A History of the French Novel. Volume 1. From the Beginning to 1800. Saintsbury George

A History of the French Novel. Volume 1. From the Beginning to 1800

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with sighs till dead love be awaked?

"I, that when drowsy Argus fell asleep,

Like jealousy o'erwatchèd with desire,

Was ever warnéd modesty to keep

While her breath, speaking, kindled Nature's fire:

Must I look on a-cold while others warm them?

Do Vulcan's brothers in such fine nets arm them?

"Was it for this that I might Myra see

Washing the water with her beauties white?

Yet would she never write her love to me:

Thinks wit of change when thoughts are in delight?

Mad girls may safely love as they may leave;

No man can print a kiss: lines may deceive."

Had Brooke always written with this force and directness he would have been a great poet. As it is, he has but the ore of poetry, not the smelted metal.

For there is no doubt that Sidney here holds the primacy, not merely in time but in value, of the whole school, putting Spenser and Shakespere aside. That thirty or forty years' diligent study of Italian models had much to do with the extraordinary advance visible in his sonnets over those of Tottel's Miscellany is, no doubt, undeniable. But many causes besides the inexplicable residuum of fortunate inspiration, which eludes the most careful search into literary cause and effect, had to do with the production of the "lofty, insolent, and passionate vein," which becomes noticeable in English poetry for the first time about 1580, and which dominates it, if we include the late autumn-summer of Milton's last productions, for a hundred years. Perhaps it is not too much to say that this makes its very first appearance in Sidney's verse, for The Shepherd's Calendar, though of an even more perfect, is of a milder strain. The inevitable tendency of criticism to gossip about poets instead of criticising poetry has usually mixed a great deal of personal matter with the accounts of Astrophel and Stella, the series of sonnets which is Sidney's greatest literary work, and which was first published some years after his death in an incorrect and probably pirated edition by Thomas Nash. There is no doubt that there was a real affection between Sidney (Astrophel) and Penelope Devereux (Stella), daughter of the Earl of Essex, afterwards Lady Rich, and that marriage proving unhappy, Lady Mountjoy. But the attempts which have been made to identify every hint and allusion in the series with some fact or date, though falling short of the unimaginable folly of scholastic labour-lost which has been expended on the sonnets of Shakespere, still must appear somewhat idle to those who know the usual genesis of love-poetry – how that it is of imagination all compact, and that actual occurrences are much oftener occasions and bases than causes and material of it. It is of the smallest possible importance or interest to a rational man to discover what was the occasion of Sidney's writing these charming poems – the important point is their charm. And in this respect (giving heed to his date and his opportunities of imitation) I should put Sidney third to Shakespere and Spenser. The very first piece of the series, an oddly compounded sonnet of thirteen Alexandrines and a final heroic, strikes the note of intense and fresh poetry which is only heard afar off in Surrey and Wyatt, which is hopelessly to seek in the tentatives of Turberville and Googe, and which is smothered with jejune and merely literary ornament in the less formless work of Sidney's contemporary, Thomas Watson. The second line —

"That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,"

the couplet —

"Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain,"

and the sudden and splendid finale —

"'Fool!' said my muse, 'look in thy heart and write!'"

are things that may be looked for in vain earlier.

A little later we meet with that towering soar of verse which is also peculiar to the period:

"When Nature made her chief work – Stella's eyes,

In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright?" —

lines which those who deprecate insistence on the importance of form in poetry might study with advantage, for the thought is a mere commonplace conceit, and the beauty of the phrase is purely derived from the cunning arrangement and cadence of the verse. The first perfectly charming sonnet in the English language – a sonnet which holds its own after three centuries of competition – is the famous "With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbst the skies," where Lamb's stricture on the last line as obscure seems to me unreasonable. The equally famous phrase, "That sweet enemy France," which occurs a little further on is another, and whether borrowed from Giordano Bruno or not is perhaps the best example of the felicity of expression in which Sidney is surpassed by few Englishmen. Nor ought the extraordinary variety of the treatment to be missed. Often as Sidney girds at those who, like Watson, "dug their sonnets out of books," he can write in the learned literary manner with the best. The pleasant ease of his sonnet to the sparrow, "Good brother Philip," contrasts in the oddest way with his allegorical and mythological sonnets, in each of which veins he indulges hardly less often, though very much more wisely than any of his contemporaries. Nor do the other "Songs of variable verse," which follow, and in some editions are mixed up with the sonnets, display less extraordinary power. The first song, with its refrain in the penultimate line of each stanza,

"To you, to you, all song of praise is due,"

contrasts in its throbbing and burning life with the faint and misty imagery, the stiff and wooden structure, of most of the verse of Sidney's predecessors, and deserves to be given in full: —

"Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes intendeth;

Which now my breast o'ercharged to music lendeth?