Chapter IV: "the Faerie Queene" and Its Group (2)

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:--

"Phoebus, rich father of eternal light,
And in his hand a wreath of Heliochrise
He 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 tincture
Coloured 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 throng
And 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 nest
His 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,[26]
And makes his pillow of my knee
The livelong night.
Strike I my lute, he tunes the string.
He music plays, if so I sing.
He lends me every lovely thing
Yet cruel! he, my heart doth sting.
'Whist, wanton! still ye!'

"Else I with roses, every day
Will 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 win
If he gainsay me?

"What if I beat the wanton boy
With many a rod?
He will repay me with annoy
Because 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."

[26] Printed in _England's Helicon_ "sleight."

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 _Coelia_, 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 perseverance,
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:--

"My Lady's presence makes the Roses red,
Because to see her lips they blush for shame.
The Lily's leaves, for envy, pale became;
And her white hands in them this envy bred.
The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spread;
Because the sun's and her power is the same.
The Violet of purple colour came,
Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed.
In brief all flowers from her their virtue take;
From her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed;
The living heat which her eyebeams doth make
Warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed.
The rain, wherewith she watereth the flowers,
Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers."

Samuel Daniel had an eminently contemplative genius which might have anticipated the sonnet as it is in Wordsworth, but which the fashion of the day confined to the not wholly suitable subject of Love. In the splendid "Care-charmer Sleep," one of the tournament sonnets above noted, he contrived, as will be seen, to put his subject under the influence of his prevailing faculty.

"Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my anguish, and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my cares, return;
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth;
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease, Dreams, th' imag'ry of our day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow,
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain;
And never wake to feel the day's disdain."

But as a rule he is perhaps too much given to musing, and too little to rapture. In form he is important, as he undoubtedly did much to establish the arrangement of three alternate rhymed quatrains and a couplet which, in Shakespere's hands, was to give the noblest poetry of the sonnet and of the world. He has also an abundance of the most exquisite single lines, such as

"O clear-eyed rector of the holy hill,"

and the wonderful opening of Sonnet XXVII., "The star of my mishap imposed this pain."

The sixty-three sonnets, varied in different editions of Drayton's _Idea_, are among the most puzzling of the whole group. Their average value is not of the very highest. Yet there are here and there the strangest suggestions of Drayton's countryman, Shakespere, and there is one sonnet, No. 61, beginning, "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part," which I have found it most difficult to believe to be Drayton's, and which is Shakespere all over. That Drayton was the author of _Idea_ as a whole is certain, not merely from the local allusions, but from the resemblance to the more successful exercises of his clear, masculine, vigorous, fertile, but occasionally rather unpoetical style. The sonnet just referred to is itself one of the very finest existing--perhaps one of the ten or twelve best sonnets in the world, and it may be worth while to give it with another in contrast:--

"Our flood's Queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crowned;
And stately Severn for her shore is praised.
The crystal Trent for fords and fish renowned;
And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised;
Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee;
York many wonders of her Ouse can tell.
The Peak her Dove, whose banks so fertile be;
And Kent will say her Medway doth excel.
Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame;
Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood
Our western parts extol their Wily's fame;
And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.
Arden's sweet Ankor, let thy glory be
That fair Idea only lives by thee!"

* * * * *

"Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part!
Nay, I have done. You get no more of me
And 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 would'st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!"

1595 chiefly contributed the curious production called _Alcilia_, by J. C., who gives the name of sonnets to a series of six-line stanzas, varied occasionally by other forms, such as that of the following pretty verses. It may be noted that the citation of proverbs is very characteristic of _Alcilia_:--

"Love is sorrow mixed with gladness,
Fear with hope, and hope with madness.
Long did I love, but all in vain;
I loving, was not loved again:
For which my heart sustained much woe.
It fits not maids to use men so,
Just deserts are not regarded,
Never love so ill rewarded.
But 'all is lost that is not sought,'
'Oft wit proves best that's dearest bought.'

"Women were made for men's relief;
To comfort, not to cause their grief.
Where most I merit, least I find:
No marvel, since that love is blind.
Had she been kind as she was fair,
My case had been more strange and rare.
But women love not by desert,
Reason in them hath weakest part.
Then henceforth let them love that list,
I will beware of 'had I wist.'"

1596 (putting the _Amoretti_, which is sometimes assigned to this year, aside) was again fruitful with Griffin's _Fidessa_, Lynch's _Diella_, and Smith's _Chloris_. _Fidessa_, though distinctly "young," is one of the most interesting of the clearly imitative class of these sonnets, and contains some very graceful poetry, especially the following, one of the Sleep class, which will serve as a good example of the minor sonneteers:--

"Care-charmer Sleep! sweet ease in restless misery!
The captive's liberty, and his freedom's song!
Balm of the bruised heart! man's chief felicity!
Brother of quiet Death, when Life is too too long!
A Comedy it is, and now an History;
What is not sleep unto the feeble mind?
It easeth him that toils, and him that's sorry;
It makes the deaf to hear; to see, the blind;
Ungentle Sleep! thou helpest all but me,
For when I sleep my soul is vexed most.
It is Fidessa that doth master thee
If she approach; alas! thy power is lost.
But here she is! See, how he runs amain!
I fear, at night, he will not come again."

_Diella_, a set of thirty-eight sonnets prefixed to the "Amorous poem of Diego and Genevra," is more elaborate in colouring but somewhat less fresh and genuine; while _Chloris_, whose author was a friend of Spenser's, approaches to the pastoral in the plan and phrasing of its fifty sonnets.

Such are the most remarkable members of a group of English poetry, which yields to few such groups in interest. It is connected by a strong similarity of feeling--if any one likes, even by a strong imitation of the same models. But in following those models and expressing those feelings, its members, even the humblest of them, have shown remarkable poetical capacity; while of the chiefs we can only say, as has been said more than once already, that the matter and form together acknowledge, and indeed admit of, no superior.

In close connection with these groups of sonnets, displaying very much the same poetical characteristics and in some cases written by the same authors, there occurs a great body of miscellaneous poetical writing produced during the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, and ranging from long poems of the allegorical or amatory kind to the briefest lyrics and madrigals. Sometimes this work appeared independently; sometimes it was inserted in the plays and prose pamphlets of the time. As has already been said, some of our authors, notably Lodge and Greene, did in this way work which far exceeds in merit any of their more ambitious pieces, and which in a certain unborrowed and incommunicable poetic grace hardly leaves anything of the time behind it. Shakespere himself, in _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_, has in a more elaborate but closely allied kind of poetry displayed less mature, but scarcely less, genius than in his dramatic and sonnet work. It is my own opinion that the actual poetical worth of Richard Barnfield, to whom an exquisite poem in _The Passionate Pilgrim_, long ascribed to Shakespere, is now more justly assigned, has, owing to this assignment and to the singular character of his chief other poem, _The Affectionate Shepherd_, been considerably overrated. It is unfortunately as complete if not as common a mistake to suppose that any one who disdains his country's morality must be a good poet, as to set down any one who disdains it without further examination for a bad one. The simple fact, as it strikes a critic, is that "As it fell upon a day" is miles above anything else of Barnfield's, and is not like anything else of his, while it is very like things of Shakespere's. The best thing to be said for Barnfield is that he was an avowed and enthusiastic imitator and follower of Spenser. His poetical work (we might have included the short series of sonnets to _Cynthia_ in the division of sonneteers) was all written when he was a very young man, and he died when he was not a very old one, a bachelor country-gentleman in Warwickshire. Putting the exquisite "As it fell upon a day" out of question (which, if he wrote it, is one of the not very numerous examples of perfect poetry written by a very imperfect poet), Barnfield has, in no extraordinary measure, the common attributes of this wonderful time--poetical enthusiasm, fresh and unhackneyed expression, metrical charm, and gorgeous colouring, which does not find itself ill-matched with accurate drawing of nature. He is above the average Elizabethan, and his very bad taste in _The Affectionate Shepherd_ (a following of Virgil's Second Eclogue) may be excused as a humanist crotchet of the time. His rarity, his eccentricity, and the curious mixing up of his work with Shakespere's have done him something more than yeoman's service with recent critics. But he may have a specimen:--

"And thus it happened: Death and Cupid met
Upon a time at swilling Bacchus' house,
Where dainty cates upon the board were set,
And goblets full of wine to drink carouse:
Where Love and Death did love the liquor so
That out they fall, and to the fray they go.

