[P. 21], No. xviii.—This sonnet is the first among the commendatory poems prefixed to the original edition of The Fairy Queen. As original in conception as it is grand in execution, it is about the finest compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet, such as it became Raleigh to indite and Spenser to receive. Yet it labours under a serious defect. The great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because later poets are found worthy to share it. Petrarch in his lesser, and Homer in his greater sphere, are just as illustrious since Spenser appeared as before.
[P. 23], No. xx.—I have marked this poem as anonymous, the evidence which ascribes it to Sir Walter Raleigh being insufficient to prove him the author of it. It first appeared in England’s Helicon, 1600. In all known copies of this edition ‘Ignoto’ has been pasted over W. R., the original signature which the poem bore. This may have arisen from a discovery on the part of the editor that the poem was not Raleigh’s; but also may be explained by his unwillingness to have his authorship of it declared; so that there is here nothing decisive one way or the other. Other external evidence bearing on the question I believe there is none, except Izaak Walton’s assertion fifty-three years later (Complete Angler, 1653, p. 64) that it ‘was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.’ No doubt then there was a tradition to this effect; though ‘younger’ must not be pushed too far, as Raleigh was ten years older than Marlowe, to whose poem this is a reply. All that we can say is that there is no name in English literature so great, but that the authorship of these lines, if this could be ascertained, would be an additional honour to it.—l. 21-24: In the second edition of Walton’s Complete Angler, 1655, this stanza appears—I should say, for the first time, were not this fact brought into question by its nearly contemporaneous appearance in a broad-sheet (see Roxburgh Ballads, vol. i. p. 205) which seems by its type to belong, as those expert in such matters affirm, to the date 1650-55. The stanza there runs,
‘What should you talk of dainties then!
Of better meat than serveth men?
All that is vain; this only good,
Which God doth bless and send for food.’
While Walton may have made, it is also possible that he may have found ready made to his hand, this beautiful addition to the poem.
[P. 24], No. xxii.—Of this poem Dr. Guest (History of English Rhythms, vol. ii. p. 273) has said, ‘It appears to me extremely beautiful,’ a judgment from which none who are capable of recognizing poetry when they see it will dissent. It is found in Campion’s Observations on the Art of English Poesy, London, 1602. The purpose of the book is mainly to prove that rhyme is altogether an unnecessary appendage to English verse; that this does not require, and indeed is better without it. Had he offered to his readers many lyrics like this, he might have done much more than by all his arguments he has done to bring them to his opinion. As it is, the main value which the Observations possess consists in this exquisite lyric, and, mediately, in the admirable Apology for Rhyme on Daniel’s part which they called out.
Pp. [27], [28], No. xxv. xxvi.—Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnets may be ‘vain and amatorious,’ as Milton has called his prose romance of The Arcadia; but they possess grace, fancy, and a passion which makes itself felt even under the artificial forms of a Platonic philosophy. They are addressed to one, who, if the course of true love had run smooth, should have been his wife. When, however, through the misunderstanding of parents, or through some other cause, she had become the wife of another, Platonic as they are, they would far better have remained unwritten.
[P. 35], No. xli.—Pope somewhere speaks of ‘a very mediocre poet, one Drayton,’ and it will be remembered that when Goldsmith visited Poets’ Corner, seeing his monument he exclaimed, ‘Drayton, I never heard of him before.’ It must be confessed that Drayton, who wrote far too much, wrote often below himself, and has left not a little to justify the censure of the one, and to excuse the ignorance of the other. At the same time only a poet could describe the sun at his rising,