A History of Elizabethan Literature

It does not matter who wrote that – the point is its occurrence in an ordinary collection of songs to music neither better nor worse than many others. When we read such verses as this, or as the still more charming Address to Love given on page 122, there is evident at once the non so che which distinguishes this period. There is a famous story of a good-natured conversation between Scott and Moore in the latter days of Sir Walter, in which the two poets agreed that verse which would have made a fortune in their young days appeared constantly in magazines without being much regarded in their age. No sensible person will mistake the meaning of the apparent praise. It meant that thirty years of remarkable original production and of much study of models had made possible and common a standard of formal merit which was very rare at an earlier time. Now this standard of formal merit undoubtedly did not generally exist in the days of Elizabeth. But what did generally exist was the "wind blowing where it listeth," the presence and the influence of which are least likely to be mistaken or denied by those who are most strenuous in insisting on the importance and the necessity of formal excellence itself. I once undertook for several years the criticism of minor poetry for a literary journal, which gave more room than most to such things, and during the time I think I must have read through or looked over probably not much less than a thousand, certainly not less than five or six hundred volumes. I am speaking with seriousness when I say that nothing like the note of the merely casual pieces quoted or referred to above was to be detected in more than at the outside two or three of these volumes, and that where it seemed to sound faintly some second volume of the same author's almost always came to smother it soon after. There was plenty of quite respectable poetic learning: next to nothing of the poetic spirit. Now in the period dealt with in this volume that spirit is everywhere, and so are its sisters, the spirits of drama and of prose. They may appear in full concentration and lustre, as in Hamlet or The Faërie Queene; or in fitful and intermittent flashes, as in scores and hundreds of sonneteers, pamphleteers, playwrights, madrigalists, preachers. But they are always not far off. In reading other literatures a man may lose little by obeying the advice of those who tell him only to read the best things: in reading Elizabethan literature by obeying he can only disobey that advice, for the best things are everywhere.[68 - In the twenty years which have passed since this book was first published, monographs on most of the points indicated on p. 459 have appeared, both in England and America.]

notes

1

In original "tencrease," and below "timbrace." This substitution of elision for slur or hiatus (found in Chaucerian MSS.) passed later into the t' and th' of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

2

As printed exactly in both first and second editions this sonnet is evidently corrupt, and the variations between the two are additional evidence of this. I have ventured to change "hid" to "hides" in line 10, and to alter the punctuation in line 13. If the reader takes "that" in line 5 as = "so that," "that" in line 10 as = "which" (i. e. "black"), and "that" in line 11 with "which," he will now, I think, find it intelligible. Line 13 is usually printed:

"In summer, sun: in winter's breath, a frost."

Now no one would compare a black silk hood to the sun, and a reference to line 2 will show the real meaning. The hood is a frost which lasts through summer and winter alike.

3

In reading these combinations it must be remembered that there is always a strong cæsura in the midst of the first and Alexandrine line. It is the Alexandrine which Mr. Browning has imitated in Fifine, not that of Drayton, or of the various practitioners of the Spenserian stanza from Spenser himself downwards.

4

In these extracts () signifies that something found in text seems better away; [] that something wanting in text has been conjecturally supplied.

5

Thickets.

6

This Alexandrine is not common, and is probably a mere oversight.

7

The precedent descriptions of Sorrow herself, of Misery, and of Old Age, are even finer than the above, which, however, I have preferred for three reasons. First, it has been less often quoted; secondly, its subject is a kind of commonplace, and, therefore, shows the poet's strength of handling; thirdly, because of the singular and characteristic majesty of the opening lines.

8

Refusal.

9

Short for "whether."

10

This and the next extract are given literatim to show Stanyhurst's marvellous spelling.

11

The letter is given in full by Mr. Arber in his introduction to Ascham's Schoolmaster, p. 5.

12

It will be seen that Cheke writes what he argues for, "clean and pure English." "Other excellent" is perhaps the only doubtful phrase in the extract or in the letter.

13

The final s of such names often at the time appears unaltered.

14

i. e. "in proportion."

15

"Blinde" with the e according to the old spelling having six letters, the same number as seeing. This curious epistle is both in style and matter an epitome of Euphues, which had appeared some three years before.

16

Apparently = the book's.

17

"Assays."

18

Adulteress.

19

Understand "me."

20

Cf. Milton's "elms star-proof" in the Arcades. Milton evidently knew Peele well.

21

The outburst of Greene about "the only Shakescene," the "upstart crow beautified with our feathers," and so forth, is too well known to need extracting here. The Return from Parnassus, a very curious tripartite play, performed 1597-1601 but retrospective in tone, is devoted to the troubles of poor scholars in getting a livelihood, and incidentally gives much matter on the authors of the time from Shakespere downward, and on the jealousy of professional actors felt by scholars, and vice versâ.

22

Of Spenser as of two other poets in this volume, Shakespere and Milton, it seemed to be unnecessary and even impertinent to give any extracts. Their works are, or ought to be, in all hands; and even if it were not so, no space at my command could give sample of their infinite varieties.

23

Delia had appeared earlier in 1592, and partially in 1591; but the text of 1594 is the definitive one. Several of these dates are doubtful or disputed.