A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation

Her breathe is sweet perfvme, or holie flame:
Her lippes more red than any coral-stone, &c.
Her breast transparent is, like cristal rock,
Her fingers long, fit for Apollo's lute,
Her slipper such, as Momus dare not mock,
Her virtues are so great, as make me mute, &c.[24 - [A note to accompany this Sonnet No. VII has been almost completely destroyed by the excision, unique in the notebook, of what was originally folio 17. The mutilated line ends of the note read thus: "… nd/ … on/… omas/… s Tr." This note presumably referred to Thomas Watson and cited Section XI of "A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets," in Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury (London, 1598, fol. 280), where among those praised for their Latin verse are Christopher Ocland, Thomas Watson, Thomas Campion, Walter Haddon, and "Thomas Newton with his Leyland."]]

Spenser's Sonnets were printed with his Epithalamium. They are entered, in the year 1593, under this title to William Ponsonby, "Amoretti, and Epithalamium, written not long since by Edmond Spencer."[25 - Novemb. 19. [1594, not 1595.] Registr. Station. B. fol. 315. a.] In a recommendatory sonnet prefixed, by G. W. senior, it appears that Spenser was now in Ireland. Considered under the idea which their title suggests, undoubtedly these pieces are too classical, abstracted, and even philosophical. But they have many strokes of imagination and invention, a strength of expression, and a stream of versification, not unworthy of the genius of the author of the Faerie Queene.[26 - There is [a] Sonnet by Spenser, never printed with his works, prefixed to Gabriel Harveys "Foure Letters, &c. Lond. 1592." I have much pleasure in drawing this little piece from obscurity, not only as it bears the name of Spenser, but as it is at the same time a natural unaffected effusion of friendship … [four words illegible]. (See Observations on Spenser's Fair. Qu. [II]. [245-247?].)"Harvey, the happy aboue happiest men,I read: that sitting like a looker-onof this worldes stage, doest note with critique penThe sharpe dislikes of each condition;And, as one carelesse of suspition,Ne fawnest for the favour of the great,Ne fearest foolish reprehensionof faulty men, which daunger to thee threat;But freely doest, of what thee list, entreat,Like a great lord of peerlesse liberty:Lifting the good vp to high honours seat,And th' euil damning euermore to dy.For life and death is in thy doomefull writing,So thy renowme liues euer by endighting.Dublin this 18 of July, 1586. Your devoted Friend during life, Edmund Spencer."I avail myself of an opportunity of throwing together a few particulars of the life and writings of this very intimate friend of Spenser, more especially as they will throw general light on the present period. He was born at Saffron-Walden in Essex, [John] Strype's [Life of the Learned Sir Thomas] Smith. [London, 1698] p. 18. He was a fellow of Pembroke-Hall, Spenser's college: and was one of the proctors of the university of Cambridge, in 1583. [Thomas] Fuller's [History of the University of] Cambridge, p. 146. [in his] Ch[urch] Hist[ory of Britain]. [London, 1655.] Wood says, he was first of Christ's college, and afterwards fellow of Trinity-Hall, Ath. Oxon. F[asti, I, col. 755]. But Wood must be mistaken, for in the Epilogus to his Smithus, addressed to John Wood Smith's amanuensis, Harvey dates from Pembroke-Hall. Smithus, Signat. G. iij. [G4 verso.] [Warton probably did not intend to deny that Harvey was a fellow of Trinity, but evidently felt that Wood was ignorant of the intermediate fellowship at Pembroke.] He was doctorated in jurisprudence at both universities. With his brother Henry, he was much addicted to Astrology. (See supr. [Vol. IV], p. 23.)He seems to have been a reader in rhetoric at Cambridge from his Ciceronianus, vel Oratio post reditum habita Cantabrigiae ad suos auditores. Lond. 1577. 4to. It is dedicated to William Lewin, I suppose of Christ's college. (See Wood, ubi supr.) He published also Rhetor, vel duorum dierum oratio de natura arte et exercitatione rhetorica, Lond. 1577. 4

