_To Mr. Gifted Hopkins_.
Dear Gifted,--If you will permit me to use your Christian, and prophetic,
name--we improved the occasion lately with the writers of light verse in
ancient times. We decided that the ancients were not great in verses of
society, because they had, properly speaking, no society to write verses
for. Women did not live in the Christian freedom and social equality
with men, either in Greece or Rome--at least not "modest women," as Mr.
Harry Foker calls them in "Pendennis." About the others there is plenty
of pretty verse in the Anthology. What you need for verses of society is
a period in which the social equality is recognized, and in which people
are peaceable enough and comfortable enough to "play with light loves in
the portal" of the Temple of Hymen, without any very definite intentions,
on either part, of going inside and getting married.
Perhaps we should not expect _vers de societe_ from the Crusaders, who
were not peaceable, and who were very earnest indeed, in love or war. But
as soon as you get a Court, and Court life, in France, even though the
times were warlike, then ladies are lauded in artful strains, and the
lyre is struck _leviore plectro_. Charles d'Orleans, that captive and
captivating prince, wrote thousands of _rondeaux_; even before his time a
gallant company of gentlemen composed the _Livre des Cent Ballades_, one
hundred _ballades_, practically unreadable by modern men. Then came
Clement Marot, with his gay and rather empty fluency, and Ronsard, with
his mythological compliments, his sonnets, decked with roses, and led
like lambs to the altar of Helen or Cassandra. A few, here and there, of
his pieces are lighter, more pleasant, and, in a quiet way, immortal,
such as the verses to his "fair flower of Anjou," a beauty of fifteen. So
they ran on, in France, till Voiture's time, and Sarrazin's with his
merry _ballade_ of an elopement, and Corneille's proud and graceful
stanzas to Marquise de Gorla.
But verses in the English tongue are more worthy of our attention. Mr.
Locker begins his collection of them, _Lyra Elegantiarum_ (no longer a
very rare book in England), as far back as Skelton's age, and as Thomas
Wyat's, and Sidney's; but those things, the lighter lyrics of that day,
are rather songs than poems, and probably were all meant to be sung to
the virginals by our musical ancestors.
"Drink to me only with thine eyes," says the great Ben Jonson, or sings
it rather. The words, that he versified out of the Greek prose of
Philostratus, cannot be thought of without the tune. It is the same with
Carew's "He that loves a rosy cheek," or with "Roses, their sharp spines
being gone." The lighter poetry of Carew's day is all powdered with gold
dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is crowned and diapered with
roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest.
Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs, as in
that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in
Eisen's vignettes for Dorat's _Baisers_:
"Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love did Heaven prepare
These powders to enrich your hair."
It would be affectation, Gifted, if _you_ rhymed in that fashion for the
lady of your love, and presented her, as it were, with cosmical
cosmetics, and compliments drawn from the starry spaces and deserts, from
skies, phoenixes, and angels. But it was a natural and pretty way of
writing when Thomas Carew was young. I prefer Herrick the inexhaustible
in dainties; Herrick, that parson-pagan, with the soul of a Greek of the
Anthology, and a cure of souls (Heaven help them!) in Devonshire. His
Julia is the least mortal of these "daughters of dreams and of stories,"
whom poets celebrate; she has a certain opulence of flesh and blood, a
cheek like a damask rose, and "rich eyes," like Keats's lady; no vaporous
Beatrice, she; but a handsome English wench, with
"A cuff neglectful and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note
In the tempestuous petticoat."
Then Suckling strikes up a reckless military air; a warrior he is who has
seen many a siege of hearts--hearts that capitulated, or held out like
Troy-town, and the impatient assailant whistles:
"Quit, quit, for shame: this will not move,
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her--
The devil take her."
So he rides away, curling his moustache, hiding his defeat in a big
inimitable swagger. It is a pleasanter piece in which Suckling, after a
long leaguer of a lady's heart, finds that Captain honour is governor of
the place, and surrender hopeless. So he departs with a salute:
"March, march (quoth I), the word straight give,
Let's lose no time but leave her:
That giant upon air will live,
And hold it out for ever."
Lovelace is even a better type in his rare good things of the military
amorist and poet. What apology of Lauzun's, or Bussy Rabutin's for
faithlessness could equal this?--
"Why dost thou say I am forsworn,
Since thine I vowed to be?
Lady, it is already morn;
It was last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility."