_8th Sonnet._
--Sweet pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
_2nd Sonnet._
--That sweet enemy,--France--
_5th Sonnet._
But they are not rich in words only, in vague and unlocalised
feelings--the failing too much of some poetry of the present day--they
are full, material, and circumstantiated. Time and place appropriates
every one of them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itself upon a
thin diet of dainty words, but a transcendent passion pervading and
illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats of arms, the opinions
of contemporaries and his judgment of them. An historical thread runs
through them, which almost affixes a date to them; marks the _when_
and _where_ they were written.
I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit of these poems,
because I have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I could treat it
by a gentler name) with which W.H. takes every occasion of insulting
the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. But the decisions of the Author of
Table Talk, &c., (most profound and subtle where they are, as for the
most part, just) are more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and
authors he has a partiality for, than on such as he has conceived
an accidental prejudice against. Milton wrote Sonnets, and was a
king-hater; and it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to
a patriot. But I was unwilling to lose a _fine idea_ from my mind.
The noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of
character, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite of some stiffness and
encumberment), justify to me the character which his contemporaries
have left us of the writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir
Philip Sydney was that _opprobrious thing_ which a foolish nobleman in
his insolent hostility chose to term him. I call to mind the epitaph
made on him, to guide me to juster thoughts of him; and I repose upon
the beautiful lines in the "Friend's Passion for his Astrophel,"
printed with the Elegies of Spenser and others.
You knew--who knew not Astrophel?
(That I should live to say I knew,
And have not in possession still!)--
Things known permit me to renew--
Of him you know his merit such,
I cannot say--you hear--too much.
Within these woods of Arcady
He chief delight and pleasure took;
And on the mountain Partheny.
Upon the crystal liquid brook,
The Muses met him every day,
That taught him sing, to write, and say.
When he descended down the mount,
His personage seemed most divine:
A thousand graces one might count
Upon his lovely chearful eyne.
To hear him speak, and sweetly smile,
You were in Paradise the while,
_A sweet attractive kind of grace;
A full assurance given by looks;
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel books--_
I trow that count'nance cannot lye,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.
* * * * *
Above all others this is he,
Which erst approved in his song,
That love and honour might agree,
And that pure love will do no wrong.
Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame
To love a man of virtuous name.
Did never Love so sweetly breathe
In any mortal breast before:
Did never Muse inspire beneath
A Poet's brain with finer store.
He wrote of Love with high conceit,
And beauty rear'd above her height.
Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running into rage) in
the Poem,--the last in the collection accompanying the above,--which
from internal testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's,--beginning with
"Silence augmenteth grief,"--and then seriously ask himself, whether
the subject of such absorbing and confounding regrets could have been
_that thing_ which Lord Oxford termed him.