonably, in the Knights' opinion, see- ing that — Through sufferance of 3'our hateful Hves, Wlio stand accursed in the sight of rieaven, These taxes and aflhctions aie befallen. — Barabas, recalcitrating, is de- prived of the whole, including ten thousand Portugal pieces and many priceless gems which he has providently concealed in his liouse, but which are unavailable on account of the mansion having been appro- priated for a nunnery. His daughter Abigail, by her father's instructions, enters the convent simulating con- version, but in reality to carry oft the treasure. She helps Barabas to his gold, but becomes a Christian in good earnest, and from this point the father goes mad, and the play along with him. The least of Barabas's crimes is to poison his daughter, and he ends by being precipitated into a boiling caldron which he had prepared for a Turkish prince. Some gleams of human feeling break through, and the ferocity The troublefome ra'tgne and lamentable death of Edward thefecond, King of SngUnd: wrth the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer: And alfo the life and death ofPeirs Gauefton^ the great Sarle of Corncwall, and mighty fauoriteof king Edi)paidihtkcQn6,'\s itwas fukliijttely aBed by the right honorable the Earle of Pemtrooke his ferMntetf Written hy Chri. Marlow Cent^ Imffrmtedat London hyVSchari Bradocke, f/;5A/,dwelling at Chrift Church gate. 1 tfoy. Title-page of the "Sonnets," 1609 RIVAL THEORIES OF THE "SONNETS" 217 with the subject of the poems. It is an almost fatal impediment to his claim that there is no record of his having been urged to marry, except at seventeen, which would correspond to 1590, an impossible date for the Sonnets. After 1594 there could be no question, at least no question raised by an intimate friend, of his marrying any one but Elizabeth Vernon, with whom he had an amour, and the poet's arguments are not of the kind that could be used to persuade a man to marry his mistress. The entire tone of the Sonnets, indeed, is so inconsistent with the probable relations of Shakespeare and Southampton after 1594 that the advocates of the Southampton theory are obliged to assign to them a date too early for their reach of thought and poetical power. Even thus a formidable difficulty arises. There is a remarkable difference between the tone of the dedications of the two poems inscribed by Shakespeare to Southampton. The formality of the dedication oiVcnus and Adonis (1593) is inconsistent with the feeling dis- played in the So;j»cte, with which the warmth of the dedication of The Rape of Lucrece (1594) would accord very well. It is therefore maintained that the majority of the Sonnets were com- posed in 1594 ; but it seems impossible that either so much could be written in so short a time, or so much variety of psychical experience lived through. Shakespeare, moreover, says (Sonnet CIV.) that he had iirst seen his friend three years previously, and implies, though he does not expressly state, that their attachment had kept pace with their acquaintance. If it had been formed in i59i,the formality of the dedica- tion of 1593 remains unexplained. Sonnet lv., moreover, apparently alludes to a passage in ]\leres's Palladis Tamia, in which case it must be later than September 1598, when Meres's book was registered for publication. No such difficulties beset Pembroke, whose friends were in August 1597 most desirous to marry him to a grand-daughter of the all-powerful Burleigh. It must be supposed that Shakespeare became acquainted with his friend, whoever he was, at the time when marriage was being pressed upon him, for the stream of thought in the Sonnets, beginning with half-earnest conceits and gaining volume and intensity as it proceeds, shows the order to be mainly chronological, and the note of marriage is struck in the very first hne : Mrs. Abingdon as Beatrice in About Nothing" ■Much Ado Pembroke s claim. From fairest creatures we desire increase. 2l8 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Indications of dates. General cojukision. As has been stated, this pressure was put upon Pembroke in August, and was, no doubt, co-itinued for somD time. Shakespeare appears to say tha^ liis acquaintance with his friend commenced at the beginning of winter, for he puts the fall of the leaf first among the natural phenomena which succeeded it ; Three winters cold Have t-oni the forests shook three summers' pride ; Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned In process of the seasons have I seen ; Three April p;-rfumes in three hot Junes burned Since first I saw 5'ou fresh, which yet are green. In Sonnet xcvii. he deplores his absence from his friend in the autumn, and m Sonnet xcviii. another absence in April. If these sonnets were addressed to Southampton in 1594, South- ampton must have been absent from town in the spring and autumn, but of this there is no evidence, and it would reduce the time available for the composition of t\ie Sonnets, upon this theorj? too short already. But we have positi^'e proof of the absence of Pembroke at both these seasons — in Sep- tember 1599, when he was called into the country by the illness of his father, and in April 1601, when he was imprisoned for his transgression with ilistress Fitton ; though we do not p. ess this latter circumstance, as Shakespeare himself appears to have been the absentee. One further indication may be gi\-en of the Sonnets not having been composed earlier than 1597. In Sonnet lxvi. Shakespeare, among the miseries that make him wish for death, enumerates " Art made tongue-tied by Authority." What art ? Clearly his own, Poetry, especially dramatic poetry. Painting, Sculpture, and Music are evidently out of the question. In 1597 there had been two interferences of Authority with this art which must have touched Shakespeare very nearly. In August 1597 a brother dramatist, Thomas Nash, was visited with a long imprisonment for political allusions in a play entitled The Isle of Dogs, and Henslowe's theatre was closed for a time. In the same year Shakespeare's own Richard II. had to be printed without the deposition scene, which must be supposed to have been omitted from the performance also. The special occasion which extorted the complaint in the sonnet may have been the destruction of ]Marlowe's translation of Ovid's Anwres, and of Marston's Pygmalion, by order of the Archbishop in 1599. We, therefore, conclude that, while the Sonnets were certainly addressed for the most part either to Southampton or to Pembroke — and Southampton is not entirely out of the question — the evidence derived from dates and the ElUston as Falstaff in Henry IV. POETRY OF THE "SONNETS" 219 general character of the poems greatly preponderates in Pembroke's favour- All will allow their superiority to the narrative poems in intellectual maturity as well as in poetical expression. The lower their date can be reasonably carried the better. We do not doubt that most are posterior to 1597, while probably none' can be dated after 1603. It may be added that the general tone of address is more appropriate to a stripling like Herbert, as yet onlj^ heir to a peerage, than to Southampton, who, although a youth, had for years been a peer of the realm. It is unlikely that Shakespeare would have termed his patron " fair friend" and " sweet boy." Some diffi- culties, no doubt, remain. There is no direct proof of any connection between Herbert and Shakespeare, nor does he appear to have been remarkably hand- some, as Southampton was. But if the prosperity of a jest lies in the ear that hears it, so may that of a countenance in the ej^e that beholds it. The " dark lady " group of sonnets (cxxvii-clii). relates to some critical circumstance in Shakespeare's life, of which we know no more than that it must have occurred before 1599, when two of them were printed. We do not think that the man referred to in them is the same person as the sub- ject of the other sonnets ; if he were, this would be an argument for Pem- broke, as he christian-name was evidently William. Sonnet cxlv., which is not a sonnet, is entirely out of place. We have left ourselves no space to comment upon the poetical merit of the Sonnets, nor is it needful. While some, no doubt, are mere exercises of Shakespeare's ingenuity, many more in depth of emotion and splendour of imagery surpass ''/'™''A''"". any kindred compositions in the language. That there should have been a time when they were slighted and contemned seems now like a bad dream. This was the eighteenth century, but in Shakespeare's own age they were far from enjoying the esteem accorded to his narrative poems, which ran through edition after edition, and in the eyes of most, eclipsed even his plays. It is as the epical, not the dramatic poet that he is celebrated upon his monu- ment. To our age these poems appear very admirable as galleries of glowing pictures, and not devoid of striking thoughts, but tedious from over-elabora- tion, and strangely deficient in pathos, the moving nature of the themes con- sidered. This is probably owing to the deliberate matter-of-fact way in which the poet goes about his task, upon which Coleridge, Hazlitt, and Dowden Richard Burbage After the portrait at Diiti^nch, atti-iimtej to himself 220 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Henry I V: ■Henry J'r have commented. The Sonnets, so long neglected, have in our own day called forth more criticism and speculation than any other of Shakespeare's works, except Hamlet. The comments of Professor Dowden, I\Ir. George Wyndham, and ;Mr. Thomas Tyler are most valuable, though we cannot subscribe to the last-named writer's views on the minor detail of Mistress Fitton. The purchase of New Place, the outward and visible sign of Shakespeare's victory o\'er the world, aptly ushers in the most sunny and genial, though not the most marvellous epoch of his dramatic production. The Fii'st Pari of Henry IV., licensed for the press in February 1598, must have been written and acted in 1597. The Second Part and The Merry Wives of ]]'indsor, satellite of the historical dramas, cannot have been long delayed. There are perhaps none of his productions in which Shakespeare is so thoroughlj^ at home, and from which so lively an impression may be derived ; not. indeed, of the man in his profounder moods, but of the man as he appeared to his fellows. If critics are right, as no doubt they are, in recognising in Hamlet and Troilus the influence of a period of gloom and sadness, the creation of Falstaff must denote one of genial jollit\', such as might well be induced by the \-ictory in the battle of life signalised by his installa- tion in his native town. In full keeping with this feeling is the fact that the second part contains many local allusions, including a reference to a peculiar agricultural custom in the Cotswolds, alone sufficient to prove that the play was written by one acquainted with the locality . The serious portion of the plot is but moderately inter- esting, but it is handled with an easy power which would excite still more admiration if it were not so completely overtopped by the humour of Falstaff. There seems no doubt that Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle, from which it has been absurdly argued that Shakespeare intended to attack the Reforma- tion. If he had had any such design he would have made Falstaff a Puritan. Henrv 1'. is in some respects a more extraordinary production than Henrv /!'., for it shows what Shakespeare could make of a subject so undramatic that it might well ha^•e been deemed intractable. The date and purpose of the play are proclaimed by itself in the speech of the Chorus celebrating Essex's expedition to Ireland in the early part of 1599. It must be regarded, hkt King John, as a dramatic improvisation designed to animate and guide public feeling. King John has a highly dramatic suhiect, Henry I . is better adapted for epic. Its tone, therefore, is lofty and epical, befitting the grandeur of the momentous, if undramatic, action, and it is sown ^MjHjE^ ■ H^^ \ 'r-w^ ' ' i^t^^^y -\ ifl^^Bkr ^IH^^Eb 'i i « BUjupjii^^ */T^^^^^^W 'Jf^^ ' ^BhU^^IP^^ Mrs. Woffington as Mrs. Ford in Merry Wives of Windsor " 'The ROMANTIC COMEDY 22 I with passages of majestic eloquence and brilliant poetry, while the comic personages, our old acquaintances, retain their original humour. The dissolute Prince Hal has become the ideal of a warrior king, and, designedly or unde- signedly, affords no inapt symbol of Shakespeare's own transformation from the youth " given to all unluckiness " into the first burgess of his native place and the first author of his age. Shortly after the broad humour of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shake- speare passes to a totally different type of comedy, the poetical and romantic. Perhaps no department of his work was so absolutely congenial to him, for none so entirely reconciled the graver and the lighter qualities of his mind. In beginning his career as a dramatist, he had turned to it as it were by instinct, for one of his earliest works. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, is an example of it, and one of extra- ordinary merit considering his age. He now, in the prime of his strength, pro- duces three masterpieces. Much Ado about Nothing {1598 or 1599), As You Like It (1599 or 1600), and Twelfth Night (1600). Of these, Mitch Ado about Nothing is the least delightful, shadowed by the villainy of Don John and the un chivalrous behaviour of Claudio ; but Bene- dick, Beatrice, and Dogberry make amends. As You Like It is the most thoroughly delightful play that Shakespeare ever wrote, and Rosalind perhaps deserves the palm among all his female creations. The Forest of Arden is as purely an ideal world as that of the Midsummer Night's Dream or The Tempest, and owes nothing of its ideality to the supernatural. It is perhaps the most remarkable instance that poetry affords of an ideal creation out of purely human elements. If Twelfth Night is less enchanting, it is merely because the Illyrian city cannot have the romantic charm of the forest, nor can Viola reproduce the unique flavour of Rosalind, nor can she have a foil Richard Tarleton, a comedy actor of Elizabeth's time From an old print 2 22 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE in Celia. But if less exceptional, the character is not less exquisite, and touches the feelings more deeply ; the subordinate personages are even more humorous ; and the action is balanced with the nicest skill on the limits between gay and grave. It is remarkable that among the materials for his plot Shakespeare takes up the Spanish romance from which he had deri^•ed The TilV Gentlemen of Verona, and uses the part which he had then rejected. Shakespeare The cheerful character of Shakespeare's dramatic work towards the close fhlu-nturv '^^ ^^^^ ccntury was promoted not merelj' bj' his restitution to Stratford, but by the general prosperity of his affairs. In 1599 the brothers Burbage built the Globe Theatre in Bankside, and allotted shares in the receiots to some of the more distinguished performers, among whom Shakespeare is mentioned. The amount he would probabty receive, including his salary as actor, has been estimated at /500 in the monej- of the period, out of which he would have to contribute his share towards the expenses of the theatre. Remuneration for his dramatic writings and extra emoluments from performances at Court and at private mansions would increase his income, which may be fairly estimated at £600 a year. His was one of the natures with which prosperitj- agrees, and we ma^' see thankfulness and satisfaction reflected in his work. This complacencA', nevertheless, was mainlv the creation of outward circum- stances. It was not vet based upon philosophv allied to experience, and resulting in that large, liberal, tolerant view of life of which his latest writings show him in possession. Ere this could be his. he had vet, to all appearance, to traverse a tempestuous inward crisis. ilean\\"hile the century, for him, closed in peace. CHAPTER VI S H A K E S P E A R E— (^^z/iM^rtO If the sixteenth century had closed brightly for Shakespeare, the seventeenth Shakespeare began in cloud and storm. His own position may not have been affected, If sevenue'ftk but he must have suffered deeply with his patron and his friend. We have century seen him celebrating Essex's Irish expedition in Henry V., and promising that the hero should return, " bearing rebellion broached upon his sword." Things had turned out far otherwise. Falling from one disaster to another, Essex, in February 1601, was goaded into the mad attempt at revolution which brought him to the scaffold, and his ally Southampton, Shakespeare's friend and Msecenas, to the Tower. In the same month, Pembroke, the subject, as we have contended, of Shakespeare's Sonnets, incurred, like Raleigh before him, the Queen's displeasure by an intrigue with a maid of honour. He was imprisoned and banished the Court. It has already been remarked that the month of his imprisonment corresponds with the month of April during which Shakespeare laments his severance from his friend. We are nevertheless not disposed to connect the circumstances, as Shakespeare seems to write as one who has himself been absent in the country. The date of the absence may with probability be conjectured from the first four lines of Sonnet xcviii. : From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing. That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Saturn may be merely a poetical synonym for Time ; but if, as is more probable, the planet Saturn is denoted, he certainly is not introduced at random. Mr. George Wyndham has most ingeniously surmised a reference to the peculiar brilliancy of Saturn when in opposition to the sun, and thus at his greatest possible distance. The sun in April is in Aries and Taurus, and to be in opposition to him Saturn must be in Libra or Scorpio, as actually was the case at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. This acute observation may be reinforced by another derived from the kindred study of astrology. Libra is astrologically the exaltation of Saturn, one of the signs in which he is supposed to be most potent. He may therefore with great propriety be said to " laugh and leap " in it. He was in Libra and opposed to the sun in the April of 1599 ^^^^l 1600. The latter date would agree best with the general chronological scheme of the Sonnets. 124 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE It is an interesting speculation whether the conspiracy of Essex contri- buted to direct Shakespeare's attention to the conspiracy of Brutus as the /'"'".'/ subject of his next play. There can be little doubt that Julius Ca;sar appeared in 1601, for It IS aUuded to m Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, pubhshed in that year, and it seems out of keeping with the plays of 1599-1600. Professor The Globe Theatre at Southwark From a draiciiig in the British Museum Dowden has pointed out its intellectual affinity to Hamlet, a drama of the succeeding year. In resorting to Plutarch for a subject, Shakespeare was merely repeating the procedure with the English chroniclers which had answered so well in his English historical plays, but he had now to deal with material already sifted by a masterly hand. It was not the especial business of the English chroniclers to record noble actions : they relate the history of the times with fidelity, and take things noble or ignoble as they come. "JULIUS C^SAR" 22 C I THE Tragicall Hiftorfe o HAMLET Trince ofVenmarh^ By William Shake-lpeare. hi it hath beene diuerfe times afted by his Highnefle fer- uants in the Cittie of London : asalfointhetwoV- niuerfitics of CambridgeandOxford,and elfe-where But Plutarch's Lives are eclectic ; his aim is to preserve what is really memorable in a strictly human point of view, and in so doing he gives it so admirable a form that Shakespeare himself cannot improve upon it. Many, therefore, of the most striking traits and sayings in Julius CcBsar are taken directly from his biographies of Ccesar and Brutus. Re- ferring back from the poet to the biographer, we find continuaUy how what has most impressed and charmed us belongs to Plutarch. An inferior writer would have at- tempted to heighten or refine upon his original. Shakespeare never alters what he knows cannot be improved. Where, however, he sees his opportunity, he fairly carries Plutarch away in his talons. The finest scenes in the play, scenes which Shakespeare him- self never surpassed — the oratory and tumult at the funeral of Csesar and the dispute between Brutus and Cassius— ^are developed from the merest hints. With ex- quisite judgment, these grand displays of elo- quence and passion are reserved for the part of the play that requires them. The first half, full of incident and character, needs no embellishment ; but after Ceesar's death the interest would flag but for these potent re- inforcements. In another respect Shakespeare is very dependent upon Plutarch — the delineation of character. He has not to do here with rude faint outlines, hke the traditional Macbeth or the traditional Lear, but with portraits painted after authentic history by the hand of a VOL. II At London printed for N.L and lohn TmnddJ. Title-page of the First Quarto of "Hamlet" ^ From t]i£ only extant copy, in the library of the Duke of Devon- shire at Chatsworth. [Reprodueed from Mr. Sidney Lee's *' Life of Shakespeare" by permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder df Co.) master. , The.se and Pliiiarch 226 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE he follows religiously. It hence comes to pass that in the character of Brutus he has made a nearer approach than anywhere else to drawing a perfect man, for Plutarch will have it so. " In all Brutus's life," says Plutarch, after recording one undeniable blot, "there is but this one fault to be found," and Shakespeare's Brutus is equally perfect ethically, save for his requiring Cassius's prompting to do what he should have resolved upon by himself. Professor Dowden justly points out the analogy with Hamlet. The very perfection of Brutus's moral nature renders him ineffi- cient intellectually ; he cannot condescend to the sphere of an unscrupulous man of the world like Antony, and Antony beats him from the field. This, of course, is also in Plutarch, but Plutarch does not show, as Shakespeare does, the necessary connection of Brutus's moral nobility with his intellectual failings. The other personages are depicted as in Plutarch, but with much greater vividness. The subordination of Caesar's part has been censured, but appears inevitable. Had Caesar been a more prominent character he must have been represented in personal relation to Brutus, inimical