FROM THE TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL'S ÆNEID. THE SPEECH OF ÆNEAS.1 They whisted2 all, with fixèd face attent,3 Thus gan to speak : O Queen! it is thy will I should renew a woe cannot be told; How that the Greeks did spoil and overthrow 4 And lo! moist night now from the welkin falls, Book II.5 1 This passage is quoted, not so much for its poetical merit as because it was perhaps the first piece of English blank verse written and heard in our language. Surrey did not invent blank verse; he transplanted it from the writings of other poets, of Italy and Spain; and it was at once adopted by our dramatic and narrative writers. In order rightly to appreciate the boon which blank verse was to English poetry, it is but necessary to read the translation by Gavin Douglas in 1512 of this same passage. They ceased all at ance incontinent, With mouthès close and visage takand tent. Begouth, and said :-"Thy desire, lady, is To shaw how Greeks did spuilyè and destroy The great riches and lamentable realm of Troy." Douglas's homely Scotch dialect helped to make the rhymed heroic couplet less heroic than it naturally was. But no literary skill could have made this kind of verse do the work of translation so well as the freer and more sonorous measure introduced by Surrey. It is also interesting to observe how instantaneously blank verse adapted itself to the dramatic mood. When Æneas commences with "O Queen! it is thy will I should renew a woe cannot be told," we seem to hear the first proud chord of a strain which Shakespeare and Milton afterwards made their own. 2 Listened. 3 Attentive. 4 Hired. 5 Surrey translated only two Books of the Æneid, the second and fourth. A contemporary Italian poet, named Molza, had translated the same two into Italian blank verse, and this probably suggested the task to Surrey; but there are passages in Surrey's translation which seem to show that he was acquainted also with the Æneid of Douglas. NICHOLAS GRIMALD. (1519?-1563.) AN important fact in the literary history of the period immediately succeeding that of Wyatt and Surrey, and preceding that of Spenser and the later Elizabethans, was the publication, in 1557, of a little work known to us as Tottel's Miscellany. Its original title was as follows :— Songes and Sonnettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward, late Earle of Surrey, and other. Apud Richardum Tottel. 1557. Cum privilegio. This little book is, in its way, of consummate interest. Dug up from a dusty oblivion and reproduced in its genuine quaintness among the English Reprints of Mr. Arber, it appears like a landmark dividing the poetry of the early Tudors from that of Elizabeth's reign. Hitherto the process of publication in a printed form had been by no means a necessary completion of the act of composing a poem or a series of poems. To publish one's own productions, especially with one's name prefixed, appears to have been regarded in the early days of Elizabeth as an act demanding some courage, nay bold-facedness; and poets, long after printing was common and easy, were quite content that their most cherished verses should be handed about in manuscript and extolled or criticised among the initiated few who composed the reading world. In Tottel's Miscellany, the first collection of the kind made in England, we may observe how the habits of authors were gradually changing in obedience to the requirements of a reading public and of enterprising publishers. This was the first time that the poems of Surrey and Wyatt, the most popular poets of their age, had been printed in a collected form. Their verses occupy about one-third of the entire volume, Surrey's being placed first in order, probably in deference to his rank, but Wyatt's being twice Surrey's in quantity. After these Songes and Sonnettes come Songes written by Nicholas Grimald, chaplain to the Bishop of Ely, probably chief Editor of the Collection,1 if not the Originator. 1 See English Reprints, Introduction to Tottel's Miscellany. The rest of the volume, constituting rather more than half of it, is made up of the songs and sonnets of “Uncertain Auctours." The names of some of these anonymous contributors have been ascertained. Among them were Sir Francis Bryan, a successful courtier in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and a personal friend of the poet Wyatt, but dead since 1549; George Boleyn, Earl of Rochford, the graceful and accomplished brother of Queen Anna Boleyn, and whom Henry executed in 1536; Lord Thomas Vaux, still living when the Miscellany appeared, and a number of whose poems were afterwards printed in a later Miscellany called The Paradise of Dainty Devices, published in 1576; John Heywood (1507?-1565), author of Merry Interludes, a Roman Catholic and a great favourite with the court in Queen Mary's time; and also Thomas Churchyard (1520-1604), a voluminous and very egotistic versifier, who has, however, left nothing more memorable than his name. Eight early editions of this Miscellany were issued before the close of Elizabeth's reign, the first six by Tottel himself from his busy shop in Fleet Street, London; but after 1587, the date of the latest Elizabethan edition, the work was not reprinted for a hundred and thirty years. FROM A FUNERAL SONG. UPON THE DECEASE OF ANNES, THE POET'S MOTHER. Yea, and a good cause why thus should I plain : So great a grief with mouth as still as stone? As woman's work, whom feeble mind doth move, 1. Disapprove. You me embraced; in bosom soft you me Ah, could you thus, dear mother, leave us all? My songs you might have sung, have heard my voice, My sisters, yet unwedded, who shall guide? But wailful verse and doleful song, accept! FROM THE POEMS OF UNCERTAIN AUCTOURS IN "TOTTEL'S MISCELLANY." THE COMPLAINT OF HARPALUS, A SHEPHERD, THAT PHYLIDA HAS BESTOWED HER LOVE ON CORIN, WHO LOVES HER NOT. 1 Been Phylida was a fair maid Whom Harpalus the herdman prayed Harpalus and eke Corin Were herdmen, both yfere ;3 And Phylida could twist and spin, And thereto sing full clear. But Phylida was all too coy For Harpalus to win; For Corin was her only joy, Who forced her not a pin. How often would she flowers twine, How often garlands make, Of cowslips and of columbine, And all for Corin's sake! But Corin, he had hawks to lure, And forced more the field; Of lovers' law he took no cure, For once he was beguiled. Harpalus prevailèd nought ; His labour all was lost; For he was farthest from her thoughts, And yet he loved her most. 2 Some time decay. 3 Companions. 4 Cared for her. 5 Cared. Therefore waxed he both pale and lean, And dry as clot of clay; His flesh it was consumèd clean, His colour gone away. . His beasts he kept upon the hill, And he sate in the dale; And thus, with sighs and sorrows shrill, O Harpalus," thus would he say— "Unhappiest under sun, The cause of thine unhappy day O Cupid, grant this my request, And do not stop thine ears, Of Corin that is careless, That she may crave her fee, Barnaby Googe? A POET'S SONG, IN PRAISE OF HIS LADY. Give place, you Ladies, and begone; The virtue of her lively looks I wish to have none other books In each of her two crystal eyes It would you all in heart suffice If all the world were sought so far, Her rosial colour comes and goes |