She runs not now, she shoots no more; Though mountains meet not, lovers may; Anon., but attributed to 'A. W.' A SONNET OF THE MOON. Look how the pale Queen of the silent night SONNET. Charles Best. Were I as base as is the lowly plain, And you, my love, as high as heaven above, Were I as high as heaven above the plain, Wheresoe'er you were, with you my love should go. Were you the earth, dear love, and I the skies, A HYMN IN PRAISE OF NEPTUNE. Of Neptune's empire let us sing, And every sea-god pays a gem The sea nymphs chant their accents shrill, With their sweet voice, Make every echoing rock reply, OF CORINNA'S SINGING. T. Campion. When to her lute Corinna sings, But when she doth of mourning speak, E'en with her sighs the strings do break. And as her lute doth live and die, E'en from my heart the strings do break. T. Campion. MADRIGAL. (In praise of Two.) Faustina hath the fairest face, MADRIGAL. My Love in her attire doth show her wit, It doth as well become her; For every season she hath dressings fit, For winter, spring, and summer. No beauty she doth miss When all her robes are on; But Beauty's self she is When all her robes are gone. GEORGE CHAPMAN. [BORN, probably, at Hitchin (1557? 1559?). Was sent (1574?) to the University, but whether first to this of Oxon or to that of Cambridge is to me unknown' (Antony Wood). Published The Shadow of Night (1594), Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595), De Guianâ, Carmen Epicum (1596), Hero and Leander (1598), Seven Books of Homer's Iliad (1598), Achilles' Shield (1598), Euthymiae Raptus, or The Tears of Peace, with Interlocutions (1609), Homer's Tenth Book of his Iliads (16c9), Epicedium, or a Funeral Song, in memory of Henry, Prince of Wales (1612), Homer's Iliads in English (1611, 1612), First Twelve Books of the Odyssey (1614), Twenty-four Books of Homer's Odisses (1614, 1615), The Whole Works of Homer (1616), The Crowne of all Homer's Workes, Batrachomyomachia, &c. (1624?). Chapman was also author of many plays. Died May 12, 1634.] In spite of the force and originality of English dramatic poetry in the age of Shakespeare, the poetical character of the time had much in common with the Alexandrian epoch in Greek literary history. At Alexandria, when the creative genius of Greece was almost spent, literature became pedantic and obscure. Poets desired to show their learning, their knowledge of the details of mythology, their acquaintance with the more fantastic theories of contemporary science. The same faults mark the poetry of the Elizabethan age, and few writers were more culpably Alexandrian than George Chapman. The spirit of Callimachus or of Lycophron seems at times to have come upon him, as the lutin was supposed to whisper ideas extraordinarily good or evil, to Corneille. When under the influence of this possession, Chapman displayed the very qualities and unconsciously translated the language of Callimachus. He vowed that he detested popularity, and all that can please 'the commune reader.' He inveighed against the 'invidious detractor' who became a spectre that dogged him in every enterprise. He hid his meaning in a mist of verbiage, within a labyrinth of conceits, and himself said, only too truly, about the 'sweet Leander' of Marlowe, 'I in floods of ink Must drown thy graces.' It is scarcely necessary to justify these remarks by illustrations from Chapman's works. Every reader of the poems and the prefaces finds barbarism, churlish temper, and pedantry in profusion. In spite of unpopularity, Chapman 'rested as resolute as Seneca, satisfying himself if but a few, if one, or if none like' his verses. Why then is Chapman, as it were in his own despite, a poet still worthy of the regard of lovers of poetry? The answer is partly to be found in his courageous and ardent spirit, a spirit bitterly at odds with life, but still true to its own nobility, still capable, in happier moments, of divining life's real significance, and of asserting lofty truths in pregnant words. In his poems we find him moving from an exaggerated pessimism, a pessimism worthy of a Romanticist of 1830, to more dignified acquiescence in human destiny. The Shadow of Night, his earliest work, expresses, not without affectation and exaggeration, his blackest mood. Chaos seems better to him than creation, the undivided rest of the void is a happier thing than the crowded distractions of life. Night, which confuses all in shadow and rest, is his Goddess, As for day, That eagle-like doth with her starry wings, Beat in the fowls and beasts to Somnus' lodgings, And haughty Day to the infernal deep, Proclaiming silence, study, ease, and sleep.’ In hell thus let her sit, and never rise, Till morns leave blushing at her cruelties.' In a work published almost immediately after The Shadow of Night, in Ovid's Banquet of Sense, Chapman 'consecrates his strange poems to those searching spirits whom learning hath made noble.' Nothing can well be more pedantic than the conception of the Banquet of Sense. Ovid watches Julia at her bath, and his gratification is described in a singular 'combination of poetical and psychological conceits. Yet in this poem, the redeeming qualities of Chapman and the soothing influence of |