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SHAKESPEARE AND 
 THE RIVAL POET 
 
 Displaying Shakespeare as a Satirist and Proving 
 
 the Identity of the Patron and the 
 
 Rival of the Sonnets 
 
 BY 
 ARTHUR ACHESON 
 
 With a Reprint of Sundry Poetical Pieces by 
 
 George Chapman 
 Bearing on the Subject 
 
 ITY 
 
 . 
 
 JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD 
 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK 
 
 M CM III 
 
NGL. LIB. FO. 
 
 rj* 
 
 COPYRIGHT, igoj, 
 
 BY 
 ARTHUR ACHESON 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The research of text-students of the works of 
 Shakespeare, undertaken with the object of unveil- 
 ing the mystery which envelops the poet's life and 
 personality, has added little or nothing of actual 
 proof to the bare outlines which hearsay, tradition, 
 and the spare records of his time have given us. It 
 has, however, resulted in evolving several plausible 
 conjectures, which, if followed and carried to the 
 point of proof, would lend some form and sem- 
 blance of his personality to these outlines, and ma- 
 terially assist in visualizing for us the actual man. 
 In this class of conjectural knowledge I would place 
 the following questions : 
 
 The question of the personal theory of the Son- 
 nets with its attendant questions of order and chro- 
 nology, and the identity of the three or four figures, 
 the "Patron," "The Rival Poet," "The Dark 
 Lady," and " The Mr. W. H." of the Dedication. 
 
 I would also mention in this class the question of 
 the chronology of the plays, for though we have 
 fairly accurate data regarding a few of them, and 
 fairly plausible inferences for nearly the whole of 
 them, we cannot give an actual date for the first pro- 
 duction of any one of them. 
 
 ili 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 Lastly in this class, and attendant upon the Son- 
 net theories, I would mention the question of the 
 intention of the poem called "Willobie His Avisa," 
 regarding Shakespeare and his connections. If any 
 one or two of these things were actually proved, a 
 new keynote to research would be struck, but at 
 present these are all still matters of opinion and dis- 
 pute. The probability that they would always re- 
 main so, has tempted some pseudo-Shakesperians 
 into wild and extravagant inventions, and some 
 honest critics into strange fantasies regarding 
 them. The lengths to which these types of critics 
 have been carried have so reacted upon many 
 others, of a more careful and scientific mind, that 
 they, fearful of being accused of extravagance, have 
 withdrawn behind the barriers of settled fact, and 
 fearfully venture fearful opinions of all that lies be- 
 yond their defenses; or else, with the reactionary 
 and stultifying tendency of aging conservatism, 
 sink back upon the conclusions of the older mas- 
 ter critics, looking askance, if deigning to look at 
 all, at whatever differs from them. The study of 
 which this book is the result was undertaken alto- 
 gether for my own pleasure, and in an honest en- 
 deavor to get, if possible, some new light upon these 
 debated questions. I had, primarily, no idea or 
 intention of writing upon the subject, but was 
 drawn thereto by a strong conviction of the truth 
 and critical value, as well as a plain cognizance of 
 the originality of most of the theory and proof 
 herein set forth. I have endeavored to tell what I 
 have found as clearly and concisely as possible, and 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 believe I have in some instances converted con- 
 jecture into proof. 
 
 For the convenience of the reader, I have ap- 
 pended a reprint of certain poems of George Chap- 
 man's connected with my argument. 
 
 It would be difficult for me to tell to whom or 
 to what sources I am indebted for help in this 
 search, as my reading has been desultory and scat- 
 tered. Professor Minto's conjecture regarding 
 Chapman certainly cannot pass unmentioned; it is 
 undoubtedly the key to my findings. I desire also 
 to acknowledge a very courteous response from 
 the able editor of the excellent Temple Edition, Mr. 
 Israel Gollancz, to an inquiry I made of him re- 
 garding a dark point in my work. 
 
 ARTHUR ACHESON. 
 
 CHICAGO, April 7, igoa. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY, i 
 
 II. THE PERSONAL THEORY, 9 
 
 III. AN ANALYSIS OF THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF 
 
 THE SONNETS, 24 
 
 IV. THE PATRON AND THE RIVAL POET OF THE 
 
 SONNETS, 50 
 
 V. THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT AND " LOVE'S LABOR'S 
 
 LOST," 76 
 
 VI. CHAPMAN DISPLAYED AS THE ORIGINAL OF 
 
 HOLOFERNES, JOO 
 
 VII. CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS UPON SHAKESPEARE IN 
 
 1594-95 116 
 
 VIII. CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS CONTINUED IN 1597-98, . 149 
 IX. SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE UPON CHAPMAN IN " TROI- 
 
 LUS AND CRESSIDA" IN 1598, . . .167 
 X. SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE UPON CHAPMAN IN " TROI- 
 
 LUS AND CRESSIDA " IN 1609 189 
 
 XL CONCLUSION, 207 
 
 REPRINTS. 
 
 (1594) CHAPMAN'S " SHADOW OF NIGHT," . . . 221 
 
 " Hymnus in Noctem " ) ... 223 
 
 " Hymnus in Cynthiam " ) . . . 237 
 
 ( 1 595) " OVID'S BANQUET OF SENSE," . . . .255 
 
 "A CORONET FOR HIS MISTRESS PHILOSO- 
 PHY/' 297 
 
 "THE AMOROUS ZODIAC," . . . .303 
 
 (1598) CHAPMAN'S POEM TO M. HARRIOTS, . . 312 
 
 (1609) " THE TEARS OF PEACE," 318 
 
 vtt 
 
And though them had'st small Latin, and less Greek, 
 
 From thence to honour thee I would not seek 
 
 For names ; but call forth thundering jEschylus, 
 
 Euripides, and Sophocles to us, 
 
 Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova, dead, 
 
 To life again, to hear thy buskin tread 
 
 And shake a stage : or, when thy socks were on, 
 
 Leave thee alone, for the comparison 
 
 Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome, 
 
 Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come." 
 
 BEN JONSON. 1623. 
 
SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL 
 POET. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 DURING the past hundred years many attempts 
 have been made at writing a life of Shakespeare. 
 Patient research has brought to light much inter- 
 esting material and many important facts which 
 have greatly enlarged the limited knowledge of the 
 poet's doings which was extant when Steevens 
 wrote : " All that is known with any degree of cer- 
 tainty regarding Shakespeare, is that he was born 
 at Stratford-upon-Avon, married, and had chil- 
 dren there, went to London, where he commenced 
 actor, and wrote poems and plays, returned to 
 Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." 
 The facts which have been added have, however, 
 merely increased the evidence of these plain out- 
 lines, without casting much new light upon that 
 which would best enable us to understand his works 
 and the spirit in which he wrote, that is his actual 
 personality. 
 
 We do not grasp the full value of any literary 
 work till we are enabled, by the knowledge which 
 we have of the writer's personality, to put ourselves 
 
2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 to some extent in his place. It is to this desire to 
 understand thoroughly and enter into the spirit of a 
 writer's work, and not to mere morbid curiosity, 
 that we may impute the public demand for bio- 
 graphical details of popular authors. 
 
 In the works of most writers the subjectivity of 
 their material and style reveals their point of view 
 and shows us their actual ideas. The highest can- 
 ons of dramatic art, however, demand absolute ob- 
 jectivity of treatment. An author's personality, 
 introduced and plainly recognized by an audience in 
 a drama, destroys the perspective and kills the illu- 
 sion as surely as would the introduction of a Queen 
 Anne cottage in the scenery of a Roman play. 
 
 Shakespeare, fully conscious of the demands of 
 his art, has so effectually hidden his own person- 
 ality and feelings in his work that it has come to be 
 generally believed that they are not to be found 
 there. Because his art is so exquisite shall we 
 deem him an artificer who chisels puppets, instead 
 of an artist who molds his heart and soul into form 
 and figure? Because he does not wail like Heine 
 and tell us that " Out of my own great woes I 
 make my little songs," may we not by searching 
 find him out? I am convinced that we may, and 
 that while the investigation of moldy records and 
 parish registers has given us some idea of how he 
 bought and sold property, sued his debtors, etc., 
 the real man, the poet and philosopher, lover and 
 hater, friend and foe, may be discerned only by a 
 critical and sympathetic study of his own works. 
 His dramas are so artistically objective, and his in- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 dividuality so carefully hidden, that this would be 
 an almost impossible task were it not for the great 
 autobiographical value of the Sonnets, and the side 
 lights which the story they contain throws upon 
 his other works. 
 
 In the Sonnets Shakespeare becomes entirely 
 subjective; they were not meant for publication, 
 and, looked at in a true light, are two series of po- 
 etic epistles: one to his friend, and one to his mis- 
 tress. 
 
 The earliest mention we have of the Sonnets is 
 in the year 1598, in Meres' " Palladis Tamia," where 
 they are called, " his sugred sonnets amongst his 
 private friends." There can be little doubt but that 
 Meres refers to the Sonnets which we know, or, at 
 least, to some portion of them. 
 
 In 1599 two of the Sonnets, Nos. 138 and 144, 
 appeared in a somewhat garbled form, in a collec- 
 tion of poems by various hands, but all attributed 
 to Shakespeare, published by Wm. Jaggard, un- 
 der the title of " The Passionate Pilgrim." 
 
 We have no other record of any of the Sonnets 
 till 1609, when the whole collection, as we know 
 them, and a poem entitled " A Lover's Complaint," 
 were published by Thomas Thorpe with the follow- 
 ing title-page: " Shake-speares | sonnets. | Never 
 before Imprinted. | At London | By G. Eld for 
 T. T. and are | to be solde by William Aspley. | 
 1609. I " This edition was ushered to the world by 
 Thorpe with the following dedication : " To the 
 onlie Begetter of these insuing sonnets Mr. W. H. 
 all happinesse and that eternitie promised by our 
 
4 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adven- 
 turer in setting forth. T. T." No other edition of 
 the Sonnets appeared until the year 1640, when 
 they were published, along with other poems pur- 
 porting to be by Shakespeare, under the heading: 
 " Poems : written by Wil. Shakespeare. Gent. 
 Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be 
 solde by John Benson, dwelling at St. Dunstan's 
 Churchyard. 1640." Several of the Sonnets in 
 Thorpe's collection are omitted from this edition, 
 and those that appear are prefixed with titles of the 
 publisher's own invention. Whatever personal 
 touches there may be in the Sonnets were quite lost 
 sight of by this date. Thorpe, in his dedication, 
 plainly recognizes their personal nature when he 
 wishes " Mr. W. H. " " that eternitie promised by 
 our ever-living poet," yet it is very probable that 
 Thorpe was quite in the dark as to their full history, 
 and believed the medium through whom he re- 
 ceived them to be their true begetter. It may be 
 that he was purposely deceived, and allowed to use 
 the term " Mr. W. H." in order to hide their pri- 
 vate nature and to shield the real begetter from the 
 public eye. 
 
 I shall prove later on that William Herbert, Earl 
 of Pembroke, was not the patron addressed in these 
 Sonnets, and shall, I believe, give very convincing 
 evidence that Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South- 
 ampton, was that figure, yet I do not think it at all 
 improbable that Pembroke was the " Mr. W. H." 
 addressed by Thorpe, nor unlikely that the Son- 
 nets were published through his influence and with 
 
INTRODUCTORY. . 5 
 
 his cognizance. It is reasonable to assume that the 
 favor of Pembroke and his brother Montgomery, 
 mentioned by Hemminge and Condel in the folio 
 dedication as having been shown to Shakespeare, 
 had commenced before the year 1609, and it is also 
 quite possible that this favor was the result of 
 Southampton's influence with these noblemen. We 
 know that Southampton and Pembroke were 
 friends, or at least very intimate acquaintances ; we 
 also know that they both, at some period, gave their 
 countenance and patronage to Shakespeare ; that he 
 and his poems should then be a topic of common 
 interest with them is most likely, and also, that 
 Southampton should bring these Sonnets in manu- 
 script to the notice of Pembroke; they having all, 
 or nearly all, been written previous to his advent at 
 Court in 1598, as I shall prove. 
 
 Shakespeare was already famous, and openly 
 acknowledged as a literary star of no small magni- 
 tude by this year. Between the end of 1598 and 
 1 60 1, Southampton, then out of favor with the 
 Court, owing to his marriage with Elizabeth Ver- 
 non in defiance of the Queen's wishes, was, through 
 his friendship with the Earl of Essex, drawn into 
 the political vortex which ended in the death of 
 Essex and his own imprisonment in the latter year, 
 he remaining in prison until March, 1603. By 
 this time the Sonnets in manuscript had, no doubt, 
 ceased to be read, and it may be that Pembroke had 
 never seen them till they were brought to his no- 
 tice by Southampton, in or about the year 1609. 
 Pembroke, recognizing their worth, may have 
 
6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 brought about their publication, and in this way 
 have become their begetter. I offer this merely as 
 a plausible suggestion. In the light of the evidence 
 which I shall hereafter adduce as to the identity of 
 Southampton as the patron, this theory as to the 
 " Mr. W. H." of Thorpe's dedication is much more 
 reasonable than that set forth by Mr. Sidney Lee in 
 his " Life of Shakespeare," where he endeavors to 
 prove a claim for a certain printer and publisher 
 named William Hall. 
 
 If William Hall was the procurer of these Son- 
 nets, as suggested by Mr. Lee, why should he do- 
 nate them to a rival publisher? for so Mr. Lee leads 
 us to infer : if he had sold them, Thorpe would not 
 have felt himself under any obligation to flatter 
 him with a dedication. Thomas Thorpe undoubt- 
 edly uses the word " begetter " in the sense of in- 
 spirer; no quibbling will do away with this fact. 
 The words, " To the onlie begetter of the insuing 
 sonnets, Mr. W. H. all happinesse, and that eternitie 
 promised by our ever-living poet," plainly show that 
 Thomas Thorpe fully believed " Mr. W. H. " to be 
 the inspirer of the Sonnets and also the person who 
 in certain of them is promised eternity ; he certainly 
 would not look upon the publisher's hack, William 
 Hall, in this light. 
 
 Neither publishers nor writers, at that date, made 
 free with the names and titles of noblemen to usher 
 their wares to the world, without having first se- 
 cured that right, or being fully assured, by a pre- 
 vious experience, of their liberty to do so. 
 
 One year later than the date of the publication 
 
IN TROD UCTOR Y. 1 
 
 of the Sonnets, we find that Thorpe dedicated 
 Healey's translation of St. Augustine's " Citie of 
 God " to the Earl of Pembroke, in language which 
 strongly suggests a previous similar connection with 
 that nobleman. 
 
 It has been suggested that a publisher would not 
 dare to take the liberty of addressing a titled no- 
 bleman as " Mr." ; and I have no doubt that Thorpe 
 would much more willingly have published the 
 Sonnets with a flourish of titles, but was probably 
 prevented from doing so by Pembroke himself, for 
 the reasons I have already suggested. The fact 
 that Thorpe issued the Sonnets with a dedication 
 is fair proof that he had not come by them dis- 
 honestly. 
 
 Mr. Lee assumes that Thorpe was a piratical 
 publisher of no standing, but the fact that he pub- 
 lished matter by Ben Jonson and Chapman, who 
 were both very careful of their literary wares, and 
 fully realized their value, proves that he was a fairly 
 reputable publisher. 
 
 Mr. Lee goes rather out of his way to abuse the 
 Elizabethan publishers' profession. There were, no 
 doubt, dishonest publishers in those days, but the 
 lack of definite copyright laws at that date 
 makes it difficult to judge what was dishonesty. 
 Publishers then, no doubt, compared quite as favor- 
 ably as in this day with men in other channels of 
 trade ; but we do not find them, either then or now, 
 presenting each other with valuable copyrights 
 gratis, nor writing fulsome dedications to one an- 
 other. 
 
$ SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 In working out my theory I have left Thorpe and 
 his dedication out of the question, and searched in 
 the Sonnets themselves for light; I have discussed 
 it here, principally, to show that Thorpe in 1609 
 recognized their personal tone. This personal idea 
 was quite lost sight of by the year 1640, when Ben- 
 son published them, and was not revived until about 
 a hundred years after their first issue. During that 
 period they were read, when read at all, as imper- 
 sonal literature. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PERSONAL THEORY. 
 
 FOR about two hundred years now critics and 
 students have given more or less thought and re- 
 search to the Sonnets as personal documents, hop- 
 ing to find therein some light on the poet's person- 
 ality and life. 
 
 Early in the eighteenth century attention was 
 called to their personal tone, by Gildon, who con- 
 jectured that they were all written by Shakespeare to 
 his mistress. Dr. Sewall, in 1728, reached the same 
 conclusion. Their examination of the Sonnets, 
 however, must have been of a most cursory nature. 
 In 1781 Malone first suggested that the Sonnets 
 were written to two persons, a patron and a mis- 
 tress ; dividing them as they are usually divided by 
 critics at this day ; from I to 126 to the patron, and 
 the remaining twenty-eight to the mistress. Since 
 that period various critics have delved into them, 
 seeking the hidden story ; all sorts of theories have 
 been propounded ; some with a slight show of foun- 
 dation, and some with none. 
 
 The " Mr. W. H." of Thorpe's dedication has 
 been a fruitful source of conjecture, and has led 
 many students away on a wild-goose chase, and 
 from far richer grounds of research. 
 
 Nothing in the Sonnets or plays will ever posi- 
 
 9 
 
10 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 tively reveal this enigma; outside evidence may; 
 this is quite a different thing, however, from prov- 
 ing the identity of the patron. It is very evident 
 that Thorpe was quite in the dark on that point, and 
 that he believed the " Mr. W. H." to whom he dedi- 
 cated them to be the patron indicated. Shakes- 
 peare certainly had no hand in their publication ; 
 several of the Sonnets are plainly incorrect in 
 places ; one Sonnet No. 145 is undoubtedly the 
 work of another hand, and the canzonette, as 
 L'Envoi to the first series, is mistaken for a sonnet, 
 and is marked as incomplete, with brackets for the 
 supposedly missing lines. These blemishes show 
 that Shakespeare was not consulted as to their ar- 
 rangement for publication ; besides which, we have 
 his own plain statement, in the Sonnets themselves, 
 that they were not written for sale. 
 
 After Malone's suggestion for the division of the 
 Sonnets into two series, the next conjecture of any 
 value was made by Dr. Drake, in 1817, when he 
 proposed Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, 
 as the patron, offering no other proof, however, than 
 the palpable fact that " Venus and Adonis," and 
 " Lucrece," were dedicated to that nobleman. He 
 would not believe that the Sonnets 127 to 154 were 
 addressed to a real woman, and supposes that they 
 were written, as were many other sonnets of that 
 day, to an imaginary mistress. Dr. Drake has had 
 many followers in this theory; in his recent book 
 Mr. Sidney Lee voiced the same ideas. 
 
 In 1818 a Mr. Bright conceived the idea that 
 William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was the patron 
 
THE PERSONAL THEORY. II 
 
 addressed in the Sonnets, taking the " W. H." of 
 Thorpe's dedication for his grounds, coupled with 
 the fact that Shakespeare's fellow actors, Hem- 
 minge and Condel, in 1623, dedicated the first folio 
 to this nobleman. Mr. Bright, while nursing his 
 idea in the hope of finding further light, was fore- 
 stalled in the public announcement of it by Dr. 
 Boaden in 1832. Since that date students of the 
 Sonnets have been divided into two camps, viz.: 
 Southamptonites and Pembrokites. There are 
 some few free lances who attach themselves to 
 neither side; believing that the Sonnets are mere 
 poetical exercises, composed at different times, in 
 an assumed character, by the poet for the amuse- 
 ment of his friends. Much interesting work has 
 been done by the champions of both the former 
 theories. The most voluminous writer on the side 
 of Southampton was Mr. Gerald Massey ( 1864) : 
 on the side of Pembroke, Mr. Thomas Tyler is at 
 this date the undoubted leader. Mr. Sidney Lee 
 has recently espoused the Southamptonite cause, 
 but has not adduced any new nor definite proof in 
 support of the theory. Mr. Lee, in his excellent 
 and painstaking book, makes the mistake, common 
 with many critics who have written on the Sonnets, 
 of neglecting the Sonnets themselves, and adducing 
 all his proof from outside sources. The " dark 
 lady " and her influence he dismisses as a trivial 
 incident, which, while possibly an actual fact in 
 Shakespeare's life, was of so small moment, and 
 such short duration, that it cannot have affected the 
 tenor of his work. 
 
12 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 The story or stories of the Sonnets, as they rest 
 to-day, are built altogether upon inference and con- 
 jecture. Both conjecture and inference are of 
 course valuable, if they work from settled data or 
 known fact, but, so far, little actual fact or conclu- 
 sive data have been adduced. 
 
 The interesting story which Mr. Tyler builds 
 around the Pembroke theory seemed to me most 
 conclusive; the only things which appeared to ren- 
 der it doubtful were the mistiness of his chronology 
 for the Sonnets and the imputation of ingratitude 
 towards Southampton, with which it inferentially 
 charges Shakespeare. I can much more readily be- 
 lieve a story of even grosser sensuality than that 
 revealed in the " dark lady " Sonnets, on the part 
 of Shakespeare, than believe him capable of the in- 
 gratitude to his early patron with which the Pem- 
 broke theory necessarily charges him, and which, 
 it also would show us, that he himself in the Sonnets 
 has the baseness to extenuate. To Mr. Tyler's ex- 
 cellent book, however, I owe my interest in the Son- 
 nets, and must admit that, for a long time after 
 reading it, I was a confirmed Pembrokite. Of all 
 the arguments used by Mr. Tyler, the one that 
 most interested me was that suggested by Pro- 
 fessor Minto in his " Characteristics of the Eng- 
 lish Poets" (1885), identifying George Chapman 
 as the " rival poet." This, while merely inference, 
 was of a stronger and more olausible nature than 
 any other theory regarding that figure, and seemed 
 to me to offer a good basis for further investiga- 
 tion. 
 
THE PERSONAL THEORY. 13 
 
 For the last ten years I have, in a haphazard way, 
 and at odd moments, pursued this theory, seldom 
 being without a copy of the Sonnets in my pocket; 
 reading them in my moments of leisure, searching 
 for evidence of their history, till I have come to 
 have them by heart, though never having made any 
 set effort to memorize them. I have also, during 
 these years, read most of Chapman's poems very 
 thoroughly, with the same object in view, though 
 not, I may say, with the same pleasure ; and in the 
 case of Chapman also, I have unconsciously memo- 
 rized many passages. This habit, or trick of mem- 
 ory, has stood me in good stead, in revealing to me 
 parallels which otherwise might have passed un- 
 noticed. It was not long till I made one or two 
 discoveries, which, to my mind, demolished the 
 basis of the Pembroke theory. To this, then, I 
 gave no more thought, and pursued my investiga- 
 tions irrespective of the claims of Southamptonite 
 or Pembrokite. 
 
 The Pembroke theory is based upon the sugges- 
 tion that the Sonnets to the patron were all written 
 in and after the year 1598; consequently, if conclu- 
 sive evidence be adduced of their earlier produc- 
 tion, the theory straightway falls to the ground. 
 
 I have not wrought with the idea of supporting 
 the contention of either the Southamptonites or Pem- 
 brokites. Having steeped my mind in the Sonnets, 
 I was forced to a belief in their personal nature 
 and their autobiographical value, and set myself the 
 task of giving, if possible, a definite date for their 
 production ; feeling assured that this would be the 
 
14 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 best manner in which to settle the personality of the 
 patron and friend to whom they were addressed. 
 The opportunities for outside research which I 
 possess being limited, any new light I might find I 
 must look for in the Sonnets themselves, and find- 
 ing any indications there to guide me, follow where 
 they pointed. In this way I have been led to make 
 a study of those plays in which the style and versi- 
 fication, as well as the passionate and poetical 
 treatment of the theme of love, indicated the period 
 of the Sonnets, as containing the same elements. 
 By this method I have made some further discov- 
 eries which will greatly strengthen the basis for a 
 more extended research and a deeper study of 
 Shakespeare's plays, as touching on his own indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 I shall show conclusively that Professor Minto's 
 conjecture as to Chapman's identity as the " rival 
 poet " is absolutely true. From the same data I 
 shall prove the truth of the contention of the South- 
 amptonites; I shall throw an altogether new light 
 on " Love's Labour's Lost," and " Troilus and Cres- 
 sida," and give a definite date for their production 
 and their revision; I shall show the truth of very 
 interesting internal evidence in the Sonnets, which 
 has hitherto been quite misunderstood or altogether 
 unnoticed, and shall set a fairly definite date for 
 their production. 
 
 I should like to continue my investigations fur- 
 ther, before publishing any of the results I have at- 
 tained, but my findings are so palpable to anyone 
 who, having the key, follows out the theory, that I 
 
THE PERSONAL THEORY. 15 
 
 am fearful that someone else may light upon it, 
 and put me in the position of Mr. Bright with Dr. 
 Boaden, for all have the key, which is the happy 
 suggestion of Professor Minto that I have already 
 mentioned. 
 
 I thought I saw in Shakespeare's references to 
 the " rival poet " something stronger than mere 
 fear of a rival, and searching the Sonnets, have 
 found other references than that suggested by Pro- 
 fessor Minto, which not only more plainly indicate 
 Chapman, but are also of a more satirical character. 
 
 Being thus thoroughly convinced that Chapman 
 was the poet indicated and attacked, I thought it 
 probable that some indications of the reason for the 
 rivalry, or for Shakespeare's enmity, might be found 
 in Chapman's own poems; I believe that I shall 
 fully establish this fact. If, then, I can positively 
 prove the identity of the rival, and that the rivalry 
 was not a passing phase, but enduring and bitter, 
 the bitterness and duration of the rivalry will plainly 
 prove the fact of the continued and valuable friend- 
 ship and patronage so fought for ; if the patron and 
 rival are seen to have been living actualities, the 
 dark mistress necessarily cannot be an imaginary 
 being, as not only the Sonnets written to her, but 
 also the Sonnets written to the patron, prove that, 
 for a short period at least, she also entered into his 
 life. 
 
 I shall show very plainly that Shakespeare car- 
 ries his friendship for Southampton and his rivalry 
 against Chapman into certain of his plays. If a 
 platonic masculine friendship and a poetic rivalry 
 
16 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 lead him to this extent, it is even more probable 
 that the passionate love for a woman of such a 
 highly strung, poetic, and sensitive nature as 
 Shakespeare's should still more strongly influence 
 his dramatic work. 
 
 I have not identified the " dark lady," but do not 
 on that account agree with a recent writer, and 
 many other critics of a like mind, that " it was the 
 exacting conventions of the sonneteering contagion, 
 and not his personal experience, that impelled 
 Shakespeare to give the ' dark lady ' of his Son- 
 nets a poetic being." 
 
