A History of Elizabethan Literature

"I, with whose colours Myra dressed her head,I, that ware posies of her own hand making,I, that mine own name in the chimnies readBy Myra finely wrought ere I was waking:Must I look on, in hope time coming mayWith change bring back my turn again to play?"I, that on Sunday at the church-stile foundA garland sweet with true love knots in flowers,Which I to wear about mine arms, was boundThat each of us might know that all was ours:Must I lead now an idle life in wishes,And follow Cupid for his loaves and fishes?"I, that did wear the ring her mother left,I, for whose love she gloried to be blamed,I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft,I, who did make her blush when I was named:Must I lose ring, flowers, blush, theft, and go naked,Watching with sighs till dead love be awaked?"I, that when drowsy Argus fell asleep,Like jealousy o'erwatchèd with desire,Was ever warnéd modesty to keepWhile her breath, speaking, kindled Nature's fire:Must I look on a-cold while others warm them?Do Vulcan's brothers in such fine nets arm them?"Was it for this that I might Myra seeWashing the water with her beauties white?Yet would she never write her love to me:Thinks wit of change when thoughts are in delight?Mad girls may safely love as they may leave;No man can print a kiss: lines may deceive."

Had Brooke always written with this force and directness he would have been a great poet. As it is, he has but the ore of poetry, not the smelted metal.

For there is no doubt that Sidney here holds the primacy, not merely in time but in value, of the whole school, putting Spenser and Shakespere aside. That thirty or forty years' diligent study of Italian models had much to do with the extraordinary advance visible in his sonnets over those of Tottel's Miscellany is, no doubt, undeniable. But many causes besides the inexplicable residuum of fortunate inspiration, which eludes the most careful search into literary cause and effect, had to do with the production of the "lofty, insolent, and passionate vein," which becomes noticeable in English poetry for the first time about 1580, and which dominates it, if we include the late autumn-summer of Milton's last productions, for a hundred years. Perhaps it is not too much to say that this makes its very first appearance in Sidney's verse, for The Shepherd's Calendar, though of an even more perfect, is of a milder strain. The inevitable tendency of criticism to gossip about poets instead of criticising poetry has usually mixed a great deal of personal matter with the accounts of Astrophel and Stella, the series of sonnets which is Sidney's greatest literary work, and which was first published some years after his death in an incorrect and probably pirated edition by Thomas Nash. There is no doubt that there was a real affection between Sidney (Astrophel) and Penelope Devereux (Stella), daughter of the Earl of Essex, afterwards Lady Rich, and that marriage proving unhappy, Lady Mountjoy. But the attempts which have been made to identify every hint and allusion in the series with some fact or date, though falling short of the unimaginable folly of scholastic labour-lost which has been expended on the sonnets of Shakespere, still must appear somewhat idle to those who know the usual genesis of love-poetry – how that it is of imagination all compact, and that actual occurrences are much oftener occasions and bases than causes and material of it. It is of the smallest possible importance or interest to a rational man to discover what was the occasion of Sidney's writing these charming poems – the important point is their charm. And in this respect (giving heed to his date and his opportunities of imitation) I should put Sidney third to Shakespere and Spenser. The very first piece of the series, an oddly compounded sonnet of thirteen Alexandrines and a final heroic, strikes the note of intense and fresh poetry which is only heard afar off in Surrey and Wyatt, which is hopelessly to seek in the tentatives of Turberville and Googe, and which is smothered with jejune and merely literary ornament in the less formless work of Sidney's contemporary, Thomas Watson. The second line —

"That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,"

the couplet —

"Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flowSome fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain,"

and the sudden and splendid finale —

"'Fool!' said my muse, 'look in thy heart and write!'"

are things that may be looked for in vain earlier.

