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A History of the French Novel. Volume 1. From the Beginning to 1800
Of the same date, or indeed earlier, are the miscellaneous poems of Thomas Howell, entitled The Arbour of Amity, and chiefly of an ethical character. Less excusable for the uncouthness of his verse is Matthew Grove, who, writing, or at least publishing, his poems in 1587, should have learnt something, but apparently had not. It has to be said in excuse of him that his date and indeed existence are shadowy, even among the shadowy Elizabethan bards; his editor, in worse doggerel than his own, frankly confessing that he knew nothing about him, not so much as whether he was alive or dead. But his work, Howell's, and even part of Gifford's, is chiefly interesting as giving us in the very sharpest contrast the differences of the poetry before and after the melodious bursts of which Spenser, Sidney, and Watson were the first mouthpieces. Except an utter dunce (which Grove does not seem to have been by any means) no one who had before him The Shepherd's Calendar, or the Hecatompathia, or a MS. copy of Astrophel and Stella, could have written as Grove wrote. There are echoes of this earlier and woodener matter to be found later, but, as a whole, the passionate love of beauty, the sense – if only a groping sense – of form, and the desire to follow, and if possible improve upon the models of melodious verse which the Sidneian school had given, preserved even poetasters from the lowest depths.
To classify the miscellaneous verse of 1590-1600 (for the second decade is much richer than the first) under subjects and styles is a laborious and, at best, an uncertain business. The semi-mythological love-poem, with a more or less tragic ending, had not a few followers; the collection of poems of various character in praise of a real or imaginary mistress, similar in design to the sonnet collections, but either more miscellaneous in form or less strung together in one long composition, had even more; while the collection pure and simple, resembling the miscellanies in absence of special character, but the work of one, not of many writers, was also plentifully represented. Satirical allegory, epigram, and other kinds, had numerous examples. But there were two classes of verse which were both sufficiently interesting in themselves and were cultivated by persons of sufficient individual repute to deserve separate and detailed mention. These were the historical poem or history – a kind of companion production to the chronicle play or chronicle, and a very popular one – which, besides the names of Warner, Daniel, and Drayton, counted not a few minor adherents among Elizabethan bards. Such were the already-mentioned Giles Fletcher; such Fitz-Geoffrey in a remarkable poem on Drake, and Gervase Markham in a not less noteworthy piece on the last fight of The Revenge; such numerous others, some of whom are hardly remembered, and perhaps hardly deserve to be. The other, and as a class the more interesting, though nothing actually produced by its practitioners may be quite equal to the best work of Drayton and Daniel, was the beginning of English satire. This beginning is interesting not merely because of the apparent coincidence of instinct which made four or five writers of great talent simultaneously hit on the style, so that it is to this day difficult to award exactly the palm of priority, but also because the result of their studies, in some peculiar and at first sight rather inexplicable ways, is some of the most characteristic, if very far from being some of the best, work of the whole poetical period with which we are now busied. In passing, moreover, from the group of miscellaneous poets to these two schools, if we lose not a little of the harmony and lyrical sweetness which characterise the best work of the Elizabethan singer proper, we gain greatly in bulk and dignity of work and in intrinsic value. Of at least one of the poets mentioned in the last paragraph his modern editor – a most enthusiastic and tolerant godfather of waifs and strays of literature – confesses that he really does not quite know why he should be reprinted, except that the original is unique, and that almost every scrap of literature in this period is of some value, if only for lexicographic purposes. No one would dream of speaking thus of Drayton or of Daniel, of Lodge, Hall, Donne, or Marston; while even Warner, the weakest of the names to which we shall proceed to give separate notice, can be praised without too much allowance. In the latter case, moreover, if not in the first (for the history-poem, until it was taken up in a very different spirit at the beginning of this century, never was a success in England), the matter now to be reviewed, after being in its own kind neglected for a couple of generations, served as forerunner, if not exactly as model, to the magnificent satiric work of Dryden, and through his to that of Pope, Young, Churchill, Cowper, and the rest of the more accomplished English satirists. The acorn of such an oak cannot be without interest.