. It is dedicated to Bartholomew Clark, the elegant translator of Castilios Courtier, who has also prefixed an address to our author's Rhetor, dated at Mitcham in Surrey, Cal. Sept. 1577. He published in four books, a set of Latin poems called Gabrielis Harveii Gratulationum Valdinensium Libri quatuor, &c. Lond. 1578. 4to. This book he wrote in honour of queen Elisabeth, while she was on a progress at Audley-end in Essex, "afterwards presenting the same in print to her Highnesse at the worshipfull Maister Capels in Hertfordshire." Notes to Spenser's September. He mentions a most perfect and elegant delineation or engraving of all England, perartificiose expressa, procured by his friend M. Saccoford, to which the queen's effigy, accuratissime depicta, was prefixed. Lib. i. p. 13. In his character of an accomplished Maid of Honour of the queen's court, some curious qualifications are recited. One of the first, to make her truly amiable, is what he calls Affectatio.She is to understand painting her cheeks, to have a collection of good jokes, to dance, draw, write verses, sing, and play on the lute, and furnish her library with some approved recipt-books. She is to be completely skilled in cosmetics. "Deglabret, lavet, atque ungat, &c." Lib. iiii. p. 21. 22. (See supr. ii[i]. [426, n].) Another book of Harvey's Latin poetry is his Smithus, vel Musarum Lacrymae, on the death of Seceretary [sic] Sir Thomas Smith, Lond. 1578. 4to. The dedication is to Sir Walter Mildmay. When Smith died, he says, Lord Surrey broke his lyre. Cant. v. He wishes on this mournful occasion, that More, Surrey, and Gascoigne, would be silent. Cant. vi. Ascham, Carr, Tonge, Bill, Goldwell, Watson, and Wilson, are panegyrised as imitators of Smith. [Nicholas Carr, 1524-1568, was Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. William Bill, d. 1561, was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Perhaps Tonge is the Barnaby Tonge who matriculated at Christ Church, Cambridge, in 1555. There were two John Goldwell's at Cambridge in Smith's day: one was a fellow at Queen's from 1538 to 1542; the other was named fellow of Trinity in 1546. For Wilson see Warton's discussion earlier in the History (III, 331-344), where this very praise in Harvey's Smithus is quoted.] Cant. vii. Signat. D. iij. See also, Sign. L. i. And C. ij. Wilson, the author of the Art of Rhetoric, is again commended. Ibid. Sign. E. ij. Again, Sign. F. i. F. ij. He thinks it of consequence to remember, that Smith gave a Globe, mira arte politum, to Queens College Library at Cambridge. Ibid, Sign. E. iij. [E4 verso.] He praises Lodovice Dolci's odes, and Ronsard. Cant. ii. Sign. C. i. His iambics are celebrated by his cotemporaries. See Meres, Wits Tr. fol. 280. 282. [283 verso.] (See supr. ii [i]. [401, n].) Nothing can be more unclassical than Harvey's Latin verse. He is Hobbinol in Spenser's Pastorals. Under that name, he has prefixed two recommendatory poems to the first and second parts of the Faerie queene. [There was only one such poem, but in some folio editions it was inadvertently printed twice.] The old annotator on Spenser's Pastorals prefaces his commentary, with an address, dated 1579, "To the most excellent and learned both oratour and poet master Gabriel Harvey, &c." In the notes to September, he is said to have written many pieces, "partly vnder vnknowne titles, and partly vnder counterfeit names: as his Tyrannomastix, his old [ode] Natalitia, his Rameidos, and especially that part of Philomusus his divine Anticosmopolite, &c." He appears to have been an object of the petty wits & pamphlet-critics of his times. His chief antagonists were Nash and Greene. In the Foure Letters abovementioned, may be seen many anecdotes of his literary squabbles. To these controversies belong his Pierces supererogation, Lond. 1593. Sub-Joined, is a New Letter of notable contents with a strange sound sonnet called Gorgon. To this is sometimes added An Advertisement for Pap-Hatchet &c. Nash's Apology of Pierce Penniless, printed 1593, is well known. Nash also attacks Harvey, as a fortune-teller & ballad maker, in Have with you to Saffron-Walden. Nash also wrote a confutation of Harvey's Foure Letters, 1592. [Strange News, of the Intercepting Certaine Letters, to which Warton evidently refers, is actually the early title of the Apology.] I pass over other pieces of the kind. The origin of the dispute seems to have been, that Nash affirmed Harvey's father to have been a rope-maker at Saffron-Walden. Harvey died, aged about 90, at Saffron Walden, in 1630.] On the whole however, with the same metaphysical flame which Petrarch felt for the accomplished Laura, with more panegyric than passion, Spenser in his sonnets seldom appeals to the heart, and too frequently shews more of the poet and the scholar than of the lover. The following, may be selected in illustration of this opinion.

