P. 6-DISDAIN ME NOT! That is Forethink me not, to be unjust! – Do not be unjust in thinking ill of me before cause shown! Arber has Nor think me not to be unjust; For think me not to be unjust, And Ellis Both meaningless! has also forespeak. Forethink is used by Donne; Chapman But since ye know what I intend. Since is here used for when, or after: the stanza is complete. Ellis, with a comma in place of the full stop, alters the sense. He also misprints the last line of the poem : Forsake me not now for no new. P. 7 DEATH IN LIFE. VAUX Given in The Paradise of Dainty Devices, 1576; and Morley's New Book of Tablature, 1596. Reprinted in Collier's Lyrical Poems, 1844. P. 8 TUSSER This, from the Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, is in the original entitled A Sonnet; and may in some sort be considered such, if we take it as consisting of fourteen verses, the first twelve but divided into two lines each to expose the middle rhymes. The old printer in line 4 for gift had shift, destroying sense and rhyme too; in line 13 for poor face had good face, also senseless. P. 9- A TRUE Love. GRIMAOLD The old reading of line 5 is As mellow pears above the crabs esteemed be. But surely the poet did not emphasize the; and would mark the contrast to mellow with some descriptive word, harsh, or other: though I may not have hit upon the right. In the last line but one I dare to print or for and. GOOGE P. II - TO THE TUNE OF APElles. Her face of crystal to the same. 66 So in Arber's Reprint of his Eglogs, Epitaphes & Sonettes, Googe, 1563. Her face, or eyes? Crystal eyes" was the stock poetic simile. Yet Watson has "her crystal breast.” P. 12- ONCE MUSING AS I SAT. This appears at first like long lines arbitrarily divided, each second half (Arber's copy) beginning without a capital. But the division is at the accent, except in one instance, where a comma enforces it at the cost of sense the well-rejoicing of the Fly being so altered to the well-perceiving of the man. Sely-simple, guileless, foolish. SIDNEY P. 17-ABSENCE. In Ward's English Poets, 1880, part of this is given one stanza squeamishly suppressed. I will not meet ill thought by pointing out which. Honi soit qui mal y pense! Pure and manly, there is never one word of Sidney's that needs to be blotted out. One may here also remark the unfairness, toward both writer and reader, of giving only part of a short poem. It should be all or none. Yet frequently in collections we find not even notice of omissions. I offer no apology for giving so much from so true a poet, characterized at once (as Grosart well observes) by "passion, thought, and fineness of art," and so neglected: out of whose riches so late a collector as Trench can borrow only a couple of sonnets. Palgrave's Golden Treasury, a choice gathering, and assuming "to include in it ALL THE BEST original lyrical pieces and songs in our language," contains (notwithstanding the Laureate's "advice and assistance ") TEN lines of Sidney, those incorrectly. The lovely Epithalamium (here at p. 22) will bear comparison with the Epithalamion and Prothalamion of Spenser, or with Ben Jonson's Epithalamion (p. 61). There is another Marriage Song of equal beauty by rare Ben: “Glad Time is at his point arrived,” to be read in his Masque of Hymen. And Donne has yet another of the same sterling character: "The sunbeams in the East are spread." Four of these neglected by the excellent collectors; and of Spenser's two one distinctly rejected by Palgrave, as “not in harmony with modern manners." My first four Songs and first three Sonnets will be found in the Astrophel and Stella; the EPITHALAMIUM, EPITAPH, RURAL POESY, and the second Sonnet on p. 29, are from the Arcadia. It is of this last sonnet that Palgrave gives part as complete in two five-line stanzas. He perhaps followed Ellis, who found it in Puttenham's contemporaneous Art of Poesy; yet neither Ellis nor Palgrave is exact to Puttenham. And he may have trusted to memory, or to some musical miscellany where it had been altered to a song, to suit an air. With few differences of punctuation, Dr. Grosart's careful text warrants me here, and generally for Sidney's writing. The exceptions are noted as follows. P. 16-THE MEETING. In the last stanza he has Leauing him to passion rent: Pp. 17-18 ABSENCE. Or if I myself find not: Fearing her beames, take with thee (which places the accent awkwardly on her) : O my thoughts, my thoughts surcease! 