We have already spoken of the large number of fine lyric pieces inserted in the dramas of Shakespeare, and also of his sonnets, some of the most beautiful ornaments of the lyric poetry of the sixteenth century. Less genuine lyric poetry is to be found in Ben Jonson's plays than in those of any other dramatist. Very pathetic songs are met with in Beaumont and Fletcher, the most touching being that in The Maid's Tragedy (p. 193):— Lay a garland on my hearse Maidens, willow branches bear: My love was false, but I was firm To the comedy written by Fletcher alone, The Captain, we are indebted for the beautiful song commencing : Tell me, dearest, what is Love? 'Tis a lightning from above, 'Tis an arrow, 'tis a fire, 'Tis a boy they call Desire. 'Tis a grave that gapes to have Those poor fools that long to prove. All that is best in the song-writing of that period was naturally achieved before a gloom was spread over the world by Puritanism. Even under James I. much fairly good work was produced. In addition to the king, who certainly perpetrated some awful poems"the most learned ass in Europe," as the French minister Sully, with good reason, called him-we have the royal court poet and poet laureate, MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631), who possessed some talent for comic heroic epics, as is shown by his Nymphidia, a counterpart of and suggested by Chaucer's satirical poem, Sir Thopas. His bulky didactic epic Polyolbion in thirty cantos would not be so bad if only the pretty descriptions of nature and little episodes were not swamped by a sea of misapplied learning. It is remarkable that amongst his smaller poems there is one that shows clearly how the sense of the beauties of nature has at all times protected England from that complete exhaustion of the lyric spring which makes the literature of France, during the reign of the three Louises (XIV.-XVI.), appear so anæmic. The whole of French literature during the seventeenth century cannot show a poem like the following: SUMMER'S EVE Clear had the day been from the dawn, The wind had no more strength than this To make one leaf the next to kiss, The flowers, like brave embroidered girls, To see whose head with orient pearls Most curiously was tyred. The rills that on the pebbles played, This world the only music made, Else, everything was still. And to itself the subtle air Such sovereignty assumes, That it received too large a share From nature's rich perfumes. Even amongst the poems, abounding in affectation and unnaturalness, of the so-called "metaphysical" poetaster Dr. JOHN DONNE (1573-1631) there may be found, here and there, by an incomprehensible accident, some very graceful songs. His poetical mannerism is called "metaphysical," since he kept himself as far as possible aloof from earthly, human understanding, and avoided the simple inartificial expression of feeling as a lie shrinks from truth. He became Dean of St. Paul's. As in this work more attention is paid to samples of what is good than of what is bad, none of Donne's senseless and tedious poems will be mentioned; we will rather give a specimen of his powers, which compensates for many of his poetical sins: Sweetest love, I do not go For weariness of thee, Nor in the hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best Thus to use myself in jest Let not thy twining heart Are but laid aside to sleep; We will conclude with a poet, for whom no laurels were reserved in the drama, but who has left some wonderfully beautiful songs, all of them in his unsuccessful plays: we mean THOMAS DEKKER (about 1570-1641). The often quoted poem, "Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers," is homely rather than poetical. But his lullaby is charming : Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, Rock them, rock them, lullaby! Care is heavy, therefor sleep you; Rock them, rock them, lullaby! And what an echo of the freshness of spring there is in his Song of May, from a comedy which appeared in the last year (1600) of the most glorious of all the centuries of England : --- O, the month of May, the merry month of May, O, and then did I unto my true love say: Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale, Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love's tale; BIBLIOGRAPHY. SPENSER.-The best and most recent edition is by Morris; minor poems by Grosart; Craik, Spenser and his Poetry; Church, Spenser (in English Men of Letters); Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen; Bake, Essay on Spenser and his Fairy Queen; Arber, The Spenser Anthology. SKELTON.-Poetical works, by Dyce. Arber's Reprint of Tottel's Miscellany: Songs and Sonnettes, by Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, Thomas Wyatt, etc., an anthology of the published lyrics of the sixteenth century published in 1557; A. E. Schelling, A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics (the best anthology); A. H. Bullen, Lyrics from the Dramatists of the Elizabethan Age (an important but rare work); also Surrey's and Wyatt's Poems, by Bell. RALEIGH.