II.
Sidney's works well accord with his life; in these few years he had time to take in with a clear and kindly glance all those beauties of ancient or modern times, of distant countries or of his own which set the hearts of his contemporaries beating, and he is therefore perhaps, on account of his catholicity, the most worthy of Shakespeare's immediate precursors. The brilliance of the Spaniards enchants him, and he translates fragments of Montemayor[184]; the Kenilworth fêtes amuse him and he writes a masque, "The Lady of May,"[185] to be used at like festivities. A true Christian he translates the Psalms of David; a tender and passionate heart, he rhymes the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella; enamoured of chivalry and great exploits, he writes, with fluent pen, his "Arcadia," where he imitates the style made fashionable in Europe by Montemayor in his "Diana"; a lover of belles lettres, he defends the poet's art in an argument charming from its youthfulness, vibrating with enthusiasm, which holds in English literature the place filled in French by Fénelon's "Lettre à l'Académie."[186] This work is very important with regard to the subject that now occupies us, not only because Sidney gives in it his opinion on works of fiction in general; but because here we have at last a specimen of flexible, spirited, fluent prose, without excessive ornament of style, or learned impedimenta, a specimen of that prose which is exactly suited to novels and that no one—Roger Ascham perhaps excepted—had until then used in England.
Perhaps it will be found, he writes at the beginning of his work, with the elegant gracefulness of a man who knows how to do everything that he does well, that I carry my apology to excess; but that is excusable: listen to what Pietro Pugliano, my master of horsemanship, at the Emperor's Court, said: "Hee sayde souldiours were the noblest estate of mankinde, and horsemen, the noblest of souldiours. Hee sayde, they were the maisters of warre, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers and strong abiders, triumphers both in camp and courts." For a prince no accomplishment is comparable to that of being a good horseman; "skill of government was but a Pedanteria in comparison: then would hee adde certaine prayses, by telling what a peerlesse beast a horse was. The onely serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beutie, faithfulnes, courage, and such more, that if I had not beene a peece of a logician before I came to him, I think he would have perswaded mee to have wished my selfe a horse. But thus much at least with his no fewe words hee drave into me, that selfe-love is better then any guilding to make that seeme gorgious, wherein our selves are parties. Wherein, if Pugliano his strong affection and weake arguments will not satisfie you, I wil give you a neerer example of my selfe, who (I knowe not by what mischance) in these my not old yeres and idelest times, having slipt into the title of a poet, am provoked to say somthing unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation."
Set at ease by Pugliano's example, who seems to have had the same veneration for the horse as his countryman Vinci, Sidney enters on his defence and does not restrain himself from extolling poetry beyond any product of the human mind. Poetry is superior to history, to philosophy, to all forms of literature. Poets have, by the charm of their works, surpassed the beauties of nature and they have succeeded in making "the too much loved earth more lovely." He gives to poetry, in effect, an immense domain: everything that is poetic or even merely a work of the imagination is poetry for him: "there have beene many most excellent poets, that never versified, and now swarme many versifiers that neede never aunswere to the name of poets." For him, the romance of "Theagines and Cariclea" is a "poem"; Xenophon's "Cyrus" is "an absolute heroicall poem." To the great joy of their author he would certainly have seen an epic in Chateaubriand's "Martyrs." "It is not riming and versing that maketh a poet, no more then a long gowne maketh an advocate: who though he pleaded in armor should be an advocate and no soldiour." Even historians have sometimes to do the work of poets, that is imagining, inventing, "although theyr lippes sounde of things doone and veritie be written in theyr foreheads."
In spite of his fondness for the ancients, whose unities and messenger he greatly approves, and of his contempt for the modern drama, such as it was understood in those pre-Shakespearean times, he remains, at bottom, entirely English; he adores the old memorials of his native land, and does not know his Virgil better than his Chaucer, or even the popular songs hummed by the wayfarer along the high roads. Irish ballads, English ballads of Robin Hood, Scottish ballads of Douglas, are familiar to him, and some of them make him start as at the sound of a trumpet: "Certainly, I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard the olde song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart mooved more then with a trumpet: and yet it is sung by some blind crouder, with no rougher voyce then rude stile; which being so evill apparelled in the dust and cobwebbes of that uncivill age, what would it worke, trymmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" He would have loved, like Molière, the song of the "roi Henri," and like La Fontaine, the story of Peau d'Ane. But his closest sympathies were reserved for poetical tales, for the adventures of Roland and King Arthur, which are a soldier's reading, and even for the exploits of Amadis of Gaul. "I dare undertake 'Orlando furioso' or honest King Arthur will never displease a souldier.... Truely, I have knowen men, that even with reading 'Amadis de Gaule,' which God knoweth wanteth much of a perfect poesie, have found their hearts mooved to the exercise of courtesie, liberalitie and especially courage." He imagines nothing more enchanting or more powerful than the charm of poetical prose stories, "any of which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner." Their attraction has something superior, divine; for, he adds with a depth of emotion that appears quite modern, "so is it in men, most of which are childish in the best things, till they bee cradlid in their graves."[187]
He closes with a witty and delightful ending, a kindly wish for the hardened enemies of poetry: "Yet this much curse I must send you, in the behalfe of all Poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour, for lacking skill of a sonnet: and when you die, your memory die from the earth, for want of an epitaph."
Neither did Sidney lack epitaphs; all the poets wept for him; nor was he wanting in those favours that a sonnet can win, for he wrote the most passionate that appeared in England before those of Shakespeare. Like the "Apologie" they move us by their youth and sincerity; they come from the heart:
"Loving in truth, and faine in verse my love to show,
That She, dear She! might take some pleasure of my paine:
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertaine;
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Som fresh and fruitfull showers upon my sun-burn'd brain:
But words came halting forth ...
Biting my trewand pen, beating myselfe for spite:
'Foole!' said my Muse to me, 'looke in thy heart, and write!'"[188]
Unfortunately, when Sidney took up his pen to write his "Arcadia,"[189] he no longer looked into his heart; he loosed the rein of his imagination, and, without concerning himself with a critical posterity for whom the book was not destined, he only wished, like Lyly, to write a romance for ladies, or rather for one lady, his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, famous as his sister, famous as a patron of letters,[190] famous also as the mother of William Herbert, the future friend of Shakespeare, the "W. H." for whom in all probability the sonnets of the great poet were written. Sidney sent the sheets to his sister as fast as he penned them, charging her to destroy them, a thing she did not do. The poet knight only saw in it an amusement for himself and for the Countess, and he gave free vent to his fondness for poetical prose: "For severer eyes it is not," says he to his sister, "being but a trifle and that triflingly handled. Your deare selfe can best witnesse the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheetes, sent unto you as fast as they were done. In summe, a young head, not so well staied as I would it were (and shall bee when God will) having many fancies begotten in it, if it had not beene in some way delivered, would have growne a monster, and more sorry might I bee that they came in than that they gat out." His "Apologie" was perhaps from its style more useful to the development of the novel than the "Arcadia"; but the latter, in spite of its enormous defects of style and composition, was also of use, and it is not unimportant to note that its influence lasted until and even beyond the time of Richardson.
Sidney's romance is not, as might be believed, an enormous pseudo-Greek pastoral, with tunic-wearing shepherds in the foreground, piping their ditties to their flocks, to their nymphs, to Echo. Elizabethan Arcadias were knightly Arcadias. Sidney's heroes are all princes or the daughters of kings. Their adventures take place in Greece, undoubtedly, and among learned shepherds, but the great parts are left to the noblemen, and the distance between the two classes is well marked. However intelligent and well bred the shepherds may be, they are only there for decoration and ornament, to amuse the princes with their songs, and to pull them out of the water when they are drowning. There are Amadises and Palmerins in Sidney's work. Amadis has come to live among the shepherds, but he remains Amadis, as valiant and as ready as ever to draw his sword. To please his sister the better, Sidney mingles thus the two kinds of affectations in fashion, the affectation of pastoral and of chivalry, taking in this as his example the famous "Diana" of George de Montemayor, which was then the talk not only of Spain, but of all the reading public in Europe.[191] As for the shepherds, are we to pity them because their domain is invaded by foreign knights, by whom they are dispossessed of the high rank belonging to them, of all places, in Arcady? There is no need for pity; a time will come when they will repay their invaders, and the end of their piping has not come yet. Leaving their country, where their place has been taken by British noblemen, we shall see them some day invade the land of their conquerors, and, sitting in their turn under the elms of Windsor Park, sing their songs at the call of Mr. Pope. They will look a little awry, no doubt, among the mists of an English landscape, with their loose tunics, bare limbs, and "in-folio" wigs; but they will prove none the less fine speakers, and they will for a time concentrate upon themselves the attention of the capital. Better still will be their treatment at the hands of a Frenchman, not a poet, but a painter, Gaspard Poussin, who will gain more permanent attention and sympathy for them than most poets when he will inscribe in his canvas, on the representation of a ruined tomb, his famous "Et in Arcadia ego."[192]
Sidney's heroes, in the meantime, Prince Musidorus and Prince Pyrocles, the latter disguised as a woman under the name of the amazon Zelmane, are in love with the Princesses Pamela and Philoclea, daughters of the King of Arcady. A great many crosses are in the way of the lovers' happiness. They have to fight helots, lions, bears, enemies from Corinth. They lose each other, find each other again, and relate their adventures. The masculine amazon especially does wonders, for she has to fight not only with the sword, but in argument. She is so pretty in woman's costume that the old king Basilius, until then wise and virtuous, falls distractedly in love with her, as imprudent as Fior-di-Spina in Ariosto; while the queen, whom the disguise does not deceive, feels an intense passion spring up in her heart for the false amazon and a terrible jealousy of her own daughter, Philoclea.
