A History of the French Novel. Volume 1. From the Beginning to 1800

"My Lady's presence makes the Roses red,Because to see her lips they blush for shame.The Lily's leaves, for envy, pale became;And her white hands in them this envy bred.The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spread;Because the sun's and her power is the same.The Violet of purple colour came,Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed.In brief all flowers from her their virtue take;From her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed;The living heat which her eyebeams doth makeWarmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed.The rain, wherewith she watereth the flowers,Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers."

Samuel Daniel had an eminently contemplative genius which might have anticipated the sonnet as it is in Wordsworth, but which the fashion of the day confined to the not wholly suitable subject of Love. In the splendid "Care-charmer Sleep," one of the tournament sonnets above noted, he contrived, as will be seen, to put his subject under the influence of his prevailing faculty.

"Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,Relieve my anguish, and restore the light,With dark forgetting of my cares, return;And let the day be time enough to mournThe shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth;Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scornWithout the torment of the night's untruth.Cease, Dreams, th' imag'ry of our day-desires,To model forth the passions of the morrow,Never let rising sun approve you liars,To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain;And never wake to feel the day's disdain."

But as a rule he is perhaps too much given to musing, and too little to rapture. In form he is important, as he undoubtedly did much to establish the arrangement of three alternate rhymed quatrains and a couplet which, in Shakespere's hands, was to give the noblest poetry of the sonnet and of the world. He has also an abundance of the most exquisite single lines, such as

"O clear-eyed rector of the holy hill,"

and the wonderful opening of Sonnet XXVII., "The star of my mishap imposed this pain."

The sixty-three sonnets, varied in different editions of Drayton's Idea, are among the most puzzling of the whole group. Their average value is not of the very highest. Yet there are here and there the strangest suggestions of Drayton's countryman, Shakespere, and there is one sonnet, No. 61, beginning, "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part," which I have found it most difficult to believe to be Drayton's, and which is Shakespere all over. That Drayton was the author of Idea as a whole is certain, not merely from the local allusions, but from the resemblance to the more successful exercises of his clear, masculine, vigorous, fertile, but occasionally rather unpoetical style. The sonnet just referred to is itself one of the very finest existing – perhaps one of the ten or twelve best sonnets in the world, and it may be worth while to give it with another in contrast: —

"Our flood's Queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crowned;And stately Severn for her shore is praised.The crystal Trent for fords and fish renowned;And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised;Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee;York many wonders of her Ouse can tell.The Peak her Dove, whose banks so fertile be;And Kent will say her Medway doth excel.Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame;Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair floodOur western parts extol their Wily's fame;And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.Arden's sweet Ankor, let thy glory beThat fair Idea only lives by thee!""Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part!Nay, I have done. You get no more of meAnd I am glad, yea, glad with all my heartThat thus so cleanly I myself can free.Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,And when we meet at any time againBe it not seen in either of our browsThat we one jot of former love retain.Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies;When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,And Innocence is closing up his eyes:Now, if thou would'st, when all have given him over,From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!"

1595 chiefly contributed the curious production called Alcilia, by J. C., who gives the name of sonnets to a series of six-line stanzas, varied occasionally by other forms, such as that of the following pretty verses. It may be noted that the citation of proverbs is very characteristic of Alcilia: —

"Love is sorrow mixed with gladness,Fear with hope, and hope with madness.Long did I love, but all in vain;I loving, was not loved again:For which my heart sustained much woe.It fits not maids to use men so,Just deserts are not regarded,Never love so ill rewarded.But 'all is lost that is not sought,''Oft wit proves best that's dearest bought.'"Women were made for men's relief;To comfort, not to cause their grief.Where most I merit, least I find:No marvel, since that love is blind.Had she been kind as she was fair,My case had been more strange and rare.But women love not by desert,Reason in them hath weakest part.Then henceforth let them love that list,I will beware of 'had I wist.'"

