The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-16 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

ton, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, Ritson,
Mason, Harness, Collier, Knight, have unde-
niably Made several and serious mistakes in
their editions of a single author? Small, in-
deed, is that critical perspicacity which re-
joices to assail Mr. Bell for printing " Marcus
Junius " for " Marcus Tullius," and for over-
looking a superfluous i in another proper
name. But, passing over such fifth-form criti-
cism, we must indicate the unfairness of the
attack. After two columns of elaborate dis-
paragement, there appears the following sen-
tence at the end of the notice :—" In many
" respects these volumes (of the annotated
" edition) have great value and interest." Then
why invidiously assail a work in two columns
of disparagement, where " great value" in
" many respects " is furtively confessed
at the conclusion? In that sentence the
critic has reversed his previous verdict. If
the last opinion which we have cited
be just (and we concur in it), then his
whole criticism was pitched in a wrong key,
and is open to the serious objection of its
being inconsistent with itself. More we
should be tempted to say, but we really dislike
reviewing our contemporaries. So much,
only, has been drawn from us because we fear
that Mr. Bell has been made to pay the
penalty of small literary jealousies, insepara-
ble from a life devoted to critical labours. We
should be sorry that one of his tried talents,
vigorous mind, and various scholarship,
should be unjustly assailed when he is exe-
cuting a work of really great importance, in
which he ought to be aided by literary sym-
pathy. But from these considerations, which
have been forced upon us, we gladly turn to
the newest volume of this valuable work.
Wyatt's poetry is of little t value save as
marking a step in the progress of English
literature. He had no original genius, but he
had a sympathetic mind, and, catching the
tone of the warmer temperament and higher
civilisation of Italy, be transposed them, with
some melody, into verse of his own. But what
in poets of the south was passion, in him was
mere gallantry. In his love there is no reality;
his raptures and his sufferings are equally
feigned ; and it does not appear probable,
from what we know of his history, that his
verse was ever more than a conventional ex-
pression of fictitious sentiment. The pastime
of his leisure, it glitters only with artificial'
fire. The supposition that there was any
attachment between him and Anne Boleyn is
unsupported by evidence. He seems to have
been married when about seventeen, and, from
what we know of his shrewd and worldly-wise
character, he was very unlikely to let his
amorous fancies take a dangerous direction.
Mr. Bell has judiciously summed up the quali-
ties of his poetry :
Attempts to extract autobiographical suggestions from
the love sonnets of an age when gallantry was cultivated
as an art, like poetry itself, should be received with caution.
Under such conditions the reality of the sentiments can-
not be implicitly depended upon, and external evidence is
necessary to justify us in regarding them in any more re-
sponsible light than as exercises of the imagination. To
paint the ecstasies of the happy lover or the sorrows of the
unfortunate, to heap up images of delight or distress, to
pursue a passion through the vicissitudes of hope and deli-
pair, were the common themes of all the poets who fol-
lowed the Italian models, and reflected the characteristics
of chivalry. Wyatt especially must be judged by this
standard, because his imitations are obvious and extensive,
and the love he depicts bears manifest traces of being
drawn from the same source as his verse. Artifice and
effect are everywhere visible ; and we may reasonably con-
clude that there was as little of genuine emotion as of ori-
ginality of inspiration in his poetry.
Wyatt was born two hundred years later
than his great poetical model Petrarch ; and,
glancing back over that wide interval, it ap-
pears strange that the English mind should—
as regards imaginative arts and studies—have
remained in so sluggish a state. When
Petrarch was penning his sonnets to Laura,
our people, fighting the battles of Cressy and
Poictiers, cared little for song ; but, in the
succeeding reign, Chaucer, catching the best
attributes of both the Norman and Saxon
races, blended them together, and formed a
genuine school of English poetry, which one
might have supposed would have proved
fertile in works, but which yet, amid the
increasing light of " the revival of letters,"
continued to slumber until the Reformation.
The invasion of France by Henry V., and the

r _ s_

SATURDAY,

desperate warfare consequent on it, with the
desolating and exhaustive civil wars which
immediately succeeded, may in some degree
account for this mental torpor; yet it is strange
that the return of poetical taste should have
been marked by reference to the earlier and
exotic rather than to the later and native
development
Mr. Bell conceives that, taking into con-
sideration the age in which Wyatt wrote, and
the sources from which he borrowed, he was
" singularly free from conceits." We can
scarcely allow this, even with the large allow-
ances claimed. Certainly we should be puz-
zled where to look for a purer example of
" conceit " than is supplied by the following
sonnet :

THE LOVER'S LIFE COMPARED TO THE ALPS.
Like unto these unmeasurable mountains
Is my painful life, the burden of ire;
For of great height they be, and high is my desire ;
And I of tears, and they be full of fountains;
Under craggy rocks they have barren plains :
Hard thoughts in me my woful mind doth tire ;
Small fruit and many leaves their tops attire :
With small effect great trust in me remains ;
The boisterous winds oft their high boughs do blast:
Hot sighs in me continually be shed;
Wild beasts in them, fierce love in me is fed:
Immovable am I and they steadfast;
Of restless birds they have the tune and note :
And I always plaints passing thorough my throat.

The "Rondeaux" of Wyatt are, in our
judgment, among his most on and hap-
piest efforts, but Mr. Bell selects for parti-
cular commendation the subjoined ode as "a
charming piece," and the " most perfect of his
compositions "

THE LOVER COMPLAINETH THE UNKINDNESS OF HIS

LOVE.

My lute, awake ! perform the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste;
And end that I have now begun:
And when this song is sung and past,
My lute! be still, for I have done.
As to be heard where ear is none ;
As lead to grave in marble stone,
My song may pierce her heart as soon ;
Should we then sing, or sigh, or moan?
No, no, my lute ! for I have done.
The rock doth not so cruelly
Repulse the waves continually,
As she my suit and affection :
So that T am past remedy;
Whereby my lute and I have done.
Proud of the spoil that thou bast got
Of simple hearts thorough Love's shot,
By whom, unkind, thou hest them won ;
Think not he bath his bow forgot,
Although my lute and I have done.
Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain,
That makest but game of earnest pain ;
Trow not alone under the sun
I.lnguit to cause thy lovers plain ;
Although my lute and I have done.
May chance thee lie withered and old
In winter nights, that are so cold,
Plaining in vain unto the moon ;
Thy wishes then dare not be told :
Care then who list, for I have done.
And then may chance thee to repent
The time that thou has lost and spent,
To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon:
Then shalt thou know beauty but lent,
And wish and want, as I have done.
Now cease, my lute ! this is the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And ended is that 1 begun :
Now is this song both sung and past;
My lute l be still, for I have done.

In his verse Wyatt was so essentially imi-
tative and affected that we can scarcely catch
glimpses of the true man, but we fancy that
in these next lines his mind found honest ex-
pression ; and one would hope that here at
least, abjuring all feigned pretences of " hot
sighs " and " painful life,' and " tears and
plaints," he dipped his pencil inhomcly colours,
and drew a sweet chaste portrait from his own
fireside :
A DESCRIPTION OF SUCH A ONE AS HE WOULD LOPE•
A face that should content me wondrous well,
Should not be fair, but lovely to behold ;
Of gladsome chere, all grief for to expel;
With sober looks so would I that it should
Speak without wards, such words as none can tell:
Her tress also should be of crisped gold.
With wit, and these, perchance I might be tied,
And knit °gam the knot that should not slide.
Another short composition certainly origin-
ated in personal feeling. In one of his
terms of imprisonment, caused by the capri-
cious tyranny of Henry VIII., he wrote :