"And having both their quivers at their back
Filled full of arrows--the one of fatal steel,
The other all of gold; Death's shaft was black,
But Love's was yellow--Fortune turned her wheel,
And from Death's quiver fell a fatal shaft
That under Cupid by the wind was waft.

"And at the same time by ill hap there fell
Another arrow out of Cupid's quiver;
The which was carried by the wind at will,
And under Death the amorous shaft did shiver.[27]
They being parted, Love took up Death's dart,
And Death took up Love's arrow for his part."

[27] Not, of course = "break," but "shudder."

There is perhaps more genuine poetic worth, though there is less accomplishment of form, in the unfortunate Father Robert Southwell, who was executed as a traitor on the 20th of February 1595. Southwell belonged to a distinguished family, and was born (probably) at Horsham St. Faiths, in Norfolk, about the year 1560. He was stolen by a gipsy in his youth, but was recovered; and a much worse misfortune befell him in being sent for education not to Oxford or Cambridge but to Douay, where he got into the hands of the Jesuits, and joined their order. He was sent on a mission to England; and (no doubt conscientiously) violating the law there, was after some years of hiding and suspicion betrayed, arrested, treated with great harshness in prison, and at last, as has been said, executed. No specific acts of treason were even charged against him; and he earnestly denied any designs whatever against the Queen and kingdom, nor can it be doubted that he merely paid the penalty of others' misdeeds. His work both in prose and poetry was not inconsiderable, and the poetry was repeatedly printed in rather confusing and imperfect editions after his death. The longest, but by no means the best, piece is _St. Peter's Complaint_. The best unquestionably is _The Burning Babe_, which, though fairly well known, must be given:--

"As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris'd I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright, did in the air appear,
Who scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,
As though His floods should quench His flames which with His tears were
fed;
'Alas!' quoth He, 'but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel My fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in My blood:'
With these He vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas Day."

Something of the glow of this appears elsewhere in the poems, which are, without exception, religious. They have not a little of the "hectic" tone, which marks still more strongly the chief English Roman Catholic poet of the next century, Crashaw; but are never, as Crashaw sometimes is, hysterical. On the whole, as was remarked in a former chapter, they belong rather to the pre-Spenserian class in diction and metre, though with something of the Italian touch. Occasional roughnesses in them may be at least partly attributed to the evident fact that the author thought of nothing less than of merely "cultivating the muses." His religious fervour is of the simplest and most genuine kind, and his poems are a natural and unforced expression of it.

