Muses that sing Love's sensual empery, Your eyes were never yet let in to see But dwell in darkness; for your god is blind.1 This limitation of the sonnet in subject and treatment led to no little repetition. Indeed, many sonnets were written in avowed competition, as the well-known series of tournament sonnets, as they are called, on Sleep,2 on Death, the Flight of Time, and others. I believe that an examination of the entire literature of the Elizabethan sonnet, with respect to subject and sentiment, would result in the discovery of an unusual number of such parallels, and exhibit, to an extent scarcely yet recognized, that the versatility of much of this species of poetry is a versatility of expression, not a versatility of thought. The cultivation of the sonnet had, on the other hand, a beneficial effect on the English Lyric, as it demanded a greater attention to the minutiae of form, a greater regard for unity, and, from the somewhat dignified tread of its decasyllables, a greater care in the molding of the thought of the lyric in distinction from the quality of mere song. In the hands of Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, and Shakespeare, the sonnet reached 1 Works of Chapman, Poems and Minor Translations, ed. 187 5, p. 38. 2 See note on Care-charmer Sleep, p. 234. an artistic height which was not surpassed until the conception of the scope of its subject was widened, and the beauty of the stricter Petrarchan form was reasserted by Milton, to be practiced by Wordsworth and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. But, as in the case of the pastoral fashion, there were other currents of lyrical production, less directed by the conventionalities of the moment. Spenser aside, whose elaborated state does not lend itself readily to the shorter lyric, and whose singing robes are stiff with tissue of gold, wrought work, and gems inlaid, and Shakespeare, also, whose non-dramatic Muse is dedicated to thoughtful sonnet and mournful threnody, as well as to the sprightlier melodies of love, wine, and merriment, the most important poetical influence of this decade is that of that grave and marvelous man, Dr. John Donne. I would respectfully invite the attention of those who still persist with Dr. Johnson in regarding this great poet as the founder of a certain "Metaphysical School of Poetry," a man all but contemporary with Cowley, and a writer harsh, obscure, and incomprehensible in his diction, first to an examination of facts which are within the reach of all, and, secondly, to an honest study of his works. Ben Jonson told Drummond 2 that "Donne's best poems were written before he was twenty-five years old," i.e., before 1598, and Francis Davison, apparently when collecting material for his Poetical Rhapsody in 1600, includes in a memorandum of " MSS. to get," certain poems of Donne. The Carews, Crashaws, and Cowleys begin at least thirty years later, and, be their imitations of Donne's characteristics what they may, Donne himself is an Elizabethan in the strictest possible acceptation of that term, and far in fact as in time from the representative of a 1 Lives of the English Poets, ed. Tauchnitz, I, 11. 2 Conversations, Sh. Soc. Pub., p. 8. 3 Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Nicolas, p. xlv. degenerate and false taste. It is somewhat disconcerting to find an author whom, like Savage Landor in our own century, the critic cannot glibly classify as the founder of a school or the product of a perfectly obvious series of literary influences. Donne is a man of this difficult type. For, just as Shakespeare touched life and man at all points, and, absorbing the light of his time, gave it forth a hundredfold, so Donne, withdrawn almost wholly from the influences affecting his contemporaries, shone and glowed with a strange light all his own. 1 2 Few lyrical poets have ever rivaled Donne in contemporary popularity. Mr. Edmund Gosse has recently given a reason for this, which seems worthy of attention, while by no means explaining everything. "Donne was, I would venture to suggest, by far the most modern and contemporaneous of the writers of his time. . . He arrived at an excess of actuality of style, and it was because he struck them as so novel, and so completely in touch with his age, that his immediate coevals were so much fascinated with him." A much bequoted passage of the Conversations with Drummond informs us that Ben Jonson "esteemeth Donne the first poet in the world in some things." An analysis of these "some things," which space here forbids, will, I think, show them to depend, to a large degree, upon that deeper element of the modern lyric, poetic insight; the power which, proceeding by means of the clash of ideas familiar with ideas remote, flashes light and meaning into what has hitherto appeared mere commonplace. This, mainly, though with much else, is the positive originality of Donne. A quality no less remarkable is to be found in what may be called his negative originality, by which I mean that trait which caused Donne absolutely to give over 1 The Jacobean Poets, p. 64. 2 Conversations, as above, p. 8, the current mannerisms of his time; to write neither in the usual Italian manner, nor in borrowed lyrical forms; indeed, to be at times wantonly careless of mere expression, and, above all, to throw away every trace of the conventional classic imagery and mannerisms which infected and conventionalized the poetry of so many of his contemporaries. It seems to me that no one, excepting Shakespeare, with Sidney, Greville, and Jonson in lesser measure, has done so much to develop intellectualized emotion in the Elizabethan lyric as John Donne. But Donne is the last poet to demand a proselyting zeal of his devotees, and all those who have learned to love his witching personality will agree to the charming sentiment of his faithful adorer, Izaak Walton, when he says: "Though I must omit to mention divers persons, . . . friends of Sir Henry Wotton; yet I must not omit to mention of a love that was there begun betwixt him and Dr. Donne, sometime Dean of Saint Paul's; a man of whose abilities I shall forbear to say anything, because he who is of this nation, and pretends to learning or ingenuity, and is ignorant of Dr. Donne, deserves not to know him.' But in the great age of Elizabeth, miracles were not the monopoly of the immortals. Strenuous Titans, such as those that wrought poetical cosmos out of the chaos of Barons' Wars or Civil Wars, out of disquisitions on statecraft and ponderous imitations of Senecan rhetoric, could also work dainty marvels in song. The lyrics of that most interesting and "difficult" of poets, Fulke Greville, have already been noticed, and are the more remarkable in their frequent grace of fancy, uncommon wit, originality, and real music of expression in that they are the sister products of the obscure and intricate musings and the often eccentric didacticism of Mustapha and Alaham. Of Daniel, a conscientious artist as he was a sensible theorist in verse, we might expect 1 Life of Wotton, Lives, etc., Amer. ed., 1846, p. 136. L the delicacy and elegance of the consummate lyrist; but far more extraordinary does it seem that the Drayton of later years should have continued well skilled in the lighter lyrical touch. It would be difficult to find a more perfect union of artistic feeling with fervent passion than is contained in "I pray thee leave, love me no more," or in the finished variation of the same theme in sonnet form: "Since there's no help." In quite another sphere, Drayton has achieved the best war-song of his age, if not of English literature, the familiar Ode to the Cambro-Britans on the Battle of Agincourt." 1 The real or affected reluctance of courtiers and gentlemen to permit their poetical productions to appear in print, led early to the practice of keeping poetical commonplace-books, in which the lover of poetry was accustomed to copy out, for his own pleasure and remembrance, such verses as met his fancy. These manuscript books are very numerous, and often afford us not only variant readings of wellknown poems, but occasionally verses of great value not elsewhere to be found. As the number of those who read poetry increased, two changes came about: the poetical commonplace-book was printed, and became the anthology, or miscellany, as they then called it; and, secondly, as necessity at times pressed upon the broken gentleman, the literary hack was evolved, in such men as Churchyard and Breton, possibly in Nicholas Grimald himself. In character, the Elizabethan poetical miscellanies differ widely; from a selection of verse, strictly lyrical, the work of various authors, to work of very mixed character, and even to mere collections of poetical quotations. The miscellanies, more strictly so-called, after The Paradise of Dainty Devices, are A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 1578; Britton's Bower of Delights, a pirated work including amongst much 1 See pp. 194, 196. 2 See p. 136. |