And yet some poets fain would prove And that desire is of that kind, As if wild beasts and men did seek Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is unfortunate in being chiefly known to posterity as the antagonist of Sidney in the quarrel already alluded to; beyond this little is recorded of him. We see, however, that he was a great patron of literature, and headed the literary party at Court which promoted the Euphuistic movement. His own verses are distinguished for their wit, and in their terse ingenuity reflect something of the coxcombry which seems to have been a leading feature in his character. Doubtless he was proud of his illustrious ancestry, and of his own office of Great Chamberlain of England, which had been hereditary in his family since the reign of Henry II.; he was, therefore, careful to conform, in his verse at least, to the external requirements of chivalry, as may be seen in his sonnet, "Love thy Choice," which has something of the old-fashioned air of Surrey, and may have been a youthful composition : Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart? In one desire to settle to thy end? Love then thy choice, wherein such choice thou bind, But in later years his natural turn for epigram seems 1 Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh (Hannah), p. 23. 2 See p. 211. 3 Poems of Thomas, Lord Vaux, etc. (Grosart, Fuller Worthies Library), p. 65. to have prevailed over his chivalrous sentiment, as may be seen in the famous lines beginning 'If women would be fair and yet not fond."1 Oxford was a contributor to The Paradise of Dainty Devices, and here his sententiousness takes the shape of devotional poems in Lord Vaux's manner; but on the whole, the epigram, pure and simple, seems to have been his favourite form of composition, and in this his studied concinnity of style is remarkable, as the following examples will show : QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Doth sorrow fret thy soul? O direful sprite ! GRIEF OF MIND What plague is greater than the grief of mind? So bitter pain that none shall ever find, What plague is greater than the grief of mind ? 3 He was not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in others. Several of the courtiers set themselves to solve the problem proposed in his well-known epigram :— Were I a king, I might command content, Were I obscure, unknown should be my cares, And were I dead, no thoughts should me torment, Sir Philip Sidney declared that there could be no doubt as to the answer : 1 Inserted in The Golden Treasury. 2 Poems of Thomas, Lord Vaux, etc., p. 69. 3 Ibid. p. 67. 4 Poems of Raleigh, Wotton, etc. (Hannah), p. 147. Wert thou a king, yet not command content, Sith empire none thy mind could yet suffice. (4) Turning from the Court to the People, we find that the general drift of the national imagination was determined by the growing influence of the Classical Renaissance. This is indicated in the middle and end of Elizabeth's reign by the wide popularity of Pastoralism, which was affected alike by the professional poets, who sought to make profit out of the public taste, and by amateurs, who wrote as the fancy seized them. One set of poets, following Spenser's lead, treated pastoralism on its lyrical side, and embodied their thoughts for the most part in Eclogues, Elegies, or Descriptive and Devotional Verses; another, inspired by Sidney's Arcadia, wrote Romances in prose, mixed with pastoral lyrics; or found their themes in the classical legends which had been made popular by Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. All alike sought to attract attention by peculiarities in the titles of their books, the names of their ideal personages, and the conceits of their style. The eldest of this group, and the one who connected it with the poetry of Gascoigne's and Churchyard's generation, was Nicholas Breton, the son of William Breton, a cadet of an old Essex family, who, like many of the younger sons of gentlemen at that period, had gone into trade and amassed a considerable fortune. Nicholas must have been born about the beginning of the reign of Edward VI. He had grown to manhood when his mother, being left a widow, married the spendthrift George Gascoigne, who evidently exercised a strong influence on the formation of Nicholas's taste. Very little is known of the events of his life. He would seem, from what he says of himself, "to have spent some years at Oxford," but there is no record of him in Anthony Wood's Athena 1 Poems of Raleigh, Wotton, etc. (Hannah), p. 147. 2 Breton's Works (Grosart), "A Floorish upon Fancie," p. 50. Oxonienses. He began to write about 1577, and his last literary work, Fantastics, was produced as late as 1626. He tried all styles, satirical, devotional, pastoral, combining the moral and sententious vein of Gascoigne with the new manner which had been brought into popularity by The Shepherd's Calendar. The titles of his books -Breton's Bower of Delights, Pilgrimage to Paradise, Arbour of Amorous Devises-mark the taste of the generation that produced The Paradise of Dainty Devices; but the Miscellanies called The Phonix Nest and England's Helicon contain many poems signed with his name or initials; and a few years later he produced his most successful work, The Passionate Shepherd, the name of which sufficiently indicates its pastoral character. He also wrote in Spenser's elegiac manner Amoris Lachrima, a lament for the death of Sir Philip Sidney; and, in common with many poets of the time, he was patronised by Sidney's sister, in whose honour he composed The Countess of Pembroke's Passion. In his later days he fell in with the taste that was arising for metaphysical devotional poetry; the titles of his poems, The Ravisht Soul, The Blessed Weeper, The Longing of a Blessed Heart, The Soul's Heavenly Exercise, seem to anticipate the style of Donne and Crashaw, but, unlike those poets, who both became members of the Roman Catholic Church, Breton remained attached to the Anglican doctrine.1 His merits rarely rise above allegorical ingenuity and smooth versifying. He had much facility and a ready power of imitation. His Flourish upon Fancy-which, in the mode of The Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, he calls "as gallant a gloss upon so trifling a text as ever was written -is a collection of what, within our own memory, used to be known as album verses. In this he copies his stepfather, Gascoigne, whose manner is also followed in his Pilgrimage to Paradise, a narrative poem relating rather obscurely the adventures of five pilgrims 1 Mr. Grosart, with his usual industry, has collected Breton's works and such facts as are known about his life in an edition published in 1879. on their heavenly journey. The description of the church to which the pilgrims came may be taken as a sample of the style of this composition : The gate is Grace, Contrition is the key, While angels' sighs the sinner's way devise, A number of moral poems, Pasquil's Passion of the World's Waywardness, Pasquil's Foolscap, Pasquil's Precession, and Pasquil's Prognostication, glance in the oldfashioned, satirical vein of Barclay, in his Ship of Fools, at current manners, borrowing here and there a suggestion from Sir Philip Sidney, as in the burden running through the dull catalogue of evils enumerated in Pasquil's Precession, as A graceless child, and an unquiet wife, A long delay, and an ungodly life, And from despair that never finds relief, And from the drone that robs the honey bee, After the publication of Sidney's Arcadia and Astrophel and Stella, Breton, abandoning for a time the proverbial sententiousness of Churchyard and Gascoigne, began to imitate the new pastoral manner, and in his Passionate Shepherd came nearer inspiration than in any other of his poems. The following verses are charming in their simplicity : Who can live in heart so glad How the birds do chirp and sing ; 1 Breton's Works (Grosart), vol. i. "The Pilgrimage to Paradise," p. 20. 2 Ibid. vol. i. "Pasquil's Passe Precession and Prognostication," p. 7. |