To Mr.Gifted Hopkins.
Dear Gifted,--If you will permit me to use your Christian,and prophetic,name--we improved the occasion lately with the writers of light verse in ancient times.We decided that the ancients were not great in verses of society,because they had,properly speaking,no society to write verses for.Women did not live in the Christian freedom and social equality with men,either in Greece or Rome--at least not "modest women,"as Mr.Harry Foker calls them in "Pendennis."About the others there is plenty of pretty verse in the Anthology.What you need for verses of society is a period in which the social equality is recognized,and in which people are peaceable enough and comfortable enough to "play with light loves in the portal"of the Temple of Hymen,without any very definite intentions,on either part,of going inside and getting married.
Perhaps we should not expect vers de societe from the Crusaders,who were not peaceable,and who were very earnest indeed,in love or war.But as soon as you get a Court,and Court life,in France,even though the times were warlike,then ladies are lauded in artful strains,and the lyre is struck leviore plectro.Charles d'Orleans,that captive and captivating prince,wrote thousands of rondeaux;even before his time a gallant company of gentlemen composed the Livre des Cent Ballades,one hundred ballades,practically unreadable by modern men.Then came Clement Marot,with his gay and rather empty fluency,and Ronsard,with his mythological compliments,his sonnets,decked with roses,and led like lambs to the altar of Helen or Cassandra.A few,here and there,of his pieces are lighter,more pleasant,and,in a quiet way,immortal,such as the verses to his "fair flower of Anjou,"a beauty of fifteen.So they ran on,in France,till Voiture's time,and Sarrazin's with his merry ballade of an elopement,and Corneille's proud and graceful stanzas to Marquise de Gorla.
But verses in the English tongue are more worthy of our attention.
Mr.Locker begins his collection of them,Lyra Elegantiarum (no longer a very rare book in England),as far back as Skelton's age,and as Thomas Wyat's,and Sidney's;but those things,the lighter lyrics of that day,are rather songs than poems,and probably were all meant to be sung to the virginals by our musical ancestors.
"Drink to me only with thine eyes,"says the great Ben Jonson,or sings it rather.The words,that he versified out of the Greek prose of Philostratus,cannot be thought of without the tune.It is the same with Carew's "He that loves a rosy cheek,"or with "Roses,their sharp spines being gone."The lighter poetry of Carew's day is all powdered with gold dust,like the court ladies'hair,and is crowned and diapered with roses,and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest.Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs,as in that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria,or as in Eisen's vignettes for Dorat's Baisers:
"Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day;For in pure love did Heaven prepare These powders to enrich your hair."It would be affectation,Gifted,if you rhymed in that fashion for the lady of your love,and presented her,as it were,with cosmical cosmetics,and compliments drawn from the starry spaces and deserts,from skies,phoenixes,and angels.But it was a natural and pretty way of writing when Thomas Carew was young.I prefer Herrick the inexhaustible in dainties;Herrick,that parson-pagan,with the soul of a Greek of the Anthology,and a cure of souls (Heaven help them!)in Devonshire.His Julia is the least mortal of these "daughters of dreams and of stories,"whom poets celebrate;she has a certain opulence of flesh and blood,a cheek like a damask rose,and "rich eyes,"like Keats's lady;no vaporous Beatrice,she;but a handsome English wench,with "A cuff neglectful and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly;A winning wave,deserving note In the tempestuous petticoat."Then Suckling strikes up a reckless military air;a warrior he is who has seen many a siege of hearts--hearts that capitulated,or held out like Troy-town,and the impatient assailant whistles:
"Quit,quit,for shame:this will not move,This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,Nothing can make her -The devil take her."
So he rides away,curling his moustache,hiding his defeat in a big inimitable swagger.It is a pleasanter piece in which Suckling,after a long leaguer of a lady's heart,finds that Captain honour is governor of the place,and surrender hopeless.So he departs with a salute:
"March,march (quoth I),the word straight give,Let's lose no time but leave her:That giant upon air will live,And hold it out for ever."
