A History of English Literature, George Saintsbury [readnow .TXT] 📗
- Author: George Saintsbury
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Of morals teaching education.
Was not this pretty for a plain rhyme extempore? if ye will ye shall have more.' 'Nay, it is enough,' said Roberto, 'but how mean you to use me?' 'Why, sir, in making plays,' said the other, 'for which you shall be well paid, if you will take the pains.'"
These same characteristics, though without the prevailing and in part obviously sincere melancholy which marks Greene's regrets, also distinguish Lodge's prose work to such an extent that remarks on the two might sometimes be made simply interchangeable. But fortune was kinder to Lodge than to his friend and collaborator. Nor does he seem to have had any occasion to "tread the burning marl" in company with conny-catchers and their associates. Lodge began with critical and polemical work—an academic if not very urbane reply to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse; but in the Alarum against Usurers, which resembles and even preceded Greene's similar work, he took to the satirical-story-form. Indeed, the connection between Lodge and Greene was so close, and the difficulty of ascertaining the exact dates of their compositions is so great, that it is impossible to be sure which was the precise forerunner. Certainly if Lodge set Greene an example in the Alarum against Usurers, he followed Greene's lead in Forbonius and Prisceria some years afterwards, having written it on shipboard in a venture against the Spaniards. Lodge produced much the most famous book of the euphuist school, next to Euphues itself, as well as the best known of this pamphlet series, in Rosalynde or Euphues' Golden Legacy, from which Shakespere took the story of As You Like It, and of which an example follows:—
"'Ah Phœbe,' quoth he, 'whereof art thou made, that thou regardest not thy malady? Am I so hateful an object, that thine eyes condemn me for an abject? or so base, that thy desires cannot stoop so low as to lend me a gracious look? My passions are many, my loves more, my thoughts loyalty, and my fancy faith: all devoted in humble devoir to the service of Phœbe; and shall I reap no reward for such fealties? The swain's daily labours is quit with the evening's hire, the ploughman's toil is eased with the hope of corn, what the ox sweats out at the plough he fatteneth at the crib: but unfortunate Montanus[39] hath no salve for his sorrows, nor any hope of recompense for the hazard of his perplexed passions. If Phœbe, time may plead the proof of my truth, twice seven winters have I loved fair Phœbe: if constancy be a cause to further my suit, Montanus' thoughts have been sealed in the sweet of Phœbe's excellence, as far from change as she from love: if outward passions may discover inward affections, the furrows in my face may discover the sorrows of my heart, and the map of my looks the grief of my mind. Thou seest (Phœbe) the tears of despair have made my cheeks full of wrinkles, and my scalding sighs have made the air echo her pity conceived in my plaints; Philomel hearing my passions, hath left her mournful tunes to listen to the discourse of miseries. I have portrayed in every tree the beauty of my mistress, and the despair of my loves. What is it in the woods cannot witness my woes? and who is it would not pity my plaints? only Phœbe. And why? Because I am Montanus, and she Phœbe: I a worthless swain, and she the most excellent of all fairies. Beautiful Phœbe! oh might I say pitiful, then happy were I though I tasted but one minute of that good hap. Measure Montanus, not by his fortunes, but by his loves, and balance not his wealth but his desires, and lend but one gracious look to cure a heap of disquieted cares: if not, ah if Phœbe cannot love, let a storm of frowns end the discontent of my thoughts, and so let me perish in my desires, because they are above my deserts: only at my death this favour cannot be denied me, that all shall say Montanus died for love of hard hearted Phœbe.' At these words she filled her face full of frowns and made him this short and sharp reply.
"'Importunate shepherd, whose loves are lawless because restless: are thy passions so extreme, that thou canst not conceal them with patience? or art thou so folly-sick, that thou must needs be fancy-sick, and in thy affection tied to such an exigent as none serves but Phœbe? Well, sir, if your market can be made nowhere else, home again, for your mart is at the fairest. Phœbe is no lettuce for your lips, and her grapes hang so high, that gaze at them you may, but touch them you cannot. Yet Montanus I speak not this in pride, but in disdain: not that I scorn thee, but that I hate love: for I count it as great honour to triumph over fancy as over fortune. Rest thee content therefore Montanus, cease from thy loves, and bridle thy looks, quench the sparkles before they grow to a farther flame; for in loving me, thou shalt but live by loss, and what thou utterest in words are all written in the wind. Wert thou (Montanus) as fair as Paris, as hardy as Hector, as constant as Troilus, as loving as Leander, Phœbe could not love, because she cannot love at all: and therefore if thou pursue me with Phœbus, I must flie with Daphne.'"
[39] The Silvius, it may be just necessary to observe, of As You Like It.