1596 (putting the Amoretti, which is sometimes assigned to this year, aside) was again fruitful with Griffin's Fidessa, Lynch's Diella, and Smith's Chloris. Fidessa, though distinctly "young," is one of the most interesting of the clearly imitative class of these sonnets, and contains some very graceful poetry, especially the following, one of the Sleep class, which will serve as a good example of the minor sonneteers: —

"Care-charmer Sleep! sweet ease in restless misery!The captive's liberty, and his freedom's song!Balm of the bruisèd heart! man's chief felicity!Brother of quiet Death, when Life is too too long!A Comedy it is, and now an History;What is not sleep unto the feeble mind?It easeth him that toils, and him that's sorry;It makes the deaf to hear; to see, the blind;Ungentle Sleep! thou helpest all but me,For when I sleep my soul is vexèd most.It is Fidessa that doth master theeIf she approach; alas! thy power is lost.But here she is! See, how he runs amain!I fear, at night, he will not come again."

Diella, a set of thirty-eight sonnets prefixed to the "Amorous poem of Diego and Genevra," is more elaborate in colouring but somewhat less fresh and genuine; while Chloris, whose author was a friend of Spenser's, approaches to the pastoral in the plan and phrasing of its fifty sonnets.

Such are the most remarkable members of a group of English poetry, which yields to few such groups in interest. It is connected by a strong similarity of feeling – if any one likes, even by a strong imitation of the same models. But in following those models and expressing those feelings, its members, even the humblest of them, have shown remarkable poetical capacity; while of the chiefs we can only say, as has been said more than once already, that the matter and form together acknowledge, and indeed admit of, no superior.

In close connection with these groups of sonnets, displaying very much the same poetical characteristics and in some cases written by the same authors, there occurs a great body of miscellaneous poetical writing produced during the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, and ranging from long poems of the allegorical or amatory kind to the briefest lyrics and madrigals. Sometimes this work appeared independently; sometimes it was inserted in the plays and prose pamphlets of the time. As has already been said, some of our authors, notably Lodge and Greene, did in this way work which far exceeds in merit any of their more ambitious pieces, and which in a certain unborrowed and incommunicable poetic grace hardly leaves anything of the time behind it. Shakespere himself, in Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, has in a more elaborate but closely allied kind of poetry displayed less mature, but scarcely less, genius than in his dramatic and sonnet work. It is my own opinion that the actual poetical worth of Richard Barnfield, to whom an exquisite poem in The Passionate Pilgrim, long ascribed to Shakespere, is now more justly assigned, has, owing to this assignment and to the singular character of his chief other poem, The Affectionate Shepherd, been considerably overrated. It is unfortunately as complete if not as common a mistake to suppose that any one who disdains his country's morality must be a good poet, as to set down any one who disdains it without further examination for a bad one. The simple fact, as it strikes a critic, is that "As it fell upon a day" is miles above anything else of Barnfield's, and is not like anything else of his, while it is very like things of Shakespere's. The best thing to be said for Barnfield is that he was an avowed and enthusiastic imitator and follower of Spenser. His poetical work (we might have included the short series of sonnets to Cynthia in the division of sonneteers) was all written when he was a very young man, and he died when he was not a very old one, a bachelor country-gentleman in Warwickshire. Putting the exquisite "As it fell upon a day" out of question (which, if he wrote it, is one of the not very numerous examples of perfect poetry written by a very imperfect poet), Barnfield has, in no extraordinary measure, the common attributes of this wonderful time – poetical enthusiasm, fresh and unhackneyed expression, metrical charm, and gorgeous colouring, which does not find itself ill-matched with accurate drawing of nature. He is above the average Elizabethan, and his very bad taste in The Affectionate Shepherd (a following of Virgil's Second Eclogue) may be excused as a humanist crotchet of the time. His rarity, his eccentricity, and the curious mixing up of his work with Shakespere's have done him something more than yeoman's service with recent critics. But he may have a specimen: —

"And thus it happened: Death and Cupid metUpon a time at swilling Bacchus' house,Where dainty cates upon the board were set,And goblets full of wine to drink carouse:Where Love and Death did love the liquor soThat out they fall, and to the fray they go."And having both their quivers at their backFilled full of arrows – the one of fatal steel,The other all of gold; Death's shaft was black,But Love's was yellow – Fortune turned her wheel,And from Death's quiver fell a fatal shaftThat under Cupid by the wind was waft."And at the same time by ill hap there fellAnother arrow out of Cupid's quiver;The which was carried by the wind at will,And under Death the amorous shaft did shiver.26They being parted, Love took up Death's dart,And Death took up Love's arrow for his part."