A little later we meet with that towering soar of verse which is also peculiar to the period:

"When Nature made her chief work – Stella's eyes,In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright?" —

lines which those who deprecate insistence on the importance of form in poetry might study with advantage, for the thought is a mere commonplace conceit, and the beauty of the phrase is purely derived from the cunning arrangement and cadence of the verse. The first perfectly charming sonnet in the English language – a sonnet which holds its own after three centuries of competition – is the famous "With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbst the skies," where Lamb's stricture on the last line as obscure seems to me unreasonable. The equally famous phrase, "That sweet enemy France," which occurs a little further on is another, and whether borrowed from Giordano Bruno or not is perhaps the best example of the felicity of expression in which Sidney is surpassed by few Englishmen. Nor ought the extraordinary variety of the treatment to be missed. Often as Sidney girds at those who, like Watson, "dug their sonnets out of books," he can write in the learned literary manner with the best. The pleasant ease of his sonnet to the sparrow, "Good brother Philip," contrasts in the oddest way with his allegorical and mythological sonnets, in each of which veins he indulges hardly less often, though very much more wisely than any of his contemporaries. Nor do the other "Songs of variable verse," which follow, and in some editions are mixed up with the sonnets, display less extraordinary power. The first song, with its refrain in the penultimate line of each stanza,

"To you, to you, all song of praise is due,"

contrasts in its throbbing and burning life with the faint and misty imagery, the stiff and wooden structure, of most of the verse of Sidney's predecessors, and deserves to be given in full: —

"Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes intendeth;Which now my breast o'ercharged to music lendeth?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only in you my song begins and endeth."Who hath the eyes which marry state with pleasure,Who keeps the keys of Nature's chiefest treasure?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only for you the heaven forgat all measure."Who hath the lips, where wit in fairness reigneth?Who womankind at once both decks and staineth?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only by you Cupid his crown maintaineth."Who hath the feet, whose steps all sweetness planteth?Who else; for whom Fame worthy trumpets wanteth?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only to you her sceptre Venus granteth."Who hath the breast, whose milk doth passions nourish?Whose grace is such, that when it chides doth cherish?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only through you the tree of life doth flourish."Who hath the hand, which without stroke subdueth?Who long dead beauty with increase reneweth?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only at you all envy hopeless rueth."Who hath the hair, which loosest fastest tieth?Who makes a man live then glad when he dieth?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only of you the flatterer never lieth."Who hath the voice, which soul from senses sunders?Whose force but yours the bolts of beauty thunders?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only with you not miracles are wonders."Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes intendeth?Which now my breast o'ercharged to music lendeth?To you! to you! all song of praise is due:Only in you my song begins and endeth."

Nor is its promise belied by those which follow, and which are among the earliest and the most charming of the rich literature of songs that really are songs – songs to music – which the age was to produce. All the scanty remnants of his other verse are instinct with the same qualities, especially the splendid dirge, "Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread," and the pretty lines "to the tune of Wilhelmus van Nassau." I must quote the first: —

"Ring out your bells! let mourning shows be spread,For Love is dead.All love is dead, infectedWith the plague of deep disdain;Worth as nought worth rejected.And faith, fair scorn doth gain.From so ungrateful fancy,From such a female frenzy,From them that use men thus,Good Lord, deliver us!"Weep, neighbours, weep! Do you not hear it saidThat Love is dead?His deathbed, peacock's Folly;His winding-sheet is Shame;His will, False Seeming wholly;His sole executor, Blame.From so ungrateful fancy,From such a female frenzy,From them that use men thus,Good Lord, deliver us!"Let dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read,For Love is dead.Sir Wrong his tomb ordainethMy mistress' marble heart;Which epitaph containeth'Her eyes were once his dart.'From so ungrateful fancy,From such a female frenzy,From them that use men thus,Good Lord, deliver us!"Alas, I lie. Rage hath this error bred,Love is not dead.Love is not dead, but sleepethIn her unmatchèd mind:Where she his counsel keepethTill due deserts she find.Therefore from so vile fancyTo call such wit a frenzy,Who love can temper thus,Good Lord, deliver us!"

The verse from the Arcadia (which contains a great deal of verse) has been perhaps injuriously affected in the general judgment by the fact that it includes experiments in the impossible classical metres. But both it and the Translations from the Psalms express the same poetical faculty employed with less directness and force. To sum up, there is no Elizabethan poet, except the two named, who is more unmistakably imbued with poetical quality than Sidney. And Hazlitt's judgment on him, that he is "jejune" and "frigid" will, as Lamb himself hinted, long remain the chiefest and most astonishing example of a great critic's aberrations when his prejudices are concerned.

