young Duke of Richmond, all dead in their prime. Alcne, a prisoner at Windsor, he recalls the happy days they have passed together: "So cruel prison how could betide, alas, As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy, "Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour, The large green courts, where we were wont to hove, And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love. "The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue, The dances short, long tales of great delight, "The palme-play, where, despoiled for the game, "The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust; ... "And with his thought the blood forsakes the face; "O place of bliss! renewer of my woes! Give me account, where is my noble fere ? "Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue, Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint."1 So in love, it is the sinking of a weary soul, to which he give vent: "For all things having life, sometime hath quiet rest; The bearing ass, the drawing ox, and every other beast; The peasant, and the post, that serves at all assays; The ship-boy, and the galley-slave, have time to take their ease; 1 Surrey's Poems, Pickering, 1831, p. 17. Save I, alas! whom care of force doth so constrain, That which brings joy to others brings him grief: "The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs! "s For all that, he will love on to his last sigh. "Yea, rather die a thousand times, than once to false my faith; I do bequeath my wearied ghost to serve her afterward." 3 An infinite love, and pure as Petrarch's; and she is worthy of it. In the midst of all these studied or imitated verses, an admirable portrait stands out, the simplest and truest we can imagine, a work of the heart now, and not of the memory, which behind the Madonna of chivalry shows the English wife, and beyond feudal gallantry domestic bliss. Surrey alone, restless, hears within him the firm tones of a good friend, a sincere counselor, Hope, who speaks to him thus: Surrey's Poems. "For I assure thee, even by oath, And thereon take my hand and troth, That she is one of the worthiest, The truest, and the faithfullest ; The gentlest and the meekest of mind That here on earth a man may find: And if that love and truth were gone, "The faithful lover declareth his pains and his uncertain joys, and with only hope recomforteth his woful heart," p. 53. 2 Ibid. "Description of Spring, wherein everything renews, save only the lover," p. 3 • Ibi p. 56. For in her mind no thought there is, And is thine own, and so she says; To thee she says full oft ‘Good night!' How thou hast done her woe and bale; That is full bent to be thine own." 1 Certainly it is of his wife that he is thinking here, not of an imaginary Laura. The poetic dream of Petrarch has become the exact picture of deep and perfect conjugal affection, such as yet survives in England; such as all the poets, from the author. ess of the Nutbrown Maid to Dickens,3 have never failed to rep resent. 1 Surrey's Poems. "A description of the restless state of the lover when absent from the mistress of his heart," p. 78. In another piece, Complaint on the Absence of her Lover being upon the Sea, he speaks in direct terms of his wife, almost as affectionately. Greene, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Shakespeare, Ford, Otway, Richardson, De Foe, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, etc. III. An English Petrarch: no juster title could be given to Surrey, for it expresses his talent as well as his disposition. In fact, like Petrarch, the oldest of the humanists, and the earliest exact writer of the modern tongue, Surrey introduces a new style, the manly style, which marks a great change of the mind; for this new form of writing is the result of superior reflection, which, governing the primitive impulse, calculates and selects with an end in view. At last the intellect has grown capable of selfcriticism, and actually criticises itself. It corrects its unconsidered works, infantine and incoherent, at once incomplete and superabundant; it strengthens and binds them together; it prunes and perfects them; it takes from them the master idea, to set it free and to show it clearly. This is what Surrey does, and his education had prepared him for it; for he had studied Virgil as well as Petrarch, and translated two books of the Eneid, almost verse for verse. In such company a man cannot but select his ideas and connect his phrases. After their example, Surrey gauges the means of striking the attention, assisting the intelligence, avoiding fatigue and weariness. He looks forward to the last line whilst writing the first. He keeps the strongest word for the last, and shows the symmetry of ideas by the symmetry of phrases. Sometimes he guides the intelligence by a continuous series of contrasts to the final image; a kind of sparkling casket, in which he means to deposit the idea which he carries, and to which he directs our attention from the first.1 Sometimes he leads his reader to the close of a long flowery description, and then suddenly checks him with a sorrowful phrase. He arranges his process, and knows how to produce effects; he uses even classical expressions, in which two substantives, each supported by its adjective, are balanced on either side of the verb. He collects his phrases in harmonious periods, and does not neglect the delight of the ears any more than of the mind. By his inversions he adds force to his ideas, and weight to his argument. He selects elegant or noble terms, rejects idle words and redundant phrases. Every epithet contains an idea, every metaphor a sentiment. There is eloquence in the regular devel 1 The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty. Description of Spring. A Vow to love faithfully. Complaint of the Lover disdained. opment of his thought; music in the sustained accent of his verse. Such is the new-born art. Those who have ideas, now pos sess an instrument capable of expressing them. Like the Ital. ian painters, who in fifty years had introduced or discovered all the technical tricks of the brush, English writers, in half-a-century, introduce or discover all the artifices of language, period. elevated style, heroic verse, soon the grand stanza, so effectually, that a little later the most perfect versifiers, Dryden, and Popr himself, says Dr. Nott, will add scarce anything to the rules, invented or applied, which were employed in the earliest efforts.' Even Surrey is too near to these authors, too constrained in his models, not sufficiently free; he has not yet felt the fiery blast of the age; we do not find in him a bold genius, an impassioned writer capable of wide expansion, but a courtier, a lover of ele gance, who, penetrated by the beauties of two finished lit eratures, imitates Horace and the chosen masters of Italy, co rects and polishes little morsels, aims at speaking perfectly fine language. Amongst semi-barbarians he wears a full dress becomingly. Yet he does not wear it completely at his ease: he keeps his eyes too exclusively on his models, and does not venture on frank and free gestures. He is sometimes as a school-boy, makes too great use of "hot" and "cold," wounds and martyrdom. Although a lover, and a genuine one, he thinks too much that he must be so in Petrarch's manner, that his phrase must be balanced and his image kept up. I had almost said that, in his sonnets of disappointed love, he thinks less often of the strength of love than of the beauty of his writing. He has conceits, ill-chosen words; he uses trite expressions; he relates how Nature, having formed his lady, broke the mould; he assigns parts to Cupid and Venus; he employs the old machinery of the troubadours and the ancients, like a clever man who wishes to pass for a gallant. At first scarce any mind dares be quite itself: when a new art arises, the first artist listens not to his heart, but to his masters, and asks himself at every step whether he be setting foot on solid ground, or whether he is not stumbling. Surrey, ed. Nott. VOL. I. 16 |