And the third, a period of widening separation, when the lover, 'forced by Stella's laws of duty to depart,' sinks deeper and deeper into depression and discouragement. Joy, hope, delight, even tears, have forgotten him : 'Only true sighs you do not go away: Thank may you have for such a thankful part; -Thankworthiest yet when you shall break my heart!' Last of all, we may imagine, comes a sudden call to action, perhaps connected with the schemes of colonisation which we know to have been occupying his mind in 1582, and Sidney writes the 107th sonnet, the last but one in the series as printed, probably the true conclusion of the whole according to Sidney's plan. 'Sweet for a while give respite to my heart, Which pants as though it still should leap to thee, To this great cause, which needs both use and art. And scorning say, 'See what it is to love!' Scattered up and down these three divisions as the sonnets stand now, are sonnets which have no special fitness to one or other division, and others again that are clearly misplaced. Still, in the main, the story of the poems runs on unbroken, a living continuous whole growing step by step more real and more tragic. With very few exceptions, the Astrophel and Stella sonnets cannot be fairly judged apart from their context. Each sonnet depends upon those before and after it, and it is in the cumulative effect of the whole that Sidney's genius is most clearly felt. Other contemporary series of sonnets will bear unstringing without injury. A stray sonnet taken at random from Delia or Lodge's Phillis or from Drummond's love-sonnets will often compare favourably with one taken at random from Astrophel and Stella. But the weak sonnets in Sidney are like the weak places in some of Wordsworth's finest work, descents to commonplace which taken alone would be intolerable, but which in their proper context rather heighten than detract from the realistic and passionate effect of the whole. In order to preserve this general effect as much as possible, the plan of the present selection has been to take from each period a certain number of representative sonnets, which reproduce the original whole at least in outline, adding to these two specimens from the Astrophel and Stella songs, eleven in number, which were originally printed after the sonnets, but were interspersed among them in the Arcadia of 1598. The two sonnets beginning 'Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare,' and 'Leave me, O Love which reachest but to dust,' which a recent editor has arbitrarily placed for the first time at the end of Astrophel and Stella, have been here care.ully distinguished from that series. In some ways, in spite of their grand flow of verse and phrase, they are inferior to the majority of the Astrophel and Stella sonnets in workmanship, and also slightly different from them in plan. Sidney was probably not inclined to assign to them finally so conspicuous a place, and they were first published with other miscellaneous sonnets in the Arcadia of 1598. But that they were written towards the close of the Stella episode, perhaps about the time of the poet's marriage with Frances Walsingham, is certainly very likely, and their consonance with all that we know of that philosophical and high-minded Sidney in whom Elizabeth found an unwelcome counsellor, and Languet saw the hope of the Protestant cause in Europe, makes it justifiable to regard them as fit successors to any selection from Astrophel and Stella, and especially as closely connected with the 107th Sonnet. Of the rest of Sidney's poetry it is not necessary to say very much. The Stella poems brought him his contemporary fame, and upon them and the Apology for Poetry his claim to live in English letters must always rest. His other poems have the youthful faults which mar even Astrophel and Stella, only in far greater abundance. Mere 'thin diet of dainty words,' ingenuity unrelieved by a single touch of true feeling, the stock phrases and themes common to the hundred-and-one second-rate rhymers of the day, this is all that the voluminous verse of the Arcadia, with the exception of a few passages here and there, has to offer. The two songs quoted below from the 'Certain Sonnets-never before printed,' of 1595, belong to the great lyrical growth of the time, and are specimens of Sidney's freest and most spontaneous manner. One of them, the passionate dirge beginning 'Ring out ye bells, let mourning shews be spread,' has a swing and force which ought long ago to have rescued it from oblivion. MARY A. WARD. ASTROPHEL AND STELLA. I. Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,— I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe; Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart, and write. 5. It is most true that eyes are form'd to serve It is most true, what we call Cupid's dart An image is, which for ourselves we carve, And, fools, adore in temple of our heart, Till that good god make church and churchmen starve: Whereof this beauty can be but a shade, Which, elements with mortal mixture breed: True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made, 18. With what sharp checks I in myself am shent And by just 'counts myself a bankrupt know Which unto it by birthright I do owe; And, which is worse, no good excuse can show, My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toys; I see and yet no greater sorrow take 23. The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 26. Though dusty wits dare scorn Astrology, To have for no cause birthright in the sky And know great causes great effects procure; 30. Whether the Turkish new moon minded be |