At last did win my lady to consort them Where she, unkind, and they might boldly sport them; Their meaning was that she some tears should shed Into the well in pity of my pining: She gave consent, and putting forth her head Which seeing, she withdrew her head puft up with prid[e],- In this remarkable group, Spenser, Sidney, Watson,the last, though in point of poetical power beneath his brethren, is the most complete as an example of our English Renaissance movement in its most attractive form. He shows no sign whatever of Spenser's influence in the poems whether of 1582 or 1593; nor, though in candour of expression and simplicity of phrase he resembles Sidney, do I find any distinct evidence that he knew the Astrophel (published 1591) when writing the Tears of Fancie. But no one who cares to read that series can fail to perceive that in force of passionate feeling and in earnest sincerity of style these singular sonnets form a true link between Surrey, Sidney, and Shakespeare.* * Sonnet 30 of the Tears (written by 1592, published 1593), closes with these lines : The leaves conspiring with the winds sweet sounding Compare the phrase in the Adonis of 1593 :— Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh sounding; III. PREFACES TO THE MONTHS OF THE CALENDER. JANUARIE In this we have a true pastoral, wherein Colin (identified with Spenser in E. K's Epistle), complains of the scorn and cruelty of his mistress Rosalind, and expresses indifference to the love-suit of his fellow-shepherd Hobbinol. The Greek or Roman bucolic has been here obviously before Spenser's mind: we are reminded (it is true, at an immeasurable distance) of Corydon and Alexis; and E. K's awkward apologetic gloss rather draws attention to the anachronistic impropriety of this allusion than justifies it. Spenser is here, of course, only obeying the literary impulse of the age towards classical reproduction :-And, as E. K. in the gloss on September expressly identifies Hobbinol with his and Spenser's friend Harvey, we may see at once how little reliance can be placed on the relation between fact and fancy in Spenser's personal allusions,—a point of great importance, to which I shall have to recur. Spenser's attractive fluency, his equable quality of poetic style, his harmony of diction (in which the old English alliterative element is still very conspicuous), are fully exhibited in this first brief Aeglogue. The traditional elements of the pastoral love-complaint are duly introduced; it is the beginning of the shepherd's calender, yet his life has already run through its spring and summer; all he sees sympathizes with his despair; but of true passion there is no sign, and the notice of Daffadillies as the ornament of Sommer in its prime, Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take would not have fallen from a poet who had his eye closely on natural fact. Nor does the embleme or motto, with which, in Italian fashion, this and the other months conclude, find support in the poem, which nowhere suggests any ground for hope. It seems to be only a poetical ornament added in obedience to a reigning literary custom. On E. K's glosses we may remark here, once for all, that although we must be grateful to them for a few hints and explanations of value, and here and there for curious illustrations of contemporary thought, yet their pedantry and conceit, their heavy style and affectation of mystery, render it singular that the poet should have (as one must suppose) sanctioned the appearance of his first book with so unpoetical an accompaniment. FEBRUARIE, If Vergil was before Spenser's mind in the Januarie, in this he seems to have wished at once to bring his relation to Chaucer before us. Thenot, an old shepherd, scorned for unsuccess in love by Cuddie, retaliates by a fable meant to rebuke the pride of youth. Among the numerous pastorals of this time, or in some fabulist, Spenser may have found this theme. But his treatment of it, if not, I think, marked by so much force and humour as commentators have discovered, is lively and original; there is more of real rustic character here than the Calender ordinarily exhibits. The subject has also, as noticed in the Argument, a certain appropriateness to February, as the last month in the year according to the old usage; although we may doubt whether this was before Spenser's mind. The tale of the Oak and Briar is told with great narrative clearness and liveliness of motion. We see here already that gift of story-telling which the Faerie Queene displays on a much larger and more varied scale. But though in this point Chaucerian, yet the fable, though professedly learned from Tityrus (who stands for Chaucer in the Calender), yet has little humour, little of the broad and direct power of that great master, and, like other similar attempts on Spenser's part, cannot be reckoned as really in Chaucer's style. The Scholiast was in some degree aware of this when he notes that though told "as learned of Chaucer," the tale "is cleane in another kind, and rather like to Æsopes fables." But the poem has lines of great vigour, beauty, and natural truth. We may perhaps feel the strong North Country air in it; and the style, here and there, singularly recalls that of Sir Walter Scott. See the paragraph beginning,— * The axes edge did oft turne againe, And often crost with the priests crew, And often hallowed with holy water dewe. And broughten this Oake to this miserie. Here, in Maye, and in September, Spenser uses a lilting metre, which seems to be what the author of the Arte of Poesie mistakenly imagined was the riding ryme, or ryme dogrell, of Chaucer and his contemporaries: and * "I have added a certain Glosse, or scholion."-Prefatory Epistle of E. K. it is possible that Spenser employed it under the same impression. It may, however, have been suggested to him by an ordinary ballad-metre, or by the French eight-syllabled line. The effect, to my ear, is not always pleasant. MARCH. A light and lively classical vein, resembling the spurious Anacreon, the Epigrams of the Anthology, or, again, the art of the later Renaissance, breaks out in this piece, which derives its main motive from Bion (named Theocritus by the annotator). This mode in art is not common with Spenser, or congenial to his essentially English mind; though the sentimental and picturesque manner of the later Hellenic literature had a natural attraction for the Renaissance artists and writers; partly because it has an element of the romantic, partly because an imitative movement inevitably seizes rather on the ornamental than the deeper and higher qualities of its originals. English poetry has reached so much more force and intensity since, that we can now hardly appreciate the attraction which a little picture-idyl of this character naturally presented to the readers of 1580. Not a few short poems (putting the larger pieces of Chaucer and his school out of sight) even then, indeed, were in existence of far higher inspiration than Spenser's "Song of Dan Cupid"; but none, probably, in which antique grace and form, even in the very distant echo of the Greek original which we here find, were so correctly reproduced. The effect on readers must have been like that which we feel when we see a classical subject |