Chapter XIV: History of Poetry From 1550 to 1600 (2)

[1168] This ode I first knew many years since by a translation in the
poems of Russell, which are too little remembered, except by a few
good judges. It has been surmised by some Spanish critics to have
suggested the famous vision of the Spirit of the Cape to Camoens;
but the resemblance is not sufficient, and the dates rather
incompatible.

|Herrera.|

34. Next to Luis de Leon in merit, and perhaps above him in European renown, we find Herrera surnamed the divine. He died in 1578; and his poems seem to have been first collectively published in 1582. He was an innovator in poetical language, whose boldness was sustained by popularity, though it may have diminished his fame. “Herrera was a poet,” says Bouterwek, “of powerful talent, and one who evinced undaunted resolution in pursuing the new path which he had struck out for himself. The noble style, however, which he wished to introduce into Spanish poetry, was not the result of a spontaneous essay, flowing from immediate inspiration, but was theoretically constructed on artificial principles. Thus, amidst traits of real beauty, his poetry everywhere presents marks of affectation. The great fault of his language is too much singularity; and his expression, where it ought to be elevated, is merely far fetched.”[1169] Velasquez observes that, notwithstanding the genius and spirit of Herrera, his extreme care to polish his versification has rendered it sometimes unpleasing to those who require harmony and ease.[1170]

[1169] P. 229.

[1170] Geschichte der Spanischen Dichtkunst, p. 207.

35. Of these defects in the style of Herrera I cannot judge; his odes appear to possess a lyric elevation and richness of phrase, derived in some measure from the study of Pindar, or still more, perhaps, of the Old Testament, and worthy of comparison with Chiabrera. Those on the battle of Lepanto are most celebrated; they pour forth a torrent of resounding song, in those rich tones which the Castilian language so abundantly supplies. I cannot so thoroughly admire the ode addressed to sleep, which Bouterwek as well as Sedano extol. The images are in themselves pleasing and appropriate, the lines steal with a graceful flow on the ear; but we should desire to find something more raised above the commonplaces of poetry.

|General tone of Castilian poetry.|

36. The poets of this age belong generally, more or less, to the Italian school. Many of them were also translators from Latin. In their odes, epistles, and sonnets, the resemblance of style, as well as that of the languages, make us sometimes almost believe that we are reading the Italian instead of the Spanish Parnaso. There seem however to be some shades of difference even in those who trod the same path. The Castilian amatory verse is more hyperbolical, more full of extravagant metaphors, but less subtle, less prone to ingenious trifling, less blemished by verbal conceits than the Italian. Such at least is what has struck me in the slight acquaintance I have with the former. The Spanish poets are also more redundant in descriptions of nature, and more sensible to her beauties. I dare not assert that they have less grace and less power of exciting emotion; it may be my misfortune to have fallen rarely on such passages.

|Castillejo.|

37. It is at least evident that the imitation of Italy, propagated by Boscan and his followers, was not the indigenous style of Castile. And of this some of her most distinguished poets were always sensible. In the Diana of Montemayor, a romance which, as such, we shall have to mention hereafter, the poetry, largely interspersed, bears partly the character of the new, partly that of the old or native school. The latter is esteemed superior. Castillejo endeavoured to restore the gay rhythm of the redondilla, and turned into ridicule the imitators of Petrarch. Bouterwek speaks rather slightingly of his generally poetic powers; though some of his canciones have a considerable share of elegance. His genius, playful and witty, rather than elegant, seemed not ill-fitted to revive the popular poetry.[1171] But those who claimed the praise of superior talents did not cease to cultivate the polished style of Italy. The most conspicuous, perhaps, before the end of the century were Gil Polo, Espinel, Lope de Vega, Barahona de Soto, and Figueroa.[1172] Several other names, not without extracts, will be found in Bouterwek.

[1171] P. 267.

[1172] Lord Holland has given a fuller account of the poetry of Lope
de Vega than either Bouterwek or Velasquez and Dieze; and the
extracts in his “Lives of Lope de Vega and Guillen de Castro,” will
not, I believe, be found in the Parnaso Español, which is contrived
on a happy plan of excluding what is best. Las Lagrimas de
Angelica, by Barahona de Soto, Lord H. says, “has always been
esteemed one of the best poems in the Spanish language,” vol. i. p.
33. Bouterwek says he has never met with the book. It is praised by
Cervantes in Don Quixote.

The translation of Tasso’s Aminta, by Jauregui, has been preferred
by Menage as well as Cervantes to the original. But there is no
extraordinary merit in turning Italian into Spanish, even with some
improvement of the diction.

|Araucana of Ercilla.|

38. Voltaire, in his early and very defective essay on epic poetry, made known to Europe the Araucana of Ercilla, which has ever since enjoyed a certain share of reputation, though condemned by many critics as tedious and prosaic. Bouterwek depreciates it in rather more sweeping a manner than seems consistent with the admissions he afterwards makes.[1173] A talent for lively description and for painting situations, a natural and correct diction, which he ascribes to Ercilla, if they do not constitute a claim to a high rank among poets, are at least as much as many have possessed. An English writer of good taste has placed him in a triumvirate with Homer and Ariosto for power of narration.[1174] Raynouard observes, that Ercilla has taken Ariosto as his model, especially in the opening of his cantos. But the long digressions and episodes of the Araucana, which the poet has not had the art to connect with his subject, render it fatiguing. The first edition, in 1569, contains but fifteen books; the second part was published in 1578, the whole together in 1590.[1175]

[1173] P. 407.

[1174] Pursuits of Literature.