Had Hazlitt been criticising Thomas Watson, his judgment, though harsh, would have been not wholly easy to quarrel with. It is probably the excusable but serious error of judgment which induced his rediscoverer, Professor Arber, to rank Watson above Sidney in gifts and genius, that has led other critics to put him unduly low. Watson himself, moreover, has invited depreciation by his extreme frankness in confessing that his Passionate Century is not a record of passion at all, but an elaborate literary pastiche after this author and that. I fear it must be admitted that the average critic is not safely to be trusted with such an avowal of what he is too much disposed to advance as a charge without confession. Watson, of whom as usual scarcely anything is known personally, was a Londoner by birth, an Oxford man by education, a friend of most of the earlier literary school of the reign, such as Lyly, Peele, and Spenser, and a tolerably industrious writer both in Latin and English during his short life, which can hardly have begun before 1557, and was certainly closed by 1593. He stands in English poetry as the author of the Hecatompathia or Passionate Century of sonnets (1582), and the Tears of Fancy, consisting of sixty similar poems, printed after his death. The Tears of Fancy are regular quatorzains, the pieces composing the Hecatompathia, though called sonnets, are in a curious form of eighteen lines practically composed of three six-line stanzas rhymed A B, A B, C C, and not connected by any continuance of rhyme from stanza to stanza. The special and peculiar oddity of the book is, that each sonnet has a prose preface as thus: "In this passion the author doth very busily imitate and augment a certain ode of Ronsard, which he writeth unto his mistress. He beginneth as followeth, Plusieurs, etc." Here is a complete example of one of Watson's pages: —

"There needeth no annotation at all before this passion, it is of itself so plain and easily conveyed. Yet the unlearned may have this help given them by the way to know what Galaxia is or Pactolus, which perchance they have not read of often in our vulgar rhymes. Galaxia (to omit both the etymology and what the philosophers do write thereof) is a white way or milky circle in the heavens, which Ovid mentioneth in this manner —

Est via sublimis cœlo manifesta sereno,Lactea nomen habet, candore notabilis ipso.– Metamorph. lib. 1.

And Cicero thus in Somnio Scipionis: Erat autem is splendissimo candore inter flammas circulus elucens, quem vos (ut a Graijs accepistis) orbem lacteum nuncupatis.

Pactolus is a river in Lydia, which hath golden sands under it, as Tibullus witnesseth in this verse: —

Nec me regna juvant, nec Lydius aurifer amnis.— Tibul. lib. 3.Who can recount the virtues of my dear,Or say how far her fame hath taken flight,That cannot tell how many stars appearIn part of heaven, which Galaxia hight,Or number all the moats in Phœbus' rays,Or golden sands whereon Pactolus plays?And yet my hurts enforce me to confess,In crystal breast she shrouds a bloody heart,Which heart in time will make her merits less,Unless betimes she cure my deadly smart:For now my life is double dying still,And she defamed by sufferance of such ill;And till the time she helps me as she may,Let no man undertake to tell my toil,But only such, as can distinctly say,What monsters Nilus breeds, or Afric soil:For if he do, his labour is but lost,Whilst I both fry and freeze 'twixt flame and frost."

Now this is undoubtedly, as Watson's contemporaries would have said, "a cooling card" to the reader, who is thus presented with a series of elaborate poetical exercises affecting the acutest personal feeling, and yet confessedly representing no feeling at all. Yet the Hecatompathia is remarkable, both historically and intrinsically. It does not seem likely that at its publication the author can have had anything of Sidney's or much of Spenser's before him; yet his work is only less superior to the work of their common predecessors than the work of these two. By far the finest of his Century is the imitation of Ferrabosco —

"Resolved to dust intombed here lieth love."

The quatorzains of the Tears of Fancy are more attractive in form and less artificial in structure and phraseology, but it must be remembered that by their time Sidney's sonnets were known and Spenser had written much. The seed was scattered abroad, and it fell in congenial soil in falling on Watson, but the Hecatompathia was self-sown.

This difference shows itself very remarkably in the vast outburst of sonneteering which, as has been remarked, distinguished the middle of the last decade of the sixteenth century. All these writers had Sidney and Spenser before them, and they assume so much of the character of a school that there are certain subjects, for instance, "Care-charming sleep," on which many of them (after Sidney) composed sets of rival poems, almost as definitely competitive as the sonnets of the later "Uranie et Job" and "Belle Matineuse" series in France. Nevertheless, there is in all of them – what as a rule is wanting in this kind of clique verse – the independent spirit, the original force which makes poetry. The Smiths and the Fletchers, the Griffins and the Lynches, are like little geysers round the great ones: the whole soil is instinct with fire and flame. We shall, however, take the production of the four remarkable years 1593-1596 separately, and though in more than one case we shall return upon their writers both in this chapter and in a subsequent one, the unity of the sonnet impulse seems to demand separate mention for them here.

