Extracts from Arcadia. 119 that nobody could lay the stealing of a nap to her charge,— upon whom he has sometimes placed touches of quite Shakesperian truth. Witness Mopsa's tale, which is very humorous after the high-flown romances of Pamela and Musidorus, about how the mighty king of a great country had the fairest daughter that did ever eat pap, and how she, while combing her hair one day with a comb of precious stones, saw a knight come into the court upon a goodly horse, one hair of gold and one of silver; and how they stole away one morning out of the castle, without staying so much as for their breakfast ;-every sentence beginning either with and so, or now forsooth, or so then. To give a somewhat more complete notion of the Arcadia, we will not part from it without giving entire one or two of the beautiful passages in which it abounds. The following description of a horse and rider in tilting at the ring, from so accomplished a horseman as Sir Philip, who had 'learnt his horsemanship at the Emperor's court, under John Pietro Pagliano,' has high interest. Pamela is describing Musidorus on horseback :— You might see him come towards me, beating the ground in so due time as no dancer can observe better measure. If you remember the ship we saw once, when the sea went high on the coast of Argos,* so went the beast. But he (as if, Centaur-like, he had been one piece with the horse) was no more moved than with the going of his own legs; and in effect did he so command him as his own limbs, for though he had both spurres and wand, they seemed rather marks of sovereignty than instruments of punishment, his hand and leg (with most pleasing grace) commanding without threatening, and rather remembering than chastising; at least, if sometimes he did, it was so stolen as neither our eyes could discern it, nor the horse with any change complain of it; he ever going so just with the horse, either forthright or turning, that it seemed as he borrowed the horse's bodie so he lent the horse his mind; in the turning one might perceive the bridle hand something gentle stir, but indeed so gently, as it did rather distil virtue than use violence and (when he would take the ring) the shifting his staff from his thigh, the descending it a little down, the getting of it up into the rest, the letting of the point fall, and taking the ring, was but all one motion, at least (if they were divers motions) they did so stealingly slippe one into another, as the latter part was ever in hand before the eye could discern the former was ended. * Beaumont and Fletcher have made use of this image, To feel our horses like proud seas under us;' which Byron, perhaps, has improved on The bathing of the princesses in the river Ladon has some pretty details: Philoclea tenderly moving her feet, unwonted to feel the naked ground, till the touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of shrugging come over her bodie like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars. Ladon would fain stay to have a full taste of his happiness, but the upper streams made such haste to have their part of the embracing, that the neather (though lothly) must needs give place to them. And as the ladies played there in the water, sometimes striking it with their hands, the water (making lines on his face) seemed to smile at such beating, and, with twenty bubbles, not to be content to have the picture of their face in large upon him, but he would in each of those bubbles set forth the miniature of them. A water-spaniel, in getting out of the river, shook off the water, 'as great men do their friends, now he had no further cause to use it :' Philoclea, when Pyrocles declares himself, became sick with a surfeit of joy, and fearful of she knew not what, as he that newly finds large treasures doubts whether he sleep or no, or like a fearful deer who then looks most about when he comes to the best feed. But with all our admiration for Sidney's romance and the scattered beauties which adorn it, it must be confessed that it is tedious. Those who read it attentively will not fail to be charmed with its romantic spirit, gentle feeling, and fine sensibility; but the characters are too many, the stories too much spun out; there is too much absence of reality, too little keeping, too little simplicity in the narrative; the main current of interest is at times scattered too broadly and flows too slowly for it ever again to become popular. It was popular at a time when the literature of English growth was scanty, and when, too, readers possessed far more patience than they do now, accustomed, as they were, to read ponderous folios, and living, as they did, so near the times of manuscript and black letter, when reading was a labor improbus indeed. It is a fact not sufficiently dwelt on, that the facility and rapidity with which modern type can be read has destroyed in great measure that dogged pertinacity which enabled readers of old to fight their way through tough and crabbed folios. Advocates for unpopular books as well as unpopular reputations will always be found, but we fear Sidney, though he may often be found on the shelf, will not so often be found in the hands of any reader who is not a more than ordinary student of literature and literary history. The Defense of Poesie, that 'ink-wasting toy' of his, as Sidney calls it, has usually been criticised in too serious a manner. It is a half-sportive, half-serious effusion, replete with the gentlest touches of humour. We are surprised that judicious critics have found it too declamatory. The commencing story about John Pietro Pagliano, and Sidney being saved by logic alone from wishing himself to be a horse, strikes the keynote of the