There is perhaps more genuine poetic worth, though there is less accomplishment of form, in the unfortunate Father Robert Southwell, who was executed as a traitor on the 20th of February 1595. Southwell belonged to a distinguished family, and was born (probably) at Horsham St. Faiths, in Norfolk, about the year 1560. He was stolen by a gipsy in his youth, but was recovered; and a much worse misfortune befell him in being sent for education not to Oxford or Cambridge but to Douay, where he got into the hands of the Jesuits, and joined their order. He was sent on a mission to England; and (no doubt conscientiously) violating the law there, was after some years of hiding and suspicion betrayed, arrested, treated with great harshness in prison, and at last, as has been said, executed. No specific acts of treason were even charged against him; and he earnestly denied any designs whatever against the Queen and kingdom, nor can it be doubted that he merely paid the penalty of others' misdeeds. His work both in prose and poetry was not inconsiderable, and the poetry was repeatedly printed in rather confusing and imperfect editions after his death. The longest, but by no means the best, piece is St. Peter's Complaint. The best unquestionably is The Burning Babe, which, though fairly well known, must be given: —

"As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,Surpris'd I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow;And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,A pretty Babe all burning bright, did in the air appear,Who scorchèd with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,As though His floods should quench His flames which with His tears were fed;'Alas!' quoth He, 'but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel My fire but I!My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defilèd souls,For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their goodSo will I melt into a bath to wash them in My blood:'With these He vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,And straight I callèd unto mind that it was Christmas Day."

Something of the glow of this appears elsewhere in the poems, which are, without exception, religious. They have not a little of the "hectic" tone, which marks still more strongly the chief English Roman Catholic poet of the next century, Crashaw; but are never, as Crashaw sometimes is, hysterical. On the whole, as was remarked in a former chapter, they belong rather to the pre-Spenserian class in diction and metre, though with something of the Italian touch. Occasional roughnesses in them may be at least partly attributed to the evident fact that the author thought of nothing less than of merely "cultivating the muses." His religious fervour is of the simplest and most genuine kind, and his poems are a natural and unforced expression of it.

It is difficult in the brief space which can here be allotted to the subject to pass in review the throng of miscellaneous poets and poetry indicated under this group. The reprints of Dr. Grosart and Mr. Arber, supplemented in a few cases by recourse to the older recoveries of Brydges, Haslewood, Park, Collier, and others, bring before the student a mass of brilliant and beautiful matter, often mixed with a good deal of slag and scoriæ, but seldom deficient in the true poetical ore. The mere collections of madrigals and songs, actually intended for casual performance at a time when almost every accomplished and well-bred gentleman or lady was expected to oblige the company, which Mr. Arber's invaluable English Garner and Mr. Bullen's Elizabethan Lyrics give from the collections edited or produced by Byrd, Yonge, Campion, Dowland, Morley, Alison, Wilbye, and others, represent such a body of verse as probably could not be got together, with the same origin and circumstances, in any quarter-century of any nation's history since the foundation of the world. In Campion especially the lyrical quality is extraordinary. He was long almost inaccessible, but Mr. Bullen's edition of 1889 has made knowledge of him easy. His birth-year is unknown, but he died in 1620. He was a Cambridge man, a member of the Inns of Court, and a physician in good practice. He has left us a masque; four Books of Airs (1601-17?), in which the gems given below, and many others, occur; and a sometimes rather unfairly characterised critical treatise, Observations on the Art of English Poesy, in which he argues against rhyme and for strict quantitative measures, but on quite different lines from those of the craze of Stanyhurst and Harvey. Some of his illustrations of his still rather unnatural fancy (especially "Rose-cheeked Laura," which is now tolerably familiar in anthologies) are charming, though never so charming as his rhymed "Airs." The poetry is, indeed, mostly in flashes, and it is not very often that any song is a complete gem, like the best of the songs from the dramatists, one or two of which will be given presently for comparison. But by far the greater number contain and exemplify those numerous characteristics of poetry, as distinguished from verse, which at one time of literary history seem naturally to occur – seem indeed to be had for the gathering by any one who chooses – while at another time they are but sparingly found in the work of men of real genius, and seem altogether to escape men of talent, accomplishment, and laborious endeavour. Here are a few specimens from Peele and others, especially Campion. As it is, an exceptional amount of the small space possible for such things in this volume has been given to them, but there is a great temptation to give more. Lyly's lyrical work, however, is fairly well known, and more than one collection of "Songs from the Dramatists" has popularised others.