[1175] Journal des Savans, Sept. 1824.

|Many epic poems in Spain.|

39. The Araucana is so far from standing alone in this class of poetry, that not less than twenty-five epic poems appeared in Spain within little more than half a century. These will be found enumerated, and, as far as possible, described and characterised, in Velasquez’s History of Spanish Poetry, which I always quote in the German translation with the valuable notes of Dieze.[1176] Bouterwek mentions but a part of the number, and a few of them may be conjectured by the titles not to be properly epic. It is denied by these writers, that Ercilla excelled all his contemporaries in heroic song. I find, however, a different sentence in a Spanish poet of that age, who names him as superior to the rest.[1177]

[1176] P. 376-407. Bouterwek, p. 413.

[1177]
Oyle el estilo grave, el blando acento,
Y altos concentos del varon famoso
Que en el heroyco verso fue el primero
Que honro a su patria, y aun quiza el postrero.
Del fuerte Arauco el pecho altivo espanta
_Don Alonso de Ercilla_ con el mano,
Con ella lo derriba y lo levanta,
Vence y honra venciendo al Araucano;
Calla sus hechos, los agenos canta,
Con tal estilo que eclipsó al Toscano:
Virtud que el cielo para sí reserva
Que en el furor de Marte esté Minerva.

La Casa de la Memoria, por Vicente Espinel, in Parnaso Espanol,
viii. 352.

Antonio, near the end of the seventeenth century, extols Ercilla
very highly, but intimates that some did not relish his simple
perspicuity. Ad hunc usque diem ob iis omnibus avidissime legitur,
qui facile dicendi genus atque perspicuum admittere vim suam et
nervos, nativaque sublimitate quadam attolli posse, cothurnatumque
ire non ignorant.

|Camoens.|

|Defects of the Lusiad.|

40. But in Portugal there had arisen a poet, in comparison of whose glory that of Ercilla is as nothing. The name of Camoens has truly an European reputation, but the Lusiad is written in a language not generally familiar. From Portuguese critics it would be unreasonable to demand want of prejudice in favour of a poet so illustrious, and of a poem so peculiarly national. The Æneid reflects the glory of Rome as from a mirror; the Lusiad is directly and exclusively what its name “The Portuguese” (Os Lusiadas) denotes, the praise of the Lusitanian people. Their past history chimes in, by means of episodes, with the great event of Gama’s voyage to India. The faults of Camoens, in the management of his fable and the choice of machinery, are sufficiently obvious; it is, nevertheless, the first successful attempt in modern Europe to construct an epic poem on the ancient model; for the Gierusalemme Liberata, though incomparably superior, was not written or published so soon. In consequence, perhaps, of this epic form, which, even when imperfectly delineated, long obtained, from the general veneration for antiquity, a greater respect at the hands of critics than perhaps it deserved, the celebrity of Camoens has always been considerable. In point of fame he ranks among the poets of the south, immediately after the first names of Italy; nor is the distinctive character that belongs to the poetry of the southern languages anywhere more fully perceived than in the Lusiad. In a general estimate of its merits it must appear rather feeble and prosaic; the geographical and historical details are insipid and tedious; a skilful use of poetical artifice is never exhibited; we are little detained to admire an ornamented diction, or glowing thoughts, or brilliant imagery; a certain negligence disappoints us in the most beautiful passages; and it is not till a second perusal, that their sweetness has time to glide into the heart. The celebrated stanzas on Inez De Castro are a proof of this.

|Its excellencies.|

41. These deficiencies, as a taste formed in the English school, or in that of classical antiquity, is apt to account them, are greatly compensated, and doubtless far more to a native than they can be to us, by a freedom from all that offends, for he is never turgid, nor affected, nor obscure, by a perfect ease and transparency of narration, by scenes and descriptions, possessing a certain charm of colouring, and perhaps not less pleasing from the apparent negligence of the pencil, by a style kept up at a level just above common language, by a mellifluous versification, and, above all, by a kind of soft languor which tones, as it were, the whole poem, and brings perpetually home to our minds the poetical character and interesting fortunes of its author. As the mirror of a heart so full of love, courage, generosity, and patriotism, as that of Camoens, the Lusiad can never fail to please us, whatever place we may assign to it in the records of poetical genius.[1178]

[1178] “In every language,” says Mr. Southey, probably, in the
Quarterly Review, xxvii. 38, “there is a magic of words as
untranslatable as the Sesame in the Arabian tale,--you may retain
the meaning, but if the words be changed the spell is lost. The
magic has its effect only upon those to whom the language is as
familiar as their mother tongue, hardly indeed upon any but those
to whom it is really such. Camoens possesses it in perfection, it
is his peculiar excellence.”

|Mickle’s translation.|

42. The Lusiad is best known in England by the translation of Mickle, who has been thought to have done something more than justice to his author, both by the unmeasured eulogies he bestows upon him, and by the more substantial service of excelling the original in his unfaithful delineation.[1179] The style of Mickle is certainly more poetical, according to our standard, than that of Camoens, that is, more figurative and emphatic; but it seems to me replenished with commonplace phrases, and wanting in the facility and sweetness of the original; in which it is well known that he has interpolated a great deal without a pretence.