or benevolent. If the former, suspicion must have been cast upon the disinterestedness of Brutus's patriotism ; if the latter, he would have been open to the charge of ingratitude. Shakespeare There is an interesting indication that Shakespeare read other lives of Plutarch than those he dramatised, and even before he had written Julius Ccesar. Caesar says to Antony, wishing to elicit his opinion of Cassius : Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, And tell me truly what thou think'st of him. Caesar is nowhere represented as deaf, but the idea seems borrowed from Plutarch's statement, in his life of Alexander the Great, that Alexander " always used to lay his hand upon one of his ears to keep that clean from the matter of accusation." On the whole, save for defects inherent in the subject, Julius Ccesar is perhaps as perfect a work as the dramatist's art is capable of producing. That perfection and power are not convertible terms appears from the unde- niable fact that Shakespeare's next production, though imperfect in structure and full of puzzling riddles, has affected mankind far more deeply and exhibits qualities far more exceptional. This play is Hamlet. The stage history of Hamlet is remarkable. It is entered on the Stationers' Register in 1602 as a piece lately acted. In 1603 a quarto edition appeared containing not more than about three-fifths of the play as republished in the following year. In the earlier edition Polonius is called Corambis, and there are many discrepancies in language and in the arrangement of scenes and speeches. It is a highly interesting question whether the iirst edition was printed after an imperfect or an acting copy, or possibly taken down in short^ hand during the performance, or whether Shakespeare himself revised and enlarged his drama. The former seems the more probable supposition ; although even the second edition, described as "printed from the only true " HAMLET " 227 The Tragicall Hiftone of HAMLET Prince of Denmarke. Enter mo C. B Thcrc- The opening' page of the First Quarto of " Hamlet" Fro7n the copy [wantivg the iitk-page) in the British Museinn Revenge ! " The theme may well have been suggested by the The English actors lately returned from Copenhagen, and, perhaps, were the play "^ " now extant, the origin of Shakespeare's remarkable acquaintance with the topo- graphy of Elsinore might be ascertained. It has been attributed with much probability to Thomas Kyd. It was acted again in 1594, and must have been well known to Shakespeare, who, no doubt, took from it the idea of Hamlet old play Hamlet ' 228 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE as a dramatic subject. the Hamlet legend as related EXi-L'ptJonal i/laraiter of ■■Hamlet'" It would be of service to him by bringing together by Saxo Grammaticus and the version of it in the no-s-el of Belleforest. Apart from this, we cannot believe that he adapted it, or that any considerable trace of it would be found in his work. It may even be that he has unkmdl}- burlesqued his predecessor in the Player's bombastic speech about " the rugged Pyrrhus" : but Hamlet's apology for the lukewarmness of Polonius's appreciation suggests that Marlowe, the declared adversary of " jigging veins," was the butt of the parody. Hamlet is Shakespeare's most wonderful play, and the most famous, but, regarded as a drama, it is not the best. The action is loose and inartistic, there is no logical sequence in the mcidents ; the moral might almost seem to be that life is a chance medley, and that the high resolve of the avenger and the sagacious plotting of the usurper are alike at the mercy of trivial accidents. Given the situa- tion and the character of an Othello or a ilacbeth, we foresee the issue, but no reader or spectator of Hamlet for the first time could tell whether Hamlet's vengeance was to be accomplished or not. It seems as though Shakespeare, ha^ang written so much for Art's sake, determined at last to write some- thing for his own, and made Hamlet, as Goethe made Wilhelm Meisfer, a vessel into wliich he could put his views and observations of men and things. It is noteworthy that it is much the longest of his plays ;■ that in no other, unless The Tempest be an exception, does a single character so com- pletely dominate the action ; and that nowhere is such an amount of speaking imposed upon a leading personage. These are, no doubt, among the chief sources of its popularity, to which may be added the wonderful perfection of indi\idual scenes considered by themseh'es ; the truth and depth of the characters, not one of which but has some strong and original trait ; above aU, the sense of mystery, vagueness, and the gazing, as it were, upon a vast and remote horizon. In fact, Hamlet is more nearh' akin to Faust than to Shakespeare's other tragedies, and the main idea, so well pointed out by Goethe, of a noble and tender spirit sinking beneath the load of a duty which it cannot perform, is almost buried in the multitude of minor issues. The question of Hamlet's madness has been much debated. We feel no doubt Fechter as Hamlet SHAKESPEARE'S PESSIMISTIC PHASE 229 THE Tragicall Hifliorie of HAMLET, Trince ofDenmarke, By William Shakefpcarc. Newly imprinted andenlafged to almoft as miicli againcas it was, according to the true and peifcifl Coppic. "that it is real, though never amounting to lunacy, and that the actual taint of insanity in liis mind makes the simulation of it much the easier to him. It is one of the finest points of dramatic irony in the play that the deception, as he deems it, by aid of which he desires to compass liis revenge, is turned against himself when his uncle, with perfect justification, as must have seemed to all, makes it tlie osten- sible reason for banishing him. Tliere is much of the cunning of tlie mad- man in his trick upon Rosencrantz and Guilden- stern, wliicli a sane man would not have carried to such length, as it would have sufficed to destroy the letter. The unsatisfactory na- ture of human life is by no means an established article of Shakespeare's creed. For some years after the performance of Hamlet we find him com- posing under the influence of more serious feeling than of old, producing tragedy by preference, but if comedy, comedy devoid of the brightness and light- ness of heart that has characterised his comedy until now. But in only one piece after Hamlet is the view presented of human life as a whole thoroughly pessimistic. Tragic incidents are se- lected for treatment, but human nature and human society are never, save once, represented as rotten at the core. This one exception is the play which there is good reason to beheve next followed Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida. Some circumstance must certainly have been at work to derange the inner harmony of Shakespeare's being, and as the heroine of his new play is the byword for female inconstancy, the presumption is very strong that this was connected with the passion of love. It would be natural to interpret it by the history of the Dark Lady adumbrated in the second AT LONDON, Printed by f . R. for N. L. and arc to be fold at his flioppc vndct Saint Dunflons Church in Flccintcet, 160s. Title-page of the 1605 "Hamlet" " Troilus and Cressida ' ' 230 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE series of the Sonnets : but this is out of the question, for two of them had been pubhshed in Jaggard's Passionate Pilgrim as early as 1599. If con- nected with any episode in the Sonnets, it is most probably with the incidents, whatever they may liave been, which led him in Sonnet cxix. to speak of his love as "ruined," even if "built anew." As these sonnets evidently belong to the latest group of those addressed to his friend, 1602 would be a very probable date, and there is strong reason to believe that this was the year in which Troilus and Cressida was written. The literary history of the ft pl'iV' however, is as perplexing as the play itself. In 1599 Dekker and CIrettle wrote a drama on the sub- ject, with wliicli a contemporar}' satirist seems to have imagined that Shakespeare had some concern. In February 1603 a piratical publisher (jbtains a licence to print " the book of Troilus and Cressida as it is acted by my Lord Chamberlain's men," Shakespeare's company. \Mien, however, the play is at length printed by another publisher about February 1609, it is stated ne\-er to have been performed, while other copies of the same edition declare it to have been acted at the Tjlobe. The simplest way of recon- ciling these conflicting statements is to suppose that the play had not, in 'act, been acted when the publica- tion was first licensed, but that the licensee, knowing that it was in pre- paration, took tlie liberty to antici- pate ; that some cause, possiblv the death of Elizabeth, prevented its produc- tion ; that the statement made earlv in 1609 that it had never been represented w{ MOVES Mr BONLS^ The Inscription on Shakespeare's grave in Stratford Church and we well know why we admire them. They " have titles manifold." Perdita and Miranda are beautiful visions, ethereal impersonations of ideal loveliness ; they do nothing, for they have nothing to do ; and yet we have as clear a mental picture of them as of any of their forerunners, and are as entirely in love with them as their own swain; can be. This is especially the case with Miranda ; something more of substantiality is communicated to Perdita by the outbreak of pride and spirit m the midst of her humiliation, so delicately introduced to indicate that, though she knows it not, her veins run with royal blood : I was not much afeard : for once or twice I was about to speak, and tell him plainly The self-same sun that shines upon his Court Hides not his visage from our cottage. The Two Noble Kinsmen, in which Shakespeare is thought to have co- operated with Fletcher, may be probably assigned to 161 1. The theory of the joint authorship has the support of the two writers' alhance in Henry VIII. two years later, and of the publication of the play with both their names in 1634. It further fits in well with the tradition of Shakespeare's obligation to furnish two plays annually at a time when he was becoming " The Two Noble Kins- men " " The Tempest " 250 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE more and more absorbed in the details of country life, and less and less inclined to write for the stage. His hand is most discernible in the first and fifth acts. " All the passages," says 'Slv. Lee, '" for which he can on any showing be held responsible develop the main plot, which is drawn from Chaucer's Knighfs Tale." The omission of the play from the Folio is not a proof that Shake- speare had no share in it, for the editors left out Pericles, and, as Mr. Fleay makes probable, were on the point of omitting Timon. After Hamlet, The Tempest has the most personal interest of any of Shake- speare's works, for as his last important production it gives his latest ^'iews on life and mankind. It follows out the same tendency as has been rem^arked in Cymtjeliiie and The Winter's Tale, to large and liberal views of life, serene tranquilhty, contented acquiescence in the lot of man, tolerance of imper- Heere lyeth interred tie body of At^ne wife ofWiluam Shakespeare who DErrED this life th (^DAY OF AVG v:t(^ J 'BEING OF TFE /GE 0F-6>YEARESl Vbera . tu mater, 't u lac , vif ani(| dedi^i Vae mihi.pro iarrto munere sa^ca dabo Quam maflem . Amouea^ lapideniVbonns Angl ^ are Exest chnst^ corpus .imago tUA o^ov£)^ Sed nil vo^a yMent venias dito Cfiri^e-refixr^et CkuiA licet tumuio mater et A5:rA petel The Inscription on the grave of Shakespeare's Wife in Stratford Church fections and forgi\'eness of injuries. All these precepts are impersonated in Prospero, whose situation as a person raised abo\-e common humanity by his transcendent knowledge and his sway over the unseen world enables him to announce them with the authoritati\-e solemnity of a messenger from heaven. That they represent Shakespeare's ultimate conclusions cannot be doubted, for the play, which bears every token of Shakespeare's latest manner, cannot ha\'e been written until after the appearance of Sylvester Jourdain's account of the tempest at the " Bermoothes," published in October 1610. There is not the least reason to suppose that Shakespeare immediately founded a drama upon this pamphlet. The improbabihty of his having done so is shown by the likelihood that A ]]'i)iter's Tale, brought out in the late winter or early spring of 1611, was then in preparation. Shakespeare would not take up anotlier theme till this was off his hands. The Tempest, then, can in no case be earlier than 1611, and the present writer thinks he has almost proved it to have been written in 1612-1613 for performance at Court on occasion of the nuptials of James's daughter Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine, a view "THE TEMPEST" 251 which greatly enhances the piece's beauty, ingenuity, and significance. Tlie discussion would be too long for our space, and the reader must be referred to the author's Essays of an Ex-Librarian} The source of the plot of The Tempest has until lately been a mystery, and Soura' of ike even the most recent writers seem unacquainted with the important discovery ^ "' by Edmund Dorer of a Spanish novelette from which it is evidently derived, unless Shakespeare and the Spaniard resorted to a common source. The story, a most dull and pedantic production, occurs in a collection entitled Noches de Invierno (Winter Nights), by Antonio de Eslava, Madrid, 1609 (the last of the multitudinous licences is dated in September). The plot is thus summarised by Anders [Shakespeare' s Books) : — Dardanus, King of Bulgaria, a virtuous magician, is dethroned by Niciphorus, Emperor of Greece, and has to flee with his only daughter, Seraphina. They go on board a little ship. In mid-ocean Dardanus, having parted the waters, rears by art of magic a beautiful submarine palace, where he resides with his daughter till she becoines marriageable. Then the father, in the disguise of a fisherman, carries off the son of Niciphorus to his palace under the sea. The youth falls in love with the maiden. The Emperor having died in the meantime, Dardanus returns with his daughter and his son-in-law to his former kingdom, which he leaves the latter to rule over, while he withdraws into solitude. This is unquestionably the groundwork of the plot of The Tempest. It is some argument for Shakespeare having obtained it directly from Eslava, and not from a common source, that the title of Eslava's book, Noches de Invierno, may have suggested to him the title of A Winter's Tale, which he began to write in 1610, the year following the publication of the Spanish stories. The Tempest is the most worthy conclusion imaginable of Shakespeare's s/iah-s/'care, dramatic career. It is a noble sunset. All is serenity, and all is splendour. {'"^,'{"1"" The poetry is of the highest order. The action is admirably planned. The . balance between the serious and the comic elements is most happily main- tained. Of the imagination that could create a Caliban and an Ariel nothing need be said, and we have spoken already of its scarcely less marvellous exercise in embodying that adorable phantom, Miranda. We need not doubt that Prospero's book and staff are Shakespeare's own, and that Shakespeare partly impersonated himself in the benevolent magician. Yet not entirely. 1 One confirmatory circumstance may be added, not observed by the author when he wrote, but pointed out by the writer of a German essay (in a Schul-Prograinin, he thinks), whose name has unfortunately passed from his remembrance. In Act I., scene 2, Prospero inquires from Ariel the time of day, and is told that it is " past the mid season." He replies : "At least two glasses : The time twixt six and now Must by us both be spent most preciously" Why should the hour Vje two in the afternoon ? The average day of twelve hours represents what, slightly departing from the letter of Scripture to suit the duodecimal system by which diurnal time is measured, should be the normal term of human existence, seventy-two years. Allowing six years to the hour, two in the afternoon answers to forty-eight years, Shakespeare's precise age when he wrote TVie 7t';;;/«J^, if this was written for the Princess Elizabeth's marriage. Prospero's admonition to himj that his remaining time must be " spent inost preciously" corresponds to his concluding declaration tnat henceforth " Every third thought shall be my grave." 252 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Prospero betrays foibles which Shakespeare would not have put to his own account, and his confession that he lost his dukedom through seclusion from The Inscription on the grave of Sha espe re's Daughter in Stratford Church affairs of State,. " rapt in secret studies," is manifestly intended as a warning to Janes, whose familv concerns are the veiled subject of the piece, and wliLSe ideal of himself is faithfullv reproduced ii Prospero's character. As we have written elsewhere, " A wise, humane, pacific prince, gaining his "HENRY THE EIGHTH" 253 ends not by ^'iolence but by policy ; devoted to far-off purposes which none but himself can realise, much less fathom ; independent of counsellors, safely contemptuous of foes, and controlling all about him by his superior wisdom ; keeping in the background till the decisive hour has struck, and then inter- fering effectuaUy ; devoted to lawful knowledge, but the sworn enemy of black magic— such was James in James's eyes, and such is Prospero." ' Shakespeare's magic book, nevertheless, was not cast so deeply into the sea that it could not upon occasion, hke Timon's gold m Lucian, be fished up ' Henry Two views of Shakespeare's Bust at Stratford-on-Avon Specially photographed to show the curious difftrcJice between the tioo projites again. The metre of Henry VIII. alone would betoken a very late date, even if we did not know that it was in course of performance when, on June 29, 1613, the Globe Theatre was burned down. These metrical peculiarities are not all of one kind ; some portions indicate beyond dispute the authorship of Fletcher, while the metre of other parts is fully consistent with the author- ship of Shakespeare. That Shakespeare had a hand in it is certain from its appearance in the First Folio during Fletcher's lifetime. The editors must certainly have known who wrote the play that burned down their own theatre ! The play is evidently a hasty piece of work, produced in response to a popular ^ Essays oj an E.x-Libiarian. 254 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE demand, which can hardly have been unconnected with the great event of the da)', the marriage of the Princess Ehzabeth, It was not, hke The Tempest, designed for representation at Court, but was meant to symbohse by the marriage of Anne Bolej-n, the general relief at the Princess having made a Protestant match, and not espoused a Roman Catholic prince, which correspondence among the State Papers shows to have been much apprehended. The expe- dition necessary that the drama might appear while the marriage was still a topic of uni^•ersal interest would involve the co-operation of two dramatists, and Shakespeare, by Ben Jonson's testimony the most facile writer of his day, and lately a proprietor of the theatre where the play was to be acted, was of all men the most likely to be invoked to help Fletcher. The portions that maj' be most confidently ascribed to him are Act I., scene i ; Act II., scenes 2 and 3 ; Act V., scene i. All are worthy of him, if regarded as impro- visations, as in fact the}' were. Fletcher also has written well ; the fine speech of Cranmer at Elizabeth's christening brings the subject to the most satis- factory conclusion of which it admits, and would be received with enthusiasm bv an audience remembering that Elizabeth was also the christian-name of the Princess whom the play was written to honour. The dramatists have shown tact in a^'ailing themselves to the utmost of Katharine's pathetic situation, without blackening King Plenry, which would have ruined their design. The participation of JMassinger has been suspected ; but if he was, as generally believed, a Roman Catholic, he cannot well have co-operated in so Protestant a play. shak.-speare's If our view of the origin of Henry VIII. is correct, our last glimpse of last years Shakespeare as an author reveals him in the act of rendering a good-natured service to a fellow dramatist, an attitude entirely in keeping with his character. His remaining years were few, and the notices of him are few also. In March 1613 he bought a house in Blackfriars, which he immediately leased ; in No\'ember 1614 he was in London on apparently local business ; in February 1616 his daughter Judith married Thomas Ouiney. The serene spirit of his latest plays coincides with the date of his residence at Stratford, and could not well have been his if he had not been living in the enjoj^ment of domestic tranquillit}'. He can hardly ha^•e felt any deep affection for the wife with whose society he had dispensed for so long, but continuous dispeace would hardly have escaped the Stratford gossips. The eccentric bequest to his wife of his second-best bed must have been explicable by some circumstance unknown to us. Could it have been Mrs. Shakespeare's marriage- bed ? The will which convcved it, and at the same time gave evidence of his affection for his daughters and his remembrance of his old theatrical comrades, was executed on Alarch 25, 1616. The testator declares himself to be then "" in perfect health,'" but by April 23 he was no more. Accord- ing to a tradition preser\'ed bv Ward, Ins death was occasioned by a fever contracted at a jo^•ial meeting witir Ben Jonson and Drayton. It ma_\- be doubted whether Ben was sufficiently well affected to Shake- SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH AND BURIAL 255 speare and Drayton to come down to Warwickshire to drink with either of them.' On April 25 Shakespeare was interred in the parish church, and honoured Shakespeare's with a tomb in the chancel, not as a poet, but as an impropriator of tithes. ^X^^^^^ His grave was covered with a flat stone, bearing the inscription known to all, artless indeed, but adapted to the capacity of the sextons for whose admonition it was designed. But ere long, certainly by 1623, when it is mentioned by The chancel of Stratford Church, showing Shakespeare's Bust Leonard Digges, an elaborate monument, including the famous bust, was erected in the chancel, at the cost, tradition affirms, of his daughter Susanna Hall. The terse Latin distich inscribed upon it celebrates Shakespeare's wisdom, urbanity, and genius for epic poetry, but is silent as to his work as a dramatist : Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet. The temper of Sophocles no less than his genius resembled Shakespeare's, ' In the very year of Shakespeare's death Jonson ridiculed The Tempest and Heiny J', in a prologue to ^7.'ery Man in his Hiunour^ not in the first edition. His professed eulogium on Drayton appears to us s. thinly disguised satire. 