"THE CHAPTER VII. THE NON-DRAMATIC ELIZABETHAN POETS. HE ELIZABETHAN AGE" is marked by features which give it peculiar distinction in the history of the literary world. The language had just reached its thorough development, Thought was rejoicing in a recent and sudden emancipation. The writers were men of originality and of high intellectual culture, who found the ancient and foreign literatures filled with materials and imagery which had not yet had time to become commonplace for English readers. They united freshness and dignity in their poetry and in their prose. The literary activity begun in the reign of Elizabeth was carried on through the reign of James I, But the progress of this age was not in literature alone. There was an awakening of the people to general social improvement, Life was recognized as worth enjoying, and its enjoyment was found in a new way of living. Comforts were invented and used.* ་ * Holinshed, writing at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, says: "There are old men yet dwelling in the village where I remain which have noted three things to be marvellously altered in England within their sound remembrance: One is the multitudes of chimneys lately erected; whereas, in their young days, there were not above two or three, if so many, in the most uplandish towns of the realm (the religious houses and manor places of their lords always excepted, and peradventure some great personage); but each made his fire against a reredosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. The second is the great amendment of lodging; for said they, our fathers and we ourselves have lain full oft upon straw pallets, covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dogswaine, and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster.' * * * * As for servants, if they had any sheet above them it was well, for seldom had they any under their bodies to keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvass and rased their hardened hides. The third thing they tell us of is the exchange of treene platters (so called, I suppose, from tree or wood) into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin. For so common were all sorts of treene vessels in old time, that a man should hardly find four pieces of pewter (of which one was peradventure a salt) in a good farmer's house." Houses were built upon improved plans. The architect and the artist were recognized as contributing to the pleasure of life. There was wonderful improvement in the use of materials. In this startling age the whole national mind was interested in questions of state. Sympathies and prejudices were intense. For the first time the average Englishman was using his brain. Society was active, thoughtful, aspiring, and its influence upon those who had genius for letters was powerfully stimulating. The great writers who shine in the literary splendor of the Elizabethan age were the natural product of the newly-awakened, thoughtful English nation of that day. The first name that gains a lasting distinction is that of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, (1536-1608). After winning much applause for his share in the composition of a tragedy, he planned a work entitled A Mirror for Magistrates. It was to narrate in verse a series of tragic stories drawn from the history of England; and these stories were to serve as lessons of virtue, and as warnings to future kings and statesmen. Other, and dreary poets carried out the details of Sackville's ingenious plan. In 1559 the first edition of the work appeared. Other editions followed, each succeeding one containing new contributions of verse, until the sixth edition, published in 1571, was of enormous bulk. Although the work was admired in its own day, it has not sufficient poetical merit to attract the attention of the modern reader. Sackville himself wrote the Induction (the introduction) and the Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham; and by these parts he saved the work from utter stupidity. He had power of expression and skill in the conduct of allegorical thought; but his meditations are very serious, and gloom shadows the playing of his imagination. These poetic passages were written in his early life, and they are all that he has contributed to literature. They fill but a small place on the printed page, yet they are so far superior to what was written by the contemporaneous poets of his early life, that we may appropriately call him the herald of the splendors of the Elizabethan Literature. After his early manhood all his years were crowded with the cares of state. Sir Philip Sidney, (1554–1586) exerted a potent influence over the spirit of his age. The qualities of his character commanded the loving respect of all men. His tastes were scholarly, his love for virtue was intense, he was magnanimous, he had heroic traits, and after living nobly he died a hero. His definition of gentlemanliness —“high erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy "—might be pronounced as the fitting description of his manliness. In his own time and until the present day he has been regarded as the model English gentleman. The charm of his life has led to over-estimates of the worth of his writings. His contributions to our literature consist of a small collection of sonnets called