[1179] Several specimens of Mickle’s infidelity in translation, which
exceed all liberties ever taken in this way, are mentioned in the
Quarterly Review.

|Celebrated passage in the Lusiad.|

43. The most celebrated passage in the Lusiad is that wherein the Spirit of the Cape, rising in the midst of his stormy seas, threatens the daring adventurer that violates their unploughed waters. In order to judge fairly of this conception, we should endeavour to forget all that has been written in imitation of it. Nothing has become more commonplace in poetry than one of its highest flights, supernatural personification; and, as children draw notable monsters when they cannot come near the human form, so every poetaster, who knows not how to describe one object in nature, is quite at home with a goblin. Considered by itself, the idea is impressive and even sublime. Nor am I aware of any evidence to impeach its originality, in the only sense which originality of poetical invention can bear; it is a combination which strikes us with the force of novelty, and which we cannot instantly resolve into any constituent elements. The prophecy of Nereus, to which we have lately alluded, is much removed in grandeur and appropriateness of circumstance from this passage of Camoens, though it may contain the germ of his conception. It is, however, one that seems much above the genius of its author. Mild, graceful, melancholy, he has never given in any other place signs of such vigorous imagination. And when we read these lines on the Spirit of the Cape, it is impossible not to perceive that, like Frankenstein, he is unable to deal with the monster he has created. The formidable Adamastor is rendered mean by particularity of description, descending even to yellow teeth. The speech put into his mouth is feeble and prolix; and it is a serious objection to the whole, that the awful vision answers no purpose but that of ornament, and is impotent against the success and glory of the navigators. A spirit of whatever dimensions, that can neither overwhelm a ship, nor even raise a tempest, is incomparably less terrible than a real hurricane.

|Minor poems of Camoens.|

44. Camoens is still, in his shorter poems, esteemed the chief of Portuguese poets in this age, and possibly in every other; his countrymen deem him their model, and judge of later verse by comparison with his. In every kind of composition then used in Portugal, he has left proofs of excellence. “Most of his sonnets,” says Bouterwek, “have love for their theme, and they are of very unequal merit; some are full of Petrarchic tenderness and grace, and moulded with classic correctness, others are impetuous and romantic, or disfigured by false learning, or full of tedious pictures of the conflicts of passion with reason. Upon the whole, however, no Portuguese poet has so correctly seized the character of the sonnet as Camoens. Without apparent effort, merely by the ingenious contrast of the first eight with the last six lines, he knew how to make these little effusions convey a poetic unity of ideas and impressions, after the model of the best Italian sonnets, in so natural a manner, that the first lines or quartets of the sonnet excite a soft expectation, which is harmoniously fulfilled by the tercets or last six lines.”[1180] The same writer praises several other of the miscellaneous compositions of Camoens.

[1180] Hist. of Portuguese Literature, p. 187.

|Ferreira.|

45. But, though no Portuguese of the sixteenth century has come near to this illustrious poet, Ferreira endeavoured with much good sense, if not with great elevation, to emulate the didactic tone of Horace, both in lyric poems and epistles, of which the latter have been most esteemed.[1181] The classical school formed by Ferreira produced other poets in the sixteenth century; but it seems to have been little in unison with the national character. The reader will find as full an account of these as, if he is unacquainted with the Portuguese language, he is likely to desire, in the author on whom I have chiefly relied.

[1181] Id. p. 111.

|Spanish ballads.|

46. The Spanish ballads or romances are of very different ages. Some of them, as has been observed in another place, belong to the fifteenth century; and there seems sufficient ground for referring a small number to even an earlier date. But by far the greater portion is of the reign of Philip II., or even that of his successor. The Moorish romances, in general, and all those on the Cid, are reckoned by Spanish critics among the most modern. Those published by Depping and Duran have rarely an air of the raciness and simplicity which usually distinguish the poetry of the people, and seem to have been written by poets of Valladolid or Madrid, the contemporaries of Cervantes, with a good deal of elegance, though not much vigour. The Moors of romance, the chivalrous gentlemen of Granada, were displayed by these Castilian poets in attractive colours;[1182] and much more did the traditions of their own heroes, especially of the Cid, the bravest and most noble-minded of them all, furnish materials for their popular songs. Their character, it is observed by the latest editor, is unlike that of the older romances of chivalry, which had been preserved orally, as he conceives, down to the middle of the sixteenth century, when they were inserted in the Cancionero de Romances at Antwerp, 1555.[1183] I have been informed that an earlier edition printed in Spain has lately been discovered. In these there is a certain prolixity and hardness of style, a want of connection, a habit of repeating verses or entire passages from others. They have nothing of the marvellous, nor borrow anything from Arabian sources. In some others of the more ancient poetry there are traces of the oriental manner, and a peculiar tone of wild melancholy. The little poems scattered through the prose romance, entitled, Las Guerras de Granada, are rarely, as I should conceive, older than the reign of Philip II. These Spanish ballads are known to our public, but generally with inconceivable advantage, by the very fine and animated translations of Mr. Lockhart.[1184]

[1182] Bouterwek, Sismondi, and others, have quoted a romance,
beginning Tanta Zayda y Adalifa, as the effusion of an orthodox
zeal, which had taken offence at these encomiums on infidels.
Whoever reads this little poem, which may be found in Depping’s
collection, will see that it is written more as a humorous ridicule
on contemporary poets, than a serious reproof. It is much more
lively than the answer, which these modern critics also quote. Both
these poems are of the end of the sixteenth century. Neither
Bouterwek nor Sismondi have kept in mind the recent date of the
Moorish ballads.

[1183] Duran in preface to his Romancero of 1832. These Spanish
collections of songs and ballads, called Cancioneros and
Romanceros, are very scarce, and there is some uncertainty among
bibliographers as to their editions. According to Duran, this of
Antwerp contains many romances unpublished before and far older
than those of the fifteenth century, collected in the Cancionero
General of 1516. It does not appear, perhaps, that the number which
can be referred with probability to a period anterior to 1400 is
considerable, but they are very interesting. Among these are Los
Fronterizos, or songs which the Castilians used in their incursions
on the Moorish frontier. These were preserved orally, like other
popular poetry. We find in these early pieces, he says, some traces
of the Arabian style, rather in the melancholy of its tone than in
any splendour of imagery, giving as an instance some lines quoted
by Sismondi, beginning, “Fonte frida, fonte frida, Fonte frida y
con amor,” which are evidently very ancient. Sismondi says
(Littérature du Midi, iii. 240) that it is difficult to explain the
charm of this little poem, but “by the tone of truth and the
absence of all object;” and Bouterwek calls it very nonsensical. It
seems to me that some real story is shadowed in it under images in
themselves of very little meaning, which may account for the tone
of truth and pathos it breathes.