Disguises are numerous in this romance; they are also frequent in Shakespeare's plays and in most of the novels of the time. Parthenia gives herself out to her admirer, Argalus, as the Queen of Corinth, whom she resembles, and announces her own death. As pretended queen she offers her hand to Argalus, to prove him; but he refuses with horror; she then discovers herself to this paragon of lovers, and gives him his Parthenia alive and more loving than ever.
When we read now of such disguises, of princes Pyrocles dressed as women, of Rosalinds dressed as pages, we are tempted to smile at the vain fancies of the novelists of the Shakespearean era.[193] But it must not be forgotten that, after all, there was not so much invention in these fancies, and that living examples were not rare from which writers might copy. Disguises were abundantly used in fêtes and ceremonies, but they were also utilized in actual life. The manners of the time in this particular are well illustrated by the earnest entreaties of a certain ambassador to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, advising her to leave her palace secretly and travel over the country as his page. The Queen was in no way shocked, but rather pleased; she did not order the ambassador to be turned out of her palace, but heard him expound his plan, wishing she might have followed it. This happened in one of those curious conversations of which Melville, the ambassador of Mary Queen of Scots, has left us an account. Elizabeth was very desirous of seeing her "dear sister" of Scotland and of judging with her own eyes what truth there was in the reports concerning her beauty. "Then again," says Melville, "she wished that she might see the queen at some convenient place of meeting. I offered to convey her secretly to Scotland by post, clothed like a page, that under this disguise she might see the queen, as James the fifth had gone in disguise to France with his own Ambassadour, to see the Duke of Vendom's sister,[194] who should have been his wife. Telling her that her chamber might be kept in her absence, as though she were sick; that none needed to be privy thereto except my Lady Strafford and one of the grooms of her chamber.
"She appeared to like that kind of language, only answered it with a sigh, saying: Alas, if I might do it thus."[195]
Surely ladies who "appeared to like that kind of language," and men who were wont to use it, would be certain to accept with much pleasure representations in plays and novels of he-Rosalinds and she-Pyrocles.
In the midst of battles, masques and eclogues, interludes are consecrated to fêtes of chivalry. As much as in Italy, France or England, the knights of Arcady challenge each other, and in brilliant tournaments break lances in honour of their mistresses. Sidney himself was very skilful at these sports; he proved it about this time in the festivities of May, 1581, by attacking with his companions, the Castle of perfect Beauty, which was reputed to contain the grace and attractions of the Queen, a treasure as may well be believed, most allegorical. His sonnets more than once refer to his prowess in the lists:
"Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance
Guided so well that I obtain'd the prize,
Both by the judgment of the English eyes,
And of some sent from that sweet enemie France.
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance;
Towne-folks my strength; a daintier judge applies
His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise;
Some luckie wits impute it but a chance ...
Stella lookt on...."[196]
In his letters to his brother Robert, he is most particular as to the every-day exercise by which the young man should improve his fencing. He could not help giving his tastes to his Arcadian knights. They would, otherwise, have been considered by his lady-readers, uninteresting barbarians. He therefore allowed them good spurs and a ready lance; this meant civilization. On a certain day every knight appears in the vale of Arcady, with drawn sword, and carrying a portrait of his fair lady; the painting is to become the prey of the conqueror. The order of merit of the various beauties is thus determined by blows of the lance. Pyrocles, who, dressed as a woman, cannot take part in the fighting, has the mortification of seeing the champion of Philoclea bite the dust and give up her portrait. He goes immediately and secretly puts on some wretched armour, lowers his visor, and like a brave hero of romance, runs into the lists, throws every one to the ground, regains the portrait, and all the others as well. He is proclaimed conqueror of the tourney, and the first of knights, while at the same time, Philoclea becomes again the most beautiful of women.
In this Arcadia of chivalry it must not be thought that only cottages and huts are to be found; sometimes the heroes sleep soundly in the open air, but seldom. In this country there are palaces like those of the rich English lords. The dwelling of the noble Kalander is of this number. The park is magnificent, and quite in the style of the Elizabethans, that style which is so minutely described in Bacon's "Essay on gardens." It did not differ much from the park at Kenilworth, a place well known to Sidney: "whearin, hard all along the castell wall iz reared a pleazaunt terres of a ten foot hy and a twelve brode, even under foot, and fresh of fyne grass: as iz allso the side thearof toward the gardein, in whiche by sundry equall distauncez, with obelisks, sphearz and white bearz [bears], all of stone, upon theyr curiouz basez, by goodly shew wear set; too theez, too fine arbers redolent by sweete trees and floourz, at ech end one, the garden plot under that, with fayr alleyz green by grass." There were fountains with marble Tritons, with Neptune on his throne, and "Thetis on her chariot drawn by her Dollphins,"[197] with many other gods and goddesses.
Kalander's gardens in Arcady were of the same sort; their adornments were not very sober, and many eccentricities are presented as beauties; thus the fashion of the day would have it; Versailles in comparison is simplicity itself. Kalander and his guest go round the place, and "as soone as the descending of the staires had delivered them downe, they came into a place cunningly set with trees of the most taste-pleasing fruits: but scarcely they had taken that into consideration, but that they were suddenly stept into a delicate greene; of each side of the greene a thicket, and behind the thickets againe new beds of flowers, which being under the trees, the trees were to them a pavilion, and they to the trees a mosaicall floore....
a shepherd of arcady, from the title-page of sidney's "arcadia."
"In the middest of all the place was a faire pond, whose shaking cristall was a perfect mirrour to all the other beauties, so that it bare shew of two gardens, one in deed, the other in shadowes. And in one of the thickets was a fine fountaine made thus: a naked Venus of white marble, wherin the graver had used such cunning that the natural blue veins of the marble were framed in fit places to set forth the beautifull veines of her body. At her breast she had her babe Æneas, who seemed, having begun to sucke, to leave that, to look upon her faire eyes, which smiled at the babe's folly, meane while the breast running."[198] The effect produced must undoubtedly have been very pleasant, but scarcely more "natural" than the embellishments recommended by Bacon, who declares that hedges and arbours ought to be enlivened by the songs of birds; and that to make such enlivening sure and permanent, the birds should be secured in cages. A good example of a garden in Sidney's time with beds of flowers, arbours, pavilions, and covered galleries is to be seen in his own portrait by Isaac Oliver, of which we give a reproduction. It must be noticed that only the lower part of the long gallery at the back is built; the vault-shaped upper portion is painted green, being supposed to be made of actual leaves and foliage. Except for such books as Sidney's it could not be said of those gardens that "they too were once in Arcady."
a princess of arcady, from the title-page of sidney's "arcadia."
Costumes and furniture are of the same style, and accord with such gardens much more than with shepherd life. They are pure Renaissance, half Italian and half English. Musidorus disguised as a shepherd, dresses his hair in such a way as to look much more like one of the Renaissance Roman Emperors at Hampton Court than like a keeper of sheep: we see him while receiving a lesson on the use of the "sheep-hooke," wearing "a garland of laurell mixt with cypres leaves on his head."[199] The glowing descriptions of the private apartments of the heroes suit modern palaces better than Greek cottages; while representations of ladies recumbent on their couches are obvious reminiscences of Tintoretto or Titian, whose newly painted works Sidney had admired in Italy. Here is a description of the beautiful Philoclea, resting in her bedroom; it shows unmistakable signs of Sidney's acquaintance with the Italian painters: "She at that time lay, as the heate of that country did well suffer, upon the top of her bed, having her beauties eclipsed with nothing, but with her faire smocke, wrought all in flames of ash-colour silk and gold; lying so upon her right side, that the left thigh down to the foot, yielded hir delightfull proportion to the full view, which was seene by the helpe of a rich lampe, which thorow the curtaines a little drawne cast forth a light upon her, as the moone doth when it shines into a thinne wood."[200]
Sidney, according to his friend Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, had the highest moral and political purposes, in writing his "Arcadia": "In all these creatures of his making, his interest and scope was, to turn the barren philosophy precepts into pregnant images of life; and in them, first on the monarchs part, lively to represent the growth, state and declination of princes, changes of government and lawes ... Then again in the subjects case, the state of favour, disfavour, prosperitie, adversity ... and all other moodes of private fortunes or misfortunes, in which traverses, I know, his purpose was to limn out such exact pictures of every posture in the minde, that any man might see how to set a good countenance upon all the discountenances of adversitie."[201] When Greville wrote thus, Sidney was dead, and in his retrospect of his friend's life he was with perfect good faith discovering high, not to say holy motives, for all his actions. Sidney's own explanation suits his work better; he was delivering his "young head" of "many, many fancies," and their main object was not politics, but love. He described it as it was known and practised in his time. Most of the heroes in the "Arcadia," talk like Surrey, Wyatt, Watson, and all the "amourists" of the century, like Sidney himself when he addressed another than Stella. The modesty of their characters is equal to their tenderness; valiant as lions before the enemy, they tremble like the leaf before their mistresses; they feed on smiles and tender glances; when they have to suffer a scarcity of this heavenly food they can only die: "Hee dieth: it is most true, hee dieth; and he in whom you live dieth. Whereof if though hee plaine, hee doth not complaine: for it is a harme but no wrong which hee hath received. He dies, because in wofull language all his senses tell him, that such is your pleasure." Fair Pamela feels deeply moved when reading this, and confesses her harshness; she denied him a look: "Two times I must confess," says she to her sister, not without a pretty touch of humour of a very modern sort, "I was about to take curtesie into mine eyes, but both times the former resolution stopt the entrie of it: so, that hee departed without obtaining any further kindenesse. But he was no sooner out of the doore, but that I looked to the doore kindly!" The poor lover who did not see this change in his lady's countenance went away fainting, "as if he had beene but the coffin that carried himselfe to his sepulchre!"[202]
Happiness produces the same effect on these heroes. Pyrocles-Zelmane when present in his false quality of woman at the bath of his mistress in the Ladon is on the point of swooning with admiration.[203] His friend, Prince Musidorus, in the ecstasies of his passion, falls "downe prostrate," uttering this prayer to the awful god who reigns paramount in Arcady: "O thou, celestiall or infernall spirit of Love, or what other heavenly or hellish title thou list to have (for effects of both I find in my selfe), have compassion of me, and let thy glory be as great in pardoning of them that be submitted to thee as in conquering them that were rebellious."[204]
But Sidney painted also amours of another sort, and one of the great attractions of his book is the variety in the descriptions of this passion. Never had the like been seen before in any English novel, and as for France, it must be remembered, that d'Urfé's "Astrée," which has kept its place in literature for the very same quality, for its inconstant Hylas and its faithful Celadon, for its Astrée and its Madonte, was yet to be written. Sidney has, among several others, created one character which, forgotten as it is now, would be enough to give a permanent interest to this too much neglected romance; it is the Queen Gynecia, who is consumed by a guilty love, and who is the worthy contemporary of the strongly passionate heroes of Marlowe's plays. With her, and for the first time, the dramatic power of English genius leaves the stage and comes to light in the novel; it was destined to pass into it entirely.