 If there is one figure more real than the others 
 in the Sonnets, it is the "dark lady"; the rival 
 poet is a phantom, and the patron a myth, in com- 
 parison with this black-eyed daughter of Eve. 
 This writer further says : " there is no greater, and 
 no less ground, for seeking in Shakespeare's per- 
 sonal environment the original of the ' dark lady ' 
 in the Sonnets, than for seeking there the original 
 of the Queen of Egypt." To me it seems ex- 
 tremely probable that not only Cleopatra, but also 
 Rosaline and Cressida, are poetic idealizations of 
 this willful, sensuous, and sprightly young woman. 
 
 Many commentators reject the personal theory 
 of the Sonnets as a whole, yet accept as personal 
 some individual Sonnets that fit their theories and 
 tastes. Either they are, as a whole, mere exercises 
 of poetic imagination, or they are, as Wordsworth, 
 with a poet's keen insight, recognized, " this key " 
 with which " Shakespeare unlocked his heart." 
 
 Many critics have accepted and followed the per- 
 
THE PERSONAL THEORY. I? 
 
 sonal theory of the Sonnets till they have run foul 
 of this shocking- person, the " dark lady," when, 
 finding that further acquiescence in the theory 
 would topple our unconventional Elizabethan actor- 
 poet from the Bowdlerized pedestal upon which 
 their staid Victorian imagination had placed him, 
 they have abandoned the quest. Mr. Knight and 
 Mr. Massey are notable instances of this class. Mr. 
 Massey did some valuable work in elucidating Dr. 
 Drake's theory as to Southampton's connection with 
 the poet, but in order to preserve Shakespeare intact 
 upon his pedestal, he imagines a most extraordinary 
 tale, without the merest shadow of proof, and in 
 several places takes unwarrantable liberties with 
 the text of the Sonnets, to fit them to his theory. 
 In quoting Mr. Knight as an advocate against the 
 personal theory, he says : "Mr. Knight has found 
 the perplexities of the personal theory so insur- 
 mountable that he has not followed in the steps of 
 those who have jauntily overleaped the difficulties 
 that meet us everywhere, and which ought, until 
 fairly conquered, to have surrounded and protected 
 the poet's personal character as with a chevaux-de- 
 frise. He has wisely hesitated, rather than rashly 
 joined in making a wanton charge of gross immor- 
 ality and egregious folly against Shakespeare." So 
 careful is he of the lay figure into which his imag- 
 ination has transformed that being of bounding, 
 exultant blood, who wrote: 
 
 " From woman's eyes this doctrine I derive. 
 They sparkle still the true Promethean fire, 
 
l8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 They are the arts, the books, the academies, 
 That show, contain, and nourish all the world " : 
 
 that remorseful, and deep-seeing spirit that wrote 
 the Sonnets: 
 
 " Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth," 
 etc. (146), 
 
 and 
 
 " The expense of spirit in a waste of shame," 
 etc. (129). 
 
 Without fear for Shakespeare, I can wish the 
 matter of the " dark lady " probed to the end ; feel- 
 ing confident that, when all is known, Shakespeare 
 will be none the less Shakespeare; Mr. Browning 
 to the contrary, notwithstanding. 
 
 I believe, from what I find in the Sonnets, that 
 our poet's connection with this woman commenced 
 at almost the same period as his acquaintance with 
 Southampton, in about 1593, and that it was con- 
 tinued until about the beginning of 1598. I 
 believe, also, that he genuinely loved her, 
 and fired with the passion and intensity of his 
 love, produced in those years the marvelous rhap- 
 sodies of love in " Romeo and Juliet," " Love's La- 
 bor's Lost," and other of his love plays, which have 
 so charmed the world, and still charm it, and shall 
 continue to do so while the language lives. 
 
 If ever a man lived who sounded the human heart 
 
THE PERSONAL THEORY. 1 9 
 
 to its depths, and gauged its heights, that man was 
 Shakespeare, and such knowledge as he had, and 
 shows us of life, may not be attained by hearsay, 
 nor at second hand. 
 
 We know somewhat of the manner in which he 
 produced his plays ; research has shown us in many 
 instances their sources, at least the sources of their 
 plots; we know how he took the bare skeletons of 
 history, the shreds and patches of romance and tra- 
 dition, the " loose feathers of fame," and on them 
 built the splendid structure of his plays, seldom 
 altering the outlines of the plots, yet, withal, so 
 transfiguring them with the light of his genius that 
 in his hands they became new creations. So, we 
 may fairly assume, he, to some extent, took inci- 
 dents of his daily life, and the characteristics of the 
 men and women with whom he came in contact, and 
 clothing them with the radiance of his fancy, in- 
 corporated them in his plays. 
 
 That this is very true, in at least two plays, I be- 
 lieve I can prove by the light of the Sonnets. That 
 the Sonnets are personal documents, that in them 
 Shakespeare spoke his real feelings to real people, 
 is a conclusion which I think all will reach who 
 will follow my argument, and who will make a 
 study of the Sonnets with their minds cleared of 
 cant. The personality which we find there revealed 
 may, it is true, lose somewhat of the Olympian, but 
 dim, proportions which we have been used to give 
 the poet ; but it will take on a humanity and a near- 
 ness which will vastly enhance both him and his 
 work in our eyes. 
 
90 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 As our greatest men recede into history, while 
 their proportions enlarge in our mental vision, their 
 characteristic lineaments are lost in the glow of the 
 halos with which our regard endows them. This 
 tendency is as old as the race: in remote times, by 
 this process our ancestors made them gods ; in these 
 days we are more like to make them wooden gods. 
 
 While I contend that the Sonnets are largely 
 autobiographical, and that they reveal a real friend 
 and patron, as well as a real rival, and mistress, yet 
 I fully recognize the fact that the language is that 
 of poetry and may not always be taken at its face 
 value. Many of them, no doubt, are topical, and 
 some of them can be shown by their form and ex- 
 pression to be reflections of more trivial sonnets by 
 other writers, who openly disavowed reality for 
 their goddesses and mistresses, but this, instead of 
 detracting from their personal value, as argued by 
 Mr. Lee and others, rather adds strength to it when 
 we consider the nature and object of the references 
 and reflections noted. Let us take one instance 
 where such a reflection seems very strong: Henry 
 Constable and Bernard Griffin, in the following 
 sonnets, were, no doubt, somewhat influenced in 
 their imagery and ideas by Chapman's " Amorous 
 Zodiac," which preceded their verses in date of 
 production. Constable writes as follows: 
 
 " OF HIS MISTRESS UPON OCCASION OF 
 HER WALKING IN A GARDEN. 
 
 " My lady's presence makes the roses red, 
 Because to see her lips they blush for shame: 
 
THE PERSONAL THEORY. 21 
 
 The lily's leaves, for envy, pale became, 
 And her white hands in them this envy bred. 
 The marigold abroad her leaves doth spread, 
 Because the Sun's and her power is the same ; 
 The violet of purple colour came, 
 Dyed with the blood she makes my heart to shed. 
 In brief, all flowers from her this virtue take: 
 From her sweet breath their sweet smells do pro- 
 ceed, 
 
 The living heat which her eye-beams do make 
 Warmeth the ground and quickeneth the seed. 
 The rain wherewith she watereth these flowers 
 Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in 
 showers." 
 
 And again, Bernard Griffin writes to his mistress 
 in the following strain: 
 
 " My lady's hair is threads of beaten gold, 
 Her front the purest crystal eye hath seen, 
 Her eye the brightest star of heaven holds, 
 Her cheeks red roses such as seld have been, 
 Her pretty lips of red vermilion dye, 
 Her hands of ivory the purest white, 
 Her blush Aurora, or the morning sky, 
 Her breast displays two silver fountains bright, 
 The sphere her voice, her grace, the Graces three, 
 Her body is the saint that I adore, 
 Her smiles and favors sweet as honey bee, 
 Her feet fair Thetis praiseth ever more, 
 But, oh, the worst and last is yet behind 
 For of a griffin she doth bear the mind." 
 
22 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Shakespeare, with one or both of these sonnets 
 very evidently in his mind, writes of his mistress: 
 
 " My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; 
 Coral is far more red than her lips' red : 
 If snows be white, why then her breasts are dun ; 
 If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. 
 I have seen roses damask'd red and white, 
 But no such roses see I in her cheeks; 
 And in some perfumes is there more delight 
 Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. 
 I love to hear her speak, yet well I know 
 That music hath a far more pleasing sound : 
 I grant I never saw a goddess go, 
 My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground : 
 And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare 
 As any she belied with false compare." 
 
 Here we find Shakespeare, far from being 
 governed by the " exacting conventions of the son- 
 neteering contagion " and giving an imaginary 
 " dark lady " " a poetic being," flying directly in 
 the face of conventions, and painting with most 
 strongly realistic strokes a very flesh-and-blood 
 being. In this, as in several other instances in the 
 Sonnets, Shakespeare refers to or parodies other 
 sonneteers, who write to imaginary mistresses, or 
 else write extravagantly to and almost deify real 
 ones; not reflecting nor indorsing their extrava- 
 gances, but directly opposing and mocking them 
 with his reality. 
 
 While what has been called " the sonneteering 
 
THE PERSONAL THEORY. * 3 
 
 contagion," lasting in England from about 1590 to 
 1598, in all probability influenced Shakespeare to 
 the use of this form of verse, and while he neces- 
 sarily is somewhat influenced by the form and ex- 
 pressions used by other writers whose poems he 
 read, these facts do not detract from the value of 
 his Sonnets as personal documents, as it is only in 
 form and expression that he is influenced. 
 
 To anyone who, having read Shakespeare's Son- 
 nets, fails to find the intimate and personal note, I 
 would say, read them again, and again, and again 
 if necessary; it is there. Shakespeare wrote his 
 Sonnets as private epistles to his patron and to his 
 mistress, who circulated them amongst their 
 friends, but that they were not written for publica- 
 tion or for sale, we have his own plain avowal in 
 the 2 ist Sonnet: 
 
 " I will not praise that purpose not to sell." 
 
 That this is the correct meaning of this line I 
 will prove in a later chapter. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 AN ANALYSIS OF THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF THE 
 SONNETS. 
 
 THE order which Thorpe used in his issue of the 
 Sonnets, in 1609, is still generally recognized as 
 correct by Shakespearean critics. I may, therefore, 
 be deemed presumptuous in assailing that which 
 has been so long accepted without question; how- 
 ever, after many years of interested and analytic 
 study of the Sonnets, I am forced to take issue 
 against the infallibility of Thorpe's arrangement. 
 The regard in which this arrangement has been 
 held has arisen largely from the fact that Thorpe 
 issued the Sonnets during the poet's life, and, there- 
 fore, possibly with his cognizance or under his su- 
 pervision. I am fully convinced, and believe I can 
 give fairly conclusive proof, that Shakespeare had 
 no hand in their arrangement or publication. 
 
 Someone has said that, if one Sonnet can be 
 shown to be out of its place and away from its con- 
 text, the whole value of Thorpe's order is at once 
 destroyed. 
 
 I shall adduce several very plain instances where 
 this is the case, and yet I admit a very great se- 
 quential value for his arrangement. In order to 
 properly estimate this value, it is necessary to un- 
 derstand the conditions under which Thorpe pro- 
 duced his edition. 
 
 24 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 25 
 
 I believe I shall clearly show that many of the 
 Sonnets were written previous to 1595, and that the 
 period of the production of the whole series ante- 
 dates 1601. As the Sonnets were not published 
 till 1609, they were, then, held in manuscript for 
 from ten to fifteen years. We know that the Son- 
 nets were produced at different times during a 
 period of at least three years. 
 
 In the io8th Shakespeare says: 
 
 " What's in the brain that ink may character, 
 Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? 
 What's new to speak, what new to register, 
 That may express my love, or thy dear merit? 
 Nothing, sweet boy ; but yet, like prayers divine, 
 I must each day say o'er the very same; 
 Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, 
 Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name." 
 
 This plainly proves that Sonnets were written in 
 the earlier, as well as the later periods of the friend- 
 ship revealed in the Sonnets. 
 
 Sonnet 104 says: 
 
 " To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
 For as you were when first your eye I eyed, 
 Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold 
 Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, 
 Three beauteous springs to yellow autumns turn'd 
 In process of the seasons have I seen, 
 Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, 
 Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green." 
 
36 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 This extract shows that the sonnet-writing had at 
 the date of its production lasted for three years. 
 We may then assume that the manuscripts from 
 which Thorpe worked were detached books or se- 
 quences, and not one large manuscript containing 
 the whole of the Sonnets as we know them. Though 
 they were written as private epistles to the poet's 
 patron, and mistress, they were evidently shown by 
 their recipients to their friends, and passed amongst 
 them to be read. In 1598 Meres mentions Shakes- 
 peare's " Sugred sonnets amongst his private 
 friends'," and I believe I shall show that Chapman 
 had read some of them in manuscript many years 
 before their eventual publication. We see, then, 
 that the Sonnets were passed among Southampton's 
 friends as they were written. 
 
 If we can get any idea of the number of the 
 groups or sequences, we will begin to understand 
 Thorpe's difficulties in chronologically arranging 
 the whole series: to get any such idea, we must 
 necessarily go to Thorpe's edition. We will, there- 
 fore, begin at the beginning and seek for palpable 
 sequences. 
 
 We see very clearly that the first seventeen Son- 
 nets are closely connected and plainly of the same 
 group; the i8th and iQth Sonnets, while differing 
 somewhat in subject, are also very evidently con- 
 nected with the first group, but neither the 2Oth, 
 2 1st, 22d, 23d, 24th, or 25th are in any way related, 
 either in sense or figure ; the 26th Sonnet, however, 
 is very similar in tone, and is plainly the last Sonnet 
 of a sequence. In nearly all of the later Sonnets 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. VJ 
 
 we find a most distinct avowal of the poet's love 
 for his friend, and also a plain record of that friend's 
 avowal of love for the poet; we find hopes, fears, 
 and even jealousy, and the clearest proofs of a very 
 intimate friendship and close personal relations. In 
 the first group we find none of this; friendship is 
 not once mentioned, the poet's love for the patron 
 is alluded to, but in a most conventional manner, 
 and only two or three times in the whole sequence. 
 There can be little doubt, then, that these were 
 the earliest Sonnets of the whole series. We find 
 only nineteen Sonnets which show continuity: now 
 sequences were not written of this number ; twenty, 
 however, was a very common number for sonnet-se- 
 quences at that period; this, then, was very evi- 
 dently such a sequence: where is the missing Son- 
 net? Certainly not either 20 or 21; I shall prove 
 this couple to be detached and topical, having no 
 connection whatever with the first sequence, nor 
 even with any succeeding Sonnets which come any- 
 where near them. These two Sonnets were writ- 
 ten as an attack upon Chapman and a poem which 
 he published in 1595, called " The Amorous Zo- 
 diac " ; this will be proved in a later chapter. A 
 very casual reading will show that neither the 22d 
 nor 23d Sonnet is connected with the first group, 
 and also that they have no connection with each 
 other; they evidently belong elsewhere. The 24th 
 Sonnet is not connected with this group ; its proper 
 context will be found in Sonnets 46 and 47. I shall 
 give these three Sonnets at length, to prove their 
 connection. 
 
2& SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 SONNET 24. 
 
 " Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stell'd 
 Thy beauty's form in table of my heart; 
 My body is the frame wherein 'tis held, 
 And perspective it is best painter's art. 
 For through the painter must you see his skill. 
 To find where your true image pictured lies ; 
 Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still, 
 That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes. 
 Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done : 
 Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me 
 Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun 
 Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee ; 
 
 Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art, 
 They draw but what they see, know not the 
 heart." 
 
 SONNET 46. 
 
 " Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, 
 How to divide the conquest of thy sight; 
 Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar. 
 My heart mine eye the freedom of that right. 
 My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie, 
 A closet never pierced with crystal eyes, 
 But the defendant doth that plea deny, 
 And says in him thy fair appearance lies. 
 To 'cide this title is impanneled 
 A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart ; 
 And by their verdict is determined 
 The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part: 
 
THORPES ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 29 
 
 As thus : mine eye's due is thine outward part 
 And my heart's right thine inward love of 
 heart." 
 
 SONNET 47. 
 
 " Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, 
 And each doth good turns now unto the other : 
 When that mine eye is famish'd for a look, 
 Or heart in love with sighs himself does smother, 
 With my love's picture then my heart doth feast 
 And to the painted banquet bids my heart ; 
 Another time mine eye is my heart's guest 
 And in his thoughts of love doth share a part: 
 So, either by the picture or my love, 
 Thyself away art present still with me; 
 For thou not farther than my thoughts canst 
 
 move, 
 
 And I am still with them and they with thee; 
 Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight 
 Awakes my heart to heart's and eyes' delight." 
 
 The sequence of ideas and the connection of these 
 Sonnets, one with another, are too palpable for 
 comment. 
 
 The 25th Sonnet is very plainly not connected, 
 in either subject or figure, with the first sequence; 
 the concluding lines, 
 
 " Then happy I, that love and am beloved 
 Where I may not remove nor be removed," 
 
 show a much more advanced stage in the poet's 
 
30 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 friendship with Southampton than that indicated 
 in the first sequence ; the true context for this Son- 
 net will be found in the 29th Sonnet, which, how- 
 ever, should precede it: 
 
 SONNET 29. 
 
 " When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
 I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, 
 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 
 With what I most enjoy contented least; 
 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
 Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
 Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
 
 For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth 
 brings 
 
 That then I scorn to change my state with 
 kings." 
 
 SONNET 25. 
 
 " Let those who are in favour with their stars 
 Of public honour and proud titles boast, 
 Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, 
 Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most. 
 Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread 
 But as the marigold at the sun's eye, 
 And in themselves their pride lies buried, 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 3 1 
 
 For at a frown they in their glory die. 
 The painful warrior famoused for fight, 
 After a thousand victories once foil'd, 
 Is from the book of honour razed quite, 
 And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd: 
 Then happy I, that love and am beloved 
 Where I may not remove nor be removed." 
 
 If the two Sonnets here quoted be critically com- 
 pared with their present contexts, it will be seen 
 very clearly that they are out of place. 
 
 The 26th Sonnet is very palpably the end of the 
 first sonnet-sequence and should be numbered 20. 
 It has no connection with any other Sonnet or Son- 
 nets in the whole series : it undoubtedly belongs to 
 the earliest stage of the poet's connection with the 
 nobleman ; in it he fearfully avows his love, and no 
 love is indicated as being given by Southampton, or 
 even hoped for by the poet. It was very evidently 
 sent to Southampton accompanying some other mat- 
 ter, as we find in the lines : 
 
 " To thee I send this written ambassage, 
 To witness duty, not to show my wit: 
 Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine 
 May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, 
 But that I hope some good conceit of thine 
 In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it." 
 
 By the words " this written ambassage " Shakes- 
 peare certainly does not mean this single Sonnet, 
 
32 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 but very evidently alludes to the group of which this 
 Sonnet is the end. 
 
 Here, then, we have one sequence of twenty Son- 
 nets intact. This sequence, however, has little per- 
 sonal value ; it is a dissertation upon the advantages 
 of matrimony and a fulsome panegyric upon the 
 physical beauty of this young nobleman. These 
 Sonnets were written at an early stage of the poet's 
 connection with Southampton, not in the spirit of 
 the later Sonnets, as a friend to a friend, and touch- 
 ing upon intimate personal things, but as a poetical 
 exercise, such as any poet might write to any pa- 
 tron. This is the only twenty-sonnet sequence in 
 the whole series; nearly all the remaining Sonnets 
 were written in small groups, as letters in verse, 
 touching upon matters personal to the two friends. 
 The number of Sonnets in these epistles differ ; very 
 often they were written in couples, sometimes in 
 threes, and occasionally in fours. In one case I 
 think I find a sequence of ten Sonnets, and to this 
 sequence I would attach the canzonette, No. 126, as 
 L'Envoi. 
 
 These small groups or sequences, however, are 
 not always intact : as in the case of the first twenty- 
 sonnet sequence, the last or the first Sonnet of a 
 group is often detached, and to be found far re- 
 moved from its proper context, and mixed in with 
 other Sonnets to which it has no possible relation. 
 I think I have rendered this very plain in the in- 
 stance of the 26th Sonnet and its obvious connection 
 with the first group, also in the case of the 24th 
 Sonnet, when compared with its context in the 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 33 
 
 46th and 47th; and again in the 25th and 2Qth 
 Sonnets. 
 
 I shall now point out a few other instances where 
 such disarrangement is so palpable that a mere 
 comparison will convince the reader; and at the 
 same time I shall indicate several of the small 
 groups of two, three, and four Sonnets, which 
 plainly show that they are whole in themselves and 
 not connected with any long sequence. 
 
 We have disposed of the Sonnets up to 26, and 
 shall continue from that point. 
 
 Sonnets 27 and 28 are a very plainly connected 
 couple; they have nothing whatever to do with 26 
 or 29, as I have previously shown : I do not find 
 in the whole series any other Sonnets connected with 
 this pair, and believe that they together make one 
 of the before-mentioned poetical epistles. 
 
 Sonnets 30 and 31 are also a separate and distinct 
 pair, treating of one particular subject, or reveal- 
 ing a particular mood of the poet's mind ; this couple 
 is also a letter written during absence. I am in- 
 clined to believe that these two Sonnets were writ- 
 ten from Stratford in 1596, and that they reflect 
 the pathetic gloom of the poet's mind 'caused by his 
 son Hamnet's death at that date. 
 
 Sonnet 32, though treating of death, as do the 
 two preceding Sonnets, and placed in its present 
 connection by Thorpe, probably on that account, 
 has no connection whatever in sense or style with 
 the two preceding Sonnets, as a comparison will 
 plainly show. The proper connection for this Son- 
 net will be found in Sonnet 81 ; this latter Sonnet, 
 
34 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 when critically compared with its present contexts, 
 Sonnets 80 and 82, will be seen to be out of place : 
 both 80 and 82 treat very plainly of the rival poet ; 
 Sonnet 80 ends with a figure in which the poet, 
 comparing himself to a worthless boat, and his rival 
 to a ship of " tall building and of goodly pride," 
 says: 
 
 " Then if he thrive and I be cast away, 
 The worst was this, my love was my decay." 
 
 Here we find no possible reference to the subject 
 of death, and there can be little doubt but that it 
 was the word " decay," at the end of this Sonnet, 
 which misled Thorpe into placing the 8ist Sonnet 
 in its present connection. I shall quote both the 
 32d and the 8ist Sonnets to show their very plain 
 connection : 
 
 SONNET 32. 
 
 " If thou survive my well-contented day, 
 When that churl Death my bones with dust shall 
 
 cover, 
 
 And shalt by fortune once more re-survey 
 These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover; 
 Compare them with the bettering of the time, 
 And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, 
 Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, 
 Exceeded by the height of happier men. 
 O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought : 
 * Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing 
 age, 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 35 
 
 A dearer birth than this his love had brought, 
 To march in ranks of better equipage: 
 But since he died, and poets better prove, 
 Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.' " 
 
 SONNET 81. 
 
 "Or I shall live your epitaph to make, 
 Or you survive when I in earth am rotten ; 
 From hence your memory death cannot take. 
 Although in me each part will be forgotten. 
 Your name from hence immortal life shall have, 
 Though I, once gone, to all the world must die : 
 The earth can yield me but a common grave. 
 When thou entombed in men's eyes shall lie. 
 Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read; 
 And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, 
 When all the breathers of this world are dead ; 
 You still shall live such virtue hath my pen 
 Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths 
 of men." 
 
 Sonnets 33, 34, and 35 are most distinctly of the 
 same sequence. This group forms the poet's first 
 epistle to his friend upon the subject of the " dark 
 lady " ; they were, most probably, written from 
 Stratford in 1596, as were, no doubt, all of the 
 Sonnets touching upon this subject. We find four 
 distinct letters : two to Southampton, and two to the 
 " dark lady." In both the series to the patron and 
 
36 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 the series to the mistress these groups are separated 
 by Sonnets touching on quite different matters ; it 
 is extremely improbable that Shakespeare wrote 
 these intervening Sonnets at that time, or that any 
 Sonnets bearing on other subjects were written be- 
 tween these two epistles. In the series to the pa- 
 tron we find 33, 34, and 35 as one epistle, and 40, 
 41, and 42 as a second ; both referring to Southamp- 
 ton's indiscretions. In the series to the " dark lady " 
 we find two couples treating on the same subject; 
 and both divided by several Sonnets; as in the case 
 in the patron series Sonnets 133 and 134 for the 
 first epistle, and 143 and 144 for the second. In 
 neither series have these groups any connection 
 with their immediate contexts, consequently they 
 are not parts of larger sequences. Had Thorpe 
 found these Sonnets in detached sheets, there can 
 be little doubt but that he would have placed them 
 all together in each series, as they very plainly treat 
 of one and the same subject. The fact that we find 
 them separated, and divided in both series into two 
 groups, lends very strong color to my contention 
 regarding all the Sonnets following the first se- 
 quence that they were written at different times, 
 in small groups and as poetical letters. It is quite 
 unlikely that either Southampton or the " dark 
 lady," in passing Shakespeare's Sonnets on to their 
 friends, would let these particular groups out of 
 their hands. I have already shown where other 
 small sequences are broken and divided ; here, how- 
 ever, are four small groups quite intact. Thorpe 
 very evidently found these groups quite unimpaired ; 
 
*$ ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 37 
 
 they, no doubt, owing to their private nature, having 
 been less handled than the other sequences. 
 
 I do not at present intend to attempt to indicate 
 the sequential misplacement of Sonnets nor the 
 chronological disorder of sequences through the 
 whole series ; I wish merely to prove my contention 
 that the Sonnets were written in small detached 
 groups, of twos, threes, fours, etc., and to show that 
 many of them are away from their proper groups. 
 I desire also to prove that whole sequences are 
 chronologically misplaced. These facts have, I be- 
 lieve, been here sufficiently proved ; however, I shall 
 adduce two more very plain instances. If Son- 
 net 56 be compared with Sonnet 55, it will be clearly 
 seen to be the beginning of a new sequence and 55 
 the ending of some other group. When we com- 
 pare 56 with 57, no connection whatever is to be 
 found between them. Sonnet 56 reveals a reunion 
 after separation and ends with a figure, in which the 
 poet likens his absence to the winter. The proper 
 connection for this Sonnet will be found in No. 97, 
 which not only continues the simile with which the 
 56th Sonnet ends, but shows the same reunion, and 
 speaks of the same absence ; these ideas and figures 
 continue on into the 98th and 99th Sonnets, mak- 
 ing a very distinct group of four. I shall quote 
 these Sonnets to prove this very obvious sequence: 
 
 SONNET 56. 
 
 " Sweet love, renew thy force ; be it not said 
 Thy edge should blunter be than appetite, 
 
& SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd, 
 To-morrow sharpen'd in his former might: 
 So, love, be thou ; although to-day thou fill 
 Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fulness, 
 To-morrow see again, and do not kill 
 The spirit of love with a perpetual dulness. 
 Let this sad interim like the ocean be 
 Which parts the shore, where two contracted new 
 Come daily to the banks, that, when they see 
 Return of love, more blest may be the view; 
 Or call it winter, which, being full of care, 
 Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, 
 more rare." 
 