It is difficult in the brief space which can here be allotted to the subject to pass in review the throng of miscellaneous poets and poetry indicated under this group. The reprints of Dr. Grosart and Mr. Arber, supplemented in a few cases by recourse to the older recoveries of Brydges, Haslewood, Park, Collier, and others, bring before the student a mass of brilliant and beautiful matter, often mixed with a good deal of slag and scoriae, but seldom deficient in the true poetical ore. The mere collections of madrigals and songs, actually intended for casual performance at a time when almost every accomplished and well-bred gentleman or lady was expected to oblige the company, which Mr. Arber's invaluable _English Garner_ and Mr. Bullen's _Elizabethan Lyrics_ give from the collections edited or produced by Byrd, Yonge, Campion, Dowland, Morley, Alison, Wilbye, and others, represent such a body of verse as probably could not be got together, with the same origin and circumstances, in any quarter-century of any nation's history since the foundation of the world. In Campion especially the lyrical quality is extraordinary. He was long almost inaccessible, but Mr. Bullen's edition of 1889 has made knowledge of him easy. His birth-year is unknown, but he died in 1620. He was a Cambridge man, a member of the Inns of Court, and a physician in good practice. He has left us a masque; four _Books of Airs_ (1601-17?), in which the gems given below, and many others, occur; and a sometimes rather unfairly characterised critical treatise, _Observations on the Art of English Poesy_, in which he argues against rhyme and for strict quantitative measures, but on quite different lines from those of the craze of Stanyhurst and Harvey. Some of his illustrations of his still rather unnatural fancy (especially "Rose-cheeked Laura," which is now tolerably familiar in anthologies) are charming, though never so charming as his rhymed "Airs." The poetry is, indeed, mostly in flashes, and it is not very often that any song is a complete gem, like the best of the songs from the dramatists, one or two of which will be given presently for comparison. But by far the greater number contain and exemplify those numerous characteristics of poetry, as distinguished from verse, which at one time of literary history seem naturally to occur--seem indeed to be had for the gathering by any one who chooses--while at another time they are but sparingly found in the work of men of real genius, and seem altogether to escape men of talent, accomplishment, and laborious endeavour. Here are a few specimens from Peele and others, especially Campion. As it is, an exceptional amount of the small space possible for such things in this volume has been given to them, but there is a great temptation to give more. Lyly's lyrical work, however, is fairly well known, and more than one collection of "Songs from the Dramatists" has popularised others.

_AE._ "Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.

_Par._ Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be:
Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.

_AE._ My love is fair, my love is gay,
As fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay
Concludes with Cupid's curse,
They that do change old love for new
Pray gods, they change for worse!

_Ambo, simul._ They that do change, etc., etc.

_AE._ Fair and fair, etc.

_Par._ Fair and fair, etc.

_AE._ My love can pipe, my love can sing,
My love can many a pretty thing,
And of his lovely praises ring
My merry, merry roundelays.
Amen to Cupid's curse,
They that do change, etc."

PEELE.

"His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen.
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

"His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,
And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms;
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are old age's alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

"And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
'Blessed be the hearts that wish my Sovereign well,
Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong.'
Goddess allow this aged man his right,
To be your beadsman now that was your knight."

PEELE.

"Fain would I change that note
To which fond love hath charm'd me,
Long, long to sing by rote
Fancying that that harm'd me:
Yet when this thought doth come,
'Love is the perfect sum
Of all delight!'
I have no other choice
Either for pen or voice
To sing or write.

"O 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;
I know thee what thou art.
I serve thee with my heart
And fall before thee.

_Anon. in_ BULLEN.

"Turn all thy thoughts to eyes,
Turn all thy hairs to ears,
Change all thy friends to spies,
And all thy joys to fears:
True love will yet be free
In spite of jealousy.

"Turn darkness into day,
Conjectures into truth,
Believe what th' curious say,
Let age interpret youth:
True love will yet be free
In spite of jealousy.

"Wrest every word and look,
Rack every hidden thought;
Or fish with golden hook,
True love cannot be caught:
For that will still be free
In spite of jealousy."

CAMPION _in_ BULLEN.

"Come, O come, my life's delight!
Let me not in languor pine!
Love loves no delay; thy sight
The more enjoyed, the more divine.
O come, and take from me
The pain of being deprived of thee!

"Thou all sweetness dost enclose
Like a little world of bliss;
Beauty guards thy looks, the rose
In them pure and eternal is:
Come, then, and make thy flight
As swift to me as heavenly light!"

CAMPION.

"Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet!
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet!
There, wrapped in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love.
But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne'er return again.

"All that I sang still to her praise did tend,
Still she was first, still she my songs did end;
Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
The music that her echo is and beauty's sympathy:
Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight!
It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for her delight."

CAMPION.

"What if a day, or a month, or a year,
Crown thy delights with a thousand sweet contentings!
Cannot a chance of a night or an hour
Cross thy desires with as many sad tormentings?
Fortune, Honour, Beauty, Youth, are but blossoms dying,
Wanton Pleasure, doating Love, are but shadows flying.
All our joys are but toys! idle thoughts deceiving:
None have power, of an hour, in their lives bereaving.