When those renowned noble peers of Greece,
Through stubborne pride among themselues did iar,
Forgetful of the famous golden fleece,
Then Orpheus with his harp their strife did bar.
But this continual, cruel, civil war,
The which myselfe against myselfe doe make,
Whilst my weake powres of passions warried arre,
No skill can stint, nor reason can aslake.
But when in hand my tunelesse harpe I take,
Then doe I more augment my foes despight,
And grief renew, and passion doe awake
To battaile fresh against myselfe to fight.
Mongst whom, the more I seeke to settle peace,
The more I find their malice to increase.[27 - Sonn. xliii.]

But the following is in a more intelligible and easy strain, and has lent some of its graces to the storehouse of modern compliment. The thought on which the whole turns is, I believe, original, for I do not recollect it in the Italian poets.

Ye tradeful Merchants, that with weary toyle,
Doe seek most precious things, to make your gaine,
And both the Indias of their treasure spoile;
What needeth you to seeke so farre in vaine?
For lo, my Love doth in herselfe containe
All this worlds riches that may farre be found:
If saphyres, loe, her eyes be saphyres plaine;
If rubies, loe, her lips be rubies sound;
If pearles, her teeth be pearles both pure & round;
If iuorie, her forehead iuorie were [wene];
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
If siluer, her faire hands are siluer sheene:
But that which fairest is, but few behold,
Her mind adornd with vertues manifold.[28 - Sonn. xv.]

The last couplet is platonic, but deduced with great address and elegance from the leading idea, which Gay has apparently borrowed in his beautiful ballad of Black-eyed Susan.

Among the sonnet-writers of this period, next to Spenser I place Shakespeare. Perhaps in brilliancy of imagery, quickness of thought, variety and fertility of allusion, and particularly in touches of pastoral painting, Shakespeare is superiour. But he is more incorrect, indigested, and redundant: and if Spenser has too much learning, Shakespeare has too much conceit. It may be necessary however to read the first one hundred & twenty six sonnets of our divine dramatist as written by a lady:[29 - Except in in [sic] such a passage as when he calls this favourite by "The master-mistress of my passion," Sonn. 20. And in a few others, where the expressions literally shew the writer to be a man. [Warton of course wanted to preserve Shakespeare's sonnets from the charge of homosexuality. In the eighteenth century the distaste for conceits and an acute sensitivity to the suspicion of homosexuality made the Sonnets so unpopular that they were omitted from the editions of Shakespeare by, among others, Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Warburton, Capell, and Johnson.]] for they are addressed with great fervency yet delicacy of passion, and with more of fondness than friendship, to a beautiful youth.[30 - The last of these is that which begins, "O thou, my lovely Boy." Sonn. 126.] Only twenty six, the last bearing but a small proportion to the whole number, and too manifestly of a subordinate cast, have a female for their object. But under the palliative I have suggested, many descriptions or illustrations of juvenile beauty, pathetic endearments, and sentimental declarations of hope or disappointment, which occur in the former part of this collection, will lose their impropriety and give pleasure without disgust. The following, a few lines omitted, is unperplexed and elegant.

