The sub-title of _Chloris_ arouses an expectation that is gratified in
the pastoral modishness of the sonnets. Corin sits under the "lofty
pines, co-partners of his woe," with oaten reed at his lips, and calls
on sylvans, lambkins and all Parnassans to testify to the beauty and
cruelty of Chloris. The attitude is a self-conscious one, yet the poem
reveals little of the personality of the author beyond the facts of
his youthfulness and of his devotion to "the most excellent and
learned Shepheard, Colin Cloute." It was in 1595, but one year before
the publication of _Chloris_, that Spenser had sung his own sonnets of
true love, and it is perhaps on this account that William Smith finds
him in a mood favourable to the defence of a young aspirant. At any
rate, the language of the dedication rings with something more than
mere desire for distinguished patronage. The youth looks with a
beautiful humility upward toward the greater but "dear and most entire
beloved" poet. His own sonnets, he says, are "of my study the budding
springs"; they are but "young-hatched orphan things." He nowhere
boasts that they will give immortal renown to the scornful beauty, but
modestly promises that if her cruel disdain does not ruin him, the
time shall come when he "more large" her "praises forth shall pen."
Chloris had once been favourable, as sonnet forty-eight distinctly
shows, but the cycle does not bring any happy conclusion to the story.
Corin is left weeping but faithful, and the picture of Chloris is
composed of such faint outlines only as the sonneteer's conventions
can delineate. Beyond this no certain information in regard to poet or
honoured lady has yet been unearthed.
For all its formality, however, the sonnet-cycle is not wanting in
touches of real feeling and lines of musical sweetness; the writer
shows considerable skill in the management of rime, and in structure
he adopts the form preferred by Shakespeare, whose "sugared sonnets"
may by this date have passed beneath his eye. The melodies piped by
other sonnet-shepherds re-echo with a great deal of distinctness in
Covin's strains; nevertheless he has himself taken a draught from the
true Elizabethan fount of lyric inspiration, and the nymph Chloris
with her heart-robbing eye well deserves a place on the snow-soft
downs where the sonneteering shepherds were wont to assemble.