A great mishap and grief of mind is him befall'n of late, Menalcas. Well, Corydon, let him go halt, and let us both go lie Corydon. The Town's estate? Menalcas, oh, thou mak'st my heart to groan, 30 [thing. For Vice hath every place possess'd, and Virtue thence is flown! For if their natures gentle be, though birth be ne'er so base, A proverb old hath oft been heard, and now full true is tried: An ape will ever be an ape, though purple garments hide. 50 For seldom will the mastiff course the hare or else the deer, But still, according to his kind, will hold the hog by th' ear. Unfit are dunghill knights to serve the town with spear in field, [shield. Nor strange it seems, a sudden chop, to leap from whip to The chiefest man in all our town, that bears the greatest sway, Is Corydon (no kin to me), a neat-herd th' other day. This Corydon, come from the cart, in honour chief doth sit, And governs us, because he hath a crabbéd clownish wit. Now see the churlish cruelty that in his heart remains: The selie sheep that shepherds good have fostered up with pains, 60 And brought away from stinking dales on pleasant hills to feed, They did torment, and drive them out in places far to dwell. 1 From whip to shield, from the carter's whip to bearing arms as a gentleman. All this is introduction to the character of Corydon, by whom Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, is represented. The reference is to the burning of heretics under Mary. Stephen Gardiner was the illegitimate son of a bishop and the brother-in-law of a king: but Edmund Bonner was the son of a poor sawyer's wife in Worcester shire. At the accession of Elizabeth he refused to take the oath o allegiance, ceased to be Bishop of London, and was imprisoned. A he died in 1569, he was living, and a prisoner, when this eclogu was published. Barnaby Googe was a youth of eighteen or mor at the time of the burning of Cranmer, and the eclogue, althoug published in 1563, may have been written in Mary's reign. If it w T not then written, he is thinking himself back into her days. sheep are the congregations. 2 Their old corrupted grass. The flocks of the clergy brought, und Edward VI., "away from stinking dales, on pleasant hills to feed were sent back, under Mary, to "their old corrupted grass," an those were burnt who refused to quit the better spiritual pastur while the pastors who sustained them were either burnt or exiled driven out "in places far to dwell." Daphnis.... Alexis. Daphnis, "the chiefest of them all," w Latimer; Alexis, perhaps Ridley, probably Cranmer. O shepherds, wail for Daphnis' death, Alexis' hap lament, To such as Him do still despise and never seek to mend? 80 Let them be sure He will revenge when they think least upon. But, look! a stormy show'r doth rise which will fall here anon. Menalcas, best we now depart. My cottage us shall keep, For there is room for thee and me and eke for all our sheep. Some chestnuts have I there in store, with cheese and pleasant whey; God sends me victuals for my need, and I sing care away.1 66 George Turbervile, a scholar liberally trained, who served as secretary with an English ambassador at St. Petersburg, and was living in 1594, published "Translations from Ovid" in 1567, Poems" in 1570, and "Translations of Tragical Tales from the Italian" in 1576. The two next poems were written by him. ALL THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE USED. Was never aught, by Nature's art Or cunning skill, so wisely wrought, Or may be of so small a price, And change his sort by sound advice. That all things are as is their use, And things corrupt by his abuse. What better may be found than flame, Yet we do oft abuse the same In bringing buildings to decay: Their malice, moved to wrath and ire, And make him sick that erst was whole. The true man and the thief are lecke," For sword doth serve them both at need, Save one by it doth safety seek And th' other of the spoil to speed. As law and learning doth redress 10 20 That otherwise would go to wrack, E'en so doth it oft times oppress 30 THAT NO MAN SHOULD WRITE BUT SUCH AS DO EXCEL. For that in every art there can but one alone exceed. At games you see how many do to win the wager run; Is that a cause to say the rest in running did not well? If none in physic should but only Galen deal, No doubt a thousand perish would whom physic now doth heal. Each one his talent hath, to use at his device, Which makes that many men as well as one are counted wise. Then God the skulls of other men did make but all in vain. Of those writers who in seeking their own highest work have done the highest service to their kind, Thomas Churchyard wrote a short poem that may follow this of Turbervile's. Churchyard, who contributed the story of "Jane Shore" to the " Mirror for Magistrates,' was born of a good family in Shrewsbury, and liberally trained. When he had spent much of his means at Court, he was in the household of the Earl of Surrey. He went afterwards to the wars, and was twice a prisoner. He to the Latin "in odio," in hate. The old derivation was from noxa," hurt or harm, noxious, hurtful; and that seems to be the sense in the word as used by Turbervile. 