The narrative of “The Arcadia” is peculiar; but if the reader’s fortitude can yield up his own fancy to the feudal poet, he will find the tales diversified. Sidney had traced the vestiges of feudal warfare in Germany, in Italy, and in France; those wars of petty states where the walled city was oftener carried by stratagem than by storm, and where the chivalrous heroes, like champions, stepped forth to challenge each other in single combat, almost as often as they were viewed as generals at the head of their armies. Our poet’s battles have all the fierceness and the hurry of action, as if told by one who had stood in the midst of the battle-field; and in his “shipwreck,” men fight with the waves, ere they are flung on the shore, as if the observer had sat on the summit of a cliff watching them.
He describes objects on which he loves to dwell with a peculiar richness of fancy; he had shivered his lance in the tilt, and had managed the fiery courser in his career; that noble animal was a frequent object of his favourite descriptions; he looks even on the curious and fanciful ornaments of its caparisons; and in the vivid picture of the shock between two knights, we see distinctly every motion of the horse and the horseman.[4] But sweet is his loitering hour in the sunshine of luxuriant gardens, or as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes of the forests which most he loves. His poetic eye was pictorial; and the delineations of objects, both in art and nature, might be transferred to the canvas.
There is a feminine delicacy in whatever alludes to the female character, not merely courtly, but imbued with that sensibility which St. Palaye has remarkably described as “full of refinement and fanaticism.” And this may suggest an idea not improbable, that Shakespeare drew his fine conceptions of the female character from Sidney. Shakespeare solely, of all our elder dramatists, has given true beauty to woman; and Shakespeare was an attentive reader of “The Arcadia.” There is something, indeed, in the language and the conduct of Musidorus and Pyrocles, two knights, which may startle the reader, and may be condemned as very unnatural and most affected. Their friendship resembles the love which is felt for the beautiful sex, if we were to decide by their impassioned conduct and the tenderness of their language. Coleridge observed that the language of these two friends in “The Arcadia” is such as we would not now use, except to women; and he has thrown out some very remarkable observations.[5] Warton, too, has observed, that the style of friendship between males in the reign of Elizabeth would not be tolerated in the present day; sets of sonnets, in a vein of tenderness which now could only express the most ardent affection for a mistress, were then prevalent.[6] They have not accounted for this anomaly in manners by merely discovering them in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. It is unquestionably a remains of the ancient chivalry, when men, embarking in the same perilous enterprise together, vowed their mutual aid and their personal devotion. The dangers of one knight were to be participated, and his honour to be maintained, by his brother-in-arms. Such exalted friendships, and such interminable affections, often broke out both in deeds and words which, to the tempered intercourse of our day, offend by their intensity. A male friend, whose life and fortune were consecrated to another male, who looks on him with adoration, and who talks of him with excessive tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical and monstrous lover! It is certain, however, that in the age of chivalry, a Damon and Pythias were no uncommon characters in that brotherhood.
It is the imperishable diction, the language of Shakespeare, before Shakespeare wrote, which diffuses its enchantment over “The Arcadia;” and it is for this that it should be studied; and the true critic of Sidney, because the critic was a true poet, offers his unquestioned testimony in Cowper—
| Sidney, warbler of poetic prose! |
Even those playful turns of words, caught from Italian models, which are usually condemned, conceal some subtility of feeling, or rise in a pregnant thought.[7] The intellectual character of Sidney is more serious than volatile; the habits of his mind were too elegant and thoughtful to sport with the low comic; and one of the defects of “The Arcadia” is the attempt at burlesque humour in a clownish family. Whoever is not susceptible of great delight in the freshness of the scenery, the luxuriant imagery, the graceful fancies, and the stately periods of “The Arcadia,” must look to a higher source than criticism, to acquire a sense which nature and study seem to deny him.
I have dwelt on the finer qualities of “The Arcadia;” whenever the volume proves tedious, the remedy is in the reader’s own hands, provided he has the judgment often to return to a treasure he ought never to lose.
It is indeed hardly to be hoped that the volatile loungers over our duodecimos of fiction can sympathise with manners, incidents, and personages which for them are purely ideal—the truth of nature which lies under the veil must escape from their eyes; for how are they to grow patient over the interminable pages of a folio, unbroken by chapters, without a single resting-place?[8] And I fear they will not allow for that formal complimentary style, borrowed from the Italians and the Spaniards, which is sufficiently ludicrous.
The narrative too is obstructed by verses, in which Sidney never obtained facility or grace. Nor will the defects of the author be always compensated by his beauties, for “The Arcadia” was indeed a fervent effusion, but an uncorrected work. The author declared that it was not to be submitted to severer eyes than those of his beloved sister, “being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in her presence, the rest by sheets sent as fast as they were done.” The writer, too, confesses, to “a young head having many fancies begotten in it, which, if it had not been in some way delivered, would have grown a monster, and more sorry might I be that they came in, than they gat out.” So truly has Sidney expressed the fever of genius, when working on itself in darkness and in doubt—absorbing reveries, tumultuous thoughts, the ceaseless inquietudes of a soul which has not yet found a voice. Even on his death-bed, the author of “The Arcadia” desired its suppression; but the fame her noble brother could contemn was dear to his sister, who published these loose papers without involving the responsibility of the writer, affectionately calling the work, “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia;” and this volume of melodious prose, of visionary heroism, and the pensive sweetness of loves and friendships, became the delight of poets.
There is one more work of Sidney, perhaps more generally known than “The Arcadia”—his “Defence of Poetry.” Lord Orford sarcastically apologised, in the second edition of his “Royal and Noble Authors,” for his omission of any notice of this production. “I had forgotten it,” he says; and he adds, “a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired.” It was a more daring offence to depreciate this work of love, than the romance which at least lay farther removed from the public eye. The “Defence of Poetry” has had, since the days of Walpole, several editions by eminent critics. Sidney, in this luminous criticism, and effusion of poetic feeling, has introduced the principal precepts of Aristotle, touched by the fire and sentiment of Longinus; and, for the first time in English literature, has exhibited the beatitude of criticism in a poet-critic.