The older romances are usually in alternate verses of eight and
seven syllables, and the rhymes are _consonant_, or real
rhymes. The _assonance_ is however older than Lord Holland
supposes, who says (Life of Lope de Vega, vol. ii. p. 12), that it
was not introduced till the end of the sixteenth century. It occurs
in several that Duran reckons ancient.

The romance of the Conde Alarcos is probably of the fifteenth
century. This is written in octosyllable consonant rhymes, without
division of strophes. The Moorish ballads, with a very few
exceptions, belong to the reigns of Philip II. and Philip III., and
those of the Cid, about which so much interest has been taken, are
the latest, and among the least valuable of all. All these are, I
believe, written on the principle of assonances.

[1184] An admirable romance on a bull-fight, in Mr. Lockhart’s volume,
is faintly to be traced in one introduced in Las Guerras de
Granada; but I have since found it much more at length in another
collection. It is still, however, far less poetical than the
English imitation.

SECT. III.--ON FRENCH AND GERMAN POETRY.

_French Poetry--Ronsard--His Followers--German Poets._

|French poets numerous.|

47. This was an age of verse in France; and perhaps in no subsequent period do we find so long a catalogue of her poets. Goujet has recorded not merely the names, but the lives, in some measure, of nearly two hundred, whose works were published in this half century. Of this number scarcely more than five or six are much remembered in their own country. It is possible indeed that the fastidiousness of French criticism, or their idolatry of the age of Louis XIV., and of that of Voltaire, may have led to a little injustice in their estimate of these early versifiers. Our own prejudices are apt of late to take an opposite direction.

|Change in the tone of French poetry.|

48. A change in the character of French poetry, about the commencement of this period, is referrible to the general revolution of literature. The allegorical personifications which, from the æra of the Roman de la Rose, had been the common field of verse, became far less usual, and gave place to an inundation of mythology and classical allusion. The _Désir_ and _Reine d’Amour_ of the older school became Cupid with his arrows and Venus with her doves; the theological and cardinal virtues, which had gained so many victories over _Sensualité_ and _Faux Semblant_, vanished themselves from a poetry which had generally enlisted itself under the enemy’s banner. This cutting off of an old resource rendered it necessary to explore other mines. All antiquity was ransacked for analogies; and, where the images were not wearisomely commonplace, they were absurdly far-fetched. This revolution was certainly not instantaneous; but it followed the rapid steps of philological learning, which had been nothing at the accession of Francis I., and was everything at his death. In his court, and in that of his son, if business or gallantry rendered learning impracticable, it was at least the mode to affect an esteem for it. Many names in the list of French poets are conspicuous for high rank, and a greater number are among the famous scholars of the age. These, accustomed to writing in Latin, sometimes in verse, and yielding a superstitious homage to the mighty dead of antiquity, thought they ennobled their native language by destroying her idiomatic purity.

|Ronsard.|

49. The prevalence however of this pedantry, was chiefly owing to one poet, of great though short-lived renown, Pierre Ronsard. He was the first of seven contemporaries in song under Henry II., then denominated the French Pleiad; the others were Jodelle, Bellay, Baif, Thyard, Dorat, and Belleau. Ronsard, well acquainted with the ancient languages, and full of the most presumptuous vanity, fancied that he was born to mould the speech of his fathers into new forms more adequate to his genius.

Je fis des nouveaux mots,
J’en condamnai les vieux.[1185]

His style, therefore, is as barbarous, if the continual adoption of Latin and Greek derivatives renders a modern language barbarous, as his allusions are pedantic. They are more ridiculously such in his amatory sonnets; in his odes these faults are rather less intolerable, and there is a spirit and grandeur which show him to have possessed a poetical mind.[1186] The popularity of Ronsard was extensive; and, though he sometimes complained of the neglect of the great, he wanted not the approbation of those whom poets are most ambitious to please. Charles IX. addressed some lines to Ronsard, which are really elegant, and at least do more honour to that prince than anything else recorded of him; and the verses of this poet are said to have enlightened the weary hours of Mary Stuart’s imprisonment. On his death in 1586 a funeral service was performed in Paris with the best music that the king could command; it was attended by the Cardinal de Bourbon and an immense concourse; eulogies in prose and verse were recited in the university; and in those anxious moments, when the crown of France was almost in its agony, there was leisure to lament that Ronsard had been withdrawn. How differently attended was the grave of Spenser![1187]

[1185] Goujet, Bibliothéque Française xii. 199.

[1186] Id. 216.

[1187] Id. 207.

50. Ronsard was capable of conceiving strongly, and bringing his conceptions in clear and forcible, though seldom in pure or well-chosen language before the mind. The poem, entitled Promesse, which will be found in Auguis’s Recueil des Anciens Poëtes, is a proof of this, and excels what little besides I have read of this poet.[1188] Bouterwek, whose criticism on Ronsard appears fair and just, and who gives him, and those who belonged to his school, credit for perceiving the necessity of elevating the tone of French verse above the creeping manner of the allegorical rhymers, observes that, even in his errors, we discover a spirit striving upwards, disdaining what is trivial, and restless in the pursuit of excellence.[1189] But such a spirit may produce very bad and tasteless poetry. La Harpe, who admits Ronsard’s occasional beauties and his poetic fire, is repelled by his scheme of versification, full of _enjambemens_, as disgusting to a correct French ear as they are, in a moderate use, pleasing to our own. After the appearance of Malherbe, the poetry of Ronsard fell into contempt, and the pure correctness of Louis XIV.’s age was not likely to endure his barbarous innovations and false taste.[1190] Balzac not long afterwards turns his pedantry into ridicule, and admitting the abundance of the stream, adds that it was turbid.[1191] In later times more justice has been done to the spirit and imagination of this poet, without repealing the sentence against his style.[1192]

[1188] Vol. iv. p. 135.

