BOOKS.

ELIZABETHAN CRITICS.*

IT has often been said without truth or reason that the Elizabethans were so busy creating masterpieces that they had not time to concern themselves with criticism. The mass of essays which have come down to us proves the falsity of the statement, and it would be easy upon general grounds to demonstrate its unreason. The Elizabethan age displayed as keen a curiosity in literature as in life. It questioned all things, and was always intent upon discovering new methods of style, new processes of thought. How, then, should it not be critical P The great creators had no scruple in passing upon others the same rough judgments which they expected their colleagues to pass upon them, and it is only the foolish opinion that inventors and critics are naturally and neces- sarily hostile which has encouraged the contempt for Elizabethan criticism.

However, Mr. Gregory Smith's learned volumes should correct once for all an erroneous impression. He has collected enough essays to show the opinions and tendencies of the time ; he has annotated them with an unimpeachable erudition ; and he has prefaced them with an essay of his own at once lucid and-well instructed. With this anthology to help him, none should ever again doubt the intelligence of the Eliza- bethans; and though the problems which they had to solve are very different from those which ask solution in our day, we cannot go back to their treatises without gaining an in- sight into the principles which governed Dryden, and which, were we wiser, should govern us to-day. They are indeed a wise band,—Aschant and Sidney, Spenser and Nash, Webbe and Puttenham. They are not always original. They depend, maybe, too faithfully upon Horace and Aristotle; they copy one another sometimes with deficient skill ; they are too fond of obvious classifications and scholastic subdivisions ; but despite their pedantry, they look upon literature as a live thing, and they respect its traditions with unfailing loyalty. Of course, they deplore, • as we do, the growing incubus of modern books. Sidney finds the world full of rude " smatterers " and " brainless bussards." " Good God,"

* Elizabethan Critical Essays. Edited, with an Introduction, by G. Gregory smith: 2 Tole. Orford : at the Clarendon Press. [123.]

partiality " exclaims Stanyhurst, " what a fry of wooden rythams doth swarm in the stationers' shops !" And Ascham grows sorrowful, as well he might, over "the rude and lewd books" sold at every corner. But the Elizabethans knew nothing of the plague which has overtaken us. They were spared the masses of printed stuff which nowadays come every week from the press. They were not overwhelmed with journals of every hue, shape, and quality. And when they were on the

look out for an instance they could seek it in the classics without running the risk of pitching on a passage too hack- neyed for quotation. Cicero and Sallust, Horace and Juvenal, Homer and Virgil, are always ready to support their argument. The Moralia of Plutarch provide them with a sound philosophy

of life ; and that they need not wholly neglect the moderns, Erasmus gives them the best counsel whenever they ask it.

Above all, they hats the literature of the Middle Ages, and the Italianate Englishman. In the one respect, a later age has revised their judgment; in the other, disagreement is still impossible. Though there is some quality in the simple narrative of the Middle Ages which stirs the sympathy of our self-conscious time, the foppish dilettante, who forgets his own tongue and his own manners after a single tour, is as ridiculous to-day as ever he was. For the rest, the same problems confronted the Elizabethans as confront their

descendants. Then, as now, the eternal battle of matter and style was being fought, and none ever struck a stouter blow

for style than Roger Ascham :—

" They be not wise," wrote he, " that say, What care I for a man's wordes and utterance, if his matter and reasons be good.' Soch men say so, not so mock of ignorance, as eyther of some singular pride in themselves or some special' malice or other, or for some private and parciall matter, either in Religion or other kinde of learning. For good and choice meates be no more requisite for helthie bodies than proper and apte wordes be for good matters, and also plain and sensible utterance for the best and deepest reasons: in which two pointes standeth perfite eloquence, one of the fairest and rarest giftes that God doth geve to man."

So Sidney freely allowed that English is " a mingled language," and Chapman indignantly repudiates a discourse which " hath nothing but what mixeth it selfe with ordinarie table talke." Ben Jonson, soundest of critics, summed up the discussion some years later, praising a noble style, yet warning those who play or riot too much " with swelling or ill-sounding words." " Some words," says he, " are to be culled only for ornament and colour, as we gather flowers to strew houses or make garlands ; but they are better when they grow to our style ; as in a meadow, where, though the mere grass and greenness delight, yet the variety of flowers doth heighten and beautify." A wise conclusion of a dis- cussion, which will cease only with the death of literature. After the antipathy of the Puritans, it is the encroaching hexameter which seems to interest the Elizabethan critics most deeply. The classical origin of this measure gave it a worth in the eyes of those who should have known better, and it was championed with eloquence and energy. " The proposition of the classicists," writes Mr. Gregory Smith, "resolved itself into three parts : that the metrical chaos was due largely to the use of rhyme ; that the accentual structure of the line was monotonous, and should be changed for quantitative variety ; and that a uniform orthography and a rule of pronunciation was necessary." Vain delusions, every one ! Variety may not be imparted to a language by outraging its character, and it is a puzzle of literary criticism that we find Spenser, in theory at least, taking the field with the enemies of rhyme. The letters which passed between him and Gabriel Harvey are as curious as anything in Mr.

Smith's two volumes, and we can only congratulate ourselves that Spenser did not harmonise his practice with his preach- ing. He tells Harvey that the hexameter " will fairly and easily yield itself to our mother tongue " ; and he likes Harvey's specimen " so exceedingly well " that he also " enures his pen sometime in that kind." Therefore he turns his " old use of toying in rhymes " into Harvey's " artificial straightness of verse." And here is a tetrastich, of which be beseeches Harvey to tell him his " fancy without

" See yee the blindefoulded pretie God, that feathered Archer, Of Lovers Miseries which maketh his bloodie Game ? Wote ye why his Moother with a Veale hath coovered his Face ? Trust me, least he my Loove happely chance to beholde."

Of these elegiacs the kindest thing we can say is that they are. not so bad as Harvey's own attempts in the same metre. But that the author of the " Peery Queen" should thus have stooped to twist and torture his language is, indeed, remark- able. It may be that Harvey touched Spenser on his worst side. Our readers will remember Nash's contemptuous words: " Immortal Spenser, no frailty hath thy fame, but the imputa- tion of this idiot's friendship." Yet it was not merely the hatred of Harvey which made Nash dislike the English hexa- meter. He has given so sound a reason for his dislike that it was evidently founded not on prejudice but upon faith. "The hexameter verse," said he in a memorable passage, "I grant to be a gentleman of an ancient house (so is many an English beggar), yet this clime of ours he cannot thrive in ; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in : he goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quag- mires, up the hill in one syllable, and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately, smooth gait, which he vaunts himself with amongst the Greeks and Romans." The wisdom of this pronouncement is untouched by partisanship, and it is no doubt an apt comment upon the Elizabethan hexameter. We are, however, by no means sure that, could Nash have read the best portions of the .Ainewrs de Voyage, he would not have seen cause to modify his verdict. He must have admitted the sonorous beauty of such lines as :—

"Michael Angelo's dome that had hung the Pantheon in Heaven, Raphael's joys and graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo."