"The smiler with the knife under the cloak." Chaucer. "When maistrie comth, the god of love anon Chaucer. "It is not all good to the ghost that the gut asketh." Langland. "I learnt never read on book, Ani I ken no French, in faith, but of the farthest end of Norfolk.” Langland. "For the best been some rich, and some beggars and poor; For all are we Christ's creatures, and of his coffers rich, And brethren as of one blood, as well beggars as earls." "For which sudden abate anon astart Langland. James I. of Scotland. “The sugared mouths with minds therefrae, Dunbar. The wind made wave the red weed on the dike." "And there that Shepherd of the Ocean is." "For of the soul the body form doth take; For soul is form, and doth the body make." Spenser. "Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish mind. Spenser. "Then came October, full of merry glee; For yet his nowl was totty with the must." Spenser. "Therefore I mourn with deep heart's sorrowing, Because I nothing noble have to sing." Spenser. "Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears." "The bird that loveth humans best, That hath the bugle eyes and rosy breast, "When all that ever hotter spirits expressed 66 They now to fight are gone : Armour on armour shone; Drum now to drum did groan; That with the cries they make Thunder to thunder." Daniel. Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof!” Ben Jonson. The very quaintness of the old language now and then makes such verbal memorabilia more impressive. In these days, when what passes for "style" is often a conventional velvety verbiage, and when our best speakers rarely “say" a thing, but only" do not hesitate to assert " it, there is refreshment in going back among writers whose notion of style was to fold words as closely as possible round the very things meant, and who used, with more or less of tact, every means for that purpose that their English afforded. Sir Walter Raleigh was not a perfect expert in verse; but there is something all the more delightful in the attempt of this "Shepherd of the Ocean," whose main business was with ships and the handling of tarry ropes, to express that mood of high ideality, high poetic spiritualism, which was the leading characteristic of all the Elizabethans : "Blood must be my body's balmer; No other balm will here be given, Travels to the Land of Heaven, Where do spring those nectar fountains. And I there will sweetly kiss The happy bowl of peaceful bliss, Drinking mine eternal fill, Flowing from each milky hill My soul will be a-dry before; In that happy peaceful day More peaceful pilgrims I shall see, I'll take them first And then to taste of nectar suckets At those clear wells Where sweetness dwells, Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets. And, when our bottles, and all we, Then those holy paths we'll travel, But not in stray passages only will even the minor old English poetry answer well to that test of worth which consists in sure hold on the memory. While much of the effect of the old poems, especially the lyrics and meditative or reflective pieces, is produced, as in modern poetry, in the act and at the moment of reading, and we afterwards remember only that we were interested, stirred, thought this ingenious and that graceful or powerful, there are many of the poems, especially the narrative poems, that leave permanent pictures and visions in our chambers of imagery. One might instance, more particularly, Chaucer's poetry and Spenser's. In Chaucer, besides the main stories themselves, with all their variety of beauty, pathos, and humour, what a furnishing for the memory, and for all future thinking in which the memory may bear part, in those little dreams, allegories, visionary landscapes and situations, which occur in the stories, and of which some of them are but constructions! Take the House of Fame singly. Who that has ever read that poem of Chaucer's but has the whole optical grotesque or phantasy as if burnt into his mind, so that he finds himself recollecting it again and again, and thinking in terms of it whenever there is occasion? Is there any is a strong one; but throughout Chaucer's poetry there are many smaller visual allegories, of subtle or high significance, that remain painted into the mind beautifully after due reading, and become, as we may say, Chaucerian forms of thinking that one would not willingly lose. So, in perhaps a larger way, though a laxer and more dreamy and luxurious, with the poetry of Spenser. One wanders through the Faery Queene as through an infinite enchanted wood, the allegories and phantasmagories gleaming out and vanishing in bewildering succession; but, in the end, what a storing of the mind, through the overclouded eyes, with visions and their meanings, and what a discipline in that wondrous Elizabethan ideality or Spenserianism! For the present age, or for many in it, what one would recommend, as the best corrective of prosaic and too low habits of intellect, might be a course of reading in Spenser. Unfortunately, those who need the medicine most are those whom it would soonest disgust. Another good to be got from readings in our older English poetry, if on a sufficient scale, is an acquaintance with the characters and physiognomies of men worthy to be remembered. No reading of poetry, no criticism of it, satisfies ultimately that does not lead to some conception, more or less distinct, of the personality of the poet. We have allowed ourselves to be too much in a haze, in this respect, even in About our more our so-called "studies" of English poetry. recent poets we know always something independently through report or biography; but about our older poets, who are to be discerned mainly through their poetry, we remain often in a state of ignorance for which there is no excuse. Of the personalities of Milton, Ben Jonson, and one or two others, it is true, the tradition is forcible enough; the eternal search after Shakespeare himself through his plays and poems has been more successful than unbelieving |