How like a winter has my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness every where!
And yet this time, remov'd,[31 - "When absent from thee".] was summer's time;
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, &c.
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a chear,
That leaues look pale, dreading the winter's near.[32 - Sonn. 97.]

In the next, he pursues the same argument in the same strain.

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim,
Has put a sprite of youth in euery thing;
That heauy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion of the rose:
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after thee, thou pattern of all those![33 - They were sweet indeed, but they wanted animation; and, in appearance, they were nothing more than beautiful resemblances or copies of you.]
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play.[34 - Sonn. 98.]

Here are strong marks of Shakespeare's hand and manner. In the next, he continues his play with the flowers. He chides the forward violet, a sweet thief, for stealing the fragrance of the boy's breath, and for having died his veins with too rich a purple. The lilly is condemned for presuming to emulate the whiteness of his hand, and buds of marjoram for stealing the ringlets of his hair. Our lover is then seduced into some violent fictions of the same kind; and after much ingenious absurdity concludes more rationally,

More flowres I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet or colour it had stolne from thee.[35 - Sonn. 99.]

Shakespeare's Sonnets were published in the year 1599.[36 - [Warton originally wrote "1609," but immediately scored it out and replaced it with "1599."]] I remember to have seen this edition, I think with Venus and Adonis and the rape of Lucrece, a very small book, in the possession of the late Mr Thomson of Queen's College Oxford, a very curious and intelligent collector of this kind of literature.[37 - In 16mo. With vignettes. Never entered in the Register of the Stationers. [Possibly Warton saw a volume registered by Eleazer Edgar on 3 January 1599/1600 as "A booke called Amours by J. D. with certen oy

sonnetes by W. S. vj

" (Arber's Stationers Register, III, 153). This entry may indicate that Edgar held manuscripts of some of Shakespeare's sonnets, and some copies of the book so registered may have been published. However, if Warton had seen this hypothetical volume he should have correctly identified it: he had already (III, 402, n.) printed the Edgar entry from the Stationers Register.If this volume which Warton mentions ever actually existed, it cannot now be located. Concerning Warton's statement Mr. G. B. Oldham, Principal Keeper of Printed Books, British Museum, wrote as follows: "I have examined the sale catalogue which contains books from the library of the Reverend William Thomson of Queens College, Oxford, but have failed to find anything at all corresponding with the volume which Warton describes. There are not, in fact, many really scarce books in this catalogue and it rather looks as though the rarer items in Thomson's collection were otherwise disposed of. In any case I think there is a strong presumption that Warton's memory betrayed him."Thus, in the absence of any evidence concerning a 1599 edition of the Sonnets and in the light of Thorpe's claim in 1609 that they were "Never before Imprinted," it seems probable that what Warton was vaguely recalling was actually a copy of Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim. This book, printed for Jaggard in 1599, my have misled Warton by its separate title page, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musicke. Such a volume as Warton describes was, it seems evident from surviving copies, frequently bound up to contain The Passionate Pilgrim, Venus and Adonis, and other small collections of poetry. The fact that Warton recollected the book as a l6mo. does not argue much against this identification. Though The Passionate Pilgrim is actually an octavo, surviving copies measure about 4-1/2 by 3-1/4 inches, and as late as 1911 William Jaggard, in his Shakespeare Bibliography (p. 429), described it as a 16mo.In explanation of Warton's probable error two extenuating facts should be remembered. First, since Thomson died about 1766, Warton's recollection was at least fifteen years old; and second, only in 1780 did Edmond Malone edit the Sonnets and The Passionate Pilgrim as discriminate texts comprising Shakespeare's lyrics. Even then Malone omitted without comment the separate title page Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musicke. Previously, except in George Steevens's edition of the Sonnets, Shakespeare's poems were lumped together, with lyrics of several other Elizabethan poets, and printed as Shakespeare's Poems on Several Occasions. Moreover, Warton was not the first to write of a 1599 edition of the Sonnets. His friend Bishop Percy may have helped to create this false impression in Warton's memory. In his interleaved copy of Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatick Poets, immediately after Oldys's statement that Shakespeare's Sonnets were not printed until 1609, Percy commented, "But this is a mistake. Lintot republished Shakespeare's Sonnets from an edition in 1599." Malone, in his transcript of Steevens's transcript of Percy, corrected Percy's mistake: "This is a mistake of D

