Amenities of Literature Part 39

It is indeed hardly to be hoped that the volatile loungers over our duodecimos of fiction can sympathise with manners, incidents, and personages which for them are purely ideal--the truth of nature which lies under the veil must escape from their eyes; for how are they to grow patient over the interminable pages of a folio, unbroken by chapters, without a single resting-place?[8] And I fear they will not allow for that formal complimentary style, borrowed from the Italians and the Spaniards, which is sufficiently ludicrous.

The narrative too is obstructed by verses, in which Sidney never obtained facility or grace. Nor will the defects of the author be always compensated by his beauties, for "The Arcadia" was indeed a fervent effusion, but an uncorrected work. The author declared that it was not to be submitted to severer eyes than those of his beloved sister, "being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in her presence, the rest by sheets sent as fast as they were done." The writer, too, confesses, to "a young head having many fancies begotten in it, which, if it had not been in some way delivered, would have grown a monster, and more sorry might I be that they came in, than they gat out." So truly has Sidney expressed the fever of genius, when working on itself in darkness and in doubt--absorbing reveries, tumultuous thoughts, the ceaseless inquietudes of a soul which has not yet found a voice. Even on his death-bed, the author of "The Arcadia" desired its suppression; but the fame her n.o.ble brother could contemn was dear to his sister, who published these loose papers without involving the responsibility of the writer, affectionately calling the work, "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia;" and this volume of melodious prose, of visionary heroism, and the pensive sweetness of loves and friends.h.i.+ps, became the delight of poets.

There is one more work of Sidney, perhaps more generally known than "The Arcadia"--his "Defence of Poetry." Lord Orford sarcastically apologised, in the second edition of his "Royal and n.o.ble Authors," for his omission of any notice of this production. "I had forgotten it," he says; and he adds, "a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired." It was a more daring offence to depreciate this work of love, than the romance which at least lay farther removed from the public eye. The "Defence of Poetry" has had, since the days of Walpole, several editions by eminent critics. Sidney, in this luminous criticism, and effusion of poetic feeling, has introduced the princ.i.p.al precepts of Aristotle, touched by the fire and sentiment of Longinus; and, for the first time in English literature, has exhibited the beat.i.tude of criticism in a poet-critic.

Sir PHILIP SIDNEY a.s.suredly was one of the most admirable of mankind, largely conspicuous in his life, and unparalleled in his death. But was this singular man exempt from the frailties of our common nature? If we rely on his biographer Zouch, we shall not discover any; if we trust to Lord Orford, we shall perceive little else. The truth is, that had Sidney lived, he might have grown up to that ideal greatness which the world adored in him; but he perished early, not without some of those errors of youth, which even in their rankness betrayed the generous soil whence they sprung. His fame was more mature than his life, which indeed was but the preparation for a splendid one. We are not surprised, that to such an accomplished knight the crown of Poland was offered, and that all England went into mourning for their hero. We discover his future greatness, if we may use the expression, in the n.o.ble termination of his early career, rather than in the race of glory which he actually ran.

The life of Sidney would have been a finer subject for the panegyric of a Pliny, than for the biography of a Plutarch; his fame was sufficient for the one, while his actions were too few for the other.[9]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Annual Review," iv. 547.

[2] Who does not recognise a well-known pa.s.sage in SHAKESPEARE, copied too by COLERIDGE and BYRON, in these words of SIDNEY--"More sweet than a gentle south-west wind which comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer." Such delightful diction, which can only spring out of deep poetic emotion, may be found in the poetic prose of Sidney.

"Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour."--

Shaks. _Twelfth Night_, act 1, sc. i.

"And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, O'er willowy meads and shadow'd waters creeping, And Ceres' golden fields."--

Coleridge's _First Advent of Love_.

"Breathing all gently o'er his cheek and mouth, As o'er a bed of violets the sweet south."--

_Don Juan_, canto 2, verse 168.

[3] Sidney alludes to all that secret history of Leicester which Parsons the Jesuit pretends to disclose in his "Leicester's Commonwealth." This challenge was found among the Sidney papers, but probably was not issued.

[4] See "The Arcadia," p. 267; eighth edition, 1633.

[5] See Coleridge's "Table-Talk," ii. 178.

[6] Richard Barnfielde's "Affectionate Shepherd" forms such a collection of sonnets which were popular. The poet bewails his unsuccessful love for a beautiful youth, yet professing the chastest affection. Poets, like mocking-birds, repeat the notes of others, till the cant becomes idle, and the fas.h.i.+on of style obsolete.

[7] A lady who has become enamoured of the friend who is pleading for her lover, and suddenly makes the fatal avowal to that friend, thus expresses her emotion--"Grown bolder or madder, or bold with madness, I discovered my affection to him." "He left nothing una.s.sayed to disgrace himself, to grace his friend."--p. 39.

[8] In the late Mr. Heber's treasures of our vernacular literature there was a copy of "The Arcadia," with ma.n.u.script notes by Gabriel Harvey. He had also divided the work into chapters, enumerating the general contents of each.--"Bib. Heberiana," part the first. A republication of this copy--omitting the continuations of the Romance by a strange hand, and all the eclogues, and most of the verses--would form a desirable volume, not too voluminous.