Gynecia does not allow herself to be blinded by any subterfuge; love has taken possession of her; the rules of the world, the laws of blood, the precepts of virtue that she has observed all her life, are lost sight of; she is conscious of nothing but that she loves, and is ready, like Phædra of old, to trample everything under foot, to forsake everything, the domestic hearth, child, husband: and it is very interesting to see, about the time of Shakespeare, this purely dramatic character develop itself in a novel.
"O vertue," she cries, in her torment, "where doest thou hide thy selfe? What hideous thing is this which doth eclipse thee? or is it true that thou wert never but a vaine name, and no essentiall thing; which hast thus left thy professed servant, when she had most neede of thy lovely presence? O imperfect proportion of reason, which can too much foresee, and too little prevent: Alas, alas, said she, if there were but one hope for all my paines, or but one excuse for all my faultinesse! But wretch that I am, my torment is beyond all succour, and my evill deserving doth exceed my evill fortune. For nothing else did my husband take this strange resolution to live so solitarily: for nothing else have the winds delivered this strange guest to my countrey: for nothing else have the destinies reserved my life to this time, but that onely I, most wretched I, should become a plague to my selfe and a shame to woman-kind. Yet if my desire, how unjust soever it be, might take effect, though a thousand deaths followed it, and every death were followed with a thousand shames, yet should not my sepulchre receive me without some contentment. But, alas, so sure I am, that Zelmane is such as can answer my love; yet as sure I am, that this disguising must needs come for some foretaken conceit: and then, wretched Gynecia, where canst thou find any small ground plot for hope to dwell upon? No, no, it is Philoclea his heart is set upon, it is my daughter I have borne to supplant me: but if it be so, the life I have given thee, ungratefull Philoclea, I will sooner with these hands bereave thee of, than my birth shall glory she hath bereaved me of my desires."[205]
We see with how little reason the "Arcadia" is sometimes placed in the category of bedizened pastorals, where the reader is reduced to regret the absence of a "little wolf," and whether Gynecia, in spite of the oblivion which has gathered over her, does not deserve a place by the side of the passionate heroines of Marlowe and Webster rather than in a gallery of Lancret-like characters.
Sidney, thus possesses the merit, unique at that time with prose writers, of varying his subjects by marking its nuances and by describing in his romance different kinds of love. Side by side with Gynecia's passion, he has set himself to paint the love of an old man in Basilius, of a young man in Pyrocles, of a young girl in Pamela. This last study led him to portray a scene which was to be represented again by one of the great novelists of the eighteenth century. Richardson borrowed from Sidney, with the name of Pamela, the idea of the adventure that shows her a prisoner of her enemies, imploring heaven that her virtue may be preserved. The wicked Cecropia who keeps Sidney's Pamela shut up, laughs heartily at her invocations: "To thinke," she says, "that those powers, if there be any such, above, are moved either by the eloquence of our prayers, or in a chafe at the folly of our actions, carries as much reason, as if flies should thinke that men take great care which of them hums sweetest, and which of them flies nimblest." Pamela, "whose cheeks were dyed in the beautifullest graine of vertuous anger," replies by speeches which yield in nothing as regards nobility and dignity, and length also, to those of her future sister, and which are followed as in Richardson, by an unexpected deliverance. These speeches are famous for yet another reason; they are said to have been recited in one of the most terrible crises of the history of England and were not this time followed by a deliverance. Charles I., it is reported, had copied out, and recited a short time before his death, the eloquent prayers to God, of the young heroine of Sidney's novel. It seems that Pamela's prayer figured among the papers that he gave with his own hand, at the last moment, to the prelate who was attending him: and the Puritans, Milton especially, uttered loud cries, and saw in this reminiscence of the artist-prince, an insult to the divine majesty. "This King," writes the poet, "hath as it were unhallowed and unchristened the very duty of prayer itself, by borrowing to a Christian use prayers offered to a heathen god. Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing deity, so little reverence of the Holy Ghost, whose office is to dictate and present our Christian prayers, so little care of truth in his last words, or honour to himself or to his friends, or sense of his afflictions or of that sad hour which was upon him, as immediately before his death to pop into the hand of that grave bishop who attended him, for a special relique of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman, praying to a heathen god, and that in no serious book, but in the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia."[206] Here is this prayer which is a very grave and eloquent one, and in no way justifies the bitter reproaches addressed to Charles by his enemies:
"Kneeling down, even where she stood, she thus said: O All-seeing Light, and eternall Life of all things, to whom nothing is either so great, that it may resist, or so small that it is contemned: looke upon my misery with thine eye of mercy, and let thine infinite power vouchsafe to limit out some proportion of deliverance unto mee, as to thee shall seeme most convenient. Let not injurie, O Lord, triumph over mee, and let my faults by thy hand bee corrected, and make not mine unjust enemy the minister of thy Justice. But yet, my God, if, in thy wisedome, this be the aptest chastisement for my unexcusable folly; if this low bondage be fittest for my over-high desires; if the pride of my not enough humble heart, be thus to be broken, O Lord, I yeeld unto thy will, and joyfully embrace what sorrow thou wilt have me suffer. Onely thus much let me crave of thee ... let calamity be the exercise, but not the overthrow of my vertue: let their power prevaile, but not prevaile to destruction: let my greatnesse be their prey: let my paine be the sweetnesse of their revenge: let them, if so it seem good unto thee, vexe me with more and more punishment. But, O Lord, let never their wickednesse have such a hand, but that I may carry a pure minde in a pure body. And pausing a while: And, O most gracious Lord, said shee, what ever become of me, preserve the vertuous Musidorus."[207]
Thus incidents, showing much diversity, but little order, follow each other in great variety. There are touching episodes, ludicrous and, to our modern ideas, even shocking episodes, brilliant adventures, fine pastoral scenes, and much pleasant description; Sidney had been perfectly frank and true when he had spoken of "his young head" and his "many many fancies." He allows his imagination to wander; fancies are swarming in his mind, and he is no more capable of restraining or putting them into logical order than a man can restrain or introduce reason into a dream. Arcadia is sometimes in England and sometimes in Greece; Basilius' cottage sometimes becomes Hampton Court; there are temples and churches also; heroes are Christians, but they believe in Mars; they act according to the Gospel and also according to the oracles; they are before everything men of the Renaissance. Following his vein, Sidney, after innumerable adventures, pastoral and warlike scenes, disappearances, unexpected meetings, scenes of deep love, of criminal, sweet or foolish love, comes at last to a sort of conclusion. King Basilius drinks a soporific draught; he is given up as dead. Queen Gynecia is accused of being the author of the deed; Zelmane, who has been found out to be a man is adjudged an accomplice; both are about to be executed. At that point, fortunately, the dead king springs to his feet; there are explanations, embracings, and a general pardon. Good Basilius, who alone seems to have understood nothing of all that happened, asks pardon of his wife and of the world at large for his silly love for Pyrocles-Zelmane, and proclaims, unasked, Queen Gynecia the most virtuous woman that ever was. The Queen blushes deeply and says nothing, but finding that the ties of her passion are now broken, she inwardly pledges herself to live in order to justify her husband's praise. She becomes the "example and glory of Greece: so uncertain are mortall judgements, the same person most infamous and most famous, and neither justly."
