“Ye dainty nymphs that in this blessed brook.”
It is enough to say that he succeeds in stripping all three of every rag of poetry. A translation of Fabricius’[[253]] prose syllabus of Horace’s rules, gathered not merely out of the Ep. ad Pisones but elsewhere, and an “epilogue,” modest as to himself, sanguine as to what will happen when “the rabble of bald rhymes is turned to famous works,” concludes the piece.
in appreciation.
On the whole, to use the hackneyed old phrase once more, we could have better spared a better critic than Webbe, who gives us—in a fashion invaluable to map-makers of the early exploration of English criticism—the workings of a mind furnished with no original genius for poetry, and not much for literature, not very extensively or accurately erudite, but intensely interested in matters literary, and especially in matters poetical, generously enthusiastic for such good things as were presented to it, not without some mother-wit even in its crazes, and encouraged in those crazes not, as in Harvey’s case, by vanity, pedantry, and bad taste, but by its very love of letters. Average dispositions of this kind were, as a rule, diverted either into active life—very much for the good of the nation—or—not at all for its good—into the acrid disputes of hot-gospelling and Puritanism. Webbe, to the best of his modest powers, was a devotee of literature: for which let him have due honour.
Puttenham—or whosoever else it was, if it was not Puttenham[[254]]—has some points of advantage, and one great one of disadvantage, in comparison with Webbe. Puttenham’s (?) Art of English Poesie. In poetical faculty there is very little to choose between them—the abundant specimens of his own powers, which the author or The Art of English Poesie gives (and which are eked out by a late copy of one of the works referred to, Partheniades), deserve the gibes they receive in one of our scanty early notices of the book, that by Sir John Harington (v. infra). On the other hand, Puttenham has very little of that engaging enthusiasm which atones for so much in his contemporary. But this very want of enthusiasm somewhat prepares us for, though it need not necessarily accompany, merits which we do not find in Webbe, considered as a critic. The Art of English Poesy, which, as has been said, appeared in 1589, three years later than Webbe’s, but which, from some allusions, may have been written, or at least begun, before it, and which, from other allusions, must have been the work of a man well advanced in middle life, is methodically composed, very capable in range and plan, and supported with a by no means contemptible erudition, and no inconsiderable supply of judgment and common-sense. It was unfortunate for Puttenham that he was just a little too old: that having been—as from a fairly precise statement of his he must have been—born cir. 1530-35, he belonged to the early and uncertain generation of Elizabethan men of letters, the Googes and Turbervilles, and Gascoignes, not to the generation of Sidney and Spenser, much less to that of Shakespeare and Jonson. But what he had he gave: and it is far from valueless.
The book is “to-deled” (as the author of the Ancren Riwle would say) into three books—“Of Poets and Poesie,” “Of Proportion,” and “Of Ornament.” Its erudition. It begins, as usual, with observations on the words poet and maker, references to the ancients, &c.; but this exordium, which is fitly written in a plain but useful and agreeable style, is commendably short. The writer lays it down, with reasons, that there may be an Art of English as of Latin and Greek poetry; but cannot refrain from the same sort of “writing at large” as to poets being the first philosophers, &c., which we have so often seen.[[255]] Indeed we must lay our account with the almost certain fact that all writers of this period had seen Sidney’s Defence at least in MS. or had heard of it. He comes closer to business with his remarks on the irreption of rhyme into Greek and Latin poetry; and shows a better knowledge of leonine and other mediæval Latin verse, not merely than Webbe, but even than Ascham. A very long section then deals with the question—all-interesting to a man of the Renaissance—in what reputation poets were with princes of old, and how they be now contemptible (wherein Puttenham shows a rather remarkable acquaintance with modern European literature), and then turns to the subject or matter of poesy and the forms thereof, handling the latter at great length, and with a fair sprinkle of literary anecdote. At last he comes to English poetry; and though, as we might expect, he does not go behind the late fourteenth century, he shows rather more knowledge than Webbe and (not without slips here and elsewhere) far more comparative judgment. It must, however, be admitted that, engaging as is his description of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate,” he does not show to advantage in the patronising glance in passing at “that other gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd’s Calendar,” contrasted with the description of the Queen our Sovereign lady, “whose Muse easily surmounteth all the rest in any kind on which it may please her Majesty to employ her pen.” But here the allowance comes in: the stoutest Tory of later days can never wholly share, though he may remotely comprehend, the curious mixture of religious, romantic, patriotic, amatory, and interested feelings with which the men of the sixteenth century wrote about Gloriana.
The second book deals with Proportion, in which word Puttenham includes almost everything belonging to Prosody in its widest sense—staff, stanza, measure, metres, and feet, “cæsure,” rhyme, accent, cadence, situation (by which he means the arrangement of the rhymes), and proportion in figure. Systematic arrangement On most of these heads he speaks more or less in accordance with his fellows (though he very noticeably abstains from extreme commendation or condemnation of rhyme), save that, for the moment, he seems to neglect the “new versifying.” It is, however, but for a moment. After his chapters on “proportion” in figure (the fanciful egg, wheel, lozenge, &c., which he himself argues for, and which were to make critics of the Addisonian type half-angry and half-sad), he deals with the subject.
About this “new versifying” he is evidently in two minds. He had glanced at it before (and refers to the glance now)[[256]] as “a nice and scholastic curiosity.” However, “for the information of our young makers, and pleasure to those who be delighted in novelty, and to the intent that we may not seem by ignorance or oversight to omit,”[[257]] he “will now deal with it.” Which he does at great length; and, at any rate sometimes, with a clearer perception of the prosodic values than any other, even Spenser, had yet shown. But he does not seem quite at home in the matter, and glides off to a discussion of feet—classical feet—in the usual rhymed English verse.
The third book is longer than the first and second put together, and is evidently that in which the author himself took most pleasure. and exuberant indulgence in Figures. It is called “Of Ornament,” but practically deals with the whole question of lexis or style, so that it is at least common to Rhetoric and Poetics. In one respect, too, it belongs more specially to the former, in that it contains the most elaborate treatment of rhetorical figures to be found, up to its time, in English literature. Full eighty pages are occupied with the catalogue of these “Figures Auricular” wherein Puttenham (sometimes rather badly served by his pen or his printer) ransacks the Greek rhetoricians, and compiles a list (with explanations and examples) of over one hundred and twenty. It is preceded and followed by more general remarks, of which some account must be given.
Beginning with an exordial defence of ornament in general, Puttenham proceeds to argue that set speeches, as in Parliament, not merely may but ought to be couched in something more than a conversational style. This added grace must be given by (1) Language, (2) Style, (3) Figures. On diction he has remarks both shrewd and interesting, strongly commending the language of the Court and of the best citizens, not provincial speech, or that of seaports, or of universities, or in other ways merely technical. “The usual speech of the Court and that of London and the shires lying about London, within ten miles and not much above” is his norm. There is also a noteworthy and very early reference to English dictionaries, and a cautious section on neologisms introduced from other tongues to fill wants. Style he will have reached by “a constant and continual tenor of writing,” and gives the usual subdivision of high, low, and middle. And so to his Figures.