 SONNET 97. 
 
 " How like a winter hath my absence been 
 From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! 
 What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! 
 What old December's bareness every where! 
 And yet this time removed was summer's time ; 
 The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, 
 Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, 
 Like widowed wombs after their lord's decease : 
 Yet this abundant issue seemed to me 
 But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; 
 For summer and his pleasures wait on thee 
 And, thou away, the very birds are mute; 
 Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer 
 That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 39 
 
 SONNET 98. 
 
 " From you have I been absent in the spring, 
 When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, 
 That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. 
 Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
 Of different flowers in odour and in hue, 
 Could make me any summer's story tell, 
 Or from their proud lap pluck them where they 
 
 grew : 
 
 Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, 
 Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ; 
 They were but sweet, but figures of delight, 
 Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. 
 Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away, 
 As with your shadow I with these did play." 
 
 SONNET 99. 
 
 " The forward violet thus did I chide : 
 Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet 
 
 that smells, 
 
 If not from my love's breath ? The purple pride 
 Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells 
 In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. 
 The lily I condemned for thy hand, 
 And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair; 
 The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, 
 One blushing shame, another white despair; 
 A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both, 
 And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath; 
 But for his theft, in pride of all his growth 
 
4& SHAKESPEARE AND 7'HK RIVAL POET. 
 
 A vengeful canker eat him up to death. 
 More flowers I noted, yet I none could see 
 But sweet or color it had stol'n from thee." 
 
 Here is a case in which we find a Sonnet away 
 from its proper context, as well as a sequence out 
 of its chronological order. Thorpe placed these 
 Sonnets as Nos. 97, 98, and 99, not from any rela- 
 tion which he supposed they had to the Sonnets 
 immediately preceding them, but from a connection 
 which he imagined they had with the Sonnets from 
 100 onwards. If the zooth Sonnet and those that 
 immediately follow be analyzed, they will be seen 
 to indicate, not an absence of the poet's, but of 
 Southampton's, and also to show strong evidence of 
 a recent estrangement. Sonnets 56, 97, 98, and 
 99, however, display only an absence, and that an 
 absence of the poet's in the country ; the figures and 
 similes therein used plainly reveal Shakespeare's 
 renewed acquaintance with rural life. I am con- 
 vinced that this sequence belongs to a period much 
 earlier than the Sonnets preceding or succeeding it, 
 and think that they were the first Sonnets written 
 after the poet's return from Stratford, upon the oc- 
 casion of his visit in 1596. 
 
 Sonnets 78 to 86, though probably nearly all of 
 the same period, do not form a connected sequence, 
 though, with one exception, they all refer to the 
 rival poet. The exception I notice is Sonnet 81, 
 which I have hitherto shown should be coupled with 
 the 32d Sonnet. 
 
 Group 87 to 96, I am inclined to believe, is a 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 41 
 
 sequence ; they all refer to the growing coldness of 
 the friend and patron. The later Sonnets of this 
 sequence, 93, 94, 95, and 96, have a tone of admo- 
 nition not to be found in any other group or single 
 Sonnet in the whole series ; the canzonette, No. 126, 
 however, displays the same admonitory tone, and, I 
 am inclined to believe, belongs as L'Envoi to this 
 ten-sonnet sequence: it certainly has no bearing 
 upon its present context. 
 
 Thus I have shown that Shakespeare, in the 
 earliest stage of his acquaintance with Southampton, 
 addressed him in a more or less formal sequence of 
 twenty Sonnets ; when the acquaintance had rip- 
 ened into friendship, he wrote letters in the form of 
 small sonnet-sequences ; later on, a coldness having 
 arisen, caused no doubt by Chapman's encroach- 
 ments with his Homeric translations, sometime in 
 1597, when Southampton for a time seems to have 
 been inclined to accept that poet's dedications, 
 Shakespeare expostulates with his friend in the 
 Sonnets running from 78 to 86, and finally bids him 
 farewell in a sequence of ten Sonnets, 86 to 96, with 
 the canzonette 126 as L'Envoi. His return to the 
 use of a long sequence shows formality, caused no 
 doubt by the strained relations between the poet and 
 his friend. A period of silence now intervenes of 
 somewhat lengthened duration. In 1598, upon 
 Southampton's return from the Continent, the 
 friendship is renewed, and Shakespeare welcomes 
 the return of love in several of the Sonnets, from 
 loo onwards. 
 
 This group, from 100 to 125, were, I believe, 
 
4 2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 nearly all written in 1598, though some of the later 
 Sonnets may belong to 1599; one or two of them, I 
 am quite convinced, are out of place in this series, 
 and belong to a much earlier period; for instance, 
 Sonnet 103, while apparently of the same nature and 
 dealing with the same subjects as Sonnets 100, 
 101, and 1 02, when critically read will be found 
 to be quite distinct from this group: the true 
 place for this Sonnet is probably between 76 
 and 77. 
 
 The io5th Sonnet is also evidently out of its 
 place, though I do not at present see its proper con- 
 text. 
 
 With these exceptions I believe that all the Son- 
 nets between 100 and 125 were written after the 
 reunion between the poet and his friend. I am in- 
 clined to the opinion that Sonnets 66, 67, and 68 
 belong also to this series, and that they refer to 
 Southampton's imprisonment late in 1598, after his 
 marriage to Elizabeth Vernon in defiance of the 
 Queen's commands. 
 
 In a later chapter I shall prove that Sonnets 69 
 and 70 are of the same period as Sonnets 20 and 
 21, and that they refer to Chapman and a poem of 
 his, in which he attacks Shakespeare. Even with- 
 out this proof which I shall adduce, as to the early 
 date of these two Sonnets, they themselves plainly 
 show that they were produced anterior to the date 
 of the incidents revealed in Sonnets 33, 34, and 35, 
 and 40, 41, and 42. The following lines in Son- 
 net 70 have always puzzled critics, seeing that this 
 Sonnet is placed by Thorpe as of a later date than 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 43 
 
 those mentioned above which show Southampton's 
 admitted sensuality: 
 
 " And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. 
 Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, 
 Either not assailed, or victor being charged." 
 
 When this Sonnet is fully proved to be of an 
 earlier date, the apparent contradiction is resolved. 
 
 Though exception may be taken to some of the 
 inferences which I have here drawn, I think it will 
 be admitted that I have proved that many single 
 Sonnets are away from their connections, and 
 groups of sonnets out of their chronological order 
 in Thorpe's arrangement; several of the instances 
 of disorder which I have adduced are so very obvi- 
 ous that they will not be questioned. 
 
 In the light of the foregoing arguments, we be* 
 gin to get some idea of the difficulties under which 
 Thorpe labored in making his edition. 
 
 With the exception of the first large sequence 
 of twenty Sonnets, the whole series were written in 
 small groups, and bound together in some crude 
 way; probably either stitched or gummed, in what 
 Shakespeare calls " books " ; in two of the Sonnets 
 he uses this term. In the 23d Sonnet: 
 
 " O let my books be then the eloquence 
 And dumb presagers of my speaking breast," 
 
 and in the 77th Sonnet: 
 
 " And of this book this learning may'st thou taste." 
 
44 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 'When Shakespeare's rather large and ungainly 
 caligraphy is borne in mind, we may infer that in 
 these books or sequences, each sheet contained a 
 single Sonnet; being read for a period of from ten 
 to fifteen years in this form, it is reasonable to sup- 
 pose that, in passing from hand to hand, the manu- 
 script would become more or less worn, and that 
 the first or the last sheet of a book might often have 
 been detached from its context, and in some in- 
 stances, especially in the case of the older manu- 
 scripts, whole sequences may have become disor- 
 ganized. The continuity, then, which Thorpe gives 
 us in the large groups at the beginning, and in 
 many of the smaller groups, he undoubtedly found 
 in the manuscripts, but, in placing the loosened 
 leaves and dispersed sequences, he had to use his 
 own judgment and was wrong in many in- 
 stances. 
 
 In placing the groups, we may infer that he went 
 altogether upon his own judgment ; and he has cer- 
 tainly displayed a fairly good idea of the continuity 
 and personal nature of the poems. It took no very 
 great perspicacity to recognize, in the first sequence, 
 the earliest of the Sonnets, and in placing the last 
 series, beginning with the looth and ending with the 
 1 25th Sonnet, the references in several of these 
 Sonnets to a three-years' friendship, as well as the 
 allusion to the peace of Vervins in the io7th Son- 
 net, guided him in giving them their present po- 
 sition. 
 
 Thorpe seems also to have recognized the fact 
 that the series referring to the " rival poet," and to 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 45 
 
 the temporary coolness of the patron, immediately 
 preceded the rather prolonged period of silence and 
 estrangement shown in some of the later Sonnets 
 to have elapsed. There can be no doubt, however, 
 that between the iQth Sonnet and the canzonette, 
 No. 126, he has misplaced many single Sonnets and 
 also many sequences. 
 
 The Sonnets in what is known as the " dark 
 lady " series, were also, I believe, written in small 
 detached groups, and sometimes even singly. The 
 i2Qth Sonnet, upon the sexual passion, is very evi- 
 dently a separate exercise, as is also Sonnet 146, 
 this latter being very probably suggested by one of 
 Sir Philip Sidney's upon the same subject, as 
 follows : 
 
 " Leave me, O love, that reachest but to dust, 
 And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things; 
 Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: 
 What ever fades but fading pleasure brings. 
 Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might 
 To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be, 
 Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light 
 That doth both shine and give us sight to see. 
 Oh, take fast hold ! let that light be thy guide 
 In this small course which birth draws out to 
 
 death, 
 
 And think how evil becometh him to slide 
 Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly 
 
 breath ; 
 
 Then farewell, world, thy uttermost I see: 
 Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me," 
 
4$ SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 SONNET 146. 
 
 " Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, 
 Starved by these rebel powers that thee array, 
 Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, 
 Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? 
 Why so large cost, having so short a lease, 
 Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? 
 Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, 
 Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? 
 Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
 And let that pine to aggravate thy store; 
 Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; 
 Within be fed, without be rich no more : 
 
 So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, 
 And Death once dead, there's no more dying 
 then." 
 
 Sonnet 141 was very evidently written with 
 " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " in mind. 
 
 This poem was published in 1595, and as I shall 
 show that Sonnets 20 and 21, and 69 and 70 also 
 refer to poems of Chapman's published at the same 
 time, we may infer that the I4ist Sonnet to the 
 " dark lady " is of the same period as the Sonnets 
 above mentioned. 
 
 The 1 43d Sonnet seems to be a reflection of some 
 verses in the poem of " The Two Italian Gentle- 
 men." As the play, " The Two Gentlemen of Ve- 
 rona," is usually supposed to be founded upon the 
 story in that poem, we may assume that this Son- 
 net is of the same period as that play. The drama- 
 
, 
 
 THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNffs. 47 
 
 tization of that subject very probably occurred to 
 Shakespeare because of its resemblance to his own 
 and his friend's actual experience. It has often 
 been remarked that the ending of this play seems 
 strained and unnatural, and quite out of accord with 
 Shakespeare's art ; where he makes Valentine volun- 
 tarily surrender Sylvia to Proteus, who, however, 
 shamed by his friend's magnanimity, refuses the 
 sacrifice and returns to his old love. Here we find 
 the incidents of the Sonnets fully repeated. 
 
 I shall show that Shakespeare, in two other plays, 
 undoubtedly introduces his own personal feelings, 
 and in one of them quite departs from accepted con- 
 vention in order to do so. I am very strongly of 
 the opinion that this is the case with " The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona," and that it was written in 
 1596 while Shakespeare was at Stratford, and at 
 the same time that the two epistles in Sonnets 33, 
 34, and 35, and 40, 41, and 42, were written to the 
 patron, and the corresponding epistles in the " dark 
 lady " series to the mistress. I shall quote the I43d 
 Sonnet and one verse from " The Two Italian Gen- 
 tlemen," to show the resemblance: 
 
 SONNET 143. 
 
 " Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch 
 One of her feather'd creatures broke away, 
 Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch 
 In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; 
 Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 
 Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent 
 
43 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 To follow that which flies before her face, 
 Not prizing her poor infant's discontent: 
 So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, 
 Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind ; 
 But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me, 
 And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind : 
 So will I pray that thou mayst have thy ' Will,' 
 If thou turn back and my loud crying still." 
 
 A verse from " The Two Italian Gentlemen " : 
 
 " Lo ! here the common fault of love, 
 
 To follow her that flies, 
 And fly from her that makes her wail 
 With loud lamenting cries." 
 
 The punning " Will " Sonnets which have been 
 so often read as indicating the patron as well as the 
 poet, under the name of " Will," if properly ana- 
 lyzed, clearly prove the falsity of this reading. No 
 other wills than the poet's name and the woman's 
 individual " will " are indicated. 
 
 The 1 53d and I54th Sonnets, while probably con- 
 nected with this series, are very evidently mere po- 
 etic exercises and have no particular personal value. 
 
 The 1 45th Sonnet is undoubtedly by some other 
 hand. Shakespeare certainly did not write it, nor 
 did anyone to whom the title of poet might be ap- 
 plied: it is possibly a flight of Southampton's own 
 muse. 
 
 The Sonnets to the " dark lady " were produced 
 at the same period as those to the patron, though 
 
THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF SONNETS. 49 
 
 very probably in a more intermittent manner. I 
 am very strongly of the opinion, however, that only 
 a portion of the Sonnets to the " dark lady " have 
 survived, and that many even of the series to the 
 patron have been lost. 
 
 At some future date I hope to attempt a rear- 
 rangement of the whole series. It will be a com- 
 paratively easy matter to replace single Sonnets in 
 their true contexts, but the chronological placing 
 of misplaced groups may be done only inferentially. 
 The theory which I am here evolving, and which 
 will develop more clearly in the next and later chap- 
 ters, will, however, throw much new light on this 
 problem. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PATRON, AND THE RIVAL POET OF THE SONNETS. 
 
 WE have no record that any other noblemen than 
 Pembroke, his brother Montgomery, and South- 
 ampton, ever gave what might be called " patron- 
 age " to Shakespeare. The dedications to " Venus 
 and Adonis " and " Lucrece " plainly prove that 
 Southampton showed him such favor in the years 
 1593 and 1594. 
 
 From a passage in Hemminge and Condell's dedi- 
 cation of the first folio of Shakespeare's plays, " To 
 the most noble and incomparable paire of brethren, 
 William, Earle of Pembroke and Philip, Earle of 
 Montgomery," we may infer that these noblemen, 
 at some period, gave their countenance to our poet. 
 The passage to which I refer reads : 
 
 " But since your lordships have beene pleas'd to 
 thinke these trifles some-thing, heeretofore; and 
 have prosequted both them, and their Author 
 living, with so much favour: we hope, that (they 
 out-living him, and he not having the fate, com- 
 mon with some, to be exequutor to his own writ- 
 ings) you will use the like indulgence toward them, 
 you have done unto their parent." 
 
PATRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS 51 
 
 At the age of eighteen, and in the year 1598, 
 Pembroke first came to Court. 
 
 As I shall give fairly conclusive proof that the 
 first seventeen Sonnets, wherein the poet urges his 
 young friend and patron to marry, were written 
 previous to 1595, it may be taken for granted that 
 a youth of fourteen was not addressd. If any of 
 the Sonnets can be proved to have been written very 
 near the same time as " Lucrece," Southampton 
 must necessarily be considered the patron and friend 
 addressed in these Sonnets, when the dedication to 
 " Lucrece " is born in mind. 
 
 The dedication to " Lucrece " reads : " The love 
 I dedicate to your Lordship is without end, whereof 
 this pamphlet without beginning is a superfluous 
 moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable 
 disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, 
 makes it assured of your acceptance. What I have 
 done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part 
 in all I have devoted yours ; were my worth greater 
 my duty would show greater, meantime as it is, 
 it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long 
 life still lengthened with all happiness. 
 " Your lordship's in all duty, 
 
 " WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE." 
 
 This dedication was prefixed to " Lucrece " and 
 published with it in 1594. In the light of the 
 words, " What I have done is yours, what I have 
 to do is yours, being part in all I have devoted 
 yours," and, if we would credit Shakespeare with 
 even a shred of sincerity, we must admit that the 
 
52 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 early Sonnets, if they can be proven to have been 
 produced in 1594 or 1595, must also have been ad- 
 dressed to Southampton. If, then, it be admitted 
 that Sonnets written in these years are addressed 
 to Southampton, the later Sonnets of the patron 
 series, 100 to 125, must necessarily be addressed to 
 the same person when we consider their internal 
 evidence. For instance: 
 
 SONNET 102. 
 
 " Our love was new, and then but in the spring, 
 When I was wont to greet it with my lays," etc. 
 
 SONNET 103. 
 
 " For to no other pass my verses tend 
 Than of your graces and your gifts to tell." 
 
 SONNET 104. 
 
 " To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
 For as you were when first your eye I eyed. 
 Such seems your beauty still. Three winters 
 
 cold 
 
 Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, 
 Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd 
 In process of the seasons have I seen, 
 Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd 
 Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are 
 
 green," etc. 
 
PATRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SOA T NETS. 53 
 SONNET 105. 
 
 " Let not my love be caird idolatry, 
 Nor my beloved as an idol show, 
 Since all alike my songs and praises be 
 To one, of one, still such and ever so," etc. 
 
 SONNET 108. 
 
 " What's in the brain that ink may character 
 Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? 
 What's new to speak, what new to register, 
 That may express my love, or thy dear merit? 
 Nothing, sweet boy ; but yet, like prayers divine, 
 Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine. 
 Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name," 
 etc. 
 
 These extracts prove very clearly that the Sonnets 
 from which they are taken were written to the same 
 person to whom the earlier Sonnets were addressed. 
 
 In order to approximate the dates for the pro- 
 duction of the Sonnets, and admitting that South- 
 ampton was the patron addressed, it is necessary to 
 consider the earlier dedications of " Venus and 
 Adonis " and " Lucrece " to this nobleman. 
 
 In 1593 the first fruits of Shakespeare's pen were 
 given to the world. No atom of proof exists to 
 show that, previous to the publication of " Venus 
 and Adonis," Shakespeare had done any serious 
 literary work. He was known as an actor, and it 
 is true, as an actor who had taken upon himself to 
 revamp the literary work of others, thereby calling 
 
54 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 down upon his head, in 1592, the spleen of Robert 
 Greene; but that he had no established fame as a 
 writer, though considerable reputation as an actor, 
 both Greene's attack and Greene's publisher's apol- 
 ogy go to show. 
 
 Robert Greene died in September, 1592. The 
 last thing he wrote, " A Groat's-worth of Wit 
 Bought with a Million of Repentance," which he 
 addressed to certain fellow-writers for the stage, 
 contained what has been recognized as a spiteful 
 attack upon Shakespeare. Greene warns his fel- 
 lows to " beware of puppets that speak from our 
 mouths and of antics garnisht with our colours," 
 and speaks of " a certain upstart crow beautified 
 with our feathers, that with his ' tygers hart wrapt 
 in a players hide ' supposes he is as well able to 
 bumbast out a blank verse as the rest of you, and 
 being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own 
 conceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie," etc. 
 The words " tygers hart wrapt in a players hide " 
 parody a line from " Henry VI.," " Oh Tiger's heart 
 wrapt in a woman's hide," and the words " Shake- 
 scene " is evidently intended as a play upon the 
 name of Shakespeare and an indication of his pro- 
 fession. Some time later Greene's publisher, Henry 
 Chettle, published an apology for Greene's attack, 
 in a preface to his book, " Kinde Hartes Dream." 
 He writes : " I am as sory as if the originall fault 
 had beene my fault, because myself hath scene his de- 
 meanour no lesse civill than he excellent in the quali- 
 tie he professes, besides divers of worship have re- 
 ported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his 
 
PATRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 55 
 
 honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that ap- 
 proves his art." 
 
 While both this attack and this apology prove 
 that Shakespeare, at that period, had tried his hand 
 at the drama, it also proves that he had, as yet, no 
 established place as a dramatist, but was recog- 
 nized as " excellent in the qualitie he professes," 
 that is, the actor's profession. Greene's umbrage 
 was taken largely at the fact that one of Shakes- 
 peare's profession should attempt to encroach upon 
 the dramatist's domain. 
 
 There are good grounds for believing that 
 Shakespeare, at this period, had tried his hand in 
 improving some old historical plays. In the three 
 plays treating of the reign of Henry VI. his touch 
 is plainly to be seen, but criticism has long ago set- 
 tled that in these works he only amended and re- 
 vised ; therefore, when he, in his dedication to 
 " Venus and Adonis," plainly avows that poem to be 
 " the first heir of my invention," I am inclined to 
 take him at his word. The Sonnets were certainly 
 not written previously, as both these words and 
 the general tone of the dedication prove; in fact, 
 the distant and respectful air of this dedication 
 precludes any previous intimacy and perhaps even 
 acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southamp- 
 ton. Next year, in 1594, " Lucrece " was pub- 
 lished, and dedicated to the same nobleman in a 
 more assured tone, proving that the dedication of 
 the previous poem had been accepted in a friendly 
 spirit by the patron, and also plainly showing that 
 the poet had in some manner been rewarded for his 
 
5 6 SHAKESPEARE AND TtiE RIVAL POET. 
 
 labor ; but even this dedication does not show a very 
 intimate acquaintance; the words of the dedication 
 " the warrant I have of your honourable dispo- 
 sition," while conveying a suggestion of benefits 
 received, have yet only the manner of a poet to a 
 patron : it is but reasonable to assume, however, that 
 a more intimate acquaintance soon followed the 
 second dedication. It is to this period, then, that I 
 assign the first sonnet-sequence. This is the 
 season in their friendship spoken of in one of the 
 later Sonnets as 
 
 " When first your eye I eyed." 
 
 This first sonnet-sequence was evidently finished 
 towards the end of 1593, or early in 1594. In 
 these Sonnets we find the poet urging his young 
 patron to marry : these admonitions, however, break 
 off suddenly in the I7th Sonnet, and in the i8th and 
 1 9th Sonnets the poet promises the immortality 
 which his perj shall achieve; a strain which runs 
 thereafter through the whole of the remainder of 
 the series to the patron. When we recall the fact 
 that, late in 1594, Southampton became enamored of 
 Elizabeth Vernon, whom he married four years 
 later, the reason for the cessation of the theme of the 
 first seventeen Sonnets becomes apparent. The 
 date which I assign for the first sonnet-sequence 
 (1593 to I 594)> coupled with the internal evidence 
 we find in some of the later Sonnets, where a 
 three-years' term is given for the friendship, 
 brings the beginning of the latest series, from 100 
 
PATRON. AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 57 
 
 to 125, to the end of 1597 or the early part of 1598. 
 The intermediate series, Nos. 20 to 99, must, there- 
 fore, have been written between the spring of 1594 
 and the end of 1597. The last series, from 100 to 
 125, however, show that there has been a period of 
 silence and perhaps estrangement between Shakes- 
 peare and his friend : the lines in the looth Sonnet, 
 
 " Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long 
 To speak of that which gives thee all thy might ? " 
 
 And, 
 
 " Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey 
 If time have any wrinkle graven there," 
 
 seem to indicate that the period of silence has been 
 rather longer than between any of the previous 
 groups of Sonnets. I would place the duration of 
 this silence at from nine to twelve months, and be- 
 lieve the Sonnets written last, preceding this 
 silence, to be the series from 86 to 96, in which he 
 refers to the growing coldness of his friend. The 
 canzonette, No. 126, was appended as L'Envoi, in 
 all likelihood, to this series, as I have previously 
 suggested. 
 
 The " rival poet " is the central figure in the 
 series from the 78th to 86th Sonnet, and from the 
 86th to 96th there is evidence of a growing cold- 
 ness, caused, no doubt, by Chapman's supposed suc- 
 cess with Shakespeare's patron. In Sonnet 86 ap- 
 pears the indication which, Professor Minto con- 
 jectured, pointed at Chapman as the rival. I shall 
 
58 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 take this matter up and discuss it fully in another 
 chapter. 
 
 In assigning this chronology to the Sonnets, I 
 was for a while nonplused by the io7th. Mr. 
 Gerald Massey's suggestion, that this was Shakes- 
 peare's gratulation upon the liberation of South- 
 ampton in 1603, after his three-years' imprison- 
 ment under Elizabeth, fitted so well into the ap- 
 parent meaning of the words that for some time I 
 accepted it as true, yet all my data and inferences 
 pointed so clearly to the years 1593-1594 to 1599, for 
 the period of the Sonnets, that I could not imagine 
 Shakespeare, after several years' disuse of this form 
 of verse, returning to it to write one gratulatory 
 Sonnet. 
 
 Upon examining this Sonnet and its context 
 closely, I am quite convinced that Mr. Massey's 
 conjecture is wrong. When properly analyzed 
 the io7th Sonnet will be seen to be a part of a se- 
 quence and closely connected in sense and imagery 
 with 104, 1 06, and 108: the iO4th Sonnet ends with 
 these lines: 
 
 " Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand, 
 Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; 
 So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth 
 
 stand, 
 
 Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived : 
 For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred ; 
 Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead/' 
 
 Sonnet 106 commences with the lines: 
 
PA TKON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONKETS. 59 
 
 " When in the chronicle of wasted time 
 I see descriptions of the fairest wights, 
 And beauty making beautiful old rhyme 
 In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, 
 Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, 
 Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, 
 I see their antique pen would have express'd 
 Even such a beauty as your master now. 
 So all their praises are but prophecies 
 Of this our time, all you prefiguring." 
 
 Sonnet 107 begins, " Not mine own fears." 
 Compare with Sonnet 104, " For fear of which," 
 etc. 
 
 Sonnet 107 continues: 
 
 " Nor the prophetic soul 
 Of the wide world dreaming on things to come" 
 
 Compare this with Sonnet 106: 
 
 " So all their praises are but prophecies 
 Of this our time, all you prefiguring" 
 
 Sonnet 107 continues: 
 
 " Can yet the lease of my true love control, 
 Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom" 
 
 Compare with 104: 
 
 " Hear this, thou age 
 unbred ; 
 Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead" 
 
60 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 This comparison clearly proves that Sonnet 107 
 is not an aftergrowth, but an integral part of this 
 sequence. The remaining lines of this Sonnet 
 
 " The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, 
 And the sad augurs mock their own presage; 
 Incertainties now crown themselves assured, 
 And peace proclaims olives of endless age. 
 Now with the drops of this most balmy time 
 My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, 
 Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, 
 While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes : 
 And thou in this shalt find thy monument, 
 When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are 
 spent " 
 
 very evidently refer, as suggested by Mr. Thomas 
 Tyler, to the Peace of Vervins, which definitely put 
 an end to the designs of Spain against England and 
 Elizabeth, which had threatened for many years. 
 If the line, 
 
 " The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured/' 
 
 be accepted as referring to Queen Elizabeth, it takes 
 on strong significance from the fact that a danger- 
 ous conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth was 
 nipped in the bud just at this time: two men, Ed- 
 ward Squire and Richard Walpole, being executed 
 after a full confession of the plot. 
 