256 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE but, instead of the expected Sophoclciii, we get Socrafciii at the expense of a false quantity. One is led to suspect that the writer disapproved of plays, in which case he may well have been Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, a Latin scholar with Puritan leanings. If so, we have testimony to the affection with which Shakespeare was regarded in his own family ; further e\-inced by the bestowal of his surname as a christian-name upon the eldest son of his daughter Judith, born in the No\'ember succeeding his death. The English lines upon the monument were probably composed by some friend in London. Space forbids our attempting any survey of Shakespeare's literary or intellectual character. Inexhaustible themes for discussion are afforded by his probable ^•iews on religion and politics, his obligations to predecessors and his relations to contemporaries, his appreciation in his own day and his influence on the after-world. The comparative fulness of the treatment which, nevertheless, we ha\-e been able to accord him, will not appear disproportionate when it is considered with what remoteness from all possible competition he stands forth as Britain's national poet. To remove any other great poet from our literature would be to lop off a limb from a many-branching tree, to rem.cve Shakespeare would be to take the sun out of heaven. CHAPTER VII THE JACOBEAN POETS The authors who will be considered in the remaining chapters of this volume were all of them liable in earlier and laxer periods of literary history to be treated as being what was vaguely called " Elizabethan." Fifty years ago it awakened no protest to see Shirley described as an Elizabethan dramatist and Hall as an Elizabethan prose-writer, although the former was only seven years old when the great Queen passed away, and although the latter survived until within four years of the Restoration. All that was seen in the general survey was the burst of production between the reign of Mary and the Common- wealth, and to this it was natural to assign the name of its most picturesque and romantic patron. But we realise now the inconvenience of treating this complex period under one heading, and we see, moreover, a subtle difference between the character of what was written in England during the reign of Elizabeth and the character of what belongs to James I. It is often objected that monarchs have nothing to do with literature, and that a division of poetry and prose effected on monarchical lines must be perfunctory and fallacious. But in times when the sovereign was the active source of public feeling, when every- thing that moulded national life was attached, as with strings or rays, to the steps of the Throne, a modification of the arts might be directly consequent on the death of a ruler. In the case of Elizabeth this was more than commonly true, and we are perfectly justified in drawing an invisible line across the chronicle of our literature at the year 1603, and in calling what precedes it Ehzabethan and what follows it Jacobean. The death of the Queen was a signal, for which the intellectual part of the country had, more or less consciously, been respectfully waiting. It meant very much more than a different set of costumes at Hampton Court or a new head on the coinage. It meant the introduction of a fresh era, which had long been preparing, but which reverence and awe for a venerable lady had restrained. Everybody who suffered from the severity of the old regime greeted the new reign with hopefulness. The new monarch, conscious of the somewhat unwelcome part he had to play, was lavish in his declarations of universal encouragement and kindliness. Eliza- beth had outlived almost every one of those who had helped her to usher in her peculiar systems, political, ecclesiastical and social. Her prestige, as of a noble aged creature, majestic in her extreme fragility, preserved itself VOL. II R James the First 258 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE in an artificial abstraction. She died, and as her subjects reverently bowed then- heads, they might be overheard to breath a sigh of relief. In literature the change was subtler and less direct than it was in politics. It would be an absurd mistake to seek for any sudden change. The alteration was made graduaUy ; it is more a matter of tone or colour than an abrupt matter of form. But, looking broadly at English books from 1580 to 1625, we see towards the middle of that period a tendency to alteration which is the more palpable the further we recede from it. It is like the general aspect of a rolling range of mountain where, at a due distance, we perceive diffused light on the one side, diffused shadow on the other. This symbol may be the more readily accepted, because the general trend is unquestionably to the peak of Shakespeare and then gently down into the flat country again. The Elizabethan period is the sun-lighted ascent, the Jacobean is the more and more deeply shadowed decline. But round the central height, on what we may call the upland alps, the altitude is so great and the luminosity of the atmosphere so general that we do not inquire whether we happen to stand on the side of rise or of descent. Nevertheless, an element, very difficult to define, distinguishes ;\Iarlowe, who is entirely on the ascending plane, from Ben Jonson, who is very near the summit, and who spreads around it, and who yet is definitely and unavoidably, in the main body of his work, at that place where the general slope begins to decline. For one thing, the death of the stubborn and dauntless Elizabeth marked the final break-up of that survival of medijeval sentiment which she had so resolutely upheld. Certain prejudices of the Queen had succeeded in preventing, or delaying, the fusion of those great elements which flowed through England during the middle of her reign. She separated them, she kept them from mingling in one great national channel, but this unification was inevitable, and it proceeded as soon as her powerful hands were relaxed. All through her reign the Renaissance, which had arrived in England so tardily, was still further delaj'ed in its action by the surviving traditions of the Middle Ages. The new learning, the new ardour for beauty, the new habit of specu- lation, were all busy in Elizabeth's reign, but they were not allowed freely to communicate with one another. They were partly intermingled, but they were not blended into a consistent and progressive unity. This result of this lack of fusion was that, even in their most brilliant developments, something of an exotic character was retained. In poetry, to take an example which comes directly home to us, certain series of beautiful pieces of writing might be termed Italian, or Latin, or even French, by an observer anxious to minimise the originality of the new English literature. But with the withdrawal of the restraints of Elizabeth, our writings immediately became nationalised, and there could no longer be a question that, for good or ill, they represented direct the instincts and aspirations of the English people, and not those of a cluster of refined scholars in a college, or of the courtiers who collected round some Italianated nobleman. If, moreover, any irresolute English author had been inclined to doubt Title-page of the "Works of King James I." 1619 26o HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE whether the practice of Uterature would be tolerated during the new reign, his fears might well have been founded on the apprehension that the monarch was too much rather than too little interested in the art of letters. In King James \'I. and I. the London poets came forward to welcome one who was so far from '' hating boetry " — like one of his successors — that he had laboured with zeal to become a poet himself. Nor was verse the only medium in which James \'I. of Scotland had exercised his abilities. He was no less ambitious to shine in prose, as theologian, as critic, as sociologist, as publicist. No writer in tlie glorious galaxy of his English subjects, not even Bacon and Raleigh, sought to excel in so many fields of literature as the King ; certainly none was so confident, in Iris sanguine moments, that he had succeeded in all. No one, in the presence of Apollo, affected more ecstasy, or assumed a greater claim to poetic immortality. I shall your names eternal ever sing , 1 shall tread down the grass on Parnass hill ; By making with your names the world to ring, I shall 3-our names from all oblivion bring ; I loftv Yirgil shall to life restore, — sang King James VI. very lustily in his Invocations to the Goddis, and his were none of those elegant and trivial efforts at genteel penmanship which royal personages in all ages ha^•e concei\'ed to be a graceful amatem pasthne. There was nothing of the amateur about James. He aimed at no less glory than is gi\'en by " the perfection of Poesy, whereunto few or none can attain." Moreo\-er, he was in this also, so far as he went, a genuine man of letters, that he saw, and poignantly and repeatedly deplored, his own deficiencies. Criti- cism, which could otherwise hardly treat the grotesque works of James I. with patience, is disarmed by his candour. " Alas ! " he says, " God by nature hath refused me the like lofty and quick genius" — which he is applauding in the French poet Du Bartas — " and my dull muse, age and fortune have refused me the like skill and learning." Later on in life, when tlie King still hankered after literary glorj', still stretched on tiptoe to pluck a leaf from the golden laurel which, after all, he found to hang too high for him, his judgment was better than his practice. He could not pretend even to his subjects that he was satisfied witfi his own prose or verse, and there is something really pathetic in the way in wliicli lie alternates sentences of royal truculence with apologies for imperfections due to burdens of office so great and so continual, and to a spirit that ne\'er has leave to be " free and unvexed." Evidence seems to prove that the King's modest estimate of his own genius was more than acknowledged in England, and literary aspirants had to be very poor or in great personal danger before they brought themseh'es down to flattering the monarch as a writer. But, in an age so abundantly autocratical, there must ha\-e been something extremely gratifying to the mind of authors in knowing that an\' one of them cotild hope to do better than the despot what the despot of all things most desired to do. James VI. of Scotkmd and L of England (1566-1625) was the son of Mary, Queen of Scotland, and Lord Darjiley. His mother's abdication, tlte year after JAMES 1. : THE SONNETEERS 261 his birth, made him King of Scotlaud, and exposed him to extraordinary dangers. Those about him, however, perceived these perils, and his education was con- ducted with remarkable care and good sense. He became a sound scholar, and his intellectual sympathies were widened almost to the limits of taste and knowledge as understood by the Renaissance of his time in Scotland. He early determined to be an eminent writer, and in 1584, in the midst of the intrigues of politicians con- tending for his person, he published The Essays of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesie. These are sonnets, in which the King emulates the French writers of his day, a romance inrime roya^ called Phcenix, some short gnomic pieces, and versions of his favourite poet, Du Bartas, and of Lucan. All these, though with some Scotch peculiarities, are essentially and characteristically Elizabethan. In 1588, James began his career as a theologian by the publication of the first of his Meditations. In 1591 he issued fresh sets of translations from Du Bartas as His Majesty's Poetical Exercises at Vacant Hours, in 1597 a prose dialogue on Demonology, and in 1599 his political treatise called Basilikon Doron, dedicated to his son Henry. All these were his publications before, in 1603, he became King of England ; after that event he produced The True Law of Free Monarchies (1603), A Counterblast to Tobacco (1604), Triplici Nodo Triplex Cuneus (1607), and a number of contro- versial works of theology. He permitted his chaplain, Richard Montague (1577- 1641), the famous author of the Appello Ccvsarem, to collect his Works in 1616. This was done, with mucli greater completeness, by Mr. R. S. Rait in 1900- 1901. If James I., on his arrival at his Southern country, had any time to spare Tiir for an inspection of the national poetry, he might observe that the sonnet had ^"'""^'"'^''^ undergone rapid and complete development since he, in 1584, and under the guidance of Du Bartas, had been one of the first to cultivate it in the North. The posthumous publication of Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophcl and Stella, of which an account has already been given, had given a violent stimulus to the fashion of writing sonnets ; during the last ten years of Elizabeth this was one of the forms of literature most universally culti\'ated. The Delia of Samuel Daniel, which was very widely enjoyed and imitated, in- augurated the system by which poets enshrined in cycles of sonnets, under a feigned pastoral name, their amatory passion for some cold fair lady or their enthusiastic admiration of some friend. In this, the second period of the English sonnet, close attention was paid to smoothness of versification, and in this respect the performances of the sonneteers were of great value. They made the old rough jingle of the popular poetry intolerable to the ear, by familiarising it with more luxurious and delicate artifice in prosody. Many of the sonnet-cycles, in fact, were no more than exercises in versification, and the best sonneteers, having learned to manipulate iambic verse and to arrange their rhymes, passed on to other business of a broader kind. But some of the sonnet-cycles were valuable in themselves, and free from slavish imitation of Desportes and the other fashionable French models. There is intellectual strength and a certain splendour of imagery in Barnabe Barnes (1569-1609), whose Parthenophil and Parthenophe belongs to 1593. Barnes, who had been a soldier in Italy and France, had a wide knowledge of the writings of the Pleiadc, vn.-e^i'^'^,' i^'Aic'iCj^JryJcp,r(,^l,^l^^l^-^ ^l,,^^^ ^/^i^^J* f»r^.^^T^^ ^<«^ , ^'^;0<^y vWiiiL jdj^Ji' '^t<:h«JjK W a^ju^.^f' (hiLi^ ^uUie^ imJ^ Jkss^^ae f&fc^/^'gjb^ ^rea^iiiS ^-yiJl^Wg JiviiJHiia lu cuu:4 ■e'lai'-r ne-n '^ HMrwiei-i^M^ -iliAt fiia-i'rg hcft^u^ -{Im^^ -(o xf^^Tv^^li^ ^iMr^JmA^nA^ l^iipi Juris €K ^Tu,f- ^y l^^l^a^ ^U,Aj, .^.i^J^ ^ la^ ^^ ^^,. ^^ ^ ^^^^^ ,^JMr^^^ Facsimile page of the MS. of "Basilikon Doron," preserved in the British Museum THE SONNETEERS ■ 63 Fidefla,more chafle then kinde. ByB.Gnfiin.gent. k At London Printed by the Widdovv Orwin.for Matthew Lownes. 1596. and directly imitates Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay. Here is a typical sonnet by Barnes : That golden planet, lamp of this world's light, Whose glorious eastern insurrection shows His ceaseless course, whose term no creature knows That silver planet, torch of silent night, Which, when the Sun reposeth his beams bright In western seas, her planet-darts forth throws, Whose influence doth strange events compose ; That boisterous turbulence of north winds' might Which swells and ruffles in outrageous sort ; Those cheerful southern showers whose fruitful dew Brings forth all sustenance for man's comfort ; East, West, North, South, if none thy puissance knew, Relate thy wondrous virtues, and with praise From West to East, from North to South them raise. Daniel was the master openly accepted in his Fidessa ot 1596 by Bartholomew Griffin, by the unknown author of Zepheria in 1594, by William Percy (1575-1648) in his Ccelia of 1594, and by Richard Linche in his Diella of 1596. It is hardly necessary to point out that there were greater poets than those, independent of the influence of Daniel, who nevertheless had doubtless read the Delia and been stimulated by it. Among such accidental or occasional sonneteers we include not Shakespeare merely, but Spenser, in his Amoretti of 1595, Drayton in his Idea's Mirror of 1594, and Donne. The en- tire business of sonnet-writing, in which a considerable amount of personal emotion was unquestionably combined with vague and sinuous methods of expression, which often subtly concealed it, was of very great importance as a school of poetic style. It was by composing sonnets in the last years of Elizabeth's reign that the ordinary clever person first learned to use his own language with security and grace. But in the general practice of these forms the glowing spring-tide of poetry was already on the wane. The victory of imaginative speech had now become so universal that all human thought began naturally to turn to verse whether it was genuinely poetical or not. This was the moment at which men of high talent began to be poets when nature had perhaps intended them rather to excel as historians or philosophers. In the laureate, Samuel Daniel, whose influence we have seen to have been paramount as a sonneteer, we meet with the first example of poetry beginning to wither on the bough. Daniel's _.x^».m4'< Title-page of Bartholomew Griffin's " Fidessa," 1596 164 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE grace, smoothness and purity seem to belong to a much later period, and to a time when the imagination had lost its early fervour. He wrote lengthy liistorical poems, besides numerous sonnets, masques, and epistles. These last, which have the merit of brevity, are Daniel's most attractive contri- butions to English literature, and are singularly elegant in their stately, limpid flow of moral reflec- tion. In prose, Daniel showed himself one of the most instructed of our early critics of poetry. Another philosophical writer, on whose style the turbulent passion of the age has left but little mark, is the great Irish jurist. Sir JOHX Davys, who, in his youth, composed several poems of the highest merit in their limited field. In his Nosce Teipsum, a treatise of consider- able length and per- spicuous dignity, dealing with the im- mortality of the soul, Davys was the first to employ on a long flight the solemn four- line stanza of which the type is supplied by the Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Three years earlier he had printed a most ingenious philosophical poem, Orchestra, in praise of dancing ; and the delicacy of Da\-vs's talent is weh seen in a httle work less known than either of these, the Hymns of Astrcea. The Hymns of Astrcsa are neither better nor worse than the ordmary poetical compliments paid to Elizabeth. They certainly do not show Davys at his best. Both Daniel and Davys offer early and distinguished examples Title-page of "The Civile Wares,' of Daniel 1609, with portrait DANIEL 265 of the employment of imagination to illuminate elaborate mental pro- cesses. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) was the son of a music-master at or near Taunton, where he was born towards the end of 1562. At the age of seventeen he was entered a commoner of Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he stayed three years, but, having devoted himself more to Enghsh history and poetry than to " pecking and hewing at logic," he left the University without a degree. Daniel's first publication was A Worthy Trad of Paulus Jovius, in prose (1585). But this was an accidental exercise, for he was really giving himself heart and soul to the study of poetry, having, he says, " adventured to bestow all my powers therein." Daniel spent some time in Italy, and appears to have been personally acquainted with the poet Guarini, whose Pastor Fido brought him into fame in 1590. Daniel was slow to give his writings to the public, and his earliest sonnets appeared, surreptitiously, in Nash's (1591) edition of Sidney's Astrophel and Stella. Finally, in February 1592, the first edition of Daniel's Delia appeared, with the romance of The Complaint of Rosamond appended to it. The publications of Daniel now became abundant — in 1594, the archaic tragedy of CZeo/ja/rrt ,• in 1595, The First Four Books of the Civil Wars ; in 1599, M usophihis and A Letter from Odavia. In 1601 Daniel, now one of the most popular hving writers, collected his Works. He became tutor to Wilham Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and afterwards to Anne Clifford at Appleby and at Skipton, until he resigned his charge in 1602. Daniel welcomed the King and Queen in Rutland as they were approaching London with a stately and far from obsequious Panegyric ; the sovereigns appear to have been pleased with him, and he took his place forth- with at Court, where he acted as a species of unofficial poet-laureate, preparing masks, songs and dramatic interludes. His duties seem to have included the licensing of plays. For this he enjoyed a " fair salary," and was the Queen's "servant in ordinary." He speaks of the repose which this permanent patronage afforded him : I who, by that most blessed hand sustained In quietness, do eat the bread of rest. He held his theatrical censorship from 1603 until 1618. As the years pro- gressed, a certain sluggishness of temperament, which had always, perhaps, been characteristic of him, became more marked. He " would be hid at his garden- .Sajintel Daniel Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset A/ler the port mil by Mytins 266 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE liouse in Old Street, near London, for some months together, as the tortoise busieth himself all the winter in the ground." This was with the purpose of devoting himself more completely to his work, which gradually grew to be almost wholly historical. His great History of England was brought to the death of Stephen in 1612 and to that of Edward III. in 1617 ; he then resigned it into the hands of John Trussell, of Winchester. More and more averse to society, Daniel " turned husbandman," and rented a farm at Beckington, in his native county of Somerset, where he died in October 16 19 ; his former pupil, Anne Clifford, now Coun- tess Dowager of Pembroke and Mont- gomerj', raised a monument to him in the church of Beckington. The fame of Daniel, long obscured, was revived at the Romantic Revival. Wordsworth, Southey, Hazlitt, and Lamb com- peted to eulogise him, and Coleridge said : " Read Daniel — the admirable Daniel — in his Civtl Wars and Triumph of Hymen. The style and language are just such as any very pure and manly writer of the present day (Wordsworth, for example) would use : it seems quite modern in comparison with tlie style of Shakespeare." How simple the narrative manner of Daniel was may be exemplified by stanzas taken almost at random from the Civil Wars : And, Memory, preservress of things done, Come thou, unfold the wounds, the wrack, tlie waste ; Reveal to me how all the strife begun 'Twixt Lancaster and York in ages past ; Title-page of the earliest edition of Samuel Daniel's j^q.