[1189] Geschichte der Poësie, v. 214.

[1190] Goujet, 245. Malherbe scratched out about half from his copy of
Ronsard giving his reasons in the margin. Racan, one day looking
over this, asked whether he approved what he had not effaced. Not a
bit more, replied Malherbe, than the rest.

[1191] Encore aujourd’hui il est admiré par les trois quarts du
parlement de Paris, et géneralement par les autres parlemens de
France. L’université et les Jesuites tiennent encore son part
contre la cour, et contre l’académie.... Ce n’est pas un poëte bien
entier, c’est le commencement et la matière d’un poëte. On voit,
dans ses œuvres, des parties naissantes, et a demi animées, d’un
corps qui se forme, et qui se fait, mais qui n’a garde d’estre
achevé. C’est une grande source, il faut l’avouer; mais c’est une
source troublée et boueuse; une source, où non seulement il y a
moins d’eau que de limon, mais où l’ordure empêche de couler l’eau.
Œuvres de Balzac, i. 670, and Goujet ubi supra.

[1192] La Harpe, Biogr. Univ.

|Other French poets.|

51. The remaining stars of the Pleiad, except perhaps Bellay, sometimes called the French Ovid, and whose “Regrets,” or lamentations for his absence from France during a residence at Rome, are almost as querulous, if not quite so reasonable, as those of his prototype on the Ister,[1193] seem scarce worthy of particular notice; for Jodelle, the founder of the stage in France, has deserved much less credit as a poet, and fell into the fashionable absurdity of making French out of Greek. Raynouard bestows some eulogy on Baif.[1194] Those who came afterwards were sometimes imitators of Ronsard, and, like most imitators of a faulty manner, far more pedantic and far-fetched than himself. An unintelligible refinement, that every nation in Europe seems in succession to have admitted into its poetry, has consigned much then written in France to oblivion. As large a proportion of the French verse in this period seems to be amatory as of the Italian; and the Italian style is sometimes followed. But a simpler and more lively turn of language, though without the naïveté of Marot, often distinguishes these compositions. These pass the bounds of decency not seldom; a privilege which seems in Italy to have been reserved for certain Fescennine metres, and is not indulged to the solemnity of the sonnet or canzone. The Italian language is ill-adapted to the epigram, in which the French succeed so well.[1195]

[1193] Goujet, xii. 128. Augis.

[1194] “Baif is one of the poets who, in my opinion, have happily
contributed by their example to fix the rules of our
versification.” Journal des Savans, Feb. 1825.

[1195] Goujet devotes three volumes, the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth, of his Bibliothèque Française, to the poets of these
fifty years. Bouterwek and La Harpe have touched only on a very few
names. In the Recueil des Anciens Poëtes, the extracts from them
occupy about a volume and a half.

|Du Bartas.|

52. A few may be selected from the numerous versifiers under the sons of Henry II. Amadis Jamyn, the pupil of Ronsard, was reckoned by his contemporaries almost a rival, and is more natural, less inflated and emphatic than his master.[1196] This praise is by no means due to a more celebrated poet, Du Bartas. His productions, which are numerous, unlike those of his contemporaries, turn mostly upon sacred history; but his poem on the Creation, called La Semaine, is that which obtained most reputation, and by which alone he is now known. The translation by Silvester has rendered it in some measure familiar to the readers of our old poetry; and attempts have been made, not without success, to show that Milton had been diligent in picking jewels from this mass of bad taste and bad writing. Du Bartas, in his style, was a disciple of Ronsard; he affects words derived from the ancient languages, or, if founded on analogy, yet without precedent, and has as little naturalness or dignity in his images as purity in his idiom. But his imagination, though extravagant, is vigorous and original.[1197]

[1196] Goujet, xiii. 229. Biogr. Univ.

[1197] Goujet, xiii. 304. The Semaine of Du Bartas was printed thirty
times within six years, and translated into Latin, Italian, German,
and Spanish, as well as English. Id. 312, on the authority of La
Croix du Maine.

Du Bartas, according to a French writer of the next century, used
methods of exciting his imagination which I recommend to the
attention of young poets. L’on dit en France, que Du Bartas
auparavant que de faire cette belle description de cheval ou il a
si bien rencontré, s’enfermoit quelquefois dans une chambre, et se
mettant à quatre pattes, souffloit, hennissoit, gambadoit, tirait
des ruades, alloit l’amble, le trot, le galop, â courbette, et
tachoit par toutes sortes de moyens à bien contrefaire le cheval.
Naudé’s Considérations sur les Coups d’Estat. p. 47.

|Pibrac; Desportes.|

53. Pibrac, a magistrate of great integrity, obtained an extraordinary reputation by his quatrains; a series of moral tetrastichs in the style of Theognis. These first appeared in 1574, fifty in number, and were augmented to 126 in later editions. They were continually republished in the seventeenth century, and translated into many European and even oriental languages. It cannot be wonderful that, in the change of taste and manners, they have ceased to be read.[1198] An imitation of the sixth satire of Horace, by Nicolas Rapin, printed in the collection of Auguis is good and in very pure style.[1199] Philippe Desportes somewhat later chose a better school than that of Ronsard; he rejected its pedantry and affectation, and by the study of Tibullus, as well as by his natural genius, gave a tenderness and grace to the poetry of love which those pompous versifiers had never sought. He has been esteemed the precursor of a better æra; and his versification is rather less lawless,[1200] according to La Harpe, than that of his predecessors.

