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." 14 To us, the expression is absurd. Is it 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 and earth, who, compared to them, finds all light dull and all happiness 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, 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 water: 66 Which the deere tongue would afford, But their tongues restrain'd from walking, Till their hearts had ended talking. But when their tongues could not speake, Love it selfe did silence breake; Love did set his lips asunder, Thus to speake in love and wonder. "This small winde which so sweet is, 14" Astrophel and Stella," ed. fol. 1629, 101st sonnet, p. 613. 16 Ibid. 8th song, p. 603. On his knees, with beating heart, oppressed, it seems to him that his mistress becomes transformed: "Stella, soveraigne of my joy, Stella, whose voice when it singeth, Angels to acquaintance bringeth." 16 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 heated breath swell each moment. A smile from his mistress, a curl lifted by the wind, a gestureall are events. He 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: 66 Thinke of that most gratefull time, There those roses for to kisse, “O joy, too high for my low stile to show: My friend, that oft saw through all maskes my wo, My spring appeares, O see what here doth grow, Of her high heart giv'n me the monarchie: I, I, O I may say that she is mine." 18 There are Oriental splendors in the dazzling 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, with oft with faire encrease doth frame 16" Astrophel and Stella" (1629), 8th song, 604. 17 Ibid. 10th song, p. 610. The height of honour in the kindly badge of shame? Who hath the crimson weeds stolne from my morning skies?" 10 As he says, his "life melts with too much thinking." Exhausted by ecstasy, he pauses; then he flies from thought to thought, seeking relief 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. Feeling forthwith the other burning power, Wood with the smart with showts and shryking shrill, But for the time his griefe went with him still.” 20 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 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." 21 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 10" Astrophel and Stella" (1629), sonnet 102, p. 614. Ibid. 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. 21 Ibid. sonnet 43, p. 545 form to enchant their eyes, and make them see the heaven which the inner sense reveals to 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 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." 22 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, In this small course which birth drawes out to death." 28 Divine love continues the earthly love; he was imprisoned in this, and frees himself. By this nobility, these lofty aspirations, recognize one of those serious souls of which there are so many in the same climate and race. Spiritual instincts pierce through the dominant paganism, and ere they make Christians, make Platonists. Section V.-Wherein Lies the Strength of the Poetry of this Period 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 hundred and thirty-three are enumerated, of whom forty have genius or talent: Breton, Donne, Drayton, Lodge, Greene, the two Fletchers, Beaumont, Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, 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 22" Astrophel and Stella" (1629), sonnet 18, p. 573. 23 Ibid. last sonnet, p. 539. 1 Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his Times," i. Part 2, ch. 2, 3, 4. Among these 233 poets the authors of isolated pieces are not reckoned, but only those who published or collected their works. time in Catholic and heroic Spain; and as in Spain it was a sign of the times, the mark of a public want, the index to an extraordinary and transient condition of the mind. What is this condition which gives rise to so universal a taste for poetry? What is it breathes life into their books? How happens it that amongst the least, in spite of pedantries, awkwardnesses, in the rhyming chronicles or descriptive cyclopædias, 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 an 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 ours. What is sunrise to an ordinary man? A white smudge on the edge of the sky, between bosses of clouds, amid pieces of land, and bits of road, which he does not see because he has seen them a hundred times. But for them, all things have a soul; I mean that they feel within themselves, indirectly, the uprising and severance of the outlines, the power and contrast of tints, the sad or delicious sentiment, which breathes from this combination and union like a harmony or a cry. How sorrowful is the sun, as he rises in a mist above the sad sea-furrows; what an air of resignation in the old trees rustling in the night rain; what a feverish tumult in the mass of waves, whose dishevelled locks are twisted forever on the surface of the abyss! But the great torch of heaven, the luminous 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 cuckooflower, 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 "Then from her burnisht gate the goodly glittring East |