For Love is lord of truth and loialtie, But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray For it is heavenly born and cannot die, Of Spenser's smaller poems we may further notice particularly his Sonnets (numbering nearly a thousand), all very pretty, many of them certainly also piquant, but on the whole lacking that breath of at least second-hand passion, which ensures Petrarch's Sonnets a certain existence even at the present day, in spite of their internal unreality. It is remarkable that Spenser also tried his powers upon a comic poem, and not unsuccessfully. His uncommonly droll Mother Hubbard's Tale, the story of the astounding travels of the ape and the fox, affords the poet the opportunity for unsparing attacks upon abuses in Church and State. In particular, the all-powerful minister Burleigh, the enemy of Spenser's patron the Earl of Leicester, is very roughly handled in it. Generally speaking, we should be wrong in trying to find in Spenser nothing but an enraptured visionary: numerous passages even in The Fairy Queen are full of coarse English humour and assist not a little in relieving the monotony of the allegorical narrative. And now for Spenser's chief work, which occupied him almost uninterruptedly for more than ten years of his life and yet has come down to us only as a mighty torso: the six books of the Fairy Queen (which appeared in 1590-6). Of the numerous allegorical poems of the Middle Ages and the period of the Renaissance it is the most magnificent in conception and the most poetical in execution. But the curse of all allegory weighs heavily even upon this creation, which is regarded by the poet with unspeakable affection: we admire numerous "beautiful passages," we delight in the inexhaustible charm of its highly artistic form and yet we feel no enthusiasm for any of the characters. The fairy Gloriana, for whose hand Prince Arthur is a suitor: the unhappy maidens, virtuous to such a degree that they excite amazement, and who are liberated by equally virtuous knights from the power of horrible dragons or villains,-all entirely lack a healthy colouring of life, and warm, red blood in their veins. 1 Mole. Spenser's first inspiration for The Fairy Queen came from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516): he has preserved much of the old Italian's romantic setting, but, to the detriment of his work, has made all his characters melt away into the shadow of allegory. In addition to this, we never feel sure whether he himself is even serious in his allegorical design, according to which the Fairy Queen Gloriana is intended to be synonymous with divine wisdom and virtue; for now and then an unpleasant flattery of Queen Elizabeth asserts itself, whom Spenser to a certain extent from time to time introduces as one of the chief allegorical characters. The virgin queen, who, with her sixty years, was the essence of female ugliness, peeps forth from behind his ideal characters Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, or whatever else the hazy beauties are called. The Fairy Queen was originally calculated to fill twelve books, of which only six and a few fragments of the seventh and eighth are preserved. As we have the poem before us to-day, it still numbers thirty thousand lines; more than the Odyssey and Iliad taken together! The metre bears Spenser's name. The Spenserian stanza, consisting of nine artistically rhyming lines (arranged according to the scheme ababbcbcc), is as well adapted for such romantic materials as the eight-lined stanza of the Italians. The last line, which is longer by two syllables, relieves the metre from monotony and reminds us of the end of the Nibelungen stanza, which in like manner concludes with a rhythmical pause. As a specimen of the poetical manner of The Fairy Queen, let us select two or three stanzas from the beginning of the first Canto of the First Book, containing The Legend of the Red Cross Knight or Holiness: 1 A gentle knight was pricking on the plain, And on his breast a bloody cross he bore, For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, Upon a great adventure he was bound, 1 Spurring. Which of all earthly things he most did crave; A lovely lady rode him fair beside, And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she led. The Fairy Queen was an attempt to re-animate two already expiring ) branches of medieval poetry: chivalry and allegory. The poet failed in the attempt, but his loyal devotedness to the creations of his imagination nevertheless fills the reader with a certain emotion. Six years after Spenser's death (1605) the Don Quixote of Cervantes appeared and put an end to chivalry amidst the laughter of the reading public of Europe. Spenser's Fairy Queen was the expiring effort of the allegorical poetry of chivalry. Spenser had written the greater part of his chief work in Ireland. In the fresh rising of 1598 he lost house and home: one of his children is even said to have perished in the flames of his burning house. Having returned to London in utter despair, the crowned court poet died-it was supposed of hunger. His death was deeply lamented by contemporary poets. He found his last resting-place by the side of Chaucer in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. A CHAPTER VI THE LYRIC POETS 2. SKELTON-SURREY, WYATT, VAUX-RALEIGH, DRAYTON, DONNE-LYRIC POETRY IN THE DRAMA T HE general observation also holds good of the lyric poets of the second class contemporary with Spenser in the sixteenth century they only adapted as much of the spirit and forms of the Renaissance as was compatible with their genuine English nature, and did not, like the Ronsardists of France, become Neo-Latin or Neo-Greek. The artistic lyric poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had not been worth mentioning. The national ballad alone had supplied the want of song properly so called in English poetry. The artistic lyric poets of the sixteenth century owe their adaptability to singing to the mental disposition, the feeling of the inner ear, and not least to the national ballad, the determining characteristic of all genuine lyric poetry. Although these poets did not, like the dramatists, appeal to the mass of the people, but to court circles, since they themselves were for the most part closely connected with the court, nevertheless their English manner compelled them to remain true to the spirit of English song, consequently to a popular style. Certainly, scarcely one of the poets above mentioned was able to escape the strong influences which also made themselves felt in English poetry in consequence of the revival of the study of antiquity and Italian lyric poetry. Perhaps JOHN SKELTON (about 1460-1529) may be designated an exception, but the motive forces of the Renaissance were not so vigorous until the last years of his life. Skelton was a clergyman, the tutor of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Henry VIII.), but bold, witty, and no respecter of persons: thus, at that time he held a position which later played so important a part in England, that of a writer of satirical political pamphlets. While the youthful poets of the sixteenth century, who for the most part belonged to the nobility, formed themselves on foreign models in their affected 210 love-poesy, Skelton kept to the simple forms and vigour of the popular minstrel song. His satires are the boldest attack which the English spirit of liberty, at that early period, ventured to make upon greed of power and lawlessness. Skelton does not trouble to palliate his attacks upon the all-powerful minister Cardinal Wolsey by elegant and harmonious verses: his doggerel rhymes fell like a sledge-hammer upon the ambitious prelate, whose palace at Hampton Court was a kind of rival residence to the king's. Three longer satirical poems bear Skelton's name: Speke Parrot, Why come ye not to Court? and Colin Clout. The two first in particular attack Wolsey with merciless rage, a hundred years before Scarron in France wrote his notorious satires against the ministercardinal Mazarin. Petrarch's Sonnets to Laura were the models of that brilliant band of English poets, which, under the name of the "School of Sonnetists," inaugurated the century of the Renaissance also for lyric poetry. The founder of the new school of poetry did not live during the Elizabethan era, as the whole sixteenth century is frequently called: the Earl of Surrey (1516-47), the first of the English sonnetists, lived and died during the reign of Henry VIII. (1509-47). This sanguinary ruler, an inconsistent compound of vain pamphleteer, bloodthirsty Bluebeard, and fickle tyrant, witnessed during his reign the new development of the poetical spirit of England, but no thanks are due to him for it. He quietly allowed Skelton to write his satires against Wolsey, for the tyrant hated his own minister who ruled him: and yet the tiger in his dying hours sent the most gifted and amiable poet of his time, the Earl of Surrey, to the scaffold for a mere nothing. Henry VIII. himself delighted to play the author and patron of the fine arts. His polemics against Luther, and later his quarrel with the Pope, are well known. It almost seemed as if he cared less about the matter itself than about the sensation which his pamphlets would cause in Europe. His poets made the nation acquainted with Italian literature: he, on his own part, desired to transfer a fragment of Italian art to England, but neither Raphael nor Titian accepted his invitation. On the other hand he succeeded in getting Hans Holbein to London, to whom we are indebted for the portraits of the majority of the poets of the so-called Sonnetist School, those of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Thomas, Lord Vaux. These men of noble and noblest blood, who introduce the lyric poetry of the glorious sixteenth century, are striking figures. With waving plume on their proud head, the sword of the courtier or the general at their side, in richly-embroidered garments, they stride through the halls of the royal palace, or mount the scaffold on Tower |