"Earth's but a point to the world, and a man
Is but a point to the world's compared centre!
Shall then a point of a point be so vain
As to triumph in a silly point's adventure?
All is hazard that we have, there is nothing biding;
Days of pleasure are like streams through fair meadows gliding.
Weal and woe, time doth go! time is never turning;
Secret fates guide our states, both in mirth and mourning."

CAMPION.

"'Twas I that paid for all things,
'Twas others drank the wine,
I cannot now recall things;
Live but a fool, to pine.
'Twas I that beat the bush,
The bird to others flew;
For she, alas, hath left me.
Falero! lero! loo!

"If ever that Dame Nature
(For this false lover's sake)
Another pleasing creature
Like unto her would make;
Let her remember this,
To make the other true!
For this, alas! hath left me.
Falero! lero! loo!

"No riches now can raise me,
No want makes me despair,
No misery amaze me,
Nor yet for want I care:
I have lost a World itself,
My earthly Heaven, adieu!
Since she, alas! hath left me.
Falero! lero! loo!"

_Anon. in_ ARBER.

Beside these collections, which were in their origin and inception chiefly musical, and literary, as it were, only by parergon, there are successors of the earlier Miscellanies in which, as in _England's Helicon_ and the celebrated _Passionate Pilgrim_, there is some of the most exquisite of our verse. And, yet again, a crowd of individual writers, of few of whom is much known, contributed, not in all cases their mites by any means, but often very respectable sums, to the vast treasury of English poetry. There is Sir Edward Dyer, the friend of Raleigh and Sidney, who has been immortalised by the famous "My mind to me a kingdom is," and who wrote other pieces not much inferior. There is Raleigh, to whom the glorious preparatory sonnet to _The Faerie Queene_ would sufficiently justify the ascription of "a vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate," if a very considerable body of verse (independent of the fragmentary _Cynthia_) did not justify this many times over, as two brief quotations in addition to the sonnet will show:--

"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn: and, passing by that way
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept,
All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen,
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;
And from henceforth those graces were not seen,
For they this Queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce:
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And curse the access of that celestial thief."

* * * * *

"Three things there be that prosper all apace,
And flourish while they are asunder far;
But on a day they meet all in a place,
And when they meet they one another mar.

"And they be these--the Wood, the Weed, the Wag:
The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;
The Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag;
The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee.

"Now mark, dear boy--while these assemble not,
Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the Wag is wild;
But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,
It frets the halter, and it chokes the child.

"God bless the Child!"

* * * * *

"Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

"Blood must be my body's balmer;
No other balm will there be given;
Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,
Travelleth towards the land of heaven;
Over the silver mountains
Where spring the nectar fountains:
There will I kiss
The bowl of bliss;
And drink mine everlasting fill
Upon every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it will thirst no more."

There is Lord Oxford, Sidney's enemy (which he might be if he chose), and apparently a coxcomb (which is less pardonable), but a charming writer of verse, as in the following:--

"Come hither, shepherd swain!
Sir, what do you require?
I pray thee, shew to me thy name!
My name is Fond Desire.

"When wert thou born, Desire?
In pomp and prime of May.
By whom, sweet boy, wert thou begot?
By fond Conceit, men say.

"Tell me, who was thy nurse
Fresh youth, in sugared joy.
What was thy meat and daily food?
Sad sighs, with 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 then asleep?
Sweet speech which likes me best.
Tell me, where is thy dwelling-place?
In gentle hearts I rest.

"What thing doth please thee most?
To gaze on beauty still.
Whom dost thou think to be thy foe?
Disdain of my good will.

"Doth company displease?
Yes, surely, many one.
Where doth desire delight to live?
He loves to live alone.

"Doth either time or age
Bring him 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 loath, methinks, to dwell
With such a one as thee.

