Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 43

[111] Concerning translations of Watson's Latin poems, I may be allowed to refer to a paper contributed to the _Modern Language Quarterly_, February, 1904, vi. p. 125.

[112] Cf. the pa.s.sage from Spenser's October eclogue, quoted on p. 88.

[113] A certain similarity between this poem and the song in _Love's Labour's Lost_, beginning:

On a day--alack the day!-- Love, whose month was ever May;

has caused them to be at times ascribed to Shakespeare. They are subscribed 'Ignoto' in _England's Helicon_, but appeared among the poems published with Barnfield's _Lady Pecunia_ in 1598, a tail of thirty lines of very inferior quality being subst.i.tuted for the singularly perfect and effective final couplet. The poem appeared again in the following year in the _Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_, this time with both the couplet and the addition. The _Helicon_ version is certainly by far the best, and not improbably represents the poem as originally written in imitation of Shakespeare's. See J. B. Henneman's paper in _An English Miscellany_, Oxford, 1901.

[114] Gascoigne's _Steel Gla.s.s_ is far rather medieval in conception.

[115] Compare with the lines in _Rosalynd_, beginning 'Phoebe sat, sweet she sat,' those in _Tarlton's News out of Purgatory_, beginning, 'Down I sat, I sat down,' and see A. H. Bullen's _Poems from Elizabethan Romances_, 1890, p. xi.

[116] The copy of _Pan's Pipe_ in the British Museum wants the _Tale_, but this will be found by itself marked C. 40. e. 68 (2, 3).

[117] Collier and Hazlitt supposed two William Ba.s.ses, but the balance of evidence seems against the theory. See S. L. Lee in _Dic. Nat. Biog_., and the edition by R. W. Bond, 1893.

[118] Fleay (_Biographical Chronicle_, i. p. 67) identifies Musidore with Lodge, and 'Hero's last Musaeus' with H. Petowe. The latter identification, which had already been proposed by Collier (_Bibliographical Account_, i. p. 130), is in all probability correct.

[119] Printed by me in the _Modern Language Quarterly_, July, 1901, iv. p.

85.

[120] These are missing in most copies of the book; the only one I know containing them is in the Bodleian.

[121] I do not know who started the idea. It was mentioned in the _Retrospective Review_ (ii. p. 180) in 1820, accepted by Sommer, and elaborated with small success by K. Windscheid. Ma.s.son makes no mention of it in his edition of Milton's poetical works. The author of _Lycidas_ was probably a reader and admirer of Browne's poems, but of _Britannia's Pastorals_ rather than of the decidedly inferior eclogues.

[122] The _Arcadian Princess_, translated by Brathwaite from Mariano Silesio, a kind of metaphorical manual of judicial polity, is in no way pastoral. It may be remarked that in 1627 there appeared as the work of one I. D. B. an 'Eclogue, ou Chant Pastoral,' on the marriage (1625) of Charles and Henrietta Maria, in which two Scotch Shepherds, Robin and Jacquet, discourse in French Alexandrines. _Taylor's Pastoral_ of 1624 again, a fanciful treatise of religious and secular history, does not properly belong to pastoral tradition.

[123] One of these appeared two years previously, ent.i.tled _The Shepherd's Oracle_.

[124] Appended to the third edition of the _Arcadia_, 1598.

[125] Appended to the _Arcadia_ in 1613.

[126] _Arcadia_, 1590, fol. 237 verso.

[127] _Opera_, Basel, 1553, p. 622.

[128] The song is said to be between 'two nymphs, each answering other line for line'; but the simple alternation adopted by Spenser makes nonsense of the present poem. The above arrangement seems to distribute the lines best; viz. the first quatrain to Phillis, with interposition of lines 2 and 4 by Amaryllis, the second quatrain to Amaryllis, with interposition of line 2 only by Phillis.

[129] Others in the _Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_, 1599, and Walton's _Complete Angler_, 1653.

[130] So, rather than 'Fair-lined,' as Bullen prints; but query 'Fur-lined.'

[131] This is the text of _England's Helicon_, which is superior to that in the play, except for the omission of the couplet in brackets, and possibly in the reading 'hath sworn' for 'is sworn,' in l. 11.

[132] From E. K. Chambers' _English Pastorals_, p. 113. The date is uncertain, but a tune of the name was extant in 1603. The earliest recorded text is a broadside, of about 1650, in the Roxburghe collection (III. 142). The conjecture of an 'original issue, _circa_ 1600,' is on the whole plausible. In that case there was, somewhere, a poet capable of antic.i.p.ating the particular cadences of _Sirena_ and _Agincourt_, and that poet is more likely to have been Drayton than another. See Ebsworth's edition for the Ballad Society (_Roxburghe Ballads_, vi. p. 460).

