Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

PAGE NO.

a certain depth and chivalry of feeling,-in the rare and noble quality of disinterestedness (to put it in one word), he has no superior, hardly perhaps an equal, amongst our Poets; and after or beside Shakespeare's Sonnets, his Astrophel and Stella, in the Editor's judgment, offers the most intense and powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range of our poetry.-Hundreds of years: The very rapture of love,' says Mr. Ruskin; 'A lover like this does not believe his mistress can grow old or die.'

12 19 Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries;' and he seems to have caught, in those southern seas no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost contemporary Art of Venice,-the glory and the glow of Veronese, Titian, or Tintoret.-From the same romance is No. 71: a charming picture in the purest style of the later Italian Renaissance. The clear (1. 1) is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old cosmography. For a fair there's fairer none: If you desire a Beauty, there is none more beautiful than Rosaline.

14 22 Another gracious lyric from an Elizabethan Songbook, first reprinted (it is believed) in Mr. W. J. Linton's 'Rare Poems,' in 1883.

15 23 16 25

20 31

that fair thou owest that beauty thou ownest.
From one of the three Song-books of T. Campion,
who appears to have been author of the words
which he set to music. His merit as a lyrical poet
(recognized in his own time, but since then for-
gotten) has been again brought to light by Mr.
Bullen's taste and research: swerving (st. 2) is his
conjecture for changing in the text of 1601.
the star Whose worth's unknown although his height
be taken: apparently, Whose stellar influence is
uncalculated, although his angular altitude from the
plane of the astrolabe or artificial horizon used by
astrologers has been determined.

20 32 This lovely song appears, as here given, in Putten-
ham's Arte of English Poesie,' 1589. A longer and
inferior form was published in the Arcadia' of
1590; but Puttenham's prefatory words clearly assign
his version to Sidney's own authorship.
keel: keep cooler by stirring round.
expense: loss.

23 37

24 39

40 prease press.

25 41

·

Nativity, once in the main of light: when a star has risen and entered on the full stream of light another of the astrological phrases no longer familiar.

"AGE NO.

Crooked eclipses: as coming athwart the Sun' apparent course.

Wordsworth, thinking probably of the 'Venus' and the 'Lucrece,' said finely of Shakespeare: 'Shakespeare could not have written an Epic; he would have died of plethora of thought.' This prodigality of nature is exemplified equally in his Sonnets. The copious selection here given (which from the wealth of the material, required greater consideration than any other portion of the Editor's task),—contains many that will not be fully felt and understood without some earnestness of thought on the reader's part. But he is not likely to regret the labour.

26 42 upon misprision growing; either, granted in error, or, on the growth of contempt.

43

With the tone of this Sonnet compare Hamlet's 'Give me that man That is not passion's slave' &c. Shakespeare's writings show the deepest sensitiveness to passion :-hence the attraction he felt in the contrasting effects of apathy.

26 44 grame: sorrow. Renaissance influences long impeded the return of English poets to the charming realism of this and a few other poems by Wyat. 28 45 Pandion in the ancient fable was father to Philomela.

29 47

In the old legend it is now Philomela, now Procne (the swallow) who suffers violence from Tereus. This song has a fascination in its calm intensity of passion; that 'sad earnestness and vivid exactness which Cardinal Newman ascribes to the master-pieces of ancient poetry.

proved: approved.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

censures judges.

52 Exquisite in its equably-balanced metrical flow.

:

32 53 Judging by its style, this beautiful example of old simplicity and feeling may, perhaps, be referred to the earlier years of Elizabeth. Late forgot lately. 35 57 Printed in a little Anthology by Nicholas Breton, 1597. It is, however, a stronger and finer piece of work than any known to be his.-St. 1 silly: simple; dole: grief; chief: chiefly. St. 3 If there be . obscure Perhaps, if there be any who speak harshly of thee, thy pain may plead for pity from Fate. This poem, with 60 and 143, are each graceful variations of a long popular theme.

36 58 That busy archer: Cupid. Descries: used actively; points out.-' The last line of this poem is a little obscured by transposition. He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a virtue?' (C. Lamb).

37 59

White Iope: suggested, Mr. Bullen notes, by a passage in Propertius (iii, 20) describing Spirits in the lower world:

Vobiscum est Iope, vobiscum candida Tyro.

PAGE NO.

38 62 cypres or cyprus,-used by the old writers for crape whether from the French crespe or from the Island whence it was imported. Its accidental similarity in spelling to cypress has, here and in Milton's Penseroso, probably confused readers. ramage: confused noise.

39 63 41 66

'I never saw anything like this funeral dirge,' says Charles Lamb, 'except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, whic seems to resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.'

43 70 Paraphrased from an Italian madrigal.

44 72 45 73 74

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

46

48

49

50

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

211

Non so conoscer poi

Se voi le rose, o sian le rose in voi.
crystal: fairness.
stare: starling.