There is, in the less exalted way, the industrious man of all work, Nicholas Breton, whom we shall speak of more at length among the pamphleteers, and John Davies of Hereford, no poet certainly, but a most industrious verse-writer in satiric and other forms. Mass of production, and in some cases personal interest, gives these a certain standing above their fellows. But the crowd of those fellows, about many of whom even the painful industry of the modern commentator has been able to tell us next to nothing, is almost miraculous when we remember that printing was still carried on under a rigid censorship by a select body of monopolists, and that out of London, and in rare cases the university towns, it was impossible for a minor poet to get into print at all unless he trusted to the contraband presses of the Continent. In dealing with this crowd of enthusiastic poetical students it is impossible to mention all, and invidious to single out some only. The very early and interesting _Posy of Gillyflowers_ of Humphrey Gifford (1580) exhibits the first stage of our period, and might almost have been referred to the period before it; the same humpty-dumpty measure of eights and sixes, and the same vestiges of rather infantine alliteration being apparent in it, though something of the fire and variety of the new age of poetry appears beside them, notably in this most spirited war-song:--

(_For Soldiers._)

"Ye buds of Brutus' land, courageous youths now play your parts,[28]
Unto your tackle stand, abide the brunt with valiant hearts,
For news is carried to and fro, that we must forth to warfare go:
Then muster now in every place, and soldiers are pressed forth apace.
Faint not, spend blood to do your Queen and country good:
Fair words, good pay, will make men cast all care away.

"The time of war is come, prepare your corslet, spear, and shield:
Methinks I hear the drum strike doleful marches to the field.
Tantara, tantara the trumpets sound, which makes our hearts with joy
abound.
The roaring guns are heard afar, and everything announceth war.
Serve God, stand stout; bold courage brings this gear about;
Fear not, forth run: faint heart fair lady never won.

"Ye curious carpet-knights that spend the time in sport and play,
Abroad and see new sights, your country's cause calls you away:
Do not, to make your ladies' game, bring blemish to your worthy name.
Away to field and win renown, with courage beat your enemies down;
Stout hearts gain praise, when dastards sail in slander's seas.
Hap what hap shall, we soon shall die but once for all.

"Alarm! methinks they cry. Be packing mates, begone with speed,
Our foes are very nigh: shame have that man that shrinks at need.
Unto it boldly let us stand, God will give right the upper hand.
Our cause is good we need not doubt: in sign of courage give a shout;
March forth, be strong, good hap will come ere it be long.
Shrink not, fight well, for lusty lads must bear the bell.

"All you that will shun evil must dwell in warfare every day.
The world, the flesh, the devil always do seek our souls' decay.
Strive with these foes with all your might, so shall you fight a
worthy fight.
That conquest dost deserve most praise, whose vice do[th] yield to
virtue's ways.
Beat down foul sin, a worthy crown then shall ye win:
If ye live well, in Heaven with Christ our souls shall dwell."

[28] I print this as in the original, but perhaps the rhythm, which is an odd one, would be better marked if lines 1 and 2 were divided into sixes and eights, lines 3 and 4 into eights, and lines 5 and 6 into fours and eights as the rhyme ends.

Of the same date, or indeed earlier, are the miscellaneous poems of Thomas Howell, entitled _The Arbour of Amity_, and chiefly of an ethical character. Less excusable for the uncouthness of his verse is Matthew Grove, who, writing, or at least publishing, his poems in 1587, should have learnt something, but apparently had not. It has to be said in excuse of him that his date and indeed existence are shadowy, even among the shadowy Elizabethan bards; his editor, in worse doggerel than his own, frankly confessing that he knew nothing about him, not so much as whether he was alive or dead. But his work, Howell's, and even part of Gifford's, is chiefly interesting as giving us in the very sharpest contrast the differences of the poetry before and after the melodious bursts of which Spenser, Sidney, and Watson were the first mouthpieces. Except an utter dunce (which Grove does not seem to have been by any means) no one who had before him _The Shepherd's Calendar_, or the _Hecatompathia_, or a MS. copy of _Astrophel and Stella_, could have written as Grove wrote. There are echoes of this earlier and woodener matter to be found later, but, as a whole, the passionate love of beauty, the sense--if only a groping sense--of form, and the desire to follow, and if possible improve upon the models of melodious verse which the Sidneian school had given, preserved even poetasters from the lowest depths.

