Sonnets, 1595, which are not the most perfect of his minor poems; "Like as the culver, on the bared bough, Seek with my plaints to match that mournful dove. In her unspotted pleasance to delight. Dark is my day whiles her fair light I miss, Richard Barnefeilde enjoyed great popularity during his time.* The following lines are from his Cynthia, With Certaine Sonnets, 1595: better specimens of his talent as a Sonnetteer might have been given, but for reasons which may be gathered from the note at p. lxxxiii. I did not choose to exhibit them: "It is reported of fair Thetis' son, That when the Trojan wars were new begun, Except with that spear's rust he holpen were: See p. 262 of Shakespeare's Poems. Even so it fareth with my fortune now, Or else to be reliev'd I know not how. Then, if thou hast a mind still to annoy me, From the Chloris of William Smith, 1596: "My love, I cannot thy rare beauties place The perfect praise of beauty forth to sound. What follows is from Diella, Certaine Sonnets, adioyned to the amorous Poeme of Dom Diego and Gineura, by R. L. Gentleman, 1596: "When love had first besieg'd my heart's strong wall, And had with ordnance made his tops to fall, I call'd a parley, and withal did crave F When lo! in dead of night he seeks his mates, With that they fir'd my heart, and thence 'gan fly, From the Fidessa of R. Griffin, 1596: "Care-charmer sleep, sweet ease in restless misery, What is not sleep unto the feeble mind? I fear at night he will not come again." From the Aurora, of William Alexander, Eari of Sterline, 1604. "I swear, Aurora, by thy starry eyes, And by those golden locks whose lock none slips, And by the coral of thy rosy lips, And by the naked snows which beauty dyes; I swear by all the jewels of thy mind, Should'st thou not love this virtuous mind in me?' The greater portion of Shakespeare's Sonnets is addressed to a male object; and the kind of exaggerated friendship which some of them profess, can only surprise a reader who is unacquainted with the manners of those days. It was then not uncommon for one man to write verses to another in a strain of such tender affectiɔn, as fully warrants our terming them amatory; 100 100 “Abraham Fraunce," says Warton, "in 1591 translated Virgil's ALEXIS into English hexameters, verse for verse, which he calls The lamentation of Corydon for the love of Alexis. It must be owned, that the selection of this particular Eclogue from all the ten for an English version, is somewhat extraordinary. But in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, I could point out whole sets of sonnets written with this sort of attachment, for which, perhaps, it will be but an inadequate apology, that they are free from direct impurity of expression and open immodesty of sentiment. Such at least is our observance of external propriety, and so strong the principles of a general decorum, that a writer of the present age who was to print love-verses in this style, would be severely reproached, and universally proscribed. I will instance only in the AFFECTIONATE SHEPHERD of Richard Barnefielde, printed in 1595 There, through the course of twenty sonnets, not inelegant, and which were exceedingly popular, the poet bewails his unsuccessful love for a beautiful youth, by the name of Ganimede, in a strain of the most tender pas sion, yet with professions of the chastest affection. Many descriptions and incidents which have a like complexion, may be found in the futile novels of Lodge and Lilly." Hist. of English Poetry, iii. 405. In an address "To the curteous Gentlemen Readers" prefixed to Barnefielde's Cynthia, with Certaine Sonnets, &c, 1595, he speaks thus of his former production, noticed in the preceding remarks of Warton: "Some there were that and even in the epistolary correspondence between two grave and elderly gentlemen, friendship used frequently to borrow the language of love. Who was the object in question, the commentators of Shakespeare have unsuccessfully laboured to discover; of their various conjectures on this point, I shall only mention two; the one remarkable for its ingenuity, the other for its absurdity. Tyrwhitt, putting together the initials W. H. in the Dedication to the Sonnets, and the following line of the xxth Sonnet, given thus in the original edition, "A man in hew all Hews in his controlling" did interpret the Affectionate Shepherd, otherwise then (in truth) I meant, touching the subject thereof, to wit, the love of a Shepherd to a boy; a fault, the which I will not excuse, because I never made. Only this, I will unshaddow my conceit: being nothing else but an imitation of Virgill in the second Eglogue of Alexis." I may add, that at a considerably later period, Phineas Fletcher (one of the purest of poetical spirits) in his first Piscatory Eclogue, introduces Thelgon lamenting the inconstancy of Amyntas; and that in a short copy of verses "To Master W. C." by the same writer, is the following stanza: "Return now, Willy; now at length return thee: By yellow Chame, where no hot ray shall burn thee, And safely cover'd from the scalding shine, We'l read that Mantuan shepherds sweet complaining, Whom fair Alexis griev'd with his unjust disdaining.” See his Piscatorie Eclogs, and other Poeticall Miscellanies, (appended to The Purple Island,) 1633, p. 1, and p. 60. |