Æ. "Fair and fair, and twice so fair,As fair as any may be;The fairest shepherd on our green,A love for any lady.Par. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,As fair as any may be:Thy love is fair for thee alone,And for no other lady.Æ. My love is fair, my love is gay,As fresh as bin the flowers in May,And of my love my roundelayConcludes with Cupid's curse,They that do change old love for newPray gods, they change for worse!Ambo, simul. They that do change, etc., etc.Æ. Fair and fair, etc.Par. Fair and fair, etc.Æ. My love can pipe, my love can sing,My love can many a pretty thing,And of his lovely praises ringMy merry, merry roundelays.Amen to Cupid's curse,They that do change, etc."PEELE."His golden locks time hath to silver turned;O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing:Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen.Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green."His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms;A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,And feed on prayers, which are old age's alms:But though from court to cottage he depart,His saint is sure of his unspotted heart."And when he saddest sits in homely cell,He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:'Blessed be the hearts that wish my Sovereign well,Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong.'Goddess allow this aged man his right,To be your beadsman now that was your knight."PEELE."Fain would I change that noteTo which fond love hath charm'd me,Long, long to sing by roteFancying that that harm'd me:Yet when this thought doth come,'Love is the perfect sumOf all delight!'I have no other choiceEither for pen or voiceTo sing or write."O Love, they wrong thee muchThat say thy sweet is bitter,When thy rich fruit is suchAs nothing can be sweeter.Fair house of joy and blissWhere truest pleasure is,I do adore thee;I know thee what thou art.I serve thee with my heartAnd fall before thee. Anon. in BULLEN."Turn all thy thoughts to eyes,Turn all thy hairs to ears,Change all thy friends to spies,And all thy joys to fears:True love will yet be freeIn spite of jealousy."Turn darkness into day,Conjectures into truth,Believe what th' curious say,Let age interpret youth:True love will yet be freeIn spite of jealousy."Wrest every word and look,Rack every hidden thought;Or fish with golden hook,True love cannot be caught:For that will still be freeIn spite of jealousy."Campion in BULLEN."Come, O come, my life's delight!Let me not in languor pine!Love loves no delay; thy sightThe more enjoyed, the more divine.O come, and take from meThe pain of being deprived of thee!"Thou all sweetness dost encloseLike a little world of bliss;Beauty guards thy looks, the roseIn them pure and eternal is:Come, then, and make thy flightAs swift to me as heavenly light!"CAMPION."Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet!Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet!There, wrapped in cloud of sorrow, pity move,And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love.But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne'er return again."All that I sang still to her praise did tend,Still she was first, still she my songs did end;Yet she my love and music both doth fly,The music that her echo is and beauty's sympathy:Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight!It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for her delight."CAMPION."What if a day, or a month, or a year,Crown thy delights with a thousand sweet contentings!Cannot a chance of a night or an hourCross thy desires with as many sad tormentings?Fortune, Honour, Beauty, Youth, are but blossoms dying,Wanton Pleasure, doating Love, are but shadows flying.All our joys are but toys! idle thoughts deceiving:None have power, of an hour, in their lives bereaving."Earth's but a point to the world, and a manIs but a point to the world's comparèd centre!Shall then a point of a point be so vainAs to triumph in a silly point's adventure?All is hazard that we have, there is nothing biding;Days of pleasure are like streams through fair meadows gliding.Weal and woe, time doth go! time is never turning;Secret fates guide our states, both in mirth and mourning."CAMPION."'Twas I that paid for all things,'Twas others drank the wine,I cannot now recall things;Live but a fool, to pine.'Twas I that beat the bush,The bird to others flew;For she, alas, hath left me.Falero! lero! loo!"If ever that Dame Nature(For this false lover's sake)Another pleasing creatureLike unto her would make;Let her remember this,To make the other true!For this, alas! hath left me.Falero! lero! loo!"No riches now can raise me,No want makes me despair,No misery amaze me,Nor yet for want I care:I have lost a World itself,My earthly Heaven, adieu!Since she, alas! hath left me.Falero! lero! loo!" Anon. in ARBER.

