Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance In martial sports I had my cunning tried, When Cupid, having me (his slave) descried Of all the kings that ever here did reign, · I Press, throng. SIR WALTER RALEIGH-TIMOTHY KENDAL-NICHOLAS BRETON-HENRY CONSTABLE. SIR WALTER RALEIGH, to whose merits as a prose writer justice is done in the sequel, deserves to be ranked amongst the minor poets of Elizabeth's reign. TIMOTHY KENDAL is only known for having published, in 1577, a volume entitled Hours of Epigrams. NICHOLAS BRETON (1555-1624) wrote some pastoral poems, and a volume called the Works of a Young Wit. HENRY CONSTABLE was a popular writer of sonnets, though strangely conceited and unnatural in his style. In most of the works of these inferior poets, happy thoughts and imagery may be found, mixed up with affectations, forced analogies, and conceits. It is worthy of remark, that this was the age when collections of fugitive and miscellaneous poems first became common. Several volumes of this kind, published in the reign of Elizabeth, contain poetry of high merit, without any author's name. The Country's Recreations. [From a poem by Raleigh, bearing the above title, the following verses are extracted.] Heart-tearing cares and quiv'ring fears, Fly, fly to courts, Fly to fond worldling's sports; Where strained sardonic smiles are glozing still, And sorrows only real be. Fly from our country pastimes, fly, Come, serene looks, Clear as the crystal brooks, Or the pure azur'd heaven that smiles to see Peace and a secure mind, Which all men seek, we only find. Where joy, heart's ease, and comforts grow, And seek them in these bowers; Where winds perhaps our woods may sometimes shake, But blustering care could never tempest make, Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us, Saving of fountains that glide by us. Now next, my gallant youths, farewell; To think that I must from you part. And now farewell thou gallant lute, With instruments of music's sounds! Recorder, citern, harp, and flute, And heavenly descants on sweet grounds. To think that I must part with you: And now farewell both spear and shield, See, see, what sighs my heart doth yield To please this dainty mouth of mine! And make good cheer with bread and cheese! And now, all orders due, farewell! My table laid when it was noon; My heavy heart it irks to tell My dainty dinners all are done: With leeks and onions, whig and whey, And farewell all gay garments now, I must go range in woodman's wise; To every dream of sweet delight, [Sonnet by Constable.] [From his Diana: 1594.] To live in hell, and heaven to behold, CHRISTOPHER MARLOW JOSHUA SYLVESTER RICHARD BARNFIELD. CHRISTOPHER MARLOW, So highly eminent as a dramatic writer, would probably have been overlooked in the department of miscellaneous poetry, but for his beautiful piece, rendered familiar by its being transferred into Walton's Angler'-The Passionate Shepherd to his Love. JOSHUA SYLVESTER, who died in 1618, at the age of 55, and who was the author of a large volume of poems of very unequal merit, claims notice as the now generally received author of an impressive piece, long ascribed to Raleigh-The Soul's Errand. Another fugitive poem of great beauty, but in a different style, and which has often been attributed to Shakspeare, is now given to RICHARD BARNFIELD, author of several poetical volumes published between 1594 and 1598. These three remarkable poems are here subjoined : The Passionate Shepherd to his Love. And I will make thee beds of roses, A gown made of the finest wool, A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs ; The shepherd swains shall dance and sing, [The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd By Raleigh.] If all the world and love were young, Time drives the flocks from field to fold, The rest complain of cares to come. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, But could youth last, and love still breed, The Soul's Errand. Go, soul, the body's guest, The truth shall be thy warrant; And if they once reply, Tell age it daily wasteth, Tell wit how much it wrangles Tell physic of her boldness, Tell fortune of her blindness, And if they will reply, Tell arts they have no soundness, Tell faith it's fled the city, So when thou hast, as I [Address to the Nightingale.] As it fell upon a day, In the merry month of May, That, to hear her so complain, All thy friends are lapp'd in lead; Is no friend in misery. Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find. Every man will be thy friend Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend : But, if store of crowns be scant, EDMUND SPENSER. These writers bring us to EDMUND SPENSER, whose genius is one of the peculiar glories of the romantic reign of Elizabeth. 'It is easy,' says Pope, to mark out the general course of our poetry; Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, are the great landmarks for it.' We can now add Cowper and Wordsworth; but, in Pope's generation, the list he has given was accurate and complete. Spenser was, like Chaucer, a native of London, and like him, also, he has recorded the circumstance in his poetry : Merry London, my most kindly nurse, Prothalamion. deformed by a number of obsolete uncouth phrases You naked buds, whose shady leaves are lost, He was born at East Smithfield, near the Tower, Whose drops in dreary icicles remain. Edmund Spenser. about the year 1553. The rank of his parents, or the degree of his affinity with the ancient house of Spenser, is not known. Gibbon says truly, that the noble family of Spenser should consider the Faery Queen as the most precious jewel in their coronet.* The poet was entered a sizer (one of the humblest class of students) of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in May 1569, and continued to attend college for seven years, taking his degree of M.A. in June 1576. While Spenser was at Pembroke, Gabriel Harvey, the future astrologer, was at Christ's College, and an intimacy was formed between them, which lasted during the poet's life. Harvey was learned and pedantic, full of assumption and conceit, and in his Venetian velvet and pantofles of pride,' formed a peculiarly happy subject for the satire of Nash, who assailed him with every species of coarse and contemptuous ridicule. Harvey, however, was of service to Spenser. The latter, on retiring from the University, lived with some friends in the north of England; probably those Spensers of Hurstwood, to, whose family he is said to have belonged. Harvey induced the poet to repair to London, and there he introduced him to Sir Philip Sidney, one of the very diamonds of her majesty's court.' In 1579, the poet published his Shepherd's Calendar, dedicated to Sidney, who afterwards patronised him, and recommended him to his uncle, the powerful Earl of Leicester. The Shepherd's Calendar is a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues, one for each month, but without strict keeping as to natural description or rustic character, and *It was lately announced, that the family to which the poet's father belonged has been ascertained as one settled at Hurstwood, near Burnley, in Lancashire, where it flourished till '690 6 All so my lustful life is dry and sere, My timely buds with wailing all are wasted; These lines form part of the first eclogue, in which the shepherd boy (Colin Clout) laments the issue of his love for a country lass,' named Rosalind-a happy female name, which Thomas Lodge, and, following him, Shakspeare, subsequently connected with love and poetry. Spenser is here supposed to have depicted a real passion of his own for a lady in the north, who at last preferred a rival, though, as Gabriel Harvey says, 'the gentle Mistress Rosalind' once reported the rejected suitor to have all the intelligences at command, and another time christened him Signior Pegaso.' Spenser makes his shepherds discourse of polemics as well as love, and they draw characters of good and bad pastors, and institute comparisons between Popery and Protestantism. Some allusions to Archbishop Grindal (Algrind' in the poem) and Bishop Aylmer are said to have given offence to Lord Burleigh; but the patronage of Leicester and Essex must have made Burleigh look with distaste on the new poet. For ten years we hear little of Spenser. He is found corresponding with Harvey on a literary innovation contemplated by that learned person, and even by Sir Philip Sidney. This was no less than banishing rhymes and introducing the Latin prosody into English verse. Spenser seems to have assented to it, fondly overcome with Sidney's charm;' he suspended the Faery Queen, which he had then begun, and tried English hexameters, forgetting, to use the witty words of Nash, that the hexameter, though a gentleman of an ancient house, was not likely to thrive in this clime of ours, the soil being too craggy for him to set his plough in.' Fortunately, he did not persevere in the conceit; he could not have gained over his contemporaries to it (for there were then too many poets, and too much real poetry in the land), and if he had made the attempt, Shak speare would soon have blown the whole away. As a dependent on Leicester, and a suitor for court favour, Spenser is supposed to have experienced many reverses. The following lines in Mother Hub bard's Tale, though not printed till 1581, seem to belong to this period of his life: Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, Strong feeling has here banished all antique and affected expression: there is no fancy in this gloomy painting. It appears, from recently-discovered documents, that Spenser was sometimes employed in inferior state missions, a task then often devolved on poets and dramatists. At length an important appointment came. Lord Grey of Wilton was sent to Ireland as lord-deputy, and Spenser accompanied him in