This 'Spousal Verse' was written in honour of the
Ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. Nowhere
has Spenser more emphatically displayed himself as
the very poet of Beauty: The Renaissance impulse
in England is here seen at its highest and purest.
The genius of Spenser, like Chaucer's, does itself
justice only in poems of some length. Hence it is
impossible to represent it in this volume by other
pieces of equal merit, but of impracticable dimen-
sions. And the same applies to such poems as the
Lover's Lament or the Ancient Mariner.

entrailed: twisted. Feateously: elegantly.
shend: shame.

a noble peer: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex,
then at the height of his brief triumph after taking
Cadiz hence the allusion following to the Pillars of
Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.
Elisa Elizabeth.

twins of Jove: the stars Castor and Pollux: baldric
belt; the zodiac.

52 79 This lyric may with very high probability be assigned to Campion, in whose first Book of Airs it appeared (1601). The evidence sometimes quoted ascribing it to Lord Bacon appears to be valueless.

Summary of Book Second.

THIS division, embracing generally the latter eighty years of the Seventeenth century, contains the close of our Early poetical style and the commencement of the Modern. In Dryden we see the first master of the new in Milton, whose genius dominates here as Shakespeare's in the former book,the crown and consummation of the early period. Their splen

A A

did Odes are far in advance of any prior attempts, Spenser's excepted: they exhibit that wider and grander range which years and experience and the struggles of the time conferred on Poetry. Our Muses now give expression to political feeling, to religious thought, to a high philosophic statesmanship in writers such as Marvell, Herbert, and Wotton: whilst in Marvell and Milton, again, we find noble attempts, hitherto rare in our literature, at pure description of nature, destined in our own age to be continued and equalled. Meanwhile the poetry of simple passion, although before 1660 often deformed by verbal fancies and conceits of thought, and afterwards by levity and an artificial tone,-produced in Herrick and Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the Elizabethan until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself, and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper.-That the change from our early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and simplicity is undeniable: yet the bolder and wider scope which Poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts then made to gain greater clearness in expression, in their results have been no slight compensation.

PAGE NO.

58 85 1. 8 whist: hushed.

---

59

61

62

1. 32 than

Lord of all.

obsolete for then: Pan: used here for the

1. 38 consort; Milton's spelling of this word, here and elsewhere, has been followed, as it is uncertain whether he used it in the sense of accompanying, or simply for concert.

1. 21 Lars and Lemures: household gods and spirits of relations dead. Flamens (1. 24) Roman priests. That twice-batter'd god (1. 29) Dagon.

1. 6 Osiris, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed after death in a sacred chest. This mythe, reproduced in Syria and Greece in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, may have originally signified the annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn overcomes Typho. L. 8 unshower'd grass: as watered by the Nile only. L. 33 youngest-teemed: last-born. Bright-harness'd (1. 37) armoured.

64 87 The Late Massacre: the Vaudois persecution, carried on in 1655 by the Duke of Savoy. No more mighty Sonnet than this collect in verse,' as it has been justly named, probably can be found in any language. Readers should observe that it is constructed on the original Italian or Provençal model. This form, in a

PAGE NO.

language such as ours, not affluent in rhyme, presents great difficulties; the rhymes are apt to be forced, or the substance commonplace. But, when successfully handled, it has a unity and a beauty of effect which place the strict Sonnet above the less compact and less lyrical systems adopted by Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and other Elizabethan poets.

85 88 Cromwell returned from Ireland in 1650, and Marvell probably wrote his lines soon after, whilst living at Nunappleton in the Fairfax household. It is hence

not surprising that (st. 21-24) he should have been deceived by Cromwell's professed submissiveness to the Parliament which, when it declined to register his decrees, he expelled by armed violence :-one despotism, by natural law, replacing another. The poet's insight has, however, truly prophesied that result in his last two lines.

This Ode, beyond doubt one of the finest in our lan. guage, and more in Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet, is occasionally obscure from imitation of the condensed Latin syntax. The meaning of st. 5 is rivalry or hostility are the same to a lofty spirit, and limitation more hateful than opposition.' The allusion in st. 11 is to the old physical doctrines of the non-existence of a vacuum and the impenetrability of matter:-in st. 17 to the omen traditionally connected with the foundation of the Capitol at Rome :-forced, fated. The ancient belief that certain years in life complete natural periods and are hence peculiarly exposed to death, is introduced in st. 26 by the word climacteric.

68 89 Lycidas: The person here lamented is Milton's college contemporary, Edward King, drowned in 1637 whilst crossing from Chester to Ireland.

[blocks in formation]

Strict Pastoral Poetry was first written or perfected by the Dorian Greeks settled in Sicily: but the conventional use of it, exhibited more magnificently in Lycidas than in any other pastoral, is apparently of Roman origin. Milton, employing the noble freedom of a great artist, has here united ancient mythology, with what may be called the modern mythology of Camus and Saint Peter,-to direct Christian images. Yet the poem, if it gains in historical interest, suffers in poetry by the harsh intrusion of the writer's narrow and violent theological politics.The metrical structure of this glorious elegy is partly derived from Italian models.

1. 11 Sisters of the sacred well: the Muses, said to frequent the Pierian Spring at the foot of Mount Olympus.

1. 10 Mona: Anglesea, called by the Welsh poets, the Dark Island, from its dense forests. Deva (1. 11) the Dee: a river which may have derived its magical

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »