EARLY ENGLISH POETS.*

MR. GROSART is the most indefatigable of editors, the most enthusiastic of critics. He discovers exquisite poetical beauty in verses which to most readers appear simply quaint and fantas- tical, and uses adjectives to describe small poets like Sir John Davies and Henry Lok, which can only fittingly be applied to a Milton or a Burns. And Mr. Grosart's love of our early literature has led him to write in a style which is always old- fashioned, and occasionally grotesque. The editor's faculty of admiration is unfortunately greater than his judgment, and hence it is frequently necessary to qualify his statements. Sir Philip Sidney, whose poetical works are reproduced in this handsome edition, was not only one of the most conspicuous figures of his age in Court and camp, but was also a scholar and a poet. Some of his verse is of rare quality, and a few of his sonnets retain their vitality after the lapse of three centuries. His writings, whether

* Early English Peels. The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney. Edited, with Memorial-Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart. 3 vols. London: Chatto and Windus. BBL

in verse or prose, will perhaps repay study, but to advise students, as Mr. Grosart advises them, to give days and nights to Sidney's poetry, is to write in a strain which reminds us of the absurd extravagance of Sir Philip's earliest editor. In 1591, Thomas Nash published a volume of Sidney's sonnets, and apologises for praising a poet "the least syllable of whose name, sounded in the ears of judgment, is able to give the meanest line he writes a dowry of immortality." It is possible to appreciate Sidney's genuine worth " on the exchange of letters," without giving way to this unreasonable admiration, and with Mr. Grosart's "first complete edition " of the poetry before us, we are glad to read again several of our favourite poems.

The " Memorial-Introduction," however, must detain us a little while from the text, and we are especially arrested by that portion of it which relates the story of Sidney's love for Lady Rich, the " Stella" of his sonnets. This love has been regarded by some critics as a blot upon the poet's memory, since Sidney's most passionate love-making in verse is supposed to be addressed to a married woman. Mr. Grosart, however, says truly that the whole question rests upon the dates of the sonnets. Love-passages had occurred between Sidney and Lady Penelope Devereux before the young lady was forced into a marriage with Rich, and that

the attachment was warm and mutual there can be no doubt. The Archbishop of Dublin regards the sonnets as exhibiting a Platonic affection, but Mr. Grosart takes a different and we think a truer view, when he writes, in his odd style, that the pas- sion was "a tragedy of Conflict, and the Love went down to the very roots of both in their deepest."

Verse such as Sidney's, artificial though it often is, after the type of the age, displays at times an ardour of feeling that could not possibly be feigned, and we have no doubt that it is the genuine expression of a real passion. What Stella might have become had she married her first lover who can say? The dis- cord of a hated union was probably felt throughout all her after- career, and may, in some measure, excuse the lapses from virtue for which she became notorious. It is Mr. Grosart's " abiding conviction that while Sidney lived, Stella' was true, and pure, and noble, after no common ideal." And he adds, "I give to Stella' without reserve the glory of having kept Sidney true to

his best self. She opened his eyes, to discern the wrong path he was taking in still seeking to cherish a hopeless love for her." Elsewhere he observes, "i cannot too emphatically reutter my own conviction, after anxious study of it under no common advantages, that Stella in her relations with Sidney was, if any- thing, the truer and nobler." Readers will accept or reject this conviction, in accordance with their estimate of Mr. Grosart's judgment, for he gives few, if any data, upon which it is possible to form an independent opinion. It is too late, we fear, to attempt the study of Sidney's love-poetry chronologically, and it is always perilous to read a poet's biography in his verse. After the absurd opinions about Shakespeare that have been based upon the order or no order of his sonnets, we become less disposed than ever to

gather up the broken threads of Sidney's story by a study of his poetry,

In his fine treatise, the Apologie for Poetrie, for the reprint of

which we have to thank Mr. Arber, Sidney objects to far-fetched words and impertinent conceits. In his day, as in our own, verse- makers were apt to mistake extravagant allusions and a fantastic use of words for the inspiration of the poet. Sidney himself was not free from the•fault he had the critical acumen to discern. He sometimes plays upon words, his imagery is sometimes strained and affected, his fancy often " high fantastical," and as conceits in poetry retain no life beyond the age that produced them, there is much in his verse which has no beauty or significance for the modern reader.- Some of the sonnets are crowded with this sort of poetical machinery, and read like the painful efforts of a scholar's wit rather than of a poet's fancy ; but Sidney at his best displays sweetness and strength, as well as imagination, with much of that subtle charm of rhythm that belongs to the Elizabethan lyrists.

Sleep is a favourite topic with the sonnet-writers, from Sidney to Keats, and Sir Philip's invocation, although not wholly without quaintness, has a winning sweetness that arrests and delights the ear :—

" Come, Sleep, 0 Sleep! the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low ; With sbield of proof shield me from out the prease Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw. Oh I make in me those civil wars to cease ; I will good tribute pay if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, A rosy garland, and a weary head : And if these things, as being thine by right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image sea."

We prefer Sidney's sonnets to his more .distinctly lyrical pieces, many of which are rather bard reading. A little piece, the only specimen of Sidney's verse inserted by Mr. Palgrave in his Golden Treasury, is one of the most pleasing to modern eats. By repeating the burden of the first line after line 4, and omitting four or five lines, Mr. Palgrave has added to the music of the verse.

We transcribe it from his pages instead of from Mr. Grosart's, while allowing it to be questionable whether Mr. Palgrave's treat- ment of the piece is wholly justifiable on the part of an editor :—

"My tree love hath my heart, and I have his, By just exchange one to the other given ; I hold his dear and mine he cannot miss, There never was a better bargain driven;

My true love hath my heart and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one, My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides ;

He loves my heart for once it was his own,.

I cherish his because in me it bides ; My true love bath my heart and I have his."

The weakest portion of Sidney's poetry is his version of the Psalms, or rather of about forty Psalms, his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, having completed the work. Mr. Grosart allows that the Countess's portion " is infinitely in advance of her

brother's, in thought, epithet, and melody." When Sidney was about twenty-three years of age, George Sandys was born, and about fifty years after Sidney's early death Sandys' version of the Psalms was published. It is difficult to believe that so brief a period separated the versions of the two men. Sidney is for the most part crude and rough and halting, while Sandys' verse, masculine and careful in construction, glides smoothly along, and delights the ear with its music. On the whole, it is not as a man of letters, and assuredly not as a poet, that Sir Philip Sidhey lives in the memory

of his country en. His Arcadia is a literary curiosity, and no

doubt impresses us with a sense of manifold gifts and graces, but Hailitt's judgment is not far wrong when he characterises it is as " one of the greatest monuments of the abuse of intellectual power upon record." Moreover, out of the three well-printed volumes produced by Mr. Grosart, it would be difficult, we think, to select thirty pages that fill the ear and heart with the exquisite delight afforded by genuine poetry ; yet, as we have

before said, Sidney was a poet, and not a mere verseman. Despite of much that is peverse and mischievous, there are lines in his book that mark unmistakably his calling and his power. All the greater is the pity that his genius was comparatively wasted, and

that his finest thoughts are so frequently injured, if not destroyed, by quiddities.