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By Root 20078 0

At the end of Barnes’s volume there also figure six dedicatory sonnets. In Sonnet xcv. Barnes pays a compliment to Sir Philip Sidney, ‘the Arcadian shepherd, Astrophel,’ but he did not draw so largely on Sidney’s work as on that of Ronsard, Desportes, De Baïf, and Du Bellay. Legal metaphors abound in Barnes’s poems, but amid many crudities, he reaches a high level of beauty in Sonnet lxvi., which runs:

Ah, sweet Content! where is thy mild abode?

Is it with shepherds, and light-hearted swains,

Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad,

Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains?

Ah, sweet Content! where dost thou safely rest

In Heaven, with Angels? which the praises sing

Of Him that made, and rules at His behest,

The minds and hearts of every living thing.

Ah, sweet Content! where doth thine harbour hold?

Is it in churches, with religious men,

Which please the gods with prayers manifold;

And in their studies meditate it then?

Whether thou dost in Heaven, or earth appear;

Be where thou wilt! Thou wilt not harbour here!

Watson’s ‘Tears of Fancie,’ 1593.

In August 1593 there appeared a posthumous collection of sixty-one sonnets by Thomas Watson, entitled ‘The Tears of Fancie, or Love Disdained.’ They are throughout the imitative type of his previously published ‘Centurie of Love.’ Many of them sound the same note as Shakespeare’s sonnets to the ‘dark lady.’

Fletcher’s ‘Licia,’ 1593.

In September 1593 followed Giles Fletcher’s ‘Licia, or Poems of Love in honour of the admirable and singular virtues of his Lady.’ This collection of fifty-three sonnets is dedicated to the wife of Sir Richard Mollineux. Fletcher makes no concealment that his sonnets are literary exercises. ‘For this kind of poetry,’ he tells the reader, ‘I did it to try my humour;’ and on the title-page he notes that the work was written ‘to the imitation of the best Latin poets and others.’

Lodge’s ‘Phillis,’ 1593.

The most notable contribution to the sonnet-literature of 1593 was Thomas Lodge’s ‘Phillis Honoured with Pastoral Sonnets, Elegies, and Amorous Delights.’ Besides forty sonnets, some of which exceed fourteen lines in length and others are shorter, there are included three elegies and an ode. Desportes is Lodge’s chief master, but he had recourse to Ronsard and other French contemporaries. How servile he could be may be learnt from a comparison of his Sonnet xxxvi. with Desportes’s sonnet from ‘Les Amours de Diane,’ livre II. sonnet iii.

Thomas Lodge’s Sonnet xxxvi. runs thus:

If so I seek the shades, I presently do see

The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by;

If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be;

If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry.

If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain

If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan

If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain,

He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon.

If so I walk the woods, the woods are his delight;

If I myself torment, he bathes him in my blood;

He will my soldier be if once I wend to fight,

If seas delight, he steers my bark amidst the flood.

In brief, the cruel god doth never from me go,

But makes my lasting love eternal with my woe.

Desportes wrote in ‘Les Amours de Diane,’ book II. sonnet iii.:

Si ie me siés l’ombre, aussi soudainement

Amour, laissant son arc, s’assiet et se repose:

Si ie pense à des vers, ie le voy qu’il compose:

Si ie plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement.

Si ie me plains du mal, il accroist mon tourment:

Si ie respan des pleurs, son visage il arrose:

Si ie monstre la playe en ma poitrine enclose,

Il défait son bandeau l’essuyant doucement.

Si ie vay par les bois, aux bois il m’accompagne:

Si ie me suis cruel, dans mon sang il se bagne:

Si ie vais à la guerre, it deuient mon soldart:

Si ie passe la mer, il conduit ma nacelle:

Bref, iamais l’inhumain de moy ne se depart,

Pour rendre mon amour et ma peine eternelle.

Drayton’s ‘Idea’, 1594.

Three new volumes in 1594, together with the reissue of Daniel’s ‘Delia’ and of Constable’s ‘Diana’ (in a piratical