99 66 (But he himself observes that the poet addresses Thought as "his intellectual part," a being that has thoughts," which also would require thy thoughts, as thy delights in next line) Till thou shalt ruinèd be, (without comment,— surely a misprint) : THE COLLOQUY.— More then in thy reason's sight: (which is not the poet's sense, even if his own writing): P. 25 — EPITHALAMIUM.— But keeping whole your meane, (What mean between peacock pride and sluttery? Or would Sidney have missed the regularly recurring rhyme ?) : In question? nay, 'uds-foot, she loves thee than. (Than-- then. I leave out the useless 'uds-foot, doubting it to be Sidney's, also as out of measure. P. 30 HIS ANSWER. Ellis rejects it.) Deeming strange euill in that he did not know. Fire and sire (in desire), p. 14, must be read as dissyllables, sometimes written fier and desier; but means unless, in last stanza of OPPORTUNITY; destines is destinies; minds (such minds to nourish, p. 21) is desires, thoughts, minded things; louts - obeisances, courtesies (p. 21); grant to the thing is grant the thing (p. 23); learn (p. 26) has its old meaning of teach; a sleek-stone (p. 27) is a stone used for smoothing, or sleeking, leather; wood (p. 30), also wode, is mad. WATSON P. 31 ON SIDNEY'S DEATH. Taken from Byrd's Italian Madrigals, 1590. Collier, reprinting it in his Lyrical Poems, for With dreary has How with dryry; for then, in last line but one, therefore, spoiling the rhythm; and greeting, in the last line, to rhyme with weeping. Since in all Watson's verse I have detected but one false couplet, and that looking like a misprint, I will not believe that in eight lines on so serious an occasion he would have been content with such slovenliness. I only suggest keeping, as at least to the purpose. I doubt any dependence to be placed on early texts, more particularly referring now to musical miscellanies. I suspect that the old musical editors, Byrd, Campion, and the rest (supposed or known to have sometimes written upon their own account), cared very little, if at all, for verbal exactness, and would not hesitate to alter their poet's words to suit the music: a more tolerable practice, I dare to think, than mangling our old airs to fit new words,—as was done with Moore's Melodies. But then we must disenthrone these editors as literary authorities. Byrd, or Bird, or Byrde, or Birde, was Watson's associate in the first publication of Madrigals with English words: that is to say, "Italian Madrigals Englished, not to the sense of the originall dittie, but after the affection of the noate." In which collection are "excellent madrigalls of Master William Byrds, composed after the Italian vaine at the request of the sayd Thomas Watson." 66 Pp. 31-34— These five "Sonnets" (so miscalled, consisting all of six-lined stanzas) are from Watson's Hekatompathia, or a "Passionate Centurie of Loue, diuided into two parts: whereof the first expresseth the Author's sufferance in Loue: the latter his long farewell to Loue and all his tyrannie.” 1582. THE MAY QUEEN is from England's Helicon. The Sonnet, pp. 35-36, from The Teares of Fancie, or Loue Disdained, printed at London for William Barley, dwelling in Gratious streete, ouer against Leaden Hall, 1593.” Put not your trust in printers! This one mis-spells the name of his own streete. There was no Gratious streete in London; but, named from the church in it, Gracechurch St. — over against Leaden Hall. Merest poetic conceits as Watson's verses seem to me, when compared with the passionate, heart-welling poetry of Sidney (though Arber, who not inaptly styles Watson “ our English Petrarch," would rank him above Sidney, next after Spenser), they are worth notice, not only for their rarity, but also for a display of very extensive book-learning, and more as perhaps the best of a large proportion of the Euphuistic versification of the period. Arber's Reprint of the Tears of Fancy, 1870, is "from an unique copy" owned by S. Christie-Miller, Esq. Each of Watson's hundred (97 only) Sonnets, or Passions, has for prefix a prose annotation: a single example of which may suffice to show the affected, yet learned, quality of all. |