[9] This summary of the character of Sidney I wrote nearly thirty years ago, in the "Quarterly Review."

SPENSER.

Though little is circ.u.mstantially related, yet frequent outbreakings, scattered throughout the writings of Spenser, commemorate the main incidents of his existence. His emotions become dates, and no poet has more fully confided to us his "secret sorrows."

Spenser in the far north was a love-lorn youth when he composed "The Shepherd's Calendar." This rustic poem, rustic from an affectation of the Chaucerian style, though it bears the divisions of the twelve months, displays not the course of the seasons so much as the course of the poet's thoughts; the themes are plaintive or recreative, amatorial or satirical, and even theological, in dialogues between certain interlocutors. To some are prefixed Italian mottoes; for that language then stamped a cla.s.sical grace on our poetry. In the eclogue of January we perceive that it was still the season of hope and favour with the amatory poet, for the motto is, _Anchora Speme_ ("yet I hope"); but in the eclogue of June we discover _Gia Speme Spenta_ ("already hope is extinguished"). A positive rejection by Rosalind herself had for ever mingled gall with his honey, and he ungenerously inveighs against the more successful arts of a hated rival. Rosalind was indeed not the Cynthia of a poetic hour: deep was the poet's first love; and that obdurate mistress had called him "her Pegasus," and laughed at his sighs.

It was when the forlorn poet had thus lost himself in the labyrinth of love, and "The Shepherd's Calendar" had not yet closed, that his learned friend Harvey, or, in his poetical appellative, Hobbinol, to steal him away from the languor of a country retirement, invited him to southern vales, and with generous warmth introduced "the unknown" to Sir Philip Sidney. This important incident in the destiny of Spenser has been carefully noted by a person who conceals himself under the initials E.

K., and who is usually designated as "the old commentator on 'The Shepherd's Calendar.'" This E. K. is a mysterious personage, and will remain undiscovered to this day, unless the reader shall partic.i.p.ate in my own conviction.

"The Shepherd's Calendar" was accompanied by a commentary on every separate month; and this singularity of an elaborate commentary in the first edition of the work of a living author was still more remarkable by the intimate acquaintance of the commentator with the author himself.

E. K. a.s.sures us, and indeed affords ample evidence, that "he was privy to all his (the poet's) designs." He furnishes some domestic details which no one could have told so accurately, except he to whom they relate; and we find our commentator also critically conversant with many of the author's ma.n.u.scripts which the world has never seen. Rarely has one man known so much of another. The poet and the commentator move together as parts of each other. In the despair of conjecture some ventured to surmise that the poet himself had been his own commentator.

But the last editor of Spenser is indignant at a suggestion which would taint with strange egotism the modest nature of our bard. Yet E. K. was no ordinary writer; an excellent scholar he was, whose gloss has preserved much curious knowledge of ancient English terms and phrases.

We may be sure that a pen so abundant and so skilfully exercised was not one to have restricted itself to this solitary lucubration of his life and studies. The commentary, moreover, is accompanied by a copious and erudite preface, _addressed to Gabriel Harvey_, and the style of these pages is too remarkable not to be recognised. At length let me lift the mask from this mysterious personage, by declaring that E. K. is Spenser's dear and generous friend Gabriel Harvey himself. I have judged by the strong peculiarity of Harvey's style; one cannot long doubt of a portrait marked by such prominent features. Pedantic but energetic, thought pressed on thought, sparkling with imagery, mottled with learned allusions, and didactic with subtle criticism--this is our Gabriel! The prefacer describes the state of our bardling as that of "young birds that be nearly crept out of their nest, who, by little, first prove their tender wings before they make a greater flight. And yet our new poet flieth as a bird that in time shall be able to keep wing with the best."

From this detection, we may infer that the Commentary was an innocent _ruse_ of the zealous friend to overcome the resolute timidity of our poet.[1] His youthful muse, teeming with her future progeny, was, however, morbidly sensible in the hour of parturition. Conscious of her powers, thus closes the address "To his Booke:"--

And when thou art past jeopardie, Come tell me what was said of me, And I will send more after thee.

After several editions, the work still remained anonymous, and the unnamed poet was long referred to by critics of the day only as "the late unknown poet," or "the gentleman who wrote 'The Shepherd's Calendar.'"

In Sir Philip Sidney the youthful poet found a youthful patron. The shades of Penshurst opened to leisure and the muse. "The Shepherd's Calendar" at length concluded, "The Poet's Year" was dedicated to "Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all t.i.tles, both of learning and chivalry." Leicester, the uncle of Sidney, was gained, and from that moment Spenser entered into a golden servitude.

The destiny of Spenser was to be thrown among courtiers, and to wear the silken trammels of n.o.ble patrons--a life of honourable dependence among eminent personages. Here a seductive path was opened, not easily scorned by the gentle mind of him whose days were to be counted by its reveries, and the main business of whose life was to be the cantos of his "Faery Queen."

