At the close he reviews his argu-sensible citizen and landed proprietor ments, and the vibrating martial accent in his small county? The muscles of his poetical period is like a trump were firmer, despair less prompt. The rage of concentrated attention, the half hallucinations, the anguish and heaving of the breast, the quivering of the limbs bracing themselves involu tarily and blindly for action, all the painful yearnings which accompany grand desires, exhausted them less; this is why they desired longer, and dared more. D'Aubigné, wounded with many sword-thrusts, conceiving of victory: "So that since the excellencies of it (poetry) may bee so easily and so justly confirmed, and the lowcreeping objections so soone trodden downe, it not being an Art of lyes, but of true doctrine; not of effeminatemesse, but of notable stirring of courage; not of abusing man's wit, but of strengthning man's wit; not banished, but honored by Plato let us rather plant more Laurels for to ingarland death at hand, had himself bound on the Poets heads than suffer the ill- his horse that he might see his missavored breath of such wrong speakers, ❘ tress once more, and rode thus sevonce to blow upon the cleare springs of Poesie." * From such vehemence and gravity you may anticipate what his verses will be. Often, after reading the poets of this age, I have looked for some time at the contemporary prints, telling myself that man, in mind and body, was not then such as we see him to-day. We also have our passions, but we are no longer strong enough to bear them. They unsettle us; we are no longer poets without suffering for it. Alfred de Musset, Heine, Edgar Poe, Burns, Byron, Shelley, Cowper, how many shall I instance? Disgust, mental and bodily degradation, disease, impotence, madness, suicide, at best a permanent hallucination or feverish raving, these are nowadays the ordinary issues of the poetic temperament. The passion of the brain gnaws our vitals, dries up the blood, eats into the marrow, shakes us like a tempest, and the human frame, such as civilization has made us, is not substantial enough long to resist it. They, who have been more roughly trained, who are more inured to the inclemencies of climate, more hardened by bodily exercise, more firm against danger, endare and live. Is there a man living who could with stand the storm of pasions and visions which swept over shakspeare, and end, like him, as a * The Defence of Poesie, p. 560. Here and there we find also verse as spirited as this: * Or Pindar's Apes, flaunt they in phrases Er am'ling with pied flowers their thoughts fine, of gold." -P. 568. eral leagues, losing blood all the way, and arriving in a swoon. Such feelings we glean still from their portraits, in the straight looks which pierce like a sword; in that strength of back, bent or twisted; in the sensuality, energy, enthusiasm, which breathe from their attitude or look. Such feelings we still discover in their poetry, in in Greene, Lodge, Jonson, Spenser, Shakspeare, in Sidney, as in all the rest. We quickly forget the faults of taste which accompany them, the affectation, the uncouth jargon. Is it really so uncouth? Imagine a man who with closed eyes distinctly sees the adored countenance of his mistress, who keeps it before him all the day; who is troubled and shaken as he imagines ever and anon her brow, her lips, her eyes; who cannot and will not be separated from his vision; who sinks daily deeper in this passionate contemplation; who is every instant crushed by mortal anxieties, or transported by the raptures of bliss. he will lose the exact conception of objects. A fixed idea becomes a false idea. By dint of regarding an object under all its forms, turning it over, piercing through it, we at last deform it. When we cannot think of a thing without being dazed and without tears, we magnify it, and give it a character which it has not. Hence strange comparisons, over-refined ideas, excessive images, become natural. However far Sidney goes, whatever object he touches, he sees throughout the un verse only the name and features of Stella. All ideas bring him back to her. He is drawn ever and invincibls by the same thought: and comparisons | pressed, it seems to him that nis mis which seem far-fetched, only express tress becomes transformed; "Stella, soveraigne of my joy,... ... the unfailing presence and sovereign power of the besetting image. Stella is ill; it seems to Sidney that "Joy, which is inseparate from those eyes, Stella, now learnes (strange case) to weepe in thee."