Very spiritless, and tame, and old fashioned, will the other Rosalind appear by the side of this impetuous, relentless deity. A few perhaps will consider that her tame, kindly, old-fashioned, mythological piece of advice to the shepherdess, makes her the more lovable: "What, shepheardesse, so fayre and so cruell?... Because thou art beautifull, be not so coye: as there is nothing more faire, so there is nothing more fading, as momentary as the shadowes which growes from a cloudie sunne. Such, my faire shepheardesse, as disdaine in youth, desire in age, and then are they hated in the winter, that might have been loved in the prime. A wrinkled maid is like a parched rose, that is cast up in coffers to please the smell, not worn in the hand to content the eye. There is no folly in love to had-I-wist, and therefore, be rulde by me. Love while thou art young, least thou be disdained when thou art olde. Beautie nor time cannot bee recalde, and if thou love, like of Montanus; for if his desires are manie, so his deserts are great."[163] And it is indeed quite touching to see poor Montanus in the simplest lover fashion verify by his acts this description of himself; for while reduced to the last degree of despair, seeing the unconquerable love Phœbe entertains for the page, he beseeches Rosalind to save her by returning her love; sorrow will kill him any way, but he will die contented if he thinks that even through another's love Phœbe will live happy in her Arcadian vale.
I need not add that all these troubles end as happily as possible; the storms pass away and a many-coloured rainbow encompasses Arden, Arcady, and the kingdom of France; every lover becomes loved, the three couples get married, and while the music of the bridal fête is still in our ears, news is brought that "hard by, at the edge of this forest, the twelve peers of France are up in arms" to recover Gerismond's rights. They accomplish this feat in a twinkling, as French peers should; why they did not do it before does not appear: probably because the treble marriage would not have looked so pretty in Notre Dame as under the lemon trees. There is much bloodshed of course, but it is blood we do not care for, and we are allowed to part from our shepherd friends with the pleasing thought that they will see no end to their loves and happiness.
Such is "Euphues golden legacy," one of the best examples of the sort of novel that was being written at this period. It has all the characteristics of this kind of writing such as it had come to be understood at that date; prose is mixed with verse, and several of Lodge's best songs are included in "Rosalynde"; it is full of meditations and monologues like those with which the neo-classic drama of the French school has made us familiar.[164] In the more important places, in monologues, speeches and letters euphuistic style usually prevails;[165] the chronology and geography of the tale, its logic and probability, the grouping of events are of the loosest description; but it has moreover a freshness and sometimes a pathos which is more easily felt than expressed and of which the above quotations may have given some idea.
In "Rosalynde" we see Lodge at his best. Perhaps, remembering his threats, it is better not to try to see him at his worst; it will therefore be sufficient to add that, having published also satires and epistles imitated from Horace, eclogues, some other short stories or romances, a translation of the philosophical works of Seneca, two or three incoherent dramas (in one of which a whale comes on to the stage, and without any ceremony vomits forth the prophet Jonah),[166] Lodge changed his profession once again, abandoned the sword for the lancet, became a physician, gained a fortune, and died quietly a rich citizen in 1625.
He had thus lived beyond the period of Lyly's fame, of Greene's reputation, of Shakespeare's splendour, and saw, before he died, the beginnings of a new and very different era in which both the drama and the novel were to undergo, as we shall see, many and vast transformations.
scorpio.
FOOTNOTES:
[103] "Prose and Verse" by John Dickenson, ed. Grosart, Manchester, 1878, 4to. At a later date Dickenson took Greene for his model when he wrote his "Greene in conceipt new raised from his grave, to write the tragique history of the faire Valeria of London," 1598. In this Dickenson imitates Greene's descriptions of the life of the courtezans of London (Troy-novant). See infra, pp. 187 et seq.
[104] "The straunge and wonderfull Adventures of Don Simonides," London, 1581, 4to; in 1584 appeared "The second tome of the travailes ... of Don Simonides."