"I loathe that I did love In youth that I thought sweet. And ye that bide behind, Poets begin to give symptoms, marked in some cases by genius, that the trammels put upon sentiment by the Courtly Makers are becoming wearisome. But that real genius-deep, refined, delicate, and powerful thought-could find expression within the sphere of the Courtly Makers is proved by the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella. In Sir Philip Sidney's poems are found the true essence of Renaissance chivalry, expressed with the thoughtfulness and animated by that delicate ideal feeling which specially distinguished his personality. Some of Sidney's sonnets are indeed barren and over-elaborate, for he belonged to the school known as the "Areopagus." Gabriel Harvey, a critic and scholar, who must have had real merit, or he would not have made and preserved the friendship of so many of the celebrated men of his time, though he is only known to us now by his absurd classical conventions and the virulence of his literary quarrels, was the centre of a group of poets who made poetic form their object, trying to bring in a reform which should make English verse entirely obedient and subservient to classical rules. Spenser, who lived much longer than Sidney, quite emancipated himself both in theory and practice from this inartistic and unpatriotic idea. Later he turned the system into ridicule, saying that it had been the cause of the production of many passing singular odd poems; " but Sidney never in theory threw off the conventions and theories of his youth, though often in practice the sincerity of his feeling caused him to triumph over the stiffness and artificiality naturally engendered by too much attention to form. "Fool, said my muse to me, 66 And love, says Sidney in another sonnet, "doth hold my hand and make me write." Of the sincerity of his inspiration there can be no doubt. It was the outcome of his feeling for Penelope Devereux, daughter of the first Earl of Essex,-a feeling which was probably quite genuine and unaffected at first, but which afterwards he evidently cultivated as a poetic motive. He met her first in 1575, next in 1580, when she was either married or pledged to Lord Rich. Sidney's sonnets, like Shakspere's, have an autobiographical interest. They can be divided into three distinct stages. First, there is the period of deep idealising passion, when he glorifies Stella and expresses scorn of his rival, Lord Rich. Sonnet V. is very characteristic of Sidney in its mixture of chivalry and Puritanism, in its admiration both for physical and for moral beauty : "It is most true that eyes are form'd to serve It is most true what we call Cupid's dart Till that good God make church and churchmen starve: Sonnet XXXI. opens with two lines that are quite perfect in themselves, and give at the same time the spirit of the following sonnet, which is one of the saddest and yet one of the most beautiful of the whole series: 'With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies, Then even of fellowship, O moon, tell me Is constant love deemed there but want of wit ?" The second division includes those sonnets which are animated by a more hopeful spirit. Stella has apparently relented to a certain extent. "O joy too high for my low style to show, Gone is the winter of my misery, My spring appears: O see what here doth grow! Of her high heart given me the monarchy.” And the third division of the sonnets includes those in which he claims freedom from love, drawn away from Stella "by a great cause which needs both use and art." "Sweet, for a while give respite to my heart. O let not fools in me thy works reprove, Thus Sidney's last sonnets breathe that freer spirit which was to throw off the conventions of chivalry and produce the vivid glowing poetry of Marlowe and Shakspere and their contemporaries; and in his lyrics we could almost place him with these greatest Elizabethans, so free and spirited and emancipated does he show himself. The song to Stella in her absence, beginning "O dear life, when shall it be That mine eyes thine eyes shall see?" the dirge beginning Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread, show that he stood on the very threshold of the new life and of that art which was its free expression. Thoroughly artificial but yet charming was the poet Watson. He is an "ingenious and posthumous child of the Courts of Love," with his "Passionate Centurie of Love," and "The Tears of Fancy or Love disdained." The poet Constable stands between the artificial school and the fresh native school that was springing up. "His things," says Mr. Lang, “have at once the freshness of a young and the trivial grace of a decadent literature." He can introduce real freshness into a pastoral song, as in that between Phillis and Amaryllis; he can put vigour into the well-worn classical tale of Venus and Adonis. George Gascoigne and Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, must also be mentioned as pioneers far more distinguished