Astrophel and Stella (44); a prose romance entitled The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia; and A Defence of Poesy (55.) The sonnets have a languid elegance. The Arcadia, full of the spirit of chivalry, illustrates in its style the defects of that euphuism to which we shall refer hereafter. The story, though it would be tedious to the devoted reader of Scott or Dickens, was popular in the days of Shakespeare, and was the most charming of books to the people of leisure and fashion in the first half of the seventeenth century. Sidney's Defence of Poets is the work on which his fame in literature now rests. It is a manly attempt to set forth the worth of the poet, and was written in opposition to the doctrine of the radical Puritans of that day, who, in their fanatical zeal, denounced whatever contributed to a taste for the beautiful. EDMUND SPENSER. "Our sage and serious Spenser."-Milton. "Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original.”—Dryden. "Master Edmund Spenser had done enough for the immortality of his name, had he only given us his Shepherd's Kalendar."-Drayton. "There is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth."-Pope. "Do you love Spenser? I love him in my heart of hearts."-Southey. "The poetry of Spenser is remarkable for brilliant imagination, fertile invention, and flowing rhythm; yet, with all these recommendations, it is cold and tedious." -Chateaubriand. "Spenser seems to me a most genuine poet, and to be justly placed after Shakespeare and Milton, and above all other English poets."-Mackintosh. "We must not fear to assert, with the best judges of this and former ages, that Spenser is still the third name in the poetical literature of our country, and that he has not been surpassed, except by Dante, in any other."-Hallam. "Among the numerous poets belonging exclusively to Elizabeth's reign, Spenser stands without a class and without a rival. * * * * There are few eminent poets in the language who have not been essentially indebted to him."— Campbell. "One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of the Faerie Queene. We become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men and women. Of the persons who read the first canto, not one in ten reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of the poem."-Macaulay. "But some people will say that all this (the Faerie Queene) may be very fine, but they cannot understand it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them; they look at it as a child looks at a dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pike-staff.”—Hazlitt. THE only non-dramatic poet of the Elizabethan age who could rank by the side of the best poets of this cen tury was the illustrious Edmund Spenser. B. 1552?] After the long and dreary interval of nearly D. 1599] two centuries, he appeared as the worthy suc cessor to Chaucer. He was born in London, about 1552. During his youth he lived in humble circumstances. He was educated at the University of Cambridge. After acquiring much genuine culture at the university, he began his brilliant and unhappy career as a man of letters. Two years were spent in the north of England, where he wrote the Shepherd's Calendar, finding in its composition some solace for his grief and disappointment as a lover.* At Cambridge he had formed an intimate friendship with Gabriel Harvey, a man of learning and of considerable literary reputation. This friend summoned Spenser from the north of England to London, and introduced him to Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney welcomed the poet to his house, treated him with the utmost kindness, and cheered him on in his literary ambition. At Sidney's mansion Spenser revised his Shepherd's Calendar, and, under the title of the Poet's Year, dedicated it to "Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of chivalry and poesy." He was anxious to win the patronage of some great person who would treat him so generously as to enable him to devote his life to literary pursuits. In our day, such an ambition would be considered unmanly and servile; but it must be remembered that before Shakespeare no man had been able to earn his bread by literary work. Whoever had love for letters, if he were a poor man, had either to quench that love or to secure the patronage of wealth. Spenser's object was well-nigh accomplished when *"Early in Spenser's life he had worshipped a fair Rosalind, whose faithless trifling with him and eventual preference of a rival are recorded in the Shepherd's Calendar. E. K. (an unknown commentator on Spenser) tells us that the name being well ordered will betray the very name of Spenser's love,' whence it has been conjectured that she was a lass of the name of Rosa Lynde. ** * He remained some twelve or fourteen years without thoughts of marriage. But in the years 1592-3 he fell in with an Elizabeth (her surname is lost), towards whom his heart turned; and after a courtship set forth in his Amoretti or sonnets, he married her in 1594. He was then forty-one or forty-two years of age. His wife was of lowly origin. 'She was certes but a country lasse,' but beautiful-'so sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she.' Her eyes were 'sapphires blue,' her hair of 'rippling gold.” ”—. Clarendon Press Series--The Faery Queene, p. 8. |