This might be taken as a sufficient conclusion in so loose a tale; but in that case it would mean giving up many heroes whose fates are yet in suspense. In fact, an "Arcadia" of this sort might be continued till doomsday. Unless the hand of the writer grew tired, there is no reason why it should ever end. This is, in fact, the one and only reason Sidney puts forth as an excuse for taking his leave; he makes no pretence of having finished, just the reverse; for when he has married his princes he concludes thus: "But ... the strange stories of Artaxia and Plexirtus, Erona and Plangus, Hellen and Amphialus, with the wonderful! chances that befell them; the shepheardish loves of Menalcas with Kalodulus daughter; the poore hopes of the poor Philisides," that is, Sidney himself, "in the pursuit of his affections; the strange continuance of Klaius and Strephons desire; lastly the sonne of Pyrocles named Pyrophilus, and Melidora the faire daughter of Pamela by Musidorus, who even at their birth entred into admirable fortunes, may awake some other spirit to exercise his pen in that wherwith mine is already dulled." From generation to generation the tale might as we see, have been continued for ages: so numerous were the wonderful adventures still to be told.
The style of the book is scarcely less fanciful than the stories it tells. It is only now and again that the charming prose of the "Apologie for Poetrie" is to be found in the "Arcadia." Sidney wished to remain faithful to his theories, and he believed it possible to write a poem in prose.[208] Here and there some speeches, passionate like those of Gynecia, or noble like Pamela's prayer, some brilliant repartee, a few observations of exquisite charm are lasting beauties, always in their place in all kinds of writing. Thus we meet the witty Sidney of the "Apologie" in the description of a spaniel, coming out of a river, who shakes off the water from his coat "as great men doe their friends;" Sidney, the poet and lover, appears in the description of Philoclea entering the water "with a prettie kind of shrugging ... like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars;" or in this expression in reference to the fair hair of one of his heroines: "her haire—alas too poore a word, why should I not rather call them her beams!"[209]
But, by the side of these graceful flowers, how many others are faded! What concessions to contemporary taste for tinsel and excessive ornament! Sidney forgets the rules of enduring beauty, and with the excuse that he will never be printed, he only seeks to please his one reader. To charm the Countess, his sister, like most women of his time, it was necessary to put his phrases in full dress, to place ruffs on his periods, and to make them walk according to the rules followed in courtly pageants. When, in spite of Sidney's earnest desire, his book was published after his death, people were enraptured with his ingeniously dressed out phrases. Lyly might shake with envy without having however the right to complain, for Sidney did not imitate him. Sidney never liked euphuism, quite the contrary, he formally condemns it in his "Apologie": "Now for similitudes in certain printed discourses I think all herberists, all stories of beasts, fowles and fishes, are rifled up, that they may come in multitudes to wait upon any of our conceits, which certainely is as absurd a surfet to the eares as is possible." But his own style is scarcely less artificial than that of Lyly, and consequently, its rules are quite as easy to discover.
They consist firstly in the antithetical and cadenced repetition of the same words in the sentences written merely for effect; secondly, in persistently ascribing life and feeling to inanimate objects. Sidney, it is true, as Lyly with his euphuism, happily only employs this style on particular occasions, when he intends to be especially attractive and brilliant. A few specimens will afford means of judging, and will show how difficult it was in Shakespeare's time, even for the best educated and most sensible men, for the sincerest admirers of the ancients, to keep within the bounds of good taste and reason. They might appeal to the Castalian virgins in their invocations, but William Rogers' Elizabeth was the Muse that rose before their eyes.
Here is an example of the first sort of embellishment: "Our Basilius being so publickly happy, as to be a prince, and so happy in that happiness, as to be a beloved prince; and so in his private estate blessed, as to have so excellent a wife, and so over-excellent children, hath of late taken a course which yet makes him more spoken of than all these blessings." In another passage Sidney wishes to describe the perfections of a woman; and "that which made her fairness much the fairer, was, that it was but a fair ambassador of a most fair mind." Musidorus considers it "a greater greatness to give a kingdome than get a kingdome."[210] Phalantus challenges his adversary to fight "either for the love of honour or honour of his love." In many of these sentences the same words are repeated like the rhymes of a song, taken up from strophe to strophe, and the sentence twists and turns, drawing and involving the readers in its spiral curves, so that he arrives at the end all bruised, and falls half stunned on the full stop.[211]
The other kind of elegance that Sidney affects is to be found in very many authors, and it is, so to say, of all time; poets especially indulge in it without measure; but Sidney surpasses them all in the frequent use he makes of it; this peculiar language is more apparent and has still stranger effect in a prose writer than in a poet. In his Arcady, the valleys are consoled for their lowness by the silver streams which wind in the midst of them; the ripples of the Ladon struggle with one another to reach the place where Philoclea is bathing, but those which surround her refuse to give up their fortunate position. A shepherdess embarks: "Did you not marke how the windes whistled, and the seas danced for joy; how the sales did swell with pride, and all because they had Urania?" Here is a description of a river: "... The banks of either side seeming armes of the loving earth, that faine would embrace it; and the river a wanton nymph which hill would slip from it ... There was ... a goodly cypres, who bowing her faire head over the water, it seemed she looked into it and dressed her green locks by that running river." One of the heroines of the romance appears, and immediately the flowers and the fruits experience a surprising commotion; the roses blush and the lilies grow pale for envy; the apples perceiving her breast fall down from the trees out of vexation, unexpected vanity on the part of this modest fruit.[212]
Similar conceits were at that time the fashion not only in England, but also in Italy, in Spain, and in France. There might still be found in France, even in the seventeenth century, authors who described in these terms the appearance of flowers in spring: "There perhaps at the end of the combat, a pink all bleeding falls from fatigue; there a rosebud, elated at the ill-success of her antagonist, blooms with joy; there the lily, that colossus among the flowers, that giant of curdled cream, vain of seeing her image triumph at the Louvre, raises herself above her companions, and looks at them with contemptuous arrogance." The same author, who is Cyrano de Bergerac, calls ice "an hardened light, a petrified day, a solid nothing."[213] But contrary to what was the case in England, this style was in France, even before Boileau and in the preceding century, the style of bad authors. In England it is frequently adopted by the most eminent writers, since on many occasions it is even that of Shakespeare himself. Besides, the combinations of sound obtained by means of the repetition of words, added to the turgidness of the images, give to Sidney's language in the passages written for effect, a degree of pretension and bad taste that Cyrano himself, in spite of his natural disposition, could never have equalled. When both kinds of Sidney's favourite embellishments are combined in the same sentence, it becomes impossible to keep serious, and it is difficult to recognize the author of the "Apologie." Sidney thus describes wreckage floating on the water after a sea-fight: "Amidst the precious things were a number of dead bodies, which likewise did not onely testifie both elements violence, but that the chiefe violence was growne of humane inhumanity: for their bodies were full of grisly wounds, and their blood had, as it were, filled the wrinkles of the sea's visage; which it seemed the see would not wash away, that it might witnesse it is not always his fault, when we do condemne his cruelty."[214] There is indeed in French literature a dagger celebrated for having rougi le traître! but what is it in comparison, and ought it not in its turn to grow pale with envy at the thought of this sea that will not wash itself?
Thus men wrote in the time of Shakespeare, guilty himself of having made many a dagger blush and weep in his bloody dramas: "See how my sword weeps for the poor king's death!" says Gloucester in "Henry VI." When Brutus stabs Cæsar the blood followed the dagger
"As rushing out of doors, to be resolv'd
If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no."
Such was the irresistible power of fashion. Sidney who in his "Apologie" had laughed at these extravagances in the poets and dramatists, could not himself avoid them when he wrote his romance. When they concern themselves with criticism, nearly all, Shakespeare, Sidney, and their contemporaries, are to be admired for their moderation, wisdom, and good sense; but as soon as they take up the pen to write their imaginative works, intoxication overcomes their brain, a divine intoxication that sometimes transports them to heaven, an earthly intoxication that sometimes leads them into bogs and gutters.
III.
These surprising embellishments were in no way harmful, quite the contrary, to the success of the "Arcadia." From the first it was extremely popular and widely read; Sidney, who has kept his high repute as a knight and a poet to our day, was still more famous at first, and indeed for a long time, as a novelist. He was before all the author of the "Arcadia."[215] His influence as such was very great, if not always very beneficial; for his examples, as often happens, were more readily followed than his precepts. Until the practical Defoe worked his great reform in style, the language of the novel was encumbered with images and unexpected metaphors, or distorted by a pompous verbosity; romance writers mostly looked at life and realities through painted glass. For this, Sidney is in some degree responsible.