In 1593 the influence of the Sidney poems (published, it must be remembered, in 1591) was new, and the imitators, except Watson (of whom above), display a good deal of the quality of the novice. The chief of them are Barnabe Barnes, with his Parthenophil and Parthenophe, Giles Fletcher (father of the Jacobean poets, Giles and Phineas Fletcher), with his Licia, and Thomas Lodge, with his Phillis. Barnes is a modern discovery, for before Dr. Grosart reprinted him in 1875, from the unique original at Chatsworth, for thirty subscribers only (of whom I had the honour to be one), he was practically unknown. Mr. Arber has since, in his English Garner, opened access to a wider circle, to whom I at least do not grudge their entry. As with most of these minor Elizabethan poets, Barnes is a very obscure person. A little later than Parthenophil he wrote A Divine Centurie of Spiritual Sonnets, having, like many of his contemporaries, an apparent desire poetically to make the best of both worlds. He also wrote a wild play in the most daring Elizabethan style, called The Devil's Charter, and a prose political Treatise of Offices. Barnes was a friend of Gabriel Harvey's, and as such met with some rough usage from Nash, Marston, and others. His poetical worth, though there are fine passages in The Devil's Charter and in the Divine Centurie, must rest on Parthenophil. This collection consists not merely of sonnets but of madrigals, sestines, canzons, and other attempts after Italian masters. The style, both verbal and poetical, needs chastising in places, and Barnes's expression in particular is sometimes obscure. He is sometimes comic when he wishes to be passionate, and frequently verbose when he wishes to be expressive. But the fire, the full-bloodedness, the poetical virility, of the poems is extraordinary. A kind of intoxication of the eternal-feminine seems to have seized the poet to an extent not otherwise to be paralleled in the group, except in Sidney; while Sidney's courtly sense of measure and taste did not permit him Barnes's forcible extravagances. Here is a specimen: —

"Phœbus, rich father of eternal light,And in his hand a wreath of HeliochriseHe brought, to beautify those tresses,Whose train, whose softness, and whose gloss more bright,Apollo's locks did overprize.Thus, with this garland, whiles her brows he blesses,The golden shadow with his tinctureColoured her locks, aye gilded with the cincture."

Giles Fletcher's Licia is a much more pale and colourless performance, though not wanting in merit. The author, who was afterwards a most respectable clergyman, is of the class of amoureux transis, and dies for Licia throughout his poems, without apparently suspecting that it was much better to live for her. His volume contained some miscellaneous poems, with a dullish essay in the historical style (see post), called The Rising of Richard to the Crown. Very far superior is Lodge's Phillis, the chief poetical work of that interesting person, except some of the madrigals and odd pieces of verse scattered about his prose tracts (for which see Chapter VI.) Phillis is especially remarkable for the grace and refinement with which the author elaborates the Sidneian model. Lodge, indeed, as it seems to me, was one of the not uncommon persons who can always do best with a model before them. He euphuised with better taste than Lyly, but in imitation of him; his tales in prose are more graceful than those of Greene, whom he copied; it at least seems likely that he out-Marlowed Marlowe in the rant of the Looking-Glass for London, and the stiffness of the Wounds of Civil War, and he chiefly polished Sidney in his sonnets and madrigals. It is not to be denied, however, that in three out of these four departments he gave us charming work. His mixed allegiance to Marlowe and Sidney gave him command of a splendid form of decasyllable, which appears often in Phillis, as for instance —

"About thy neck do all the graces throngAnd lay such baits as might entangle death,"

where it is worth noting that the whole beauty arises from the dexterous placing of the dissyllable "graces," and the trisyllable "entangle," exactly where they ought to be among the monosyllables of the rest. The madrigals "Love guards the roses of thy lips," "My Phillis hath the morning sun," and "Love in my bosom like a bee" are simply unsurpassed for sugared sweetness in English. Perhaps this is the best of them: —