 That the dates which I have suggested for the 
 Sonnets have very strong circumstantial evidence, 
 I believe all students of the Sonnets will agree, but 
 
PATRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 6 1 
 
 I shall now produce some new facts which will more 
 definitely prove the truth of my contention. 
 
 In the 2Oth and 2ist Sonnets I have found a clew 
 which not only leads to a full identification of Chap- 
 man as the " rival poet," but gives us also a set- 
 tled date for those two Sonnets which enables us 
 to work out dates for the production of the whole 
 of the remainder of the series, and incidentally, for 
 several of the plays. 
 
 I believe I may state positively that these Son- 
 nets were written in 1595, they certainly could not 
 have been written before that date, and that they 
 were not written later, other satirical strokes made 
 by Shakespeare against Chapman which I shall 
 show fully prove. 
 
 A very casual reading of these two Sonnets will 
 show that they are connected one with the other. 
 There are few of the Sonnets which have puzzled 
 critics more than these; the most far-fetched ex- 
 planations have been given for them, and extraor- 
 dinary theories built upon them. Tyrwhitt sug- 
 gested that the elusive " Mr. W. H.," of Thorpe's 
 dedication, was a Mr. Wm. Hughes, taking the sev- 
 enth line of the 2oth Sonnet, 
 
 "A man in hew, all 'hews' in his controlling," 
 
 as his key. From the fact that the word " hues " 
 is spelled " Hews " in Thorpe's edition and that 
 it is put in italics and inclosed between inverted 
 commas, we may, in the light of the proof that 
 Southampton is addressed infer two things: one, 
 
62 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 that Shakespeare intended this as an anagram for 
 the initials of Southampton's name and title, Henry 
 Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and the other, 
 that Thorpe, however he came by them, worked 
 from Shakespeare's original manuscripts. The 
 making of anagrams was a common practice with 
 the writers of that period; even Chapman indulges 
 in it, as the following forced and stupid transpo- 
 sition of the name and title of the Earl of Salisbury 
 proves. 
 
 " Robert Cecyl, Earle of Salisburye. 
 Curb foes ; thy care, is all our erly be." 
 
 This Sonnet also mystified Coleridge, who be- 
 lieved that the whole series of Sonnets from i to 154 
 were addressed by the poet to his mistress, and sup- 
 posed that the term " master-mistress " in the sec- 
 ond line, and the references to a man contained in 
 the seventh line, were introduced as a blind, to hide 
 this supposed fact. Professor Dowden suggested 
 that in the 2ist Sonnet Shakespeare satirizes the 
 extravagant conceits of such sonneteers as Daniels, 
 Barnes, Constable, and Griffin. Mr. Wyndham is 
 the only critic who has recognized the fact that 
 Shakespeare in this Sonnet clearly indicates one, 
 and not a number of poets. The concluding couplet 
 of this Sonnet, 
 
 " Let them say more that like of hearsay well ; 
 I will not praise that purpose not to sell," 
 
 has proved a stumbling block to all commentators, 
 
PA TRON t AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 63 
 
 misleading one careful and conservative critic, who 
 supposes that the poet protests that he will not sell 
 his friend. 
 
 Let us now consider this Sonnet critically: 
 
 " So is it not with me as with that Muse 
 Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse, 
 Who heaven itself for ornament doth use 
 And every fair with his fair doth rehearse, 
 Making a couplement of proud compare, 
 With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich 
 
 gems, 
 
 With April's first-born flowers and all things rare 
 That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems." 
 
 The words, " that Muse," very distinctly indi- 
 cate one poet, and not a number of poets. This 
 " Muse," being " stirr'd by a painted beauty to his 
 verse," uses " heaven itself for ornament " and com- 
 pares his mistress with the glories he beholds there ; 
 couples her with the " sun and moon, with earth 
 and sea's rich gems " ; with April's flowers and all 
 the rarities of the displayed universe. Shakespeare 
 then protests against such inordinate comparison 
 in the following lines: 
 
 " O let me, true in love, but truly write, 
 And then believe me, my love is as fair 
 As any mother's child, though not so bright 
 As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air." 
 
 What does Shakespeare here mean by the expres- 
 sion "those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air"? 
 
64 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 The only heavenly lights previously alluded to in 
 the Sonnet are the sun and moon ; he certainly 
 would not refer to these bodies as " candles." He 
 then very evidently indicates something mentioned 
 by the " Muse " whom he attacks. 
 In the concluding couplet, 
 
 " Let them say more that like of hearsay well ; 
 I will not praise that purpose not to sell," 
 
 he indicates the fact that this poet has attempted to 
 lay some bases for hearsay, that is, reputation or 
 fame; and he protests that he will not make such 
 claims for his own verse, as it is not written for 
 sale. 
 
 It is little wonder that critics have failed to see 
 the true sense of these last two lines, for, without 
 knowing the object indicated or attacked, they are 
 inscrutable. 
 
 Some years ago I came to the conclusion that 
 Shakespeare in this Sonnet attacked some one poem 
 and poet ; and the minute descriptive details of the 
 poem, which he gives us in the Sonnet, inclined me 
 to hope that that poet might be identified. I ac- 
 cordingly began a systematic reading of Eliza- 
 bethan verse, to, if possible, find the poem so plainly 
 described. Being struck by the plausibility of Pro- 
 fessor Minto's suggestion regarding Chapman, it 
 occurred to me that that poet might also be referred 
 to in this Sonnet. I had scarcely commenced a 
 reading of Chapman's miscellaneous poems when I 
 found, not only what I sought, but even stronger 
 
PA TRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 65 
 
 and more interesting evidence connecting that poet 
 with Shakespeare. 
 
 A poem published by Chapman in 1595, called 
 " The Amorous Zodiac" is unquestionably the poem 
 indicated by Shakespeare in the 2ist Sonnet. In 
 that poem Chapman, addressing his mistress, or, 
 as is much more likely, his imaginary mistress, in 
 thirty verses compares and couples her beauties 
 with the signs of the Zodiac, as representing the 
 months of the year; endowing her with all the 
 graces of the seasons and the glories of the heavens. 
 
 If the first eight or ten verses of this poem be 
 compared with the first eight lines of the 2ist Son- 
 net, my contention will be fully justified, but should 
 anyone still doubt, when the last four lines of the 
 Sonnet are compared with L'Envoi of the poem, all 
 doubts will cease. To make the Sonnet match the 
 poem, it is not necessary to pick and choose verses 
 or lines ; the sequence of ideas between the poem 
 and the critique runs plainly, from beginning to 
 end. 
 
 I shall quote enough of this poem to prove the 
 truth of my argument. 
 
 "THE AMOROUS ZODIAC. 
 I. 
 
 " I never see the sun but suddenly 
 My soul is moved with spite and jealousy 
 Of his high bliss, in his sweet course discerned: 
 And am displeased to see so many signs, 
 As the bright sky unworthily divines, 
 Enjoy an honour they have never earn'd. 
 
66 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 II. 
 " To think heaven decks with such a beauteous 
 
 show, 
 
 A harp, a ship, a serpent, or a crow ; 
 And such a crew of creatures of no prices, 
 But to excite in us th' unshamefaced flames, 
 With which, long since, Jove wrong'd so many 
 
 dames, 
 Reviving in his rule their names and vices. 
 
 in. 
 
 " Dear mistress, whom the gods bred here below, 
 T* express their wondrous power, and let us 
 
 know 
 
 That before thee they nought did perfect make; 
 Why may not I as in those signs, the sun 
 Shine in thy beauties, and as roundly run, 
 To frame, like him, an endless Zodiac. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " With thee I'll furnish both the year and sky, 
 Running in thee my course of destiny: 
 And thou shalt be the rest of all my moving, 
 But of thy numberless and perfect graces, 
 To give my moons their full in twelve months' 
 
 spaces, 
 I choose but twelve in guerdon of my loving. 
 
 v. 
 
 " Keeping even way through every excellence, 
 I'll make in all an equal residence 
 Of a new Zodiac; a new Phoebus guising. 
 
PATRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 67 
 
 When, without altering the course of nature, 
 I'll make the seasons good, and every creature 
 Shall henceforth reckon day, from my first rising. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " To open then the spring-time's golden gate, 
 And flower my race with ardour temperate, 
 I'll enter by thy head and have for house 
 In my first month, this heaven Ram-curled tress, 
 Of which Love as his charm-chains doth address, 
 A sign fit for a spring so beauteous. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Lodged in that fleece of hair, yellow and curl'd, 
 I'll take high pleasure to enlight the world, 
 And fetter me in gold, thy crisps implies 
 Earth, at this spring, spongy and languorsome 
 With envy of our joys in love become, 
 Shall swarm with flowers, and air with painted 
 flies. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Thy smooth embow'd brow, where all grace I see, 
 . My second month, and second house shall be ; 
 Which brow with her clear beauties shall delight 
 The Earth, yet sad, and overture confer 
 To herbs, buds, flowers and verdure-gracing Ver, 
 Rendering her more than summer exquisite. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " All this fresh April, this sweet month of Venus. 
 I will admire this brow so bounteous; 
 This brow, brave court of love and virtue builded ; 
 
68 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 This brow, where chastity holds garrison ; 
 This brow, that blushless none can look upon, 
 This brow, with every grace and honour gilded," 
 etc., etc. 
 
 These verses compared with the following lines 
 from the Sonnet plainly reveal the parallel : 
 
 " So it is not with me as with that Muse 
 Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse, 
 Who heaven itself for ornament doth use 
 And every fair with his fair doth rehearse, 
 Making a couplement of proud compare. 
 With sun and moon, with earth and seas' rich 
 
 gems, 
 
 With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare 
 That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems." 
 
 Chapman ends his poem with two verses as 
 L'Envoi, as follows: 
 
 L'ENVOI. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " Dear mistress, if poor wishes heaven would hear, 
 I would not choose the empire of the water; 
 The empire of the air, nor of the earth, 
 But endlessly my course of life confining, 
 In this fair Zodiac for ever shining. 
 And with thy beauties make me endless mirth. 
 
 xxx. 
 
 " But, gracious love, if jealous heaven deny 
 My life this truly blest variety, 
 
PATRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 6y 
 
 Yet will I thee through all the world disperse; 
 If not in heaven, amongst those braving fires, 
 Yet here thy beauties, which the world admires, 
 Bright as those flames shall glister in my verse." 
 
 If these two verses be compared with the follow- 
 ing six lines from the 2ist Sonnet the whole parallel 
 will be seen to be complete: 
 
 " O, let me, true in love, but truly write, 
 And then believe me, my love is as fair 
 As any mother's child, though not so bright 
 As those gold candles fi.v'd in heaven's air. 
 Let them say more that like of hearsay well ; 
 I will not praise that purpose not to sell." 
 
 This latter comparison, not only clearly shows 
 to what Shakespeare refers as " those gold candles 
 fix'd in heaven's air " but plainly reveals his stroke 
 at Chapman's vanity and self-praise, and also proves 
 what I have previously asserted that Shakespeare 
 here avows that his Sonnets were not written for 
 sale. 
 
 The thrust which Shakespeare in this Sonnet 
 makes at Chapman's laudation of his own work, 
 and his mercenary motives, he repeats several 
 times both in " Love's Labor's Lost " and in 
 " Troilus and Cressida." 
 
 Though I find that Shakespeare in several other 
 Sonnets seems to indicate or parody other poets and 
 their poems, as in the sonnets of Constable and 
 Griffin already quoted, in none of them do I find the 
 unmistakable animus which is noticeable in nearly 
 
70 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 all Sonnets, and in many passages in his plays, 
 where he refers to Chapman. Why this hostility? 
 
 All students of the Sonnets will agree with me 
 when I say that Shakespeare's personality, as we 
 find it there revealed, is of much too magnanimous 
 and gentle a spirit to gratuitously assail a fellow 
 poet with such bitterness as we find in many pas- 
 sages indicating Chapman. This caustic tone dis- 
 played in some of the Sonnets, and even more 
 strongly in the two plays I have mentioned, cer- 
 tainly bespeaks provocation. The mere fact that 
 Chapman sought Southampton's patronage would 
 not alone justify it, if at all: many other contempo- 
 rary poets sunned themselves in the beams of this 
 young Maecenas' eye without adverse comment from 
 Shakespeare. The poems of Barnes, Barnfield, and 
 Nash addressed to Southampton prove this; we 
 must, therefore, seek farther for the cause of this 
 hostility ; for that there was a decidedly bitter feel- 
 ing between Chapman and Shakespeare from the 
 very beginning of their recorded contemporary ca- 
 reers, and that each at various times, in prose and 
 verse, sometimes very openly, and often covertly, 
 attacked the other, I shall show so conclusively that 
 I do not think any critic who follows my argument 
 will dispute it. 
 
 The beginning of this enmity possibly antedates 
 any plain record which we have of the work of 
 either poet, but that the onus of it lay with Chap- 
 man I am prone to believe, from the mass of evi- 
 dence which I find of this strange man's envious 
 disposition and cantankerous temper. The latest 
 
PA TRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. Jl 
 
 thing which we have from his pen, written during 
 his last illness and left incomplete at his death, is a 
 virulent and vulgar attack upon his erstwhile friend 
 and champion, Ben Jonson. 
 
 The overweening pride of learning and scholastic 
 conceit with which Chapman was filled, and which 
 marks and mars nearly all his original work, made 
 him look with disdain upon aspirants for literary 
 honors who were of less erudition. This disdain 
 developed into stormy and rancorous abuse, when 
 confronted by the success and popularity achieved 
 by one of Shakespeare's comparatively limited 
 scholastic attainments. His abuse reflects, not only 
 upon what he is pleased to call Shakespeare's 
 " ignorance and impiety," but also upon his sup- 
 posed servility to patrons. A hundred years and 
 over of painstaking research has failed to reveal 
 that Shakespeare ever sought patronage, except in 
 the case of Southampton, and then only in the earli- 
 est stage of his literary career: that he had some 
 benefit, material and otherwise, of this patronage, 
 we have good reason for believing, but that he made 
 his own way in the world, by hard and consistent 
 work, unflagging industry, and careful business 
 methods, we have proof more than sufficient. Far 
 otherwise with Chapman. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne, in his analytic and comprehen- 
 sive introduction to Chapman's miscellaneous and 
 dramatic works, says : " It has been remarked by 
 editors and biographers, that between the years 
 1574 (at or about which date, according to An- 
 thony Wood, he being well grounded in school 
 
?2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 learning was sent to the University) and 1594, 
 when he published his first poem, we have no trace 
 or hint to guide us, in conjecturing how his life 
 was spent between the ages of fifteen and thirty- 
 five. This latter age is the least he can have at- 
 tained, by any computation, at the time when he 
 put forth his ' Shadow of Night,' full of loud and 
 angry complaints of neglect and slight, endured at 
 the hands of an unthankful and besotted genera- 
 tion." Thus, in the year 1594, Chapman first 
 comes into our ken, a rancorous and disgruntled 
 man, and though, in the ensuing years, he accom- 
 plished great work in his Homeric translations, and 
 also attained some meed of fame both as a dramatist 
 and a poet, we find him to the last a very Timon 
 in misanthropy. Not only in his prose and verse 
 dedications does he rail against his rivals and curse 
 his fate, but even in the poems for which the dedi- 
 cations are written he strays again and again from 
 his subject to indulge in like abuse and railing. The 
 history of English verse does not reveal in any other 
 poet the self-consciousness manifested by Chapman 
 in his poems ; nor do we find in the work of any 
 other poet or dramatist the absolute effacement of 
 self exhibited by Chapman's great rival : were it 
 not for the Sonnets, and the light which they throw 
 upon some of his plays, his personality would be 
 quite hidden. 
 
 Though we see that Chapman dedicates his earlier 
 poems of 1594 and 1595 to men of learning and fel- 
 low-writers, and not to men of place and wealth, 
 both the tone of these dedications, and internal evi- 
 
PATRON, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 73 
 
 dence in these poems, prove that this was more 
 from necessity than virtue. In " Ovid's Banquet of 
 Sense," dedicated to his friend Matthew Royden, 
 he breaks clean away from his subject to mourn his 
 state, thus: 
 
 ^ 
 
 " In these dog-days how this contagion smothers 
 The purest blood with virtues diet fined, 
 Nothing their own, unless they be some other's 
 Spite of themselves, are in themselves confined, 
 And live so poor they are of all despised, 
 Their gifts held down with scorn should be di- 
 vined, 
 
 And they like mummers mask, unknown, unprized : 
 A thousand marvels mourn in some such breast, 
 Would make a kind and worthy patron blest." 
 
 Even in his earliest published poem, " The 
 Shadow of Night" (1594), which is also dedi- 
 cated to Royden, he in many passages sounds the 
 same doleful note. " A Coronet for his Mistress 
 Philosophy " is nothing but lament for his friendless 
 condition, and splenetic abuse of a more fortunate 
 poet. There is scarcely an original poem by Chap- 
 man in which this mournful and abusive tone can- 
 not be found. Even in his " Hymn to Christ upon 
 the Cross " it reveals itself, and it is strange that he 
 can abstain from it in his translations. 
 
 No contemporary poet so persistently supplicated 
 patronage, yet none are so bitter and envious to- 
 wards others who sought it and were successful. In 
 later years we find him not too particular in his 
 
74 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 choice of patrons, so that they were men of position 
 or wealth. He dedicated " Andromeda Liberata " 
 most fulsomely to the notorious Carr, Earl of 
 Somerset, and his still more notorious wife ; in fact, 
 it was written expressly for their nuptials and made 
 Chapman the laughing-stock of the day. In the 
 light of all this, I am inclined to take his strictures 
 upon other poets who sought the patronage of the 
 great with a grain of salt, and to impute his choler 
 to plain envy of their success. 
 
 His early attacks upon Shakespeare, which I shall 
 demonstrate later on, in all probability arose from 
 this source, and possibly initiated the feud between 
 them; his later attacks clearly reveal jealousy, not 
 only of Shakespeare's literary reputation, but also 
 of his increase in estate and wealth, and were no 
 doubt intensified in virulence by the retaliatory 
 measures adopted by our poet. 
 
 In Shakespeare's early rejoinders I notice rather 
 an amused disdain than bitterness; in only one in- 
 stance in his early retorts do I find bitterness, and 
 this touch seems to refer to some smallness or 
 treachery on the part of Chapman, which antedates 
 the period at which our history of the enmity be- 
 gins, or else it was introduced at a later date by 
 Shakespeare, upon his revision of the play in which 
 I find it. In " Love's Labor's Lost," in the gulling 
 by Biron and his friends of the actors in the " Nine 
 Worthies," the wit expended upon all the characters, 
 except that which Holofernes personates, is of 
 rather a playful and harmless nature; in the gibes 
 directed at Holofernes, however, a most distinctly 
 
, AND RIVAL POET OF SONNETS. 75 
 
 bitter and personal tone is discernible, and refer- 
 ences are made that are entirely without point un- 
 less they refer to something not revealed in the 
 play. That Chapman is pilloried in the character 
 of Holofernes and that his ideas and theories are 
 attacked and expressly mentioned in the play, I be- 
 lieve I can prove. 
 
 Chapman's "Amorous Zodiac," which Shakespeare 
 attacks in the 2ist Sonnet, was published in 1595 
 along with " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " and " A 
 Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy." I shall in 
 the next chapter prove that Shakespeare indicates 
 and attacks these three poems, and shall also show 
 that he attacks the theories evolved by Chapman in 
 a poem published in the previous year, called " The 
 Shadow of Night." In a still later chapter I shall 
 show the reasons for Shakespeare's attacks, in the 
 covert aspersions which Chapman casts at him in 
 these poems and their dedications. I will show a 
 renewal of this hostility a year or two later, when 
 Chapman again seeks the favor of Southampton, to 
 father the publication of his first Homeric trans- 
 lations, giving both Shakespeare^s attacks and 
 Chapman's rejoinders, and finally shall reveal a 
 new outburst of this latent hostility on both sides, 
 in the year 1609, and in this way not only cast a 
 new light upon many of the Sonnets, " Love's La- 
 bor's Lost," and " Troilus and Cressida," but shall 
 set a definite date for their production and forever 
 place beyond cavil the value of the personal theory 
 of the Sonnets. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT, AND " LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST/' 
 
 IT has been usual, with Shakespearean critics, to 
 assign a much earlier date for the production of 
 "Love's Labor's Lost" than that for which I 
 shall now contend. Many writers place it in 1591, 
 and others have given it even an earlier date. 
 
 The earliest known publication of this play is the 
 quarto of 1598. The earliest known references to 
 it are also in this year. Meres mentions it with sev- 
 eral other plays in his " Palladis Tamia," and an 
 obscure contemporary poet, Robert Tofte, al- 
 ludes to it in one of his verses. Tofte's reference, 
 however, is of such a nature as to lead us to infer 
 that it was not a new publication at the time he 
 wrote : 
 
 " Love's Labor's Lost I once did see, a Play 
 Y-cleped so, so called to my pain. 
 Which I to hear to my small joy did stay, 
 Giving attendance on my f reward Dame: 
 My misgiving mind presaging to me ill, 
 Yet was I drawn to see it 'gainst my will. 
 
 " Each actor played in cunning wise his part, 
 But chiefly those entrapped in Cupid's snare; 
 Yet all was feigned, 'twas not from the heart, 
 They seemed to grieve, but yet they felt no care: 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 77 
 
 'Twas I that grief (indeed) did bear in breast, 
 The others did but make a show in jest." * 
 
 Many commentators are of the opinion that this 
 play is Shakespeare's earliest complete dramatic 
 effort; it is certainly, I believe, one of his earliest 
 comedies. I have already referred to the distinct 
 assertion which Shakespeare makes in the dedi- 
 cation to " Venus and Adonis," as to that poem be- 
 ing the " first heir " of his " invention." Critics 
 have usually passed over this plain avowal of the 
 poet's, alleging that he did not look upon his plays 
 in this light, as children of his brain, as they 
 were generally built upon plots which he borrowed. 
 I quite repudiate this view in reference to " Love's 
 Labor's Lost." Shakespeare undoubtedly amended 
 old plays by other hands previous to this, but no 
 proof exists to show that he wrote any complete 
 original poem or play, previous to the publication 
 of " Venus and Adonis." If Shakespeare had writ- 
 ten " Love's Labor's Lost " before " Venus and 
 Adonis " he could not truthfully have made the 
 above-mentioned assertion, as this play is even more 
 distinctly an heir of his invention than that poem. 
 The groundwork of " Venus and Adonis," is bor- 
 rowed from Ovid's " Metamorphoses," while in 
 Love's Labor's Lost " there is absolutely no plot or 
 plan to be so borrowed ; it has no previously known 
 basis. Nothing that Shakespeare ever wrote is so 
 entirely his own as this play. Though he intro- 
 
 f "Alba; or, the Month's Mind of a Melancholy Lover," by 
 Robert Tofte, 1598. 
 
7 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 duces a King Ferdinand of Navarre, and names that 
 King's friends after well-known courtiers of Henry 
 of Navarre, there is palpably no real history in the 
 play, and the interest would be equally as great 
 were purely imaginary names used. As a dramatic 
 fiction, " Love's Labor's Lost " is 
 
 " Apart from space, withholding time." 
 
 It is purely a satirical comedy, in which the whole 
 '' interest centers in the dialogue, repartee, and satire. 
 The poetry of the play has all the distinguishing 
 features of the early poems and sonnets; the same 
 limpidity of diction and wealth of imagery. 
 
 I shall not rehearse the conjectures which are 
 generally used to prove this play an early produc- 
 tion, as the data which I shall adduce shall, I be- 
 lieve, place the date of its production beyond con- 
 jecture. 
 
 " Love's Labor's Lost " was certainly written 
 later than both " Venus and Adonis " and " Lu- 
 crece," and also after the first twenty-sonnet se- 
 quence, and was very probably produced in 1595. 
 
 My reason for giving it this date is that I find it 
 to be a distinct satire upon the theories and ideas 
 set forth by Chapman in the two poems which he 
 published in 1594, called "The Shadow of Night." 
 I would be inclined to date the production of 
 "Love's Labor's Lost" in 1594, after the publica- 
 tion of these poems of Chapman's, but that I find in 
 the play references also to other poems which Chap- 
 man published in 1595. It is quite possible, how- 
 ever, that Shakespeare saw these latter poems of 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 79 
 
 Chapman's in manuscript previous to their publica- 
 tion, as there can be little doubt, from the tone of 
 the dedication to Matthew Royden, that Chapman 
 had previously sought other and greater names to 
 which to dedicate them, and had very probably 
 made an attempt upon Southampton's favor ; in this 
 event, Shakespeare would probably have seen them 
 in manuscript ; however, even could this be proved, 
 it would alter the date by only a few months. 
 
 It may be said by some who have read my argu- 
 ments, and agree with the truth of the satire 
 set forth, that while there is full warrant for assign- 
 ing the production of the play to a period later than 
 the poems satirized, there is no such warrant for 
 placing so definite a date. We know, however, 
 from Meres' and Tofte's references, that it was pro- 
 duced before 1598, and it shall be very clearly 
 proved here that it was written later than 1594 or 
 
 1595- 
 
 These poems of Chapman's which are satirized 
 were not of sufficient interest to the public for the 
 satire to be appreciated if produced any consider- 
 able time, say a year, after their issue. Shakes- 
 peare, no doubt, struck while the iron was hot, 
 while the reading world was still laboring through 
 the jumbled construction and cloudy rhetoric of 
 Chapman's earnest, but distorted and impenetrable 
 verses, and not yet quite decided whether a rapt and 
 inspired seer, or a befogged pedant, had appeared 
 in their midst. 
 
 This satire we must impute to the covert slings 
 and slurs which Chapman makes at Shakespeare in 
 
8o SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 these same poems. It is not now possible to elu- 
 cidate all of the satirical points in the play that 
 Shakespeare intended, but there can be little doubt 
 that the playgoing public of that day recognized the 
 full force of the satire, if we, after three hundred 
 years, can find such strong evidence of it. 
 
