'Ah, how methinks I see Death dallying seeks Do yet retain dear notes of former grace, 'Wonder of beauty, O receive these plaints, 'Yet, ere I die, thus much my soul doth vow, same. III.-HENRY CONSTABLE (1555 ?—1610?). Constable was of Roman Catholic family, and was educated at St John's, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1579. He was obliged to leave England in 1595, from suspicion of treasonable practices. Venturing back in 1601 or 1602, he was committed to the Tower, from which he was not released till towards the close of 1604. He is mentioned as if he were still alive in the 'Return from Parnassus' (1606), and in Bolton's Hypercritica' (1616) as if he were then dead. The first edition of his sonnets to "Diana" appeared in 1592, and contained 23; a second was issued in 1594, containing 27. Sixty-three sonnets by Constable, methodically arranged in sevens, are printed in the Harleian Miscellany from a MS. known as Todd's MS.: this collection comprises all that appear in the printed collections. Constable wrote also certain 'Spiritual Sonnets,' and a version of the tale of Venus and Adonis, which was not published till 1600, but is believed to have been written earlier. Like Daniel, Constable does not attempt the delineation of stormy passions, yet his deepest vein is quite different from Daniel's. He has a more ardent soul than Daniel: his imagination is more warmly and richly coloured: he has more of flame and less of moisture in him. Daniel's words flow most abundantly and with happiest impulse when his eye is dim with tears; Constable's when his whole being is aglow with the rapture of beauty. Tears fall from the poet's eyes in the following sonnet, but they fall like rain in sunshine. The occasion is his lady's walking in a garden : "My lady's presence makes the roses red Because to see her lips they blush for shame : Dyed with the blood she made my heart to shed. Falls from mine eyes which she dissolves in showers." The following is more characteristic of his soaring ardour"rapture all air and fire;" though the structure is somewhat artificial :— "Blame not my heart for flying up so high, Sith thou art cause that it this flight begun, Blame not, I say again, my high desire, Thine eye a fire, and so draws up my love; The most exquisite of his sonnets for sweet colour and winning fancy is that where he compares his love to a beggar at the door of beauty 'Pity refusing my poor Love to feed, A beggar starved for want of help he lies, A cherry tree before the door he spies— O dear, quoth he, two cherries may suffice, But beggars can they nought but cherries eat? And never feedeth but of dainty meat, In one of his sonnets he makes the same glorious claim for his lady that Shakespeare makes for the fair youth of his adoration "Miracle of the world! I never will deny That former poets praise the beauty of their days; But all those beauties were but figures of thy praise, His amorous sonnets and other light poems were the effusions of his youth, and like Spenser he turned in his older years to the contemplation of heavenly beauty. He concludes his love-sonnets by saying "For if none ever loved like me, then why Still blameth he the things he doth not know? And adds in prose-"When I had ended this last sonnet, and found that such vain poems as I had by idle hours writ, did amount just to the climacterical number 63; methought it was high time for my folly to die, and to employ the remnant of wit to other calmer thoughts less sweet and less bitter." There can be little doubt that the beautiful "spiritual sonnets ascribed to him by Mr Park, and printed in vol. ii. of the 'Heliconia,' are his composition. Those addressed to "our Blessed Lady" are particularly fine. IV. THOMAS LODGE (1556-1625). Lodge, the next in order of our sonneteers, led rather a varied life. His father was a grocer in London, who in 1563 attained to the dignity of Lord Mayor. He entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1573, and Lincoln's Inn in 1578; but literature seems to have had more attraction for him than the bar. In 1586, and again in 1591-3, we find him engaged in privateering expeditions to the West Indies, in search of excitement and adventure. He belonged to the wild society of Greene, Marlowe, and Nash; but if he took much part in their dissipations, he had strength enough to survive it, and when the leaders of the set died off, he became sober and respectable, studied medicine, gave up poetry, and spent the leisure of his professional life in translating Josephus, and the "works, both natural and moral," of Seneca. His chief pro ductions were-A 'Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage-plays,' in reply to Stephen Gosson's 'School of Abuse,' 1580; Alarm against Usurers,' along with the novelette of Forbonius and Prisceria, 1584; 'Scylla's Metamorphosis,' with "sundry most absolute Poems and Sonnets," 1589; 'Euphues Golden Legacy,' 198 (reprinted in Mr_Collier's 'Shakespeare's Library,' as being the basis of "As You Like It," 1590; 'Phyllis honoured with Pastoral Sonnets,' 1593; 'The Wounds of Civil War,' a tragedy on the history of Marius and Sylla, 1594; 'A Fig for Momus,' a body of satires, 1595; 'Wit's Misery and the World's Madness,' a prose satire, 1596; A Marguerite of America,' a very tragical novel, 1596. Lodge's love-poems have an exquisite delicacy and grace they breathe a tenderer and truer passion than we find in any of his contemporaries. His sonnets are more loose and straggling, slighter and less compactly built, than Constable's or Daniel's; but they have a wonderful charm of sweet fancy and unaffected tenderness. His themes are the usual praises of beauty and complaints of unkindness; but he contrives to impart to them a most unusual air of sincere devotion and graceful fervour. None of his rivals can equal the direct and earnest simplicity and grace of his adoration of Phyllis, and avowal of faith in her constancy. "Fair art thou, Phyllis; ay, so fair, sweet maid, As nor the sun nor I have seen more fair; For in thy cheeks sweet roses are embayed And gold more pure than gold doth gild thy hair. And lay such baits as might entangle Death. In such a breast what heart would not be thrall? From such sweet arms who would not wish embraces ? At thy fair hands who wonders not at all, Wonder itself through ignorance embases. There is a seeming artlessness in Lodge's sonnets, a winning "The dewy roseate Morn had with her hairs In sundry sorts the Indian clime adorned; The loss of lovely Memnon long had mourned: Whenas she spied the nymph whom I admire, Which heaven itself with wonder might behold: The sighs which 'midst the air she breathed a space Her shame a fire, her eyes a swelling rain.' And when despair seizes him, with what earnestness he makes his appeal to the last relief !— 66 Burst, burst, poor heart, thou hast no longer hope: Let all my senses have no further scope; Let death be lord of me and all my sheep. She will not yield; my words can have no power; Who filled the world with volumes of her praise. It may, however, be acknowledged that Lodge's nature was not specially fitted for the sonnet form of composition; he was not sufficiently patient and meditative to elaborate intricate stanzas. His lines have on them the dewy freshness of an impulsive gush, -a freshness off which the dew has not been brushed by the travail of thought; and the opening of his sonnets in many cases leads us to expect better things than we find as we proceed when the leading idea has been hammered out into a quatorzain. In the sonnet that opens with the lines "Ah, pale and dying infant of the spring, How rightly now do I resemble thee! That self-same hand that thee from stalk did wring, Hath rent my breast and robbed my heart from me the conclusion is laboured and disappointing. And still more disappointing is the sonnet to his lady on her sickness, which opens with the exquisitely tender verses "How languisheth the primrose of love's garden? Although it contains two other beautiful lines of adjuration "Ah, roses, love's fair roses, do not languish : Blush through the milk-white veil that holds you covered." |