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 Deuided into viij. Decads. Vincitur a facibus, qui iacet ipfe faces AT LONDON, Printed by Iames Roberts for 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, Which sing upon the downs and pipe abroad, Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains? Ah, sweet Content, where dost thou safely rest? In heaven, with angels that the praises sing Of Him who made, and rules at his behest, The minds and hearts of every living thing? Ah, sweet Content, where doth thine harbour Is it in churches with religious men 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 to 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 ROBERT SOUTHWELL 143 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 Queen was an usurper-an Athaliah awaiting a Jehoiada. The conduct of the English Government 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 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: Robert Southwell From the portrait in "St. Peter's Complaint," 1630 The loppéd tree in time may grow again; The driest soil suck in some moistening shower.\ The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb; 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, The saddest birds a season find to sing, The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. Fortune has been most unkind to RICHARD BARNFIELD (1574-1627) in depriving him for nearly three centuries of the honour due to his two best poems, but most kind in bestowing this on no less a person than Shakespeare. These are the beautiful lines on the song of the nightingale, beginning, "As it fell upon a day," and the sonnet to R. L., "If music and sweet poetry agree," both of which, being printed in The Passionate Pilgrim, were ascribed to Shakespeare, and only restored to Barnfield upon their discovery in a copy of his then almost unknown writings. The so-called ode is not very Shakespearean, but the authorship of the sonnet would hardly have been questioned upon internal evidence alone: If Music and sweet Poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As, passing all conceit, needs no defence. Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes; And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned When as himself to singing he betakes. One god is god of both, as poets feign; One knight loves both, and both in thee remain. Barnfield certainly did not encumber himself with poetical baggage for the ascent of Parnassus. The greater part of his slender store of verse was produced by the age of twenty, which may excuse a questionable morality which was probably nothing worse than boyish affectation. Here, as everywhere, he manifests pure poetical qualities, and it was a loss to English literature when, perhaps upon inheriting a patrimonial estate, he quitted the excellent literary LYLY, GREENE, AND LODGE AS LYRISTS 145 society he had enjoyed in London for his native Staffordshire, where he remained obstinately silent until his death in 1627. Poetry: The lives and general personal and literary characters of Lyly, Greene, Lyrical and Lodge have been treated elsewhere, and in this place it is only necessary Lyly, Greene, to speak of them as lyric poets. In our estimation, Lodge is the truest lyrist Lodge among them. The best lyrics of Lyly and Greene are not, strictly speaking, songs, but little poems, musical indeed, but whose length is rather conditioned by the subject than the melody. Lyly's famous song of Apelles on Campaspe is a notable instance. Rather than quote anything so universally known, we give the no less beautiful "Nightingale Song": What bird so sings, yet so does wail? O'tis the ravished nightingale. Jug, jug, jug, jug, teren! she cries, And still her woes at midnight rise, Brave prick song! Who is't now we hear? Cuckoo! to weloome in the spring. Greene's verses are frequently steeped in the richest hues of poetry, but want something of the easy spontaneity of the lyric. They are rarely snatches of simple melody, but patterns of sonorous stateliness, such as might have passed for examples of an Elizabethan Keats. If they are to be regarded as songs, they are songs for the concert chamber : Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content; The homely house that harbours quiet rest; The cottage that affords no pride nor care; A mind content both crown and kingdom is. As Greene reminds us of Keats, so Lodge sometimes reminds us of Blake. It is difficult to think that Blake had no knowledge of "Love's Wantonness " when he wrote "How sweet I roamed from field to field": VOL. II Love guards the roses of thy lips, And if I kiss he stingeth me, K Love in thine eyes doth build his bower, And sleeps within their pretty shrine, And from their orbs shoot shafts divine. Love works thy heart within his fire, And of my plaints doth make a game. Love, let me cull her choicest flowers, 66 The same daring imagination is shown in the gorgeous "Description of Rosalynd," a rare example of continuous hyperbole never transgressing the limits allowable to impassioned feeling. The less-known “ Hamadryad's Song " is an instance of the power of genuine lyrical emotion to exalt what without it would be mere commonplace: Pluck the fruit and taste the pleasure, Youthful Lordings, of delight! While occasion gives you seizure, Here on earth no thing is stable; Let your seeds of joy be sown. Feast it freely with your lovers : Whilst that lively Cupid hovers Round about this lovely shade. Sport it freely one to one, Now the pleasant Spring allureth, As already mentioned, another class of lyrical poets was formed by those men of society who occasionally turned aside from pleasure or business to the solace of poetry. After Raleigh, Edward de VeRE, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), is the most perfect type of the poetical courtier. So great was his brilliancy as an ornament of Elizabeth's Court, and so strong his position as the son-in-law of Burghley, that nothing but his perverse wrong-headedness could have prevented his rising to the highest dignities of the State; but neither his |