There are two specimens of English pastoral verse which I have reserved for separate discussion in this place, namely, Lycidas and Britannia's Pastorals. The one is probably the most perfect example of the allegorical pastoral produced since first the form was invented by Vergil, the other the longest and most ambitious poem ever composed on a pastoral theme.[133]
Milton's poem was written on the occasion of the death of Edward King, fellow of Christ's College, who was drowned on his way to Ireland during the long vacation of 1637, and first appeared in a collection of memorial verses by his Cambridge friends published in 1638. It gathers together within its narrow compass as it were whole centuries of pastoral tradition, fusing them into an organic whole, and inspiring the form with a poetic life of its own.
Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
For Lycidas is dead and claims his meed of song.
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.
Sing first their friendship, nursed upon the self-same hill, their youth spent together. But oh! the heavy change; now the very caves and woods mourn his loss. Where then were the Muses, that their loved poet should die? And yet what could they do for Lycidas, who had no power to shield Orpheus himself,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His goary visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.
What then avails the poet's toil? Were it not better to taste the sweets of love as they offer themselves since none can count on reward in this life? The prize, however, lies elsewhere--
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
But such thoughts are too lofty for the swains of Arethusa and Mincius. Listen rather as the herald of the sea questions the god of winds about the fatal wreck. It was no storm drove the ill-starred boat to destruction:
The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd,
sounds the reply. Next, footing slow, comes the tutelary deity of Alma Mater, and in one sad cry mourns the promise of a life so soon cut short. Lastly, 'The Pilot of the Galilean lake,' with denunciation of the corrupt hirelings of a venal age, laments the loss of the church in the death of Lycidas. As his solemn figure passes by, the gracious fantasies of pastoral landscape shrink away: now
Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams,
bid the nymphs bring flowers of every hue,
To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies--
and yet indeed even this comfort is denied, we dally with false imaginings,
Whilst thee the shores, and sounding Seas
Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world,
or on the Cornish coast,
Where the great vision of the guarded Mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.
But enough!
Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
On this note the elegy ends, and there follow eight lines in which the poet glances at his own pastoral self that has been singing, and realizes that the world will go on even though Lycidas be no more, and that there are other calls in life than that of piping on an oaten reed. These lines correspond to the plain stanzaic frames in which Spenser set his lyrics in the Shepherd's Calender:
Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills,
While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,
He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.
The poem, in common with the whole class of allegorical pastorals, is undoubtedly open to the charge of artificiality, since, in truth, the pastoral garb can never illustrate, but only distort and obscure subjects drawn from other orders of civilization. Yet none but a great master could, to produce a desired effect, have utilized every association which tradition afforded with the consummate skill observable in Milton's poem. He has been blamed for the introduction of St. Peter, on the ground of incongruity; but he has tradition on his side. St. Peter, as we have already seen, figures, under the name of Pamphilus, in the eclogues of Petrarch, and his introduction by Milton is in nicest keeping with the spirit of the kind. The whole poem, and indeed a great deal more, must stand or fall with the Pilot of the Galilean Lake, for to censure his introduction here is to condemn the whole pastoral tradition of three centuries, a judgement which may or may not be just, but which is not a criticism on Milton's poem. So again with the flowers that are to be strewn on the laureate hearse. Three kinds of berries and eleven kinds of flowers are mentioned, and it has been pointed out with painful accuracy that nine of the latter would have been over, and none of the former ripe on August 11, when King was drowned; while all the flowers, with the exception of the amaranth, if it were of the true breed, would have been dead and rotten in November, when the poem was presumably written. It would be foolish to quarrel with Milton on this point, since where all is imaginary such licence is as natural as the strictest botany; yet it must not be forgotten that it is just this disseverance from actuality that has made the eclogue the type of all that is frigid and artificial in literature. The dissatisfaction felt by many with Lycidas was voiced by Dr. Johnson, when he wrote: 'It is not to be considered the effusion of real passion, for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions.... Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief[134].' This is so absolutely true, with regard to the present poem at all events, that it would appear hardly worth saying were it not that there have always been found persons to maintain the contrary. There is no reason whatever to suppose that Milton felt any keen personal grief at the death of Edward King. There is nothing spontaneous, nothing, one might almost say, genuine in the lament. This is indeed strictly irrelevant to the question of its artistic merit, but it must nevertheless be admitted that there is thus much justice in the censure, that the poem purports to be the expression of an intimate sorrow, of the reality of which the reader is never wholly convinced. In so far as it lacks this 'soul-compelling power,' it may be said, not unfairly, to fail of its own artistic purpose.