than Constable, though less distinguished than Sidney. As Mr. Church says, "The scanty remains of Sackville's poetry are chiefly interesting because they show a strong sense of the defects of the existing poetical standards and a craving after something better." Sackville, who is celebrated as having taken part in the authorship of the Tragedy of Gorboduc, is renowned also as having planned a great work called The Mirror for Magistrates, containing a series of poetical examples showing how "grievous plagues, vices, are punished in great princes and magistrates, and how frail and unstable worldly prosperity is found where fortune seemeth most highly to favor." His efforts after moral purpose are not less evident than his struggle after form: he had evidently theories of poetic fitness and grace, to which he had not talent enough to be true in practice. But he has a certain grandeur and largeness of style which he must have gained from the careful and appreciative study of the master at whose feet he sat-Dante. In the Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates, which, with the story of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was his contribution to this moral poem, there is observable an attempt to be grand and severe in expression and in the choice of ornament, which, sometimes failing, gives an impression of rigidity and stiffness to the verse, but which at other times is successful and recalls the dignified intensity of Dante's verse. Sorrows guide the poet to the realms of the dead :— "I shall thee guide first to the grisly lake, Where thou shalt see and hear the plaint they make Thence come we to the horror and the hell, George Gascoigne is spoken of by Webbe as "a witty gentleman, and the very chief of our late rhymers." He was exceedingly popular in his day, being one who recommended himself by his personal attractions and accomplishments to his contemporaries. Posterity, in doing him justice, must take into account the facts on which Nash grounded his opinion. "Whoever my private opinion condemns as faulty, Master Gascoigne is not to be abridged of his deserved esteem who first beat the path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to since his departure: whereto he did ascend by comparing the Italian with the English, as Tully did Græca cum Latinis." He wrote, in common with the minor poets of his age, poems on the “Arraignment of a Lover," on the "Strange Passion of a Lover;" but in his "Steel Glass" he attempted a work of a more serious and 66 unconventional character, which he meant to be a satire on the vices and follies of his age, to hold the mirror up to nature as deformed by society." It is in blank verse, and is "the first example in our language," says Prof. Morley, "of a poem of any length and not dramatic, written in that measure." It is an effective didactic satire animated by a sincere and religious earnestness. But the poet was yet to come who could combine spiritual greatness and earnestness with feeling for the varied beauty and interest of the world. PART II.-Prose.-Euphuism and beginnings of Art Criticism. LYLY, John, b. 1554, d. 1606.—Euphues: First part published, 1579; Second, 1680. SIDNEY'S Arcadia: Begun, 1580; published, 1590. Apologie for Poetrie: Written about 1581 (first known edition that of 1595). Life: Son of Henry Sidney, President of Wales and Lord Deputy of Ireland under Elizabeth, and Lady Mary Dudley, daughter of Duke of Northumberland, sister of Earl of Leicester; entered Shrewsbury School, 1564; went to Christchurch, Oxford, 1568; abroad from May 1572 to May 1575; 1575, appears at Elizabeth's Court, takes part in Kenilworth progress; 1577, ambassador to Rudolf II. at Prague; makes acquaintance with Harvey and Spenser, 1578; retires to Penshurst till 1580; returns to Court, 1580; knighted, 1581; 1583, Member of Parliament for second time; 1584, appointed Governor of Flushing; 1586, fatally wounded at battle of Zutphen. WEBBE, William.- Discourse of English Poesie: Published, 1586. The Art of English Poesie, in three books (the first of Poets and Poesie, the second of Proportion, and the third of Ornament): Published, 1589. GossoN, Stephen.-The School of Abuse, 1579. Euphuism and the Euphuists have for the most part been cruelly underrated by a posterity who have only noticed the more trivial, external, and degenerate aspect of this system and its followers. However far removed many of the Euphuists may have been from the ideal of their system, however affected and insipid and often ridiculous some of them may have become,—it can never be doubted but that the spirit of Euphuism was sound, and that the influence it exercised by way of refinement and polish, both of thought and of style, was great and beneficial. Euphuism, as it is now generally known in its later and more degenerate aspect, was little more than the popularisation, and therefore vulgarisation, of the ideal of Elizabeth's Court,—an ideal which in itself was high and worthy of respect. At a time when |