His book was, so to speak, a standard one; everybody had to read it; elegant ladies now began to talk "Arcadianism" as they had been before talking "Euphuism." Dekker, in 1609, advises gallants to go to the play to furnish their memories with fine sayings, in order to be able to discourse with such refined young persons: "To conclude, hoarde up the finest play-scraps you can get, upon which your leane wit may most savourly feede for want of other stuffe, when the Arcadian and Euphuized gentlewomen have their tongues sharpened to set upon you."[216] When he has to represent "a court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by herself, and one more," her lover, Ben Jonson, in his "Every man out of his humour," makes her talk "Arcadianism." Her lover, who is quite the man to appreciate these elegancies of speech, being "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well and in fashion, practiseth by his glass how to salute ... can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the gingle of his spur and the jerk of his wand," thus describes the Arcadian music which falls from the lips of the lady Saviolina: "She has the most harmonious and musical strain of wit that ever tempted a true ear ... oh! it flows from her like nectar, and she doth give it that sweet quick grace and exornation in the composure, that by this good air, as I am an honest man, would I might never stir, sir, but—she does observe as pure a phrase and use as choice figures in her ordinary conference as any be in the 'Arcadia.'"[217]
The demand for Sidney's book continued long unabated. It was often reprinted during the seventeenth century,[218] and found imitators, abbreviators and continuators. Among its early admirers it had that indefatigable reader of novels, William Shakespeare, who took from it several hints, especially from the story of the "Paphlagonian unkind king," which he made use of in his "King Lear."[219] Books were published under cover of Sidney's name, as "Sir Philip Sydney's Ourania";[220] others were given away bearing as an epigraph an adaptation of two well-known verses:
"Nec divinam Sydneida tenta
Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora,"[221]
no insignificant compliment, considering the word which had to make room for "Sydneida." Works without number were dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, not only because she was what she was, and a poetess of some renown, but because she was the Mary Sidney of Arcadian fame.
As Sidney had stated that he did not consider his novel finished with the marriage of his heroes, and the reconciliation of his royal couple, continuations were not wanting; writers who did not consider their pen "dulled" as he had declared his own to be, volunteered to add a further batch of adventures to the "Sidneyd." Thus we have the "English Arcadia alluding his beginning to Sir Philip Sidnes ending," by Gervase Markham, 1607; a "Sixth booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, written by R[ichard] B[eling] of Lincolnes Inne," 1624; or again a "Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia: wherein is handled the loves of Amphialus and Helena ... written by a young gentlewoman, Mrs. A. W.," 1651. Dramas were built upon incidents in the "Arcadia"; Shakespeare we have seen made use of it in his "King Lear"; John Day wrote after Sidney's tale, "The Ile of Guls," 1606, "the argument being a little string or rivolet drawne from the full streme of the right worthy gentleman, Sir Phillip Sydneys well knowne Archadea."[222] Some years later, in 1640, Shirley put Basilius and his court again on the stage in his "Pastorall called the Arcadia."[223]
Authors of poems also took their plots from stories in Sidney's novel, one of the most popular among those stories was the adventures of Argalus and Parthenia; it was constantly reprinted in a separate form, and was the subject of a long poem by the well-known Francis Quarles, the author of the "Emblemes." "It was," says he in his preface, "a scion taken out of the orchard of Sir Philip Sidney of precious memory, which I have lately graffed upon a crab-stock in mine own.... This book differs from my former as a courtier from a churchman." Not less did it differ from his later books, among which the "Emblemes" were to figure; but the pious author eases his conscience about it by alleging "precedents for it." It cannot be denied that if Quarles' "churchman" was very devout his "courtier" was very worldly. He goes far beyond Sidney in his descriptions of love, of physical love especially, and uses in this matter a freedom of speech and a bantering tone which reminds us much more of the Reine de Navarre than of the author of the "Emblemes." Such as it is, however, this poem remains, so far as literary merit goes, one of the best Quarles ever wrote. He scarcely ever reached again this terseness and vivacity of style, and this entrain. Having for once shut himself out of the church, and not for long, he wanted it seems to do the best with his time, and if he was sinning, at least to enjoy his sin.
[p. 265.
His contemporaries enjoyed it greatly; "Argalus and Parthenia" went through an extraordinary number of editions;[224] some of them were very fine, and were even illustrated with cuts. We give an example of them showing the newly married couple sitting in their garden to read a story:
"Upon a day as they were closely seated,
Her ears attending whilst his lips repeated
A story treating the renown'd adventures
And famous acts of great Alcides, enters
A messenger whose countenance did bewray
A haste too serious to admit delay."
Is there any necessity for reminding the reader of the cause of the messenger's haste? Is it possible that such world-famous adventures can be now forgotten? The messenger was sent by King Basilius, who was sorely pressed by his arch-enemy Amphialus. The young hero rushes to the rescue of the Arcadian king, but he is piteously slain in a duel with Amphialus. Then Parthenia dresses herself as a knight, and fights her husband's conqueror. With more verisimilitude than is usually the case, she too is piteously slain. And this is the end of Argalus and Parthenia.
But there was still more than this, and like Lyly, Sidney had direct imitators who copied him in prose, and tried to fashion novels after his model. All the peculiarities of his style and of his way, or rather want, of composition, are to be found minutely reproduced in: "The countesse of Mountgomeries Urania; written by the Rt. Hon. the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter of the Rt. noble Robert earle of Leicester, and neece to the ever famous and renowned Sr Phillips Sidney Kt. and to ye most excelent Lady Mary Countesse of Pembroke late deceased."[225] This pedigree-shaped title is enough in itself to show what we may expect from the performance. It is a complete and pious imitation of Sidney's manner, especially of his defects, for they were more easily attained. Thus we have those repetitions of the same words which were so pleasant to Sidney's ear, and Lady Mary Wroth has a felicity of her own in twisting the idea into the words, screw-wise, with a perfection her model had scarcely ever attained: "All for others grieved; pittie extended so, as all were carefull, but of themselves most carelesse: yet their mutual care made them all cared for." A very true and logical observation. Lady Mary is also fond of giving sense and feeling to inanimate objects, and scarcely, again, can Sidney, with his sea that will not wash, or Cyrano with his proud giant of curdled milk, suffer comparison with this description of a burning tower into which a woman throws the head of her enemy: "For her welcome [Dorileus] presented her with the head of her enemy, which he then cut off and gave unto her, who like Tomeris of Sithia, held it by the haire, but gave it quickly another conclusion, for she threw it into the midst of the flaming tower, which then, as being in it selfe enemy to good, because wasting good, yet hotly desiring to embrace as much ill, and so headlongly and hastily fell on it, either to grace it with the quickest and hottest kisses, or to conceale such a villanous and treacherous head from more and just punishments."[226]
As to the story, it is, like the "Arcadia," a tale of shepherds who are princes, and of shepherdesses with royal blood in their veins; there are eclogues, dialogues, and if not much poetry at least much verse. The events take place in Greece and in the Greek islands; people go to the temple of Diana and to the temple of Venus. In the last-named place they get married. These worshippers of the deities of old are dressed as follows. Here is the description of a man's costume: "Then changed he his armour taking one of azure colour, his plume crimson, and one fall of blew in it; the furniture to his horse being of those colours, and his device onely a cipher, which was made of all the letters of his misstrisses name, delicately composed within the compasse of one." Here is now a description of the costume women wore in Lady Mary's Greek land: "She was partly in greene too; as her upper garment, white buskins she had, the short sleeves which she wore upon her armes and came in sight from her shoulders were also white, and of a glistering stuffe, a little ruffe she had about her neck, from which came stripps which were fastned to the edges of her gowne, cut downe equally for length and breadth to make it square; the strips were of lace, so as the skinne came steallinglie through, as if desirous but afraide to bee seane, knowing that little joy would moove desire to have more." This clever young person had been "sworn a nymph," which prevented her getting married for some years. Waiting for that auspicious date a lover was offering his addresses to her, and as Lady Wroth's Arcadia is an Arcadia with a peerage, we are informed that this sworn nymph's lover was "the third sonne of an earle."[227]
No less a man than Ben Jonson proclaimed himself an admirer of Lady Mary; he dedicated one of his masterpieces, "the Alchemist," to "the lady most deserving her name and blood, Lady Mary Wroth," and in his "Epigrams" he addressed her as follows, his only but sufficient excuse being that the "Urania" was not yet written:
"Madam, had all antiquity been lost,
All history seal'd up and fables crost,
That we had left us, nor by time nor place,
Least mention of a Nymph, a Muse, a Grace,
But even their names were to be made anew
Who could not create them all from you?"[228]
The eighteenth century began, and Sidney's romance was not yet forgotten; his book was still alive, if one may say so, when the novel assumed its definite shape, style and compass with Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Addison notices its presence in the fair Leonora's library, among "the some few which the lady had bought for her own use."[229] It continued then to be fashionable, and a subject of conversation. No wonder, therefore, that between the date of "Robinson Crusoe" and the date of "Pamela" two more editions of the "Arcadia" were given to the public. One of them contained engravings after drawings by L. Chéron.[230] The other was "moderniz'd" and was published by subscription under the patronage of the Princess of Wales.[231] Sidney's novel continued to act on men's minds, and many proofs of its influence on eighteenth-century literature might be pointed out. That Sidney was Richardson's first teacher in the art of the novel is well known; that Cowper read the "Arcadia" with delight is well known too, and he confers no mean praise on our author when he speaks of
"those golden times
And those arcadian scenes that Maro sings
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose."[232]
Examples of Sidney's style are also to be found in several authors of that time. Consciously or not, Young sometimes adopts all the peculiarities of Sidney; for example, when he writes:
"Sweet harmonist! and beautiful as sweet!
And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
And gay as soft! and innocent as gay!
And happy (if aught happy here) as good!