[133] _Lycidas_ is almost too familiar, one might suppose, to need comment, but such irreconcilable views have been held by different authorities, from Dr. Johnson onwards, that it may not be idle to attempt to view the work critically in relation to pastoral tradition as a whole.

[134] When Johnson went on to describe the form of the poem as 'easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting,' he was but exhibiting a critical incapacity which seriously impairs his authority in literary matters.

[135] For a detailed account of the poem, as well as for a number of parallel pa.s.sages--as well as some of doubtful relevance--the reader may be referred to F. W. Moorman's monograph. I use the text of G. Goodwin's edition of Browne's poems, with introduction by A. H. Bullen, 2 vols., 1894.

[136] K. Windscheid professes to discover a different hand in the third book, and is inclined to ascribe it to some imitator of Browne. Its merit is certainly not high, but it is no worse than parts of the former books; and Browne's work is so notoriously unequal that I can see no excuse for depriving or relieving him of its authors.h.i.+p.

[137]

The hatred which they bore was only this, That every one did hate to do amiss; Their fortune still was subject to their will; Their want--O happy!--was the want of ill. (II. iii. 447.)

Many readers may be inclined to pity poor men and women debarred from that

First of all joys that unto sin belong-- The sweet felicity of doing wrong.

[138] Pail.

[139] The translater was afterwards knighted. Who was the first person to ascribe this translation to Thomas Wilc.o.x, a certain 'very painful minister of G.o.d's word,' I am not sure. The mistake has, however, been constantly repeated, and led Underhill, in his able monograph on _Spanish Literature in England_, to give a detailed account of Wilc.o.x and his wholly chimerical connexion with the spread of Spanish influence in this country. The translation is preserved in the British Museum, Addit. MS.

18,638, and contains the translator's name perfectly clearly written, both on the t.i.tle-page and at the end of the dedicatory epistle to Fulke Greville. This MS. is a copy of the original made by the translator himself about 1617, and bears on the fly-leaf the name 'Dorothy Grevell.'

The t.i.tle-page is worth transcribing: 'Diana de Monte mayor done out of Spanish by Thomas Wils Esquire, In the yeare 1596 & dedicated to the Erle of Southampt who was then uppon y'e Spanish voiage w'th my Lord of Ess.e.x--Wherein under the names and vailes of Sheppards and theire Lovers are covertly discoursed manie n.o.ble actions & affections of the Spanish nation, as is of y'e English of [_sic_] y't admirable & never enough praised booke of S'r. Phil: Sidneyes Arcadia.'

[140] Arber's edition, p. 83.

[141] See the useful table of correspondences given by Homer Smith in his paper on the _Pastoral Influence in the English Drama_. All needful apparatus for the study of the story will of course be found in Furness'

'Variorum' edition of the play.

[142] Macaulay once remarked of the _Faery Queen_, that few and weary are the readers who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. It might with equal or even greater force be contended that most readers are asleep ere the Arcadian princesses in Sidney's romance are rescued from the power of Cecropia.

[143] Into purely bibliographical questions, such as the history of the Edinburgh edition of 1599, it is of course impossible to enter here.

[144] Letter in the State Papers. See Introduction to Sommer's facsimile of the first edition, 1891.

[145] Conversations with Drummond, X. Shakespeare Society, 1842, p. 10.

[146] K. Brunhuber, to whose work on the _Arcadia_ (_Sir Philip Sidneys Arcadia und ihre Nachlaufer_, 1903) I am in a measure indebted, failing to find many specific borrowings, is inclined to make light of Montemayor's influence. There can, however, be little question that, in general style and conception, Sidney, while influenced by the Greek romance, yet belonged essentially to the Spanish school.

[147] a.n.a.lyses of the _Arcadia_ will be fouud in all works upon the novel from Dunlop to J. J. Jusserand and W. Raleigh. Perhaps the fullest, which is also provided with copious extracts, is that in the _Retrospective Review_, 1820, ii. p. 1.

[148] An allegorical interpretation certainly found favour among the critics of the time, and was advanced by Puttenham in his _Art of English Poesy_ (1589), even before the publication of the romance. See also Thomas Wilson's allusion on the t.i.tle-page of his translation from the _Diana_, given above (p. 141, note).

[149] A critical edition remains, however, a desideratum.

[150] See Jusserand's _English Novel in the time of Shakespeare_, 1890, p.

274.

[151] The later fas.h.i.+onable pastoral of French origin, with the _Astree_ as its type and chief representative, does not concern us, or at most concerns us so indirectly as not to warrant our lingering over it here.

[152] I should at once say that the view of the development of the pastoral drama adopted above is not endorsed by all scholars. To have set forth at length the considerations upon which it is based would have swollen beyond all bounds an introductory section of my work. Since, however, the question is one of considerable interest, I have added what I believe to be a fairly full and impartial discussion in the form of an appendix.