the capacity of secretary. They remained there two years, when the deputy was recalled, and the poet also returned to England. In June 1586, Spenser obtained from the crown a grant of 3028 acres in the county of Cork, out of the forfeited lands of the Earl of Desmond, of which Sir Walter Raleigh had previously, for his military services in Ireland, obtained 12,000 acres. The poet was obliged to reside on his estate, as this was one of the conditions of the grant, and he accordingly repaired to Ireland, and took up his abode in Kilcolman Castle, near Doneraile, which had been one of the ancient strongholds or appanages of the Earls of Desmond. The poet's castle stood in the midst of a large plain, by the side of a lake; the river Mulla ran through his grounds, and a chain of mountains at a distance Kilcolman Castle. approved of his friend's poem; and he persuaded Spenser, when he had completed the three first books, to accompany him to England, and arrange for their publication. The Faery Queen appeared in January 1589-90, dedicated to her majesty, in that strain of adulation which was then the fashion of the age. To the volume was appended a letter to Raleigh, explaining the nature of the work, which the author said was a continued allegory, or dark conceit.' He states his object to be to fashion a gentleman, or noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline, and that he had chosen Prince Arthur for his hero. He conceives that prince to have beheld the Faery Queen in a dream, and been so enamoured of the vision, that, on awaking, he resolved to set forth and seek her in Faery Land. The poet further 'devises' that the Faery Queen shall keep her annual feast twelve days, twelve several adventures happening in that time, and each of them being undertaken by a knight. The adventures were also to express the same number of moral virtues. The first is that of the Redcross Knight, expressing Holiness; the second Sir Guyon, or Temperance; and the third, Britomartis, a lady knight,' representing Chastity. There was thus a blending of chivalry and religion in the design of the Faery Queen. Spenser had imbibed (probably from Sidney) a portion of the Platonic doctrine, which overflows in Milton's Comus, and he looked on chivalry as a sage and serious thing.* Besides his personification of the abstract virtues, the poet made his allegorical personages and their adventures represent historical characters and events. The queen, Gloriana, and the huntress Belphoebe, are both symbolical of Queen Elizabeth; the adventures of the Redcross Knight shadow forth the history of the Church of England; the distressed knight is Henry IV.; and Envy is intended to glance at the un-. fortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. The stanza of Spenser is the Italian ottava rima, now familiar in English poetry; but he added an Alexandrine, or long line, which gives a full and sweeping close to the verse. The poet's diction is rich and abundant. He introduced, however, a number of obsolete expressions, new grafts of old and withered words,' for which he was censured by his contemporaries and their successors, and in which he was certainly not copied by Shakspeare. His Gothic subject *The Platonism of Spenser is more clearly seen in his hymns on Love and Beauty, which are among the most passionate and exquisite of his productions. His account of the spirit of love is not unlike Ovid's description of the creation of man: the soul, just severed from the sky, retains part of its heavenly power 'And frames her house, in which she will be placed, seemed to bulwark in the romantic retreat. Here he wrote most of the Faery Queen, and received the visits of Raleigh, whom he fancifully styled the Shepherd of the Ocean;' and here he brought home his wife, the Elizabeth' of his sonnets, welcoming her with that noble strain of pure and fervent passion, which he has styled the Epithalamium, and which forms the most magnificent spousal verse' But he speculates further— in the language. Kilcolman Castle is now a ruin; its towers almost level with the ground; but the spot must ever be dear to the lovers of genius. Raleigh's visit was made in 1589, and, according to the figurative language of Spenser, the two illustrious friends, while reading the manuscript of the Faery Queen, 'So every spirit, as it is most pure, Spenser afterwards wrote two religious hymns, to counteract the effect of those on love and beauty, but though he spiritualises his passion, he does not abandon his early belief, that the fairest body encloses the fairest mind: he still says 'For all that's good is beautiful and fair.' The Grecian philosophy was curiously united with Puritanism in both Spenser and Milton. Our poet took the fable of his great poem from the style of the Gothic romance, but the deep sense of beauty which pervades it is of classical origin, elevated and purified by strong religious feeling. |