Beside these collections, which were in their origin and inception chiefly musical, and literary, as it were, only by parergon, there are successors of the earlier Miscellanies in which, as in England's Helicon and the celebrated Passionate Pilgrim, there is some of the most exquisite of our verse. And, yet again, a crowd of individual writers, of few of whom is much known, contributed, not in all cases their mites by any means, but often very respectable sums, to the vast treasury of English poetry. There is Sir Edward Dyer, the friend of Raleigh and Sidney, who has been immortalised by the famous "My mind to me a kingdom is," and who wrote other pieces not much inferior. There is Raleigh, to whom the glorious preparatory sonnet to The Faërie Queene would sufficiently justify the ascription of "a vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate," if a very considerable body of verse (independent of the fragmentary Cynthia) did not justify this many times over, as two brief quotations in addition to the sonnet will show: —

"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,Within that temple where the vestal flameWas wont to burn: and, passing by that wayTo see that buried dust of living fame,Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept,All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen,At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;And from henceforth those graces were not seen,For they this Queen attended; in whose steadOblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce:Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,And curse the access of that celestial thief.""Three things there be that prosper all apace,And flourish while they are asunder far;But on a day they meet all in a place,And when they meet they one another mar."And they be these – the Wood, the Weed, the Wag:The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;The Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag;The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee."Now mark, dear boy – while these assemble not,Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the Wag is wild;But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,It frets the halter, and it chokes the child."God bless the Child!""Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,My staff of faith to walk upon,My scrip of joy, immortal diet,My bottle of salvation,My gown of glory, hope's true gage;And thus I'll take my pilgrimage."Blood must be my body's balmer;No other balm will there be given;Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,Travelleth towards the land of heaven;Over the silver mountainsWhere spring the nectar fountains:There will I kissThe bowl of bliss;And drink mine everlasting fillUpon every milken hill.My soul will be a-dry before,But after it will thirst no more."

There is Lord Oxford, Sidney's enemy (which he might be if he chose), and apparently a coxcomb (which is less pardonable), but a charming writer of verse, as in the following: —

"Come hither, shepherd swain!Sir, what do you require?I pray thee, shew to me thy name!My name is Fond Desire."When wert thou born, Desire?In pomp and prime of May.By whom, sweet boy, wert thou begot?By fond Conceit, men say."Tell me, who was thy nurseFresh youth, in sugared joy.What was thy meat and daily food?Sad sighs, with great annoy."What hadst thou then to drink?Unfeigned lovers' tears.What cradle wert thou rocked in?In hope devoid of fears."What lulled thee then asleep?Sweet speech which likes me best.Tell me, where is thy dwelling-place?In gentle hearts I rest."What thing doth please thee most?To gaze on beauty still.Whom dost thou think to be thy foe?Disdain of my good will."Doth company displease?Yes, surely, many one.Where doth desire delight to live?He loves to live alone."Doth either time or ageBring him unto decay?No, no! Desire both lives and diesA thousand times a day."Then, fond Desire, farewell!Thou art no mate for me;I should be loath, methinks, to dwellWith such a one as thee.

There is, in the less exalted way, the industrious man of all work, Nicholas Breton, whom we shall speak of more at length among the pamphleteers, and John Davies of Hereford, no poet certainly, but a most industrious verse-writer in satiric and other forms. Mass of production, and in some cases personal interest, gives these a certain standing above their fellows. But the crowd of those fellows, about many of whom even the painful industry of the modern commentator has been able to tell us next to nothing, is almost miraculous when we remember that printing was still carried on under a rigid censorship by a select body of monopolists, and that out of London, and in rare cases the university towns, it was impossible for a minor poet to get into print at all unless he trusted to the contraband presses of the Continent. In dealing with this crowd of enthusiastic poetical students it is impossible to mention all, and invidious to single out some only. The very early and interesting Posy of Gillyflowers of Humphrey Gifford (1580) exhibits the first stage of our period, and might almost have been referred to the period before it; the same humpty-dumpty measure of eights and sixes, and the same vestiges of rather infantine alliteration being apparent in it, though something of the fire and variety of the new age of poetry appears beside them, notably in this most spirited war-song: —