One of the first to take up the new fashion of the sonnet-cycle, was
Thomas Lodge, whose "Phillis" was published in 1595. Lodge had a wide
acquaintance among the authors of his time, and was in the thick of the
literary activity in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. But
in spite of his interesting personality and genius, he has had to wait
until the present time for full appreciation. To his own age he may have
appeared as a literary dilettante, who tried his hand at several forms
of writing, and being outshone by the more excellent in each field, gave
up the attempt and turned to the practice of medicine. This profession
engaged him for the last twenty-five years of his life, until his death
in 1625 at the advanced age of sixty-seven or eight. During all these
years the gay young "university wit" of earlier days was probably
forgotten in the venerable and successful physician. It was as "old
Doctor Lodge" that he was satirised in a Cambridge student's
Common-place Book in 1611. Heywood mentions him in 1609 among the six
most famous physicians in England, and in the _Return from Parnassus_, a
play acted in 1602, he is described as "turning over Galen every day."
Yet no one had been in the last twenty years the sixteenth century more
responsive than Lodge to the shifting moods of that excitable period.
Lodge was the son of a Lord Mayor of London, and was a contemporary at
Oxford with Sidney, Gosson, Chapman, Lyly, Peele and Watson. His life
included a round of varied experiences. A student at Lincoln's Inn, a
young aspirant for literary honours, friends with Greene, Rich, Daniel,
Drayton, Lyly and Watson, a taster of the sorrows that many of the
University wits endured when usurers got their hands upon them, for a
time perhaps a soldier, certainly a sailor following the fortunes of
Captain Clarke to Terceras and the Canaries, and of Cavendish to Brazil
and the Straits of Magellan, in London again making plays with Greene,
off to Avignon to take his degree in medicine, back again to be
incorporated an M.D. at Oxford and to practise in London, adopting
secretly the Roman Catholic faith, and sometimes hiding on the continent
as a recusant from persecution at home, imprisoned perhaps once for
debt, and entertaining a concourse of patients of his own religion till
his death in 1625:--the life of Lodge thus presents a view of the ups
and downs possible in that picturesque age.
The wide variety of his literary ventures reflects the interests of his
life. Some controversial papers, some unsuccessful plays, two dull
historical sketches in prose, some satirical and moralising works in
prose and in verse, two romantic tales in verse and three in prose, a
number of eclogues, metrical epistles and lyrics, some ponderous
translations from Latin and French, and two medical treatises; these
widely differing kinds of writing are the products of Lodge's industry
and genius. All, however, have but an antiquarian interest save two; the
prose romance called _Rosalynde, Euphues' Golden Legacy_, could not be
spared since Shakespeare borrowed its charming plot for _As You Like
It_; and _Phillis_, bound up with a sheaf of his lyrics gathered from
the pages of his stories and from the miscellanies of the time, should
be treasured for its own sake and should keep Lodge's memory green for
lovers of pure poetry.
Lodge's lyric genius was a clear if slender rill. His faults are the
more unpardonable since they spring from sheer carelessness and a lack
of appreciation of the sacred responsibility of creative power. He took
up the literary fashion of the month and tried his hand at it; that
done, he was ready for the next mode. He did not wait to perfect his
work or to compare result with result; therefore he probably never found
himself, probably never realised that after three centuries he would be
esteemed, not for the ponderous tomes of his translation of Josephus,
not for all the catalogues of his satirical and religious and scientific
writings, but for mere lyrics like the "Heigh ho, fair Rosaline," and
"Love in my bosom like a bee," heedlessly imbedded in the heart of a
prose romance.
Lodge was one of the earliest to follow the example of Sidney in linking
a sequence of sonnets together into a sonnet-cycle. The _Astrophel and
Stella_ was published in 1591, though it had doubtless before this been
handed about, as was the Elizabethan fashion, in manuscript. Early in
1591 also when Daniel was probably abroad, twenty-seven of the
fifty-seven sonnets that a year later formed the sonnet-cycle _Delia_
were published in his absence. Now in August of 1591 Lodge set sail with
Cavendish on that long voyage to Brazil and the Straits of Magellan from
which he did not return till early in ninety-three, and it was during
his absence that Daniel's and Constable's sonnet-cycles came out. It is
possible that Lodge saw Daniel's series, as he doubtless did Sidney's,
in manuscript before he left England, but the Induction to _Phillis_,
which carries a message to Delia's "sweet prophet," was almost certainly
written later, and in the absence of further proof it seems no more than
fair to allow Lodge to share with Daniel and Constable the honour of
being the earliest to take the hint Sidney had offered.
On the whole, Lodge's sonnets show a much more cheerful and buoyant
temper than Daniel's "wailing verse." The "sad horror, pale grief,
prostrate despair" that inform the _Delia_, are replaced in the
_Phillis_ by a spirit of airy toying, a pleasure in the graces of fancy
even when they cluster around a feeling of sadness. During Lodge's
absence, his friend Robert Green published several pieces for him, and
in one of the prefaces promised the public to present on his return
"what labours Lodge's sea-studies afford." _Phillis_ was the chief of
these sea-studies, and was like _Rosalynde_ "hatcht in the stormes of
the ocean and feathered in the surges of many perillous seas." But as
far as the imagery of the sonnets is concerned, the pageantry of day and
night at sea might have passed before blinded eyes; if it made any
impression, it was in the form of ocean-nymphs and Cupid at the helm.
The poet was in Arcadia, Phillis was a shepherdess, and the conventional
imageries of the pastoral valley were the environment. "May it please
you," he says in dedicating the book to the Countess of Shrewsbury, "to
looke and like of homlie Phillis in her Country caroling, and to
countenance her poore and affectionate sheapheard." The Countess of
Shrewsbury he chooses for the "Sovereign and she-Mæcenas" of his toil,
and promises her "as much in affection as any other can performe in
perfection;" but the name of Phillis is no cover for the personality of
a grand lady, and therefore no puzzling questions disturb the pleasure
of the reader as the gentle modulations, the insidious alliterations,
and the musical cadences of his double rhymes fall upon the ear.
Yet for this name or ideal, or whatever Phillis represented in the
poet's thought, he has poured forth a passion that has an air of
sincerity, an artless freshness, a flute-like clearness of tone, as rare
as delightful. It is the very voice of the oaten pipe itself, thin,
clear, and pure. The touches of seriousness are impossible, to mistake.
When the poet avows his faith in Phillis' constancy, after giving the
usual catalogue of her beauties, he says:
"At thy fair hands who wonders not at all
Wonder itself through ignorance embases;
Yet not the less though wondrous gifts you call these
My faith is far more wonderful than all these."
When Phillis persists in her disdain, he cries out impulsively:
"Burst, burst, poor heart, thou hast no longer hope!"
Even when re-moulding the familiar pastoral conceits, he makes the
fancies his own and gives to them a unique touch and spirit. Mere
conventions he rates at their proper value. His pen shall not "riot in
pompous style." He claims a brighter aspect for his poetical devotion
than his fellow-sonneteers manifest:
"No stars her; eyes....
.... but beams that clear the sight
Of him that seeks the true philosophy."
In spite of its defects, the lax structure of the sonnet-form, the
obscurities and needless blurring, and the disappointing inequalities,
_Phillis_ takes a high place among the sonnet-cycles, and must ever be
dear to lovers of quiet, melodious verse, who have made themselves at
home in the golden world of the pastoral poets and mislike not the
country-carolling heard therein.