6 Moe, more. lived through Elizabeth's reign; died, more than eighty years old, in 1604; and is said to have been buried near the grave of Skelton, whose praise he blended in this piece with reminder of the duty of Englishmen to hold by the memory of OUR ENGLISH POETS. If sloth and tract of time that wears each thing away Should rust and canker worthy Arts, each thing would soon decay. If such as present are forego the people past, Ourselves should soon in silence sleep and lose renown at last. God shield our sloth were such or world so simple now And paints forth vice aright and blames abuse in men, And shows what life deserves rebuke and who the praise of pen. You see how foreign realms advance their Poets all, wonders do 10 Who erst did The works and sugar'd verses fine of our rare poets new, Nor scorn your Mother-Tongue, O babes of English breed! A higher verse, a statelier style that may be read or sung 30 Through earth and waters deep the pen by skill doth pass, The honeycomb that bee doth make is not so sweet in hive Earl Surrey had a goodly vein, Lord Vaux the mark did beat; Oh, shall I leave out Skelton's name, the blossom of my fruit, A poet for his art whose judgment sure was high, And had great practice of the pen; his works they will not lie. 50 His terms to taunts did lean, his talk was as he wrate,- Of reason ripe and good, and to the hateful mind, And seldom out of Prince's grace, and great with each degree. Time all consumes, and helps itself no whit, Shepherd's IN the year 1579 Edmund Spenser was first known as a poet by the publication of his "Shepherd's Calendar." In 1579 the reign of Elizabeth attained the age of twenty-one; and the young men who then came to years of discretion had been born and bred under the influences of her time. After 1579 we may say that the Elizabethan literature rapidly attained to its full breadth and depth and force; the writers multiplied, their power rose. Spenser's first book, "The Shepherd's Calendar," associated with this date the promise that one of those great poets, who are rarely born into the world, was about to speak the best thought of his country. And he did. Spenser's great poem, the "Faerie Queene," is not, as some take it to be, a work of bright imagination seldom touching earth, a lovely pile of castles in the air he dealt in it, after his own manner, with the vital concerns of England in his time-religious, social, and political; his point of view being that of an Elizabethan Puritan, earnest as his successor, Milton, in a later day. He was, indeed, in more senses than one, the Elizabethan Milton. Milton was afterwards in a worthy sense what Dryden called him, "the poetical son of Spenser; Milton," Dryden added, "has confessed to me that Spenser was his original." Out of this sympathy with Spenser came Milton's emphatic reference to him in the "Areopagitica" as "the sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." Of the four greatest English poets-Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton-two may be said to be ours only, and two the world's. Spenser and Milton were individually English, and each fought on the same side in the same battle, though they were in action at different hours of the long day, and under different conditions of the contest. Chaucer and Shakespeare were universal poets, representing not the struggle of a nation, but, for all humanity, the essence of the life of man, with cheerful faith in the great heaven that is broader than the storm about our ears. Yet that knowledge of theirs does not forbid battle with the storm-it warns us rather not to let it beat us down into despair. To conquer evil, or that which he thinks evil, is man's work in life. To lowest minds few ills are known but those which trouble their own bodies, hunger, thirst, or privation of enjoyments that make up their earthly good: but higher minds see farther, and, knowing those ills to be worst that touch the soul, rise to a nobler life in labour for their overthrow. Thus, high or low, we are all combatant; our best poets are but a part of us; our battle-cries are in their songs. Few only in the lifetime of a world can rise as Shakespeare did to the pure heaven of essential truth, and, while so far re moved and yet near to us all, look on our struggles with a peaceful trust in God and an unbounded goodwill towards man. Edmund Spenser, Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, and