Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Vol. III

Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Vol. III

In the case of most of the constituents of these volumes, there was little need of 'deliberating and pondering' like the excellent Sir Thomas Bertram, when he had to settle such weighty questions as whether his niece should or should not go out to dinner, and if so whether she should walk or drive. But it was not quite the same in regard to Albino and Bellama. The first claim of entrants hererarity and novelty to the general, it has without question: for the book (though it seems to have been issued in two forms, or at least with two title-pages) is very uncommon, and the author has escaped the wide-encroaching net of the D.N.B. Nor could I allow this to be balanced by the dull, clumsy, philistine, hackneyed ribaldry of the nunnery scenes in the middle, or by a page of sheer nastiness at the end, which is a sort of concentration of Herrick's foulest epigrams. These things will happen: and they can be skipped. It gave one more serious pause that 'N. W.' seldom1 displays anything like the poetry which far more than compensates for much milder blots in Leoline and Sydanis, and that his book is written in a singular jargon almost as much out of the common way as the wildest freaks of Benlowes, but without their excuse of furor poeticus. What turned the scale in his favour, after more than one reading, was the increasing conviction that the book, in spite or perhaps to some extent because of its defects, is a really valuable document for the history of English Literature from the special point of view which was marked out in the General Introduction. It is noteworthy as a member, graceless and slatternly, but still a member, of that class of Heroic Poem which it has been one of my main objects to bring before the student. It is still more noteworthy in connexion with the history of English fiction as presenting a special variety of that kind. It was not till, for the purposes of this collection, and by the kindness of Professor Firth, who lent me his copy, I read the volume (I knew it before only by name and from the Censura Literaria) that a gap in my mind's atlas of that fiction was filled in satisfactorily. I said, in speaking of Leoline and Sydanis, that we must take not merely the Heroic but the Mock-Heroic poem into consideration as origins for our English examples; and this is very much more the case with Albino and [page425] Bellama. Whiting almost parades his knowledge of Italian; and I should think, from some of the worst as well as the oddest parts of his poem, that he had pushed his researches as far as Macaronic. In fact you must go beyond Folengoto Tifi Odassi and Fossa Cremonese2to supply a 'further' to his excursions, into the unsavoury now and then. But turning willingly enough from this, it will be evident to any instructed readerand his perlusive panegyrists point it outthat his purpose is largely satiric. Indeed, his uncouth lingo3 has a close connexion with that of Marston and the other early Elizabethan satirists forty years before him: while he gives one odd reminders, at the same time, of the prose pamphlet which was contemporary with these very satirists, and was actually written by some of them. Now all these links are links with the history of the Novel backwards; and there are others forward. Change the romance apparatus into that of common life, of which our examples are French and Spanish rather than Italian, and you will get out of parts of Albino and Bellama something by no means unlike the singular farrago which goes under the name of The English Rogue. Besides convincing the author that prose is much better for such work than verse (which Head himself saw4), present him with more wits, better taste, and a more advanced state of society and manners, and you will probably find him some way on the road which leads, however far away, and after whatever rise, over the hills beyond his dirty marsh, to Tom Jones itself. While, to make a less 'kangaroo' transition in quality though a farther one in time, much smaller alteration would make Albino and Bellama into very fair Mrs. Radcliffe. The curious addition Il Insonio Insonadado or 'Waking-Dream Undreamt' (whether the title is invented or borrowed, some one with greater knowledge of Spanish than I possess must decide) may supply some greater interest than Whiting's escapade in the Heroic Romance. It is not continuously paged with the rest of the volume, but merely 'signatured' H, H2, &c. as far as a (misprinted) 5. On the whole, however, it is much less carelessly put to press than Albino and Bellama, and it is also (in parts at least) much more soberly written. The opening does not promise much, except an example of the loose, would-be satirical academic commonplaces of the [page426] time; but it afterwards takes on some critical substance, and if I had read it (as I had not yet) twenty years ago I should have given it a small corner in an otherwise very scantily occupied chapter of my History of Criticism. Whether the personages introduced before the Heavenly Court aim at individuals it would be very hard to say: but the certification of the poetess5 might have some interest. 'Tenth Muses', as was said in relation to Anne King (v. sup., p. 210), were not unknown, and Katharine Philips was alive, though as yet but a child. But women had, before her, made little figure in English literature. The evidences of popular taste are not quite worthless, and while the absence of Ben Jonson is noteworthy, the presence of Drummond is almost equally so, as well as the mention of that 'testiness' which certainly does appear in the poet of Hawthornden. But the chief critical utterance is the quatrain, solid and judicial if not very poetical, on Donne. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 46856
Author: Cleveland, John
Release Date: Sep 14, 2014
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Saintsbury, George, 1845-1933