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printed in 1579. Let us pause a little upon its pages; and thence look back also, with a brief glance, at the poetical models in his own language which were open to the study of one who, without models, was destined to found the greatest school of poetry which the world had seen.

Spenser, displeased with the artificial character of the literature of his own early time, its mythological affectations, its mincing and foreign phraseology, thought to infuse into it a more healthy tone by familiarizing the court of Elizabeth with the diction of the age of Edward III. The attempt was not successful. His friend and editor, E. K., indeed says,-" In my opinion it is one especial praise, of many which are due to this poet, that he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited. Which is the only cause that our mother tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough of prose, and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted most bare and barren of both."* But even Sidney, to whom the work was dedicated, will not admit the principle which Spenser was endeavouring to establish:-“‹ The

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Shepherd's Calendar' hath much poetry in his eclogues worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazarius in Italian, did affect it."+ Yet we can well imagine that The Shepherd's Calendar,' dropping in the way of the young recluse of Stratford, must have been exceedingly welcome. "Colin Clout, the new poet," as his editor calls him, had the stamp of originality upon him; and therefore our Shakspere would

6

* Epistle to Master Gabriel Harvey, prefixed to The Shepherd's Calendar,' edition 1579. + Defence of Poesy.

agree that "his name shall come into the knowledge of men, and his worthiness be sounded in the trump of fame."* The images and the music of the despairing shepherd would rest upon his ear :

"You naked trees, whose shadie leaves are lost,
Wherein the birds were wont to build their bowre,
And now are clothd with mosse and hoarie frost,
In steede of blossomes, wherewith your buds did floure;
I see your teares that from your boughes do raine,
Whose drops in drerie ysicles remaine.

All so my lustfull leafe is drie and sere,

My timely buds with wayling all are wasted;

The blossome which my braunch of youth did beare,
With breathed sighes is blowne away and blasted;

And from mine eyes the drizling teares descend,
As on your boughes the ysicles depend."†

We read the passage, and our memory involuntarily turns to the noble commencement of one of Shakspere's own Sonnets:

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."

But here we also see the difference between the two poets. Shakspere's comparison of his declining energies with the "bare ruin'd choirs" of the woods of autumn has all the power of reality. The love-sick shepherd who "compareth his careful case to the sad season of the year, to the frosty ground, to the frozen trees, and to his own winterbeaten flock," § is an affectation. The pastoral poetry of all ages and nations is open in some degree to this objection; but Spenser, who makes his shepherds bitter controversialists in theology, has carried the falsetto style a degree too far even for those who can best appreciate the real poetical power which is to be discovered in these early productions. One passage in these Eclogues sounded, as we think, a note that must have sunk deeply into the ambition of him who must very early have looked upon the thoughts and habits of real life as the proper staple of poetry :

Sonnet 73.

"Who ever castes to compasse wightie prise,

And thinkes to throwe out thundring words of threat,
Set powre in lavish cups

and thriftie bittes of meate,

For Bacchus fruite is friend to Phoebus wise;

And, when with wine the braine begins to sweat,

The numbers flow as fast as spring doth rise.

Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rime should rage;

O, if my temples were distain'd with wine,

And girt in girlonds of wilde yvie twine,

How could I reare the muse on stately stage,

And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine,

With queint Bellona in her equipage?" ||

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These verses sound to us exceedingly like a sarcasm upon the " huft, puft, braggart" vein of the drama which preceded Shakspere by a few years, and which fixed its character even upon the first efforts of the great masters whose light soon gleamed out of this dun smoke. It was no doubt a drunken drama. But there was one in whom we believe the desire was early planted to raise dramatic composition into a high art. The shepherd who speaks these lines in the Calendar' is represented in the argument as "the perfect pattern of a poet, which, finding no maintenance of his state and studies, complaineth of the contempt of poetry, and the causes thereof." The cause of the contempt was the want of true poets. The same argument says of poetry, that it is “a divine gift, and heavenly instinct, not to be gotten by labour and learning, but adorned with both, and poured into the wit by a certain Enthousiasmos and celestial inspiration." In the case of Shakspere the Enthousiasmos must have come early; nor, in our minds, were the labour and learning wanted to direct it. The great model of Spenser, in his early efforts, was Chaucer. Chaucer too was his later veneration :

"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled."*

In The Shepherd's Calendar' Chaucer is "Tityrus, god of shepherds:"—
"Goe, little Calender! thou hast a free passeporte;
Goe but a lowly gate amongst the meaner sorte:
Dare not to match thy pype with Tityrus his stile." ↑

The greatest minds at the period of which we are writing reverenced Chaucer. Sidney says of him," I know not whether to marvel more either that he in that misty time could see so clearly, or that we in this clear age go so stumblingly after him." Passing over the minor poetry with which Shakspere must have been familiar,—the elegance of Wyatt, the tenderness of Surrey, the dignity of Sackville, the broad humour of Skelton,—we have little hesitation in believing that the poetical master of Shakspere was Chaucer. But whilst Spenser imitated his style, Shakspere penetrated into the secret of that excellence which is almost independent of style. The natural and moral world was displayed before each; and they became its interpreters, each after his own peculiar genius.