For fortune fond had built her nest on high."[233]
Sidney's popularity did not, of course, last so long without encountering some opposition. For Milton, and no wonder, the "Arcadia" was nothing but "a vain amatorious poem," though he is fair enough to add that it is "in that kind, full of worth and wit."[234] Horace Walpole was very hard upon our novelist: "We have a tedious, lamentable, pedantic pastoral romance," says he, in his "Royal and Noble Authors," "which the patience of a young virgin in love cannot now wade through."[235] It is sad to think that the once famous "Castle of Otranto," though twenty times shorter, requires now no smaller dose of patience.
"See the fond youth! he burns, he loves, he dies,
He wishes as he pines and feeds his famish'd eyes."
None the less, the "Arcadia" was popular in the last century, and, at the same time as it attracted the attention of fair Leonoras, it also interested and delighted a much commoner sort of readers. It was several times printed in an abbreviated form, and circulated, with engravings, as a chap-book. Sometimes the whole of the "Arcadia" was compressed into a small volume, sometimes only an episode was given to the public. The story of Argalus and Parthenia was especially popular.[236] The engravings, it is needless to say, were very coarse; and if Sidney had taken little trouble to be historically or geographically accurate, the wood-block makers took even less, and they offer to our eyes an extraordinary medley of fifteenth-century knights, Roman soldiers, gentlemen in flowing wigs and court swords, all of them supposed to have at one time adorned with their presence the groves of Arcady. A few specimens of these engravers' art are here given; no doubt the reader will be pleased to know what the famous Argalus and Parthenia were supposed to have been like, how the bathing of Philoclea in the Ladon was represented, and the sorts of fêtes and courtly dances that enlivened the marriage of that princess.
More striking even than these tributes to Sidney's merits as a novelist is the treatment awarded him in France. The famous Du Bartas in his second "Week" names Sidney as one of the "three firm pillars of the English Speech." This speech, according to the French poet, is mainly supported by Thomas More and Bacon,
"Et le milor Cydné qui cygne doux-chantant
Va les flots orgueilleux de Tamise flatant;
Ce fleuve gros d'honneur emporte sa faconde
Dans le sein de Thétis et Thétis par le monde."[237]
"how the two princesses pamela and her sister philoclea went to bath themselves ... and what after hapned."
Besides this, Sidney's romance received in France an homage very rare at that epoch: it was translated. A Frenchman possessing a knowledge of the English language was then an extraordinary phenomenon. As late as the year 1665, no less a paper than the "Journal des Scavans" printed a statement to the following effect: "The Royal Society of London publishes constantly a number of excellent works But whereas most of them are written in the English language, we have been unable till now to review them in our pages. But we have at last found an English interpreter through whose offices it will be henceforth possible for us to enrich our publication with the best things appearing in England." As for Sidney, not only was he translated, but what is not less strange, the fact provoked in France one of the most violent literary quarrels of the time. Two translations of the "Arcadia," now entirely forgotten, were published simultaneously, both in three volumes, both adorned with engravings.[238] As soon as a volume appeared, each of the translators profited by the occasion to write a new preface, and to repeat that his rival was a mere plagiarist and did not know a word of English. The other replied offering to prove such a rare knowledge; had it been a question of Chinese or of Hindustani they could not have boasted more noisily of their unique acquaintance with so mysterious an idiom. Each appealed to his patroness, who was, in either case, no ordinary woman: the one had dedicated his work to Diane de Chateaumorand (D'Urfé's Diane), who had indeed the right to judge of Arcadias; the other invoked the authority of the Queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, by whose express command he had carried on his work.
Baudoin, who had been the first to turn the "Arcadia" into French, published it in 1624, prefixing to it this remark, flattering to Sidney's memory, but which shows how very little his language was known in France: "Merely the desire of understanding so rare a book caused me to go to England, where I remained for two years in order to gain a knowledge of it."
"the glorious entertainments that graced
the happy nuptials."
Two years! immediately retorts the publisher of the other translation; we can do better than that: the author of the work that we publish is Mademoiselle Geneviève Chappelain, and what guarantees does she not offer! "She has the honour to have lived more than seven years at the court of the King of Great Britain, in the suite of the Countess of Salisbury, who esteemed her as no ordinary young girl, but as a very well-bred demoiselle who had been presented to her with good credentials, and who was descended from a race that has given us great men: verily, and women, too, that the muses have deigned to favour." This is a little like the argument of Scudéry, boasting, ten years later, of his noble birth in order to prove to poor Pierre Corneille that he is the better poet of the two, and that the "Cid" is worth nothing.
But something better still follows, and here the worthy publisher somewhat betrays himself: "If she has not been able to learn the language of the country in which she has lived for more than seven years, and nearly always with great ladies: how, I beg of you, could those who have only lived there two years, and among the common people, know the language? I do not wish to offend any one by this notice, which I thought it necessary to make only to defend a young lady who is my near relation."
Baudoin maintains his statement, and defies his rivals to translate Sidney's verse, and he enumerates the precautions he himself has taken, precautions which certainly ought to satisfy the reader as regards his accuracy. Not only did he live for two years in England, but, he says, "I secured the assistance of a French gentleman of merit and learning, who has been good enough to explain to me the whole of the first book. I have acted in such a way as to procure two different versions of it in order to produce one good one." And he has done even something more: "I have always had near me one of my friends to whom this tongue was as familiar as our own; he has taken the trouble to elucidate for me any doubts I may have had." In truth, he could hardly have surrounded himself with more light, but then, what an arduous task to translate from English!
Baudoin's adversaries were in no way intimidated by this display; firstly, they had had the assistance of exactly the same gentleman; it appears that a second equally learned was not to be found; secondly, Mdlle. Chappelain also showed her translation to persons who knew both languages, and they found her work perfect; lastly, and what more can be required? she sends a challenge to Baudoin and his accomplices, and invites them to a decisive combat: "She is ready to show that she knows the English language better than they, and they would not dare to appear in order to speak it with her in the presence of persons capable of judging." Baudoin does not appear, indeed, to have accepted this challenge, but neither does it seem to have discouraged him. He closes the preface of his last volume with this poetical apostrophe to those who are envious of his reputation: "By the mouth of good wits—Apollo holds you in contempt,—Troop so ignorant and bold:—For you profane his beauteous gifts,—And cause thistles to spring up—In the midst of your Arcady."[239]
What astonishes us now, when we follow the vicissitudes of the long-forgotten dispute of these two writers is that so much passion should have been expended over Sidney's romance, however great might be its merit; while the attention of no one in France was attracted by Shakespeare and the inimitable group of dramatists of his time. No Baudoin, no Geneviève Chappelain disputed the honour of translating "Hamlet," and a century was still to elapse before so much as Shakespeare's name should figure in a book printed in France.[240]
This double translation of the "Arcadia" did not, however, pass unnoticed, far from it; and from time to time we find the name of Sidney reappearing in French books, while the giants of English literature continued entirely unknown on the continent. When Charles Sorel satirized the long-winded romances of his time in his "Berger Extravagant," he did not forget Sidney, who figures among the authors alternately praised and criticized in the disputation between Clarimond and Philiris. The criticism is not very severe, and compared with the treatment inflicted on other authors, it would seem that Sorel wished to show courtesy to a foreigner who had been invited, so to say, as a visitor to France by his translators.[241] Copies of Sidney's original "Arcadia" crept into France, and are to be found in rather unexpected places. Thus a copy of the edition of 1605 is to be seen in the National Library in Paris, with the Φ Φ of surintendant Fouquet on the cover. The way in which the letters are interlaced shows that the book did not come from Fouquet's own library, but from the library of the Jesuits,[242] to whom he had given a yearly income of 6,000 livres, and who, in memory of their benefactor, stamped thus books purchased from this fund.
In France, too, as well as in England, the "Arcadia" was turned into a play. Antoine Mareschal, a contemporary of Corneille and the author of such dramas as "La généreuse Allemande ou le triomphe de l'amour," 1631, the "Railleur ou la satyre du temps," 1638, the "Mauzolée," 1642, derived a tragi-comedy, in five acts, and in verse from the "Arcadia." The piece, which, if the author is to be believed, made a great sensation in Paris, was called the "Cour Bergère," and was dedicated to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, ambassador of England to France, and brother to Sir Philip. It appeared in 1640; it was thus later than the "Cid." None the less, it exhibits the phenomenon of several deaths on the stage; but the ridiculous manner in which these deaths are introduced could only strengthen Corneille in his scruples. The wicked Cecropia, standing on a terrace at the back of the stage, moves without seeing the edge, and falls head foremost on the boards, exclaiming:
"Ah! je tombe, et l'enfer a mon corps entrainé ...
Je déteste le ciel! Ah! je meurs enragée!"
In the following century Sidney was still remembered in France. In his "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la République des lettres," Niceron mentions the "Arcadia" as "a romance full of intelligence and very well written in the author's language."[243] Florian knew him and held him in great honour; he names him with D'Urfé, Montemayor, and Cervantes, as being, as it were, one of his literary ancestors,[244] and the fact is not without importance; for Florian, continuing, as he did, Sidney's tradition, and trying in his turn to write poems in prose, stands as a link between the pastoral writers of the sixteenth century and the author who was the last to compose prose epics in our time: the author of "Les Martyrs" and of that American Arcadia called "Atala"—Chateaubriand.
sagittarius.
