and culture that is grateful about the verses of this Earl." (Fuller Worthies' Miscellanies, IV, 11.) Oxford is ramblingly described by Mr. Saintsbury as "Sidney's enemy (which he might be if he chose), and apparently a coxcomb (which is less pardonable), but a charming writer of verse. (A History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 127.) Oxford was Lord High Chamberlain in 1588. 84. Fond. Foolish. Cf. 19 5, 41 11, 62 13. 88. Self-Conceit. Probably here equal to very imagination rather than in the ordinary modern sense. 9 27. I insert the to make the metre agree with that of the corresponding line in the preceding stanza. Another reading gives: "Whom dost thou think to be thy foe." 9 34. Make. Mate. Cf. 32 35. No one who would know Sidney should neglect the reading of Greville's tribute to their early friendship, usually entitled The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney. "Indeed he was a true model of worth; a man fit for conquest, plantation [i.e., colonizing], reformation, or what action soever is greatest and hardest amongst men: withal such a lover of mankind and goodness, that whoever had any real parts, in him found comfort, participation, and protection to the uttermost of his power: like Zephyrus he giving life where he grew." (Works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, ed. Grosart, IV, 37.) 9. Wooing Stuff. In the absence of any external evidence, I prefer to place this poem in lighter vein before the strong, pure notes of Astrophel and Stella. I follow Dr. Grosart's text for Sidney. The title is not in the MS. 98. Use. Be accustomed to, to make a practice of. 9 10. Learns. This verb was commonly employed with a personal object in Elizabethan English. Cf. "The red plague rid you For learning me your language," Tempest, i, 2, 365; and see Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, § 291. 10 22. In question. This line reads in the MS.: "In question? nay, 'uds-foot, she loves thee than." The oath is ugly in itself and destructive of the metre. I therefore omit it with Ellis and Linton. 10 22. Than. A common by-form of then, as then of than (quam). These variations are in this book reduced to modern spelling, except where the older form is necessary to preserve the rime. 10. My true love hath my heart. I prefer to give this little poem in the form in which it first appeared in print, in Puttenham's Art of English Poesy (ed. Arber, p. 233), where it is quoted as an illustration of "Epimone or the love-burden." In the next year it appeared in sonnet form in the Arcadia. This version adds the following lines to those of the text, transferring the refrain to the close: His heart his wound received from my sight, My heart was wounded with his wounded heart; Dr. Grosart considers both forms Sidney's own. (Introd. to The 11 3. Sense. Probably here plural, the final s not being pronounced nor in this case even written—for euphony's sake. See Sh. Gram., § 471 and the numerous examples there given. Cf. also a possible instance, 160 15. 11 13. Sprite. Spirit. These forms are interchangeable in Elizabethan English. Cf. v. of this sonnet, above. 11. Astrophel and Stella. The chronology of Astrophel and Stella seems beyond accurate solution. I content myself with an upward limit, as in the cases of Donne and the Sonnets of Shakespeare. Stella became Lady Rich in March, 1581, by our calendar. It is doubtful if a sonnet of the series was written after the close of that year. Sidney himself was married in January, 1583. For a discussion of the biographical particulars underlying the writing of this sonnet sequence, the reader should consult Dr. Grosart's Introduction, Poems of Sidney, 1877. Mr. F. T. Palgrave thus concludes a discerning note on Sidney in the last edition of his Golden Treasury of English Lyrics: “In a certain depth and chivalry of feeling in the rare and noble quality of disinterestedness (to put it in one word),- he has no superior, hardly perhaps an equal, amongst our poets; and after or beside Shakespeare's Sonnets, his Astrophel and Stella. . offers the most intense and powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range of our poetry." (Ed. 1892, p. 351.) 11. First Song. The readings of this song are various and may be seen in Dr. Grosart's Sidney, I, 151. I have followed this editor in preferring the (!) to the (?), as the successive outbursts of each stanza seem to me rather rapturous exclamations than mere interrogations. 11 3. All song of praise is due seems better than the reading be due. 11 5. Marry state with pleasure. Combine dignity with vivacity. Cf. 178 3. 11 8. Forgat all measure, i.e., when heaven made her. (Grosart.) 12 10. Staineth. Stains by comparison. (Grosart.) Cf. 41 4. 12 13. cluding lines of Æglamour's Lament, p. 194: The feet, whose step all sweetness planteth. Cf. below the con. And where she went, the flowers took thickest root As she had sowed them with her odorous foot. 12 17. Doth patience nourish. The passage is obscure, if not corrupt. Grosart reads and defends the variant of some of the early edd. passions nourish. Professor Kittredge reminds me that patience, with constancy, secrecy and obedience, was one of the conventional virtues of the chivalric lover (cf. Chaucer's Troilus, iii, 21), and hence an appropriate feeling for the lady to inspire. 12 22. Long-dead beauty with increase reneweth, i.e., reincarnates, so to say, and enhances in her person the charms of beauties long since dead. Cf. in this vol. Daniel's sonnet on p. 48 and Shakespeare's on p. 86. 