"Love in my bosom like a bee,Doth suck his sweet;Now with his wings he plays with me,Now with his feet.Within mine eyes he makes his nestHis bed amidst my tender breast,My kisses are his daily feast;And yet he robs me of my rest?'Ah, wanton! will ye?'"And if I sleep, then percheth he,With pretty flight,25And makes his pillow of my kneeThe livelong night.Strike I my lute, he tunes the string.He music plays, if so I sing.He lends me every lovely thingYet cruel! he, my heart doth sting.'Whist, wanton! still ye!'"Else I with roses, every dayWill whip you hence,And bind you, when you want to play,For your offence.I'll shut my eyes to keep you in,I'll make you fast it for your sin,I'll count your power not worth a pin.Alas, what hereby shall I winIf he gainsay me?"What if I beat the wanton boyWith many a rod?He will repay me with annoyBecause a god.Then sit thou safely on my knee,And let thy bower my bosom be.Lurk in mine eyes, I like of thee.O Cupid! so thou pity me,Spare not, but play thee."

1594 was the most important of all the sonnet years, and here we are chiefly bound to mention authors who will come in for fuller notice later. The singular book known as Willoughby's Avisa which, as having a supposed bearing on Shakespere and as containing much of that personal puzzlement which rejoices critics, has had much attention of late years, is not strictly a collection of sonnets; its poems being longer and of differing stanzas. But in general character it falls in with the sonnet-collections addressed or devoted to a real or fanciful personage. It is rather satirical than panegyrical in character, and its poetical worth is very far from high. William Percy, a friend of Barnes (who dedicated the Parthenophil to him), son of the eighth Earl of Northumberland, and a retired person who seems to have passed the greater part of a long life in Oxford "drinking nothing but ale," produced a very short collection entitled Cœlia, not very noteworthy, though it contains (probably in imitation of Barnes) one of the tricky things called echo-sonnets, which, with dialogue-sonnets and the like, have sometimes amused the leisure of poets. Much more remarkable is the singular anonymous collection called Zepheria. Its contents are called not sonnets but canzons, though most of them are orthodox quatorzains somewhat oddly rhymed and rhythmed. It is brief, extending only to forty pieces, and, like much of the poetry of the period, begins and ends with Italian mottoes or dedication-phrases. But what is interesting about it is the evidence it gives of deep familiarity not only with Italian but with French models. This appears both in such words as "jouissance," "thesaurise," "esperance," "souvenance," "vatical" (a thoroughly Ronsardising word), with others too many to mention, and in other characteristics. Mr. Sidney Lee, in his most valuable collection of these sonneteers, endeavours to show that this French influence was less uncommon than has sometimes been thought. Putting this aside, the characteristic of Zepheria is unchastened vigour, full of promise, but decidedly in need of further schooling and discipline, as the following will show: —

"O then Desire, father of Jouissance,The Life of Love, the Death of dastard Fear,The kindest nurse to true persèverance,Mine heart inherited, with thy love's revere. [?]Beauty! peculiar parent of Conceit,Prosperous midwife to a travelling muse,The sweet of life, Nepenthe's eyes receipt,Thee into me distilled, O sweet, infuse!Love then (the spirit of a generous sprite,An infant ever drawing Nature's breast,The Sum of Life, that Chaos did unnight!)Dismissed mine heart from me, with thee to rest.And now incites me cry, 'Double or quit!Give back my heart, or take his body to it!'"

This cannot be said of the three remarkable collections yet to be noticed which appeared in this year, to wit, Constable's Diana, Daniel's Delia, and Drayton's Idea. These three head the group and contain the best work, after Shakespere and Spenser and Sidney, in the English sonnet of the time. Constable's sonnets had appeared partly in 1592, and as they stand in fullest collection were published in or before 1594. Afterwards he wrote, like others, "divine" sonnets (he was a Roman Catholic) and some miscellaneous poems, including a very pretty "Song of Venus and Adonis." He was a close friend of Sidney, many of whose sonnets were published with his, and his work has much of the Sidneian colour, but with fewer flights of happily expressed fancy. The best of it is probably the following sonnet, which is not only full of gracefully expressed images, but keeps up its flight from first to last – a thing not universal in these Elizabethan sonnets: —