This book seems to have been very successful, and Lodge began to write pamphlets vigorously, sometimes taking up the social satire, sometimes the moral treatise, sometimes (and then most happily) the euphuist romance, salted with charming poems. His last prose work in this kind (he wrote other things later) was the pretty and prettily-named Margarite of America, in 1596.
The names of Nash and Harvey are intertwined even more closely than those of Greene and Lodge; but the conjunction is not a grasp of friendship but a grip of hatred—a wrestle, not an embrace. The fact of the quarrel has attracted rather disproportionate attention from the days of Isaac Disraeli onwards; and its original cause is still extremely obscure and very unimportant. By some it is connected, causally as well as accidentally, with the Martin Marprelate business; by some with the fact that Harvey belonged to the inner Sidneian clique, Nash to the outer ring of professional journalists and Bohemians. It at any rate produced some remarkable varieties of the pamphlet, and demonstrated the keen interest which the world takes in the proceedings of any couple of literary men who choose to abuse and befoul one another. Harvey, though no mean scholar, was in mere writing no match for Nash; and his chief answer to the latter, Pierce's Supererogation, is about as rambling, incoherent, and ineffective a combination of pedantry and insolence as need be wished for. It has some not uninteresting, though usually very obscure, hints on literary matters. Besides this, Harvey wrote letters to Spenser with their well-known criticism and recommendation of classical forms, and Foure Letters Touching Robert Greene and Others: with the Trimming of Thomas Nash, Gentleman. A sample of him, not in his abusive-dull, but in his scholarly-dull manner, may be given:—
"Mine own rules and precepts of art, I believe will fall out not greatly repugnant, though peradventure somewhat different: and yet I am not so resolute, but I can be content to reserve the copying out and publishing thereof, until I have a little better consulted with my pillow, and taken some further advice of Madame Sperienza. In the mean time, take this for a general caveat, and say I have revealed one great mystery unto you: I am of opinion, there is no one more regular and justifiable direction, either for the assured and infallible certainty of our English artificial prosody particularly, or generally to bring our language into art, and to frame a grammar or rhetoric thereof; than first of all universally to agree upon one and the same orthography in all points conformable and proportionate to our common natural prosody: whether Sir Thomas Smithies in that respect be the most perfit, as surely it must needs be very good; or else some other of profounder learning and longer experience, than Sir Thomas was, shewing by necessary demonstration, wherein he is defective, will undertake shortly to supply his wants and make him more absolute. Myself dare not hope to hop after him, till I see something or other, to or fro, publicly and authentically established, as it were by a general council, or Act of Parliament: and then peradventure, standing upon firmer ground, for company sake, I may adventure to do as others do. Interim, credit me, I dare give no precepts, nor set down any certain general art: and yet see my boldness, I am not greatly squeamish of my Particular Examples, whereas he that can but reasonably skill of the one, will give easily a shrewd guess at the other: considering that the one fetcheth his original and offspring from the other. In which respect, to say troth, we beginners have the start, and advantage of our followers, who are to frame and conform both their examples and precepts, according to precedent which they have of us: as no doubt Homer or some other in Greek, and Ennius, or I know not who else in Latin, did prejudice, and overrule those that followed them, as well for the quantities of syllables, as number of feet, and the like: their only examples going for current payment, and standing instead of laws, and rules with the posterity."
In Harvey, more perhaps than anywhere else in prose, appears the abusive exaggeration, not humorous or Rabelaisian, but simply rancorous and dull, which mars so much Elizabethan work. In order not to fall into the same error ourselves, we must abstain from repeating the very strong language which has sometimes been applied to his treatment of dead men, and such dead men as Greene and Marlowe, for apparently no other fault than their being friends of his enemy Nash. It is sufficient to say that Harvey had all the worst traits of "donnishness," without having apparently any notion of that dignity which sometimes half excuses the don. He was emphatically of Mr. Carlyle's "acrid-quack" genus.
Thomas Nash will himself hardly escape the charge of acridity, but only injustice or want of discernment will call him a quack. Unlike Harvey, but like Greene and Lodge, he was a verse as well as a prose writer. But his verse is in comparison unimportant. Nor was he tempted to intersperse specimens of it in his prose work. The absolutely best part of that work—the Anti-Martinist pamphlets to be noticed presently—is only attributed to him conjecturally, though the grounds of attribution are very strong. But his characteristics are fully evident in his undoubted productions. The first of these in pamphlet form is the very odd thing called Pierce Penniless [the name by which Nash became known], his Supplication to the Devil. It is a kind of rambling condemnation of luxury, for the most part delivered in the form of burlesque exhortation, which the
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