* To us, the expression is absurd. It is so for Sidney, who for hours together had dwelt on the expression of those eyes, seeing in them at last all the beauties of heaven These cries of adoration are like and earth, who, compared to them, hymn. Every day he writes thoughta finds all light dull and all happiness of love which agitate him, and in stale? Consider that in every extreme passion ordinary laws are reversed, that our logic cannot pass judgment on it, that we find in it affectation, cnnidishness, witticisms, crudity, folly, and that to us violent conditions of the nervous machine are like an unknown and marvellous land, where common sense and good language cannot penetrate. On the return of spring, when May spreads over the fields her dappled dress of new flowers, Astrophel and Stella sit in the shade of a retired grove, in the warm air, full of birds' voices and pleasant exhalations. Heaven smiles, the wind kisses the trembling leaves, the inclining trees interlace their sappy branches, amorous earth swallows greedily the rippling this long journal of a hundred pages we feel the heated breath swell each moment. A smile from his mis.ress, a curl lifted by the wind, a gesture,all are events. He paints her in every attitude; he cannot see her too con stantly. He talks to the birds, plants, winds, all nature. He brings the whole world to Stella's feet. At the notion of a kiss he swoons: "Thinke of that most gratefull time "O joy, too high for my low stile to show: The height of honour in the kindly badge si This small winde w' 'ch so sweet is, shame? Who hath the crimson weeds stolne frem my morning skies? Sense of love to love inspiring." t As he says, his "life melts with toc On his knees, with beating heart, op- much thinking." Exhauste I by ecstasy still." * At last calm returned; and whilst this calm lasts, the lively, glowing spirit plays like a flickering flame on the surface of the deep brooding fire. His love-songs and word-portraits, delightful pagan and chivalric fancies, seem to be inspired by Petrarch or Plato. We feel the charm and sportiveness under the seeming affectation : "Faire eyes, sweete lips, deare heart, that foolish I Could hope by Cupids helpe on you to pray; Since to himselfe he doth your gifts apply, As his maine force, choise sport, and easefull stray. "For when he will see who dare him gairay, Then with those eyes he lookes, lo by and by Each soule doth at Loves feet his weapon lay, Glad if for her he give them leave to die. 'When he will play, then in her lips he is, Where blushing red, that Loves selfe them doth love, With either lip he aotn the other kisse: But when he will for quiets sake remove From ali the world, her heart is then his rome, Where well he knowes, no man to him can come." t Both heart and sense are captive here. If he finds the eyes of Stella more beautiful than any thing in the world, be finds her soul more lovely than her body He is a Platonist when he reounts how Virtue, wishing to be loved of men, took Stella's form to enchant heir eyes, and make them see the neaven which the inner sense reveals heroic souls. We recognize in him that entire submission of heart, love turned into a religion, perfect passion which asks only to grow, and which, like the piety of the mystics, finds itself always too insignificant when it compares itself with the object loved: "My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toyes, My wit doth strive those passions to defend, Which for reward spoyle it with vaine ar noyes, I see my course to lose my selfe doth bend. I see and yet no greater sorrow take, Than that I lose no more for Stella's sake." At last, like Socrates in the banquet, he turns his eyes to deathless beauty heavenly brightness : "Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust, And thou my minde aspire to higher things: Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings... O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide, In this small course which birth drawes out to death." t Sidney was only a soldier in an army, there is a multitude about him, a multitude of poets. In fifty-two years, without counting the drama, two hun dred and thirty-three are enumerated, of whom forty have genius or talent: Breton, Donne, Drayton, Lodge, Greene, the two Fletchers, Beaumont Spenser, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Mar lowe, Wither, Warner, Davison, Carew, Suckling, Herrick; we should grow tired in counting them. There is a crop of them, and so there is at the same time in Catholic and heroic a Spain; and as in Spain it was a sign of the times, the mark of public want, the index to an extraordinary and transient condition of the mind. What is this condition which gives rise to so universal to taste for poetry? What * Astrophel and Stella, p. 525: this sonnet is headed E. D. Wood, in his Athen. Oxon. i., says it was written by Sir Edward Dyer, Chancellor of the Most noble Order of the Garter.-TR. ↑ Ibid. sonnet 43, P. 545. * Ibid. 18, p. 573- † Last sonnet, p. 539. Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his Times, i. Part 2, ch. 2, 3, 4. Anong these 233 poets the authors of isolated pieces are not reckoned, but only those who published or col lected their works. rs it breathes life into their books? How happens it, that amongst the least, in spite of pedantries, awkwardnesses, in the rhyming chronicles or descriptive cyclopedias, we meet with brilliant pictures and genuine love. cries? How happens it, that when this generation was exhausted, true poetry ended in England, as true painting in Italy and Flanders? It was because ai epoch of the mind came and passed away,-that, namely, of instinctive and creative conception. These men had new senses, and no theories in their heads. Thus, when they took a walk, their emotions were not the same as To kiss the gentle Shade, this while th A step further, and you will find the pease; ours. What is sunrise to an ordinary And flat ireads thatch'd with stover, them to ous god, emerges and shines; the tall, soft, pliant herbs, the evergreen meadows, the expanding roof of lofty oaks, the whole English landscape, continually renewed and illumined by the flooding moisture, diffuses an inexhaustible freshness. These meadows, red and white with flowers, ever moist and ever young, slip off their veil of golden mist, and appear suddenly, timidly, like beautiful virgins. Here is the cuckoo-flower, which springs up before the coming of the swallow; there the hare-bell, blue as the veins of a woman; the marigold, which sets with the sun, and, weeping, rises with him. Drayton, in his Polyolbion, sings keep; Thy banks with peonèd and lilied brims, flowers Diffusest honey-drops, reireshing showers, crown My bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down."t "They are as gentle as zephyrs, blowing below the violet, Not wagging his sweet head." ‡ Greene writes: Then from her burnisht gate the go dlv glittring East Guilds every lofty top, which lae the humorous Nigh flowers, Sat bright and gay, And gloried in the dew of 's' showers, And did display Her mantle chequered all with g The same author also says: lap; And beauteous Thetis his red body wrap * M. Drayton's Polyolbion, ed. 622, 3th So Spenser in his Faërie Queene, and his heart of giving rise to smiles sings: In the life of every man there are moments when, in presence of objects, he experiences a shock. This mass of ideas, of mangled recollections, of mutilated images, which lie hidden in all corners of his mind, are set in motion, organized, suddenly developed like a flower. He is enraptured; he cannot help looking at and admiring the charming creature which has just appeared; he wishes to see it again, and others like it, and dreams of nothing else. There are such moments in the life of nations, and this is one of them. They are happy in contemplating beautiful things, and wish only that they should be the most beautiful possible. They are not preoccupied, as we are, with theories. They do not excite themselves to express moral or philosophical ideas. They wish to enjoy through the imagination, through the eyes, like those Italian nobles, who, at the same time, were so captivated by fine colors and forms, that they covered with paintings not only their rooms and their churches, but the lids of their chests and the saddles of their horses. The rich and green sun ay country; young, gayly-attired ladies, blooming with health and love; half-draped gods and goddesses, masterpieces and models of strength and grace, these are the most lovely objects which man can contemplate, the most capable of satisfying his senses and joy; and these are the objects which occur in all the poets in a most wonderful abundance of songs, pastorals, sonnets, little fugitive pieces, so lively, delicate, easily unfolded, that we have never since had their equals. What though Venus and Cupid have lost their altars? Like the contemporary painters of Italy, they willingly imagine a beautiful naked child, drawn on a chariot of gold through the limpid air; or a woman, redolent with youth, standing on the waves, wuch kiss her snowy feet. Harsh Ben Jonson is ravished with the scene. The disciplined battalion of his sturdy verses changes into a band of little graceful strophes, which trip as lightly as Raphael's children. He sees his lady approach, sitting on the chariot of Love, drawn by swans and doves. Love leads the car; she passes calm and smiling, and all hearts, charmed by her divine looks, wish no other joy than to see and serve her forever. Do but look on her eyes, they do light As Love's star when it riseth!... Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier? is What can be more lively, more unlike measured and artificial mythology! Like Theocritus and Moschus, they play with their smiling gods, and their belief becomes a estiva... One day, ir an alcove of a wood, Cupid meets a nymph asleep : * Spenser's Works, ed. Todd, 1863, The Faerie Queene, i. c. 11, st. 51. * Ben Jonson's Poems, ed. R. Bell. Cele bration of Charis; her Triumph, p. 125. |
