Were I another Baillet, solely occupied in collecting the "_jugemens des
scavans_"--the decisions of the learned--the name of Sir Philip Sidney
would bring forth an awful crash of criticism, rarely equalled in
dissonance and confusion.
He who first ventured to pronounce a final condemnation on "THE ARCADIA"
of Sir PHILIP SIDNEY as a "tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral
romance," was Horace Walpole;--a decision suited to the heartlessness
which wounded the personal qualities of an heroic man, the pride of a
proud age. Have modern critics too often caught the watchword when given
out by an imposing character? The irregular Hazlitt honestly confides to
us, in an agony of despair, that "Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom
I cannot acquire a taste," tormented by a conviction that a taste should
be acquired. The peculiar style of this critic is at once sparkling and
vehement, antithetical and metaphysical. The volcano of his criticism
heaves; the short, irruptive periods clash with quick repercussion; the
lava flows over his pages, till it leaves us in the sudden darkness of
an hypercriticism on "the celebrated description of the 'Arcadia.'"
Gifford, once the Coryphaeus of modern criticism, whose native shrewdness
admirably fitted him for a partisan, both in politics and in literature,
did not deem Walpole's depreciation of Sidney "to be without a certain
degree of justice; the plan is poor, the incidents trite, the style
pedantic." But our prudential critic harbours himself in some security
by confessing to "some nervous and elegant passages."
At our northern Athens, the native coldness has touched the leaves of
"The Arcadia" like a frost in spring. The agreeable researcher into the
history of fiction confesses the graceful beauty of the language, but
considers the whole as "extremely tiresome." Another critic states a
more alarming paroxysm of criticism, that of being "lulled to sleep over
the interminable 'Arcadia.'"
What innocent lover of books does not imagine that "The Arcadia" of
Sidney is a volume deserted by every reader, and only to be classed
among the folio romances of the Scuderies, or the unmeaning pastorals
whose scenes are placed in the golden age? But such is not the fact.
"Nobody, it is said, reads 'The Arcadia;' we have known very many
persons who read it, men, women, and children, and never knew one read
it without deep interest and admiration," exclaims an animated critic,
probably the poet Southey.[1] More recent votaries have approached the
altar of this creation of romance.
It may be well to remind the reader that, although this volume, in the
revolutions of times and tastes, has had the fate to be depreciated by
modern critics, it has passed through fourteen editions, suffered
translations in every European language, and is not yet sunk among the
refuse of the bibliopolists. "The Arcadia" was long, and it may still
remain, the haunt of the poetical tribe. SIDNEY was one of those writers
whom Shakespeare not only studied but imitated in his scenes, copied his
language, and transferred his ideas.[2] SHIRLEY, BEAUMONT and FLETCHER,
and our early dramatists turned to "THE ARCADIA" as their text-book.
Sidney enchanted two later brothers in WALLER and COWLEY; and the
dispassionate Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE was so struck by "The Arcadia," that he
found "the true spirit of the vein of ancient poetry in Sidney." The
world of fashion in Sidney's age culled their phrases out of "The
Arcadia," which served them as a complete "Academy of Compliments."
The reader who concludes that "The Arcadia" of Sidney is a pedantic
pastoral, has received a very erroneous conception of the work. It was
unfortunate for Sidney that he borrowed the title of "The Arcadia" from
Sannazaro, which has caused his work to be classed among pastoral
romances, which it nowise resembles; the pastoral part stands wholly
separated from the romance itself, and is only found in an interlude of
shepherds at the close of each book; dancing brawls, or reciting verses,
they are not agents in the fiction. The censure of pedantry ought to
have been restricted to the attempt of applying the Roman prosody to
English versification, the momentary folly of the day, and to some other
fancies of putting verse to the torture.
"The Arcadia" was not one of those spurious fictions invented at random,
where an author has little personal concern in the narrative he forms.
When we forget the singularity of the fable, and the masquerade dresses
of the actors, we pronounce them to be real personages, and that the
dramatic style distinctly conveys to us incidents which, however veiled,
had occurred to the poet's own observation, as we perceive that the
scenes which he has painted with such precision must have been
localities. The characters are minutely analyzed, and so correctly
preserved, that their interior emotions are painted forth in their
gestures as well as revealed in their language. The author was himself
the tender lover whose amorous griefs he touched with such delicacy, and
the undoubted child of chivalry he drew; and in these finer passions he
seems only to have multiplied himself.
The manners of the court of Elizabeth were still chivalric; and Sidney
was trained in the discipline of those generous spirits whom he has
nobly described as men of "high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of
courtesy." Hume has censured these "affectations, conceits, and
fopperies," as well became the philosopher of the Canongate; but there
was a reality in this shadow of chivalry. Amadis de Gaul himself never
surpassed the chivalrous achievements of the Earl of Essex; his life,
indeed, would form the finest of romances, could it be written. He
challenged the governor of Corunna to single combat for the honour of
the nation, and proposed to encounter Villars, governor of Rouen, on
foot or on horseback. And thus run his challenge:--"I will maintain the
justice of the cause of Henry the Fourth of France, against the league;
and that I am a better man than thou, and that my mistress is more
beautiful than thine." This was the very language and the deed of one of
the Paladins. It was this spirit, fantastic as it may appear to us,
which stirred Sidney, when Parsons the Jesuit, or some one who lay
concealed in a dark corner of the court, sent forth anonymously the
famous state-libel of "Leicester's Commonwealth." To the unknown
libeller who had reflected on the origin of the Dudleys, that "the Duke
of Northumberland was not born a gentleman," Sir Philip Sidney, in the
loftiest tone of chivalry, designed to send a cartel of defiance.
