perfect pleasures, which do grow
Amongst poore hyndes, in hils, in woods, in dales,
are not allowed to afford more than a temporary solace to the knight; the robbers break in upon the rustic quietude, rapine and murder succeed the peaceful occupations of the shepherds, and Sir Calidore is driven once again to resume his arduous quest. The same idea may be traced in the knight's visit to the heaven-haunted hill where he meets Colin Clout. In the
hundred naked maidens lilly white All raunged in a ring and dauncing in delight
to the sound of Colin's bagpipe, and who, together with the Graces and their sovereign lady, vanish at the knight's approach, it is surely not fanciful to see the gracious shadows of the idyllic poet's vision trooping reluctantly away at the call of a more lofty theme. With this sense of regret at the vanishing of an ideal long cherished, but at last deliberately abandoned for matters of deeper and more real import, we may turn from the work of the most important figure in English pastoral poetry to his less famous contemporaries.
III
Besides its wider influence on English verse, and the stimulus it gave to pastoral composition as a whole, the Shepherd's Calender called forth a series of direct imitations. Of these the majority are but of accidental and ephemeral interest and of inconspicuous merit; and it is probable that Spenser himself lived to see the end of this over-direct school of discipleship. Several examples appeared in Francis Davison's famous miscellany known as the Poetical Rhapsody, the first edition of which, though it only appeared in 1602, contained the gleanings of the entire sixteenth century.[[108]] Of these imitations, four in number, the first, the work of the editor himself, is a very poor production. It is a love lament, and the insertion of a song in a complicated lyrical measure in a plain stanzaic setting is evidently copied from the Calender. The other three poems are ascribed, either in the Rhapsody itself or in Davison's manuscript list, to a certain A. W., who so far remains unidentified, if, indeed, the letters conceal any individuality and do not merely stand for 'Anonymous Writer,' as has been sometimes thought. The three eclogues at any rate bear evidence of coming from the same pen, and the following lines show that the writer was no incompetent imitator, and at the same time argue some genuine feeling:
Thou 'ginst as erst forget thy former state,
And range amid the busks thyself to feed:
Fair fall thee, little flock! both rathe and late;
Was never lover's sheep that well did speed.
Thou free, I bound; thou glad, I pine in pain;
I strive to die, and thou to live full fain.
The first of these poems is a monologue 'entitled Cuddy,' modelled on the January eclogue. The second is a lament 'made long since upon the death of Sir Philip Sidney,' in which the writer wonders at Colin's silence, and which consequently must, at least, date from before the appearance of Astrophel in 1595, and is probably some years earlier. It is in the form of a dialogue between two shepherds, one of whom sings Cuddy's lament in lyrical stanzas, thus recalling Spenser's 'November.' These stanzas do not reveal any great metrical gift. The last poem is a fragment 'concerning old age,' which connects itself by its theme with the February eclogue, though the form is stanzaic.[[109]] Again we find mention of Cuddy, a name evidently assumed by the author, though whether he can be identified with the Cuddie of the Calender it is impossible to say. Whoever he was, he shows more disposition than most of his fellow imitators to preserve Spenser's archaisms.
But undoubtedly the greatest poet who was content to follow immediately in Spenser's footsteps was Michael Drayton, who in 1593 published a volume entitled 'Idea The Shepheards Garland, Fashioned in nine Eglogs. Rowlands Sacrifice to the nine Muses.' This connexion between the number of the eclogues and the muses is purely fanciful; Rowland is Drayton's pastoral name, and Idea, which re-appeared as the title of the 1594 volume of sonnets, is that of his poetic mistress.[[110]] It can hardly be said that the verse of these poems attains any very high order of merit, but the imitation of Spenser is evident throughout. In the first eclogue Rowland bewails, in the midst of spring, 'the winter of his grief.' In this and the corresponding monologue at the end he clearly follows Spenser's arrangement and likewise adopts his minor key--
Fayre Philomel, night-musicke of the spring,
Sweetly recordes her tunefull harmony,
And with deepe sobbes, and dolefull sorrowing,
Before fayre Cinthya actes her Tragedy.