[1198] Goujet, xii. 266. Biogr. Univ.

[1199] Recueil des Poëtes, v. 361.

[1200] Goujet, xiv. 63. La Harpe. Auguis, v. 343-377.

|French metre and versification.|

54. The rules of metre became gradually established. Few writers of this period neglect the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes;[1201] but the open vowel will be found in several of the earlier. Du Bartas almost affects the _enjambement_, or continuation of the sense beyond the couplet; and even Desportes does not avoid it. Their metres are various; the Alexandrine, if so we may call it, or verse of twelve syllables, was occasionally adopted by Ronsard, and in time displaced the old verse of ten syllables, which became appropriated to the lighter style. The sonnets, as far as I have observed, are regular; and this form, which had been very little known in France, after being introduced by Jodelle and Ronsard, became one of the most popular modes of composition.[1202] Several attempts were made to naturalise the Latin metres; but this pedantic innovation could not long have success. Specimens of it may be found in Pasquier.[1203]

[1201] Grevin, about 1558, is an exception. Goujet, xii. 159.

[1202] Bouterwek, v. 212.

[1203] Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 11. Baif has passed for the
inventor of this foolish art in France, which was more common there
than in England. But Prosper Marchand ascribes a translation of the
Iliad and Odyssey into regular French hexameters to one Moysset, of
whom nothing is known; on no better authority, however, than a
vague passage of d’Aubigné, who “remembered to have seen such a
book sixty years ago.” Though Mousset may be imaginary, he
furnishes an article to Marchand, who brings together a good deal
of learning as to the Latinized French metres of the sixteenth
century. Dictionnaire Historique.

Passerat, Ronsard, Nicolas Rapin, and Pasquier, tried their hands
in this style. Rapin improved upon it by rhyming in Sapphics. The
following stanzas are from his ode on the death of Ronsard:--

Vous que les ruisseaux d’Helicon frequentez,
Vous que les jardins solitaires hantez,
Et le fonds des bois, curieux de choisir
L’ombre et le loisir.

Qui vivant bien loin de la fange et du bruit,
Et de ces grandeurs que le peuple poursuit,
Estimez les vers que la muse apres vous
Trempe de miel doux.

Notre grand Ronsard, de ce monde sorti,
Les efforts derniers de la Parque a senti;
Ses faveurs n’ont pu le garantir enfin
Contre le destin, &c. &c.
Pasquier, ubi supra.

|General character of French poetry.|

55. It may be said, perhaps, of French poetry in general, but at least in this period, that it deviates less from a certain standard than any other. It is not often low, as may be imputed to the earlier writers, because a peculiar style, removed from common speech, and supposed to be classical, was a condition of satisfying the critics; it is not often obscure, at least in syntax, as the Italian sonnet is apt to be, because the genius of the language and the habits of society demanded perspicuity. But it seldom delights us by a natural sentiment or unaffected grace of diction, because both one and the other were fettered by conventional rules. The monotony of amorous song is more wearisome, if that be possible, than among the Italians.

|German poetry.|

56. The characteristics of German verse impressed upon it by the meister-singers still remained, though the songs of those fraternities seem to have ceased. It was chiefly didactic or religious, often satirical, and employing the veil of apologue. Luther, Hans Sachs, and other more obscure names are counted among the fabulists; but the most successful was Burcard Waldis, whose fables, partly from Æsop, partly original, were first published in 1548. The Froschmauseler of Rollenhagen, in 1545, is in a similar style of political and moral apologue with some liveliness of description. Fischart is another of the moral satirists, but extravagant in style and humour, resembling Rabelais, of whose romance he gave a free translation. One of his poems, Die Gluckhafte Schiff, is praised by Bouterwek for beautiful descriptions and happy inventions; but in general he seems to be the Skelton of Germany. Many German ballads belong to this period, partly taken from the old tales of chivalry: in these the style is humble, with no poetry except that of invention, which is not their own; yet they are true-hearted and unaffected, and better than what the next age produced.[1204]

[1204] Bouterwek, vol. ix. Heinsius, vol. iv.

SECT. IV.--ON ENGLISH POETRY.

_Paradise of Dainty Devices--Sackville--Gascoyne--Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar--Improvement in Poetry--England’s Helicon--Sydney--Shakspeare’s Poems--Poets near the Close of the Century--Translations--Scots and English Ballads--Spenser’s Faery Queen._

|Paradise of Dainty Devices.|

57. The poems of Wyatt and Surrey with several more first appeared in 1557, and were published in a little book, entitled Tottel’s Miscellanies. But as both of these belonged to the reign of Henry VIII. their poetry has come already under our review. It is probable that Lord Vaux’s short pieces, which are next to those of Surrey and Wyatt in merit, were written before the middle of the century. Some of these are published in Tottel, and others in a scarce collection, the first edition of which was in 1576, quaintly named, The Paradise of Dainty Devices. The poems in this volume, as in that of Tottel, are not coeval with its publication; it has been supposed to represent the age of Mary, full as much as that of Elizabeth, and one of the chief contributors, if not framers of the collection, Richard Edwards, died in 1566. Thirteen poems are by Lord Vaux, who certainly did not survive the reign of Mary.

