The history of English poetry: from the close of the eleventh to the commencement of the eighteenth century. To which are prefixed, two dissertations. ... By Thomas Warton, ... [pt.3]

SECT. XLIII.

ENOUGH has been opened of the reign of queen Elisa∣beth, to afford us an opportunity of forming some general reflections, tending to establish a full estimate of the genius of the poetry of that reign; and which, by drawing conclusions from what has been said, and directing the reader to what he is to expect, will at once be recapitulatory and preparatory. Such a survey perhaps might have stood with more propriety as an in∣troduction to this reign. But it was first necessary to clear the way, by many circumstantial details, and the regular narration of those particulars, which lay the foundation of principles, and suggest matter for discursive observation. My sentiments on this subject shall therefore compose the concluding section of the present volume.

The age of queen Elisabeth is commonly called the golden age of English poetry. It certainly may not improperly be styled the most POETICAL age of these annals.

Among the great features which strike us in the poetry of this period, are the predominancy of fable, of fiction, and fancy, and a predilection for interesting adventures and pathetic events. I will endeavour to assign and explain the cause of this charac∣teristic distinction, which may chiefly be referred to the follow∣ing principles, sometimes blended, and sometimes operating singly: The revival and vernacular versions of the classics, the importation and translation of Italian novels, the visionary reve∣ries or refinements of false philosophy, a degree of super∣stition sufficient for the purpose•• of poetry, the adoption of

the machineries of romance, and the frequency and improve∣ments of allegoric exhibition in the popular spectacles.

When the corruptions and impostures of popery were abo∣lished, the fashion of cultivating the Greek and Roman learning became universal: and the literary character was no longer ap∣propriated to scholars by profession, but assumed by the nobility and gentry. The ecclesiastics had found it their interest to keep the languages of antiquity to themselves, and men were eager to know what had been so long injuriously concealed. Truth propagates truth, and the mantle of mystery was removed not only from religion but from literature. The laity, who had now been taught to assert their natural privileges, became impa∣tient of the old monopoly of knowledge, and demanded admit∣tance to the usurpations of the clergy. The general curiosity for new discoveries, heightened either by just or imaginary ideas of the treasures contained in the Greek and Roman writers, ex∣cited all persons of leisure and fortune to study the classics. The pedantry of the present age was the politeness of the last. An accurate comprehension of the phraseology and peculiarities of the antient poets, historians, and orators, which yet seldom went farther than a kind of technical erudition, was an indispensable and almost the principal object in the circle of a gentleman's education. Every young lady of fashion was carefully instituted in classical letters: and the daughter of a duchess was taught, not only to distil strong waters, but to construe Greek. Among the learned females of high distinction, queen Elisabeth herself was the most conspicuous. Roger Ascham, her preceptor, speaks with rapture of her astonishing progress in the Greek nouns; and declares with no small degree of triumph, that during a long residence at Windsor-castle, she was accustomed to read more Greek in a day, than

"some prebendary of that church did Latin, in one week a 1.1."

And although perhaps a princess looking out words in a lexicon, and writing down hard phrases

from Plutarch's Lives, may be thought at present a more incom∣patible and extraordinary character, than a canon of Windsor understanding no Greek and but little Latin, yet Elisabeth's pas∣sion for these acquisitions was then natural, and resulted from the genius and habitudes of her age.

The books of antiquity being thus familiarised to the great, every thing was tinctured with antient history and mythology. The heathen gods, although discountenanced by the Calvinists on a suspicion of their tending to cherish and revive a spirit of idolatry, came into general vogue. When the queen paraded through a country-town, almost every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobility, at en∣tering the hall she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to her privy-chamber by Mercury. Even the pastry-cooks were ex∣pert mythologists. At dinner, select transformations of Ovid's metamorphoses were exhibited in confectionary: and the splen∣did iceing of an immense historic plumb-cake, was embossed with a delicious basso-relievo of the destruction of Troy. In the afternoon, when she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons and Nereids: the pages of the family were converted into Wood-nymphs who peeped from every bower: and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of Satyrs. I speak it without designing to insinuate any unfavourable suspicions, but it seems difficult to say, why Elisa∣beth's virginity should have been made the theme of perpetual and excessive panegyric: nor does it immediately appear, that there is less merit or glory in a married than a maiden queen. Yet, the next morning, after sleeping in a room hung with the tapes∣try of the voyage of Eneas, when her majesty hunted in the Park, she was met by Diana, who pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusions of Acteon. The truth is, she was so profusely flattered for this virtue, because it was esteemed the characteristical ornament of the heroines, as fantastic honour was the chief pride of the champions, of the old barbarous romance.