^^ causes, counsels, and events did "Delia," 1592 run So long as these unhappy times did last ; Unintermixt with fiction's fantasies. I versify the truth, not poetise. And to the end we may with better ease Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to show What were the times foregoing near to these. That these we may with better profit know ; Tell how the world fell into this disease, And how so great distemperature did grow, So shall we see by what degrees it came, How things, at full, do soon wax out of frame. For kings had, from the Norman conqueror, reigned With intermixt and variable fate. DANIEL : DAVYS 267 When England to her greatest height attained Of power, dominion, glory, wealth, and state After it had, with much ado, sustained The violence of princes, with debate For titles, and the often mutinies Of nobles for their ancient liberties. The tendency of Daniel was against the picturesque and romantic, and towards the civilised and modern in literar}' taste. In this respect he occupies a remarkable position as dimlj' foreshadowing the eighteenth century, and exemplifying that instinct for rigid propriety of diction of which we find scarcely a trace in English literature before him. Daniel was a philosophical realist, and he dared to gird even at Spenser for his romance, saying, in the course of his Delia : Let others sing of knights and paladines, fn aged accents and untimely words. Paint shadows in imaginary lines Which well the reach of their high wits records. Nofcc teipfum. Thu Oracle expounded in tm Elegies, X. Of Humine knowledge. 2. OfthcSouleof Manj»ndtheimmon»Uu« thereof. LONDON, Printed by HichardTiilUotliihnStiadhh, Such adventures in language and in art were unwelcome to the " sober-minded Daniel." Whether Sir John Davys (or Davis) (1569-1626) joined in the otherwise universal laudation of Daniel's early poems is uncertain. If, as is supposed, Davys satirised his contemporary under the name of Dacus, he put his finger with great emphasis on Daniel's radical fault, the prosiness of his poetry. To the witchery of the sonnet-cycles, too, Davj-'s was recalcitrant, circulating in MS. a series of Gulling Sonnets, which were im- pertinent parodies of Delia. Nevertheless, the place of Davys in literary history is very close to that occupied by Daniel. He was the third son of John Dave's of Tisbury, in Wilts, where he was christened on April 16, 1569. His father died when the poet was ten years of age, " and left him with his two brothers to his mother to be educated ; she therefore brought them all up to learning." John was sent to Winchester, and in 1585 to Queen's College, Oxford ; in 1587 he was admitted to the Middle Temple. Little is known about his early years, but in 1593 he had ready for the press his poem on dancing, called Orchestra, which appeared in 1596. In the preceding year Davys had become a barrister, but early in 1598 he was disbarred for cudgelling Richard Martin — afterwards Recorder of London, but then a young man of manners no less boisterous than his own — during dinner in Hall. Davys went back to Oxford in disgrace, and wrote his great philosophical poem, the Nosce Teipsum, which appeared in ■ /o/m Title-pag-e of Sir John Davys's " Nosce Teipsum," 1599 l68 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1599. Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased with this work, and in tne same year Davys addressed to her his Hymns to Astnea. He was now in great favour, and in 1601 he sat for Corfe Castle in the Queen's last parliament. Davys was one of those selected to attend Lord Hunsdon in announcing to James VI. of Scotland his accession. When his name was announced in the presence, the literary King immediately asked " whether he were Nosce Teipsmn," and on learning that he was, " em- braced him and conceived a considerable liking for him." His further favour was shown by Davys's appointment in November of the same year to be Solicitor-General for Ireland, when he was knighted. His career (save that in 1622 he collected his poems) was hence- forth entirely dedicated to legal and political business, in which he displayed ability of a very high order. Charles I. was pre- pared to continue the favour which his father had shown to Davys, who was finally nomi- nated to the post of Lord Chief Justice, the purple and ermine robes being actually purchased, but just before the date of his promotion he was found dead in his bed, on December 8, 1626. Davys enjoyed the re- putation, both in Ireland and England, of being judex in- corriiptiis ct patromis fidus. His daughter, having recently married Lord Hastings, be- came Lucy, Countess of Huntingdon. Of the poem on the Immortality of the Soul, which so deeply nnpressed Sir John Davys's generation, a fragment of quotation may suffice : I know mv body's of so frail a kind As force without, fevers within can kill ; I know the hca\':nlv nature of mv mind ; But 'tis corrupted both in wit and wilL I know my soul liath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant in all ; I know I am one of Nature's little kings, Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall. I know mv life's a pain and but a span, I know ni)' sense is mocked with everything ; Michael Drayton After the portrait in f/ic Nat luiuil Portrait Gallery DRAYTON 269 And, to conclude, I know myself a Man — Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing. Either Davys or Daniel might easily have given his talent all to prose. Michael Their friend and companion, Michael Drayton, was not a better poet, but ^''"y'o" he was much more persistently devoted to the cultivation of the art of verse, and regarded himself as absolutely consecrated to the Muses. During a life more prolonged than that of most of TOEMES t Lyrick and paftoralL ■ oJeJ, Thi man in the CMoone, ByMiCHAELL Drayton Efquier, his contemporaries, he never ceased to write — feverishly, crudely, copiously, very rarely giving to his work that polish which it needed to make it dur- able. Of his lyrical vocation there could be no doubt ; yet, if Daniel and Davys were prose-men who wrote poetry, Drayton was a prosaic poet. His masterpiece of topographical ingenuity, the Poly-Olbion, a huge British gazet- teer in broken-backed twelve-syllable verse, is a portent of misplaced energy. In his earlier historical pieces Drayton more closely resembles Daniel, whom, however, he exceeds in his lyrics as much as he limps behind him in his attempts at gnomic verse. Drayton writes like a man, and a few of his odes are still read with fervour ; but his general compositions, in spite of all their variety, abundance, and accom- plishment, fail to interest us ; a prosy flatness spoils his most ambitious efforts. He helps us to comprehend the change which was to come in sixty years, and through Cowley he prophesies of Dryden. In his personal character and his atti- tude to literature, it is impossible not to be reminded by Drayton of Southey ; the Jacobean poet had the same confidence in his own powers, the same €ncyclopa;dic aims, the same fluency, hardness and manly strength, com- bined with a similar absence of charm. Unlike Southey, however, Drayton kept himself, through a long and busy life, almost exclusively to verse. His self-sufficiency was unshaken ; his monument in Poets' Corner describes him as one who had but to " exchange his laurel for a crown of glory," and he describes himself, in The Man in the Moon, as a poet who had By general voice, in times that then was, grown So excellent, that scarce there had been known Him that excell'd in piping or in song. At London, Printed by R.B, for TV.i. and /. Fl^fk'U Title-page of Drayton's " Poemes," 1606 270 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Michael Drayton (1563-1631) was born at HartshiU, in Warwickshire. At the age of ten, being already ambitious to be a poet, he is beheved to have entered the family of the highly cultivated Sir Henry Goodyer, at Polesworth, as page. He became known to the Countess of Bedford and to Sir Walter Aston, who permanently befriended him. We know nothing of the details of his early hfe. Early in 1591 Drayton was preparing to publish his earliest volume, a book of religious verse entitled The Harmony of the Church, when it was suppressed by the authorities, and one copy only has survived. In 1593 he published a volume of eclogues, entitled Idea : The Shepherd's Garland, in which he spoke of himself as Row- land, and described a love affair with a lady residing by the river Anker, in Warwick- shire. This was further ex- panded in the sonnet-cycle of Idea's Mirror (1594). Drayton's publications now became very numerous. Matilda (1594), Endiuiion and Phabe (1595 ? ), Mortimeri- ados — afterwards revised as The Barons' Wars — (1596), and England's Heroical Epis- tles. Drayton's poetry, or else his person, was distasteful to King James, and when he laid his Gratnlatory Poem at the feet of their arriving Majesties, the monarch, whO' had SO graciously welcomed Daniel and Davj'S, rudely re- pulsed Drayton, whose work from this moment betrays a note of petulance and disap- pointment. The royal disfavour, however, does not seem to have affected Drayton's popularity, which was very great. In 1605 he began to collect his poetical works, and they were reprinted with a frequencv which proves them to have been welcome to the public. In 1606 appeared the Poems Lyric and Pastoral. Drayton was now occupied for many years by his masterpiece of antiquarian ingenuity, the famous Poly-Olbion, the first eighteen "songs " of which were issued, with maps, and with notes by Selden, in 1612 ; the remaining twelve " songs " being added in 1622. In 1627 Dravton issued a small folio volume comprising some of the most natural and delightful of his compositions, such as The Battle of Agincourt Title-page of Drayton's "Poly-Olbion," 1612 DRAYTON 271 (quite distinct from the ode of that name) ; Nimphidia, or the Court of Faery ; The Quest of Cynthia ; The Shepherd's Sirena ; and The Moon Calf. His latest work was a rather grotesque collection of " nymphalls " or pastorals, called The Muses' Elysium (1630) ; this volume contained, however, some of the daintiest fairy poetry in the language. Drayton died in London on December 23, 1631, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The following sonnet, which is the most perfect thing that Drayton wrote, was published iniGig : Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part — Nay, I have done, you get no more of me ; nd 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, passion speechless lies, When faith is kneeling by his bed of death. And innocence is closing up his eyes — Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over. From death to life thou mightst him yet recover. From thf very lively adventure of the fair Queen Mab on her visit to the fairy knight Pigwiggin, in Nyniphidia, the following stanzas may be quoted as a favourable example of Drayton's easier vein : She mounts her chariot with a trice, Nor would she stay for no advice. Until her maids, who were so nice. To wait on her were fitted ; But ran herself away alone ; Which when they heard, there was not one But hasted after to be gone. As she had been dis-witt-ed. Hop and Mop and Drab so clear, Pip and Trip and Skip, that were Unto Mab, their sovereign dear. Her special maids of honour ; Fib and Tib and Pink and Pin, Tick and Quick and Jill and Jin, Tit and Nit and Wap and Win — The train that waited on her. Upon a grasshopper they got. And, what with amble and with trot. For hedge or ditch they spared not. But after her did hie them : A cobweb over them they throw, To shield the wind if it should blow ; Themselves they wisely could bestow Lest any should espy them. The closing years of the sixteenth century were marked by a curious The attempt to introduce into English literature a school of satire founded on the ^'^''"^ imitation of Roman models. Narratives and diatribes directed against persons and institutions had, of course, always existed, and Spencer, in his 272 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE THE O VV L E. By Michaell Druytort NoSf.uas Athenat. Mother Hubbard's Tale, and Drayton in his Owl and his Moon- Calf, produced belated specimens of the medieval satire of allegory. But as a species of social poetry closely modelled on the practice of Horace, Juvenal and Persius, satire was not comprehended in Europe until after the dissemination of Casaubon's criticism of the Latin poets. In Enghsh, the movement began in 1593, and it scarcely can be said to have survived 1599 ; it therefore belongs properly to the Elizabethan rather than to the Jacobean period. As, however, it was principally cultivated by very young men, who became eminent for writings of a different character in later years, and as it possessed a tone eminently in contrast with the ideal and romantic colour of the earlier age, it is convenient to discuss it now. The earliest of these Latin satires were those written, and widely circulated, but not printed, by Donne, who was twenty years of age when he composed the first three of his Satires in 1593. He was followed in composition, but preceded in publication, by Lodge, whose Fig for Mourns belongs to 1595. Joseph HaU, whom we shall meet with again among the theo- logians, printed his books of Vir- gidcmiarum in three instalments, in 1597-1599. Meanwhile Marston, the future dramatist, issued his satires, in two brochures, in 1598, and Edward Guilpin, of whoin nothing more is known, his Skia- Title-page of Drayton's "Owie," 1604 ; j; ■ ■ j.i ti '^ '^ ■' ' t letlieia m tlie same year, lliese were the leaders among those who deliberately followed the model of Persius and Juvenal, and the result in the hands of these young poets of very various ultimate bias was curiously similar. These satires might almost be written by the same hand ; it is difficult to distinguish a page of Marston from a page of Donne, or to decide at sight whether a certain passage is by Guilpin or by Hall. All of them cultivated a roughness which they supposed to be necessary in literature which should resemble "angry Juvenal" and "crabbed Persius." Hall said : " It is not for every one to relish a true and natural satire, being of itself both hard of conceit and harsh of style." Lhis notion of satire, as of necessity obscure and elliptical, violent and "tart," lasted until Milton, with his superior scholarship, exposed it. The group of coarse. L O 7^ }) O 'N. Pruned by E, /?. for E. Vyhnc ajid A'. Ling : md are to befoldcnccrcthtlritknoriliclooieofS, PiulcsChuiill, THE SATIRISTS 273 fuscous poems, however, contains some very picturesque writing, and preserves for us a gallery of grotesque contemporary portraits. There is an example of Joseph Hall's rude irony : O the fond boasting of vain-glorious man ! Does he the best that may the best be seen ? Who ever gives a pair of velvet shoes To the Holy Rood, or liberally allows But a new rope to ring the curfew-bell, But he desires that his great deed may dwell Or graven in the chancel-window glass, Or in a lasting tomb of plated brass ? Marston is often still more angry and more incoherent, and has not the same accent of sincerity : Ay, Philo, ay ! I'll keep an open hall, A common, and a sumptuous festival : Welcome all eyes, all eyes, all tongues to me ; Gnaw, peasants, on my scraps of poesy ! Castalios, Cyprions, court-boys, Spanish blocks, Ribbanded cars, granado-netherstocks, Fiddlers and scriveners, pedlers, tinkering knaves. Base blue-coats, tapsters, broad-cloth-minded slaves. Welcome, i' faith, but may you ne'er depart Till I have made your galled hides to smart. This would require a long commentary completely to explain its allusions, although it is one of Marston's less obscure passages. The darkness of allusion and crabbedness of style were intentional ; they were carried even further by Donne, of whom, however, it has to be said that while the satires of Hall were general invectives, and those of Marston and his group mainly fantastic libels against individuals, those of Donne were a series of humorous and sardonic portraits of types. This fact, and the eccentric violence of the poet's wilful versification, are exemplified in this picture of a walk in London streets with a young man of fashion : Now leaps he upright, jogs me, and cries, " Do you see Yonder well-favoured youth ? " " Which ? " " O, 'tis he That dances so divinely." " O," said I, " Stand still ! Must you dance here for company ? " He droop'd ; we went, till one, which did excel Th' Indians in drinking his tobacco well, Met us. They talk'd. I whispered, " Let us go. It may be you smell him not ? Truly, I do ! " He hears not me, but, on the other side A many-coloured peacock having spied. Leaves him and me. I for my lost sheep stay ; He follows, overtakes, goes on the way. With the writings of those satirists must be connected a work which, though Parnassus in dialogue, has no real dramatic character. This is the curious trilogy of Parnassus, a satirical review of the condition of English poetry at the close of the sixteenth century, which provided Cambridge students with entertainment on successive Christmas Da3's. The third of these plays was printed, as The Return from Pernassus, in 1606 ; the other two were preserved VOL. 11 s 2 74 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Title-page of John Dowland's " Booke of Songes," 1597 among Hcarne's J\ISS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and first printed by Mr. \\. D. Macray in 1886. Tlie anonymous author, wlio was possibly J olm Day, seems to have been a Cheshire man. A certain Furor Poeticus is introduced THE SONG-WRITERS 275 to ridicule and parody the extravagance of writers like Kyd, and the ranting Marstons and Tourneurs of a later generation. The Parnassus is not only valuable for its insight into University life, but it contains outspoken criticisms, from the scholar's point of view, of most of the poets of the time. The great actors, Burbage and Kempe, are introduced on the stage, and the latter gives an amusing professional opinion on the pieces which were being sub- mitted to him for acting : Few of the University [he says] pen plays well. They smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. O, that Ben Jonson is a petulant fellow ! He brought up Horace gi\'ing the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit. The reformation, or rather creation, of English song at the close of the xkc Song reign of Elizabeth has been referred to in an earlier chapter. But its causes ^'^''^ters and the strange abruptness with which it came into full development remain imperfectly examined. What had caused it ? No doubt the general efflores- cence of feeling, the new enlightenment, the new passion of life, took this mode of expressing themselves, as they took others in other departments of intellectual behaviour. But this particular manifestation of tuneful, flowery fancy seems to have been connected with two artistic tendencies, the one the cultivation of music, the other the study of recent French verse. The former is the more easy to follow. The year 1588 had been the occasion of a sudden outburst of musical talent in this country ; it is, approximately, the date of public recognition of the exquisite talent of TaUis, Bird, and Dowland, and the foundation of their school of national lute-melody. This species of chamber-music instantly became the fashion, and remained so for at least some quarter of a century. It was necessary to find words for these airs, and the poems so employed were obhged to be lucid, liquid, brief, and of a temper suited to the gaiety or sadness of the instrument. The demand created the supply, and from having been heavy and dissonant to a painful degree, English lyrics suddenly took a perfect art and sweetness. What is very strange is that there was no transition. As soon as a composer wanted a trill of pure song, such as a blackcap or a whitethroat might have supplied, anonymous bards, without the smallest training, were able to gush forth with — Love, they wrong thee much That say thy sweet is bitter. When thy rich fruit is such As nothing can be sweeter. Fair house of joy and bliss, Where truest pleasure is, I do adore thee ; 1 know thee what thou art, I serve thee with my heart, And fall before thee. (a Httle miracle which we owe to Mr. BuUen's researches) ; or, in a still lighter key, with — 276 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Now is the month of ma5'ing, When merry lads are playing, Each with his bonny lass, Upon the greeny grass ; The Spring, clad all in gladness, Doth laugh at Winter's sadness, And to the bagpipe's sound The nymphs tread out their ground. This joj'ous semi-classical gusto in life, this ecstasy in physical beauty and frank pleasure, recalls the 13'rical poetry of France in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the influence of the Pleiade on the song-writers and sonneteers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages is not questionable. It is, however, very difficult to trace tliis with exactitude. The spirit of Ronsard and of Remy Belleau, and something intangible of their very style, are discerned in Barnes and Drummond, but it would be dangerous to insist on this. A less important French writer, however, Philippe Desportes, enjoyed, as we know, a great popularity in England. Lodge says of him that he was " ordi- narily in every man's hands," and direct paraphrases of the amatory and of the religious verse of Desportes are frequent. The trick of this light and brilliant sensuous verse once learned, it took forms the most various and the most delightful. In the hands of the best poets it rapidly developed from an extreme naivete and artless jigging freedom to the fullest splendour of song. When Lodge, in 1590, could write — ■ Like to the clear in highest sphere, Where all imperial beauty' shines, Of self-same colour is her hair. Whether unfolded or in twines ; Heigh ho, fair Rosaline ! Her eyes are sapphires set in snow, Refining heaven by every wink ; The gods do fear whenas they glow, And I do tremble, when I think, Heigh ho, would she were mine ! there was no technical lesson left for the English lyric to learn. But the old simplicity remained awhile side by side with this gorgeous and sonorous art, and to the combination we owe the songs of Shakespeare and TnoiiAS CAiipioN, the pastorals of Nicholas Breton, the marveUous short flights of verbal melody that star the music-books down to 1615 and even later. But then the flowers of English lyric began to wither, and the jewels took their place ; a harder, less lucid, less spontaneous method of song-writing succeeded. Thomas Of the early life of Thomas Campion [d. 1620) we know nothing, except that Laiiipio: Yift was educated at Cambridge and was probably a member of Gray's Inn. In 1591 a wonderful lyric, containing the stanzas ; In myrtle arbours on the downs, The fairy-queen Proserpina, This night by moonshine leading merry rounds, Holds a watch with sweet lo\'e Down the dale, up the hill ; No plaints or groans may move Their holv vigil. CAMPION 277 ^||i|li|iiiji|iiiiiiiilgli vr. -iiiiiiiiSiipi^li Ken to her lute Corrinafings, her voice reuiucs the ka- denfiringes. HP p r M P p r -^-fl iKjis: £_jL^-fc: ■"•s" > >— iLi i c ~V a " u ^1 • -±_z_jiZtz: ^fpiiiiiliii^liiiiiili anH.