|Character of this collection.|

58. We are indebted to Sir Egerton Brydges for the republication, in his British Bibliographer, of the Paradise of Dainty Devices, of which, though there had been eight editions, it is said that not above six copies existed.[1205] The poems are almost all short, and by more nearly thirty than twenty different authors. “They do not, it must be admitted,” says their editor, “belong to the higher classes; they are of the moral and didactic kind. In their subject there is too little variety, as they deal very generally in the commonplaces of ethics, such as the fickleness and caprices of love, the falsehood and instability of friendship, and the vanity of all human pleasures. But many of these are often expressed with a vigour which would do credit to any æra.... If my partiality does not mislead me, there is in most of these short pieces some of that indescribable attraction which springs from the colouring of the heart. The charm of imagery is wanting, but the precepts inculcated seem to flow from the feelings of an overloaded bosom.” Edwards, he considers, probably with justice, as the best of the contributors, and Lord Vaux the next. We should be inclined to give as high a place to William Hunnis, were his productions all equal to one little poem;[1206] but too often he falls into trivial morality and a ridiculous excess of alliteration. The amorous poetry is the best in this Paradise; it is not imaginative or very graceful, or exempt from the false taste of antithetical conceits, but sometimes natural and pleasing; the serious pieces are in general very heavy, yet there is a dignity and strength in some of the devotional strains. They display the religious earnestness of that age with a kind of austere philosophy in their views of life. Whatever indeed be the subject, a tone of sadness reigns through this misnamed Paradise of Daintiness, as it does through all the English poetry of this particular age. It seems as if the confluence of the poetic melancholy of the Petrarchists with the reflective seriousness of the Reformation overpowered the lighter sentiments of the soul; and some have imagined, I know not how justly, that the persecutions of Mary’s reign contributed to this effect.

[1205] Beloe’s Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v.

[1206] This song is printed in Campbell’s Specimens of English Poets,
vol. i. p. 117. It begins,

“When first mine eyes did view and mark.”

The little poem of Edwards, called Amantium Iræ, has often been
reprinted in modern collections, and is reckoned by Brydges one of
the most beautiful in the language. But hardly any light poem of
this early period is superior to some lines addressed to Isabella
Markham by Sir John Harrington, of the date of 1564. If these are
genuine, and I know not how to dispute it, they are as polished as
any written at the close of the Queen’s reign. These are not in the
Paradise of Dainty Devices.

|Sackville’s induction.|

59. But at the close of that dark period, while bigotry might be expected to render the human heart torpid, and the English nation seemed too fully absorbed in religious and political discontent, to take much relish in literary amusements, one man shone out for an instant in the higher walks of poetry. This was Thomas Sackville, many years afterwards Lord Buckhurst, and High Treasurer of England, thus withdrawn from the haunts of the muses to a long and honourable career of active life. The Mirrour of Magistrates, published in 1559, is a collection of stories by different authors, on the plan of Boccaccio’s prose work, De Casibus virorum illustrium, recounting the misfortunes and reverses of men eminent in English history. It was designed to form a series of dramatic soliloquies united in one interlude.[1207] Sackville, who seems to have planned the scheme, wrote an Induction, or prologue, and also one of the stories, that of the first Duke of Buckingham. The Induction displays best his poetical genius; it is, like much earlier poetry, a representation of allegorical personages, but with a fertility of imagination, vividness of description, and strength of language, which not only leave his predecessors far behind, but may fairly be compared with some of the most poetical passages in Spenser. Sackville’s Induction forms a link which unites the school of Chaucer and Lydgate to the Faery Queen. It would certainly be vain to look in Chaucer, wherever Chaucer is original, for the grand creations of Sackville’s fancy, yet we should never find any one who would rate Sackville above Chaucer. The strength of an eagle is not to be measured only by the height of his place, but by the time that he continues on the wing. Sackville’s Induction consists of a few hundred lines; and even in these there is a monotony of gloom and sorrow, which prevents us from wishing it to be longer. It is truly styled by Campbell a landscape on which the sun never shines. Chaucer is various, flexible, and observant of all things in outward nature, or in the heart of man. But Sackville is far above the frigid elegance of Surrey; and, in the first days of the virgin reign, is the herald of that splendour in which it was to close.

[1207] Warton, iv. 40. A copious account of the Mirrour for Magistrates
occupies the forty-eighth and three following sections of the
History of Poetry, p. 33-105. In this Warton has introduced rather
a long analysis of the Inferno of Dante, which he seems to have
thought little known to the English public, as in that age, I
believe, was the case.

|Inferiority of poets in early years of Elizabeth.|

|Gascoyne.|

60. English poetry was not speedily animated by the example of Sackville. His genius stands absolutely alone in the age to which as a poet he belongs. Not that there was any deficiency in the number of versifiers; the muses were honoured by the frequency, if not by the dignity, of their worshippers. A different sentence will be found in some books; and it has become common to elevate the Elizabethan age in one undiscriminating panegyric. For wise counsellors, indeed, and acute politicians, we could not perhaps extol one part of that famous reign at the expense of another. Cecil and Bacon, Walsingham, Smith, and Sadler, belong to the earlier days of the queen. But in a literary point of view, the contrast is great between the first and second moiety of her four and forty years. We have seen this already in other subjects than poetry; and in that we may appeal to such parts of the Mirrour of Magistrates as are not written by Sackville, to the writings of Churchyard, or to those of Gouge and Turberville. These writers scarcely venture to leave the ground, or wander in the fields of fancy. They even abstain from the ordinary commonplaces of verse, as if afraid that the reader should distrust or misinterpret their images. The first who deserves to be mentioned as an exception is George Gascoyne, whose Steel Glass, published in 1576, is the earliest instance of English satire, and has strength and sense enough to deserve respect. Chalmers has praised it highly. “There is a vein of sly sarcasm in this piece which appears to me to be original; and his intimate knowledge of mankind enabled him to give a more curious picture of the dress, manners, amusements, and follies of the times, than we meet with in almost any other author. His Steel Glass is among the first specimens of blank verse in our language.” This blank verse, however, is but indifferently constructed. Gascoyne’s long poem, called The Fruits of War, is in the doggrel style of his age; and the general commendations of Chalmers on this poet seem rather hyperbolical. But his minor poems, especially one called The Arraignment of a Lover, have much spirit and gaiety;[1208] and we may leave him a respectable place among the Elizabethan versifiers.