Touched to the quick in any blur in the _Stemmata Dudleiana_, which, it
is said, occupied the poet Spenser when under the princely roof of
Leicester, Sidney exclaims, "I am a Dudley in blood, that Duke's
daughter's son; my chief honour is to be a Dudley, and truly am I glad
to have cause to set forth the nobility of that blood; none but this
fellow of invincible shamelessness could ever have called so palpable a
matter in question." He closed with the intention of printing at London
a challenge which he designed all Europe to witness. "Because that thou
the writer hereof doth most falsely lay want of gentry to my dead
ancestors, I say that thou therein liest in thy throat, which I will be
ready to justify upon thee in any place of Europe where thou wilt assign
me a free place of coming, as within three months after the publishing
thereof I may understand thy mind. And this which I write, I would send
to thine own hands if I knew thee; but I trust it cannot be intended
that he should be ignorant of this printed in London, who knows the very
whisperings of the Privy-chamber."[3]
We, who are otherwise accustomed to anonymous libels, may be apt to
conclude that there was something fantastical in sending forth a
challenge through all Europe:--we, who are content with the obscure
rencontre of a morning, and with the lucky chance of an exchange of
shots.
The narrative of "The Arcadia" is peculiar; but if the reader's
fortitude can yield up his own fancy to the feudal poet, he will find
the tales diversified. Sidney had traced the vestiges of feudal warfare
in Germany, in Italy, and in France; those wars of petty states where
the walled city was oftener carried by stratagem than by storm, and
where the chivalrous heroes, like champions, stepped forth to challenge
each other in single combat, almost as often as they were viewed as
generals at the head of their armies. Our poet's battles have all the
fierceness and the hurry of action, as if told by one who had stood in
the midst of the battle-field; and in his "shipwreck," men fight with
the waves, ere they are flung on the shore, as if the observer had sat
on the summit of a cliff watching them.
He describes objects on which he loves to dwell with a peculiar richness
of fancy; he had shivered his lance in the tilt, and had managed the
fiery courser in his career; that noble animal was a frequent object of
his favourite descriptions; he looks even on the curious and fanciful
ornaments of its caparisons; and in the vivid picture of the shock
between two knights, we see distinctly every motion of the horse and the
horseman.[4] But sweet is his loitering hour in the sunshine of
luxuriant gardens, or as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes of the
forests which most he loves. His poetic eye was pictorial; and the
delineations of objects, both in art and nature, might be transferred to
the canvas.
There is a feminine delicacy in whatever alludes to the female
character, not merely courtly, but imbued with that sensibility which
St. Palaye has remarkably described as "full of refinement and
fanaticism." And this may suggest an idea not improbable, that
Shakespeare drew his fine conceptions of the female character from
Sidney. Shakespeare solely, of all our elder dramatists, has given true
beauty to woman; and Shakespeare was an attentive reader of "The
Arcadia." There is something, indeed, in the language and the conduct of
Musidorus and Pyrocles, two knights, which may startle the reader, and
may be condemned as very unnatural and most affected. Their friendship
resembles the love which is felt for the beautiful sex, if we were to
decide by their impassioned conduct and the tenderness of their
language. Coleridge observed that the language of these two friends in
"The Arcadia" is such as we would not now use, except to women; and he
has thrown out some very remarkable observations.[5] Warton, too, has
observed, that the style of friendship between males in the reign of
Elizabeth would not be tolerated in the present day; sets of sonnets, in
a vein of tenderness which now could only express the most ardent
affection for a mistress, were then prevalent.[6] They have not
accounted for this anomaly in manners by merely discovering them in the
reigns of Elizabeth and James. It is unquestionably a remains of the
ancient chivalry, when men, embarking in the same perilous enterprise
together, vowed their mutual aid and their personal devotion. The
dangers of one knight were to be participated, and his honour to be
maintained, by his brother-in-arms. Such exalted friendships, and such
interminable affections, often broke out both in deeds and words which,
to the tempered intercourse of our day, offend by their intensity. A
male friend, whose life and fortune were consecrated to another male,
who looks on him with adoration, and who talks of him with excessive
tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical and monstrous
lover! It is certain, however, that in the age of chivalry, a Damon and
Pythias were no uncommon characters in that brotherhood.
It is the imperishable diction, the language of Shakespeare, before
Shakespeare wrote, which diffuses its enchantment over "The Arcadia;"
and it is for this that it should be studied; and the true critic of
Sidney, because the critic was a true poet, offers his unquestioned
testimony in Cowper--