Of the favours and mortifications during his career of patronage, and of his intercourse with the court, too little is known; though sufficient we shall discover to authenticate the reality of his complaints, the verity of his strictures, and all the flutterings of the sickening heart of him who moves round and round the interminable circle of "hope deferred."

Our poet was now ascending the steps of favouritism; and the business of his life was with the fair and the great. He looked up to the smiles of distinguished ladies, for to such is the greater portion of his poems dedicated. If her Majesty gloried in "The Faery Queen," we are surprised to find that the most exquisite of political satires, "Mother Hubbard's Tale," should be addressed to the Lady Compton and Monteagle; that "The Tears of the Muses" were inscribed to Lady Strange; and that "The Ruins of Time" are dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke. For others, their nuptials were graced by the music of his verse, or their sorrows were soothed by its elegiac tenderness.[2] In the Epithalamion on his own marriage, the poet reminds

The sacred sisters who have often times Been to the aiding others to adorn, Whom ye thought worthy of your graceful rymes, That even the greatest did not greatly scorn To hear their names sung in your simple lays, But joyed at their praise.

"The Tears of the Muses," as one of his plaintive poems is called, had possibly been spared had the poet only moved among that bevy of ladies whose names are enshrined in his volumes, around the Queen, whose royalty so frequently rises with splendour in his verse. Unawares, perhaps, the gentle bard discovered that personal attachments by cruel circ.u.mstances were converted into political connexions; that a favourite must pay the penalty of favouritism; and that in binding himself more closely to his patrons, he was wounded the more deeply by their great adversary; and in gaining Sidney, Leicester, and Ess.e.x, Spenser was doomed to feel the potent arm of the scornful and unpoetic Burleigh.

The Queen was the earliest and the latest object of our poet's musings.

"The Maiden Queen" enters into almost every poem. Shortly after the publication of "The Shepherd's Calendar," wherein her Majesty occupies the month of April, Spenser, in writing to Harvey, has this remarkable pa.s.sage:--"Your desire to hear of my late being with her Majesty must die in itself." By this ambiguous reply, it is, however, evident that Harvey, and probably Spenser himself, had looked forwards, by the intervention of his great patrons, that "the unknown poet," as he is called by "the old commentator," would have been honoured by an interview with the royal poetess. Elizabeth, among her princely infirmities, had the ambition of verse. She was afterwards saluted as

A peerless prince and peerless poetess,

by Spenser, who must, however, have closed his ear at her harsher numbers.[3] We may regret that we know so little of our Spenser's intercourse with the Queen. If Sidney made him known to her Majesty, as Philips has told, the poet might have read to the Queen the earlier cantos of his romantic epic. The poet himself has only recorded that "The Shepherd of the Ocean," Sir Walter Raleigh, brought him into the presence of Cynthia, "The Queen of the Ocean," who

To his oaten pipe inclined her ear, And it desired, at timely hours, to hear.

The Lord Treasurer Burleigh seems to have marred those "timely hours."

Spenser had lingered before the fountain of court favour; and how often the dark shadow of the political minister intervened between the poet and the throne we are reminded by the deep sensitiveness of the victim, the murmurs, and even the scorn of the indignant bard.

Under the patronage of Leicester, the poet's services were transferred to Lord Arthur Grey, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who appointed Spenser his secretary. He has vindicated this viceroy's administration in the "Faery Queen," by shadowing forth his severe justice in Arthegal, accompanied by his "Iron Man," whose iron flail "threshed out falsehood" in their quest of Ierne, in that "Land of Ire" where justice and the executioner were ever erratic.

Of the brief life of the poet, his better years were consumed in Ireland, where he filled several appointments more honourable than lucrative. His slender revenue seems not to have flourished under a grant of land from the crown, on the conditions attached to it in 1585.[4] Cast into active service, the musings of the "Faery Queen" were a.s.suredly often thrown aside; its fate was still dubious, for Ireland was not a land of the muses, as he himself declared, when a chance occurrence, the visit of Rawleigh to that country, gave Spenser another Sidney. The "Faery Queen" once more opened its mystical leaves on the banks of the Mulla, before a judge, whose voice was fame.

And when he heard the music that I made, He found himself full greatly pleased at it; He gan to cast great liking to my lore, And great disliking to _my luckless lot, That banish'd had myself, like wight forlore, Into that waste where I was quite forgot_.

Spenser has here disclosed involuntarily "the secret sorrow."

The acres of Kilcolman offered no delights to "the wight forlore, forgotten in that waste." Our tender and melancholy poet was not blessed with that fort.i.tude which, even in a barren solitude, can muse on its own glory, as Petrarch and Rousseau were wont, and which knows also to value a repose freed from spiteful rivalries and mordacious malignity.

And now opened his tedious suings at court, for what, but to obtain some situation in his native home, which offered repose of mind, and carelessness of the future? We know of his restless wanderings to England, and his constant returns to Ireland. We find the poet, in 1590, wearied by solicitations, throwing out the immortal lines so painfully descriptive of