One further question, however, inevitably presents itself when we have to consider such a work as Lycidas, a work, that is, in which art has attained the highest perfection in one particular kind. Although the objections urged against the individual poem may be shown to miss their mark as criticisms on that poem, may they not have force as criticisms on the class? The allegorical pastoral, though in one sense, as I have said, created by Vergil, was yet, in another, a plant of slow growth, and represents a tradition gradually evolved to meet the needs of a long line of poets. Petrarch, Mantuan, Marot, Spenser were more than mere imitators of Vergil or of one another; they wrote in a particular form because it answered to particular requirements, and they fashioned it in the using. Nevertheless it may be urged with undoubted force, that the requirements were not primarily of an artistic nature, being ever governed by some alien purpose, and that consequently the form which evolved itself in answer to those requirements and to fulfil that purpose, was not by nature calculated to yield the highest artistic results. And thus, though any attempt to question the perfection of the art which Milton brought to the composition of his elegy must needs be foredoomed to failure, the question of the propriety of the form as an artistic medium remains open; and in so far as critical opinion tends to give an unfavourable answer, in so far does the form of pastoral instituted by Vergil and handed down without break from the fourteenth century to Milton's own time stand condemned in its most perfect flower.
Few things could be less like Lycidas than the work which next claims our attention. Unique of its kind, and, in spite of its shortcomings, possessed of no small poetic interest, William Browne's Britannia's Pastorals may be regarded at pleasure either as a pastoral epic or as a versified romance. It resembles the prose romances in being by nature discursive, episodic and inconsequent, and like not a few it remained unfinished. Little would be gained by giving any detailed analysis of the plot developed through the leisurely amplitude of its 10,000 lines, while any attempt to deal, however slightly, with the sources and literary analogues of the work would lead us far beyond the scope of the present chapter[135]. With regard to the latter, it must suffice to note that among the works to which incidents can be directly traced are Tasso's Gerusalemme, Montemayor's Diana, and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, while a more general indebtedness may in particular be observed to Chaucer, Piers Plowman, and the Faery Queen. The plot involves two more or less connected threads of action, the one dealing with the adventures of the swains and shepherdesses, the other concerned with the progress of Thetis and her court. This latter recalls the poetic geography of Drayton's Polyolbion. The principal episodes in the former are the loves of Celandine and Marina, and the allegorical story of Fida and Aletheia, each of which leads to numerous ramifications. Indeed, so far as the pastoral action is concerned, the whole is one string of barely connected episodes.
Celandine loves the shepherdess Marina, who is readily brought to return his affection. To the love thus easily won he soon becomes indifferent, and Marina in despair seeks to end her sorrows in a stream. Saved by the god of the fountain, she is carried off to Mona, and there imprisoned in a cave by the monster Limos (hunger). With her loss, Celandine's love revives, and in his search for her he is led to visit the faery realm, where he finds Spenser lying asleep. The poem ends abruptly in the midst of his adventures. The story of Fida centres round the slaughter of her pet hind by the monster Riot. From the mangled remains of the animal rises the beautiful form of Aletheia (truth). The new-transformed nymph is the daughter of Chronos (time), born, Pallas-like, without a mother. The narrative of her rejection by the world gives occasion for some biting satire on the ill-living of the religious orders, the vanity of the court, and the dishonesty of the crafts. Meanwhile Riot, who from this point ceases to be an embodiment of cruelty, and comes to typify fallen humanity--the Humanum Genus of the moralities--passing successively by Remembrance, Remorse, and Repentance, is purged of his foul shape, and appears as the shepherd Amyntas, finally to be united in marriage with Aletheia. With these adventures is interwoven the progress of Thetis, who comes to view her dominions. From the Euxine and the Hellespont her train sweeps on by Adriatic and Atlantic shores, past lands which call up the names of a long line of poets--Vergil, Ovid, Ariosto, Petrarch, Tasso, Du Bartas, Marot, Ronsard--till ultimately she arrives off the coast of Devon--the Devon of Browne and Drake. Here the shepherds assemble to do her honour, from Colin Clout down to Browne's immediate circle, Brooke, Davies, and Wither, and here the poet entertains her with the tale of Walla and Tavy, which forms a charming incidental piece. The nymph Walla loved the river-god Tavy, and while gathering flowers to weave a garland for him was surprised by a satyr, who pursued her into a wood. She sought refuge in a cave, where, being overtaken by her pursuer, she prayed to Diana, and in the last resort to Ina, by whom she was transformed into a spring, which, after drowning the venturesome satyr, ran on to join its waters with those of her beloved Tavy. Thus Browne wove the common names of his familiar home into a romance of pastoral invention. The metamorphosis of Arethusa pursued by Alpheus, of Ambra by Ombrone, of the nymphs by the satyrs of the Salices, or as frescoed on the temple of Pales in the Arcadia, the loves of Mulla and Mollana in Spenser, and the mythological impersonations of the Polyolbion, find, as it were, a meeting-place in Browne's lay of Walla.