It was in conformity to the sentiments of chivalry, which still continued in vogue, that she was celebrated for chastity: the compliment, however, was paid in a classical allusion.

Queens must be ridiculous when they would appear as women. The softer attractions of sex vanish on the throne. Elisabeth sought all occasions of being extolled for her beauty, of which indeed in the prime of her youth she possessed but a small share, whatever might have been her pretensions to absolute virginity. Notwithstanding her exaggerated habits of dignity and cere∣mony, and a certain affectation of imperial severity, she did not perceive this ambition of being complimented for beauty, to be an idle and unpardonable levity, totally inconsistent with her high station and character. As she conquered all nations with her arms, it matters not what were the triumphs of her eyes. Of what consequence was the complexion of the mistress of the world? Not less vain of her person than her politics, this stately coquet, the guardian of the protestant faith, the terror of the sea, the mediatrix of the factions of France, and the scourge of Spain, was infinitely mortified, if an embassador, at the first audience, did not tell her she was the finest woman in Europe. No negociation succeeded unless she was addressed as a goddess. Encomiastic harangues drawn from this topic, even on the supposition of youth and beauty, were surely super∣fluous, unsuitable, and unworthy; and were offered and received with an equal impropriety. Yet when she rode through the streets of the city of Norwich, Cupid, at the command of the mayor and aldermen, advancing from a groupe of gods who had left Olympus to grace the procession, gave her a golden arrow, the most effective weapon of his well-furnished quiver, which under the influence of such irresistible charms was sure to wound the most obdurate heart.

"A gift, says honest Hollinshed, which her majesty, now verging to her fiftieth year, received very thankfullie b 1.2."

In one of the fulsome interludes at

court, where she was present, the singing-boys of her chapel presented the story of the three rival goddesses on mount Ida, to which her majesty was ingeniously added as a fourth: and Paris was arraigned in form for adjudging the golden apple to Venus, which was due to the queen alone.

This inundation of classical pedantry soon infected our poetry. Our writers, already trained in the school of fancy, were sud∣denly dazzled with these novel imaginations, and the divinities and heroes of pagan antiquity decorated every composition. The perpetual allusions to antient fable were often introduced without the least regard to propriety. Shakespeare's Mrs. Page, who is not intended in any degree to be a learned or an affected lady, laughing at the cumbersome courtship of her corpulent lover Falstaffe, says,

"I had rather be a giantess and lie under mount Pelion c 1.3."

This familiarity with the pagan story was not, however, so much owing to the prevailing study of the original authors, as to the numerous English versions of them, which were consequently made. The translations of the classics, which now employed every pen, gave a currency and a celebrity to these fancies, and had the effect of diffusing them among the people. No sooner were they delivered from the pale of the scholastic languages, than they acquired a general notoriety. Ovid's metamorphoses just translated by Golding, to instance no farther, disclosed a new world of fiction, even to the illiterate. As we had now all the antient fables in English, learned allu∣sions, whether in a poem or a pageant, were no longer obscure and unintelligible to common readers and common spectators. And here we are led to observe, that at this restoration of the classics, we were first struck only with their fabulous inventions. We did not attend to their regularity of design and justness of sentiment. A rude age, beginning to read these writers, imitated their extravagancies, not their natural beauties. And these, like other novelties, were pursued to a blameable excess.

I have before given a sketch of the introduction of classical stories, in the splendid show exhibited at the coronation of queen Anne Boleyn. But that is a rare and a premature in∣stance: and the pagan fictions are there complicated with the barbarisms of the catholic worship, and the doctrines of scho∣lastic theology. Classical learning was not then so widely spread, either by study or translation, as to bring these learned specta∣cles into fashion, to frame them with sufficient skill, and to present them with propriety.

Another capital source of the poetry peculiar to this period, consisted in the numerous translations of Italian tales into Eng∣lish. These narratives, not dealing altogether in romantic in∣ventions, but in real life and manners, and in artful arrange∣ments of fictitious yet probable events, afforded a new gratifica∣tion to a people which yet retained their antient relish for tale∣telling, and became the fashionable amusement of all who pro∣fessed to read for pleasure. They gave rise to innumerable plays and poems, which would not otherwise have existed; and turned the thoughts of our writers to new inventions of the same kind. Before these books became common, affecting situations, the combination of incident, and the pathos of catastrophe, were almost unknown. Distress, especially that arising from the con∣flicts of the tender passion, had not yet been shewn in its most interesting forms. It was hence our poets, particularly the dra∣matic, borrowed ideas of a legitimate plot, and the complica∣tion of facts necessary to constitute a story either of the comic or tragic species. In proportion as knowledge encreased, genius had wanted subjects and materials. These pieces usurped the place of legends and chronicles. And although the old historical songs of the minstrels contained much bold adventure, heroic enterprise, and strong touches of rude delineation, yet they failed in that multiplication and disposition of circumstances, and in that description of characters and events approaching nearer to truth and reality, which were demanded by a more

discerning and curious age. Even the rugged features of the original Gothic romance were softened by this sort of reading: and the Italian pastoral, yet with some mixture of the kind of incidents described in Heliodorus's Ethiopic history now newly translated, was engrafted on the feudal manners in Sydney's ARCADIA.