The example of The Mirror for Magistrates is perhaps sufficient to account for the determination of a certain number of Elizabethan poets towards English history; especially if we add the stimulating effect of Holinshed's Chronicle, which was published in 1580. The first of the so-called historians, William Warner, belongs in point of poetical style to the pre-Spenserian period, and like its other exponents employs the fourteener; while, unlike some of them, he seems quite free from any Italian influence in phraseology or poetical manner. Nevertheless Albion's England is, not merely in bulk but in merit, far ahead of the average work of our first period, and quite incommensurable with such verse as that of Grove. It appeared by instalments (1586-1606-1612). Of its author, William Warner, the old phrase has to be repeated, that next to nothing is known of him. He was an Oxfordshire man by birth, and an Oxford man by education; he had something to do with Cary, Lord Hunsdon, became an Attorney of the Common Pleas, and died at Amwell suddenly in his bed in 1609, being, as it is guessed rather than known, fifty years old or thereabouts. Albion's England was seized as contraband, by orders of the Archbishop of Canterbury – a proceeding for which no one has been able to account (the suggestion that parts of it are indelicate is, considering the manners of the time, quite ludicrous), and which may perhaps have been due to some technical informality. It is thought that he is the author of a translation of Plautus's Menæchmi; he certainly produced in 1585? a prose story, or rather collection of stories, entitled Syrinx, which, however, is scarcely worth reading. Albion's England is in no danger of incurring that sentence. In the most easily accessible edition, that of Chalmers's "Poets," it is spoilt by having the fourteeners divided into eights and sixes, and it should if possible be read in the original arrangement. Considering how few persons have written about it, an odd collection of critical slips might be made. Philips, Milton's nephew, in this case it may be hoped, not relying on his uncle, calls Warner a "good plain writer of moral rules and precepts": the fact being that though he sometimes moralises he is in the main a story-teller, and much more bent on narrative than on teaching. Meres calls him "a refiner of the English tongue," and attributes to him "rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments of the pen": the truth being that he is (as Philips so far correctly says) a singularly plain, straightforward, and homely writer. Others say that he wrote in "Alexandrines" – a blunder, and a serious one, which has often been repeated up to the present day in reference to other writers of the seven-foot verse. He brings in, according to the taste and knowledge of his time, all the fabulous accounts of the origins of Britain, and diversifies them with many romantic and pastoral histories, classical tales, and sometimes mere Fabliaux, down to his own time. The chief of the episodes, the story of Argentile and Curan, has often, and not undeservedly, met with high praise, and sometimes in his declamatory parts Warner achieves a really great success. Probably, however, what commended his poem most to the taste of the day was its promiscuous admixture of things grave and gay – a mixture which was always much to the taste of Elizabeth's men, and the popularity of which produced and fostered many things, from the matchless tragi-comedy of Hamlet and Macbeth to the singularly formless pamphlets of which we shall speak hereafter. The main interest of Warner is his insensibility to the new influences which Spenser and Sidney directed, and which are found producing their full effect on Daniel and Drayton. There were those in his own day who compared him to Homer: one of the most remarkable instances of thoroughly unlucky critical extravagance to be found in literary history, as the following very fair average specimen will show: —
"Henry (as if by miracle preserved by foreigns long,From hence-meant treasons) did arrive to right his natives' wrong:And chiefly to Lord Stanley, and some other succours, asDid wish and work for better days, the rival welcome was.Now Richard heard that Richmond was assisted and ashore,And like unkennel'd Cerberus, the crookèd tyrant swore,And all complexions act at once confusedly in him:He studieth, striketh, threats, entreats, and looketh mildly grim,Mistrustfully he trusteth, and he dreadingly did dare,And forty passions in a trice, in him consort and square.But when, by his consented force, his foes increasèd more,He hastened battle, finding his co-rival apt therefore.When Richmond, orderly in all, had battlèd his aid,Inringèd by his complices, their cheerful leader said:'Now is the time and place (sweet friends) and we the persons beThat must give England breath, or else unbreathe for her must we.No tyranny is fabled, and no tyrant was in deedWorse than our foe, whose works will act my words, if well he speed:For ill to ills superlative are easily enticed,But entertains amendment as the Gergesites did Christ.Be valiant then, he biddeth so that would not be outbid,For courage yet shall honour him though base, that better did.I am right heir Lancastrian, he, in York's destroyèd rightUsurpeth: but through either ours, for neither claim I fight,But for our country's long-lack'd weal, for England's peace I war:Wherein He speed us! unto Whom I all events refer.'Meanwhile had furious Richard set his armies in array,And then, with looks even like himself, this or the like did say:'Why, lads, shall yonder Welshman with his stragglers overmatch?Disdain ye not such rivals, and defer ye their dispatch?Shall Tudor from Plantagenet, the crown by cracking snatch?Know Richard's very thoughts' (he touch'd the diadem he wore)'Be metal of this metal: then believe I love it moreThan that for other law than life, to supersede my claim,And lesser must not be his plea that counterpleads the same.'The weapons overtook his words, and blows they bravely change,When, like a lion thirsting blood, did moody Richard