Sidney's friends Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer, were all children of three, four, or five years old when Elizabeth came to the throne. In 1579 they were in the full vigour of early manhood, and all poets, though not poets of equal mark. Spenser belonged to a poor branch of a good family, and was at home in the north of England, although he was born and sent to school in London. As a youth of about sixteen he had shown his interest in EDMUND SPENSE. From George Vertue's Engraving of his Portrait. the chief struggle of his time by contributing some poetical translations from the visions of Petrarch and of Bellay to a religious book published in the year 1569 by a refugee from Brabant. The book was called "A Theatre, wherein be represented as well the Miseries and Calamities that follow the Voluptuous Worldlings, as also the great Joys and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy. An Argument both Profitable and Delectable to all that sincerely love the Word of God." Young Spenser was a contributor to such a book as that, in the year of his going to Cambridge. Soon after he had finished his university course, a faithful college friend of his, named Gabriel Harvey, caused him to leave his home in the North for London, and enter the service of the Earl of Leicester. Then it was that Spenser's friendship was formed with a young man of about his own age, earnest as he was himself, and like himself a poet, the Earl of Leicester's nephew, Philip Sidney. Edmund Spenser had but just formed these new relations, and was looking for advancement in life by the help of his new friends, who had influence at Court, when he completed the writing of "The Shepherd's Calendar." Part of this work he is said to have written while with Sidney at Penshurst, and at Penshurst a tree has been associated with his memory as Spenser's oak, the tradition being that one or two eclogues of "The Shepherd's Calendar" were written under it. There is also still shown Sidney's oak, said to have been planted on the day of Philip Sidney's birth. A certain tree-worship has often been associated with the memories of poets. In the name of Shakespeare, homage was paid to a mulberry-tree, and there was a tree under which Spenser's forerunner in pastoral verse, Clement Marot, was said to have written. "The Shepherd's Calendar" is in twelve eclogues, corresponding to the twelve months of the year; each eclogue being a complete and independent poem. Spenser took for himself, from John Skelton, the name of Colin Clout, which he held by in after years as his poetical name; and he showed himself in sympathy with the spirit of Skelton's "Colin Clout," while he wrote these pastorals as one who was strongly influenced by the genius of Clement Marot. The two last of Spenser's eclogues were, indeed, simply paraphrases of two eclogues by the French poet, who gets little credit from his countrymen for that in him which our English Spenser felt and understood. In his "Shepherd's Calendar" Spenser provided one essential element by giving Colin Clout a hapless love for Rosalind to pipe about sometimes. Here also he tried his skill as a poet in a variety of measures; and Chaucer was to him, as in all his after years, the great Master, in whose steps he sought humbly to follow. Years afterwards, in the Faerie Queene" (book iv., canto 2), Spenser wove into his work a thread of fiction derived, as he said, from Dan' Chaucer, Well of English undefiled;" and in the June eclogue of the "Shepherd's Calendar," using the pastoral name of Tityrus, which stands always for Chaucer in these eclogues, young Spenser wrote the following lines: 66 "The god of shepherds, Tityrus, is dead, Who taught me homely, as I can, to make:2 He, whilst he lived, was the sovereign head Of shepherds all that ben with love ytake. Now dead he is, and lieth wrapt in lead, Oh, why should Death on him such outrage show? And all his passing skill with him is fled, The fame whereof doth daily greater grow. But if on me some little drops would flow Of that the Spring was in his learned head, I soon would learn these woods to wail my woe, And teach the trees their trickling tears to shed." Spenser's homage to Chaucer was shown, at a time when fashion tended to outlandish and affected speech, by a steady cultivation of plain one-syllabled English. In the few lines just quoted, for example, there are eighty-seven monosyllables, fourteen words of two syllables, all of the very simplest kind, such as lived, learned, little, lieth; and the only word of more syllables than two is sovereign, except, of course, the name Tityrus. Spenser's second eclogue 1 Dan was a contraction of "dominus," master. 2 To make, to write verses. See Note in reference to the ward makars on page 109. |