Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

his honest but feeble rhymes. Warton supposes the prosaic mediocrity of the Collection to have recommended it to the vulgar, who were incapable of appreciating the graces of composition. The criticism is just. But while Sternhold and his assistants never rise into poetry, they sometimes become affecting and impressive from the homeliness and simplicity of their style. Many ambitious efforts of modern Psalmody might be rebuked by this natural and unaffected version of the 90th Psalm.

PSALM XC.

Thou, Lord, hast been our sure defence,
Our rock, and place of rest,

In all times past, in all times since
Thy name is ever blest.

Ere there was mountain made or hill,

Or earth, and all abroad,

From age to age, and ever still,

For ever thou art God:

Thou bringest man through grief and pain
To death and dust, and then,
And then thou sayest, return again,
Again, ye sons of men.

The lasting of a thousand year
What is it in thy sight?

As yesterday it doth appear,

Or as a watch by night:

Whene'er thy judgments come on men,
Then is their life soon done;

All as a sleep, or like the grass,
Whose beauty soon is gone;

Which in the morning shines most bright,
But fadeth by and bye;

And is cut down ere it be night,

All withered, dead, and dry.

So, through thy wrath our days soon waste,
Till nought thereof remain ;

Our years consume as word or blaste,
And ne'er return again.

Our age is three score years and ten
That we the sun behold;

Four score, if any see, yet then

We count them wondrous old;

And all this time our strength and life
Which we then count upon,
Are little else but painful strife,
Until our breath be gone.

Instruct us, then, O Lord, to know
How long our days remain,
That we may now our thoughts apply
True wisdom to attain.

Sternhold published thirty-seven Psalms in 1549; the complete version appeared in 1562.

Under the gloomy tyranny of Mary, poetry obtained little attention. But, though discouraged, it was not destroyed; the River of Gold seemed only to be hidden. for a season, that it might issue forth in a more majestic torrent in the happier reign of Elizabeth. One name, however, sheds a lustre over this gloomy epoch, and awakens a train of romantic imagery which had slumbered since the death of Surrey. I allude to Sackville, afterwards Lord Buckhurst, who, in Gorboduc, written before he was twenty years old, had produced the first regular tragedy in our language. Pope, who considered its style more pure than the early plays of Shakspeare, recommended its republication to Spence; and Sir Philip Sidney, while censuring the violation of the] unities, eulogized its stately speeches and its "notable morality," so delightfully communicated, he said, as to fulfil the proper end of poetry. The praise of Pope was inspired by the enthusiasm of his classical taste; and Sackville is now remembered only for the display of his genius in a different order of imagination, The Mirrour for Magistrates.

In this collection of poems, he proposed to embrace a

review of all the illustrious and unfortunate persons in English history, from the Conquest to the close of the fourteenth century; each individual relating his own adventures. Sackville, however, had not proceeded beyond the Induction, and the legend of the Duke of Buckingham, when he relinquished the task to Richard Baldwyne and George Ferrers, who, with the aid of Churchyard and Phaer, names not unknown to our poetry, carried on the work. But Sackville's mantle did not fall upon his successors. Had he fulfilled his original design, we might have boasted a Divine Comedy of our own; not, perhaps, so majestic or impressive as the Vision which overshadowed the soul of Dante, but full of stern and animated tableaux, and alive with all the grotesque sublimity of that immortal painter. Like him, he descends into the shades, with Sorrow for his guide, as the Florentine had taken Virgil. Warton remarks that, although a descent into hell had been suggested by other poets, the application of such a fiction to the present composition, is a conspicuous proof of genius and invention. The only narrative contributed by Sackville, is introduced by that noble poem to which he gave the title of an Induction.

It opens with a picturesque description of a walk among the fields upon an autumnal, or winter evening. The leaves and blossoms are swept from the trees, and nature wears a dreary and melancholy aspect. The poet wanders on, while the shadows of night begin to deepen around him, and

Titan couched in his purple bed.

The decay of the flowers reminds him of the perishing character of human honour,

Which comes and goes more faster than we see

The flickering flame, that with the fire is wrought.

Quickening his pace at the rapid approach of darkness, a

figure, "in black all clad," suddenly presents herself to his sight. Her form is wasted by suffering, and her countenance is agitated by the most violent emotion.

Her forceless hands together oft she smote.

To the poet's inquiries into the cause of her affliction, she replies, that her name is Sorrow,

In endless torments pained

Among the Furies in the eternal lake.

Raising her from the ground, he commiserates her situation, and finally accompanies her to the melancholy habitation

Of worthy men by fortune overthrown.

The celebrated scene in the Sixth Book of the Eneid is here recalled to the memory; but Sackville has expanded the romance of Virgil into a Gothic wildness and extravagance. His impersonations of Remorse, Dread, Revenge, Misery, Care, Sleep

Heavy sleep, the cousin of death

Old Age, Malady, Famine, and War, are dashed off with a sweep and amplitude of imagination, which have hardly been equalled by the happiest touches of Spenser. We know not where to seek, from Eschylus to Milton, for any picture more vividly delineated than the following:Lastly stood war in glittering arms 'y clad

With visage grim, stern-looks, and blackly-hued;

In his right hand a naked sword he had,

That to the hilt was all with blood embrued;
And in his left, that kings and kingdoms rewed,
Famine and fire he held, and there withal,
He razed towns, and threw down towers and all.
Cities he sackt, and realms that whilom flowered,
In honour, glory, rule above the best,
He overwhelm'd, and all their fame devoured,
Consumed, wasted, destroyed, and never ceast,
Till he their wealth, their nature, all opprest,
His face forehewed with wounds, and by his side
There hung his terge with gashes deep and wide.

VOL. I.

Proceeding on their journey they arrive at the Lake of Acheron, and Charon recognising Sorrow, hastens to receive her with her companion into his boat. Upon the opposite shore a melancholy spectacle awaits them. The forms of the most celebrated heroes and statesmen pass mournfully along; and at the same moment, Henry duke of Buckingham approaches and begins to relate the story of his misfortunes. Such is Sackville's famous Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates. It is composed of those "golden verses which Spenser knew so well how to praise, and how to imitate.

[ocr errors]

The appearance of the Fairy Queen must have been like the sudden rushing of an "Arabian heaven" upon the night of our poetry. To the reader, whose opinion of Spenser is not formed upon an accurate acquaintance with his poems, John Wesley's advice to the Methodists, who were desirous of proceeding through a course of academical learning, may appear paradoxical: he recommended them, in their second year, to combine with the study of the historic books of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Testament, the reading of the Fairy Queen. And yet nothing more clearly displays the penetration of this remarkable individual than the advice referred to. That Spenser intended the Fairy Queen to be a truly moral and religious poem, setting forth the rules and conduct of life, there can be no question. This fact, indeed, appears to be satisfactorily substantiated by a passage in Lodowick Bryskett's Discourse of Civil Life, published in 1606", to which Mr. Todd has the merit of having first directed particular attention. In this treatise a desire is expressed, that Spenser would "set down in English the precepts of those parts of moral philosophy, whereby our youth might speedily enter into the right course of virtuous life;" and

*But written, according to the conjecture of Malone, between 1584 and 1589.

« AnteriorContinuar »