ness. There is none of the young Elizabethan joyousness about him; rather the severe religious spirit of the medieval mystic "Of death and judgment, heaven and hell, Himself one of the most outwardly chivalrous of Elizabethans, he is yet guilty of verse which, in its tendency towards moralising of the most commonplace kind, would take the life out of any system of chivalry. "For those desires that aim too high For any mortal lover, When reason cannot make them die, If this had been characteristic of the tone and expression of all Raleigh's works, he could not claim a place even among the lesser philosophic artists of his time. But he has written poems which show that he had real and profound moral sensibilities, jarred by the worldliness and sordidness of the life into which he had plunged, and which he found so difficult; as, for example, the small poem called "The Lie " "So, soul, the body's guest "Tell zeal it wants devotion: "Tell age it daily wasteth : Very early in the period were written lyrics and songs expressing that weariness of things which seeks consolation in a sort of sententious philosophy, and believes the greatest happiness to consist in a state of cultivated content—a condition which, in 1 Errand. both senses of the term, leaves nothing to hope for. wrote the song beginning— ending "Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content," "A mind content both crown and kingdom is.' Greene Dyer, the friend of Sidney and Greville, is remembered chiefly by one poem, attributed to him— Sir Henry Wotton writes of the character of a happy life, of the bliss of the man "Whose passions not his masters are, Of public fame or private breath." But the most profoundly reflective poems of the day,-poems which are animated by the real philosophic and enquiring spirit, and not stimulated by mere personal dissatisfaction,—are those of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, and Sir John Davies. "For Lord Brooke throws light on his purposes in writing. my own part I found my creeping genius more fixed upon the images of life than the images of wit, and therefore chose not to write to them on whose foot the black ox had not already trod, as the proverb is, but to those only that are weather-beaten in the sea of this world, such as, having lost the sight of their gardens and groves, study to sail on a right course among rocks and quicksand." In the tragedy of Mustapha he says— "Man should make much of life as Nature's table Lord Brooke, says Mr. Ward, has great thinking power, but : his powers of expression were not equal to the strength of his mental capacity. "Words are taxed beyond what they can bear all thoughts, whether great or trivial, are tortured into the same over-laboured dress: there is no ease, no flow, no joy." Yet at times his verse is impressive from the very nobility of the thoughts it conveys; as, for instance, the lines in his treatise on "Human Learning "The chief use then in man of that he knows Is his painstaking for the good of all; Not fleshly weeping for our own-made woes, Not hating from a soul that overflows With bitterness, breathed out from inward thrall, As need requires, this frail fall'n humankind." 66 But it needs not to be pointed out that the philosophic poets are inferior to the other poets of their great generation, both in their temperaments, which were the reverse of artistic, and also because their natures led them to think that every subject, under every aspect, was material for the poet. Sir John Davies, like Lord Brooke, wrote on Human Knowledge," and "On the Soul of Man and the Immortality thereof," these two "elegies" constituting his great work Nosce Teipsum. Inferior to Lord Brooke in the qualities that go to make the true philosopher, he was superior in artistic skill,-in the selection, arrangement, and management of his thought. In easier and smoother verse he dwells on "that divine discontent," beyond which, however, he and many of his school never seemed to go. He speaks of the soul-how "Under heaven she cannot light on aught How that we go through the world and never possess our souls— As far as poetry is concerned the philosophic school only deserves notice as marking the decline of the art of the great Elizabethan period. It is indeed a great and noble decline, but it is certainly the decline of that great age which was so full of exuberance and energy, so interested in the mere exercise of its own faculties, so open to interest in all aspects and sides of life, so contented in the healthiness of its being. When we see men like Sir John Davies and Lord Brooke, especially men like Lord Brooke, full of earnest thought and feeling, dwelling mostly on the unsatisfactoriness of life, the want of gratification that it affords to the highest and noblest cravings of human nature,—we feel that the brilliant period of art is indeed passing away, that outward circumstances have ceased to stimulate and encourage a life which is happy and energetic because it is in harmony with its surroundings. It was evident that life, both national and intellectual, was beginning to offer hard problems to solve. The life of the best and thinking people became more and more reflective, and in proportion art and poetry declined, and prose, the vehicle of reasoned conclusions, improved. But before this epoch arrived English art had culminated in the drama, and Shakspere, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, and even Beaumont and Fletcher in their way, proved how great could be English dramatic genius. CHAPTER VI. RISE OF THE DRAMA.1 King John (1548 circ.) By Bishop BALE. Gorboduc. 1562. First three acts by Thomas NORTON; the last two by Ralph Roister Doister. 1551 or earlier. By UDALL. Probably by STILL. IN the Elizabethan age was the highest development of the English national drama, because only by that age were united the two essential requisites for great dramatic art. The Elizabethans enjoyed a wide and closely national life, and the drama is an art which, like architecture, requires the co-operation of a large and united nation. More than any other art, it depends for success and encouragement on public opinion; it must mirror the tastes and instincts of the national mind, and in return its image must be recognised and appreciated. And secondly, Elizabethan national life furnished all the material that the drama required,— great crises, great events, great personages, strange and exciting vicissitudes of fortune. The brilliant and exciting foreign policy of Henry VIII., the Reformation under himself and his successors, the position it gave England in Europe, thrilling in its insecurity and importance,—all this gave to the nation excitement, while it made it feel its unity. It was kept at a high strain throughout the whole of the sixteenth century; yet at the latter end of this century, the period when the drama flourished most brilliantly, there came a time of comparative quiet, which gave the necessary leisure and opportunity for production. Then this brilliant and interesting national life found expression in dramatic art, which never before, and never since, in England has had such a vigorous life, and such high ideals. 1 The substance of this chapter is almost entirely taken from Mr. Ward's Dramatic Literature. |