 In " The Shadow of Night " Chapman, in several 
 hundred lines of the most meandering and misty 
 verse, relieved, it is true, by occasional fine lines, 
 endeavors to tell the world some matter of appar- 
 ently great moment ; he incidentally bewails his own 
 woes,. and belabors and slangs his rival, as he in- 
 variably does in his original poems. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne says of this poem : " I sincerely 
 think and hope that no poem with a tithe of its gen- 
 uine power and merit, was ever written on such a 
 plan or after such a fashion, as ' The Shadow of 
 Night/ 
 
 " It is not merely the heavy and convulsive 
 movement of its tangled and jarring sentences, that 
 seem to wheeze and pant at every painful step, the 
 incessant byplay of incongruous digressions and 
 impenetrable allusions, that makes the first reading 
 of this poem as tough and tedious a task for the 
 mind as oakum-picking or stone-breaking can be 
 > for the body. Worse than all this is the want of 
 any perceptible center towards which these tangled 
 and raveled lines of thought may seem at last to 
 converge. We see that the author has thought hard 
 and felt deeply; we apprehend that he is charged 
 as it were to the muzzle with some ardent matter 
 of spiritual interest, of which he would fain deliver 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 81 
 
 himself in explosive eloquence ; we perceive that he 
 is angry, ambitious, vehement, and arrogant; no 
 pretender, but a genuine seer, bemused and stifled 
 by the oracular fumes which choke in its very ut- 
 terance the message they inspire, and forever pre- 
 clude the seer from becoming properly the prophet 
 of their mysteries. He foams at the mouth with 
 rage through all the flints and pebbles of hard lan- 
 guage, which he spits forth, so to say, in the face of 
 'the prejudicate and peremptory reader' (his own 
 words), whose ears he belabors with 'very bitter 
 words/ not less turgid than were hurled by Pistol 
 at the head of the ' recalcitrant and contumelious ' 
 Mistress Tearsheet: nor assuredly had the poet 
 much right to expect that they would be received 
 by the profane multitude with more reverence and 
 humility than was the poetic fury of ' such a fustian 
 rascal ' by that ' honest, virtuous, civil gentle- 
 woman.' ' 
 
 Mr. Swinburne takes leave of this poem saying, 
 that it " is incomprehensible to human apprehen- 
 sion " and that he leaves to others a solution to him 
 insoluble. I do not pretend to have found that 
 which so great a critic has abandoned, the solu- 
 tion of this poem, nor do I think it can be found. 
 I apprehend in a general way that Chapman extols 
 learning, philosophy, religion, etc., all of which he 
 clothes with the garb of darkness and the night; 
 that he attacks " the day and all its sweets," gayety, 
 frivolity, lightness of heart, the love of woman, and 
 very especially, what he calls " ignorance." It is 
 rather curious to notice, in all Chapman's attacks 
 
82 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 upon Shakespeare, how frequently he indicates him 
 by these words " ignorance and impiety " : it is also 
 noticeable that Shakespeare understands the stroke 
 as meant for him and with sardonic humor accepts 
 it to himself in some of the Sonnets where he no- 
 tices Chapman, as, for instance, in Sonnet 78 : 
 
 " So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse 
 And found such fair assistance in my verse 
 As every alien pen hath got my use 
 And under thee their poesy disperse. 
 Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing 
 And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, 
 Have added feathers to the learned's wing, 
 And given grace a double majesty. 
 Yet be most proud of that which I compile, 
 Whose influence is thine and born of thee; 
 In other's work thou dost but mend the style, 
 And arts with thy sweet graces graced be; 
 But thou art all my art, and dost advance 
 As high as learning my rude ignorance." 
 
 In " Love's Labor's Lost " Shakespeare makes 
 Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his lords, steep 
 their minds in the spirit of " The Shadow of 
 Night," and makes them swear to eschew, for three 
 years, all natural pleasures and the society of wo- 
 men, and give themselves up to study, fasting, and 
 philosophy: but in the character of Biron he in- 
 troduces the " little rift within the lute " ; for Biron, 
 though swearing as do the others to the vows im- 
 posed, mentally resolves to break them at the 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 83 
 
 first opportunity. Through the mouth of Biron, 
 Shakespeare, I believe, speaks his own views in at- 
 tacking the unnatural theories of " The School of 
 Night " as set forth by Chapman. 
 
 In the pedantry and verbosity of Holofernes he 
 caricatures Chapman's style, and in the person of 
 Holofernes excoriates Chapman himself. He pos- 
 sibly ridicules the Euphuistic School in the char- 
 acter of Armado, and may also give us a caricature 
 of a certain noted character, half wit and half fool, 
 known as the " phantastical monarcho," who 
 frequented London somewhere about this time. I 
 shall confine myself, however, to those parts of the 
 play in which I detect the satire upon Chapman and 
 his theories. 
 
 Act I. scene i opens with the King addressing 
 his fellow ascetics as follows : 
 
 " King. Let fame, that all hunt after in their 
 
 lives, 
 
 Live register'd upon our brazen tombs, 
 And then grace us in the disgrace of death : 
 When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, 
 The endeavour of this present breath may buy 
 That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen 
 
 edge, 
 
 And make us heirs of all eternity. 
 Therefore, brave conquerors, for so you are 
 That war against your own affections 
 And the huge army of the world's desires, 
 Our late edict shall strongly stand in force : 
 Navarre shall be the wonder of the world ; 
 
84 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Our courte shall be a little Academe, 
 
 Still and contemplative in living art: 
 
 You three, Biron, Dumain, and Longaville, 
 
 Have sworn for three years' term to live with me 
 
 My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes 
 
 That are recorded in this schedule here : 
 
 Your oaths are pass'd ; and now subscribe your 
 
 names, 
 
 That his own hand may strike his honour down 
 That violates the smallest branch herein : 
 If you are arm'd to do as sworn to do, 
 Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too. 
 
 " Long. I am resolved ; 'tis but a three years* 
 
 fast : 
 
 The mind shall banquet, though the body pine : 
 Fat paunches have lean pates ; and dainty bits 
 Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits. 
 
 " Duin. My loving lord, Dumain is mortified : 
 The grosser manner of these world's delights 
 He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves : 
 To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die; 
 With all these living in philosophy. 
 
 " Biron. I can but say their protestation over ; 
 So much, dear liege, I have already sworn, 
 That is, to live and study here three years : 
 But there are other strict observances; 
 As not to see a woman in that term, 
 Which I hope well is not enrolled there; 
 And one day in a week to touch no food, 
 And but one meal on every day beside, 
 The which I hope is not enrolled there ; 
 And then, to sleep but three hours in the night, 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 85 
 
 And not be seen to wink of all the day, 
 When I was wont to think no harm all night, 
 And make a dark night too of half the day, 
 Which I hope well is not enrolled there: 
 O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, 
 Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep ! 
 
 " King. Your oath is pass'd to pass away from 
 these. 
 
 " Biron. Let me say no, my liege, an if you 
 
 please : 
 
 I only swore to study with your grace. 
 And stay here in your court for three years' space. 
 
 " Long. You swore to that, Biron, and to the 
 rest, 
 
 " Biron. By yea and nay,sir,then I swore in jest, 
 What is the end of study ? let me know. 
 
 " King. Why, that to know, which else we 
 should not know. 
 
 " Biron. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from 
 common sense? 
 
 " King. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense. 
 
 " Biron. Come on then ; I will swear to study so, 
 To know the thing I am forbid to know : 
 As thus, to study where I well may dine, 
 When I to feast expressly am forbid; 
 Or study where to meet some mistress fine, 
 When mistresses from common sense are hid; 
 Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath, 
 Study to break it, and not break my troth. 
 If study's gain be thus, and this be so. 
 Study knows that which yet it doth not know: 
 Swear me to this, and I will ne'er say no. 
 
86 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 "King. These be the stops that hinder study 
 
 quite, 
 And train our intellects to vain delight. 
 
 " Biron. Why, all delights are vain; but that 
 
 most vain, 
 
 Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain: 
 As, painfully to pore upon a book 
 To seek the light of truth ; while truth the while 
 Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look: 
 Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile: 
 So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, 
 Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. 
 Study me how to please the eye indeed, 
 By fixing it upon a fairer eye ; 
 Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, 
 And give him light that it was blinded by. 
 Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, 
 That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; 
 Small have continual plodders ever won, 
 Save base authority from others' books. 
 These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, 
 That give a name to every fixed star, 
 Have no more profit of their shining nights 
 Than those that walk and wot not what they are. 
 Too much to know, is to know nought but fame ; 
 And every godfather can give a name." 
 
 All this points most palpably to the earnest, though 
 vague and impossible, theories set forth by Chap- 
 man in " The Shadow of Night " ; the learning and 
 philosophy which he there endeavors to extol is 
 most certainly " hid and barr'd from common 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 87 
 
 sense " ; it is so filled also with phrases and similies 
 borrowed from obscure classics, with what Biron 
 calls, 
 
 " Base authority from others' books," 
 
 that Chapman, conscious of their obscurity, and to 
 explain the borrowed conceits, appends a glossary 
 which often but makes the darkness darker. In 
 both of these " Hymns," but especially in the sec- 
 ond one, " Hymnus in Cynthiam," as he calls it, he 
 rolls off the names of the stars and constellations 
 with great glibness and volubility, and sometimes, 
 not content with one name, gives us several for the 
 same heavenly body: for the moon he gives us 
 " Cynthia, Lucinia, Ilythia, Prothyrea, Diana, 
 Luna, and Hecate," proving himself a veritable 
 
 " Earthly godfather of heaven's lights." 
 
 So, all through this play, such hints and parallels 
 are numerous. In the first passage in Act IV. 
 scene 3, where Biron, at the invitation of the 
 King and his fellows who have fallen away from 
 their vows, to prove their " loving lawful " and 
 their " faith not torn," speaks for over eighty lines 
 in praise of love and light and a joyous life, 
 Shakespeare brings his heavy guns to bear upon 
 the gloomy brotherhood of night, and in two lines 
 in particular unmistakably paraphrases two of 
 Chapman's own lines, clearly indicating him and his 
 theories as the object of his attack. I shall quote a 
 few lines of Biron's speech and a few from " The 
 
8S SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Shadow of Night/' to show the antithesis and the 
 paraphrase : 
 
 " Biron. But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, 
 Lives not alone, immured in the brain; 
 But, with the motion of all elements, 
 Courses as swift as thought in every power, 
 And gives to every power a double power, 
 Above their functions and their offices. 
 It adds a precious seeing to the eye ; 
 A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind ; 
 A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, 
 When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd: 
 Love's feeling is more soft and sensible 
 Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; 
 Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in 
 
 taste : 
 
 For valour, is not Love a Hercules, 
 Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? 
 Subtle as Sphinx ; as sweet and musical 
 As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; 
 And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods 
 Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. 
 Never durst poet touch a pen to write 
 Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs." 
 
 Chapman's " Shadow of Night " : 
 
 " Since day, or light, in any quality, 
 For earthly uses do but serve the eye ; 
 And since the eye's most quick and dangerous use, 
 Enflames the heart, and learns the soul abuse ; 
 Since mournings are preferr'd to banquettings, 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 89 
 
 And they reach heaven, bred under sorrow's 
 
 wings ; 
 
 Since Night brings terror to our frailties still, 
 And shameless Day doth marble us in ill, 
 All you possess'd with indepressed spirits, 
 Endued with nimble, and aspiring wits, 
 Come consecrate with me to sacred Night 
 Your whole endeavours, and detest the light. 
 No pen can anything eternal write, 
 That is not steep'd in humour of the Night." 
 
 In these two extracts, as in numerous others I 
 could quote, a very plain antithesis is seen, but I 
 have selected this particular passage from Chapman 
 for comparison, because it contains even more than 
 antithesis ; if the two last lines of each of these ex- 
 tracts be compared, paraphrase also is plainly dis- 
 cernible, in which Shakespeare refutes Chapman in 
 almost his own words. 
 
 Chapman : 
 
 " No pen can anything eternal write 
 That is not steep'd in humour of the Night." 
 
 Shakespeare : 
 
 " Never durst poet touch a pen to write 
 Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs." 
 
 Another palpable proof of the truth of my con- 
 tention I will adduce ; one which did not occur to me 
 till long after I had become possessed of the idea, 
 but which lends it strong confirmatory evidence. 
 
 In working out the proof of my theory I have 
 
90 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 kept by me, for reference, Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps' 
 facsimile reprint of the first folio of Shakespeare's 
 plays. 
 
 In Act IV. scene 3 Biron, praising the beauty of 
 Rosaline, who is represented as being of dark com- 
 plexion, says: 
 
 "Biron. Where is a book? 
 
 That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack, 
 If that she learn not of her eyes to look : 
 No face is fair that is not full so black. 
 
 " King. O paradox ! Black is the badge of hell, 
 The hue of dungeons, and the school of night." 
 
 This expression " the school of night " has al- 
 ways puzzled commentators, and appeared to all of 
 them so senseless that, to give meaning to an ap- 
 parently meaningless line, the following emenda- 
 tions have, at different times, been proposed : 
 " scowl of night," " shade of night," " seal of 
 night," " scroll of night," " shroud of night," " soul 
 of night," " stole of night." The Cambridge edit- 
 ors have proposed " shoote of night " for " suit." 
 None of these changes add a particularly strong 
 meaning to the line, nor give a fit figure to the ex- 
 pression, and it appears very patent to me that this 
 is one of the many instances in which Shakespeare, 
 since the days of Steevens and Malone, has been 
 misimproved by the critics. The reading of this 
 line as it appears in the first folio, and also in the 
 first quarto, in the light of my theory, as referring 
 to the ideas of Chapman evolved in " The Shadow 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 91 
 
 of Night," is full of pith and point. To show the 
 aptness of this phrase in this connection I shall 
 quote a few extracts from this extraordinary poem : 
 
 " Since day, or light, in any quality, 
 For earthly uses do but serve the eye ; 
 And since the eye's most quick and dangerous 
 
 use, 
 
 Enflames the heart, and learns the soul abuse ; 
 Since mournings are preferred to banquettings, 
 And they reach heaven, bred under sorrow's 
 
 wings ; 
 
 Since Night brings terror to our frailties still, 
 And shameless Day doth marble us in ill, 
 All you possess'd with indepressed spirits, 
 Endued with nimble, and aspiring wits, 
 Come consecrate with me to sacred Night 
 Your whole endeavours, and detest the light. 
 No pen can anything eternal write. 
 That is not steep'd in humour of the Night/' 
 
 " Day of deep students, most contentful night." 
 
 ; " Men's faces glitter, and their hearts are black, 
 But thou (great mistress of heaven's gloomy rack) 
 Art black in face, and glitter'st in thy heart.'* 
 
 " Rich-taper'd sanctuary of the blest, 
 Palace of ruth, made all of tears, and rest, 
 To thy black shades and desolation 
 I consecrate my life." 
 
$2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 " Ye living spirits then, if any live, 
 Whom like extremes do like affections give, 
 Shun, shun this cruel light, and end your thrall, 
 In these soft shades of sable funeral." 
 
 " Kneel then with me, fall wormlike on the ground, 
 And from the infectious dunghill of this round, 
 From men's brass wits and golden foolery, 
 Weep, weep your souls, into felicity: 
 Come to the house of mourning, serve the Night 
 To whom pale Day . . . 
 Is but a drudge," etc., etc. 
 
 There is certainly a distinct enough mental pose 
 exhibited in this poem, as shown in these selections, 
 to warrant the application of the word " school," 
 and Chapman so often applies the word " black " in 
 his praise of the night as sovereign and mistress of 
 his philosophy, that the full gist of Shakespeare's 
 reference becomes clear when we transpose the line 
 and give the plain prose meaning: black is the hue 
 of the school of night. 
 
 Though Shakespeare attacks Chapman as the 
 spokesman of this " School of Night " and the most 
 eloquent exponent of its theories, there were, no 
 doubt, others like Chapman, so filled with the pride 
 of " The New Learning " that they could see little 
 merit in the literary production of one of Shakes- 
 peare's " Smalle Latine and lesse Greeke," and 
 who, in all probability, took sides with Chapman in 
 this dispute. Years after Shakespeare's death we 
 find Ben Jonson, himself a scholar of even greater 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 93 
 
 parts than Chapman, defending himself from the ac- 
 cusation of having attempted to belittle Shakes- 
 peare. We may, then, assume that the rivalry and 
 hostility between Chapman and Shakespeare was no 
 hidden thing, but well known to the literary world, 
 and that each poet had his friends and champions, 
 the scholastic element, to a large extent, probably 
 siding with Chapman. The term " school of night," 
 then, while plainly indicating Chapman and his 
 poems, evidently embraced those others of like views 
 who, while not openly attacking Shakespeare as 
 does Chapman, may have given their countenance 
 to that poet's invectives. 
 
 In Ben Jonson's allusions to Shakespeare's 
 " Smalle Latine and lesse Greeke " in his verses 
 prefixed to the first folio some critics have found 
 what they have conceived to be a recrudescent glim- 
 mer of Jonson's alleged enmity to Shakespeare dur- 
 ing our poet's life. While Jonson and Shakespeare 
 may at times have crossed swords during the period 
 in which Jonson collaborated in dramatic work 
 with Shakespeare's arch-enemy Chapman, they 
 were never really bad friends in the sense that 
 Chapman and Shakespeare were, but it is well known 
 that Jonson and Chapman were for many years at 
 daggers drawn, and we know that the last thing to 
 which Chapman put his hand, and which was left 
 unfinished by his death, was a bitter attack upon 
 Jonson. With the knowledge of Chapman's en- 
 mity to Shakespeare in mind, added to the fact that, 
 in 1623 (the date of the issue of the first folio), 
 Jonson and Chapman were avowed enemies, Jon- 
 
94 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 son's allusion to Shakespeare's " Smalle Latine and 
 lesse Greeke " takes on quite a new significance. 
 Let us examine the lines: 
 
 " And though thou had'st small Latin, and less 
 
 Greek, 
 
 From thence to honour thee I would not seek 
 For names; but call forth thundering ^schylus, 
 Euripides, and Sophocles to us ; 
 Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova, dead, 
 To life again, to hear thy buskin tread 
 And shake a stage: or, when thy socks were on, 
 Leave thee alone, for the comparison 
 Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome, 
 Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come." 
 
 Here Jonson, while admitting to the full the 
 charge which Chapman constantly brings against 
 Shakespeare, i. e., his ignorance of the clas- 
 sics, yet challenges for Shakespeare a comparison 
 with the best dramatic writers that Rome or Greece 
 produce and with the line : 
 
 " Or since did from their ashes come," 
 
 throws his gage directly into the teeth of Chapman 
 and the classicist clique. We may then reasonably 
 impute to the hand of Chapman, and not Jonson, 
 those strokes which have been recognized as leveled 
 at Shakespeare in " Eastward Hoe ! " and one or 
 two other plays in which Jonson, Marston, and 
 Chapman are known to have collaborated at an 
 earlier period. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 95 
 
 With this slight digression, which I have intro- 
 duced here in preference to using footnotes, I will 
 return to a consideration of Shakespeare's allusions 
 to Chapman in the play under discussion. 
 
 A careful reading of " Love's Labor's Lost " will 
 plainly show many passages quite lacking in either 
 sense, point, or wit, unless they had a topical mean- 
 ing. I have previously shown that, in the 2ist 
 Sonnet, Shakespeare undoubtedly refers to and 
 criticises Chapman's " Amorous Zodiac." In this 
 poem Chapman, after describing in detail the physi- 
 cal beauties of a naked woman through twenty-eight 
 verses, concludes with the two following verses as 
 L'Envoi : 
 
 " Dear mistress, if poor wishes heaven would hear, 
 I would not choose the empire of the water ; 
 The empire of the air, nor of the earth, 
 But endlessly my course of life confining, 
 In this fair Zodiac for ever shining, 
 And with thy beauties make me endless mirth. 
 
 " But, gracious love, if jealous heaven deny 
 My life this truly-blest variety; 
 Yet will I thee through all the world disperse; 
 If not in heaven, amongst those braving fires, 
 Yet here, thy beauties, which the world admires, 
 Bright as these flames, shall glister in my verse." 
 
 The first of these verses, if accepted as having 
 been written by Chapman to an actual woman, 
 would reveal that prosy and stilted moralist as a 
 
96 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POE7\ 
 
 most reprehensible person. The incongruity and 
 humor of the thing appeal to Shiakespeare, and we 
 find many veiled, though, when analyzed, rather 
 broad allusions to it in " Love's Labor's Lost " ; 
 Shakespeare, however, true to the demands of his 
 art, puts his vulgarisms into the mouths of the 
 homespun yokels Costard and Dull. 
 
 Many idioms and phrases which we find in 
 Shakespeare may still be found in common use, 
 and retaining their Elizabethan meaning, in primi- 
 tive and remote communities, though they have now 
 quite ceased to be used or even understood in more 
 polite circles. In several of the plays, but espe- 
 cially in " Romeo and Juliet," and " Love's Labor's 
 Lost," I find the word " goose " used in a vulgar 
 sense. I have heard this word used with exactly 
 the same meaning in England, Ireland, Australia, 
 and America; an examination of the plays men- 
 tioned will reveal the sense intended by Shakes- 
 peare. 
 
 The use of the word in " Love's Labor's Lost," 
 and every allusion to " goose " or " geese," and 
 especially Costard's mistake in supposing the word 
 " L'Envoi " to be synonymous, are directed by 
 Shakespeare at the apparent sensuousness of Chap- 
 man's L'Envoi to the " Amorous Zodiac." 
 
 The first use of this term is in Act I. scene I, 
 where Shakespeare, speaking through the mouth of 
 Biron, attacks Chapman and his poems, " The 
 Shadow of Night " and those published in the next 
 year. - j 
 
THE SCHOOL OF MIGHT. QJ 
 
 " Biron. Why, all delights are vain; but that 
 
 most vain, 
 
 Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain: 
 As, painfully to pore upon a book 
 To seek the light of truth ; while truth the while 
 Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look : 
 Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile : 
 So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, 
 Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. 
 Study me how to please the eye indeed, 
 By fixing it upon a fairer eye ; 
 Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, 
 And give him light that it was blinded by. 
 Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, 
 That will not be deep-search 'd with saucy looks : 
 Small have continual plodders ever won, 
 Save base authority from others' books. 
 These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, 
 That give a name to every fixed star, 
 Have no more profit of their shining nights 
 Than those that walk and wot not what they are. 
 Too much to know, is to know nought but fame; 
 And every godfather can give a name. 
 
 "King. How well he's read to reason against 
 reading ! 
 
 " Dum. Proceeded well, to stop all good pro- 
 ceeding ! 
 
 " Long. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow 
 the weeding. 
 
98 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 " Biron. The spring is near, when green geese 
 
 are a-breeding. 
 " Dum. How follows that? 
 "Biron. Fit in his place and time. 
 
 "Dum. In reason nothing. 
 " Biron. Something, then, in rhyme." 
 
 Farther on in the play, in Act III. scene I, there 
 is another similar allusion, where the word goose is 
 used. Costard with his usual obtuseness confounds 
 it with the word " L'Envoi," which he imagines is 
 synonomous. 
 
 Armado says: 
 
 " Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee. 
 
 " Cost. O, marry me to one Frances : / smell 
 some I 'envoy, some goose, in this." 
 
 The play on these words " goose " and " 1'envoy " 
 in this passage is entirely without point unless it 
 had some topical meaning. 
 
 When Armado, amused at Costard's mistake in 
 confounding " salve " and " 1'envoy," says : 
 
 " Doth the inconsiderate take salve for 1'envoy, 
 and the word Tenvoy for salve ? " 
 
 Moth replies: 
 
 "Do the wise think them other? is not 1'envoy a 
 salve?" 
 
THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT. 99 
 
 apparently alluding to the Latin parting salutation, 
 " salve." 
 
 Armado answers: 
 
 " No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse, to make 
 
 plain 
 Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been 
 
 sain. 
 I will example it: 
 
 The fox, the ape, and the bumble-bee, 
 Were still at odds, being but three. 
 There's the moral. Now the 1'envoy. 
 Until the goose came out of the door 
 And stayed the odds by adding four. 
 
 " Moth. A gool l f envoy, ending in the goose; 
 would you desire more? 
 
 If Chapman's " Amorous Zodiac " be read with 
 the L'Envoi, and the L'Envoi compared with Cos- 
 tard's and Moth's references, the allusions intended 
 by Shakespeare will, I believe, be recognized. 
 
 The last passage in this play in which the word 
 " goose " or " geese " appears is as follows, when, 
 Longaville having read his sonnet, Biron says: 
 
 " This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity, 
 A green goose a goddess." 
 
 I shall in the next chapter show that this is a 
 palpable allusion to Chapman. If this be admitted, 
 the claims I make for the previous passages where 
 the same term appears will, I believe, be justified. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHAPMAN DISPLAYED AS THE ORIGINAL OF 
 HOLOFERNES. 
 
 THAT Holofernes is a caricature of some one pe- 
 dantic original, and not merely a type of pedants in 
 general, has long been the opinion of the best 
 Shakespearean critics. The strokes with which this 
 character is drawn are too intimate and personal 
 for any other conclusion. Mr. Warburton and Dr. 
 Farmer suggested that John Florio, a well-known 
 Anglo-Italian of that day, was Shakespeare's 
 original for this character; their only grounds for 
 this supposition being the somewhat flowery and 
 Bombastic preface with which Florio introduced 
 his " World of Words " to the public, upon the 
 issue of that work in 1598. This theory necessarily 
 assigns the production of " Love's Labor's Lost " 
 to a period subsequent to the publication of Flor- 
 io's book, which alone proves its inconsistency. We 
 may reasonably infer that Shakespeare held Florio 
 in good estimation ; we know that he made use of 
 his translations in some of his plays and that one 
 of the few authentic autographs which we have of 
 Shakespeare's was found in a copy of Florio's trans- 
 lation of Montaigne's " Essays," which is now pre- 
 served in the British Museum. It is quite likely 
 that Florio and Shakespeare were intimate, as both 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. lot 
 
 were, to some extent, proteges of the Earl of South- 
 ampton. 
 
 I am fully convinced that Shakespeare has cari- 
 catured George Chapman in the character of Holo- 
 fernes. 
 
 Whoever will read Chapman's " Shadow of 
 Night," " Ovid's Banquet of Sense," and the son- 
 net-sequence called " A Coronet for His Mistress 
 Philosophy " with their dedications and glossaries, 
 and will compare them with those parts of " Love's 
 Labor's Lost " in which Holofernes appears, will 
 find such an original for the character there repre- 
 sented as shall not be matched in the whole range 
 of Elizabethan literature; especially when this re- 
 markable likeness is supported by the other evi- 
 dences in this play and the Sonnets which I have 
 already adduced. 
 
 Every fault and foible caricatured in Holofernes 
 will be found in these poems and dedications of 
 Chapman's; the bombastic verbosity and tautology, 
 the erudition gone to seed, the overweening scorn 
 of ignorance, the extravagant similes and far- 
 fetched conceits, and the pedantic Latinity, are all 
 not only clearly indicated, but, I believe, I can show, 
 actually parodied in the play. Even the alliteration 
 of the " Playful Princess " doggerel is noticeable in 
 these poems, but particularly so in " The Shadow 
 of Night," where it often spoils otherwise fine lines. 
 
 A few of Holofernes' speeches, compared with 
 extracts from the poems and dedications I have 
 mentioned, will prove the caricature. 
 
 Holofernes is first introduced into the play, dis- 
 
102 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 cussing the age and quality of a deer which has been 
 killed by the Princess ; thus : 
 
 " Holo. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in 
 blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth 
 like a jewel in the ear of Caelo, the sky, the welkin, 
 the heaven ; and anon falleth like a crab on the face 
 of terra, the soil, the land, the earth. 
 
 Nath. Truly, Master, Holofernes, the epithets are 
 sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least; but, sir, 
 I assure ye, it was a buck of the first head." 
 
