Spenser's Sonnets were printed with his Epithalamium. They are entered, in the year 1593, under this title to William Ponsonby, "Amoretti, and Epithalamium, written not long since by Edmond Spencer."[18] In a recommendatory sonnet prefixed, by G. W. senior, it appears that Spenser was now in Ireland. Considered under the idea which their title suggests, undoubtedly these pieces are too classical, abstracted, and even philosophical. But they have many strokes of imagination and invention, a strength of expression, and a stream of versification, not unworthy of the genius of the author of the Faerie Queene.[19] On the whole however, with the same metaphysical flame which Petrarch felt for the accomplished Laura, with more panegyric than passion, Spenser in his sonnets seldom appeals to the heart, and too frequently shews more of the poet and the scholar than of the lover. The following, may be selected in illustration of this opinion.
When those renowned noble peers of Greece,
Through stubborne pride among themselues did iar,
Forgetful of the famous golden fleece,
Then Orpheus with his harp their strife did bar.
But this continual, cruel, civil war,
The which myselfe against myselfe doe make,
Whilst my weake powres of passions warried arre,
No skill can stint, nor reason can aslake.
But when in hand my tunelesse harpe I take,
Then doe I more augment my foes despight,
And grief renew, and passion doe awake
To battaile fresh against myselfe to fight.
Mongst whom, the more I seeke to settle peace,
The more I find their malice to increase.[20]
But the following is in a more intelligible and easy strain, and has lent some of its graces to the storehouse of modern compliment. The thought on which the whole turns is, I believe, original, for I do not recollect it in the Italian poets.
Ye tradeful Merchants, that with weary toyle,
Doe seek most precious things, to make your gaine,
And both the Indias of their treasure spoile;
What needeth you to seeke so farre in vaine?
For lo, my Love doth in herselfe containe
All this worlds riches that may farre be found:
If saphyres, loe, her eyes be saphyres plaine;
If rubies, loe, her lips be rubies sound;
If pearles, her teeth be pearles both pure & round;
If iuorie, her forehead iuorie were [wene];
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
If siluer, her faire hands are siluer sheene:
But that which fairest is, but few behold,
Her mind adornd with vertues manifold.[21]
The last couplet is platonic, but deduced with great address and elegance from the leading idea, which Gay has apparently borrowed in his beautiful ballad of Black-eyed Susan.
Among the sonnet-writers of this period, next to Spenser I place Shakespeare. Perhaps in brilliancy of imagery, quickness of thought, variety and fertility of allusion, and particularly in touches of pastoral painting, Shakespeare is superiour. But he is more incorrect, indigested, and redundant: and if Spenser has too much learning, Shakespeare has too much conceit. It may be necessary however to read the first one hundred & twenty six sonnets of our divine dramatist as written by a lady:[22] for they are addressed with great fervency yet delicacy of passion, and with more of fondness than friendship, to a beautiful youth.[23] Only twenty six, the last bearing but a small proportion to the whole number, and too manifestly of a subordinate cast, have a female for their object. But under the palliative I have suggested, many descriptions or illustrations of juvenile beauty, pathetic endearments, and sentimental declarations of hope or disappointment, which occur in the former part of this collection, will lose their impropriety and give pleasure without disgust. The following, a few lines omitted, is unperplexed and elegant.
How like a winter has my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness every where!
And yet this time, remov'd,[24] was summer's time;
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, &c.
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a chear,
That leaues look pale, dreading the winter's near.[25]
In the next, he pursues the same argument in the same strain.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim,
Has put a sprite of youth in euery thing;
That heauy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion of the rose:
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after thee, thou pattern of all those![26]
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play.[27]
Here are strong marks of Shakespeare's hand and manner. In the next, he continues his play with the flowers. He chides the forward violet, a sweet thief, for stealing the fragrance of the boy's breath, and for having died his veins with too rich a purple. The lilly is condemned for presuming to emulate the whiteness of his hand, and buds of marjoram for stealing the ringlets of his hair. Our lover is then seduced into some violent fictions of the same kind; and after much ingenious absurdity concludes more rationally,