straitened circumstances; but not let it be hoped-actually 'for lake of bread,' as Ben Jonson puts it.* At his own desire, he was buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of Chaucer-the revered Tityrus of his Aeglogues. The Faery Queene, Spenser's longest and most ambitious poem, is an unfinished allegory. Its plan is sufficiently described in the explanatory letter to Raleigh, prefixed to the first three books published in 1590. 'The generall ende . . . . of all the booke,' says the author, 'is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.' Of this, King Arthur is his exemplar, and he strives to pourtraict' in him, 'before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised.' Each 'morall vertue,' if the work had been finished, would have had its special book and patron knight, whose individual adventure is laid upon him by the Faery Queene. Thus Holinesse has its patron in the Redcrosse Knight (Bk. i.); Temperaunce in Sir Guyon (Bk. ii.); and Chastitie, in the 'lady knight,' Britomartis (Bk. iii.). Arthur, to whom no special virtue is allotted, represents Magnificence, which includes all, and he assists in every book, succouring the rest when in need. The origin of the several adventures was to have been revealed in the concluding book, 'where,' says the author, ‘I devise that the Faery Queene kept her annuall feast twelve daies, uppon which twelve severall dayes, the occasions of the twelve severall adventures hapened, which being undertaken by xii. severall knights, are in these twelve books severally handled and discoursed.' † In addition to the virtues which they typified, each of Spenser's characters figured some special contemporary. 'The original of every knight,' says Dryden, 'was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them that virtue, which he thought was most conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, though it turned not much to his account.' The Queen herself sufficed to the two characters of Gloriana and Belphœbe; and Sidney was Arthur, to whom, in the all-resolving twelfth book, Gloriana was to have been triumphantly united. But the judicious modern reader will probably set aside the 'continued Allegorie' altogether, and surrender himself entirely to the poet's lofty morality and splendid descriptions, to the inexhaustible succession of images that, 'like the vapours which rise ceaselessly from the ocean, ascend, sparkle, commingle their scrolls of snow and gold, whilst below them new *As reported by Drummond of Hawthornden. † See also Appendix A, Extract XXIII. Discourse on Satire, Dryden's Works, 1867, 356. mists and yet new mists again arise in undimmed and undying procession.'* He will be thankful that the absence of six books (for only fragments of the seventh remain) has not materially affected what time has preserved. Spenser's greatest work leaves little space for any detailed account of his lesser pieces. The Shepheard's Calender, 1579, which preceded it, was a series of twelve Aeglogues, of which the defects are that they are 'framed (in Sidney's words) to an old rustick language,' and marred by a warp of ecclesiastical allegory. Mother Hubberd's Tale, 1591, or the adventures of a fox and an ape, is a sharp and shrewd satire upon the common method of rising in Church and State.' Colin Clout's come home again, 1595, the Amoretti, and the splendid Epithalamion on his own courtship and marriage; the Prothalamion in honour of the double marriage of the ladies Katherine and Elizabeth Somerset, 1596, and the Fowre Hymns in praise of Love, of Beauty, of Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, 1596, are some of his more important minor pieces. His sole remaining prose work, A View of the State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Irenæus, was first published in 1633, after his death. The language of Spenser's poetry is designedly archaic, and rather resembles that of Chaucer (For hee of Tityrus his songs did lere ') than that of his own time. The stanza of the Faery Queene, now known as the Spenserian stanza, is the eight-line measure of Ariosto, another of the poet's models, with the addition of an Alexandrine line. An example will be better than a formula:— 'And more, to lulle him in his slumber soft, A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, And ever-drizling raine upon the loft, [sky] Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne (Faery Queene, Bk. i. Canto i. 41.) In the last line, the cæsura, for the sake of variety, is placed at the seventh syllable. Spenser more usually puts it in the middle of the verse, as in the last line of the stanza which immediately precedes the one above quoted: 'And unto Morpheus comes, whom drowned deepe In drowsie fit he findes || of nothing he takes keepe.' * Taine, Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, Bk. ii. chap. i. 333. The Spenserian stanza is a favorite with English versifiers. Thomson, Campbell, Byron, and others have used it successfully; and it was employed by the late Mr. Worsley with happy effect in his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, the latter poem especially (1861-8).* 36. The Minor Poets.-The minor poets of the Elizabethan age are very numerous; and, for the most part, well worthy of more than a passing notice. The scope of this volume, however, restricts us to a brief selection. The first to be named is Michael Drayton (1563-1631), whose most famous work, the Poly-Olbion, 1612-22, is a metrical and topographical description of England, extending to 30 books, and 'illustrated with a prodigality of historical and legendary erudition.' It is said to be accurate. Drayton also wrote an 'elegant and lively little poem,' entitled Nymphidia, or, the Court of Faery. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), Master of the Queen's Revels under James, and Laureate after Spenser, was the author of a metrical history of the wars of Lancaster and York; Musophilus, a dialogue containing a defence of learning; and a collection of 57 sonnets entitled Delia-perhaps the most poetical, though the first-named is undoubtedly the most important, of his productions. Sir John Davies (1570-1626), Solicitor-General and Attorney-General under James I., wrote a metaphysical poem in the heroic quatrains afterwards employed in Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, under the title of Nosce Teipsum: Two Elegies, I. Of Human Knowledge; II. Of the Soul of Man and the Immortality thereof,1599, which is praised by Hallam for its closeness of thought and uniformity of power. John Donne (1573-1631), sometime Dean of St. Paul's, and, as a preacher, famed for his eloquence, is known as a poet by a number of songs, sonnets, marriage pieces, funeral pieces, and satires, chiefly of a metaphysical cast, the inherent poetry of which is frequently disfigured by harsh metres and whimsical conceits, which have given rise to contradictory opinions as to his merits (see p. 77, s. 50). Giles Fletcher (15881623) and Phineas Fletcher (1584-1650) were imitators of Spenser, and allegorical poets. Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death, 1610, is the chief work of the former; and the Purple Island, 1633,—under which tropical title the reader will hardly divine' an anatomical lecture in verse on the human frame' progressing to the intellectual and moral faculties of the soul *See Appendix A, Extract XXIV. For some account of Arthur Brooke, Browne, Churchyard, Constable, Edwards, Southwell, Sylvester, Taylor the Water Poet, Watson, Warner, and others, the reader is referred to our Dictionary Appendix (E). -that of the latter, who, chronologically, belongs more strictly to the next chapter. To the first-named work Milton is said to have been indebted for certain passages of Paradise Regained. William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585-1649),—concludes our list of original minor poets. He is the 'son-in-the Muses' of Surrey and Sidney, whose efforts in the Italian meetre and stile' he has rivalled, if not excelled, in his sonnets. The reader may compare the following, addressed To a Nightingale, with that of Milton upon a similar theme (see p. 83, s. 57) :— 'Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early howres, Of winters past, or comming, void of care, Well pleased with delights which present are, Faire seasones, budding sprayes, sweet-smelling flowers; To rocks, to springs, to rils, from leauy bowres Thou thy Creator's goodnesse dost declare Sweet artlesse songstarre, thou my minde dost raise By a version of the Iliad and Odyssey characterised by Pope, for its daring fiery spirit,' as something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have writ before he arrived at years of discretion,' George Chapman (1557-1634) takes precedence of the other metrical translators. He also produced renderings of Hesiod's Works and Days, and Juvenal's Fifth Satire, and he completed Marlowe's translation of the Hero and Leander of Musæus. The Ovid's Metamorphoses of Arthur Golding (d. 1590); the Eneid of Thomas Phaer (d. 1560) and Thomas Twyne (d. 1613); the Orlando Furioso, 1591, of Sir John Harrington (1561-1612), and the Recoverie of Jerusalem, 1600, of Edward Fairfax (d. 1632)—the two last especially-also deserve notice. 37. The Growth of the English Drama.-The germ of the English Drama is to be found in those rude and primitive representations of events in Scriptural history which, as they generally involved the exhibition of supernatural power, were, on this account, known to our forefathers as MIRACLE PLAYS OF MYSTERIES. When they were introduced into England is uncertain. In all probability * Drummond's Poems, 1832, p. 172 (Maitland Club). † Preface to the Iliad. they first came to us from France, and were, perhaps, first acted here in French. The earliest recorded performance is that of a Miracle Play acted at Dunstable about 1110. It was written by Geoffrey, afterwards Abbot of St. Albans, and was based upon the legend of St. Catherine. Later we learn from Fitz-Stephen, Becket's biographer, that, during the life or soon after the death of that martyr, religious plays were frequently performed in London. Later still they became common in most large cities; and three collections of them, known respectively as the Townley or Woodkirk (30 plays), Coventry (42 plays), and Chester series (24 plays) are still extant. At first the Miracle Plays were wholly in the hands of the clergy, who acted them, making them a vehicle to convey religious instruction to the people, and, not infrequently, to enforce or illustrate dogmas. Thus one of the oldest known in MS.,-the Play of the Blessed Sacrament, 1461,-was based upon transubstantiation. Ultimately the Miracie Plays passed from the hands of the clergy into those of the laity, the craftsmen of the different guilds becoming their chief exponents, occasionally with much propriety, as, for example, when Noah's Flood, one of the Chester series, was entrusted to the Water-Drawers of the Dee. In many cases, the Scripture characters represented wore the costume of the fraternity to which the actors belonged. This homely and familiar rendering of the sacred stories was often accompanied by grotesque and even profane incongruities. A scene from the last-named mystery, in which Noah and his insubordinate wife come to blows because she obstinately refuses to enter the Ark, is a frequently-cited instance of the former characteristic. The same unfavourable view of the disposition of the patriarch's helpmate prevails in the Woodkirk play of the Career of Noah, where she persists in continuing her spinning until the rising waters have all but submerged the seat she sits on. In the Coventry piece, however, which treats the same subject, she is pictured as amiable and devoted. The personages of the first Mysteries were confined exclusively to stock characters drawn from Holy Writ and the Legends of the Saints. As these lost novelty, it became necessary to revive the fading interest of the audience by the addition of allegorical embodiments of vices, virtues, conditions of life, &c.; and out of this necessity grew the second stage of the drama-the MORALITY, Or MORAL PLAY. From the Moral Play, with its abstract ideas personified, to the modern drama, the transition was natural and inevitable. |