The three parts of Britannia's Pastorals did not appear together. Book I was published during the winter of 1613-14, Book II in 1616, each containing five songs; while the fragment of Book III, containing two songs only, remained in manuscript till 1853, when it was discovered in the Cathedral Library at Salisbury, and printed for the Percy Society[136].
The narrative, as may have been inferred from what has already been said, is sufficiently fantastic. In the introduction of allegorical characters Browne was probably influenced by Spenser, and in a lesser degree by the masque literature of his day and by the study of Langland. Since the work is unfinished, we may in charity suppose that had Browne completed his design the whole would have presented a somewhat less incongruous appearance; there is, however, a marked tendency towards the accumulation of unexplained incidents, which may most plausibly be referred to the influence of the Spanish romances, especially of the Diana, which was already accessible in Yong's translation, and one incident of which Browne did undoubtedly borrow.
In style and poetic merit Browne's work is most astonishingly unequal, though the general level of Britannia's Pastorals is distinctly higher than that of the Shepherd's Pipe. The author passes at times abruptly from careful and loving realism to the most stilted conventionality, and from passages of impassioned eloquence to others grotesquely banal. In some of his peculiarities, as in the perpetuai use of elaborate similes and in the indulgence in inflated paraphrases, he anticipates some of the worst faults of style cultivated by writers of the next century. There are portions of the poem where the narrative is literally carried on through a succession of highly wrought comparisons, each paragraph beginning with an 'As' followed by a correlative 'So' half a page further on. No such series of pictures, however fairly wrought--and Browne's too often end in bathos--can possibly convey the impression of continuons action. It is the same with periphrasis. Used with discretion it may be one of the subtlest ornaments of style, and even when fulfilling no particular purpose is capable of imparting a luxuriant and somewhat rococo richness to the verse. The effect, however, is frequently one of unrelieved frigidity, as in the lines:
And now Hyperion from his glitt'ring throne
Sev'n times his quick'ning rays had bravely shown
Unto the other world, since Walla last
Had on her Tavy's head the garland plac'd;
And this day, as of right, she wends abroad
To ease the meadows of their willing load.
(II. iii. 855.)
At times it was Browne's moral preoccupation that curbed his muse, as in his description of the golden age where, for the sensuous glow of Tasso and for Carew's pagan paradise, he substitutes the insipid convention of a philosophical age of innocence[137]. In his genuine mood as a loving observer of country life he is a very different poet. His feeling is delicate in tone and his observation keen; he was familiar with every tree that grew in the woods, every fish that swam in the waters of his beloved Devon; he entered tenderly into the homely life of the farm--
By this had chanticleer, the village clock,
Bidden the goodwife for her maids to knock,
And the swart ploughman for his breakfast stay'd,
That he might till those lands were fallow laid;
The hills and vailles here and there resound
With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound;
Each shepherd's daughter, with her cleanly peal,[138]
Was come afield to milk the morning's meal.
(I. iv. 483.)
When, however, naturalism of this kind is introduced into pastoral it is already on the high road toward ceasing to be pastoral at all. Nor are touches of higher poetic imagination wanting, as when Time is described as
a lusty aged swain,
That cuts the green tufts off th' enamell'd plain,
And with his scythe hath many a summer shorn
The plough'd-lands lab'ring with a crop of corn.
(I. iv. 307.)
The love of his country is, however, the altar at which Browne's poetic genius takes fire:
Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessed plot,
Whose equal all the world affordeth not!
Show me who can so many crystal rills,
Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills,....
And if the earth can show the like again,
Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men.
Time never can produce men to o'ertake
The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake,
Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more
That by their power made the Devonian shore
Mock the proud Tagus, for whose richest spoil
The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil
Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost
By winning this, though all the rest were lost.
(II. iii. 601.)
It is after all in such a passage as this that we see the true William Browne, with all his high-handedness and worthy enthusiasm, the poet who not only loves his country with a lover's passion and cannot tolerate that any should be compared to her in fairness of feature, in stateliness of stature, or in virtue of mind; but who, first perhaps among English poets, has that more local patriotism, narrower and more intimate, for his own home, for its moors, its streams, its associations, all the actual or imagined surroundings of his beloved Tavistock, and carries in his heart for ever the cry of the wild west--
Devon, O Devon, in wind and rain!