^oihinh.Vicdnoatesappcarcas any chaileng-dctchocIcerc,but when (he doth of rioui- P P Pi pr ppppp r p p p f <^ era: tt ■''<■ <^ e > >, c •"'"" t^r "?_t^ u J t:^ c f *< T L. > > > " rf V c c c <: - c s s ■ . - J — ■ • i=i|iiEiiii^SiiiiEilli niiig rpcakc,eu'n with her fighcs her fighcs, ii. the firings do brcakc the firings do btcakc. p p^ f u t ar- n e 1 pp r i; ^ > _, , >, .1 > rf t^a ct a. -^^ ■ a + . ■f (^ ^ ■ ■ . i. u -» <- • a AC r iX t" r . c > ^ c c c c c « A , ^ And as her lute doth lioeordie. Led by her paffion, fo muft I, For when of pleafurc l"he doth (ing. My thoughts enioy 3 fodaine fpring. But if Hic doth of iorrow fpeake, Eu'n from my hart the firings doc breakc. C z A page of Music from Campion's "Book of Ayres," 1601 278 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ..Ml you that will hold watch with love, The fairy-queen Proserpina Will make you fairer than Dione's dove ; Roses red, lilies white, And the clear damask hue Sliall on vour cheeks unite : Love will adorn you, appeared anonymously in an appendix to the Astrophel and Stella of Sidney. This was a very characteristic specimen of Campion's writing, who in 1595 pubhshed a volume of Latin Poemata, in which the author's preoccupation with the art of music is betrayed. The poet, however, had before this become a physician, and seems to have practised with success. His songs were published in successive Books of Airs, the first of which appeared in 1601, with the music, which was composed by the author himself and by Philip Rossiter the lutenist. Campion was a theorist on prosody, and in 1602 pubhshed prose Observations oil the Art of English Poesy, in which he attacked " the vulgar and unartificial {i.e., inartistic) custom of rhyming." Daniel and Ben Jonson wrote replies to this pamphlet. Later, Campion began to compose masques, and became second only to Jonson in this delicate exercise. That entitled The Lords' Masque (1613) contains the following song, to which the stars, summoned by Prometheus and Orpheus, " moved in an exceeding strange and delightful manner " in response to a neat mechanical artifice of Inigo Jones : Advance your choral motions now. You music-loving lights ; This night concludes the nuptial vow — Make this the best of nights : So bravely crown it with your beains That it mav live in fame As long as Rhenus or as Thames Are known by either name. Once more again, yet nearer move Your forms at willing view ; Such fair effects of J03' and lo\-e None can express but you. Then revel midst vour airy bowers Till all the clouds do sweat, That pleasure mav be poured in showers On this triumpliant seat. Long since hath loveb' Flora thrown Her flowers and garlands here : Rich Ceres all her wealtli hath shown, Proud of her dainty cheer. Changed, then, to human shape, descend, Clad in familiar weed, That everv eye mav here commend Tlie kind delights you breed. Mr. Bullen believes that Campion wrote the Entertainment at Brougham Castle of 1618. He was now near the end of his career, for he died in London, probably of the plague, on March i, 1620, and was buried the same day at St. Dunstan's- in-the-^^'est. Campion was almost unknown, until, in 1887, Mr. Bullen revealed BRETON 279 to us the beauties of one of the most admirable song-writers of his age ; the same historian has edited the works of Campion in 1889, and again in 1903. Nicholas Breton (1542 ? -1626 ? ) was the son of William Breton, a London tradesman, connected with a good Essex famil}', and claiming the title of " gentle- man." He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford ; his father died early, and his mother married again, making the poet George Gascoigne her son's stepfather. As early as 1577 Breton began to publish, and he was the author of more than fifty separate collections of prose and verse, many of which are lost. Breton was in the service of Sir Phihp Sidney until his death, and then in that of the Countess of Pembroke. He appears to have grievously offended her, and to have fallen in consequence into miserable in- digence, " going up and down like a shadow without substance, a purse with- out money, and a body without spirit." About the year 1601, however, she seems to have forgiven him, and he went on writing serenely until 1626, the year of the publication of his Fantastics, when he disappears. His artless, diffuse, and easy grace in lyric pastoral is seen at its best in The Passionate Shepherd of 1604, and in such songs as : Good Muse, rock me asleep With some sweet harmony ; This weary eye is not to keep Thy wary company. Sweet Love, be gone awhile ! Thou knowest my heaviness ; , Beauty is born but to beguile My heart of happiness. See how my little flock. That loved to feed on high, Do tumble headlong down the rock. And in the valley die. T H F WTL OP WIT, VVrtsVVi]l,orWils VVit,ehufe you whether. Coatainlngfiuedifcour- fes, thceflTeiits whereorfoUow- l^ade anAiuige, Compiled by t^ichohs Breton OenLlemm. lONDON Printed by Thomas Creede, I i 9 0, Title-page of Nicholas Breton's "The Will of Wit," 1599 The bushes and the trees, That were so fresh and green, Do all their dainty colour leese [lose], And not a leaf is seen. The blackbird and the thrush, That made the woods to ring. With all the rest, are now at hush, And not a note they sing. The publication of the Faery Queene, with its languid passion and volup- r/te School tuous romance, produced a veryvivid influence on the minds of several young "-^ Spenser poets, who received the stamp of Spenser's genius in their adolescence, and did !8o HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE not lose it in their advancing years. The great charm of the stanza which Spenser had in^•ited, — "a measure," as Shelley said long afterwards, "in- expressibly beautiful," fascinated several of these youthful poets, but, with the metrical restlessness of the age, none of them were content to accept it as Spenser had left it, in the brilliancy and magnificence of its perfection. They introduced modifications of it, leaving out one line (as Giles Fletcher and the author of Britaifis Ida), or the two central lines of the stanza (as in The Purple Island) ; or, while retaining the nine lines, slightly rearranging the rhymes (as Phineas Fletcher in the Piscatory Eclogues). These alterations, however, left Spenser's noble stanza, — the Chaucerian narrative stanza enlarged by an alexandrine, — the aim and model of their style. With this, all these poets endeavoured to reproduce, without direct imitation but in harmony with their individual talent, the sumptuousness and magic of their model. Their sense of beauty, however, was in no case so pure as it had been in Spenser, and these interesting writers display the tendency towards decay which was already, early in the reign of James I., threatening to invade English poetry. They are uplifted in imagination, but their fancy takes shorter and abrupter flights, and they are easily diverted by what is extravagant and preposterous. Their love for what is comely and noble raises them often to genuine heights, from \\'hich they suddenly descend into tastelessness. In this group of the disciples of Spenser, the predominant talent is that of Giles Fletcher, to whom, indeed, the rarer quality of genius can scarcely be denied. He was the author of the finest religious poem produced in England between the Vision of Piers Plowman and Paradise Lost. In several passages of his fourfold Christ's Victory and Triumph, Giles Fletcher solved the difficult problem of how to be at once gorgeous and yet simple, majestic and yet touch- ing. At his apogee he surpasses his very master, for his imagination lifts him to a spiritual sublimity. In the beatific vision in his fourth canto we are reminded of no lesser poem than the Paradiso : ton O N Printed by Robert RAVVORTn,and ace to be fold ty Iskn m'lf"j ai his Chopncen Chrifl.Church gate. 1607. Title-page of Nicholas Breton's " A Murmurer." 1607 Toss up your heads, ve everlasting gates. And let the Prince of Glory enter in ! At whose brave volley of siderial states The sun to blush and stars grow pale were seen ; When leaping first from Earth he did begin GILES AND PHINEAS FLETCHER 2»I To climb his angel's wings. Then, open hang Your crystal doors ! so, all the chorus sang Of heavenly birds, as to the stars they nimbly sprang. Hark ! how the floods clap their applauding hands ; The pleasant valleys singing for delight ; The wanton mountains dance about the lands, The while the fields, struck with the heavcnlv light, Set all their flowers a-smiling at the siglrt ; The trees laugh with their blossoms, and the sound Of the triumphant shout of praise that crowned The flaming Lamb, breaking through Heaven, hath passage found. Out leap the antique patriarchs, all in haste. To see the powers of Hell in triumph led. And with small stars a garland inter- chased Of olive-leaves they love, to crown His head. That was before with thorns dis- gloried : After them flew the prophets, brightly stoled In shining lawn, and wimpled manifold, Striking their ivory harps, strung all in chords of gold. To which the saints victorious carols sung, Ten thousand saints at once ; that with the sound The hollow vault of heaven for triumph rung ; The cherubim their clamours did con- found With all the rest, and clapped their wings around ; Down from their thrones the domina- tions flow, And at His feet their crowns and sceptres throw. And all the princely souls fell on their faces low. CHRISTS VICTORIE, AND TRI- umph in Heauen, and Earth, ver, and after death. Ctirnrmcicapta tun .AlqHthAfcJtue remperftrircifm Intir Viilricil hcdeT*m nhiferfere laurel. CAMBRmCE PrintedbyC.LEGQE.itfio. Title-page of Giles Fletcher's " Christs Victoria, " 1610 The sonorous purity and elevation of Giles Fletcher at his best give more than a hint of the approaching Milton, who was himself to belong, in his early youth and particularly in his odes, to the group of Spenserians. In Christ's Victory and Triumph we find the widely popular Spenserian tradition at its highest. It is right to say that these splendours are not sustained, and that Giles Fletcher is often florid and sometimes merely trivial. Phineas Fletcher is still more open to censure in matter of taste, and although in his way a genuine poet, never rises to his brother's white heat of imagination. His famous Purple Island is really a work of the decadence, and, although vivacious, varied and marvellously ingenious, is a hopeless attempt to embroider 282 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE with beautiful language and fantastic images a theme — the physiology of the human body — which is radically grotesque and arid as a subject for poetrv. Another Spenserian of looser and more languid talent was William Browne, who adopted a fluid pastoral sweetness and wrote mainly in the heroic couplet. He is most to be valued for his occasional felicities, his happy vignettes of country life, his touches of landscape. But his unfinished masterpiece, Britannia's Pastorals, is incoherent, and sometimes mawkish. The Fletchers were a family largely endowed with literary talent. Richard Fletcher, of Cranbrook, had two sons, each of whom became eminent. Of these one was Richard (d. 1596), who was Mary Queen of Scots' chaplain at Fotheringay, and who died Bishop of London ; his son was John Fletcher, the famous play- wright. The brother of the bishop was Giles Fletcher the elder (1549-1611), who went as envoy to Russia, printed a dangerous and able book on that country in 1591, and appeared in 1593 among the sonnet-writers as the author of a cycle entitled Licia. He married Joan Sheafe, and their two sons were the leaders of the Spenserian school. The elder, Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650), was born at Cranbrook on April 8, 1582, was educated at Eton, and became a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, in 1600. He resided at the University for sixteen years, having been elected a fellow of his college. After acting as chaplain in the Willoughby household for some time, Phineas Flttcher settled down in Norfolk for the rest of his life as Rector of Hilgay, where he died towards the close of 1650. It is unexplained why he did not publish his poems,- which bear the impress of youth, until late in life. But his earliest publication, the LocustcB, belongs to 1627, and the Sicelides to r63r. Finally, his important works. The Purple Island and the Piscatory Eclogues, were delayed until 1633. An idea of the forms by which Phineas is principally known may be given by a stanza from each of these writings. The following exemplifies the Piscatory Eclogues : A fisher-boy that never knew his peer In dainty songs, the genlls Thomalin, With folded arms, deep siglis and heavy cheer. Where hundred nymphs, and hundred muses inn, Sank down by Camus' brinks ; with him his dear Dear Thyrsil lav ; ofttimes would he begin To cure his grief, and better way advise ; But still his words, when his sad friend he spies. Forsook his silent tongue, to speak in water\' eyes. While this is the stanza in which The Purple Island is composed : The morning fresh, dappling her horse with roses. Vexed at the lingering shades, that long had left her In Tithon's freezing arms, the light discloses, And, chasing night, of rule and harm bereft her, The sun with gentle beams his rage disguises, And, like aspiring tyrants, temporises, Never to be endured, but when he falls or rises. Giles Fletcher, the younger (1584 ? -1623 ? ), was the brother of Phineas, and was probably born in London not later than 1584. He was sent early to Westminster School, and thence in 1605 to Trinity College, Cambridge, by the generous kindness of the famous Dr. Thomas Neville, who was Master of that GILES FLETCHER : WILLIAM BROWNE 2rf3 college from 1593-1615. His earliest verses, which are of a rare maturity, and display already the stanzaic adaptation of the Spenserian form which Giles Fletcher was afterwards to make prominent, appeared in 1603 in a collection called Sorrow's Joy, of poems on the death of Queen Elizabeth. In this " canto " the youthful poet gives remarkable promise, as a single specimen may serve to show : So let the loathed lapwing, when her nest Is stolen away, not as she uses, flv, Cozening the searcher of his promised feast, But, widowed of all hope, still " Itys " cry, And naught but " Itys, Itys ! " till she die. Say, sweetest quirester of the airy quire. Doth not thy " Tereu, Tereu ! " then expire, When winter robs thy house of all her green attire ? At Trinity College, where Giles Fletcher became a bachelor of divinity, he was famous for being " equally beloved of the Muses and the Graces." In 1610 he published the poem on which his fame rests, Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth ; in spite of its transcendent beauties, it was coldly received, and was the object of " mali- cious tongues." But at least Milton read it. Fletcher, however, was dis- couraged, and about 1617 he exchanged his living in Cambridge for the rectory of Alderton, in Suffolk, where his " clownish and low-parted parishioners valued not their pastor according to his worth." Their stubbornness " dis- posed him to melancholy and hastened his dissolution." He issued no more verse, but a prose treatise of divinity, The Reward of the Faithful, in 1623. This dim record of the life of Giles Fletcher leaves upon us the impression of a man whose powers were early paralysed by the inexplicable neglect of his contemporaries. Title-page of "Britannia's Pastorals," 1613 William Browne (1591 ? -1643) was born at Tavistock, and is believed to have belonged to an old Devonshire family, the Brownes of Browne-Ilash. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, but left the University without a degree, entering Clifford's Inn, in London, as a law student. Thence he went over to the Inner Temple in the winter of 1611. In 1613 appeared the First Book of Britannia's Pastorals, a work in which the talent of a very young man is displayed in its crude exuberance. In 1614 Browne issued the collection of eclogues called 284 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Withe?' The Shepherd' s Pipe, and in 1616 a Second Book of Britannia's Pastorals, dedicated to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, into whose service he had now entered ; Anthony a ^^'ood savs that he settled at Wilton, where " he got wealth and pur- chased an estate." but this is doubtful. A William Browne, who may be the poet, was buried at Tavistock on March 27, 1643 ; but the widow of the latter did not obtain administration of his estate at Dorking until 1645. Browne was small in stature, and a favourite with his friends, among whom were Dravton and Selder. One of his most agreeable works, the Inner Temple Masque, remained in MS. until 1772, and a Third Book of ito**^!^ — =s^^^^^^^i^^ BritauHia's Pastorals until 1852. The following exquisite epitaph, hrst printed in 165S, and long attributed to Ben Jonson, is now known to be the work of Browne : Ox THE Countess Dowager OF Pembroke Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse : Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother : Death, ere thou hast slain another, Fair and learn'd and good as she. Time shall throw a dart at thee. It is difficult to find an appropriate place in our re- cord for George Wither, whose figure is ^•erv pro- minent from the reign of Elizabeth to that of Charles II., but so protean are its inconsistencies, and so violently various, that il belongs to a succession of periods rather than to an}- one. For convenience, however, we may con- sider the poems of Wither in succession to those of the disciples of Spenser, \\ith whom he preser^•ed close relations for some time. At his best ^^'ither is a lyric poet of \-ery remarkable freshness, brightness and charm ; at his worst he is a poetaster pouring forth absolute trash. In no writer iti onr literature do we meet with such violent extremes of merit, and XA'ither appears to ha\'e been devoid, not indeed of genius, but of the rudiments of a controlling taste. Moreo\-er, during his long life he showed himself sensiti\ <; without intelligence to the trend of popular feeling, so that when the public demanded airy and exquisite pa.itor.al songs, about 1610, Wither could pro- '^1 It J ^\i^ I ! paljed hv, ^hat I SHAL BEE..«o«/- 4,^ ,< l Yer, in thai.mv-Ee£iLitics /.-,■, Georg'e Wither From the portrait t'v Julin Fiiviu' in the ' Emblcmes " 1634 WITHER 285 duce them ; and when, after the Restoration, all sense ot styie and dignity was lost in popular verse, Wither could, with absolute complacency, publish dog- gerel such as his Tuba Pacifica and his Sighs for the Pitchers. His life was so long, his works so extremely numerous and their value so irregular, that the best critical opinion has always separated the chaff from the grain before beginning to estimate Wither's value. This being done, he appears as the author, between 1612 and 1630, of a number of little books of verse, containing eclogues, songs and epistles of great pic- turesqueness, occasionally rising into really eminent beauty. In this mood. Wither knows that . . . though all the world's delight forsake me, I have a Muse, and she shall music make me ; Whose very notes, in spite of closest cages, Sliall give content to me and after ages. Shepheards Hunting : Being, J^ CcrraineEglogucs written du- t>rj4 ling the time of [he Authors Imprifonmcntmlhe CMm-Jhitlffy . f3 '-m BY George wyther; Gentleman. LONDON, Printed by W. H-'h/itioiGttrge 7^arton^2ndircto be fold at tbcftgnc of the red Bull ntcrc cligi eoiplc-bjrxe. i ^ t ;. Title-page of Wither's "Shepheards Hunting," 1615 But the irregularity of his inspiration is remarkable even in his earliest works, where, as has been said, the purple pas- sages are often stitched into a ground of the coarsest sacking. The faults of ^^'ither were repeated by Francis QuARj ES, the extremely popular writer of scriptural paraphrases, epitaphs and emblems, in whom the prosaic qualities of the seventeenth century first appear in their open and pronounced form. Slovenly and tasteless as Quarles was, he had never- theless a vigour and homely wit, which should save him from absolute ridicule. His ardour did not always betray him into the grotesque, and he is occasionally dignified as well as spirited. The majority of his writings, however, are disfigured by the most preposterous faults of style, and awaken something like bewilderment in a reader who recollects that they were written by a man who was born before Spenser died. George Wither (1588-1667) was born at Bentworth, in Hampshire, on June II, 1588. His parents, who were in easy circumstances, sent him to the village school of Colemore, and then to Magdalen College, Oxford . He went back to Bentworth, and, whatever that may mean, " to the plough." But about 1612 he went up to London, and began to devote himself to literature, and in 1613 was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for printing his satire called Abuses Stript and Whipt. While in prison he wrote The Shepherd's Hunting and Fidelia, two of his most successful works, each published in 1615. The Mistress of Philarete 286 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE belongs to the same period, hut was not printed until 1622. In this poem occurs the description of the poet's Hampshire home, and in particular of Alresford Pool: Two prettv rills do meet, and meeting make Witliin one vallev a laree sil\-er lake ; About whose banks the fertile mountains stood In a,ux-s passed, bra\'eh- crowned with wood ; Which, lending cold, sweet shadows, ga\"e it grace To be accounted Cynthia's bathing-place ; And from her father Xeptune's brackish court Fair Thetis thither often would resort. Attended bv the fishes of the sea. Which in these sweeter waters come to play. There would the Daughter of the Sea-god diye ; And thither came the land- nymphs, eyery eye. To wait upon her, bringing for her brows Rich garlands of sweet flowers and beech^' boughs. For pleasant was that pool, and near it there Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen. It was not oyergrown with boisterous sedge, Nor grew there rudely, thiU, along the edge, A bending willow nor a prickly bush, Xor broad-leafed flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush. But here, well-ordered, was a gro\"e «'ith bowers, r,i'-'-tl]ty If he n'hoae tnfant.Miist: baaann •Tu hniiL.