 Compare this with the following extract from the 
 dedication to " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " : 
 
 " Obscurity in affection of words and indigested 
 conceits, is pedantical and childish; but where it 
 shroudeth itself in the heart of his subject, uttered 
 with fitness of figure and expressive epithets, with 
 that darkness will I still labor to be shadowed." 
 
 And again: 
 
 " Dull. 'Twas not a haud credo ; 'twas a pricket. 
 
 " Holo. Most barbarous intimation ! yet a kind of 
 insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication ; 
 facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to 
 show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed, 
 unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or, 
 rather, unlettered, or, ratherest, unconfirmed fash- 
 ion, to insert again my haud credo for a deer." 
 
 Compare this effort of Holofernes with the fol- 
 lowing extract from the dedication to " Ovid's Ban- 
 quet of Sense " : 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. 103 
 
 " It serves not a skilful painter's turn, to draw 
 the figure of a face only, to make known who it rep- 
 resents; but he must limn, give lustre, shadow 
 and heightening; which though ignorants will es- 
 teem spiced and too curious, yet such as have the 
 judicial perspective will see it hath motion, spirit 
 and life." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Dull. I said the deer was not a hand credo ; 
 'twas a pricket. 
 
 " Hoi. Twice sad simplicity, bis coctus ! 
 O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou 
 
 look! 
 
 " Nath. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that 
 are bred in a book ; he hath not eat paper as it were ; 
 he hath not drunk ink : .his intellect is not replen- 
 ished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the 
 duller parts : 
 " And such barren plants are set before us, that we 
 
 thankful should be, 
 
 Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts 
 that do fructify in us more than he." 
 
 Compare the attitude of these scholars, Holo- 
 
 fernes and Nathaniel, with the following from 
 
 Chapman's dedication to " Ovid's Banquet of 
 Sense " : 
 
 " Such is the wilful poverty of judgements, sweet 
 Matthew, wandering like passportless men, in con- 
 tempt of the divine discipline of poesy, that a man 
 may well fear to frequent their walks. The pro- 
 
1<H SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 fane multitude I hate, and only consecrate my 
 strange poems to those searching spirits whom 
 learning hath made noble, and nobility sacred," etc. 
 
 Also 
 
 " I know that empty and dark spirits will com- 
 plain of palpable night; but those that beforehand 
 have a radiant and light-bearing intellect, will say 
 they can pass through Corinna's garden without 
 the help of a lantern." 
 
 This same attitude towards the ignorant multi- 
 tude is also expressed in a footnote which he makes 
 to the glossary of " The Shadow of Night " : 
 
 " For the rest of his own invention, figures and 
 similes touching their aptness and novelty he hath 
 not laboured to justify them, because he hopes they 
 will be proved enough to justify themselves, and 
 prove sufficiently authentical to such as understand 
 them ; for the rest, God help them." 
 
 In comparing these extracts with the caricature 
 in the play, we see the contemptuous and disdainful 
 spirit of the dedications plainly pilloried, the " ex- 
 pressive epithets " reproduced, and the " profane 
 multitude " indicated in the person of Dull. 
 
 In one or two other extracts which I shall now 
 quote, I am quite convinced that Shakespeare paro- 
 dies parts of these dedications and glossaries ; for 
 instance : 
 
 " Dull. You two are book-men : can you tell me 
 by your wit 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. 105 
 
 What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five 
 weeks old as yet? 
 
 " Hoi. Dictynna, goodman Dull ; Dictynna, good- 
 man Dull. 
 
 "Dull. What is Dictynna? 
 
 " Nath. A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon." 
 
 In Chapman's gloss to (< The Shadow of 
 Night " he elucidates what he pretends to consider 
 an enigmatical passage in that poem; he speaks of 
 the moon as, 
 
 " Nature's bright eyesight and the night's fair 
 soul," 
 
 a line which, when considered as poetry, scarcely 
 needs elucidation ; from which, even one not lack- 
 ing in charity, might well infer that the following 
 gloss savors more of pedantry than of a desire to 
 give light. 
 
 When this gloss is compared with Bull's conun- 
 drum, and Holofernes' answers, the parody is, I 
 think, apparent: 
 
 " I. He gives her that periphrasis viz., Nature's 
 bright eyesight, because that by her store of hu- 
 mours issue is given to all birth : and thereof is she 
 called Lucina and Ilythia, quia praeest parturienti- 
 bus cum invocaretur, and gives them help: which 
 Orpheus in a Hymn of her praise expresseth and 
 calls her besides Prothyrea, ut sequitur : 
 
106 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 K\i)0l JAOI, GL TCoXvffejtve Oea, etc. 
 " Audi me veneranda Dea, cui nomina multa : 
 Prsegnantum adjutrix, parientum dulce levamen, 
 Sola puellarum servatrix, solaque prudens: 
 Auxilium velox teneris Prothyraea puellis." 
 
 And a little after, he shows her plainly to be Diana, 
 Ilythia, and Prothyraea, in these verses: 
 
 " Solam animi requiem te clamant parturientes, 
 Sola potes diros partus placare labores 
 Diana, Ilythia gravis, sumus et Prothyraea." 
 
 " 2. He calls her the soul of night, since she is 
 the purest part of her according to common conceit. 
 
 " 3. Orpheus in these verses of Argonauticus, 
 saith she is thrice-headed, as she is Hecate, Luna 
 and Diana, ut sequitur. 
 
 " Cumque illis Hecate properans horrenda cucurrit 
 Cui trinum caput est, genuit quam Tartarus olim." 
 
 There were many, no doubt, even amongst the 
 foremost verse-writers of that day, to whom the 
 gloss just quoted was not more intelligible than was 
 Holofernes' " Dictynna " and Nathaniel's " Phoebe " 
 and " Luna " to the by no means dull-witted 
 " Dull." The parody here displayed, we may as- 
 sume, would not be lost upon an audience composed 
 of a class more or less interested in current verse. 
 The voluminous supply of poetry at that period 
 would certainly seem to indicate a considerable pub- 
 lic demand. 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. 107 
 
 I shall adduce one more parallel which savors 
 strongly of parody. 
 
 Nathaniel having read Dumain's canzonette 
 aloud, Holofernes' holds forth as follows : 
 
 " Hoi. You find not the apostrophes, and so miss 
 the accent: let me supervise the canzonet. Here 
 are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, 
 facility, and golden cadency of poesy, caret. 
 Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, 
 Naso, but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers 
 of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is noth- 
 ing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his 
 keeper, the tired horse his rider." 
 
 Compare this with the following extract from 
 " Ovid's Banquet of Sense." 
 
 " The profane multitude I hate, and only conse- 
 crate my strange poems to those searching spirits, 
 whom learning hath made noble, and nobility sa- 
 cred ; endeavouring that material oration which you 
 call schema ; varying in some rare fiction from popu- 
 lar custom, even for the pure sakes of ornament 
 and utility; this of Euripides exceeding sweetly 
 relishing with me; lentem coquens ne quicquam 
 dentis addito. 
 
 " But that poesy should be as pervial as oratory, 
 and plainness her special ornament, were the plain 
 way to barbarism, and to make the ass run proud 
 of his ears, to take away strength from lions, and 
 give camels horns. 
 
 " That Energia, or clearness of representation, 
 
108 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 required in absolute poems, is not the perspicuous 
 delivery of a low invention ; but high and hearty in- 
 vention expressed in most significant and unaffected 
 phrase." 
 
 If one not acquainted with these extracts from 
 Chapman's dedications, and " Love's Labor's Lost," 
 were to be told that one was a satire on the spirit 
 of the other, he would verily be at a loss to know 
 which was meant for sense, and which for nonsense. 
 The unnecessary Latinity of Chapman and the 
 pseudo-Latinity of Shakespeare in these extracts, 
 the triple phrases in each, the hound, the horse 
 and the ape in one and the ass, the lion and the 
 camel in the other, the introduction of Euripides 
 by Chapman and of Ovidius Naso by Shakespeare, 
 all most strongly suggest direct parody. 
 
 When examined more critically there is some- 
 thing even stronger than parody in this passage. 
 Seeing that Shakespeare is here caricaturing Chap- 
 man as Holofernes, and that he has very evidently 
 parodied a passage from his dedication to " Ovid's 
 Banquet of Sense," we may infer that Chapman 
 makes a stroke at Shakespeare in the following 
 words : 
 
 " But that poesy should be as pervial as oratory 
 and plainness her special ornament, were the plain 
 way to barbarism, and to make the ass run proud 
 of his ears, to take away strength from lions, and to 
 give camels horns" 
 
 Shakespeare, recognizing Chapman's intention, 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. 109 
 
 not only plainly parodies this passage, but through 
 the mouth of Holofernes names Ovid, and attacks 
 Chapman's poem as being a mere imitation of that 
 poet. 
 
 " Let me supervise the canzonet," says Holo- 
 fernes it will be seen that this term is applica- 
 ble to the form of verse which Chapman uses in 
 " Ovid's Banquet of Sense." Holofernes then con- 
 tinues, 
 
 " Here are only numbers ratified ; but for the ele- 
 gancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. 
 Ovidius Naso was the man : and why, indeed, Naso, 
 but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers and 
 fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing: 
 so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the 
 tired horse his rider." 
 
 Shakespeare here practically says that Chapman, 
 in " Ovid's Banquet of Sense," has merely " rati- 
 fied numbers," that is, that he has only built the 
 structure of the Verse, but has borrowed his flowers 
 of fancy or imagery, and his invention, from Ovid ; 
 and as Chapman accuses him of being too "per- 
 vial" and "plain" saying that "plainness is the 
 way to barbarism, to make the ass run proud of his 
 ears, to take away strength from lions, and to give 
 camels horns; " so Shakespeare accuses him of lack 
 of originality and imitation of Ovid ; and parodying 
 Chapman's passage just quoted, says: "Imitari is 
 nothing, so doth the hound his master, the ape his 
 keeper, and the tired horse his rider." 
 
 The play upon Ovid's surname " Naso " is a ref- 
 
HO SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 erence to one of the heads under which Chapman 
 divides this poem in the " argument " which he pre- 
 fixes to it; the heads are, " Auditus, Olfactus, Visus, 
 Gustus, Tactus." 
 
 In playing upon " Naso " where he says : "and 
 why, indeed, Naso, but for smelling out the odor- 
 iferous flowers of fancy," etc., he very evidently 
 alludes to Chapman's " Olfactus/' which that poet 
 explains as follows : 
 
 " Olfactus. Then the odours she used in her 
 bath breathing a rich savour, he expressed the joy 
 he felt in his sense of Smelling." 
 
 There are numerous other passages in this play, 
 very evidently of an indicative nature, which a 
 closer examination will, no doubt, show to be di- 
 rected at Chapman; one, in particular, I felt sure 
 pointed at him, and that it was introduced into the 
 play for no other purpose; for unless meant in- 
 dicatively, it has no special point or wit. In Act 
 V. scene i Armado addresses Holofernes as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 " Arm. Arts-man, pre-ambulate, we will be sin- 
 gled from the barbarous. Do you not educate 
 youth at the charge-house on the top of the moun- 
 tain? 
 
 " Hoi. Or Mons, the hill. 
 
 "Arm. At your sweet pleasure, for the moun- 
 tain. 
 
 " Hoi. I do, sans question." 
 
 Not being able to find any record of Chapman's 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. in 
 
 occupation previous to his publication of " The 
 Shadow of Night" (1594), in the meager records 
 which we have of his life, and taking Mr. Swin- 
 burne as my authority for the paucity of that knowl- 
 edge, I supposed it hopeless to look for any in- 
 dication which could connect Chapman with this 
 allusion to Holofernes' avowed occupation; I had 
 passed this by, suggesting, however, that if other 
 Shakespearean students, having access to sources 
 impossible to me, cared to follow up my theory, they 
 would probably find that Chapman, some time dur- 
 ing the hidden years of his life, between 1574 and 
 1594, and perhaps for a while later, had earned his 
 livelihood as a schoolmaster, and that the school 
 at which he taught would be found to have been 
 located, as indicated in this passage, somewhere on 
 an eminence. In Chapman's " Tears of Peace," 
 however, I find a passage which plainly shows us 
 Chapman's abode during at least a part, and per- 
 haps the whole of this period ; and which also lends 
 strong point to this allusion I notice in " Love's 
 Labor's Lost." In this poem Chapman pictures 
 himself as in a deep reverie; when a spirit appears 
 to him of which he asks : 
 
 " ' O thou, that, blind, doth see 
 My heart and soul, what may I reckon thee, 
 Whose heavenly look shows not, nor voice sounds 
 
 man? ' 
 
 ' I am,' said he, ' that spirit Elysian, 
 That in thy native air, and on the hill 
 Next Hitchin's left hand, did thy bosom fill 
 
H2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 With such a flood of soul, that thou were fain, 
 With explanations of her rapture there, 
 To vent it to the echoes of the vale ; 
 When, meditating of me, a sweet gale 
 Brought me upon thee; and thou did'st inherit 
 My true sense, for the time then, in my spirit ; 
 And I, invisibly, went prompting thee 
 To those fair greens where thou dids't English 
 
 me:' 
 
 Scarce he had utterd this, when well I knew 
 It was my Prince's Homer." 
 
 Here we see that Chapman lived on a hill near 
 the village of Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, before 
 coming to London, and I have very little doubt that, 
 if those who can look into this matter will do so, 
 and supposing that any records exist by which it 
 may be proved, that Chapman will be found to have 
 taught a school while there. His whole style, and 
 particularly his earlier style, very strongly suggests 
 the pedagogue ; his dogmatic and overbearing man- 
 ner, towards all but scholars like himself, bespeaks 
 the bachelor village schoolmaster of thirty-six. It 
 takes much of the grace of God to preserve a proper 
 proportionate sense of his own importance in any 
 man who lives, as no doubt Chapman did, for about 
 fifteen years, as the high court of appeal in all liter- 
 ary, and in fact, in all other matters, for a rural com- 
 munity. Further evidence confirms this avowal of 
 Chapman's as to his abode during these years, and 
 possibly refers also to the avocation which I have 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. 1 13 
 
 assigned him. William Browne, in " Britannia's 
 Pastorals," alludes to him as : 
 
 " The learned shepherd of fair Hitching Hill/' 
 
 All through this play there are undoubted topical 
 and indicative allusions, which, though dark now to 
 us, were full of point to an Elizabethan audience. 
 In the flouting of the characters in the impromptu 
 play of the " Nine Worthies," the gibes directed at 
 Holofernes, who takes the part of " Judas Mac- 
 cabseus," are much more pointed than at the other 
 characters ; they have a sharper touch ; the " Judas," 
 the " ass " and the " kissing traitor," I am inclined 
 to believe, have an intended sting and that they refer 
 to some smallness or treachery of Chapman's 
 against Shakespeare. 
 
 In the following passage, where Biron, Boyet, 
 Dumain, and Longaville each expend their wit upon 
 Holofernes, we fail at this day to find any wit what- 
 ever; and unless these taunts had an indicative or 
 topical value, it is hard to see where the wit came 
 in, even in that day. I shall show in a later chapter 
 where Chapman several times indicates Shakes- 
 peare, by alluding in a scurrilous manner to his fal- 
 con crest: it occurs to me as possible, that Shakes- 
 peare, in the following lines, refers to the rather 
 vainglorious use which Chapman makes of a medal- 
 lion with a picture of his own head in the center 
 and this legend on the rim " Georgius Chapmanus 
 Homeri Metaphrastes "- - as an illustration to the 
 title-page of the earlier issues of his Homeric trans- 
 lations. 
 
114 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 " Hot. I will not be put out of countenance. 
 
 " Biron. Because thou hast no face. 
 
 "Hoi. What is this? 
 
 " Boyet. A cittern-head. 
 
 " Dum. The head of a bodkin. 
 
 " Biron. A death's face in a ring. 
 
 " Long. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce 
 seen. 
 
 " Boyet. The pommel of Caesar's falchion. 
 
 " Dum. The carved bone face on a flask. 
 
 " Biron. Saint George's half-cheek in a brooch. 
 
 " Dum. Ay, and in a brooch of lead. 
 
 " Biron. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth 
 drawer and now forward ; for we have put thee in 
 countenance. 
 
 " Hoi. You have put me out of countenance. 
 
 " Biron. False : we have given thee faces. 
 
 " Hoi. But you have out-faced them all. 
 
 " Biron. An thou wert a lion, we would do so. 
 
 " Boyet. Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go." 
 
 The indicative value which I suggest as possible 
 for these lines is not at all incompatible with the 
 dates which I assign for the play, as these lines, if 
 meant in this manner as well as the more bitterly 
 satirical tone of this whole scene, very probably be- 
 longs to the period of the revision of this play by 
 Shakespeare in 1598, when it was also published, 
 very shortly after Chapman's issue of the first seven 
 books of Homer in that year. The references to 
 Achilles and Hector, further on in this same scene, 
 very evidently belong also to the period of revision, 
 
CHAPMAN AS ORIGINAL OF HOLOFERNES. 115 
 
 as I shall prove later that Shakespeare wrote 
 " Troilus and Cressida " in this year as a satire 
 upon Chapman's work, and shall also give good 
 reasons for believing that the revision of " Love's 
 Labor's Lost " and the production of " Troilus and 
 Cressida " occupied our poet's attention at about the 
 same time. 
 
 In the next chapter I shall endeavor to show the 
 reason for Shakespeare's attack upon Chapman in 
 " Love's Labor's Lost," at the period of its produc- 
 tion in 1595. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS UPON SHAKESPEARE IN 1594 
 AND 1595. 
 
 IT is a rather curious fact that both Shakespeare 
 and Chapman should have reached such an ad- 
 vanced age before publishing any of their poems. 
 At the age of thirty Shakespeare published " Venus 
 and Adonis " ; at the age of thirty-five Chapman 
 published his first poem, " The Shadow of Night." 
 Shakespeare's poem met with almost immediate 
 success a success, too, that was not of a day; as 
 we find that in the eight years following its first ap- 
 pearance it went into seven editions, and into five 
 more editions in the next twenty or twenty-five 
 years. Chapman's " Shadow of Night " was pub- 
 lished in 1594, one year later than " Venus and 
 Adonis," and did not see a second print for over 
 forty years (in 1639). In the same year that Chap- 
 man published " The Shadow of Night " Shakes- 
 peare issued his second poem " Lucrece," which, 
 in turn, met with almost as flattering a reception 
 as " Venus and Adonis." The dedication to " Lu- 
 crece " contains strong evidence that Shakespeare 
 reaped something more tangible than mere popu- 
 larity from his first effort ; the passage : " the war- 
 rant I have of your honourable disposition, and not 
 the worth of my untutored lines," etc., lends good 
 
 116 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTA CKS OJV SHAKESPEARE. 1 1 7 
 
 color to the report which we have from Nicholas 
 Rowe (Shakespeare's earliest biographer) as to 
 Southampton's munificence to our poet. The fame 
 of this munificence brought many worshipers to this 
 young nobleman's shrine. In 1595 Gervase Mark- 
 ham, in a sonnet addressed to Southampton, apos- 
 trophizes him as follows: 
 
 ; ' Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill 
 Whose eye doth crown the most victorious pen ; 
 Bright lamp of virtue in whose sacred skill 
 Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men." 
 
 There can be little doubt but that these lines refer 
 to Shakespeare; they show, however, a very differ- 
 ent spirit from Chapman's advances in the same 
 field. We have proof positive, in an extant sonnet 
 of Chapman's, that he sought the patronage of 
 Southampton at a later date (in 1609). I shall now 
 endeavor to show that he sought it in 1594 or 1595, 
 for his poems of those years ; and that he sought it 
 again in 1596 or 1597 f r ms fi rst Homeric transla- 
 tions, and that the references to Chapman which 
 Professor Minto discovered in certain of Shakes- 
 peare's Sonnets referred to this latter period. That 
 he was unsuccessful in both attempts we are as- 
 sured from the fact that his dedications to South- 
 ampton, which Shakespeare mentions in certain of 
 his Sonnets, never saw print. 
 
 In "The Shadow of Night," published later 
 than " Venus and Adonis " and " Lucrece," I find 
 references to patrons who reward " fools," in much 
 
Ii8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 the same strain as in the poems of Chapman pub- 
 lished in the following year, where similar refer- 
 ences undoubtedly indicate Shakespeare, as I shall 
 prove. 
 
 The literary world at this date (1594) was, no 
 doubt, ringing with the praises of Shakespeare's 
 published poems ; his early Sonnets to Southampton 
 were also being read in manuscript. The fact of 
 Southampton's patronage and friendship was now, 
 no doubt, well known, therefore, when we find 
 Chapman, whom we prove to have been an avowed 
 enemy of Shakespeare, working himself into a heat 
 over the recent successes of a poet whom he calls a 
 fool, we may take it for granted whom he means. 
 The following quotation from * The Shadow of 
 Night " is exceedingly suggestive : 
 
 " Wealth fawns on fools ; virtues are meat for vices ; 
 Good gifts are often given to men past good 
 And noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood." 
 
 This seems to lend color to Nicholas Rowe's ru- 
 mor of Southampton's munificence to our poet and 
 seems also to indicate, not only Southampton's pat- 
 ronage of Shakespeare, but also the fact of his close 
 intimacy and friendship as revealed in the Sonnets. 
 It also calls to mind several of Shakespeare's Son- 
 nets, wherein he seems to defend himself and his 
 friend from such attacks, when he complains of the 
 meanness of his own state and fears that his friend 
 and patron will be besmirched by such open recog- 
 nition of their friendship. 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. "9 
 
 SONNET 26. 
 
 "'* Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, 
 Points on me graciously with fair aspect, 
 And puts apparel on my tattered loving 
 To show me worthy of thy sweet respect: 
 Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee." 
 
 And again in Sonnet 36: 
 
 " In our two loves there is but one respect, 
 Though in our lives a separable spite, 
 Which though it alter not love's sole effect, 
 Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight. 
 I may not evermore acknowledge thee, 
 Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, 
 Nor thou with public kindness honour we, 
 Unless thou take that honour from thy name." 
 
 There are many of the Sonnets written in this 
 strain; it is noticeable, too, that in these lines 
 Shakespeare bewails, not his standing as a poet, but 
 his social condition, and when we find him in 1596 
 applying, through his father, to the college of Her- 
 alds, for the confirmation of an ancient grant of 
 arms to his family, we get some idea of what he 
 meant in the lines: 
 
 " Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, 
 Points on me graciously with fair aspect, 
 And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving, 
 To show me worthy of thy sweet respect," etc. 
 
 It is very probable that Shakespeare made use 
 of his crest even before the date of the ratification 
 
120 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET 
 
 of this grant, and was moved to secure this recog- 
 nition by the slurs which Chapman, and perhaps 
 others also, cast at his gentility. Spenser, in 1594, 
 in " Colin Clout's Come Home Again," very proba- 
 bly describes Shakespeare, in a passage which I 
 shall quote, indicating him in the first line as 
 " JEtion," derived from the Greek Aettis, an eagle, 
 which he uses as a reference to his crest ; and in the 
 last line the name Shakespeare certainly fits the 
 description given: we know of no other contempo- 
 rary poet to whom either indication can apply and 
 certainly none to whom both could refer: 
 
 " And there, though last not least is ^Etion ; 
 A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found, 
 Whose Muse full of high thoughts' invention 
 Doth like himself heroically sound." 
 
 I shall show in a later chapter that Chapman 
 also indicates Shakspeare by several scurrilous allu- 
 sions to this crest. 
 
 Towards the end of "The Shadow of Night" 
 Chapman evidently alludes to Southampton in a 
 passage from which unfortunately, at the most tell- 
 ing point, a line has slipped out: speaking of his 
 hobby, " beauty of the mind," as contrasted with 
 mere physical beauty, he says : 
 
 " He is the Ganymede, the bird of Jove, 
 Rapt to her sovereign's bosom for his love, 
 His beauty was it, not the body's pride, 
 That made him great Aquarius stellified," 
 
 and in the gloss he explains this passage as follows : 
 
CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 121 
 
 " The beauty of the mind being signified in Gany- 
 mede, he gives a man's shape unto it." 
 
 He then continues: 
 
 "If wisdom be the mind's true beauty, then, 
 And that such beauty shines in virtuous men, 
 If those sweet Ganymedes shall only find " 
 
 and here a line has slipped out, but the word 
 " find " would indicate a line ending in the word 
 mind. The context attacks poets who solicit the 
 favor of these " Ganymedes " 
 
 " Love of Olympus, are these wizards wise, 
 That naught but gold, and his dejections prize?" 
 etc. 
 
 Thomas Nash, in some lines which are supposed 
 to refer to Southampton, uses this expression of 
 Chapman's " Jove's Eagle-born Ganymede," and 
 in 1595 Richard Barnfield dedicated a sonnet- 
 sequence containing twenty sonnets to a young 
 nobleman whom he indicates by this same name, 
 " Ganymede." Southampton has been suggested 
 as the original in this instance also. 
 
 In "A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy," pub- 
 lished in 1595, in all probability after the produc- 
 tion of Shakespeare's first sonnet-sequence, Chap- 
 man makes the central idea the beauty of the 
 mind, in contradistinction to mere physical beauty. 
 I have already shown that Chapman and his poem 
 entitled " The Amorous Zodiac " are indicated in 
 the 2oth and 2ist Sonnets. Professor Minto's sug- 
 
122 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 gestion as to the identity of the " rival poet " 
 scarcely needs the support of my findings, but with 
 that support becomes, I believe, unassailable. In 
 the DQth and 7<Dth Sonnets the reference to Chap- 
 man and his beauty of the mind idea, as shown in 
 " The Shadow of Night " and " A Coronet for his 
 Mistress Philosophy," when supported by the refer- 
 ences already noted, becomes fairly plain. 
 
 SONNET 69. 
 
 " Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view 
 Want nothing that the thought of hearts can 
 
 mend; 
 
 All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, 
 Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. 
 Thy outward thus with outward praise is 
 
 crown'd ; 
 But those same tongues, that give thee so thine 
 
 own, 
 
 In other accents do this praise confound 
 By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. 
 They look into the beauty of thy mind, 
 And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds ; 
 Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes 
 
 were kind, 
 
 To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds ; 
 But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, 
 The solve is this, that thou dost common grow." 
 
 The 7oth Sonnet is clearly a continuation of the 
 theme discussed in the 69th. 
 
CHA PMA N'S ATTA CKS ON SHAKESPEA RE. 1*3 
 
 SONNET 70. 
 
 " That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, 
 For slander's mark was ever yet the fair ; 
 The ornament of beauty is suspect, 
 A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air. 
 So thou be good, slander doth but approve 
 Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time ; 
 For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, 
 And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. 
 Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, 
 Either not assail'd, or victor being charged ; 
 Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, 
 To tie up envy evermore enlarged: 
 
 If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show, 
 Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst 
 owe." 
 
