IX. I never drank of Aganippe well, Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell; Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell, But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it; X. Of all the kings that ever here did reign, XI. O happy Thames, that didst my STELLA bear, I saw thyself, with many a smiling line Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, While wanton winds, with beauty so divine XII. Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be; By no encroachment wrong'd nor time forgot; Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last sonnet, are my favourites. But the general beauty of them all is, that they are so perfectly characteristical. The spirit of "learning and of chivalry," of which union, Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been the "president,"-shines through them. I confess I can see nothing of the "jejune" or "frigid" in them; much less of the "stiff" and "cumbrous "—which I have sometimes heard objected to the Arcadia. The verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have been tuned to the trumpet; or tempered (as himself expresses it) to 'trampling horses' feet." abound in felicitous phrases O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face Sweet pillows, sweetest bed; They 8th Sonnet. A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light; That sweet enemy,- France 2nd Sonnet. 5th Sonnet. But they are not rich in words only, in vague and unlocalised feelings-the failing too much of some poetry of the present day-they are full, material, and circumstantiated. Time and place appropriates every one of them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty words, but a transcendent passion pervading and illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats of arms, the opinions of contemporaries and his judgment of them. An historical thread runs through them, which almost affixes a date to them; marks the when and where they were written. I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit of these poems, because I have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) with which W. H.1 takes every occasion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. But the decisions of the Author of Table Talk, &c., (most profound and subtle where they are, as for the most part, just) are more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and authors he has a [1 William Hazlitt.] partiality for, than on such as he has conceived an accidental prejudice against. Milton wrote Sonnets, and was a king-hater; and it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot. But I was unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. The noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of character, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite of some stiffness and encumberment), justify to me the character which his contemporaries have left us of the writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir Philip Sidney was that opprobrious thing which a foolish nobleman in his insolent hostility chose to term him. I call to mind the epitaph made on him, to guide me to juster thoughts of him; and I repose upon the beautiful lines in the "Friend's Passion for his Astrophel," printed with the Elegies of Spenser and others. You knew-who knew not Astrophel? The Muses met him every day, That taught him sing, to write, and say. When he descended down the mount, Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running into rage) in the Poem,—the last in the collection accompanying the above,-which from internal testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's, --beginning with "Silence augmenteth grief,”and then seriously ask himself, whether the subject of such absorbing and confounding regrets could have been that thing which Lord Oxford termed him. |