To classify the miscellaneous verse of 1590-1600 (for the second decade is much richer than the first) under subjects and styles is a laborious and, at best, an uncertain business. The semi-mythological love-poem, with a more or less tragic ending, had not a few followers; the collection of poems of various character in praise of a real or imaginary mistress, similar in design to the sonnet collections, but either more miscellaneous in form or less strung together in one long composition, had even more; while the collection pure and simple, resembling the miscellanies in absence of special character, but the work of one, not of many writers, was also plentifully represented. Satirical allegory, epigram, and other kinds, had numerous examples. But there were two classes of verse which were both sufficiently interesting in themselves and were cultivated by persons of sufficient individual repute to deserve separate and detailed mention. These were the historical poem or history--a kind of companion production to the chronicle play or chronicle, and a very popular one--which, besides the names of Warner, Daniel, and Drayton, counted not a few minor adherents among Elizabethan bards. Such were the already-mentioned Giles Fletcher; such Fitz-Geoffrey in a remarkable poem on Drake, and Gervase Markham in a not less noteworthy piece on the last fight of _The Revenge_; such numerous others, some of whom are hardly remembered, and perhaps hardly deserve to be. The other, and as a class the more interesting, though nothing actually produced by its practitioners may be quite equal to the best work of Drayton and Daniel, was the beginning of English satire. This beginning is interesting not merely because of the apparent coincidence of instinct which made four or five writers of great talent simultaneously hit on the style, so that it is to this day difficult to award exactly the palm of priority, but also because the result of their studies, in some peculiar and at first sight rather inexplicable ways, is some of the most characteristic, if very far from being some of the best, work of the whole poetical period with which we are now busied. In passing, moreover, from the group of miscellaneous poets to these two schools, if we lose not a little of the harmony and lyrical sweetness which characterise the best work of the Elizabethan singer proper, we gain greatly in bulk and dignity of work and in intrinsic value. Of at least one of the poets mentioned in the last paragraph his modern editor--a most enthusiastic and tolerant godfather of waifs and strays of literature--confesses that he really does not quite know why he should be reprinted, except that the original is unique, and that almost every scrap of literature in this period is of some value, if only for lexicographic purposes. No one would dream of speaking thus of Drayton or of Daniel, of Lodge, Hall, Donne, or Marston; while even Warner, the weakest of the names to which we shall proceed to give separate notice, can be praised without too much allowance. In the latter case, moreover, if not in the first (for the history-poem, until it was taken up in a very different spirit at the beginning of this century, never was a success in England), the matter now to be reviewed, after being in its own kind neglected for a couple of generations, served as forerunner, if not exactly as model, to the magnificent satiric work of Dryden, and through his to that of Pope, Young, Churchill, Cowper, and the rest of the more accomplished English satirists. The acorn of such an oak cannot be without interest.