-Complete works in eight vols. (London, 1857); good selections (chiefly prose) by Grosart; his poems, by Hannah. DRAYTON.-Works, in "Chalmers' British Poets," vol. vi. DONNE.-Poems, by Grosart. DEKKER.-Plays (1873); his poems in Bullen's Collection. CHAPTER VII PROSE THOMAS MORUS - ROGER ASCHAM-RICHARD HOOKER-JOHN LYLY-PHILIP SIDNEY-FRANCIS BACON HOLINSHED'S CHRONICLE-ROBERT BURTON-THE BIBLE T HE extraordinary genius of one man, Shakespeare, whose art stamped the century as his, added to the supremacy of the drama in popular favour, deferred till a much later date any literary picture of the greatest age of England. If, at the end of the sixteenth century, an educated Englishman had been asked to mention the most prominent writers of the period of time that had just expired, the names of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, or John Lyly would rarely have been heard, and they would have hardly been mentioned even among the poets, for they were indeed only playwrights. Lyly would perhaps have been regarded as an author on the strength of his Euphues, and Shakespeare for his poems. Those whose names stand at the head of this chapter would have been awarded the palm of greatness: the prose writers. In fact, we are apt to forget, in the presence of Shakespeare and the drama, that the intellect of England also made full use of its powers in other forms, and that the prose of the sixteenth century also affords a picture of luxuriant abundance. All the branches of human mental activity, which had remained withered during the Middle Ages owing to ecclesiastical narrowness, budded forth as soon as the spring of the Renaissance (which indeed signifies "new birth ") allowed the stagnating sap to circulate and swell. Of the prose writers to be discussed here, some lived until the seventeenth century, and the English version of the Bible was not published until 1611. But it need hardly be said that the round numbers 1600 do not indicate any distinct period in the life of literature. The spirit of the century lasted far beyond its numerical completion to the days of Puritan supremacy. It was not till then that the bright light, which had been kindled in "merry old England," was extinguished. THOMAS MORE, or Morus, (1478-1535), one of Henry VIII.'s victims, in addition to some writings not unimportant for the beginnings of modern English prose (especially a History of Edward V. and Richard III.), wrote a work in Latin, which has gained a place in English literature in the free English translation (1551) by Ralph Robinson, but at the same time is one of the most remarkable books of the early Renaissance, Utopia (1516). In this work may be seen, perhaps more clearly than in any other work of that period, how the first mental breeze, blowing from classical antiquity, tended to free those who were favoured by it from their trammels. In religious questions Thomas Morus was far from liberal-minded; on the contrary, he recommended for the stake, in libels characterised by religious frenzy, Tyndale, the poor friend of Luther and English translator of the Bible, and it was only his resistance to the State and Church policy of Henry VIII. and his self-installation in the office of supreme head of the Church in the place of the Pope, that cost him his head. In all secular questions, however, that remarkable disciple of the ancient philosophers and statesmen was a man astonishingly free from prejudice. A passage in Amerigo Vespucci's Travels, describing an island of Paradise peopled with happy inhabitants, was the foundation of Utopia (The Land of Nowhere). Morus makes a traveller describe the islandstate of Utopia, an entirely ideal state of the future, with a six hours' working day, enjoying perfect justice, free from war, idleness, financial troubles, lawyers, and even religious disputes, with a system of mild communism, which tolerates neither wealth nor poverty, in short a cloud-cuckoo town, but one which contains nothing but human possibilities. It is the first production (belonging to the Christian era) of a literature, which was subsequently cultivated by English and American writers; Harrington's Oceana and Bellamy's Looking Backward owe their reputation to More's Utopia. The following specimen of the old English translation shows that the author's views regarding the penal code are on a level which England did not reach until three hundred years later, since far into the nineteenth century capital punishment was still inflicted in certain cases of theft. Morus's traveller in Utopia writes :— Surely I thinke it not ryght nor justice, that the losse of money should cause the losse of man's life. For myne opinion is, that all the goods in the world are not able to countervayle man's life. For so cruell governance, so strait rules and unmercyfull lawes be not allowable, that if a small offense be committed, by and by1 the sword should be drawn. Nor so stoical 1 At once. |