- the World bcfij/v warv.s stuiihimAiRni ■ Iciiifjtik.srome.': in ma/^nsRviue.; _^^.,- - - , -, . _, . .. -\-mcs. \e.t fi'VJ hvqi'nd ii/r'i riiiiL' hiii~inorc up ^^ . r. jf 'Thnyjli pniLV hn su apfiro ii'il X Georg-e Wither '1 JJvji.ri:y~v'.{'TKhulajll me'iiP mddi- Afta- the portrait by W. Holle There, grassy plots set round about with flowers ; Here you might, through the water, see the land Appear, strewn o'er with white or ^'cllow sand. Yon deeper was it ; and the wind, by whiffs. Would make it rise, and wash the little cliffs ; On which, oft pluming, sate, unfrighted than. The gaggling wild-goose and the snow-white swan, With aU those flocks of fowls which, to this clay. Upon those quiet waters breed and play. At the breaking out of the Ci^"il War, X^'ither's sympathies were originally on the side of the Kins and he led a regiment of cayalr}- a.t ainst the Scotch Coyenanters. WITHER : QUARLES 287 But he was a Puritan by convic- tion, and in 1642 he deiinitely came over to the Parliamentarian side, and was made Governor of Farn- ham Castle. His literary produc- tions became more numerous than ever, but they consisted either of hymns and religious exercises or of violent political diatribes. He cultivated the extravagant nomen- clature of the day, and the titles of his later pamphlets vary from Opo- bahamum Anglicantim to Salt upon Salt. His violence grew with years, and the Restoration deprived his temper of its last shred of self- control. He was imprisoned in Newgate for libel in 1660, and left there, as being out of harm's way, for several years. He was infinitely active with the pen, however, during this period, and published nine or ten volumes while he was in prison. He was released at last, and died obscurely in London, being close upon his eightieth year, on May 2, 1667. Title-page of Wither's "Juvenilia," 1622 Francis Quarles From an etigravini^ by Alais Francis Quarles (1592-1644) was a gentleman of good family, born at the manor-house of Stewards, in Essex, in May 1592. He was early left an orphan, and was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, afterwards entering Lincoln's Inn. When the Princess Elizabeth married the Palatine and pro- ceeded to Germany in 1613, Quarles accompanied her as cup-bearer, and appears to have lived abroad in her service for several years. In 1620, however, he was back in London, and published A Feast for Worms, a metrical version of the book of Jonah. His publications now became exceed- ingly numerous, and among the most popular of them were Sion's Sonnets (1625), Ar gains and Parthenia {1629), 288 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE and Einblciiis (1634-1635). It is not known at what date previous to 1629 Ouarles became the private secretary to Archbishop Ussher in Ireland. He was appointed Chronologer to the city of London in 1639, and from the outbreak of the war to the end of his life was a fervent royalist. He defended Charles I. with such ardour that his ]\ISS. were confiscated and burned and he himself was in much danger. His extreme popularity among Puritan readers, however, preserved Quarles from personal attack, and he died in London before the struggle was decided on Sep- tember 8, 1644, and was buried in the church of St. Olave, Silver Street. His solitary drama, the tragedy of The Virgin Widow, appeared posthumously in 1649. That homeliness of Ouarles which so endeared him to his con- temporaries may be exem- plified by the following pas- sage : E\'en like the hawk, whose keeper's wary hands Have made a prisoner to her weathering stock, Forgetting quite the power of her fast bands, Makes a rank bate from her forsaken block. But her too-faithful leash doth soon restrain Her broken flight, at- tempted oft in vain ; It gives her loins a twitch, and tugs her back again. So, \^hen m}^ soul directs her better ej'e To heaven's bright palace, where my treasure lies, I spread my willing wings, but cannot fly ; Title-page of Quarless "Argalus and Parthenia," 1629 Earth hauls me down ; I cannot, c.iunot rise When I but strive to mount the least degree. Earth gives a jerk, and foils me on my knee ; Lord ! how my soul is rackt betwixt the world a^d thee ! Great God, I spread my feeble wings in vain ; In vain I offer mv extended hands : I cannot mount till thou unlink my chain ; I cannot come till thou release my bands . Which if Thou please to break, and then supply jNI}' wings with spirit, the eagle shall not fly A pitch that's half so fair nor half so swift as I. LORD BROOKE 289 Another isolated figure in the period we are now considering is Fulke Greville, afterwards the first Lord Brooke (1554-1628), who was a late survival from the chivalry of the early Elizabethan age. He had left his ancestral house of Beau- champ Court, in Warwickshire, at the age of ten, to enter Shrewsbury School, and had met a fellow pupil arriving on the same day, the young Philip Sidney. They were not divided in affection until Sidney died, although when the latter went to Oxford, Greville became a fellow commoner at Jesus College, Cambridge. The friends met again at the Court of Elizabeth, and there was added to their close confraternity another poet, Sir Edward Dyer, who was to die in 1607. The three were inseparable, and on one occasion when he had been for a moment divided from Dyer and Greville and was reunited to them, Sidney sang : Welcome my two to me. The number best beloved ; Within mv heart you be In friendship unremoved. Join hands and hearts, so let it be ; Make but one mind in bodies three. Greville was the survivor of this romantic trinity. He adopted poli- tics as a profession, and rose to high honours under Elizabeth, who greatly esteemed him. He was Secretary to the Principality of Wales for forty-five years, and in 1597 he was knighted. Fulke Gre- ville rose to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1614, and was raised to the peerage, as Baron Brooke, in 162 1. James I. gave him two magnificent and historic estates, Warwick Castle and Knoll Park. His end was mysterious ; he was stabbed in the back by a footman, in his bed-chamber while he was dressing, in September 1628 ; the murderer committed suicide before any explanation of his crime could be extracted from him. With the exception of a few verses in anthologies and the surreptitious edition of part of Mustapha in i6og, nothing of Lord Brooke's was published in his Hfetime. It was not until 1633 that Certain Learned and Elegant Works appeared in folio ; this contained some philosophical " treatises " in verse, a cycle of sonnets entitled Ccelica, and the two tragedies of Alaham and Mustapha. In 1652 was pubhshed Fulke Greville's belated Life of Sir Philip S^Wwey, and more philosophical poems in 1670. The poetry of Lord Brooke is extremely abstruse and obscure, harsh in construction, with what a contemporary critic called " a close, mysterious, and sententious way of writing." As far as we can judge, the earliest, and cer- tainly the simplest, of his writings which we possess are the sonnets. Lamb said that his plays were. " frozen " ; they have rhyme introduced into them, and move slowly under a burden of ripe and solemn thougl;i;. But Brooke neglects VOL. II T Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke After ail original portrait 290 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE John Domie lucidity, melody, and colour more resolutely than any other English poet of his rank, and his poems were obviously written, in proud disdain of public taste, to please no one but himself. The ingenuity of Lord Brooke is exemplified at its best in this quatorzam from Caiica : Satan, no woman, yet a wandering spirit, When he saw ships sail two ways with one wind, Of sailors' trade he hell did disinherit — The Devil himself loves not a half-fast mind. The sat\-r, when he saw the shepherd blow To warm his hands and make his pottage cool, jManhood forswore and, half a beast, did know Nature with double breath is put to school. Cupid doth head his shafts in women's faces. Where smiles and tears dwell ever near together. Where all the arts of change give passion graces ; While these clouds threaten, who fears not the weather ? Sailors and satyrs, Cupid's knights, and I Fear women that swear " Nay ! " and know they lie. A poetical oddity of much voluble talent was John Taylor (1580-1653), called " The Water Poet," because he was a Thames waterman by profes- sion ; he was patronised by Ben Jonson and by the Court, and arranged the aquatic pageants which was a picturesque feature of the age. In the course of his life, the Water Poet issued nearly one hundred and thirty separate publications. He was a sort of public jester, and in 1620 was received in that capacity by the Queen of Bohemia, who entertained him at Prague. Taylor cohected his queer doggerel into his "Works " in 1630. A certain interest, not wholly literary, attaches also to the poetry of Master Patrick Hannay, who was drowned at sea about 1629. His books were collected in 1622. But a poet was in the field who was to sweep the pleasant flowers of the disciples of Spenser before him as ruthlessly as a mower cuts down the daisies with his scythe. In this age of mighty wits and luminous imagina- tions, the most robust and the most elaborately trained intellect was surely that of John Doxxe. Born as early as 1573, and associated with many of the purely Elizabethan poets, we have yet the habit of thinking of him as wholly Jacobean, Title-page of the Works of the Water Poet DONNE 291 and the instinct is not an erroneous one, for he begins a new age. His po^ms were kept in manuscript until two years after his death in 1631, but they were widely circulated, and they exercised an extraordinary effect. Long before any edition of Donne was published, tlie majority of living English verse-writers had been influenced by the main peculi- arities of his style. He wrote satires, epistles, elegies, son- nets, and lyrics, and although it is in the last mentioned that his beauties are most frequent, the essence of Donne, the strange personal character- istic which made him so unlike every one else, is redolent in all. He rejected whatever had pleased the Eliza- bethan age ; he threw the fashionable humanism to the winds ; he broke up the accepted prosody ; he aimed at a totally new method in dic- tion, in illustration, in attitude. He was a realist, who studded his writings with images drawn from contemporary life. For grace and melli- fluous floridity he substituted audacity, intensity, a proud and fulgurant darkness, as of an intellectual thunder- cloud. He thought to redeem poetry from triviality by a transcendental exercise of mental force, applied with violence to the most unpromising subjects, chosen sometimes merely because they were unpromising, in an insolent rejection of the traditions of plastic beauty. He conceived nothing Title-page of Patrick Hannay's Poems, with portrait of the Author 292 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE less daring than a complete revolution of style, and the dethronement of the whole dynasty of modern verse, in favour of a new naturalism dependent solely on a blaze of intellect. Unfortunately, the genius of Donne was not equal to his ambition and his force. He lacked the element needed to fuse his brilliant intuitions into a classical shape. He aimed at becoming a great creative reformer, but he succeeded only in disturbing and dislocating literature. He was the blind Samson in the Elizabethan gate, strong enough to pull the beautiful temple of Spen- serian fancy about the ears of the worshippers, but powerless to offer them a substitute. What he gave to poetry in exchange for what he destroyed was almost wholly deplorable. For sixty years the evil taint of Donne rested on us, and our tradition is not free from it yet. To him — almost to him alone — we owe the tortured irregularities, the monstrous pedantries, the alembi- cated verbiage of thedecline. "Rhyme's sturdy cripple," as Coleridge called him, Donne is the father of all that is exasperating, affected, and " meta- physical " in English poetry. He re- presented, with Marino in Italy, Gongora in Spain, and Du Bartas and D'Aubigne in France, that mania for an inflamed and eccentric extravagance of fanc}' which was racing over Europe like a hideous new disease ; and tire ease and rapidity with which the in- fection was caught shows how ready the world of letters was to succumb to such a plague. That Donne, in flashes, and especially in certain of his lyrics, is still able to afford us imaginative ecstasy of the very highest order — he has written a few single lines almost comparable witli the best of Shakespeare's — must not blind us, in a general surve}', to the maleficence of his genius. No one has injured English writing more than Donne, not even Carlyle. John Donne (r573-i63i) was born in the parish of St. Nicholas Olave, in the City. He was the eldest son of a citizen and ironmonger of London of the same name, who died early in 1576, and left three children to the charge of their mother, Elizabeth He}'\vood, who was of the family of the great Sir Thomas More, and the daughter of John Heywood, the epigrammatist and writer of interludes. On both sides the family of Donne was Catholic, and during his childhood, his uncles ElizEeus (or Ellis) and Jasper Hej-^vood, both men of literary attainments, were persecuted for their faith. Donne was so brilliantly precocious that it was said of him that " this age hath brought forth another Pico deUa Mirandola." In John Donne From a contemporary engraving by Lomhart DONNE 293 P S E V D O MARTYR- Wherein O VT O F CERTAINE Propofitionsand Gradations, This ConclufioQiscuiiled. THAT THOSE WHICH ARE oftheRomane Religion in this Kingdome, may and ought co take the Oath of October 1584 he and his younger brother Henry were entered at Hart Hall, Oxford. By advice from his Roman friends, he forebore to take a degree, and left the University in 1587, being then only fourteen years of age. He proceeded to Cambridge, where he took his degree ; in 1590 removed to London and entered Lincoln's Inn in May 1592. His brother, Henry Donne, was arrested in May 1593 for harbouring a proscribed Catholic priest, and died of fever in prison. When, therefore, Donne came of age in 1594 he had to divide the very considerable fortune which his father had left with his mother and his sister, now Mrs. Copley. He now began to examine the basis of his faith, and gradually J^ J/^^^'^'i^'' c^ U X^^^ left the Church of Rome ; he " betrothed himself to no religion that might give him any other denomination than a Christian." He began to devote himself to poetry, and he made his maiden efforts in satire. The year 1593 is the date of his earliest exercises in this kind, of which some account has already been given. He did not publish anything at this time, and on June i, 1599, the power of doing so was removed from him by an order from the Archbishop's court " that no Satires or Epi- grams be printed hereafter." Donne engaged himself under the Earl of Essex for the Cadiz ex- pedition in 1596 and that made to the Azores in 1597. His ex- periences in the latter are enshrined in two remarkable poems. The Storm and The Calm. Instead of returning from the Azores to England, Donne visited Spain and Italy, remaining "some years" in the South of Europe. There is here, perhaps, some exaggeration, for in the winter of 1597 Donne was already settled m London, in York House, as private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton (afterwards Lord EUesmere), the Lord Keeper. It is probable that by this time, and during his years of wandering adventure, the greater part of Donne's lyrical poems had been composed. At the death of Lady Egerton, the Lord Keeper's niece, Anne More, came to conduct his household. She and Donne fell in love with one another, and at the close of 1601 they were secretly married. This business being disclosed, Sir George More, the father of the bride, demanded that Donne should be dismissed from his appointment and thrown into the Fleet Prison, where he lay for some weeks. He had recently ,.,./, -M, G.d ,..Mr,''k' '""r"]" '■'•'■•,f ""'^'"t r**'^ "" '" ...fc,,™,.^""*"''''".*"''""*?'""''''''''''''''''''^"''''''"''"'''''' LONDON PrintttJ by fV. Stmshy (orWolttr ^vrn. ^%^^u^.^^d^ . '^Jm^m^ Title-page of the " Pseudo- Martyr,' with Donne's handwriting 1610, 294 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE completed a treatise in verse on the Pythagorean theory of metempsychosis, called The Progress of the Soul, which is one of the most brilliant and reckless of his writings, and the most lengthy of his existing poems. How Donne supported his wife and himself, and where he resided, from 1602 to 1605, is not clearly known, but during a part of this time they were the guests of Sir Francis Wooley at Pyrford. They moved in the last-named year to a small manor-house at Mitcham, a dis- comfortable and unhealthy dwelling. At this time and until 1607 Donne was helping Morton, long afterwards Bishop of Durham, in his controversies with the Catholics. When this work was ended, Morton proposed to his helper that he should enter the Church of England, in which he offered him instant promotion. This offer, however, Donne was not prepared to accept, and with " faint breath and perplexed countenance " thankfully declined it. His refusal did the more honour to the scrupulositv of his conscience in that, by some decay or early waste of his fortune, Donne was now reduced to the very straits of povert)'. It was at the chmax of sickness and indigence that he wrote, about 1608, the singular treatise on suicide called Biathanatos, in which, frankly confessing that the tempta- tion to put an end to his life was often present with him, he tried to prove that " self-homicide is not so naturally sin that it may never be otherwise." At this juncture, however. Sir George More tardily forgave his daughter, and gave the Donnes a handsome allowance. In 1610 Donne published his prose treatise called Pseiido-M irtyr, and in 1611 he wrote his curious squib against the Jesuits, called Ignatius his Conclave. To this time, also, may be attributed his two cycles of Holy Sonnets, in which the majesty of his sombre imagination is finely exemplified : At the round earth's imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, vou numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go ; All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'crthrow, AU whom war, death, age, agues, tyrannies. Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe. But let them sleep. Lord, and me mourn a space For, if a'Dove all these mv sins abound, 'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace, When we are there. Here on this lowly ground, Teach me how to repent, for that's as good As if Thou hadst seal'd ray pardon with Thy blood. In 1610 Sir Robert Drury became Donne's patron, and the poet published in 1611-12 two extravagantly transcendental elegies, An Anatomy of the World, in cele- bration of the knight's daughter, who had just died in her fourteenth year. In 1612 he went with Drury to Paris, but returned without any definite employment. " No man," he writes in 1614, " attends Court fortunes more impatiently than I do." But before that vear was out the King had insisted on his taking holy orders, and in January 1615, Donne was ordained. He was, howeyer, long disappointed of any promotion, and when his wife died, on August 15. 1617, her allowance ceased and Donne was left " a man of narrow, unsettled estate and the careful [anxious] father of seven children then living." After the death of Mrs. Donne, the poet " became crucified to the world," and adopted an ascetic mode of Hfe which he preserved to the end. But he acceded to the invitation of the benchers DONNE 295 of Lincoln's Inn to become their Reader, and in 1619 he accompanied Lord Don- caster on his Embassy to Germany. Li 1621 Donne was appointed Dean of St. Paul's, and he died on March 31, 1631, being buried in his cathedral, where a very curious portrait-statue of him, wrapped in a winding-sheet, still exists. He was the most powerful and splendid preacher of his time, " carrying some to heaven in holy raptures and enticing others to amend their life " ; Izaak Walton compared him in the pulpit to an angel leaning from a cloud. The main part o; Donne's writings were posthumously pubhshed — his Poems in 1633 ; his Sermons (with, in the first volume, a Life by Walton) in 1640, 1649, and 1661 ; his Biatha- natos in 1634 ; his Letters in 1651. On one of the many occasions of his sudden departure on foreign travel, Donne addressed the following epistle to his wife : Sweetest love, I do not go For weariness of thee. Nor in fiope the world can show A titter love for me, But since that I At the last must part, 'tis best. Thus to use myself in jest Bv feigned deaths to die. Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here to-day ; He hath no desire nor sense. Nor half so short a way ; Then fear not me. But believe that I shall make Speedier journej's, since I take More wings and spurs than he. O how feeble is man's power, That if good fortune fall. Cannot add another hour, Nor a lost hour recall ; But come bad chance. And we join to it our strength. And we teach it art and length. Itself o'er us to advance. I I When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind, But sigh'st my soul away ; When thou weep'st, unkindly kind, My life's blood doth decay. It cannot be That thou lov'st me as thou say'st, If in thine my life thou waste. That art the best of me. Let not thv divining heart Forethink me any ill ; Destiny may take thy part, And may thy fears fulfil. But think that we Are but turn'd aside to sleep : They who one another keep Alive, ne'er paiied be. 296 HISrORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE A couple of stanzas from The Canonization ma\' exemplify the fiery violence of his early muse : For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me \o\-e ! Ox chide niv palsv, or mv gout ; .AIv five grav hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ; Witli wealth vour state, your mind with arts improve Take vou a course, ,get \'OU a place^ Observe his Honour or his Grace, Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face Contemplate ; what vou will, appro\'e, So you will let me love. Alas ! alas ! who's injured by rny love ? ^^"hat merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd ? Who savs my tears have over- flow'd his ground ? When did mv colds a forward spring remove ? \\'hen did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguev bill ? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels mo\e, Tho' she and I do love. \Miile literature, and particu- larly poetry, flourished with such magnificence in the English dominions of King James, the re- moA'al of the seat of government to London seems to ha^•e star\'ed intellectual effort north of tlie Tweed. To the Scottish ballads, which form an independent group of compositions of high national importance, attention has already been given. The literary graces now generally cultivated in Scot- land were those which were in fashion in England and France ; we look in ^•ain for what can be considered an independent Scots movement at this juncture. Du Bartas, in the translations of Josliua Sylvester, was greatly admired in Edinburgh, and the influence on current Scottish ^•erse came from him and in a less measure from Spenser. Sir Robert A\'ton. who wrote English \\'ith studied elegance, abandoned the \ai-rnacular altogether ; the survi\-ing poems of the Earl oj Ancrum fail to justif\' the reputation he enjoyed as a sonneteer ; and the Earl of Stirling, though preferred hv liis Scr-ttish contemporaries to Tasso, is a jLuliclinuJ IcHavth rirrriTnorici ■William Drummond of Hawthornden From an cjigraving by R. Gayuood DRUMMOND 297 pedantic and lumbering writer. The best of all the Scotch poets of this age, by far, is William Drummond of Hawthornden, who had studied Sidney and Ronsard, but had, peculiar to himself, a rich note of solemn music, which he exercised in sonnets, madrigals and canzones of genuine value. He had the honour of attracting the notice of Milton, who borrowed with slight adaptation Drummond' s Immortal Amaranthus, princely Rose, Sad Violet, and that sweet flower that bears In sanguine spots the tenour of our woes. There is beauty, but no great elevation in the poetry of Drummond ; it is sensuous, uniform, and dyed with gorgeous colours. Its fault is a certain studied artificiality, and a tendency to give way, prematurely, to that mania for violent and tasteless imagery which was already invading tire Italian and Spanish writers whom Drummond was among the earliest in these islands to study. Hawthornden From Grose s '^ Aniiquiiies 0/ Scotland,' 1789 William Drummond (1585-1649) belonged to one of the best families of Scot- land, and claimed kinship, through Annabella, the Queen of Robert III., with the royal family. His father. Sir John Drummond, be- came gentleman-usher to James VI. ; the poet was the eldest son, and was born at his father's romantic house of Hawthornden on December 13, 1585. After taking his degree in the University of Edinburgh, Drummond proceeded in 1607 to Bourges, and thence to Paris, being absent on the Continent until he succeeded to the estates of Hawthornden in i6ro. He published a fine elegy on the death of Prince Henry in r6r3, and a volume of Poems in 1616. His Forth Feasting, a panegyric on the King, belongs to 1617. In the winter of i6r8, Ben Jonson paid Drummond a long visit in Edinburgh and at Hawthornden, and the Scotch poet took invaluable notes of Jonson's con- versation. Drummond's Flowers of Sion appeared in r623, and to these religious poems was appended the admirable prose treatise called The Cypress Grove. He had suffered in his youth the misfortune of seeing his intended bride carried off by a fever just before their wedding-day, and he remained long inconsolable ; but in 1632 he married a peasant-girl, the daughter of a village minister, who bore him nine children. Drummond was deeply attached to the royal house, and his death, whirh happened on December 4, 1649, is said to have been hastened by his excessive grief at the " martvrdom " of Charles I. The rich lyric strain of Drummond is exemplified in the canzone which opens thus : 298 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE PhcEbiis, arise, And paint tlie sable skies With azure, white, and red ; Rouse Jlemnon's mother from her Tithon's bed. That she tliv carrier mav with roses spread ; The nightingales thy coming eachwhere sing ; Make an eternal spring ! Give life to this dark world which lieth dead ! Spread forth thy golden hair In larger locks than thou wast wont before, And, emperor-like, decore With diadem of pearl thv temples fair. The best of Drummond's sonnets are among the most dignified productions of the Jacobean age. Those To My Lute and To a Nightingale are in all the anthologies. This is less famihar : As, in a duskv and tempestuous night, A star is wont to spread her locks of gold, And while her pleasant rays abroad are roU'd, Some spiteful cloud doth rob us of her sight ; Fair soul, in this black age so shin'd thou bright. And made all eyes with wonder thee behold, Till ugly Death, depriving us of light, In his grim misty arms thee did enfold. Who more shall vaunt true beauty here to see ? What hope doth more in any heart remain. That such perfections shall his reason reign, If Beauty, with thee born, too died with thee ? World, plain no more of Love, nor count his harms ; With his pale trophies Death hath hung his arms. At the close of the Elizabethan age the range of poetic interest began to be widened, and at the same time dangerous exotic influences were introduced by the circulation of very able translations, particularly from the French and the Italian. Se\'eral of these became almost classical, and were \-erv frequently reprinted. Ariosto, in his Orlando Furioso, was presented to English readers by Sir John Harington ; Tasso, in his Godfrey of BuUoigne, or the Recovery of Jerusalem, by Richard Carew and afterwards by Edward Fairfax ; the popular Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas by Joshua Sylvester ; above all Homer, in his entire works, was magnificently rendered b\' George Chapman. Each of these versions was a valuable gift to our litei-ature and, in particula"?, the trans- lation of Tasso by Fairfax, in which that gentleman proved himself to belong William Drumraond of Hawthornden After the pot trait by C, Jansseii CHAPMAN'S "HOMER' 299 to the Spenserian school of the Fletchers and Browne, was a fructifying and highly characteristic product of the period. Chapman's translation, with what Charles Lamb called its " unconquerable quaiatness," its deep sympathy with one or two aspects of the genius of Homer, and its splendid freedom and vigour of paraphrase, is a work which stands alone in the Jacobean age. Chapman employed, for the Iliad, an interesting rhymed couplet of fourteen feet, which is very effective when written with spirit. This is, indeed, so commonly spoken of as the general metre of Chapman's Homer, as to leave an impression upon us that those who praise this transla- tion rarely proceed far in the reading of it. For Chapman soon became weary of his galloping couplet, and in the Odyssey and the Hymns, as well as in his version of Hesiod's Days and Weeks, he returned to the nor- mal heroic measure. A fragment from the Eleventh Book of the Iliad may give an impression of his earlier treatment of the narrative : High was the fury of his lance. But. having beat them close Beneath their walls, the both-worlds' Sire did not again repose On fountain-flowing Ida's tops, being newly slid from Heaven, And held a lightning in his hand ; from thence the charge was given To Iris with the golden wings : " Thaumantia, fly," said he, " And tell Troy's Hector that as long as he enrag'd shall see The soldier-loving Atreus' son amongst the foremost fight, Depopulating troops of men, so long must he excite Some other to resist the foe, and he no arms advance ; But when he wounded takes his horse, attain'd with shaft or lance, Then will I fill his arm with death, ev'n till he reach the fleet, And peaceful night treads busy day beneath her sacred feet." The wind-foot swift Thaumantia obey'd, and us'd her wings To famous Ilion, from the mount enchas'd with silver springs, And found in his bright chariot the hardy Trojan knight. To whom she spake the words of Jove, and vanish'd from his sight. He leapt upon the sounding earth, and shook his lengthful dart. And everywhere he breath'd exhorts, and stirr'd up every heart. A dreadful fight he set on foot. His soldiers straight turn'd head. The Greeks stood firm. In both the hosts, the field was perfected. But Agamemnon, foremost still, did all his side exceed. And would not be the first in name unless the first in deed. From this we may turn to Chapman's treatment of the Odyssey, where Engraved portrait of Chapman From the 1616 edition of " Horner'^ 300 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1 itle-page of Chapman's "Homer," 1616 it is interesting to find liim using the measure wliiclr Pope was to employ for tiie same purpose a hundred years later. Here is a fragment from the Fourth Book : CHAPMAN'S "HOMER" 301 While this his thoughts disputed, forth did shine, Lilce to tlie golden distaff-deck'd Divine, From her bed's high and odoriferous room Helen. To whom, of an elaborate loom, Adrasta set a chair ; Alcippe brought A piece of tapestry of fine wool wrought ; Phylo a silver cabinet conferr'd, Given by Alcandra nuptially endear'd To Lord Pol/bius, whose abode in Thebes The Egyptian city was, where wealth in heaps His famous house held, out of which did go. In gift to Atrides, silver bath-tubs two. Two tripods, and of fine gold talents ten. His wife did likewise send to Helen then Fair gifts, a distaff that of gold was wrought, And that rich cabinet that Phylo brought. Round, and with gold ribb'd, now of fine thread full ; On which extended, crown'd with finest wool Of violet gloss, the golden distaff lay. Chapman's enthusiasm for his subject was extreme ; he asserted with a loud voice that " of all books extant in aU kinds, Homer is the first and best." In early youth the magnificence of the Greek had im- pressed itself upon his imagination, and in his old age he was still rap- turously contemplating " this full sphere of poesy's sweetest prime." He translated what others, and in particular Politian, had written in the praise of Homer, and his original epistles recur to the beloved theme. Title-page of "Godfrey of Bulloigne," 1600 At the suggestion of Bacon, and supported by the praise of Ben Jonson and Drayton, Chapman turned from Homer to the translation of Hesiod's Book of Days, but here his " Attic elocution " flags and fails him. His whole heart was with Homer, and Homer alone. The publication of the Jerusalem Delivered of Torquato Tasso, and the sensational success which it had enjoyed throughout the Catholic world, had greatly excited interest in England, where Italian books seem to have had numerous readers. The earliest version, that of Richard Carew, was published here before the brief hfe of Tasso closed in darkness at San Onofrio ; 302 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the second, that of Edward Fairfax, appeared only five years after that event,, so that it was really an Italian contemporary to whom these English honours were paid. The version of Carew, of which only five cantos saw the light, was kepi pedantically close to the original. The pubhsher, boasting of " how strict a conrse the translator hath tied himself in," printed the Italian text opposite each page further to emphasise the literalness. This determination to be accurate makes Carew very stiff, and sometimes almost unintelligible ; his translation is, at its worst, hardly more than a " crib " to Tasso. This is an ex- ample of it at its best : Within few days this Dame lier journey ends. There where the Franks their large pavihons spread. Whose beaut}' rare at his appearance lends Babbling to tongues, and eyes a-gazing led : As when some star or comet strange ascends, And in clear da}' through sky his beams doth shed ; They flock in plumps this pil- grim fair to view, And to be wised what cause her thither drew. Not Argos, Cyprus, Delos e'er present Patterns of shape or beauty could so dear ; Gold are her locks, which, in white shadow pent. Eft do but glimpse, eft all disclos'd appear, As when new cleans'd we see the element, — Sometimes the sun shines throughwhite cloudunclear. Sometimes from cloud out-gone, his rays more bright He sheds abroad, doubling of day the light. To turn from Carew to Fairfax is to pass from a crabbed experiment to one of the most admirable transfusions of poetry from one language to another which has ever been achieved. Tasso's rich epic, with its embroidered episodes and its pictures of radiant chi\-alry, is genuinely transferred by Fairfax to the atmosphere of England. That he was so harmonious and " prevailing " a poet in translation is the more remarkable in that such specimens of fas original Title-page of "Orlando Furioso," with portrait of Haryngton, by W. Rogers FAIRFAX'S " TASSO " 303 verse as have been preserved are without value. Fairfax existed only when he was guided by the magical genius of Tasso. A fragment of his description of Rinaldo at the Mount of Olives may here be given : Thus praved he. With purple wings up-flew, In golden weed, the morning's lusty Queen, Begilding with the radiant beams she threw His helm, his harness, and the mountain green ; y^^y*^- (J^ " /1-t«»»~A£!>/><^rv- ^jP « J-^-,-.^ C/ h^y>^hr^ ytnj>n Jion^r- '"■^/Sf ^ / Facsimile Letter from Haryngton to Lady Russell British Mti ewni, Lansdoume MS. 82 Upon his breast and forehead gently blew The air, that balm and nardus breath'd unseen And o'er his head, let down from clearest skies, A cloud of pure and precious dew there flies. The heavenly dew was on his garments spread. To which compared, his clothes pale ashes seem. And sprinkled so that all that paleness fled. And thence of purest white bright rays outstream So cheered are the flowers, late withered. With the sweet comfort of the morning beam, And so, returned to youth, a serpent old Adorns herself in new and native gold. 304 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE The lovely whiteness of his changed weed The pi-mce perceived well and long admired ; Toward the forest march'd he on with speed, Resolv'd, as such adventures great required ; Thither he came, whence, shrinking back for dread Of that strange desert's sight, he first retn-ed ; But not to him fearful or loathsome made That forest was, but sweet with pleasant shade. QVno/e l,irrcii—',nie.l 'I' I'jrow,: inl-i • ' /i ■■ I'l'n- ,/3.,V ,., ■.,,,•.■,? T,,,/ ,1 6,IW/ Cxi, From the engraved portrait in the 1633 edition of Du Bartas Richard Carew (1555- 1620) was born at East An- thony, in Cornwall, and was educated as a gentleman- commoner of Christ Church, Oxford. He disputed in pub- lic with Philip Sidney when they both were children ; a little later Carew is associated as an antiquary with the his- torians Camden, Spelman. and Raleigh. He represented various Cornish boroughs in parliament, and in 1602 he published a valuable Survey of Cornwall. His first instal- ment of Tasso, called Godfrey of Bulloigiie, was published at Exeter in 1504. Of the career of Edward Fairfax very little is known. He was probably the natural son of Sir Thomas Eairfax of Denton. Almost all his life was spent in delightful retire- ment in the forest of Knares- borough. His Godfrey of Bid- loignc was printed first in 1600. It is believed that Edward Eairfax died in 1635. Sir John Harington (or Haryngton) 'i56i-i'.)i2; was a godson of Queen Elizabeth, and he translated the Orlando in obedience to her command. A very odd publica- , the Metiimor pilosis of Ajax, 1596, which is partly a i\, ./, Furioso of Ariosto in I5qi, tion of Harington's in pro; useful hygienic treatise and partly a savage Rabelaisian satire, deeply offended the Queen, and Harington was driven from Court, He cast in his lot with Essex, and shared his adventures and his chsgrace. Tde Efnu^rcims of Haringion were much admired, and were rollected, in i'>J3, after his death. He was no SYLVESTER 305 ^uAr oyimtTna Polk liaSu^t^TTL myjtLh;^ u{nt^Jri. Tn. t^Couniriy ) JiM^airtUt try Jrrt^^A- syvtr ?rfi lS ^ialCj^ac^rtl. J^Lvktm. _ pLti34^S>^J^bT^kin^, Tn. HAi l^ -M J//vrxL^ 2ro au^i an.- ff^ hv tfvU laLTn.i.rLirJ>ty.Jij^Uc3:t^m^ ^ TV*^ ^fTrr k^ 2tt r SormS --' ^osr JiunbU SuLtOr C/ )e.vJirtJ Sfrx/an h uakJ^fvfsnr Letter from Sylvester to James I. VOL. II U 3o6 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE poet, hut a man of great shrewdness of ohservation, prompt and cool in action, and of a ready wit. An immense popularity attended the versions of Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618), who attached ■fm 1 Title-page of Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas' " Divine Weekes and Workes," 1605 himself to the French poet Du Bartas, as Chapman did to Homer. Sylvester was the son of a Kentish clothier, and he was educated under Hadrianus Saravia at Southampton, and then at Leyden. He became a merchant- adventurer, and spent much time in the Low Countries. As early as 1501 he began to publish instalments of his immense version of The Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, on which he was engaged all the rest o his life. In 1613 Sylvester became secretary to the great Merchants' Company at Middel- burg, in Zealand, and there he died on September 28, 1618. His version of the French poet's Puritan epic long retained its popularity, and it is well known that Milton was intimately acquainted with it. The Divine Weeks and Works, whether in Du Bartas' French or in Sylvester's English, has now become intolerably tedious and unattractive ; but the translator, had he concentrated his powers on a happier object, might have enriched the language. This is an example of his work at its best : Sweet >v ight, without thee, without thee alas 1 Our life were loathsome, even a hell to pass ; For outward pains and inward passion still, With thousand deaths, would soul and body thrik. O Night, thou puUest the proud mask away \Mierewith vain actors in this world's great play Bv day disguise them. For, no difference Night makes between the peasant and the prince. The poor and rich, the prisoner and the judge. The foul and fair, the master and the drudge. The fool and wise, Barbarian and the Greek, For Night's black mantle covers all alike. CHAPTER VIII JACOBEAN DRAMA There can be no question that in the first quarter of the seventeenth century the imaginative force of the EngHsh people ran so vehemently in a single channel, that all other manifestations of it are in danger of being regarded as side-streams or backwaters. As the man of fancy in the reign of Elizabeth had naturally turned to an amorous or pastoral lyric as the medium in which to express the passion which worked in him, so his successor in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. naturally produced a tragedy or a farcical tragi-comedy. The drama was the characteristic art of the age in England, and even if we omit Shakespeare from our consideration, as a figure too disturbing and over- shadowing, the fact remains true that it was in the drama that Jacobean England displayed its main current of imagination. By the end of the sixteenth century the question of the direction which English drama was to take was absolutely settled. The classical play, which had enjoyed so overwhelming a success in Italy and France, had been glanced at by our poets, gingerly touched and rejected as inappropriate and vmsym- pathetic. Just as in France the inspiration of the dramatists had been from the first directly academic, so with us it was directly popular. The earliest modern plays in France, such as those of Jodelle and La Peruse, had been class- room entertainments, given in French in place of Latin, by actors who imitated the verses of Seneca in the vernacular instead of repeating them in the original. This was how French tragedy was formed, and on these lines it rose, smoothly and steadily, to Corneille and Racine. But we have seen that English tragedy was, from the first, a wild and popular entertainment, allied to the mediaeval morality and to the medieval farce rather than to anything that Aristotle could have legislated for or Scaliger have approved. The experiments of ' Fulke Greville, and still more of Samuel Daniel (who, like Jodelle, but half a century later than he, wrote a Senecan Cleopatra in choruses) may give us an idea of what our drama might have become if we had taken the same turn as the French. i By 1600, however, the question was finally settled. The taste for decla- mation, for long moral disquisitions in rhymed soliloquy, had been faintly started by a few University pedants and had been rejected by the public in favour of a loud, loose tragedy and a violently contrasted and farcical comedy. In England something of the same national disposition to adopt for the stage extravagant and complicated plots, which had been met with a few years 3o8 HISTORY OF, ENGLISH LITERATURE before in Spain, liad determined the action of our tlieatrical poets. The tragedies of Argensola. the predecessor of Lope de Vega, are described by Mr. FitzniauriceTvehv as " a tissue of butcheries," and tliis poet was an exact contemporary of our carnage-loving Cliapmans and Tourneurs. We see in Spain, although the Spanish drama has little positive resemblance to the Elizabethan, parallel lines of character which are not like anything which we meet with in the dramatic Renaissance of Italy or France. But whatever adaptations of the style of stage-plays might have seemed imminent about 1595, they were all swept away at the approach of the genius of Shal^espeare. When a writer of superlati\'e force takes the development of a branch of national literature under his sway, he bends it, in its superficial forms, to his will. Jacobean drama cannot be judged apart from the fact that the most illustrious poet of the world chose to make it his instrument. But if Shakespeare determined, beyond any power of Latinising con- temporaries to divert it, the line which the vast mass of Jacobean drama should take, his own relation to his fellow playwrights is confused by the fact that he towers immeasurably above them. He would illustrate his age much better, and form a much more useful guide to its intricacies, if he were not raised o\'er it by such a moimtainous ele\'ation. One of the penalties of altitude is isolation, and in reviewing the state of literary feeling in England in the Jacobean times, we gain the impression that a child nowadays may be more familiar with the proportion