noticed, was clearly revealed in 1569 (ten years anterior to the probable commencement of the Arcadia), if either writer distinctly affected the other, the inference would be that Sidney in his youth adopted from Spenser a turn for allegory, which the unfinished state of the romance suggests was discovered by the author to be unsuited to his genius. And the somewhat chilling or restricted praise with which the Apologie of 1581 notices the Calender, disallowing Spenser's "framing his style in an old rustic language," bears witness in the same direction. One more writer requires a notice, for the length of which, looking to the undeserved oblivion which for near three centuries has fallen on his work, I ask forbearance from the reader. After or with Sidney, by far the most remarkable of Spenser's contemporary poets, at least during his youth, is Thomas Watson (cir. 1557-1592), a writer to whom Fame has been singularly unjust. Soon celebrated in his own day, coupled with Spenser and Sidney by R. Barnfield (1594),* honoured, it has been argued, by Spenser in his Colin Clout (1595), Watson's two chief English poems, the Hecatompathia or Passionate Centurie of Love (1582), the Teares of Fancie (1593), never seem to have been reprinted (except a limited impression of the first in 1869), before the appearance of Mr. Arber's valuable edition of 1870, from which the above notices are taken. Yet, beside his absolute value as poet, Watson is one of the most complete examples of Renaissance cultivation in England: in variety of acquirement and variety of attempt surpassing even Spenser and * The Shepheard's Content: st. xxxiii. Sidney. Perhaps this learning overweighted him, as it was, in fact, apt to overweight all the writers of that age it was long before a certain pedantry of classical allusion and deference to Italian or French models effaced itself from our poetry. The Hecatompathia exemplifies these limitations. Like the Calender, every poem in it is preceded by a careful and erudite argument, whether by Watson or by some one who played for him the part played for Spenser by E. K., is uncertain. Like the Calender, transfusion from previous sources, mostly Renaissance, is freely acknowledged : Petrarch, Strozza, Serafino, Ronsard, Forcatel; with references to Sophocles and Horace, Theocritus and Chaucer. A tender and melodious elegance, which stops short of passion, is the chief note of this sonnetseries. It displays the neatly-finished, antithetical style which abounds from Surrey's time in our poetry, running often into conceit and learned fancy; but the diction is very clear and simple. Watson in this respect resembles Sidney rather than Spenser, as he resembles him also in that marked and convincing sincerity of personal expression, which renders his work, with Sidney's, much more trustworthy evidence than Spenser's upon the writer's life and opinions. In the Hundred Passions Watson clearly avows that he wrote more from fancy than from fact; * his passion has the graceful unreality which I find in Spenser's for Rosalind. "Truly," wrote Sidney about this time, * supposed": My paines in suffering [these love-passions] although but "Dic tu [liber] mentito me tepuisse foco:" are his prefatory phrases. many of such writings as come under the banner of irresistible love, if I were a mistress, would never persuade me that they were in love":-Yet poetry of this class, when graced by charm of style and ingenuity of invention, has through all past time held a place in human interest which it is not likely to forfeit in the future. Such verse, like Spenser's own Amoretti, is best felt when read in sequence: we yield ourselves to the pleasant artificial atmosphere; each sonnet ripples by like the waves in a summer calm. Yet I will give one specimen from the Hecatompathia, in deference to the place which a just criticism must assign to Thomas Watson as the third with Spenser and Sidney amongst our earlier amourists :— When May is in his prime, and youthful spring Doth clothe the tree with leaves, and ground with flowers, And lovely Nature smiles, and nothing lowers : Whilst others are becalm'd, or lie them still, And as all those, which hear this Bird complain, So she, for whom I wail both day and night, Watson calls his pieces Passions more frequently than Sonnets, and it will be observed that this, like most of the Hundred, is in fact a short poem of three six-line stanzas as the form used by Spenser in his early work, and afterwards by Shakespeare, consists of three four-line stanzas closing in a couplet. Some arrangement of this kind is in fact almost inevitable to us if sonnets are to be written in series: the strict Italian form (which, however, may be said to require no other proof beyond itself that it is the most elegant and the most perfect) calling for so many consonant rhymes that an English writer cannot hope wholly to escape either from an appearance of forced rhyming, or from diffuseness and commonplace of diction. In Watson's posthumous book, the Tears of Fancie (of which but one original copy, and that not wholly-complete, is known), he has used the more condensed and passionate model with which Shakespeare, as I have just noticed, has familiarized us. And with this change in form comes a change in the substance of the song: the note of vera passio is heard here at once as clearly as in the Astrophel itself, and although the series must be ranked below Astrophel in force and in variety, yet a few of Watson's may be placed near Sidney's best. The mere concetti of the earlier work, the over-frequent mythological allusions, have disappeared. The heart speaks here too clearly to require learned and illustrative glosses. We have now what no "true lover" can fail to recognize as the long lament of hopeless love, monotonous in its very depth and concentration. The sweetness and rhythmical flow of these sonnets is unbroken; the frequent double rhymes add a sort of melancholy cadence. Here again one quotation may be allowed:Those whose kind hearts sweet pity did attaint, With ruthful tears bemoan'd my miseries: Those which had heard my never-ceasing plaint, Or read my woes engraven on the trees, 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 159 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; |