MINOR ANTHOLOGIES

Then took I paper, pen, and ink, this proverb for to write,
In register for to remain of such a worthy wight.
As she proceeded thus in song unto her little brat,
Much matter uttered she of weight in place where as she sat;
And provéd plain there was no beast, nor creature having life,
Could well be known to live in love without discord and strife.
Then kisséd she her little babe, and sware by God above,

The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love.

139

Of the writers who cultivated poetry as a profession, the oldest was the best. NICHOLAS BRETON will more properly be considered when we reach the Jacobean period, but of his early lyrics it may here be said that their excessive fluency injured his reputation; greatly admired by his contemporaries, they were soon almost entirely forgotten. Yet one lyric of most admirable pathos and truth to nature is attributed to Breton, although, appearing in an anthology which has contributions from other hands, it is not certainly from his pen :

SWEET LULLABY

Come, little babe, come, silly soul,

Thy father's shame, thy mother's grief,
Born as I doubt to all our dole,

And to thyself unhappy chief :

Sing lullaby, and lap it warm,

Poor soul that thinks no creature harm.

Thou little think'st and less dost know
The cause of this thy mother's moan;
Thou want'st the wit to wail her woe,
And I myself am all alone;

Why dost thou weep? why dost thou wail?
And know'st not yet what thou dost ail.

Come, little wretch-ah, silly heart!
Mine only joy, what can I more?
If there be any wrong they smart,
That may the destinies implore :
'Twas I, I say, against my will,

I wail the time, but be thou still.

And dost thou smile? O thy sweet face!
Would God himself He thee might see!
No doubt thou would'st soon purchase grace,
I know right well, for thee and me:
But come to mother, babe, and play,
For father false is fled away.

Sweet boy, if it be fortune's chance
Thy father home again to send,
If Death do strike me with his lance,
Yet may'st thou me to him commend:
If any ask thy mother's name,

Tell him by love she purchased blame.

Then will his gentle heart soon yield:
I know him of a noble mind:

Although a lion in the field,

A lamb in town thou shalt him find :

Thomas Watson

Ask blessing, babe, be not afraid;

His sugared words have me betrayed.

Then may'st thou joy and be right glad;
Although in woe I seem to moan,
Thy father is no rascal lad,

A noble youth of blood and bone :
His glancing looks, if he once smile,
Right honest women may beguile.

Come, little boy, and rock asleep;
Sing lullaby and be thou still;
I that can do nought else but weep,
Will sit by thee and wail my fill,
God bless my babe, and lullaby
From this thy father's quality.

If Breton was the author of this lyric he had a dramatic force and the insight into human. nature which should have qualified him for greater achievements than he actually brought to pass, though several of his songs have true lyrical quality. The best of his prose performances is Wit's Trenchmour, an idyll of angling which is no unworthy precursor of Izaak Walton. THOMAS WATSON (1557?-1592) took his art more seriously than Breton, but had much less natural gift. His madrigals are poor; and the eighteen-line sonnet monstrosities of his Hecatompathia are chiefly interesting as elaborate contributions to those Elizabethan sonnetcycles of which Sidney's Astrophel, Spenser's Amoretti, and Shakespeare's Sonnets are memorable examples. The question how far these cycles were artificial exercises and how far expressions of real feeling is one of great interest, but needs to be propounded again with each successive author. There is no reason to think that the sonnet meant much more to Watson than a literary exercise; a large proportion of his pieces are translations or imitations from the Frenci. or Italian. Translation into Latin verse was his forte, and this gift, rare among Englishmen of his time, was successfully exercised upon Tasso's Aminta. He was a gentleman-author, an amateur of music, and especially patronised by Walsingham, whose favour he had gained in Paris.

Title-page of Watson's "Hekatompathia "

Although BARTHOLOMEW YONG is principally known as a translator of Italian and Spanish prose, he has a claim to a place among poets from

his twenty-four contributions to England's Helicon (1600), even though these are mostly translations. His best known work is his rendering of the Diana of Montemayor, which may have been seen in MS. by Shakespeare when he wrote The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

HENRY CONSTABLE (1562-1613), a man of good family, became a Roman Catholic early in life, and spent many years in Paris, where he played an ambiguous part as agent, perhaps spy, for Pope and Queen at the same time. In 1603 he was imprisoned in the Tower, but was liberated in the following year, and died at Liège in 1613. His Diana, a collection of sonnets, was published in 1592, and republished in 1594 with additional poems, not all of which are his. In 1600 he appears as a contributor of pastoral poems to the celebrated anthology, England's Helicon. These, though diffuse, evince genuine rustic feeling, and entitle him to a good position among the minor lyrists of his day. Nor are his sonnets devoid of merit. It must be set to the credit of a dubious character to have been the friend of Sidney in early youth, and to have celebrated the publication of Sidney's Apology for Poetry in a sonnet inspired by real emotion:

