could scarcely be brought together than the thirteenth sonnet of Caelica, 'Cupid his boy's play many times forbidden,' as compared with the well-known 'His mother dear Cupid offended late' of Astrophel and Stella. This list might be largely extended with ever-increasing profit to Sidney's reputation. Still, when all deductions are made, Caelica brings its own peculiar reward to the reader. There are veins of poetry in it of a remote and fanciful kind, and what is not poetry will often affect us with the old-world charm, which is the true explanation of Cultismo wherever it appears in literary history, the charm of ingenuity as such, of mind-play pure and simple. To which may be added that among the religious poems of Caelica there is perhaps simpler and sincerer work than Lord Brooke produced anywhere else. With regard to the poem-plays of Alaham and Mustapha, which may be compared with the much inferior 'Monarchical tragedies of Sir William Alexander, nothing can be added to the well-known criticism of Charles Lamb, which describes them as 'political treatises, not plays,' in which all is made frozen and rigid with intellect,' or to Lord Brooke's own account of them as intended to illustrate the 'high ways of ambitious governours,' and the public and private ruin to which such ways tend. In spite of tragical situations, in spite of the injured youth of Mustapha, and the maiden heroism of Caelica, they are not tragical, and for all their high intellectual interest, they are very seldom poetical. In those rare instances however, where the poet succeeds in mastering and transforming the philosopher, there we have a very noble and perfect effect, such an effect as is reached in The Chorus of Tartars quoted below, where the plea of the world against the claims and promises of religion is put with a passion and directness which lifts it far above its surroundings. The outer facts of Lord Brooke's prolonged literary career bring the world of Spenser and the world of Milton together in a striking way. He, with Spenser, Dyer, and Sidney, was a member of Harvey's 'Areopagus,' and there is other evidence of intercourse between him and Spenser. His friendship with Sidney is one of the classical stories in the history of English letters. On the other hand Davenant, the founder of the Restoration theatre, was the protégé of his old age, and he died the year before the composition of the Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. MARY A. WARD. CHORUS OF TARTARS. [From the Tragedy of Mustapha.] Vast Superstition! Glorious style of weakness! Thy texts bring princes' titles into question: Mankind! Trust not these superstitious dreams, If any man would break her laws to kill, VOL. I. She neither taught the father to destroy: CHORUS OF PRIESTS. [From Mustapha.] Oh wearisome condition of Humanity! Is it the mask or majesty of Power Only commands things difficult and hard; If Nature did not take delight in blood, He finds the God there far unlike his books. 1 These last four lines are in allusion to the plot of Mustapha, which turns upon the murder of the unresisting and innocent Mustapha by his father Solyman, in consequence of certain unjust suspicions. CHORUS OF GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS. [From Alaham.] Evil Spirits. Why did you not defend that which was once your own? Even in the infancy of Time, when man was innocent1; Where pride of courage made men fall, and baseness rais'd them higher? Where they that would be great, to be so must be least, And where to bear and suffer wrong, was Virtue's native crest. As they came in, so they go out with that which you call vice. No Babel-walls by greatness built, for littleness a wonder, No conquest testifying wit, with [dauntless] courage mixt; As wheels whereon the world must run, and never can be fixt. No arts or characters to read the great God in, Nor stories of acts done; for these all entered with the sin. The glory of the skilful shines, where men may go amiss. And since we were in men, yourselves presume of little right. * * * * * Keep therefore where you are; descend not but ascend: For, underneath the sun, be sure no brave state is your friend. 1i. e. consider the boundless power you enjoyed in the golden age.' Good Spirits. What have you won by this, but that curst under Sin, You make and mar; throw down and raise; as ever to begin; Like meteors in the air, you blaze but to burn out; And change your shapes-like phantom'd clouds-to leave weak eyes in doubt. Not Truth but truth-like grounds you work upon, Varying in all but this, that you can never long be one: In Peace erect your thrones, your delicacy spread; The flowers of time corrupt, soon spring, and are as quickly dead. Let War, which-tempest-like-all with itself o'erthrows, Make of this diverse world a stage of blood-enamelled shows. Successively both these yet this fate follow will, That all their glories be no more than change from ill to ill. SEED-TIME AND HARVEST. [From Caelica, Sonnet XL.] The nurse-life wheat within his green husk growing Flatters our hopes and tickles our desire; Nature's true riches in sweet beauties shewing, That love and glory there are brought to bed; And your ripe years, Love, now they grow no higher, Turn all the spirits of man into desire'. 1 The reading of these last two lines is conjectural. |