12 24. Rueth. Sorrows, laments. 12 25. Loosest fastest tieth. Possibly intentionally difficult of utterance to symbolize the thought. 12 32. Not miracles, etc. 13 1. Miracles are not wonders. With how sad steps. "The first perfectly charming sonnet in the English language," declares Mr. Saintsbury. (Elizabethan LiteraCf. a fine sonnet of Charles Best, printed in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody (ed. Nicolas, p. 184):— ture, p. 102.) A SONNET OF THE MOON. Look how the pale Queen of the silent night So as you come, and as you do depart, Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart. 13 5. Long-with-love-acquainted. Sidney, like Shakespeare, is fond of compound words; and in his Defence of Poesy (ed. Cook, Athenæum ... Press Series, p. 55), considers English "particularly happy in compositions of two or three words together, which is one of the greatest beauties can be in language." Cf. chamber-melody, 14 4; safe-left, 14 6; false-seeming, 15 15. See also Sh. Gram., §§ 428-435. In lyrical composition compound words are not so frequent as in the drama or in satire. In this collection there are scarcely four score, none of them compounded of more than two words, excepting the one which forms the heading of this note. Some of the noun compounds are: morning-grey, 38 7; care-charmer, 501; bride-house, 161 22; adjectives: sweet-breathing, 76 2; heart-quelling, 79 97; flower-adornèd, 110 22; humble-eyed, 191 3; adverbs: ill-adventred, 50 6; seld-seen, 198 11; verbs: over-blow, 116 36; out-weep, 205 4. Bold and otherwise notable compounds are Donne's long-strayed eyes, 101 1, and vice-nature, 103 6; Jonson's crown-worthy, 117 88; Lodge's morn-waking birds, 59 3; Drummond's sweet-strained moisture, 1825; and Wither's greatest-fairest, 203 52. 13 8. Descries. Shows, discloses. 13 10. Wit. Mind, understanding. Cf. 13 2, 14 12, 16 38, 178 4, 186 2. 13. 14. Do they call ungratefulness a virtue there? 13. Come Sleep! Cf. Daniel's Care-charmer Sleep, p. 50 below, and the note there. 13 4. Indifferent. Impartial. Press, throng: the spelling of the original preserved 13 10. Deaf of noise and blind of light. Of is the earlier reading. To seems, as Dr. Grosart puts it, "the countess' or the editors' improvement." 13 11. A rosy garland. Rosy, “as the garland of silence (sub rosa),” comments Dr. Grosart, and refers to an interesting use of the word rose in the Epistle prefixed to the Arcadia, ed. 1593. Speaking of those who carp at the author's works, the editor writes: "To us, say they, the pastures are not pleasant and as for the flowers, such as we light on we take no delight in, but the greater part grow not within our reach. Poor souls! what talk they of flowers? They are roses [i.e., allusions about which silence had better be kept], not flowers, must do them good." 13 12. In right. In modern English, by right or of right. See Sh. Gram., § 163. 14 1. High way, since you my chief Parnassus be. Because it leads him to Stella, the inspiration of his song and the cause of his fame. 14 2. My Muse . . tempers her words. opening speech of Richard III, i, 1, 10: — Cf. the familiar lines of the And now instead of mounting barbed steeds He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. 14 6. Safe-left. Cf. 13 5. 14 8. Thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. Playing with words was the besetting sin of Elizabethan authors from Shakespeare himself, whose puns and double meanings are notorious, to jesters like Tarlton and professional jugglers with words, like Nashe, in his prose. Cf. in this volume: Breton's "The heaven of heavens with heavenly power preserve thee,” 66 11; Davison's “Which presence still presented, Absence hath not absented," 75 42-43; Shakespeare's "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove," 86 2-4; Jonson's "Close the close cause of it," 115 16. For puns and plays upon the meaning of a single word, see 78 67 and 180 8. 14 9. Still. Ever, continuously, always. This is the usual Elizabethan meaning of the word. See Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, § 69, and cf. 25 18, 28 33, 181 14, 187 13, 188 17, etc.; on p. 143 23 the word occurs in its modern sense. 14 12. Lot. More in the original sense of chance than in the sense we are accustomed to give the word in modern English. 14 14. "Hundreds of years!" exclaims Mr. Ruskin, "you think that a mistake? No, it is the very rapture of love. A lover like this does not believe his mistress can grow old, or die." (Fors Clavigera, vol. III, p. 6, Lecture XXXV.) 14 9. Ne. Nor. This form was already archaic in Sidney's time. It was employed by Spenser and Watson, the latter, in a limited sense, a poet of Sidney's school. Cf. 23 18. 14 11. Without. Unless. 14 12. Wit. Cf. 13 10. -- 'Sidney's sonnets -I speak of the best of them are among the very best of their sort. They fall below the plain moral dignity, the sanctity, the high yet modest spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his compositions of a similar structure. . . . [But] the sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Milton were the compositions of his maturest years. Those of Sidney. ... were written in the very heyday of his blood. They are stuck full of amorous fancies-far-fetched conceits, befitting his occupation for true love thinks no labor to send out thoughts upon vast, and more than Indian voyages, to bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self. depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the beloved : |