Title-page of Bartholomew Yong's "Diana," 1598

Give pardon, blessed soul, to my bold cries,

If they, importune, interrupt thy song,
Which now with joyful notes thou sing'st among
The angel choristers of the heavenly skies.
Give pardon, eke, sweet soul, to my slow cries,
That, since I saw thee, now it is so long;
And yet the tears that unto thee belong
To thee as yet they did not sacrifice.
I did not know that thou wert dead before,
I did not feel the grief I did sustain ;
The greater stroke astonisheth the more,
Astonishment takes from us sense of pain.
I stood amazed when others' tears begun,
And now begin to weep when they have done.

Henry
Constable

Robert Southwell

Sonnet-cycles prevailed exceedingly from 1593 to 1596, during which period volumes of sonnets were published by poets of such repute as Chapman, Drayton, and Barnfield, and a number of minor minstrels, among whom BARNABE BARNES holds the first place. After this date the fashion ceased, though there is reason to think that the finest of Shakespeare's sonnets were yet to come. Perhaps the final blow was dealt by the publication in 1597 of three hundred and twenty-six spiritual sonnets at one fell swoop by HENRY LOK, who next year is found unsuccessfully suing for the appointment of

DIANA.

OR,

The excellent conceitful Sonnets
of H. C. Augmented with diuers
Quatorzains of honorable and
lerned perfonages.

Deuided into viij. Decads.

Vincitur a facibus, qui iacet ipfe faces

AT LONDON,

Richard Smith.

Title page of Constable's "Diana"

keeper of the Queen's bears and mastiffs. Barnes (1569?-1609), a son of the Bishop of Durham, is a sonnetteer of real merit. He wrote two volumes of poetry, one spiritual, the other secular; and The Devil's Charter, a tragedy on the history of Pope Alexander VI. Some of his sonnets are almost modern in thought and expression :

Ah! sweet Content, where is thy mild
abode ?

Is it with shepherds and light-hearted
swains,
and pipe

Which sing upon the downs

The minds and hearts of every living thing?

Ah, sweet Content, where doth thine harbour hold?

Is it in churches with religious men

Which please the gods with prayers manifold,
And in their studies meditate it then?
Whether thou dost in earth or heaven appear,
Be where thou wilt, thou wilt not harbour here.

Much of Barnes's amorous poetry in his Parthenophill seems trembling on the verge of excellence, but seldom attains it. He is one of the few English poets who have essayed the difficult sestine stanza, which he has converted into a lyrical measure by making it octosyllabic.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL (1561 ?-1595) has obtained a higher place in English poetry than strictly his due, on account of the compassion excited by his fate. Belonging to a Roman Catholic family, he was sent fo the Continent for his education, and returned to England ambitious for the crown of martyrdom, which, in the opinion of his co-religionists, he obtained by his execution for

treason in 1595. That he was guilty of treason is unquestionable; the fault, however, was not his, but that of Pope Pius V., who, by excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth, had rendered every Roman Catholic ecclesiastic an emissary of conspiracy and rebellion. Every such ecclesiastic was bound, by his allegiance to the Pope, to tell his flock that their Quec. was an usurper-an Athaliah awaiting a Jehoiada. The conduct of the English Govern

ment was that prescribed by the circumstances, and exactly the same as that which any other Government would have adopted in its place. This in no respect impairs the honour due to Southwell for his singleminded enthusiasm, or for his courage and constancy. Apart from the man, the poet is interesting on two grounds -the rhetorical merit of much of his verse, and the first indications of the far-fetched metaphysical conceit which so marred the poetry of Donne and Crashaw and Cowley in the next century. He has, like these writers, great fertility of conception; ideas throng upon him, and he entertains and arrays all with indiscriminate hospitality. When writing simply and naturally he can be very pleasing, as in the following lines :

"

From the portrait in St. Peter's Complaint," 1630

The lopped tree in time may grow again;
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorest wight may find release of pain;

The driest soil suck in some moistening shower.
Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow;

She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;
Her time hath equal times to come and go;

Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web.

No joy so great but runneth to an end,

No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring,

No endless night yet not eternal day;

The saddest birds a season find to sing,

The roughest storm a calm may soon allay.
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise yet fear to fall.

Fortune has been most unkind to RICHARD BARNFIELD (1574-1627) in