[p. 286.
FOOTNOTES:
[167] And which has been faithfully and touchingly described in Dr. Jessopp's book: "Arcady: For better, for worse," recently published in London.
[168] Besides its fine collection of family portraits, one of which is reproduced in this volume, by the kind permission of Lord de l'Isle and Dudley, Penshurst is remarkable because it offers to this day a perfect example of a fourteenth-century hall with the fireplace in the middle.
[169] "Life of the renowned Sr Philip Sidney," London, 1652, 12mo.
[170] "The Correspondence of Sir Ph. Sidney and Hubert Languet," ed. Pears London, 1845, 8vo, Appendix; a.d. 1579(?).
[171] "Vindictæ contra tyrannos," Edinburgh, 1579, part iii.
[172] Padua, February 4, 1574, "Correspondence," p. 29.
[173] a.d. 1575, "Correspondence," p. 94.
[174] "Arcadia," bk. iii.
[175] "Captain Cox his ballads ... or Robert Laneham's Letter, 1575," ed. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1871, 8vo, p. 53.
[176] "Correspondence," ut supra, March 1, 1578.
[177] "Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella ... edited from the folio of 1598," by Alfred Pollard, London, 1888, 8vo, sonnet 33. Penelope's marriage with Lord Rich seems to have taken place in April, 1581.
[178] "Astrophel and Stella," ut supra, pp. 170 and 72 (sonnet 69).
"Goe little booke! thy selfe present
As childe whose father is unkent
To him that is the President
Of noblenesse and chevalree...."
Dedication of the "Shepheardes Calender." Sidney seems to have had a right and not over-enthusiastic appreciation of Spenser's eclogues; in his "Apologie for Poetrie" he is content to say that "the Sheapheardes Kalender hath much poetrie in his eglogues: indeede worthy the reading if I be not deceived" (Arber's reprint, p. 62).
[180] The elegies written on this occasion are counted by the hundred. A splendid series of engravings were published by T. Laut to perpetuate the memory of Sidney's funeral, London, 1587
[181] London, 1598, fol.
[182] Sidney left only one daughter who became Countess of Rutland. His wife remarried twice, first with the Earl of Essex, brother of Penelope, then with Lord Clanricarde.
[183] "Essayes," London, 1603, fol. Dedication of Book II. This "Epistle" is followed by two sonnets, one to each lady, again praising them for their connection with Sidney. The sonnet to Penelope begins thus:
"Madame, to write of you, and doe you right,
What meane we, or what meanes to ayde meane might?
Since HE who admirably did endite,
Entiteling you perfections heire, joies light,
Loves life, lifes gemme, vertues court, Heav'ns delight,
Natures chiefe worke, fair'st booke, his muses spright,
Heav'n on earth, peerlesse Phœnix, Phœbe bright,
Yet said he was to seeke, of you to write" (p. 191).
This last line alludes to Astrophel's first sonnet to Stella (quoted below, p. 233).
[184] "What changes here," &c. "translated out of the 'Diana' of Montemayor in Spanish. Where Sireno a shepheard pulling out a little of his mistresse Diana's haire, wrapt about in greene silke, who now had utterly forsaken him, to the haire hee thus bewayled himselfe."—"The same Sireon ... holding his mistresse glasse ... thus sung." "Certaine sonnets written by Sir Philip Sidney, never before printed."
[185] This masque was written in 1578; and was performed before the Queen when staying with the Earl of Leicester at Wanstead. Sidney wrote also for festivities of the same kind a "Dialogue betweene two shepheards, uttered in a pastorall shew at Wilton" (the seat of his sister the Countess of Pembroke). Both works are to be found in divers old editions of the "Arcadia" (e.g., the eighth, 1633, fol.), which in fact contain, very nearly, Sidney's complete works.
[186] The "Apologie" written about 1581, which circulated in MS. during Sidney's life-time, was published only after his death: "An Apologie for Poetrie, written by the right noble, vertuous and learned Sir Philip Sidney, Knight," London, 1595, reprinted by Arber, London, 1869.
[187] Arber's reprint, pp. 46, 55, 41, and 40.
[188] "The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney," ed. Grosart, London, 1877, 3 vol. 8vo; "Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella ... edited from the folio of 1598," by Alfred Pollard, London, 1888, 8vo.
[189] The "Arcadia" begun in 1580, appeared after Sidney's death: "The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, written by Sir Philippe Sidnei," London, 1590, 4to. Several of the numerous poems inserted in the "Arcadia" are written in classical metres; for Sidney took part with several of his contemporaries in the futile effort made in England as in France to apply to modern languages the rules of ancient prosody. The pages referred to in the following notes are those of the edition of 1633, "now the eighth time published with some new additions."
[190] And compared as such to Octavia, sister of Augustus, by Meres in his "Paladis Tamia," 1598. She helped her brother in translating the Psalms of David and published various works, one of them being a translation of one of Garnier's neo-classical tragedies: "The tragedie of Antonie," written in 1590, printed in 1595, which contains, conformably to Sidney's taste, messengers, monologues and choruses. It begins thus in the regular classical style of that time:
"Since cruel Heav'ns against me obstinate,
Since all mishappes of the round engin doo
Conspire my harme: since men, since powers divine,
Aire, earth, and sea are all injurious:
And that my queene her selfe, in whom I liv'd
The idoll of my harte, doth me pursue,
It's meete I dye."
[191] The "Diana" was turned into English by B. Yong, London, 1598, fol. Shakespeare derived from one of the stories in Montemayor's romance (the story of the shepherdess Felismena) a part of the plot of his "Two Gentlemen of Verona." See above p. 150.
[192] Now in the Louvre.
[193] The taste for these fancies had been handed down from the Middle Ages; ladies following as pages their own lovers, unknown to them, abound in the French mediæval literature; one, e.g., is to be found in the "Très chevaleureux Comte d'Artois," a very old tale, of which we have only a version of the fifteenth century, but which existed long before, and supplied Boccaccio with the groundwork of his story of Giletta of Narbonne. From Boccaccio, this tale was transferred by Paynter to his "Palace of Pleasure," and from this work, by Shakespeare, to the stage, under the name of "All's well." Sidney's model Montemayor gives the same part to play, as we have seen, to his pretended shepherdess Felismena, who follows as his page her lover Don Felix.
[194] See "Les projets de mariage de Jacques V.," by Edmond Bapst, Secrétaire d'Ambassade, Paris, 1889, 8vo, ch. xxiv. p. 289.
[195] "Memoires of Sir James Melvil," London, 1683, fol., p. 51.
[196] Sonnet 41. See also Sonnet 53.
[197] "Captain Cox his ballads ... or Robert Laneham's Letter, 1575," ed. Furnivall, London, 1871, 8vo, p. 49.
[198] Book i. p. 8 (edition of 1633).
[199] Book ii. p. 99.
[200] Book iii. p. 382.
[201] "Life of Sidney," London, 1652, 12mo, p. 18.
[202] Book ii. p. 117.
[203] "Zelmane would have put to her helping hand, but she was taken with such a quivering, that she thought it was more wisdome to lean her selfe to a tree and look on" (book ii. p. 138).
[204] Book i. p. 65.
[205] Book ii. p. 95. The daughter's speeches though she believes Zelmane to be a woman and cannot understand her own feelings are scarcely less intemperate (book ii. p. 112).
[206] And in order that no doubt may exist, Milton refers his reader to the page in Sidney and in Dr. Juxon's book of "Ἑικονοκλαστες," "Prose Works," London, 1806, 6 vols., 8vo, vol. ii. p. 407.
[207] "Arcadia," book iii. p. 248. In the "Εἰκὼν Βασιλική, the portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitude and sufferings," 1648, 8vo, towards the end of the book, where are to be found "praiers used by his majestie in the time of his sufferings, delivered to Dr. Juxon, bishop of London, immediately before his death," the end of the prayer of course is altered: "... so that at the last, I may com to thy eternal kingdom through the merits of thy son our alone Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen."
[208] His contemporaries agreed in his belief: "Sir Philip Sidney writ his immortal poem 'The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia' in prose; and yet our rarest poet" (F. Meres "Paladis Tamia," 1598).
[209] Pp. 138 and 51.
[210] On this and other occasions Sidney combines alliteration with the repetition of words. Here is another example: "Is it to be imagined that Gynecia, a woman, though wicked, yet witty, would have attempted and atchieved an enterprise no lesse hazzardous than horrible without having some counsellor in the beginning and some comforter in the performing?" (book v. p. 466).
[211] Pp. 10, 17, 129, 267, &c. The same curious repetition of words is sometimes to be noticed in Sidney's poetry:
"Nor faile my faith in my fayling fate;
Nor change in change, though change change my state."
("The Smokes of melancholie.")
[212] Pp. 2, 137, 51.
[213] "Là, possible au sortir du combat, un oeillet tout sanglant tombe de lassitude; là un bouton de rose, euflé du mauvais succès de son antagoniste, s'épanouit de joie; là le lys, ce colosse entre les fleurs, ce géant de lait caillé, glorieux de voir ses images triompher au Louvre, s'élève sur ses compagnes et les regarde de haut en bas." Ice is for Cyrano: "une lumière endurcie, un jour pétrifié, un solide néant" ("Lettre pour le printemps"; "Lettre à M. le Bret").