whole. What humour there is, too, in the allusion to Zopyras, where he is arguing that fiction is better than history, because you may save your nose by the bargain.' The essay does not by any means attempt to go so profoundly into the question as Shelley in his beautifully written Defence of Poetry, which analyses the very inner essence of poetry and the reason of its existence,-its development from, and operation on, the mind of man, and gives us such an ethereal and beautiful disquisition on the subject as none but the poet of poets could produce. It has many very choice expressions, as when he speaks of the poet as 'not limited to nature, but ranging freely within the zodiack of his own wit.' The termination is charmingly pleasant: : But if (fie of such a But) you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like musicke of poetry, if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the skies of poetry, then will I not wish to you the asses' ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses as Bubonax was to hang himself, nor to be rhymed to death as is said to be done in Ireland, yet thus much curse I must send you in behalf of all poets, that while you live you live in love, and never get favor for lacking skill of a sonnet, and when you die your memorie die from the earth for want of an epitaph. This Defense forms an important document in our literary history. England had need then of a defence of poetry. Sidney said she was a very step-mother of poets, and little suspected the great burst of poetic genius which was at hand. Chaucer, that well of English undefiled,' was the only great poet whom Sidney really admired, and lamented that wee, in this clear age, go so stumblingly after him.' The Earl of Surrey for his sonnets, and Sackville for his powerfully written and lugubrious Induction, and his bombastic Gorboduc, were the only poets Sidney could bring forward against the bards of Italy and Spain. France, with Ronsard, Bellay, and Du Bartas, seemed to promise a richer harvest of poetic fame. In poetry Sidney unfortunately was a convert to Harvey's mania for introducing the ancient metres into the English. language. Still he has written enough of genuine rhyme to show that In his gentle sprite The pure well head of poetry did dwell. He stands at the entrance of the great literary epoch-a befitting herald of the long line of inspired writers who came after him. An attentive reader of Dante and Petrarch, the strains inspired by Beatrice and Laura found responsive chords in his own gentle nature, and the sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney breathe all that fine sensibility and immaterial passion which was one of the choicest bequests of chivalry and Provençal culture-which has raised the passion of the sexes from a mere sensual caprice to a religion of the soul—and which, as embodied in modern poetry, would be alone sufficient to prove the spiritual superiority of modern civilization over the time when the Roman lyrist sent for Pyrrha or Neæra over his cups, and the shriek of the fife was heard before the door of Barine in the Saburra. Sidney is not so much an imitator of the Italians as Surrey or Wyatt, he trusted more to the impulses of his own fine emotions. He tells us himself that he turned over the leaves of poets To see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful shower upon my sun-burnt braine. But that he in vain attempted to follow in the track of others: Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write. In another place he says:— And Love doth hold my hand and make me write. Nevertheless, there are frequent instances of that false wit, those unmeaning antitheses and plays upon words_which, when Petrarch was popular among the students of Europe, passed, in the absence of sure taste, for the very pearls of poetry, and which even disfigure the best of the Tre Sorelle. The following is an example of this fantastic refinement of expression : Not thou by praise, but praise in thee is raised, It is a praise to praise, when thou art praised. Moreover, the language of poetry was not then sufficiently formed to prevent the introduction of words associated with low and common ideas, and which sometimes spoil the most effective passages, nevertheless there are several sonnets, which might have been written by Shakespeare himself, and which open especially in the grand Shakesperian manner; Witness these two commencements, and the two sonnets which follow : With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies! Come sleepe, oh sleep the certain knot of peace, His Character. When far-spent night persuades each mortal eye, 123 It may seem indeed to some, after an examination into the life and writings of Sidney, that the reputation which has made his name a household word in England exceeds his merits. It is true England has had greater soldiers and greater statesmen, but never so choice a union of the qualities which made a Sidney, Sir Philip Sidney's fame is founded precisely on those personal qualities of which his contemporaries were the best judge, which do not leave a trace in books or history. It was love, affection, adoration, which he inspired, and these are the conquest not of the head but of the heart. Nature had endowed him with goodness, grace, and beauty, and by the assiduous culture and constant practice of virtue he became as fair in mind as in form. Had Sidney been the slayer of some half-a-million of Spaniards or Frenchmen-had he possessed the cold heart of a conqueror—or had * The lines ascribed to Thomas Warton may be suggested by these― Sic sine vitâ Vivere, quam suave est, sic sine morte mori. + Astrophel and Stella, sonnets xxxi. xxxii. xxxix. xlix. |