The example of _The Mirror for Magistrates_ is perhaps sufficient to account for the determination of a certain number of Elizabethan poets towards English history; especially if we add the stimulating effect of Holinshed's _Chronicle_, which was published in 1580. The first of the so-called historians, William Warner, belongs in point of poetical style to the pre-Spenserian period, and like its other exponents employs the fourteener; while, unlike some of them, he seems quite free from any Italian influence in phraseology or poetical manner. Nevertheless _Albion's England_ is, not merely in bulk but in merit, far ahead of the average work of our first period, and quite incommensurable with such verse as that of Grove. It appeared by instalments (1586-1606-1612). Of its author, William Warner, the old phrase has to be repeated, that next to nothing is known of him. He was an Oxfordshire man by birth, and an Oxford man by education; he had something to do with Cary, Lord Hunsdon, became an Attorney of the Common Pleas, and died at Amwell suddenly in his bed in 1609, being, as it is guessed rather than known, fifty years old or thereabouts. _Albion's England_ was seized as contraband, by orders of the Archbishop of Canterbury--a proceeding for which no one has been able to account (the suggestion that parts of it are indelicate is, considering the manners of the time, quite ludicrous), and which may perhaps have been due to some technical informality. It is thought that he is the author of a translation of Plautus's _Menaechmi_; he certainly produced in 1585? a prose story, or rather collection of stories, entitled _Syrinx_, which, however, is scarcely worth reading. _Albion's England_ is in no danger of incurring that sentence. In the most easily accessible edition, that of Chalmers's "Poets," it is spoilt by having the fourteeners divided into eights and sixes, and it should if possible be read in the original arrangement. Considering how few persons have written about it, an odd collection of critical slips might be made. Philips, Milton's nephew, in this case it may be hoped, not relying on his uncle, calls Warner a "good plain writer of moral rules and precepts": the fact being that though he sometimes moralises he is in the main a story-teller, and much more bent on narrative than on teaching. Meres calls him "a refiner of the English tongue," and attributes to him "rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments of the pen": the truth being that he is (as Philips so far correctly says) a singularly plain, straightforward, and homely writer. Others say that he wrote in "Alexandrines"--a blunder, and a serious one, which has often been repeated up to the present day in reference to other writers of the seven-foot verse. He brings in, according to the taste and knowledge of his time, all the fabulous accounts of the origins of Britain, and diversifies them with many romantic and pastoral histories, classical tales, and sometimes mere _Fabliaux_, down to his own time. The chief of the episodes, the story of Argentile and Curan, has often, and not undeservedly, met with high praise, and sometimes in his declamatory parts Warner achieves a really great success. Probably, however, what commended his poem most to the taste of the day was its promiscuous admixture of things grave and gay--a mixture which was always much to the taste of Elizabeth's men, and the popularity of which produced and fostered many things, from the matchless tragi-comedy of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ to the singularly formless pamphlets of which we shall speak hereafter. The main interest of Warner is his insensibility to the new influences which Spenser and Sidney directed, and which are found producing their full effect on Daniel and Drayton. There were those in his own day who compared him to Homer: one of the most remarkable instances of thoroughly unlucky critical extravagance to be found in literary history, as the following very fair average specimen will show:--

"Henry (as if by miracle preserved by foreigns long,
From hence-meant treasons) did arrive to right his natives' wrong:
And chiefly to Lord Stanley, and some other succours, as
Did wish and work for better days, the rival welcome was.
Now Richard heard that Richmond was assisted and ashore,
And like unkennel'd Cerberus, the crooked tyrant swore,
And all complexions act at once confusedly in him:
He studieth, striketh, threats, entreats, and looketh mildly grim,
Mistrustfully he trusteth, and he dreadingly did dare,
And forty passions in a trice, in him consort and square.
But when, by his consented force, his foes increased more,
He hastened battle, finding his co-rival apt therefore.
When Richmond, orderly in all, had battled his aid,
Inringed by his complices, their cheerful leader said:
'Now is the time and place (sweet friends) and we the persons be
That must give England breath, or else unbreathe for her must we.
No tyranny is fabled, and no tyrant was in deed
Worse than our foe, whose works will act my words, if well he speed:
For ill to ills superlative are easily enticed,
But entertains amendment as the Gergesites did Christ.
Be valiant then, he biddeth so that would not be outbid,
For courage yet shall honour him though base, that better did.
I am right heir Lancastrian, he, in York's destroyed right
Usurpeth: but through either ours, for neither claim I fight,
But for our country's long-lack'd weal, for England's peace I war:
Wherein He speed us! unto Whom I all events refer.'
Meanwhile had furious Richard set his armies in array,
And then, with looks even like himself, this or the like did say:
'Why, lads, shall yonder Welshman with his stragglers overmatch?
Disdain ye not such rivals, and defer ye their dispatch?
Shall Tudor from Plantagenet, the crown by cracking snatch?
Know Richard's very thoughts' (he touch'd the diadem he wore)
'Be metal of this metal: then believe I love it more
Than that for other law than life, to supersede my claim,
And lesser must not be his plea that counterpleads the same.'
The weapons overtook his words, and blows they bravely change,
When, like a lion thirsting blood, did moody Richard range,
And made large slaughters where he went, till Richmond he espied,
Whom singling, after doubtful swords, the valorous tyrant died."