And yet, whilst we believe that Shakspere was the pupil of Chaucer; whilst we imagine that the fine bright folio of 1542, whose bold black letter seems the proper dress for the rich antique thought, was the closet companion of the young poet; that in his solitary walks unbidden tears came into his eyes when he recollected some passage of matchless pathos, or irrepressible laughter arose at those touches of genial humour which glance like sunbeams over the pagecomparing, too, Chaucer's fresh descriptions with the freshest things under the sky, and seeing how the true painter of Nature makes even her loveliness more lovely;-believing all this, we yet reverentially own that this wondrous

*

Fairy Queen, book iv., canto 2.

+ Epilogue to the 'Calender.' Defence of Poesy.

excellence was incommunicable, was not to be imitated. But nevertheless the early familiarity with such a poet as Chaucer must have been a loadstar to one like Shakspere, who was launched into the great ocean of thought without a chart. The narrow seas of poetry had been navigated by others, and their track might be followed by the common adventurer. Chaucer would disclose to him the possibility of delineating individual character with the minutest accuracy, without separating the individual from the permanent and the universal. Chaucer would show him how a high morality might still consist with freedom. of thought and even laxity of expression, and how all that is holy and beautiful might be loved without such scorn or hatred of the impure and the evil as would exclude them from human sympathy. Chaucer, working as an artist, would inform him what stores lay hidden of old traditions and fables, legends that had travelled from one nation to another, gathering new circumstances as they became clothed in new language, the property of every people, related in the peasant's cabin, studied in the scholar's cell; and he would teach him that these were the best materials for a poet to work upon, for their universality proved that they were akin to man's inmost nature and feelings. In these, and in many more things, Chaucer would be the teacher of Shakspere. The pupil became greater than the master, partly through the greater comprehensiveness of his genius, and partly through its dramatic direction. The form of their art was essentially different, but yet the spirit was very much the same. These two poets, England's two greatest poets, have so much in common, that we scarcely regard the different modes in which they worked when we think of their mutual characteristics. Each is equally unapproachable in his humour as in his pathos; each is so masterly a delineator of character that we converse with the beings of their creation as if they had moved and breathed around us; each is the closest and the clearest painter of external nature; each has the profoundest skill in the management of language, so as to send his thoughts with the greatest effect, and with the least apparent effort, into the depths of the understanding; each, according to his own theory, is a perfect master of harmonious numbers. What was superadded in Shakspere sets him above all comparison with any other poet. But with Chaucer he may be compared; and having so much in common with him, it is impossible not to feel that the writings of Chaucer must have had an incalculable influence on the formation of the mind of Shakspere.

Such were the speculations that came across us in that silent reach of the Avon below Charlecote. But the silence is broken. The old fisherman of Alveston paddles up the stream to look for his eel-pots. We drop down the current. Nothing can be more interesting than the constant variety which this beautiful river here exhibits. Now it passes under a high bank clothed with wood; now a hill waving with corn gently rises from the water's edge. Sometimes a flat meadow presents its grassy margin to the current which threatens to inundate it upon the slightest rise; sometimes long lines of willow or alder shut out the land, and throw their deep shadows over the placid stream. Islands of sedge here and there render the channel unnavigable, except to

the smallest boat. A willow thrusting its trunk over the stream reminds us of Ophelia :

"There is a willow grows askaunt the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.'

A gust of wind raises the underside of the leaves to view, and we then perceive the exquisite correctness of the epithet "hoar." Hawthorns, here and there, grow upon the water's edge; and the dog-rose spots the green bank with its faint red. That deformity, the pollard-willow, is not so frequent as in most rivers; but the unlopped trees wear their feathery branches, as graceful as ostrich-plumes. The gust which sings through that long colonnade of willows is blowing up a rain-storm. The wood-pigeons, who have been feeding on the banks, wing their way homewards. The old fisherman is hurrying down the current to the shelter of his cottage. He invites us to partake that shelter. His family are busy at their trade of basket-making; and the humble roof, with its cheerful fire, is a welcome retreat out of the driving storm. It is a long as well as furious rain. We open the volume of Shakspere's own poems; and we bethink us what of these he may have composed, or partly shadowed out, wandering on this river-side, or drifting under its green banks, when his happy and genial nature instinctively shaped itself into song, as the expression of his sympathy with the beautiful world around him.

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