63. It cannot be denied that some of these blemishes are

after this

time.

by no means unusual in the writers of the Elizabe- Improvethan age, as in truth they are found also in much ment soon other poetry of many countries. But a change seems to have come over the spirit of English poetry soon. after 1580. Sidney, Raleigh, Lodge, Breton, Marlowe, Greene, Watson, are the chief contributors to a collection called England's Helicon, published in 1600, and comprising many of the fugitive pieces of the last twenty years. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, in 1602, is a miscellany of the same class. A few other collections are known to have existed, but are still more scarce than these. England's Helicon, by far the most important, has been reprinted in the same volume of the British Bibliographer as the Paradise of Dainty Devices. In this juxta-position the difference of their tone is very perceptible. Love occupies by far the chief portion of the later miscellany; and love no longer pining and melancholy, but sportive and boastful. Every one is familiar with the beautiful song of Marlowe, "Come live with me and be my love;" and with the hardly less beautiful answer ascribed to Raleigh. Lodge has ten pieces in this collection, and Breton eight. These are generally full of beauty, grace, and simplicity; and while in reading the productions of Edwards and his coadjutors every sort of allowance is to be made, and we can only praise a little at intervals, these lyrics, twenty or thirty years later, are among the best in our language. The conventional tone is that of pastoral; and thus, if they have less of the depth sometimes shown in serious poetry, they have less also of obscurity and false refinement. *

Relaxation

austerity.

64. We may easily perceive in the literature of the later period of the queen, what our biographical knowledge confirms, that much of the austerity charac- of moral teristic of her earlier years had vanished away. The course of time, the progress of vanity, the prevalent dislike, above all, of the Puritans, avowed enemies of gaiety,

* Ellis, in the second volume of his Specimens of English Poets, has taken largely from this collection. It must be owned that his good taste in selection gives a higher notion of the poetry of

this age than, on the whole, it would be found to deserve; yet there is so much of excellence in England's Helicon, that he has been compelled to omit many pieces of great merit.

Serious poetry.

concurred to this change. The most distinguished courtiers, Raleigh, Essex, Blount, and we must add Sidney, were men of brilliant virtues, but not without license of morals; while many of the wits and poets, such as Nash, Greene, Peele, Marlowe, were notoriously of very dissolute lives. 65. The graver strains, however, of religion and philosophy were still heard in verse. The Soul's Errand, printed anonymously in Davison's Rhapsody, and ascribed by Ellis, probably without reason, to Silvester, is characterised by strength, condensation, and simplicity. * And we might rank in a respectable place among these English poets, though I think he has been lately overrated, one whom the jealous law too prematurely deprived of life, Robert Southwell, executed as a seminary priest in 1591, under one of those persecuting statutes which even the traitorous restlessness of the English Jesuits cannot excuse. Southwell's poetry wears a deep tinge of gloom, which seems to presage a catastrophe too usual to have been unexpected. It is, as may be supposed, almost wholly religious; the shorter pieces are the best. †

Poetry of

Sidney.

66. Astrophel and Stella, a series of amatory poems by Sir Philip Sidney, though written nearly ten years before, was published in 1591. These songs and sonnets recount the loves of Sidney and Lady Rich, sister of Lord Essex; and it is rather a singular circumstance that, in her own and her husband's lifetime, this ardent courtship of a married woman should have been deemed fit for publication. Sidney's passion seems indeed to have been unsuccessful, but far enough from being platonic. ‡ Astrophel

* Campbell reckons this, and I think justly, among the best pieces of the Elizabethan age. Brydges gives it to Raleigh without evidence, and we may add, without probability. It is found in manuscripts, according to Mr. Campbell, of the date of 1593. Such poems as this could only be written by a man who had seen and thought much; while the ordinary Latin and Italian verses of this age might be written by any one who had a knack of imitation and a good

ear.

I am not aware that Southwell has gained any thing by a republication of

his entire poems in 1817. Headley and Ellis had culled the best specimens. St. Peter's Complaint, the longest of his poems, is wordy and tedious; and in reading the volume I found scarce any thing of merit which I had not seen before.

Godwin having several years since made some observations on Sidney's amour with Lady Rich, a circumstance which such biographers as Dr. Zouch take good care to suppress, a gentleman who published an edition of Sidney's Defence of Poetry, thought fit to indulge in recriminating attacks on Godwin him

and Stella is too much disfigured by conceits, but is in some places very beautiful; and it is strange that Chalmers, who reprinted Turberville and Warner, should have left Sidney out of his collection of British poets. A poem by the writer just mentioned, Warner, with the quaint title, Albion's England, 1586, has at least the equivocal merit of great length. It is rather legendary than historical; some passages are pleasing, but it is not a work of genius, and the style, though natural, seldom rises above that of prose.

Spenser.

67. Spenser's Epithalamium on his own marriage, written perhaps in 1594, is of a far higher mood than any Epithalathing we have named. It is a strain redolent of mium of a bridegroom's joy, and of a poet's fancy. The English language seems to expand itself with a copiousness unknown before, while he pours forth the varied imagery of this splendid little poem. I do not know any other nuptial song, ancient or modern, of equal beauty. It is an intoxication of ecstasy, ardent, noble, and pure. But it pleased not Heaven that these day-dreams of genius and virtue should be undisturbed.

68. Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis appears to have been published in 1593, and his Rape of Lucrece the Poems of following year. The redundance of blossoms in Shakspeare. these juvenile effusions of his unbounded fertility obstructs the reader's attention, and sometimes almost leads us to give him credit for less reflection and sentiment than he will be found to display. The style is flowing, and, in general, more perspicuous than the Elizabethan poets are wont to be. But I am not sure that they would betray themselves for the works of Shakspeare, had they been anonymously published.

69. In the last decad of this century several new poets came forward. Samuel Daniel is one of these. His Daniel and Complaint of Rosamond, and probably many of his Drayton. minor poems, belong to this period; and it was also that of his greatest popularity. On the death of Spenser, in 1598, he was thought worthy to succeed him as poet-laureate ; and some of his contemporaries ranked him in the second

self. It is singular that men of sense and such arguments are likely to convince education should persist in fancying that any dispassionate reader.

place; an eminence due rather to the purity of his language than to its vigour.* Michael Drayton, who first tried his shepherd's pipe with some success in the usual style, published his Barons' Wars in 1598. They relate to the last years of Edward II., and conclude with the execution of Mortimer under his son. This poem, therefore, seems to possess a sufficient unity, and, tried by rules of criticism, might be thought not far removed from the class of epic a dignity, however, to which it has never pretended. But in its conduct Drayton follows history very closely, and we are kept too much in mind of a common chronicle. Though not very pleasing, however, in its general effect, this poem, The Barons' Wars, contains several passages of considerable beauty, which men of greater renown, especially Milton, who availed himself largely of all the poetry of the preceding age, have been willing to imitate.

Nosce
Teipsum

of Davies.

70. A more remarkable poem is that of Sir John Davies, afterwards chief-justice of Ireland, entitled, Nosce Teipsum, published in 1600, usually, though rather inaccurately, called, On the Immortality of the Soul. Perhaps no language can produce a poem, extending to so great a length, of more condensation of thought, or in which fewer languid verses will be found. Yet, according to some definitions, the Nosce Teipsum is wholly unpoetical, inasmuch as it shows no passion and little fancy. If it reaches the heart at all, it is through the reason. But since strong argument in terse and correct style fails not to give us pleasure prose, it seems strange that it should lose its effect when it gains the aid of regular metre to gratify the ear and assist the memory. Lines there are in Davies which far outweigh much of the descriptive and imaginative poetry of the last two centuries, whether we estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual vigour they display. Experience has shown that the faculties peculiarly deemed poetical are frequently exhibited in a considerable degree, but very few have been able to preserve a perspicuous brevity without stiffness or pedantry (allowance made for the subject

in

* British Bibliographer, vol. ii. Head- by contemporary critics as the polisher ley remarks that Daniel was spoken of and purifier of the English language.

and the times), in metaphysical reasoning, so successfully as Sir John Davies.

Marston,

71. Hall's Satires are tolerably known, partly on account of the subsequent celebrity of the author in a very Satires of different province, and partly from a notion, to which Hall he gave birth by announcing the claim, that he was and Donne. the first English satirist. In a general sense of satire, we have seen that he had been anticipated by Gascoyne; but Hall has more of the direct Juvenalian invective, which he may have reckoned essential to that species of poetry. They are deserving of regard in themselves. Warton has made many extracts from Hall's Satires; he praises in them "a classical precision, to which English poetry had yet rarely attained;" and calls the versification "equally energetic and elegant."* The former epithet may be admitted; but elegance is hardly compatible with what Warton owns to be the chief fault of Hall," his obscurity, arising from a remote phraseology, constrained combinations, unfamiliar allusions, elliptical apostrophes, and abruptness of expression." Hall is in fact not only so harsh and rugged, that he cannot be read with much pleasure, but so obscure in very many places that he cannot be understood at all, his lines frequently bearing no visible connexion in sense or grammar with their neighbours. The stream is powerful, but turbid and often choked. † Marston and Donne may be added to Hall in this style of poetry, as belonging to the sixteenth century, though the satires of the latter were not published till long afterwards. With as much obscurity as Hall, he has a still more inharmonious versification, and not nearly equal vigour.

Modula

tion of

72. The roughness of these satirical poets was perhaps studiously affected; for it was not much in unison with the general tone of the age. It requires a good English deal of care to avoid entirely the combinations of verse. consonants that clog our language; nor have Drayton or Spenser always escaped this embarrassment. But in the

Hist. of English Poetry, iv. 383. + Hall's Satires are praised by Campbell, as well as Warton, full as much, in my opinion, as they deserve. Warton has compared Marston with Hall, and concludes that the latter is more "elegant,

VOL. II.

K

exact, and elaborate." More so than his rival he may by possibility be esteemed; but these three epithets cannot be predicated of his satires in any but a relative sense.