But the reformation had not yet destroyed every delusion, nor disinchanted all the strong holds of superstition. A few dim characters were yet legible in the mouldering creed of tradition. Every goblin of ignorance did not vanish at the first glimmer∣ings of the morning of science. Reason suffered a few demons still to linger, which she chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering around, who brought with them airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, that the ghost was duely released from his prison of torment at the sound of the curfue, and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this credulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound speculation. Prospero had not yet broken and buried his staff, nor drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet sound. It was now that the alchymist, and the ju∣dicial astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philo∣sophers, to evoke the queen of the Fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre d 1.4. The Shakespeare of a more instructed and polished age, would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation.

Undoubtedly most of these notions were credited and enter∣tained in a much higher degree, in the preceding periods. But the arts of composition had not then made a sufficient progress, nor would the poets of those periods have managed them with so much address and judgement. We were now arrived at that point, when the national credulity, chastened by reason, had produced a sort of civilized superstition, and left a set of tradi∣tions, fanciful enough for poetic decoration, and yet not too violent and chimerical for common sense. Hobbes, although no friend to this doctrine, observes happily,

"In a good poem both judgement and fancy are required; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please for the EXTRAVA∣GANCY, but ought not to displease by INDISCRETION e 1.5."

In the mean time the Gothic romance, although somewhat shook by the classical fictions, and by the tales of Boccace and Bandello, still maintained its ground: and the daring machine∣ries of giants, dragons, and inchanted castles, borrowed from the magic storehouse of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, began to be em∣ployed by the epic muse. These ornaments have been censured by the bigotry of precise and servile critics, as abounding in whimsical absurdities, and as unwarrantable deviations from the practice of Homer and Virgil. The author of AN ENQUIRY INTO THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HOMER is willing to allow a fertility of genius, and a felicity of expression, to Tasso and Ariosto; but at the same time complains, that,

"quitting life, they betook themselves to aerial beings and Utopian characters, and filled their works with Charms and Visions, the modern Supplements of the Marvellous and Sublime. The best poets copy nature, and give it such as they find it. When once they lose sight of this, they write false, be their talents ever so great f 1.6."

But what shall we say of those Utopians, the Cyclopes and the Lestrigons in the Odyssey? The hippogrif of Ariosto may be opposed to the harpies of Virgil. If leaves

are turned into ships in the Orlando, nymphs are transformed into ships in the Eneid. Cacus is a more unnatural savage than Caliban. Nor am I convinced, that the imagery of Ismeno's necromantic forest in the Gierusalemme Liberata, guarded by walls and battlements of fire, is less marvellous and sublime, than the leap of Juno's horses in the Iliad, celebrated by Lon∣ginus for its singular magnificence and dignity g 1.7. On the prin∣ciples of this critic, Voltaire's Henriad may be placed at the head of the modern epic. But I forbear to anticipate my opi∣nion of a system, which will more properly be considered, when I come to speak of Spenser. I must, however, observe here, that the Gothic and pagan fictions were now frequently blended and incorporated. The Lady of the Lake floated in the suite of Neptune before queen Elisabeth at Kenilworth; Ariel assumes the semblance of a sea-nymph, and Hecate, by an easy associa∣tion, conducts the rites of the weird sisters in Macbeth.

Allegory had been derived from the religious dramas into our civil spectacles. The masques and pageantries of the age of Elisabeth were not only furnished by the heathen divinities, but often by the virtues and vices impersonated, significantly deco∣rated, accurately distinguished by their proper types, and repre∣sented by living actors. The antient symbolical shews of this sort began now to lose their old barbarism and a mixture of re∣ligion, and to assume a degree of poetical elegance and precision. Nor was it only in the conformation of particular figures that much fancy was shewn, but in the contexture of some of the fables or devices presented by groupes of ideal personages. These exhibitions quickened creative invention, and reflected back on poetry what poetry had given. From their familiarity and public nature, they formed a national taste for allegory; and the allego∣rical poets were now writing to the people. Even romance was turned into this channel. In the Fairy Queen, allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur's round table

are moralised. The virtues of magnificence and chastity are here personified: but they are imaged with the forms, and under the agency, of romantic knights and damsels. What was an after∣thought in Tasso, appears to have been Spenser's premeditated and primary design. In the mean time, we must not confound these moral combatants of the Fairy Queen with some of its other embodied abstractions, which are purely and professedly allegorical.

It may here be added, that only a few critical treatises, and but one ART OF POETRY, were now written. Sentiments and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of compo∣sition: nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capriciousness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception. And this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction. A cir∣cumstance, by the way, that greatly contributed to give the flowing modulation which now marked the measures of our poets, and which soon degenerated into the opposite extreme of dissonance and asperity. Selection and discrimination were often overlooked. Shakespeare wandered in pursuit of universal nature. The glancings of his eye are from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. We behold him breaking the barriers of imaginary method. In the same scene, he descends from his meridian of the noblest tragic sublimity, to puns and quibbles, to the meanest merriments of a plebeian farce. In the midst of his dignity, he resembles his own Richard the second, the skipping king, who sometimes discarding the state of a monarch,

Mingled his royalty with carping fools h 1.8.

He seems not to have seen any impropriety, in the most abrupt transitions, from dukes to buffoons, from senators to sailors, from counsellors to constables, and from kings to clowns. Like Virgil's majestic oak,

—Quantum vertice ad auras Aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit i 1.9.

No Satires, properly so called, were written till towards the latter end of the queen's reign, and then but a few. Pictures drawn at large of the vices of the times, did not suit readers who loved to wander in the regions of artificial manners. The Muse, like the people, was too solemn and reserved, too cere∣monious and pedantic, to stoop to common life. Satire is the poetry of a nation highly polished.

The importance of the female character was not yet acknow∣ledged, nor were women admitted into the general commerce of society. The effect of that intercourse had not imparted a comic air to poetry, nor softened the severer tone of our versification with the levities of gallantry, and the familiarities of compli∣ment, sometimes perhaps operating on serious subjects, and im∣pe••ceptibly spreading themselves in the general habits of style and thought. I do not mean to insinuate, that our poetry has suffered from the great change of manners, which this assumption of the gentler ••ex, or rather the improved state of female education, has produced, by giving elegance and variety to life, by enlarging the sphere of conversation, and by multiplying the topics and enriching the stores of wit and humour. But I am marking the peculiarities of composition: and my meaning was to suggest, that the absence of so important a circumstance from the modes and constitution of ant••ent life, must have influenced the cotem∣porary poetry. Of the state of manners among our ancestors respecting this point, many traces remain. Their style of court∣ship may be collected from the love-dialogues of Hamlet, young

Percy, Henry the fifth, and Master Fenton. Their tragic heroines, their Desdemonas and Ophelias, although of so much consequence in the piece, are degraded to the back-ground. In comedy, their ladies are nothing more than MERRY WIVES, plain and chearful matrons, who stand upon the chariness of their honesty. In the smaller poems, if a lover praises his mistress, she is com∣plimented in strains neither polite nor pathetic, without elegance and without affection: she is described, not in the address of intelligible yet artful panegyric, not in the real colours, and with the genuine accomplishments, of nature, but as an eccentric ideal being of another system, and as inspiring sentiments equally unmeaning, hyperbolical, and unnatural.

All or most of these circumstances, contributed to give a descriptive, a picturesque, and a figurative cast to the poetical language. This effect appears even in the prose compositions of the reign of Elisabeth. In the subsequent age, prose became the language of poetry.

In the mean time, general knowledge was encreasing with a wide diffusion and a hasty rapidity. Books began to be multi∣plied, and a variety of the most useful and rational topics had been discussed in our own language. But science had not made too great advances. On the whole, we were now arrived at that period, propitious to the operations of original and true poetry, when the coyness of fancy was not always proof against the approaches of reason, when genius was rather directed than go∣verned by judgement, and when taste and learning had so far only disciplined imagination, as to suffer its excesses to pass without censure or controul, for the sake of the beauties to which they were allied.

Notes

• a 1.1

  SCHOOLEMASTER. p•• 19. b. edit. 1589. 4to.
• b 1.2

  CHRON. iii. f. 1297.
• c 1.3

  MERRY W. Act. ii. Sc. i.
• d 1.4

  Lilly's LIFE, p. 151.
• e 1.5

  LEVIATH. Part i. ch. viii.
• f 1.6

  SECT. V. p. 69.
• g 1.7

  IL••AD, V. 770. Longin. §. ix.
• h 1.8

  FIRST P. HENRY iv. Act iii. Sc. ii.
• i 1.9

  GEOR••. ii. 29••.