between Shakespeare and his fellows than the brightest of these latter could be ; since those highest qualities of his, which we now take for granted, remained invisible to his contemporaries. Lo them, unquestionably, he was a stepping-stone to the superior art of Jonson, to the more fluid and ob\'ious graces of Beaumont and Fletcher. Of those whose inestimable privilege it was to meet Shakespeare day by day, we have no evidence that even Ben J onson perceived the absolute supremacy of his genius. The case is rather curious, for it was not that anything austere or arrogant in him- self or his v/ork repelled recognition, or that those who gazed were blinded by excess of light. On the contrary, it seemed to his own friends that they appreciated his amiable, easy talent at its proper value ; he was " gentle " Shakespeare to them ; and thej^ loved the man and they were ready to borrow freely from his poetry. But that he excelled them all in every poetical artifice, soarmg abo\-e them all like an elm in a coppice of hazels, this, had it been whispered at the iMermaid, would have aroused smiles of derision. The elements of Shakespeare's perfection were too completely fused to attract vulgar wonder at any one point, and those intricate refinements of style and of character which now excite in us an almost superstitious amazement did not appeal to the rough and hasty Jacobean hearer. In considering Shakespeare's position during his lifetime, moreo\-er, it must not be forgotten that his works made no definite appeal to the reading class until after his death. The study of " Shakespeare " as a book cannot date farther back than 1623. To us, however, our closer acquaintance with Shakespeare must prove a disastrous preparation for appreciating his contemporaries. He rises out of all JACOBEAN DRAMA 309 measurement with them by comparison, and we are tempted to repeat that unjust trope of Landor's in which he calls the other Jacobean dramatists mushrooms growing round the foot of the Oak of Arden. They had, indeed, noble flashes of the creative light, but Shakespeare walks in the soft and steady glow of it. As he proceeds, without an effort, life results ; his central qualities are cease- less growth. In him, too, characteristics are found fully formed which the rest of the world had at that time barely conceived. His liberalit^^ his tender respect for women, his absence from prejudice, his sympathy for every pecu- liarity of human emotion — these are miraculous, but the vigour of his imagin- ation explains the marvel. He sympathised because he comprehended, and he comprehended because of the boundless range of his capacity. The quality in which Shakespeare is unique among the poets of the world, and that which alone explains the breadth, the unparalleled \'ivacity and coherency of the vast world of his imagination, is what Coleridge calls his " omnipresent creative- ness," his power of observing everything, of forgetting nothing, and of combin- ing and reissuing impressions in complex and infinite variety. In this godlike gift not the most brilliant of his great contemporaries approached him. The misfortune of the Jacobean dramatists who were not Shakespeare la}' in their contentedness with the results of their very remarkable personal energy. Their love of extravagance betrayed them into shapelessness, their rebellious scorn of discipline into anarchy. But perhaps their most serious fault was one inherent in the system of dramatic composition which they had adopted. They fell away from the examination of sane and normal types of humanity, in which they suspected the presence of the hated academic spirit, and they devoted all their attention to the " humours " of violent exceptions and odd varieties of humanity. As the fire of passion sank, they endeavoured to stir its embers by a more and more bombastic and grotesque insistence on these " humours," losing at last, in their preposterous pursuit of farce, all touch with the delicate spirit of truth. In their confusion of plot, in their far-fetched imagery, in their jumble of circumstance and event, in their far- tastic and unearthly caprices, in their violently contrasted outbreaks cf vituperance and amorousness, we feel the minor Jacobean dramatists to present to us, with all the air of those who offer di\ane gifts, a medley of what is good and bad, of what is wholesome and stimulating, with what is decaying and distasteful. The general criticism of the nineteenth century was indulgent to the faults and enthusiastic about the merits of the Jacobean dramatists. It was observed by Charles Lamb, Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt that for a hundred and fifty years the beauties of the contemporaries of Shakespeare had been unduly slighted ; these critics set themselves to show in what manner those great men felt, " what sort of loves and enmities theirs were, how their griefs were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated." No form of literature is more effectively presented by quotation than the drama of these Jacobean poets, and Charles Lamb, in 1808, dazzled all sensitive readers by the richness of the anthology he gathered from the English dramatists who lived about the 3IO HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE time of Shakespeare. Since the age of Lamb, the tone of critidsm has been increasingly eulogistic, until in the lips of Mr. Swinburne it reached, in prose and verse, the proportions of a pa;an. It can hardly be questioned that the critics of whom ^Ir. Swinburne is at once the most learned and the most in- spired, who approach the minor writers of the age of James I. with such epi- thets as "unflawed " (Marston), "sweetest of all thy time save one" (Dekker), " a full-blown flower in heaven " (John Day), and who occupy themselves exclusively with the fugitive beauties and fehcitous occasional audacities of their favourites, are unsafe guides for those who, in humdrum fashion, read the works of the authors so lauded, not in picturesque quotation, but steadily through as dramas representative of human life on a possible public stage. From Charles Lamb downwards, our fanatics of the Jacobean drama have brought with them half the qualities they have attributed ; they have seen too much on the one hand, and too little on the other. These powerful and romantic poets are no longer in need of being urged upon ignorant or unwilling admirers. Lhey are rather in danger of suffering from excess of praise and from a neglect of those errors of proportion and discretion which prevent them from claiming a place in the very highest rank of literary accomplishment. In a brief survey of non-Shakespearean drama from 1600 onwards, we ought not to blind ourselves to the fact that the highest point had already been reached, and that a decline was imminent. Ben Jonson With the turii of the century a reaction against pure imagination began to make itself felt in England, and this movement found a perfect expositor in Ben Jonson. Born seven years later than Shakespeare, he worked, like his fellows, in Henslowe's manufactory of romantic drama, until, in consequence of running a rapier through a man, the fierce poetic bricklaj'er was forced to take up for a while the position of an Ishmael. Lhe immediate result was the production of a comedy. Every Man in his Humour, in which a new thing was started in drama, the study of what Jonson called " recent humours or manners of men that went along with the times." In other words, in the midst of that luxurious romanticism which had culminated in Shakespeare, Ben Jonson set out to be what we now call a " realist " or a " naturalist." In doing this, he went back as rigidly as he could to the methods of Plautus, and fixed his " grave and consecrated eyes " on an academic scheme by which poetry was no longer to be a mere entertainment but a form of lofty mental gymnastic. Jonson called his solid and truculent pictures of the age " comic satires," and his intellectual arrogance combining with his contempt for those who differed from liim, soon called down upon his proud and rugged head all the hostility of Parnassus. About the year 1600 Jonson's pugnaciousness had roused against him an opposition in which, perhaps, Shakespeare alone forbore to take a part. But Jonson was a formidable antagonist, and when he fought with a brother poet, he had a trick, in a double sense, of taking his pistol from him and beating him too. A persistent rumour, constantly refutea, will have it that Shakespeare was one ot those whom Jonson hated. Lhe most outspoken of misanthropes did BEN JONSON 311 EI7"! — '•" Title-page of the Collected Works of Ben Jonson, 1616 not, we may be sure, call another man " star of poets " and " soul of the age " without meaning what he said ; but there may have been a sense in whicli, 312 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE while lo\ing Shakespeare and admiring his work, Jonson disapproved of its ten- dency. It conld hardlv be otherwise. He dehghted in an iron style, ham- mered and twisted ; he must have thought that Shakespeare's " excellent phantasy, bra\-e notions, and gentle expressions" had a flow too liquid and facile. Jonson, with his Latin paraphrases, his stiff academic procession of ideas, could but dislike the flights and frenzies of his far less learned but brisker and airier companion. And Jonson, be it remembered, Irad the age on his side. To see Julius CcEsar on the boards might be more amusing, but surely no seriously minded Jacobean could admit that it was so instructive as a per- formance of Scjanits or of Catiline, which gave a chapter of good sound Roman history, without lyric flowers or ornaments of style, in hard blank verse. Even the ponderous comedies of Ben Jonson were put forth by him, and were accepted by his contemporaries, as very serious contributions to the highest culture. \Mrat other men called " plays " were " works " to Jonson, as the old joke had it. Solid and of lasting value as are the productions of Jonson, the decline begins to be observed in them. Even if we confine our attention to his tv/o noblest plays — the Fox and the Alchemist — we cannot but admit that here, in the very heyday and glory of the English Renaissance, a fatal element is introduced. Charm, ecstasy, the free play of the emotions, the development of individual character — these are no longer the sole solicitude of the poet, who begins to dogmatise and educate, to prefer types to persons and logic to passion. It is no wonder that Ben Jonson was so great a favourite with the writers of the Restoration, for he was their natural parent. With all their rules and unities, with all their stickling for pseud-Aristotelian correctness, they were the intellectual descendants of that poet who, as Dryden said, " was willing to give place to the classics in all things." For the next fifty years English poetry was divided between loyalty to Spenser and attraction to Ben Jonson, and every year the influence of the former dwindled while that of the latter increased. In temperament Jonson differed wholly from the other leaders of Jacobean drama. They, without exception, were romantic ; he by native bias, purely classical. It is not difficult to perceive that the essential quality of his mind had far more in common with Corneille and with Dryden than with Shake- speare. He was so full of intelligence that he was able to adopt, and to culti- \'ate with some degree of zest, the outward forms of romanticism, but his heart was always with the Latins, and his favourite works, though not indeed his best, were his stiff and solid Roman tragedies. He brought labour to the construction of his poetry, and he found himself surrounded by facile pens, to whom he seemed, or fancied that he seemed, " barren, dull, lean, a poor writer." He did not admire much of the florid ornament in which they delighted, and which we also have been taught to admire. He grew to hate the kind of drama which Marlowe had inaugurated. No doubt, sitting in the Apollo room of the Old Devil Tavern, with his faithful Cartwright, Brome and Randolph round him, he would truculently point to the inscription above the chimney, BEN JONSON 313 EVERY MAN IN his Humor. As it hathbecne fundry times pttblickly aBed by the right Honorable the Lord Ghani- herUitit hiiftnunts. Written by Bin- Iouhioh. Insipida pceiiiata mdla recitantor, and not spare the masters of the lovely age which he had outlived. He would speak " to the capacity of his hearers," as he tells us that the true artificer should do, and they would encourage him, doubtless, to tell of doctrines and precepts, of the dignity of the ancients, of Aristotle, " first accurate critic and truest judge " of poetry. They would listen, nor be aware that, for all his wisdom, and all the lofty distinction of his intellect, the palmy hour of English drama — that hour in which it had sung out like a child, ignorant of rules and precepts — had passed for ever. Not the less does Ben Jonson hold a splendid and durable place in our annals. His is the most vivid and picturesque per- sonal figure of the times ; he is the most learned scholar, the most rigorous upholder of the dignity of letters, the most blustering soldier and insulting dueller in the literary arena ; while his personal characteristics, " the mountain belly and the rocky face," the capacity for drawing young persons of talent around him and captivating them there, the volcanic alternations of fiery wit and smouldering, sullen arrogance, appeal irre- sistibly to the imagination, and make the " arch-poet " live in history. But his works, greatly admired, are little read. They fail to hold any but a trained attention ; their sober majesty and massive concentration are highly praiseworthy, but not in a charming direction. His in- difference to beauty tells against him. Jonson, even in his farces, is pon- derous, and if we acknowledge " the flat sanity and smoke-dried sobriety " of his best passages, what words can we find for the tedium of his worst ? He was an intellectual athlete of almost unequalled vigour, who chose to dedicate the essentially prosaic forces of his mind to the art of poetry, because the age he lived in was pre-eminently a poetic one. With such a brain and such a will as his he could not but succeed. If he had stuck to bricklaying, he must have rivalled Inigo Jones. But the most skilful and headstrong master- builder cannot quite become an architect of genius. Of the parentage of Benjamin Jonson (1573-1637) nothing is known but what J2»tidtmi iUntfrtc(r(!,tlJ>it HiJIrit. Hiudt4men iitmJids vati^uem f»lfiuj>afcimt. Imprinted at London for Walstr Burri.vndtK to befouldat hhjlitffe in PmUi Church-Jtrdt. Title-page of Ben Jonson's " Every Man in his Humour," 1601 3H HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE he told Drummond, of Hawthornden. " His grandfather came from Carhsle, and, he thought, from Annandale to it ; he served King Henry VHI., and was a gentleman. His father lost all his estates under Queen Mary, having been cast in prison and forfeited ; at last turned minister : so he was a minister's son. He himself was posthumous born, a month after his fatlier's decease," in 1573. Two years later his mother, who lived in London, married a master-bricklayer, who sent the child to a private school at St. Martm-in-the-Fields, and then to West- minster. Here the great William Camden " learned him " not only to read Latin and Greek but to write with freedom in prose and verse. Ben Jonson spe.aks of no one with greater respect tlian of Camden ! most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in arts, all that I know. If Fuller is correct, Jonson went for a short time to St John's College, Cambridge, but he was certainly soon appren- ticed to the bricklayer's trade. From this he escaj^ed to enlist as a soldier in the Low Coun- ries, where he had a duel with an enemy " in the face of both the camps," killing him, and "taking spolia opiniahom him." He returned to England about 1592, and married ; he was not very happy in his wife, whom he described as " a shrew, but honest," nor in his children. We do not know how he was occupied until about 1597, when he is found writing for the stage, and producing the earliest of his surviving works, the comedy of Every Man in His Humour (printed in 1601), unless, indeed, what is now called The Case is Altered be earlier still. In the autumn of I5(j8, one of the actors with whom Jonson was working in Henslowe's company was killed by him in a duel in the Fields at Shoreditch, and the poet was tried at the Old Bailey for murder. He confessed and was convicted, and came " almost to the gallows," but was released with the forfeit of all his goods and a felon's brand upon his thumb. While he was in prison for this affair, Jonson was converted to the Roman faith, in which he continued until 1610. According to an early legend, it was on his release that Shakespeare induced the Lord Chamberlain's men to buy Every Man in His Humour, which was certainly performed before the close of 1598 ; Shakespeare acted in it at the Globe. This was followed by what Ben Jonson called those " comical satires " — Every Man out of His Humour (1599), Cynthia's Revels (1600), and The Poetaster (1601), in which he justifies that reputation for " self-love, arrogancy, impudence, Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford After the portrait by Honthorst BEN JONSON 317 Laden with belly, who doth hardly approach His friends but to break chairs or crack a couch, Whose weight is twenty stone within two pound. In 1628 he accepted the sinecure of chronologer to the City of London, but he produced nothing, and in 1631 " the barbarous court of aldermen withdrew their chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard." He quarrelled ■ with Inigo Jones, and lost his place at Court as masque- maker. He sank into great poverty, but the kindness of the King gave some comfort to his latest years. Ben Jon- son died on August 6, 1637, and [was buried in Westminster Abbey, under a plain slab, on which the words, "O rare Ben JonsonI" were afterwards carved. His charming frag- ment of a pastoral. The Sad Shepherd, was posthumously published in 1641. The de- cease of Jonson was treated almost as a national event, and he was mourned by all the poets of the age. From " The Alchemist." Mam. We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the medicine My meat shall all come in in Indian shells, Dishes of agate set in gold, anr studded With emeralds, sapphires, hv^ cinths, and rubies ; The tongues of carps, dormici and camels' heels, Boil'd in the spirit of Sol, ai dissolved pearl, (Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsv And I will eat these broths witn spoons of amber, Headed with diamant and car- buncle. My footboy shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons. Knots, godwits, lampreys : I myself will have The beards of barbels served, instead of salads ; Oil'd mushrooms ; and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Dress'd with an exquisite and poignant sauce ; For which, I '11 say unto my cook, " There 's gold Go forth, and be a knight." Ben Jonson's Tomb in Westminster Abbey 3i8 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Face. Sir, I '11 go look A little, how it heightens. J\Iain. Do. — My shirts I '11 have of tallata-sarsnet, soft and light As eobwebs ; and, for all my other raiment, It shall be snch as might provoke the Persian, Were he to teach the world riot anew. My gloves of fishes' and birds' skins, perfumed With gums of paradise, and eastern air. Sur. And do you think to have the stone with this ? Mam. No, I do think to have all this with tlie stone. (iiros Figures desig'ned by Inigo Jones for a I.Iasqus Sur. Why, I have heard, he must be homo fntgi, A pious, hoh-, and religious man, One free from mortal sm, a very virgin Mam. That makes it Sir, he is so. But I bu>' it, My venture brin.^'s it me. He, honest wretch, A notable, superstitious, good soul. Has worn his knees baic, and liis slippers bakl, With pra\er and fasting for it ; and, sir, le' him Do it alone, for me, still. Here he comes. Xot a profane vord, aiore him : 'tis poison BEN JONSON 319 From " The Sad Shepherd." Aiken. Know ye the witch's dell ? Scarlet. No more than I do know the walks of hell. Alk. Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell Down in a pit o'ergrown with brakes and briars. Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey, Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground, 'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house, Where you shall find her sitting in her form, As fearful, and melancholic, as that She is about ; with caterpillars' kells, And knotty cobwebs, rounded in with spells. Then she steals forth to relief, in the fogs, And rotten mists, upon the fens and bogs, Down to the drowned lands of Lincolnshire ; To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow ; The housewife's tun not work, nor the milk churn ; Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in sleep ; Get vials of their blood ; and where the sea Casts up his slimjr ooze, search for a weed To open locks with, and to rivet charms. Planted about her, in the wicked seat Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold. John. I wonder such a story could be told Of her dire deeds. Geo. I thought, a witch's banks Had enclosed nothing but the merry pranks Of some old woman. Scar. Yes, her malice more. Scath. As it would quicklv appear, had we the store Of his collects. Geo. Ay, this good learned man Can speak her right. Scar. He knows her shifts and haunts. Alk. And all her wiles and turns. The venom'd plants Wherewith she kills ; where the sad mandrake grows, Whose groans are deathful ; the dead numbing nightshade ; The stupefying hemlock ; adder's tongue, And martagan ; the shrieks of luckless owls. We hear, and croaking night-crows in the air ; Green-bellied snakes ; blue fire-drakes in the sky ; And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings ; The scaly beetles, with their habergeons That make a humming murmur as they fly ; There, in the stocks of trees, white fays do dwell, And span-long elves that dance about a pool, With each a little changeling in their arms : The airy spirits play with falling stars. And mount the sphere of fire, to kiss the moon ; While she sits reading by the glow-worm's light. Or rotten wood, o'er which the worm hath crept, The baneful schedule of her nocent charms, And binding characters, through which she wounds Her puppets, the si^illa of her witchcraft. All this I know, and I will find her for you ; And show you her sitting in her form ; I '11 lay My hand upon her ; make her throw her scut 320 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE »v^ •»H.C«.(-l r-» \'fii>.iuit- yS J^iaAfp*^ , »>*- Ou««-c.>-