range,And made large slaughters where he went, till Richmond he espied,Whom singling, after doubtful swords, the valorous tyrant died."Of the sonnet compositions of Daniel and Drayton something has been said already. But Daniel's sonnets are a small and Drayton's an infinitesimal part of the work of the two poets respectively. Samuel Daniel was a Somersetshire man, born near Taunton in 1562. He is said to have been the son of a music master, but was educated at Oxford, made powerful friends, and died an independent person at Beckington, in the county of his birth, in the year 1619. He was introduced early to good society and patronage, became tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, a great heiress of the North, was favoured by the Earl of Southampton, and became a member of the Pembroke or Arcadia coterie. His friends or his merits obtained for him, it is said, the Mastership of the Revels, the posts of Gentleman Extraordinary to James I., and Groom of the Privy Chamber to Anne of Denmark. His literary production besides Delia was considerable. With the first authorised edition of that collection he published The Complaint of Rosamond; a historical poem of great grace and elegance though a little wanting in strength. In 1594 came his interesting Senecan tragedy of Cleopatra; in 1595 the first part of his chief work, The History of the Civil Wars, and in 1601 a collected folio of "Works." Then he rested, at any rate from publication, till 1605, when he produced Philotas, another Senecan tragedy in verse. In prose he wrote the admirable Defence of Rhyme, which finally smashed the fancy for classical metres dear even to such a man as Campion. Hymen's Triumph, a masque of great beauty, was not printed till four years before his death. He also wrote a History of England as well as minor works. The poetical value of Daniel may almost be summed up in two words – sweetness and dignity. He is decidedly wanting in strength, and, despite Delia, can hardly be said to have had a spark of passion. Even in his own day it was doubted whether he had not overweighted himself with his choice of historical subjects, though the epithet of "well-languaged," given to him at the time, evinces a real comprehension of one of his best claims to attention. No writer of the period has such a command of pure English, unadulterated by xenomania and unweakened by purism, as Daniel. Whatever unfavourable things have been said of him from time to time have been chiefly based on the fact that his chaste and correct style lacks the fiery quaintness, the irregular and audacious attraction of his contemporaries. Nor was he less a master of versification than of vocabulary. His Defence of Rhyme shows that he possessed the theory: all his poetical works show that he was a master of the practice. He rarely attempted and probably would not have excelled in the lighter lyrical measures. But in the grave music of the various elaborate stanzas in which the Elizabethan poets delighted, and of which the Spenserian, though the crown and flower, is only the most perfect, he was a great proficient, and his couplets and blank verse are not inferior. Some of his single lines have already been quoted, and many more might be excerpted from his work of the best Elizabethan brand in the quieter kind. Quiet, indeed, is the overmastering characteristic of Daniel. It was this no doubt which made him prefer the stately style of his Senecan tragedies, and the hardly more disturbed structure of pastoral comedies and tragi-comedies, like the Queen's Arcadia and Hymen's Triumph, to the boisterous revels of the stage proper in his time. He had something of the schoolmaster in his nature as well as in his history. Nothing is more agreeable to him than to moralise; not indeed in any dull or crabbed manner, but in a mellifluous and at the same time weighty fashion, of which very few other poets have the secret. It is perhaps by his scrupulous propriety, by his anxious decency (to use the word not in its modern and restricted sense, but in its proper meaning of the generally becoming), that Daniel brought upon himself the rather hard saying that he had a manner "better suiting prose."
The sentence will scarcely be echoed by any one who has his best things before him, however much a reader of some of the duller parts of the historical poems proper may feel inclined to echo it. Of his sonnets one has been given. The splendid Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland is not surpassed as ethical poetry by anything of the period, and often as it has been quoted, it must be given again, for it is not and never can be too well known: —
"He that of such a height hath built his mind,And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,As neither fear nor hope can shake the frameOf his resolvèd powers; nor all the windOf vanity or malice pierce to wrongHis settled peace, or to disturb the same:What a fair seat hath he, from whence he mayThe boundless wastes and wealds of man survey!"And with how free an eye doth he look downUpon these lower regions of turmoil!Where all the storms of passion mainly beatOn flesh and blood: where honour, power, renown,Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;Where greatness stands upon as feeble feetAs frailty doth; and only great doth seemTo little minds, who do it so esteem."He looks upon the mightiest monarch's warsBut only as on stately robberies;Where evermore the fortune that prevailsMust be the right: the ill-succeeding marsThe fairest and the best fac'd enterprise.Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:Justice, he sees (as if seducèd) stillConspires with power, whose cause must not be ill."He sees the face of right t'appear as manifoldAs are the passions of uncertain man;Who puts it in all colours, all attires,To serve his ends, and make his courses hold.He sees, that let deceit work what it can,Plot and contrive base ways to high desires,That the all-guiding Providence doth yetAll disappoint, and mocks the smoke of wit."Nor is he mov'd with all the thunder cracksOf tyrants' threats, or with the surly browOf Power, that proudly sits on others' crimes;Charg'd with more crying sins than those he checks.The storms of sad confusion, that may growUp in the present for the coming timesAppal not him; that hath no side at all,But of himself, and knows the worst can fall."Although his heart (so near allied to Earth)Cannot but pity the perplexèd stateOf troublous and distress'd Mortality,That thus make way unto the ugly birthOf their own sorrows, and do still begetAffliction upon imbecility:Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done."And whilst distraught ambition compasses,And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives,And is deceiv'd: whilst man doth ransack manAnd builds on blood, and rises by distress;And th' inheritance of desolation leavesTo great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon,As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,And bears no venture in impiety."In sharp contrast with this the passage from Hymen's Triumph,
"Ah, I remember well, and how can I,"shows the sweetness without namby-pambyness which Daniel had at constant command. Something of the same contrast may be found between the whole of Hymen's Triumph and the Queen's Arcadia on the one side, and Cleopatra and Philotas on the other. All are written in mixed blank and rhymed verse, much interlaced and "enjambed." The best of the historical poems is, by common consent, Rosamond, which is instinct with a most remarkable pathos, nor are fine passages by any means to seek in the greater length and less poetical subject of The Civil Wars of York and Lancaster. The fault of this is that the too conscientious historian is constantly versifying what must be called mere expletive matter. This must always make any one who speaks with critical impartiality admit that much of Daniel is hard reading; but the soft places (to use the adjective in no ill sense) are frequent enough, and when the reader comes to them he must have little appreciation of poetry if he does not rejoice in the foliage and the streams of the poetical oasis which has rewarded him after his pilgrimage across a rather arid wilderness.
Michael Drayton was much better fitted for the arduous, and perhaps not wholly legitimate, business of historical poetry than Daniel. If his genius was somewhat less fine, it was infinitely better thewed and sinewed. His ability, indeed, to force any subject which he chose to treat into poetry is amazing, and can hardly be paralleled elsewhere except in a poet who was born but just before Drayton's death, John Dryden. He was pretty certainly a gentleman by birth, though not of any great possessions, and is said to have been born at Hartshill, in Warwickshire, in the year 1563. He is also said, but not known, to have been a member of the University of Oxford, and appears to have been fairly provided with patrons, in the family of some one of whom he served as page, though he never received any great or permanent preferment.28 On the other hand, he was not a successful dramatist (the only literary employment of the time that brought in much money), and friend as he was of nearly all the men of letters of the time, it is expressly stated in one of the few personal notices we have of him, that he could not "swagger in a tavern or domineer in a hothouse" [house of ill-fame] – that is to say, that the hail-fellow well-met Bohemianism of the time, which had led Marlowe and many of his group to evil ends, and which was continued in a less outrageous form under the patronage of Ben Jonson till far into the next age, had no charms for him. Yet he must have lived somehow and to a good age, for he did not die till the 23d December 1631. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a fact which drew from Goldsmith, in The Citizen of the World, a gibe showing only the lamentable ignorance of the best period of English poetry, in which Goldsmith was not indeed alone, but in which he was perhaps pre-eminent among contemporaries eminent for it.
Drayton's long life was as industrious as it was long. He began in 1591 with a volume of sacred verse, the Harmony of the Church, which, for some reason not merely undiscovered but unguessed, displeased the censors, and was never reprinted with his other works until recently. Two years later appeared Idea, The Shepherd's Garland– a collection of eclogues not to be confounded with the more famous collection of sonnets in praise of the same real or fancied mistress which appeared later. In the first of these Drayton called himself "Rowland," or "Roland," a fact on which some rather rickety structures of guesswork have been built as to allusions to him in Spenser. His next work was Mortimeriados, afterwards refashioned and completed under the title of The Barons' Wars, and this was followed in 1597 by one of his best works, England's Heroical Epistles. The Owl, some Legends, and other poems succeeded; and in 1605 he began to collect his Works, which were frequently reprinted. The mighty poem of the Polyolbion was the fruit of his later years, and, in strictness, belongs to the period of a later chapter; but Drayton's muse is eminently one and indivisible, and, notwithstanding the fruits of pretty continual study which his verses show, they belong, in the order of thought, to the middle and later Elizabethan period rather than to the Jacobean.
Few poets of anything like Drayton's volume (of which some idea may be formed by saying that his works, in the not quite complete form in which they appear in Chalmers, fill five hundred of the bulky pages of that work, each page frequently containing a hundred and twenty-eight lines) show such uniform mixture of imagination and vigour. In the very highest and rarest graces of poetry he is, indeed, by common consent wanting, unless one of these graces in the uncommon kind of the war-song be allowed, as perhaps it may be, to the famous and inimitable though often imitated Ballad of Agincourt, "To the brave Cambro-Britons and their Harp," not to be confounded with the narrative "Battle of Agincourt," which is of a less rare merit. The Agincourt ballad,