[1208] Ellis’s Specimens. Campbell’s Specimens, ii. 146.

|Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar.|

61. An epoch was made, if we may draw an inference from the language of contemporaries, by the publication of Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar in 1579.[1209] His primary idea, that of adapting a pastoral to every month of the year, was pleasing and original, though he has frequently neglected to observe the season, even when it was most abundant in appropriate imagery. But his Kalendar is, in another respect, original, at least when compared with the pastoral writings of that age. This species of composition had become so much the favourite of courts, that no language was thought to suit it but that of courtiers, which, with all its false beauties of thought and expression, was transferred to the mouths of shepherds. A striking instance of this had lately been shown in the Aminta; and it was a proof of Spenser’s judgment, as well as genius, that he struck out a new line of pastoral, far more natural, and therefore more pleasing, so far as imitation of nature is the source of poetical pleasure, instead of vieing, in our more harsh and uncultivated language, with the consummate elegance of Tasso. It must be admitted, however, that he fell too much into the opposite extreme, and gave a Doric rudeness to his dialogue, which is a little repulsive to our taste. The dialect of Theocritus is musical to our ears, and free from vulgarity; praises which we cannot bestow on the uncouth provincial rusticity of Spenser. He has been less justly censured on another account, for intermingling allusions to the political history and religious differences of his own times; and an ingenious critic has asserted that the description of the grand and beautiful objects of nature, with well-selected scenes of rural life, real but not coarse, constitute the only proper materials of pastoral poetry. These limitations, however, seem little conformable to the practice of poets or the taste of mankind; and if Spenser has erred in the allegorical part of his pastorals, he has done so in company with most of those who have tuned the shepherd’s pipe. Several of Virgil’s Eclogues, and certainly the best, have a meaning beyond the simple songs of the hamlet; and it was notorious that the Portuguese and Spanish pastoral romances, so popular in Spenser’s age, teemed with delineations of real character, and sometimes were the mirrors of real story. In fact, mere pastoral must soon become insipid, unless it borrows something from active life or elevated philosophy. The most interesting parts of the Shepherd’s Kalendar are of this description; for Spenser has not displayed the powers of his own imagination so strongly as we might expect in pictures of natural scenery. This poem has spirit and beauty in many passages; but is not much read in the present day, nor does it seem to be approved by modern critics. It was otherwise formerly. Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetry, 1586, calls Spenser “the rightest English poet he ever read,” and thinks he would have surpassed Theocritus and Virgil, “if the coarseness of our speech had been no greater impediment to him, than their pure native tongues were to them.” And Drayton says, “Master Edmund Spenser had done enough for the immortality of his name, had he only given us his Shepherd’s Kalendar, a masterpiece, if any.”[1210]

[1209] The Shepherd’s Kalendar was printed anonymously. It is ascribed
to Sydney by Whetstone in a monody on his death in 1586. But Webbe,
in his Discourse on English Poesie, published the same year,
mentions Spenser by name.

[1210] Preface to Drayton’s Pastorals.

|Sydney’s character of contemporary poets.|

62. Sir Philip Sydney, in his Defence of Poesie, which may have been written at any time between 1581 and his death in 1586, laments that “poesy thus embraced in all other places, should only find in our time a bad welcome in England;” and, after praising Sackville, Surrey, and Spenser for the Shepherd’s Kalendar, does not “remember to have seen many more that have poetical sinews in them. For proof whereof, let but most of the verses be put into prose, and then ask the meaning, and it will be found that one verse did but beget another, without ordering at the first what should be at the last; which becomes a confused mass of words, with a tinkling sound of rhyme, barely accompanied with reason.... Truly many of such writings as come under the banner of irresistible love, if I were a mistress, would never persuade me they were in love; so coldly they apply fiery speeches as men that had rather read lovers’ writings, and so caught up certain swelling phrases, than that in truth they feel those passions.”

|Improvement soon after this time.|

63. It cannot be denied that some of these blemishes are by no means unusual in the writers of the Elizabethan age, as in truth they are found also in much other poetry of many countries. But a change seems to have come over the spirit of English poetry soon after 1580. Sydney, Raleigh, Lodge, Breton, Marlowe, Greene, Watson, are the chief contributors to a collection called England’s Helicon, published in 1600, and comprising many of the fugitive pieces of the last twenty years. Davidson’s Poetical Rhapsody, in 1602, is a miscellany of the same class. A few other collections are known to have existed, but are still more scarce than these. England’s Helicon, by far the most important, has been reprinted in the same volume of the British Bibliographer as the Paradise of Dainty Devices. In this juxtaposition the difference of their tone is very perceptible. Love occupies by far the chief portion of the later miscellany; and love no longer pining and melancholy, but sportive and boastful. Every one is familiar with the beautiful song of Marlowe, “Come live with me and be my love;” and with the hardly less beautiful answer ascribed to Raleigh. Lodge has ten pieces in this collection, and Breton eight. These are generally full of beauty, grace, and simplicity; and, while in reading the productions of Edwards and his coadjutors every sort of allowance is to be made, and we can only praise a little at intervals, these lyrics, twenty or thirty years later, are among the best in our language. The conventional tone is that of pastoral; and thus, if they have less of the depth sometimes shown in serious poetry, they have less also of obscurity and false refinement.[1211]

[1211] Ellis, in the second volume of his Specimens of English Poets,
has taken largely from this collection. It must be owned that his
good taste in selection gives a higher notion of the poetry of this
age than, on the whole, it would be found to deserve; yet there is
so much of excellence in England’s Helicon, that he has been
compelled to omit many pieces of great merit.