. Percy's. Lintot republished from old ed

but not from any ed. of 1599, except a very few sonnets called the Passionate Pilgrim printed in that year." (Photostat of Bergen Evans's transcript of Bodleian Malone 129-132.) Warton, however, may well have been misled by Percy's comment, for in the winter of 1769 he had borrowed and used Percy's annotated copy of Langbaine. (The Percy Letters, The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton, ed. M. G. Robinson and Leah Dennis [Baton Rouge, 1951], pp. 135, 137.) It is unfortunate that the matter was not cleared up in discussion with Malone, whom at some time during the 1780's Warton furnished with a copy of the 1596 Venus and Adonis and with whom he corresponded around 1785 concerning sonnets in general and Shakespeare in particular. (William Shakespeare, Plays and Poems, ed. Edmond Malone [London, 1790] X, 13, n. 1; and James Prior, The Life of Edmond Malone [London, 1860], pp. 122-123.)]] But they were circulated in manuscript before the year 1598. For in that year, they are mentioned by Meres. "Witness his [Shakespeare's] Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends, &c."[38 - Wits Tr. fol. 281. b. [The brackets in the text are Warton's.]] They were reprinted in the year 1609; one hundred & fifty four in number. They were first printed under Shakespeares name, among his Poems, in the year 1717, by Sewel, who had no other authority than tradition.[39 - [Warton was of course much mistaken. Following the 1640 edition of Benson, Gildon had reprinted them under Shakespeare's name in 1709 (dated 1710) and again in 1714. The two Sewell editions appeared in 1725 and 1728. Invariably the poems seem to have been printed under Shakespeare's name, though perhaps not always in a collected edition of his complete poems. See Hyder Rollins's New Variorum edition of the Sonnets (Philadelphia, 1944).]] But that they were undoubtedly written by Shakespeare, the frequent intermixture of thoughts and expressions which now appear in his plays, and, what is more, the general complexion of their phraseology & sentiment, abundantly demonstrate, Shakespeare cannot be concealed. Their late ingenious editor is of opinion, that Daniel was Shakespeare's model.[40 - [See Malone's Supplement to the Edition of Shakespeare's Plays (London, 1780), I, 581.]]

I have before incidentally mentioned Barnefield's Sonnets,[41 - See supr. vol. iii. [p. 405].] which, like Shakespeare's, are adressed [sic] to a boy. They are flowery and easy. Meres recites Barnefelde among the pastoral writers.[42 - Wits Tr. fol. 284. a. He is again mentioned by Meres for his distich on king James's Furies & Lepanto. fol. 284. b. [The distich, printed by Meres, is the final couplet of Barnfield's Sonnet II.]] These sonnets, twenty in number, are written in the character of a shepherd: and there are other pieces by Barnefield which have a pastoral turn, in Englands Helicon. Sir Philip Sydney had made every thing Arcadian. I will cite four of this authors best lines, and such as will be least offensive.

Some talk of Ganymede th' Idalian boy,
And some of faire Adonis make their boast;
Some talke of him whom louely Leda lost
And some of Echo's loue that was so coy, &c.[43 - Sonn. xii.]

Afterwards, falling in love with a lady, he closes these sonnets with a palinode.[44 - It begins thus.Nights were short, and daies were long,Blossoms on the hauthorns hong;Philomel, night-musickes kinge,Tolde the comming of the springe, &c.He does not scruple to insert these lines,Loue I did the fairest boy,That these fields did ere enioy.Loue I did faire Ganymed,Venus darling, beauties bed, &c.This piece was afterwards inserted in Englands Helicon.]