this creative and superior conception by which the artist dresses and embellishes nature. At the same time, he is an ardent man, trusting in the nobleness of his aspirations and in the width of his ideas, who scorns the brawling of the shoppy, narrow, vulgar Puritanism, and glows with the lofty irony, the proud freedom, of a poet and a lord. In his eyes, if there is any art or science capable of augmenting and cultivating our generosity, it is poetry. He draws comparison after comparison between it and philosophy or history, whose pretensions he laughs at and dismisses. He fights for poetry as a knight for his lady, and in what heroic and splendid style! He says: 'I never heard the old Song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet: and yet it is sung but by some blinde Crowder, with no rougher voyce, than rude stile; which beeing so evill apparelled in the dust and Cobweb of that uncivill age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindare ?'2 The philosopher repels, the poet attracts: 'Nay hee doth as if your journey should lye through a faire vineyard, at the very first, give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that tast, you may long to passe further. '3 What description of poetry can displease you? Pastoral so easy and genial? Is it the bitter but wholesome Iambicke, who rubbes the galled minde, making shame the Trumpet of villanie, with bold and open crying out against naughtinesse ?'4 At the close he reviews his arguments, and the vibrating martial accent of his poetical period is like a trump of victory: 'So that since the excellencies of it (poetry) may bee so easily and so justly confirmed, and the low-creeping objections so soone trodden downe, it not being an Art of lyes, but of true doctrine; not of effeminatenesse, but of notable stirring of courage; not of abusing man's wit, but of strengthning man's wit; not banished, but honoured by Plato; let us rather plant more Laurels for to ingarland the Poets heads than suffer the ill-savoured breath of such wrong speakers, once to blow upon the cleare springs of Poesie.'5 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 1 The Defence of Poesie, ed. fol. 1629, p. 558: 'I dare undertake, that Orlando Furioso, or honest King Arthur, will never displease a soldier: but the quidditie of Ens and prima materia, will hardly agree with a Corselet.' See also, in these pages, the very lively and spirited personification of History and Philosophy. It contains genuine talent. 3 Ibid. p. 550. 4 Ibid. p. 552. • Ibid. p. 553. time at the contemporary prints, telling myself that man, body and soul, 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 distract us; we are not 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 now-a-days 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 skeleton man, to which civilisation has reduced 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, endure and live. Is there a man living who could withstand the storm of passions and visions which swept over Shakspeare, and end, like him, as a sensible citizen and landed proprietor in his small county? The muscles were firmer, the despair less prompt. The rage of concentrated attention, the half hallucinations, the anguish and heaving of the heart, the quivering of the limbs stretching involuntarily and blindly for action, all the painful impulses which accompany large desires, exhausted them less; this is why they desired longer, and dared more. D'Aubigné, wounded with many sword-thrusts, conceiving death at hand, had himself bound on his horse that he might see his mistress once more, and rode thus several leagues, losing blood, and arriving in a swoon. Such feelings we glean still in their portraits, in the straight looks which pierce like a sword; in this 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 Greene, Lodge, Jonson, Spenser, Shakspeare, in Sidney, as in all the rest. We quickly forget the faults of taste which accompany it, 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 would 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 dimness and tears, we magnify it, and give it a nature which it has not. Then strange comparisons, overrefined ideas, excessive images, become natural. However far Sidney goes, whatever object he touches, he sees throughout the universe only the name and features of Stella. All ideas bring him back to her. He is drawn ever and invincibly by the same thought; and comparisons which seem far-fetched, only express 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."1 To us, the expression is absurd. Is it for Sidney, who for hours together had dwelt on the expression of those eyes, seeing in them at last all the beauties of heaven and earth, who, compared to them, finds all light dull and all joy 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, childishness, fancifulness, 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 sighs greedily for the rippling water: On his knees, with beating heart, oppressed, it seems to him that his mistress is transformed: 'Stella, soveraigne of my joy, . Stella, load-starre of desire, 1 Astrophel and Stella, ed. fol. 1629, 101st sonnet, p. 613. Ibid. 8th song, p. 603. Stella, in whose shining eyes Are the lights of Cupid's skies. Stella, whose voice when it speakes Stella, whose voice when it singeth, Angels to acquaintance bringeth."1 These cries of adoration are like a hymn. Every day he writes thoughts of love which agitate him, and in this long journal of a hundred pages we feel the inflamed breath swell each moment. A smile from his mistress, a curl lifted by the wind, a gesture,-all are events. paints her in every attitude; he cannot see her too constantly. 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: O blisse, fit for a nobler state then me: My friend, that oft saw through all maskes my wo, My spring appeares, O see what here doth grow, I, I, O I may say that she is mine.'3 He There are Oriental splendours in the sparkling sonnet in which he asks why Stella's cheeks have grown pale: 'Where be those Roses gone, which sweetned so our eyes? Where those red cheekes, which oft with faire encrease doth frame The height of honour in the kindly badge of shame ? Who hath the crimson weeds stolne from my morning skies?'4 As he says, his life melts with too much thinking.' Exhausted by ecstasy, he pauses; then he flies from thought to thought, seeking a cure for his wound, like the Satyr whom he describes: 'Prometheus, when first from heaven hie He brought downe fire, ere then on earth not seene, Fond of delight, a Satyr standing by, Gave it a kisse, as it like sweet had beene. 1 Astrophel and Stella, 8th song, p. 603. Ibid. sonnet 69, p. 555. Ibid. 10th song, p. 610. Ibid. sonnet 102, p. 614. Feeling forthwith the other burning power, Wood with the smart with showts and shryking shrill, He sought his ease in river, field, and bower, But for the time his griefe went with him still.'1 At last calm returned; and whilst this calm lasts, the lively, glowing spirit plays like a 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. One feels the charm and liveliness under the seeming affectation: Faire eyes, sweete lips, deare heart, that foolish I As his maine force, choise sport, and easefull stray. For when he will see who dare him gainsay, · When he will play, then in her lips he is, Where blushing red, that Loves selfe them doth love, But when he will for quiets sake remove From all the world, her heart is then his rome, Where well he knowes, no man to him can come. Both heart and sense are captive here. If he finds the eyes of Stella more beautiful than anything in the world, he finds her soul more lovely than her body. He is a Platonist when he recounts how Virtue, wishing to be loved of men, took Stella's form to enchant their eyes, and make them see the heaven which the inner sense reveals to heroic souls. We recognise 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 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 annoyes, 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.'3 At last, like Socrates in the banquet, he turns his eyes to deathless beauty, heavenly brightness: 1 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. 2 Ibid. sonnet 43, p. 545. 3 Ibid. sonnet 18, p. 573. |