[214] Book i. p. 4.
[215] Here is an example among many others. Sidney's portrait, now belonging to Earl Darnley, bears the following inscription painted on its canvas: "Sr Phillip Sidney, who writ the Arcadia" (Tudor Exhibition, 1890).
[216] "The Guls Horne-booke," "Works," ed. Grosart, vol. ii. p. 254.
[217] Act ii. sc. 1, performed 1599, printed 1600. See also in "Bartholomew fair," performed in 1614, act iv. sc. 2, how Quarlous chooses the word "Argalus" to try his luck in a love affair.
[218] The British Museum, which does not possess a complete collection, has editions of 1590, 1598, 1599, 1605, 1613, 1621, 1623, 1627, 1629, 1633, 1638, 1655, 1662, 1674.
[219] From book ii. of the "Arcadia." It resembles the episode of Gloucester and his sons, and shows the old King of Paphlagonia dispossessed, become blind and led by his son Leonatus. See "Shakespeare's Library," ed. Collier and Hazlitt, London, 1875, 6 vol. 8vo, "King Lear."
[220] A philosophical and scientific poem by N. Baxter, dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, Lady Mary Wroth, &c., and published in 1606, 4to.
[221] "Theophania or severall modern histories, represented by way of Romance ... by an English person of quality," London, 1655, 4to.
[222] "The Ile of Guls, as it hath been often played in the blacke fryars by the children of the revels" (reprinted by Bullen, "Works of John Day," 1881, 4to.)
[223] "Works," ed. Dyce, vol. vi. All the main incidents of Sidney's novel are reproduced by Shirley except the quarrel with Cecropia, and as the romance might very well have ended where Sidney left it, the dramatist did not go further and did not use any of the continuations. See also "Zelmane," by W. Mountfort, 1705, "Parthenia, an Arcadian Drama," 1764, &c.
[224] It was published in 1622. The British Museum possesses editions of the years 1629, 1632, 1647, 1651, 1656, 1677, 1684, 1687, 1700, 1708, 1726. Grosart (Quarles' "Complete Works," 1876) mentions one more of the year 1630.
[225] London, 1621, fol. (a very curious engraved title).
[226] Pp. 39 and 519.
[227] Pp. 295, 298.
[228] In Jonson's "Masque of Blackness," 1605, Lady Mary Wroth played the part of Baryte, and Lady Rich, Sidney's Stella of many years before, personated Ocyte.
[229] "Spectator," April 12, 1711.
[230] "The Works of the honourable Sr Philip Sidney," London, 1725, 3 vols. 8vo.
[231] "Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia," modernized by Mrs. [D.] Stanley, London, 1725, fol. It is a very fine volume with wide margins. One of the "improvements" due to Mrs. Stanley, is the suppression of all the verses. She did so, she says, at the invitation of her subscribers. The list of them which prefaces the book contains many Leonoras, who even at this late period desired to have a copy of the "Arcadia" for "their own use." In our century an abbreviated edition of the same work was published by Mr. Hain Friswell, London, 1867, 8vo.
[232] "The Task," bk. iii. l. 514.
[233] Night iii. "Narcissa."
[234] "Ἑικονοκλαστες," "Prose Works," 1806, vol. ii. p. 408.
[235] Ed. of 1806, 5 vols., 8vo, "Life of Fulke Greville," vol. ii. p. 231.
[236] "The unfortunate lovers: the history of Argalus and Parthenia," London, 12mo. The date, 1700 (?), given for this edition in the British Museum catalogue, is obviously too early, as the publisher advertises at the beginning of this volume "Robinson Crusoe," "Jonathan Wild," &c. There were (not to mention earlier versions of "Argalus," e.g., one of 1691) other editions of (about) 1710, 1715, 1750, 1770, 1780, 1788, &c. These little books had sometimes very long descriptive titles, such as those Defoe has made us familiar with: "The famous history of heroick acts of the honour of chivalry, being an abstract of Pembrokes' 'Arcadia,' with many strange and wonderful adventures, the whole being a compleat series interwoven with the heroick actions of many valiant men, as kings, princes, and knights, of undoubted fame, whose matchless deeds, ..." &c., &c. London, 1701, 12mo, "Bound, 1s."
[237] Second day of the second Week, "Oeuvres," Paris, 1611, fol., p. 211. After Sidney, Du Bartas thus addresses the Queen:
"Claire perle du nort, guerrière domte-Mars,
Continue à chérir les muses et les arts,
Et si jamais ces vers peuvent, d'une aile agile,
Franchissant l'océan voler jusqu'à ton isle,
Et tomber, fortunez, entre ces blanches mains
Qui sous un juste frein régissent tant d'humains,
Voy les d'un œil bénin et, favorable, pense
Qu'il faut, pour te louer, avoir ton éloquence."
[238] "L'Arcadie de la Comtesse de Pembrok, mise en nostre langue," by J. Baudoin; Paris, 1624, three vol. 8vo. It contains fancy portraits of Sidney and of his sister. The second translation appeared at the bookseller's, Robert Fouet, in 1625, in the same size; it is ornamented with pretty engravings. Of its three parts the first was the work of "un brave gentilhomme," and the two others of Mdlle. Geneviève Chappelain. It is needless to observe that the great success of D'Urfé's "Astrée" had much to do with this zeal for translating Sidney's pastoral novel.
Baudoin, who died in 1650, was the translator of various other foreign works, among which part of the works of Bacon. Sir Kenelm Digby, whose fondness for romances was great, had in his library a copy of the "Arcadia" in French; this was Baudoin's translation, and it is one of the items of the catalogue drawn in view of the sale of his library ("Bibliotheca Digbeiana," London, 1680, 4to). There was, a little later, a translation in German: "Arcadia ... in unser Hochteutsche Sprach ... ubersetzt," by Theocritus von Hirschberg [i.e., Martin Opitz], Francfort, 1629, 4to.
"Par la bouche des bons esprits
Apollon vous tient à mespris
Troupe ignorance et trop hardie,
Car vous prophanez ses beaux dons
Et faites naistre des chardons
Au milieu de vostre Arcadie."
[240] And then it was spelt Chaksper, "La critique du théâtre anglois," translated from the English of Collier, Paris, 1715, 8vo. In the "Journal des Scavans" for the year 1710 it appears under the shape "Shakees Pear," p. 110.
[241] Thus speaks Clarimond in his harangue against romances: "L'Angleterre n'a pas manqué d'avoir aussi son Arcadie, laquelle ne nous a esté montrée que depuis peu par la traduction qui en a esté faite. Je ne trouve point d'ordre là dedans et il y a beaucoup de choses qui ne me peuvent satisfaire.... Il est vrai que Sidney, étant mort jeune, a pu laisser son ouvrage imparfait." In his defence of romances, Philiris answers: "Quant a l'Arcadie de Sidney, après avoir passé la mer pour nous venir voir, je suis marry que Clarimond la reçoive avec un si mauvais compliment. S'il n'entend rien aux amours de Strephon et de Clajus, il faut qu'il s'en prenne a luy, non pas a l'autheur qui a rendu son livre l'un des plus beaux du monde. Il y a des discours d'amour et des discours d'estat si excellens et si délectables que je ne me lasserois jamais de les lire" ("Le Berger extravagant, où, parmy des fantaisies amoureuses, l'on void les impertinences des romans et de la poesie," vol. iii., Paris, 1628, pp. 70 and 134). Sorel's work was translated into English: "The extravagant shepherd. The anti-romance, or the history of the shepherd Lysis," by John Davies, of Kidwelly; London, 1653, fol. The book has very curious plates; Davies in his preface is extremely hard upon Sidney, and heaps ridicule especially on the head of King Basilius. See infra, chap. vii.
[242] Fouquet, however, was very fond of foreign books; the catalogue (dated 1665) of his library, drawn up after his committal, shows that he had a fairly large number of English books. He was the earliest known French possessor of a Shakespeare. The catalogue, it is true, reveals the fact that he preserved it "in his garret":
| "Livres in folio qui se trouvent dans le grenier: | |
| Comédies de Jazon [i.e., Ben Jonson] en anglois, 2 vol., London, 1640 | 3l. |
| Idem, comédies angloises | 10s. |
| Shakespeares comédies angloises | 1l. |
| Fletcher commédies angloises | 1l." |
| (MS. 9,438 français, in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.) | |
The second in date of the French possessors of copies of Shakespeare was, strange to say, no less a person than the patron of Racine and Boileau, the Roi-Soleil himself. Looking over, some time ago, at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the original manuscript slips made in 1684 by the royal librarian, Nicolas Clément, for his catalogue of the books confided to his care, I found one inscribed: "Will. Shakspeare, poeta Anglicus. Opera poetica, continentia tragoedias, comoedias et historiolas, Anglice, Londres, Th. Cotes, 1632, fol." And to this, considering that he had to deal with a thoroughly unknown person, Clément was careful to add a note that people might be informed what was to be thought of the poet. This is (so far as now known) the earliest French allusion to Shakespeare: "Ce poète anglois a l'imagination assès belle, il pense naturellement; mais ces belles qualitez sont obscurcies par les ordures qu'il mêle dans ses comédies."
[243] Vol. xv. published in 1731.
[244] "Essai sur la pastorale," prefacing "Estelle."