 A comparison of these two Sonnets with their 
 contexts, 68 and 71, will show that they are of a 
 different nature and period, and that they are a 
 separate exercise upon a particular subject such as 
 are the 2oth and 2ist Sonnets. The following lines 
 from the 7oth Sonnet, 
 
 " And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. 
 Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, 
 Either not assail'd or victor being charged," 
 
 as I have hitherto suggested, denote a period an- 
 terior to the indiscretion of Southampton with the 
 poet's mistress recorded in the 33d, 34th, and 35th 
 and 40th, 4ist, and 42d Sonnets. I would there- 
 fore give these two Sonnets a very early date, and 
 
124 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 place them shortly after the first sequence, and at 
 about the same period as the 2Oth and 2ist Sonnets. 
 I find them to be a direct criticism of " A Coronet 
 for his Mistress Philosophy," as were the 2Oth and 
 2 ist Sonnets of " The Amorous Zodiac." 
 
 Though Shakespeare does not in the 6Qth and 
 7oth Sonnets so definitely indicate one poet, he uses 
 an expression which, I believe, is meant to single 
 out Chapman. He says: 
 
 " All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that 
 due." 
 
 This expression, " tongues, the voice of souls," 
 seems to point very directly at that poet. I do not 
 find in any other poet of that day a similar use of 
 the figure, which leads me to suppose that Chap- 
 man is here indicated. 
 
 In " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " Chapman says : 
 
 " Alas ! why lent not heaven the soul a tongue 
 Nor language nor peculiar dialect." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Or turn me into swound, possess me whole 
 Sotd to my life and essence to my soul." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Her body doth present those fields of peace 
 Where souls are feasted with the soul of ease." 
 
 And, in contradistinction to his high soul, he speaks 
 of rival poets as follows : 
 
CHAPMAN S A TTA CKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 1 2$ 
 
 " Hell-descending gain 
 
 The soul of fools that all their soul confounds, 
 The art of peasants and our nobles' stain, 
 The bane of virtue and the bliss of sin, 
 Which none but fools and peasants glory in." 
 
 In the " Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy " 
 he often uses similar " soulful " expressions ; for 
 instance : 
 
 " But my love is the cordial of souls, 
 Teaching by passion what perfection is, 
 Spirit to flesh and soul to spirit giving, 
 Love flows not from my liver, but her living." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Virtue is but the merit and reward, 
 Of her removed and soul-infused regard." 
 
 Again, in the same poem, in a verse which I shall 
 show to be an attack upon Shakespeare, he says : 
 
 " Not the weak disjoint 
 Of female humours; nor the Protean rages 
 Of pied-faced fashion, that doth shrink and swell, 
 Working poor men like waxen images, 
 And makes them apish strangers where they dwell, 
 Can alter her ; titles of primacy, 
 Courtship of antic gestures, brainless jests, 
 Blood without soul, of false nobility, 
 Nor any folly which this world infests," etc. 
 
 And in the dedication to " The Shadow of 
 Night," in the same passage to which Professor 
 
126 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Minto suggests that Shakespeare refers in the 86th 
 Sonnet, Chapman says: 
 
 " Now what a supererogation in wit this is, to 
 think Skill so mightily pierced with their loves, that 
 she should prostitutely show them her secrets when 
 she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with 
 invocation, fasting and watching. Yea, not without 
 having drops of their souls" etc. 
 
 I think it will be granted that the frequent use of 
 the idea in these extracts warrants the assumption 
 that Shakespeare indicates Chapman in the 6o,th 
 Sonnet. 
 
 In Sonnet 141 Shakespeare again has Chapman 
 in mind. 
 
 SONNET 141. 
 
 " In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, 
 For they in thee a thousand errors note ; 
 But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise, 
 Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote ; 
 Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune de- 
 lighted ; 
 
 Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone, 
 Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited 
 To any sensual feast with thee alone : 
 But my five wits nor my five senses can 
 Dissuade one foolish heart from loving thee, 
 Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man, 
 Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be: 
 Only my plague thus far I count my gain, 
 That she that makes me sin awards me pain." 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 127 
 
 A comparison of this Sonnet with " Ovid's Ban- 
 quet of Sense " will reveal the references suggested. 
 
 Thus we see that Shakespeare indicates Chap- 
 man in a more or less critical and unfriendly man- 
 ner in the 2oth, 2ist, 38th, 69th, and 7oth Sonnets, 
 also in the series from 78 to 86, as well as the I4ist. 
 The indications already shown in " Love's Labor's 
 Lost " are also fairly definite. 
 
 We have no positive proof, in extant dedications, 
 that Chapman sought Southampton's patronage 
 previous to the year 1609, yet we have much evi- 
 dence in the above-mentioned Sonnets that he did 
 so, both in the years 1594 and 1595 for his earliest 
 poems, and also, a year or two later, for his 
 Homeric translations. Chapman having sought 
 this patronage and being unsuccessful, it stands to 
 reason he would not publish his rejected dedications 
 as monuments of his repulse ; therefore, the " dedi- 
 cated words," of which Shakespeare speaks in the 
 82d Sonnet, were undoubtedly still in manuscript at 
 the date of his expostulation in that Sonnet; so, in 
 writing of Chapman's dedications of the earlier 
 period (1594-1595) as follows: 
 
 " All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, 
 Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. 
 Thy outward thus with outward praise is 
 
 crown'd ; 
 But those same tongues, that give thee so thine 
 
 own, 
 
 In other accents do this praise confound, 
 By seeing farther than the eye hath shown," 
 
128 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Shakespeare evidently indicates some poem of 
 Chapman's which he had seen in manuscript and 
 that has not come down to us, or else that has been 
 published in some other form ; that this latter is the 
 case, I shall give my reasons for believing. We 
 know that " The Shadow of Night," issued in 1594, 
 was the first published poem of Chapman's ; and that 
 "Ovid's Banquet of Sense," "The Amorous 
 Zodiac," and " A Coronet for his Mistress Phi- 
 losophy," issued in 1595, were the second published 
 efforts of his Muse; yet we find that he rages and 
 fumes both in these poems and in their dedications, 
 over his lack of patronage. It is reasonable to 
 infer that he would not do this unless he had sought 
 such patronage and been repulsed. The poems of 
 both these years are dedicated to his friend Matthew 
 Roydon, a poor scholar like himself; but the dis- 
 gruntled tone of these dedications argues that 
 Chapman had previously sought a more shining 
 mark than his friend Roydon as sponsor for the 
 children of his brain. There can be little doubt but 
 that Chapman was numbered amongst the many 
 suitors who were drawn at this time, by the fame 
 of Shakespeare's success, to seek some share of 
 Southampton's bounty. I have shown how 
 Gervase Markham in this year (1595), approaching 
 this young nobleman, alludes in a most propitiatory 
 manner to Shakespeare as " the most victorious 
 pen." Chapman, either on account of a previous 
 enmity to Shakespeare or because of his innate 
 envy, instead of praising the nobleman's favorite, 
 covertly slurs him; he, however, does Shakespeare 
 
CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 129 
 
 the honor of imitating him, or at least he endeavors 
 to do so. Assuming, no doubt, that it was the sen- 
 suous nature of Shakespeare's poems ("Venus and 
 Adonis," and " Lucrece ") which charmed the 
 young patron and caught the public fancy; but 
 scornful of Shakespeare's limpid diction and blind 
 to the imaginative beauties which relieve the sen- 
 suousness of these two poems, Chapman forthwith 
 trips his elephantine Muse to like measures; its 
 gambols, however, suggest ^Lsop's fabled donkey 
 that would fain be a lapdog. While there are many 
 fine lines in these poems of Chapman's, as a whole 
 they are meandering, conceited, and strained. 
 
 In " Venus and Adonis," sensuous and unnatural 
 as is the theme, we have the " freshness of the early 
 world " ; we have an ideal Greek god and an ideal 
 Greek goddess, in an idealized landscape; we have 
 
 " The gleam, 
 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream." 
 
 The sensuousness is idealized. 
 
 " All breathing human passion far above, 
 That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 
 A burning forehead, and a parching tongue." 
 
 We forget it, carried away by the beauty of the 
 verse. 
 
 In " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " we have simply a 
 naked woman and a " peeping Tom " ; a lady of the 
 Roman court, disrobed for bathing, in a trim 
 garden where spouts an artificial fountain; and a 
 man (Ovidius Naso) lurking behind bushes, men- 
 
13 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 tally dissecting and analyzing the senses, one by 
 one. By and by Ovid reveals himself and talks 
 erotic metaphysics with this unblushing female 
 through about twenty verses of the poem. 
 
 " The Amorous Zodiac " is a weaker effort in the 
 same direction; both poems are filled with what 
 Mr. Swinburne calls " the dry rot of scholastic sen- 
 suality." The very assumption of purity, and the 
 high moral pose which Chapman endeavors to com- 
 bine with his sensuous subject, fail utterly of their 
 purpose, and what, in Ovid's hands, had been mere 
 Pagan sensuousness becomes, under his touch, 
 analytic obscenity. The subjects treated of by 
 Chapman in these two poems were utterly foreign 
 to him and his Muse, and there can be little doubt 
 that, in choosing these subjects, he was trying 
 either to do the popular thing in order to gain fame 
 speedily, or else to show how much better a poet of 
 his erudition and morality could treat the same sub- 
 jects that had won an unlearned actor such fame as 
 Shakespeare had achieved with " Venus and 
 Adonis " and " Lucrece." 
 
 I have already shown that Shakespeare attacks 
 Chapman in " Love's Labor's Lost," indicating these 
 poems of 1594 and 1595 ; in the following lines from 
 that play I believe he refers to Chapman's efforts 
 to be sensuously poetic. 
 
 Act V. scene 2, " Love's Labor's Lost " : 
 
 " Prin. None are so surely caught, when they are 
 
 catch'd, 
 As wit turn'd fool : folly, in wisdom hatch'd, 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 13* 
 
 Has wisdom's warrant and the help of school, 
 And wit's own grace to grace a learned fool. 
 
 " Ros. The blood of youth burns not with such 
 
 such excess 
 As gravity's revolt to wantonness. 
 
 " Mar. Folly in fools bears not so strong a note, 
 As foolery in the wise, when wit doth dote ; 
 Since all the power thereof it doth apply 
 To prove by wit, worth in simplicity." 
 
 These lines are spoken by the Princess, Rosaline, 
 and Margaret, criticising Biron, who has the repu- 
 tation of being a wit; but Biron is quite a young 
 man; he is described in the play in the following 
 terms : 
 
 " Biron they call him ; but a merrier man, 
 Within the limit of becoming mirth, 
 I never spent an hour's talk withal : 
 His eye begets occasion for his wit ; 
 For every object that the one doth catch, 
 The other turns to a mirth-moving jest, 
 Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, 
 Delivers in such apt and gracious words, 
 That aged ears play truant at his tales, 
 And younger hearings are quite ravished; 
 So sweet and voluble is his discourse." 
 
 So that the expressions used in the lines previ- 
 ously quoted ; " a learned fool " and " foolery in the 
 wise," and also the lines spoken by Rosaline, 
 
 " The blood of youth burns not with such excess 
 As gravity's revolt to wantonness," 
 
132 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 though in the play directed at Biron, are not at all 
 descriptive of that character's age or bearing; they 
 are very evidently directed at Chapman's freakish 
 attempt at sensuousness in these two poems. To 
 anyone that makes a study of Chapman's other 
 poems " The Shadow of Night," " A Coronet for 
 his Mistress Philosophy," " The Tears of Peace," 
 the " Penitential Hymns," ''Eugenia," " A Hymn 
 to our Saviour on the Cross," " Epicedium," " Pro 
 Vere Autumni Lachrymae," etc., etc. his two sen- 
 suous poems will be seen to be a very peculiar 
 breaking away from his ordinary and usual strains, 
 and quite out of accord with the man's scholastic 
 and rather puritanical mentality. 
 
 In the third poem of Chapman's published in 
 1595, entitled "A Coronet for his Mistress Phi- 
 losophy," I find what I conceive to be a distinct and 
 spiteful attack upon Shakespeare. Regarding this 
 sonnet-sequence of Chapman's an idea occurs to 
 me which I offer for what it is worth. Looking at 
 it in the light which I shall suggest, it certainly 
 gives some meaning to the reference which Shakes- 
 peare makes in the 69th Sonnet to a dedicatory 
 poem of Chapman's, addressed to Southampton at 
 this date, in which that poet is indicated as praising 
 not only the nobleman's physical beauty, but also 
 the beauty of his mind. I have hitherto suggested 
 that "Ovid's Banquet of Sense" and "The 
 Amorous Zodiac," written in imitation of Shakes- 
 peare's two sensuous poems, were offered to South- 
 ampton along with the dedication referred to in the 
 69th Sonnet. I am very strongly of the opinion 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 133 
 
 that this poem ("A Coronet for his Mistress Phi- 
 losophy ") is that identical dedicatory poem. 
 Shakespeare's expostulations having induced 
 Southampton to refuse these poems, Chapman 
 altered this latter poem into an address to " his 
 Mistress Philosophy," and also into a virulent at- 
 tack upon the rival who was the cause of his re- 
 pulse. Many lines in this poem seem to suggest 
 such a change : being addressed in the first place to 
 a young man, it contains many of Chapman's slurs 
 at femininity and female natures, which seem quite 
 out of place when we find the poem addressed to a 
 feminine abstraction, " his Mistress Philosophy." 
 The first three verses of this poem show little alter- 
 ation, and if the gender of the pronouns be changed 
 and " he " and " his " substituted for " she " and 
 " her," in these verses, the poem may be recognized 
 as having the fulsome dedicatory touch usual with 
 Chapman; however, even in its present state, it 
 plainly reveals an attack upon Shakespeare. 
 
 " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " has evidently also 
 been somewhat altered. There can be little doubt, 
 from the tone of Chapman's two dedications to 
 Roydon, that he had previously sought a wealthier 
 patron for these poems, so that, when we find two 
 verses in the poem itself breathing the same dis- 
 gruntled spirit as the dedication, we may infer that 
 they were introduced after his repulse. The last 
 two verses evidently belong to the poem in its origi- 
 nal form ; the two verses preceding these, however, 
 are, in all likelihood, of a later time. I shall quote 
 these verses: 
 
*34 SHAKESPEARE AND J^HE RIVAL POET. 
 
 " In these dog-days how this contagion smothers 
 The purest blood with virtue's diet fined, 
 Nothing their own unless they be some other's 
 Spite of themselves, are in themselves confined, 
 And live so poor they are of all despised. 
 Their gifts held down with scorn should be di- 
 vined, 
 
 And they like mummers mask, unknown, un- 
 prized : 
 
 A thousand marvels mourn in some such breast, 
 Would make a kind and worthy patron blest. 
 
 " To me, dear sovereign, thou art patroness, 
 And I, with that thy graces have infused, 
 Will make all fat and foggy brains confess 
 Riches may from a poor verse be deduced : 
 And that gold's love shall leave them grovelling 
 
 here, 
 
 When thy perfections shall to heaven be mused, 
 Deck'd in bright verse, where angels shall appear, 
 The praise of virtue, love and beauty singing, 
 Honor to noblesse, shame to avarice bringing." 
 
 I will now, in a general way, analyze the sonnet- 
 sequence " A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy," 
 and show what I believe to be covert references to 
 Shakespeare, as well as a few instances where 
 Shakespeare, in some of the Sonnets and in 
 " Love's Labor's Lost," refers to this poem. 
 
 Though Chapman in this sonnet-sequence ad- 
 dressed Muses collectively, it is not difficult to per- 
 ceive that he had one figure in mind. Shakes- 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACfCS ON SHAKESPEARE. i$$ 
 
 peare's undoubted pre-eminence at this date, as 
 shown by the lines of Gervase Markham which I 
 have quoted, should be borne in mind in consider- 
 ing Chapman's indications. " Venus and Adonis " 
 and " Lucrece," with the first sonnet-sequence, had 
 all been produced at this date. In all of these 
 poems Shakespeare very plainly sings " Love's sen- 
 sual empery." This sonnet-sequence of Chapman's 
 seems to refer more particularly to Shakespeare's 
 early Sonnets to his patron than to the other two 
 poems, though they also are indicated. In Shakes- 
 peare's first sonnet-sequence, he certainly praises 
 his friend's exterior graces; so that when Chap- 
 man writes, 
 
 " Muses that sing Love's sensual empery, 
 And lovers kindling your enraged fires 
 At Cupid's bonfires burning in the eyes, 
 Blown with the empty breath of vain desires, 
 You that prefer the painted cabinet 
 Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye, 
 That all your joys in dying figures set, 
 And stain the living substance of your glory, 
 Abjure those joys, abhor their memory, 
 And let my love the honour'd subject be 
 Of love, and honour's complete history ; 
 Your eyes were never yet let in to see 
 The majesty and riches of the mind, 
 But dwell in darkness ; for your god is blind," 
 
 he very plainly indicates a poet or poets who praise 
 a man's beauty, and whom he accuses of being ob- 
 
I3 6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 livious to the beauties of the mind. Chapman 
 would scarcely be referring to the amorous verses 
 of poets who praised their mistresses ; even he him- 
 self, tiresome old pedant that he was, in extolling 
 his mistress or imaginary mistress, found that in 
 her worthier of his eulogy than her mind. 
 
 In " The Amorous Zodiac " he most decidedly 
 preferred 
 
 " The painted cabinet 
 Before the wealthy jewels it did store him," 
 
 and 
 
 " All his joys in dying figures set." 
 
 A few extracts from Shakespeare's first sonnet- 
 sequence will show the continuous praise of his 
 patron's outward graces to which Chapman refers. 
 
 SONNET i. 
 
 " Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament 
 And only herald to the gaudy spring." 
 
 SONNET 2. 
 " Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now." 
 
 SONNET 2- 
 
 " Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee 
 Calls back the lovely April of her prime." 
 
 SONNET 4. 
 
 " Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend 
 Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?" 
 
CHAP MA N'S A TTA CKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 1 3 7 
 
 SONNET 5. 
 
 " Those hours that with gentle work did frame 
 The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell." 
 
 SONNET 6. 
 
 " Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair 
 To be death's conquest and make worms thine 
 heir." 
 
 SONNET 14. 
 
 " Or else of thee this I prognosticate : 
 Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date." 
 
 SONNET 17. 
 
 " If I could write the beauty of your eyes 
 And in fresh numbers number all your graces, 
 The age to come would say ' This poet lies ; 
 Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly 
 faces/ " 
 
 SONNET 19. 
 
 " O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, 
 Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; 
 Him in thy course untainted do allow, 
 For beauty's pattern to succeeding men." 
 
 All through this sequence Shakespeare, in this 
 strain, sings of his patron's beauty, not once refer- 
 ring to his mental attributes, so that when Chap- 
 man writes: 
 
 " You that prefer the painted cabinet 
 Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye, 
 That all your joys in dying figures set, 
 
I3 8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 And stain the living substance of your glory, 
 Abjure those joys, abhor their memory, 
 And let my love the honour 'd subject be 
 Of love, and honour's complete history; 
 Your eyes were never yet let in to see 
 The majesty and riches of the mind," 
 
 there can be little doubt but that he refers to 
 Shakespeare, and that Shakespeare, recognizing the 
 intention, answers in the 69th Sonnet, as follows : 
 
 " Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view 
 Want nothing that the thought of hearts can 
 
 mend; 
 
 All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, 
 Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. 
 Thy outward thus with outward praise is 
 
 crown'd ; 
 But those same tongues, that give thee so thine 
 
 own, 
 
 In other accents do this praise confound 
 By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. 
 They look into the beauty of thy mind!' 
 
 In the next verse Chapman continues his attack 
 in much the same strain : 
 
 " But dwell in darkness, for your God is blind, 
 Humour pours down such torrents on his eyes; 
 Which, as from mountains, fall on his base kind, 
 And eat your entrails out with ecstasies. 
 Colour, whose hands for faintness are not felt, 
 Can bind your waxen thoughts in adamant; 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 139 
 
 And with her painted fires your heart doth melt, 
 Which beat your soul in pieces with a pant. 
 But my love is the cordial of souls, 
 Teaching by passion what perfection is, 
 In whose fix'd beauties shine the sacred scrolls, 
 And long-lost records of your human bliss, 
 Spirit to flesh, and soul to spirit giving, 
 Love flows not from my liver, but her living." 
 
 To Chapman's thrusts at Shakespeare in this 
 verse I think I can show our poet's answers, not 
 only in the Sonnets, but in " Love's Labor's Lost." 
 Chapman here says : 
 
 " Colour, whose hands for faintness are not felt, 
 Can bind your waxen thoughts in adamant; 
 And with her painted fires your heart doth melt, 
 Which beat your soul in pieces with a pant." 
 
 Compare this with Biron's words in the play, only 
 a few lines after the mention of " The School of 
 Night," and written, no doubt, while Shakespeare 
 had Chapman still in mind: 
 
 " Her favour turns the fashion of the days, 
 For native blood is counted painting now; 
 And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise, 
 Paints itself black, to imitate her brow." 
 
 And again in Sonnet 83 : 
 
 " I never saw that you did painting need, 
 And therefore to your fair no painting set; 
 I found, or thought I found, you did exceed 
 The barren tender of a poet's debt : 
 
14 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 And therefore have I slept in your report, 
 That you yourself, being extant, well might show 
 How far a modern quill doth come too short, 
 Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. 
 This silence for my sin you did impute, 
 Which shall be most my glory, being dumb: 
 For I impair not beauty, being mute, 
 When others would give life, and bring a tomb. 
 There lives more life in one of your fair eyes 
 Than both your poets can in praise devise." 
 
 Both of these references of Shakespeare's may 
 point to these lines of Chapman's, but that in 
 " Love's Labor's Lost " undoubtedly does. In the 
 latter lines of this Sonnet Chapman says : 
 
 " But my love is the cordial of souls, 
 Teaching by passion what perfection is, 
 In whose fix'd beauties shine the sacred scrolls, 
 And long-lost records of your human bliss, 
 Spirit to flesh, and soul to spirit giving, 
 Love flows not from my liver, but her living." 
 
 There are two expressions in this extract to which 
 I can show that Shakespeare refers in the 6gth Son- 
 net : the words " the voice of souls " have no pos- 
 sible meaning unless a satirical or indicative one; 
 they very evidently point to Chapman's frequent 
 use of this figure which we find used in the above 
 passage. The last two lines of this extract, 
 Shakespeare refers to satirically in " Love's Labor's 
 Lost " ; if any other meaning can be given to the 
 expression which Shakespeare uses, than an indie- 
 
CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 141 
 
 ative reference to this Sonnet of Chapman's, it has 
 yet to be advanced. 
 
 In Act IV. scene 3 Longaville having read his 
 Sonnet : 
 
 " Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, 
 ' Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, 
 Persuade my heart to this false perjury? 
 Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. 
 A woman I forswore; but I will prove, 
 Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee : 
 My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; 
 Thy grace being gain'd cures all disgrace in me. 
 Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is : 
 Then, thou, fair sun, which on my earth doth 
 
 shine, 
 
 Exhalest this vapour vow ; in thee it is : 
 If broken then, it is no fault of mine, 
 If by me broke, what fool is not so wise 
 To lose an oath to win a paradise ? " 
 
 Biron comes in with 
 
 ' This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity/' 
 Compare this with Chapman's 
 
 " Spirit to flesh and soul to spirit giving 
 Love flows not from my liver, but her living." 
 
 In the sixth verse of this sequence Chapman 
 works himself into great wrath : 
 
 " Her look doth promise and her life assure ; 
 A right line forcing a rebateless point, 
 
142 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 In her high deeds, through everything obscure, 
 
 To full perfection ; not the weak disjoint 
 
 Of female humours ; nor the Protean rages 
 
 Of pied-faced fashion, that doth shrink and swell, 
 
 Working poor men like waxen images, 
 
 And makes them apish strangers where they 
 
 dwell, 
 
 Can alter her, titles of primacy, 
 Courtship of antic gestures, brainless jests, 
 Blood without soul, of false nobility, 
 Nor any folly that the world infests 
 
 Can alter her who with her constant guises 
 To living virtues turns the deadly vices." 
 
 Let us analyze this Sonnet. The words, 
 
 " Not the weak disjoint 
 Of female humours," 
 
 certainly seem out of place, as I have previously 
 suggested, when we find these verses apparently ad- 
 dressed to a feminine figure. 
 
 " The Protean rages 
 
 Of pied-faced fashion, that doth shrink and swell, 
 Working poor men like waxen images, 
 And makes them apish strangers where they dwell," 
 
 possibly refers to Shakespeare's growth out of the 
 mere actor's sphere, and to his friendship with 
 Southampton ; " titles of primacy " takes on point 
 when we consider Gervase Markham's reference, of 
 this date, to Shakespeare as " the most victorious 
 pen." Others besides Markham, no doubt, spoke 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 143 
 
 of Shakespeare in much the same strain at this 
 period. A few years later, in 1598, Meres gives 
 him an equally high and much more clearly defined 
 standing when he says : 
 
 " The Muses would speak Shakespeare's fine filed 
 phrase if they could speak English : among the 
 English he is the most excellent in both kinds for 
 the stage, that is, comedy and tragedy." He further 
 says, " the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mel- 
 lifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare." 
 
 The remainder of this sonnet, 
 " Courtship of antic gestures, brainless jests," 
 is evidently a fling at Shakespeare as a comedian; 
 " Blood ivithout soul, of false nobility," 
 
 a slur upon his gentility ; the " false nobility " 
 probably calling in question his right to the use of 
 the Eagle and Spear crest, by which it has been 
 shown that Spenser indicated our poet, and by 
 which it shall be shown later that Chapman again 
 indicates him. The expression here used, " blood 
 without soul," when considered as a stroke at 
 Shakespeare's quality, accounts for the retort which 
 he makes at Chapman in the 6o,th Sonnet where he 
 says: 
 
 " All tongues, the voice of souls" etc. 
 
 In the Qth and loth sonnets of this sequence 
 Chapman even more definitely indicates Shakes- 
 peare and more bitterly assails him ; 
 
144 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POhT. 
 
 " For words want art, and art wants words to praise 
 
 her; 
 
 Yet shall my active and industrious pen 
 Wind his sharp forehead through those parts that 
 
 raise her, 
 
 And register her worth past rarest women. 
 Herself shall be my Muse ; that well will know 
 Her proper inspirations ; and assuage 
 With her dear love the wrongs my fortunes show, 
 Which to my youth bind heartless grief in age. 
 Herself shall be my comfort and my riches, 
 And all my thoughts I will see her convert ; 
 Honour and error which the world bewitches, 
 Shall still crown fools, and tread upon desert, 
 And never shall my friendless verse envy 
 Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify. 
 
 " Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify, 
 And such as scorn to tread the theatre, 
 As ignorant : the seed of memory 
 Have most inspired, and shown their glories there 
 To noblest wits, and men of highest doom, 
 That for the kingly laurel bent affair 
 The theatres of Athens and of Rome, 
 Have been the crowns and not the base impair. 
 Far, then, be this foul cloudy-brow'd contempt 
 From like-plumed birds: and let your sacred 
 
 rhymes 
 
 From honour's court their servile feet exempt, 
 That live by soothing moods, and serving times : 
 And let my love adorn with modest eyes, 
 Muses that sing Love's sensual emperies." 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 14$ 
 
 The construction, grammar, and sense of this last 
 sonnet are strange and wonderful. Chapman has 
 evidently tried to put the full point and sting of the 
 whole sequence into the last verse, and grammar 
 and construction have been secondary to his wrath. 
 Let us first take the indications in the Qth sonnet 
 pointing at Shakespeare: 
 
 " Herself shall be my comfort and my riches, 
 And all my thoughts I will on her convert ; 
 Honour and error, which the world bewitches, 
 Shall still crown fools, and tread upon desert." 
 
 " Herself," his Mistress Philosophy, shall be his 
 comfort and his riches, the antithesis of "honour and 
 error " which " still crown fools," Shakespeare, 
 and " tread upon desert," Chapman. " Honour," 
 I suppose, means Southampton ; '* Error," the ap- 
 plauding public " altogether hide-bound with affec- 
 tion to great men's fancies," which calls a poem 
 like " Venus and Adonis " into eight editions in as 
 many years, and lets a gem like " The Shadow of 
 Night " lie hidden. 
 
 " And never shall my friendless verse envy 
 Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify." 
 
 What does Chapman mean by " Fame's loose 
 feathers"? I would opine, such pieces of classical 
 fiction as the legend of " Venus and Adonis " and 
 the story of " Lucrece," which Shakespeare uses as 
 he finds them in stray translations: not being able, 
 as was Chapman, with his superior classical knowl- 
 
146 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 edge, to pluck the whole birds of Grecian mythology 
 and Roman history. In this line Chapman not only 
 indicates our poet, but sneers at his lack of learning. 
 In the next verse Chapman, repeating the last 
 line of the preceding verse, as he does all through 
 the sequence, addresses 
 
 " Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify, 
 And such as scorn to tread the theatre, 
 As ignorant," 
 
 and tells them : 
 
 " The seed of memory 
 
 Have most inspired, and shown their glories there 
 To noblest wits, and men of highest doom, 
 That for the kingly laurel bent affair 
 The theatres of Athens and of Rome, 
 Have been the crowns and not the base impair." 
 
 The punctuation in this passage is evidently 
 wrong; there should be some stop after " affair." 
 The sense I make of this passage is as follows : 
 
 Muses who beautify the loose feathers of Fame 
 and who scorn, as ignorant, the dramatic profes- 
 sion, know ye, the seed of memory have most in- 
 spired, and shown their glories there to noblest wits 
 and men of highest doom, who, for the kingly laurel 
 strove in endeavor. For such men the theaters of 
 Athens and of Rome have been the crowns, and not 
 the base impair. 
 
 He then continues: 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 147 
 
 " Far, then, be this foul cloudy-brow'd contempt 
 From like-plumed birds." 
 
 By " like-plumed birds " Chapman here very evi- 
 dently means the class of men of whom he has just 
 been writing, i. c., actors, or writers for the stage. 
 
 " And let your sacred rhymes 
 From honour's court their servile feet exempt, 
 That live by soothing moods, and serving times." 
 
 Here is proof that he is not addressing the son- 
 neteers of the day; he would not write of the 
 amorous sonnet as a " sacred rhyme." By this ex- 
 pression he evidently means poems or rhymes on 
 sacred, that is classical subjects, and I believe, 
 intends to indicate " Venus and Adonis " and 
 " Lucrece." 
 
 " From honour's court " means the courtship of 
 men of honour, i. e., title and position. 
 
 " Their servile feet exempt 
 That live by soothing moods, and serving times " 
 
 probably refers to Shakespeare's dedications of his 
 poems to Southampton. 
 
 The last line of this Sonnet gives the same indi- 
 cation as the first line of the whole sequence : 
 
 " Muses that sing Love's sensual emperies." 
 
 In this poem we have, singled out for attack, a 
 poet who sings of love and its emperies; who 
 praises his friend's physical beauty and not the 
 beauty of his mind; who remodels and beautifies 
 
I4 8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 fragments from classical lore ; who is given titles of 
 primacy, that is, who is greeted as foremost amongst 
 poets; who is applauded by the public, and re- 
 warded by a titled patron ; who is an actor and yet 
 scorns the actor's profession and who writes sooth- 
 ing dedications. If these indications do not point 
 to Shakespeare, I do not know any other con- 
 temporary poet to whom all this could have been 
 applied in the year 1595. We have many sugges- 
 tions in the Sonnets that the theatrical profession 
 was repugnant to Shakespeare at this period, how- 
 ever much his ideas on that subject may have 
 changed in later years with his increase in wealth 
 and his enhanced standing in the profession, as well 
 as tlje comparative importance and respectability 
 which the dramatic profession attained during 
 these years. The English stage previous to 
 Shakespeare's time was extremely crude, and in the 
 estimation of the public, and before the law, actors 
 ranked little better than vagabonds and traveling 
 tinkers. 
 
 When we consider the personal references con- 
 tained in these verses, we can see the reason for 
 Shakespeare's personalities against Chapman in 
 " Love's Labor's Lost " and also his satirical refer- 
 ences to him in the 2oth and 2ist and 69th and 7oth 
 Sonnets. Several of the Sonnets in the series 78 to 
 86 probably refer also to Chapman's attempts upon 
 Southampton's favor at this date ; but I am inclined 
 to believe that most of them point to a slightly later 
 period, which I shall endeavor to indicate in the 
 next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS CONTINUED IN 1597-1598. 
 
 THE references to a " rival poet ".in the Sonnets, 
 from which Professor Minto's happy inference re- 
 garding Chapman in that connection was drawn, 
 are to be found in the 86th Sonnet. In his " Char- 
 acteristics of the English Poets" (1885) Professor 
 Minto asks : " Who was the ' rival poet ' ? " and 
 then continues: 
 
 " So complete is the parallel of the course of true 
 friendship to the course of true love that even the 
 passion of jealousy finds a place. Nine Sonnets, 
 78 to 86, are occupied with the pretensions of other 
 poets, and one poet in particular, to the gracious 
 countenance of his patron. 
 
 " In the 8oth Sonnet he cries : 
 
 " ' O how I faint when I of you do write 
 
 Knowing a better spirit doth use your name.' 
 
 Who was this ' better spirit ' ? I hope I shall not 
 be held guilty of hunting after paradox if I say 
 that every possible poet has been named but the 
 right one, nor of presumption if I say that he is so 
 obvious that his escape from notice is something 
 little short of miraculous. The 86th Sonnet sup- 
 plies ample means of identification : 
 
 149 
 
150 SHAKESPEAKE AND THE RIVAL 
 
 " ' Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, 
 Bound for the prize of all too perfect you, 
 That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, 
 Making their tomb the womb wherein they 
 
 grew? 
 
 Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write 
 Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead ? 
 No, neither he, nor his compeers by night 
 Giving him aid, my verse astonished. 
 He, nor that affable familiar ghost 
 Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 
 As victors, of my silence cannot boast ; 
 I was not sick of any fear from thence : 
 
 But when your countenance fill'd up his line, 
 Then lack'd I matter ; that enfeebled mine/ 
 
 " The allusions to supernatural assistance are 
 here very pointed. Chapman was a man of over- 
 powering enthusiasm, ever eager in magnifying 
 poetry and advancing fervid claims to supernatural 
 inspiration. In 1594 he published a poem called 
 ' The Shadow of Night,' which goes far to estab- 
 lish his identity with Shakespeare's rival; in the 
 dedication, after animadverting severely on vulgar 
 searchers after knowledge, he exclaims, ' Now what 
 a supererogation in wit this is, to think Skill so 
 mightily pierced with their loves, that she should 
 prostitutely show them her secrets, when she will 
 scarcely be looked upon by others but with invoca- 
 tion, fasting, and watching, yea, not without hav- 
 ing drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar,' 
 etc. 
 
fv< 
 
 ' ^ 
 
 CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS ON SHAK&SP&ARE. 15* 
 
 \ 
 " Here we have something like a profession of 
 
 the familiar ghost that Shakespeare so saucily 
 laughs at." 
 
 In these words Professor Minto gave the clew to 
 my findings, the only mistake he makes being in 
 supposing that, in these nine Sonnets, others be- 
 sides this one particular poet are indicated. 
 
 I have conclusively shown that Chapman is even 
 more distinctly indicated in four Sonnets of an 
 earlier date; viz.: 20, 21, 69, and 70 (1595). To 
 the bulk of the Sonnets in the apparent sequence 
 from 78 to 86 I assign a later date. Shakespeare's 
 protestations are here more pronounced, and his 
 allusions to the " rival poet " more respectful, than 
 in the earlier years. He is evidently threatened by 
 a more powerful weapon in the rival's hands. In 
 1598 Chapman published his translation of seven 
 books of Homer's Iliad, and a little later in the 
 same year, another book of the Iliad which he en- 
 titled "Achilles' Shield," dedicating them both to 
 the Earl of Essex, Southampton's intimate friend, 
 and connection by marriage. 
 
 These translations were licensed for publication 
 in 1596 or 1597; m tne tmie intervening between 
 their entry in the " Stationer's Register " and their 
 actual issue, Chapman, no doubt, sought a suitable 
 patron to whom to dedicate them. I am fully con- 
 vinced that it was an attempt of Chapman's upon 
 Southampton's favor at this time that called forth 
 Shakespeare's protest in the bulk of the Sonnets 
 from 78 to 86 and even beyond them, as I am very 
 
t$* SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 much inclined to place all of this group of Sonnets, 
 from 78 to 96, at this date. 
 
 I would, however, omit Sonnet 81, which evi- 
 dently belongs to another sequence, as I have pre- 
 viously pointed out. I believe I shall plainly prove 
 these Sonnets of Shakespeare's to have been writ- 
 ten previous to 1598, when Chapman published his 
 first translations, as I shall show in a poem of 
 Chapman's, published with these translations, very 
 palpable references made by him to the attack which 
 Shakespeare makes upon him in these particular 
 Sonnets. 
 
 We may infer from this that these Sonnets of 
 Shakespeare's were written while Chapman's trans- 
 lations were still in manuscript, and while South- 
 ampton was considering whether or not he would 
 accept their dedication. Southampton probably left 
 England at this time, leaving Shakespeare in doubt 
 on that point; and our poet was probably not cog- 
 nizant that his remonstrances had been successful, 
 till Chapman's translations appeared with the dedi- 
 cation to the Earl of Essex. These Sonnets of 
 Shakespeare's reveal argument ; there is a question- 
 and-answer tone about them, as though Southamp- 
 ton had intimated that he was not tied to Shakes- 
 peare's Muse, in answer to which Shakespeare says : 
 
 SONNET 82. 
 
 " I grant thou wert not married to my Muse, 
 And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook 
 The dedicated words which writers use 
 Of their fair subject, blessing every book. 
 
CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS ON S//AA'ESPEARE. I S3 
 
 Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue, 
 Finding thy worth a limit past my praise ; 
 And therefore art enforced to seek anew 
 Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days. 
 And do so, love ; yet when they have devised 
 What strained touches rhetoric can lend, 
 Thou truly fair wert truly sympathized 
 In true plain words by thy true-telling friend ; 
 And their gross painting might be better used 
 Where cheeks need blood ; in thee it is abused." 
 
 A little later Southampton seems to have sug- 
 gested that his learned eulogist praised him more 
 highly than did Shakespeare, and our poet answers : 
 
 " You to your beauteous blessings add a curse, 
 Being fond on praise, which makes your praises 
 
 In this the young nobleman was possibly playing 
 upon the feelings of his protege, to induce him to 
 display his poetic versatility. However, we are 
 quite assured that Southampton did not accept 
 Chapman's dedications, but probably feeling rather 
 kindly disposed than otherwise towards his pre- 
 sumably flattering suitor, and at the same time not 
 wishing to offend Shakespeare, to whom, we may 
 safely conclude, he bore as strong a friendship as a 
 man in his position an only and, I suppose, a 
 spoiled child, of great place and wealth, flattered 
 from his cradle could bear to anyone inferior in 
 station ; he very likely introduced Chapman to the 
 notice of Essex, to whom we see that Chapman's 
 
154 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 translations were finally dedicated. In this same 
 year we find proof of Southampton's influence with 
 Essex, who was then chief of the college of 
 Heralds, in the fact that Shakespeare at this date 
 finally secured the confirmation of his long-sought 
 honor of arms. 
 
 That Chapman was fully conscious of the fact 
 that the repulse he met with, in seeking Southamp- 
 ton's favor, was due to Shakespeare's objections, he 
 plainly shows in a poem of this date. 
 
 Appended to a translation of the i8th book of the 
 Iliad, published this year (1598) under the name of 
 " Achilles' Shield," there is a poem addressed as 
 follows: "To my admired and soul-loved friend, 
 master of all essential and true knowledge, M. 
 Harriots." 
 
 In the poem Chapman sings the same high praise 
 of learning, and castigates the pretensions of 
 " ignorants," in much the same terms as I have 
 shown in " A Coronet for his Mistress Phi- 
 losophy." Taking the date of this poem into con- 
 sideration, and in the light of the references I find 
 in the poem, I am fully convinced that it is Chap- 
 man's revenge for the repulse he has recently met 
 with in soliciting Southampton's favor, as well as 
 his answer to a satire which Shakespeare produced 
 this year upon his Homer-worship in " Troilus and 
 Cressida." There can be no doubt but that Chap- 
 man, at the time of writing this poem, had read the 
 Sonnets by which Shakespeare had wrought on 
 Southampton to refuse his dedications. 
 
 In the first passage in which I notice references 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 155 
 
 to Shakespeare in this poem to Harriots, Chapman 
 says: 
 
 " When, absurd and vain, 
 Most students in their whole instruction are, 
 But in traditions more particular ; 
 Leaning like rotten houses, on out beams, 
 And with true light fade in themselves like 
 dreams." 
 
 Here we find the same idea expressed which 
 Chapman voices in " A Coronet for his Mistress 
 Philosophy," where he indicates Shakespeare's lack 
 of classical knowledge in the line : 
 
 " Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify." 
 
 He here accuses Shakespeare of being " absurd 
 and vain " in his whole instruction, but particularly 
 so in his knowledge of traditions, that is, ancient 
 history and mythology ; he says he uses " out 
 beams " of knowledge, intimating by that term that 
 he makes use of stray translations. In the use of 
 this word " traditions," Chapman is not making a 
 mere general charge of ignorance, but is definitely 
 alluding to his version of the story of " Troilus and 
 Cressida," which I shall show in a later chapter that 
 Shakespeare produced this year as an attack upon 
 Chapman's Homer-worship. Shakespeare's proved 
 sources for this play were Chaucer's poem " Troylus 
 and Cryseyde," Lydgate's " Troye Book," and Cax- 
 ton's " Recuyell of the Historic of Troye." It is to 
 this fact that Chapman refers when he says, 
 
156 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 " Absurd and vain, 
 
 Most students in their whole instruction are, 
 But in traditions more particular ; 
 Leaning like rotten houses, on out beams," 
 
 contrasting Shakespeare's play, done from trans- 
 lations, with his own great work, which he asserts 
 he takes directly from the Greek. 
 
 Chapman continues this passage as follows: 
 
 " True learning hath a body absolute, 
 That in apparent sense itself can suit, 
 Not hid in airy terms, as if it were 
 Like spirits fantastic, that put men in fear, 
 And are but bugs form'd in their foul conceits." 
 
 In these lines he distinctly refers to Shakes- 
 peare's attack upon his spirit-taught Muse in the 
 86th Sonnet : 
 
 " Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write 
 Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead ? 
 No, neither he, nor his compeers by night 
 Giving him aid, my verse astonished. 
 He, nor that affable familiar ghost 
 Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 
 As victors, of my silence cannot boast ; 
 I was not sick of any fear from thence." 
 
 Chapman claims that learning has an absolute 
 body and is not hid in airy terms 
 
 " Like spirits fantastic that put men in fear," 
 
CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 157 
 
 and in using these terms, shows very plainly in the 
 next line that he is quoting someone who has used 
 a like simile, when he says : 
 
 " And are but bugs formed in their foul conceits." 
 
 This word " bug," for spirit or ghost, is still used 
 with variations of pronunciation in this same sense 
 in many parts of the United Kingdom even at this 
 day, and upon the Continent many forms of the 
 same word still exist ; the " pucca " of Welsh, the 
 " pooka " of Irish, and the " bock " of German folk- 
 lore have, I believe, the same origin ; and the 
 " boogie," which children fear, is of the same stock. 
 I am inclined to the opinion that Shakespeare's 
 " Puck " is also connected with this family. 
 
 Chapman continues his praise of learning and his 
 scolding of ignorance, thus : 
 
 " Not made for sale, glazed with sophistic sleights, 
 But wrought for all times proof, strong to bid 
 
 prease 
 
 And shiver ignorants, like Hercules, 
 On their own dung-hills; but our formal clerks, 
 Blown for profession, spend their souls in sparks, 
 Framed of dismember'd parts that make most 
 
 show, 
 And like to broken links of knowledge go." 
 
 In the first line of the extract he echoes back the 
 slur which Shakespeare casts at him in the 2ist 
 Sonnet where he refers to Chapman's avowed in- 
 tention to publish " The Amorous Zodiac," and 
 says of his own Sonnets, 
 
158 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 " I will not praise that purpose not to sell." 
 
 The remainder of this extract bears the usual 
 stamp of his anti-Shakespearean passages : " igno- 
 rant " and " dung-hill " are words which he often 
 uses against our poet. 
 
 The last four lines of the extract, 
 
 " But our formal clerks, 
 
 Blown for profession, spend their souls in sparks, 
 Framed of dismembered parts that make most show 
 And like to broken links of knowledge go," 
 
 almost spell the word sonnets. 
 
 In the following passage I quote, Chapman evi- 
 dently refers again to Shakespeare's Sonnets to his 
 patron : 
 
 " When thy true wisdom by thy learning won, 
 Shall honour learning while there shines a sun ; 
 And thine own name in merit, far above 
 Their tym panics of state, that arms of love, 
 Fortune, or blood shall lift to dignity." 
 
 He speaks of the Sonnets as " tympanies of 
 state." Shakespeare very probably refers to this 
 passage in the I24th Sonnet, where he says : 
 
 "// my dear love were but the child of state, 
 It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathcr'd, 
 As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate, 
 Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers 
 
 gather'd. 
 No, it was builded far from accident." 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 159 
 These lines of Chapman, 
 
 " Their tympanies of state, that arms of love, 
 Fortune, or blood shall lift to dignity," 
 
 being published in 1598, may also refer to South- 
 ampton's recent success in securing for his protege 
 his coveted badge of gentility. This takes on 
 special point when we recall Chapman's slur three 
 years before, in " A Coronet for his Mistress Phi- 
 losophy," upon Shakespeare's 
 
 " Blood without soul, of false nobility." 
 
 Further on in this poem, I find a still clearer allu- 
 sion to some of the Sonnets contained in the group 
 78 to 96 ; Chapman says : 
 
 " Then past anticipating dooms and scorns 
 Which for self-grace each ignorant suborns, 
 Their glowing and amazed eyes shall see 
 How short of thy soul's strength my weak words 
 be." 
 
 In these lines Chapman refers to those Sonnets 
 in which Shakespeare seems to fear the waning of 
 his friend's regard, " anticipating " both " dooms 
 and scorns " ; which Chapman asserts he " suborns " 
 for " self-grace." I shall quote : 
 
 SONNET 88. 
 
 " When thou shalt be disposed to set me light, 
 And place my merit in the eye of scorn, 
 Upon thy side against myself I'll fight, 
 
160 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 And prove thee virtuous, though thou art for- 
 sworn. 
 
 With mine own weakness being best acquainted, 
 Upon thy part I can set down a story 
 Of faults conceal'd wherein I am attainted ; 
 That thou in losing me shalt win much glory : 
 And I by this will be a gainer too ; 
 For bending all my loving thoughts on thee, 
 The injuries that to myself I do, 
 Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me. 
 Such is my love, to thee I so belong, 
 That for thy right myself will bear all wrong." 
 
 SONNET 89. 
 
 " Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, 
 And I will comment upon that offence ; 
 Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt, 
 Against thy reasons making no defence. 
 Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill, 
 To set a form upon desired change, 
 As I'll myself disgrace ; knowing thy will, 
 I will acquaintance strangle, and look strange ; 
 Be absent from thy walks ; and in my tongue 
 Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, 
 Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong, 
 And haply of our old acquaintance tell. 
 For thee, against myself I'll vow debate, 
 For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost 
 hate." 
 
 In these two Sonnets we have the " scorns " which 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON StfAXESPEAXE. l6t 
 
 Chapman accuses Shakespeare of suborning for 
 " self-grace " very plainly displayed. 
 
 I shall now show the dooms of which he speaks : 
 
 SONNET 92. 
 
 " But do thy worst to steal thyself away, 
 For term of life thou art assured mine ; 
 And life no longer than thy lore 7i-i7/ stay, 
 For it depends upon that love of thine. 
 Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, 
 When in the least of them my life hath end. 
 I see a better state to me belongs 
 Than that which on thy humour doth depend : 
 Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind, 
 Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie. 
 O, what a happy title do I find, 
 Happy to have thy love, /i <///> v to did 
 
 But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot? 
 Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not." 
 
 Here we have the " dooms." Shakespeare says 
 that life will stay no longer than his friend's love; 
 there can be little doubt but that Chapman refers to 
 these particular Sonnets. 
 
 Chapman, continuing his attack, says: 
 
 " And that I do not like our poets prefer, 
 For profit, praise, and keep a squeaking stir 
 With call'd-on Muses to unchild their brains 
 Of wind and vapour." 
 
 In these lines he again accuses Shakespeare of 
 
1 62 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 seeking pelf, as he does in many passages in the 
 earlier poems, and in the line 
 
 " With calFd-on Muses to unchild their brains " 
 
 refers to those Sonnets of Shakespeare's in which 
 he invokes his Muse as follows : 
 
 SONNET 78. 
 
 " So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse 
 And found such fair assistance in my verse, 
 As every alien pen hath got my use 
 And under thee their poesy disperse. 
 Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing 
 And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, 
 Have added feathers to the learned's wing 
 And given grace a double majesty. 
 Yet be most proud of that which I compile, 
 Whose influence is thine and born of thee : 
 In others' works thou dost but mend tlte style, 
 And arts with thy sweet graces graced be; 
 But thou art all my art, and dost advance 
 As high as learning my rude ignorance.'' 
 
 SONNET 79. 
 
 "Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, 
 My verse alone had all thy gentle grace ; 
 But now my gracious numbers are decay'd, 
 And my sick Muse doth give another place. 
 I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument 
 Deserves the travail of a worthier pen; 
 Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent 
 
CHAPMAN'S A TTACKS ON SHAKESPEARE. 163 
 
 J Ic rut> tlice of, and pays it thee again. 
 He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word 
 From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give, 
 And found it in thy check: he can afford 
 No praise to thee but what in thee doth live. 
 Then thank him not for that which lie doth say, 
 Since what he owes thee thou thyself doM pay." 
 
 Both these Sonnets belong to the same period as 
 the other Sonnets which Chapman has indicated in 
 this poem ; they were both also written as an attack 
 upon him, as were most of the other Sonnet^ t<> 
 which he refers. 
 
 There are several other Sonnets in which Shakes- 
 peare very distinctly calls upon his Muse to which 
 these lines of Chapman might refer, but I do not 
 think that they were written at this date. In the 
 looth Sonnet Shakespeare says: 
 
 " Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so 
 long," 
 
 and again 
 
 "Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem," 
 and yet again, 
 
 " Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey," 
 and in the loist Sonnet he says: 
 
 " truant Muse, what shall be thy amends," 
 also, 
 
164 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 " Make answer, Muse, wilt thou not haply say," 
 and so on. 
 
 In the next lines of this poem of Chapman's 
 which I shall quote, he probably refers to his recent 
 repulse in seeking Southampton's patronage: 
 
 " Though all the rotten spawn of earth reject me. 
 For though I now consume in poesy, 
 Yet Homer being my root I cannot die." 
 
 In the following passage I find the first, last, and 
 only admission upon Chapman's part that Shakes- 
 peare had any merit whatever: 
 
 " And though to rhyme and give a verse smooth 
 
 feet, 
 
 Uttering to vulgar palates passions sweet, 
 Chance often in such weak capricious spirits, 
 As in naught else have tolerable merits, 
 Yet where high poesy's native habit shines, 
 From whose reflections flow eternal lines, 
 Philosophy retired to darkest caves 
 She can discover," etc. 
 
 This admission is grudging, but it is very de- 
 scriptive of Shakespeare's style, as we would 
 imagine it judged by Chapman's mind. This poem 
 concludes with what looks like a paraphrase of one 
 of Shakespeare's own lines : 
 
 " But as ill-lines new filled with ink undried 
 An empty pen with their own stuff applied 
 
CHAPMAN 'S A TTA CKS ON SHAKESPEARE. I 6$ 
 
 Can blot them out: so shall their wealth-burst 
 
 wombs 
 Be made witn empty pen their honours' tombs." 
 
 Chapman, in writing these lines, possibly had the 
 following line of Shakespeare's in mind : 
 
 " Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew." 
 
 This is from the 86th Sonnet, to which I have 
 shown that Chapman has hitherto referred in this 
 poem. It is rather difficult to tell exactly what 
 Chapman means in this last passage; he possibly 
 refers to the nobleman who has rejected him, and 
 predicts for him the same lack of future fame from 
 Shakespeare's pen that Shakespeare in the 83d Son- 
 net predicts for his patron if sung by Chapman, 
 when he says : 
 
 " For I impair not beauty, being mute, 
 When others would bring life, and give a tomb." 
 
 It seems fairly evident, from the parallels which 
 I have here shown, that Chapman had read many 
 of Shakespeare's Sonnets while they were in manu- 
 script. In this poem his references, however, are 
 all to the particular sequence or series which refer 
 to the " rival poet " and to those which immediately 
 follow them. Chapman very evidently recognized 
 them as being directed against himself. 
 
 The evidences of Chapman's hostility to Shakes- 
 peare are somewhat more definite in this poem to 
 Harriots than in the poems of 1594 and 1595. I 
 
166 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 have already shown that Shakespeare answers 
 Chapman's covert sneers and criticisms of the 
 earlier years, in several of the Sonnets and in 
 " Love's Labor's Lost," and that he attacks that 
 poet's theories, which he attempts to evolve in " The 
 Shadow of Night " ; but Chapman has advanced 
 now beyond the nebulous stage of vague theoriz- 
 ing, and in the year 1598 challenges the approval 
 of the world as a translator of Homer. In his vari- 
 ous introductory poems and prefaces he claims a 
 very exalted plane, not only for Homer, but even 
 for the heroes of that poet's epics ; and for his own 
 work of translation he assumes a greatness beside 
 which he attempts to make all contemporary literary 
 efforts pale into insignificance. I shall now show 
 that Shakespeare takes issue with Chapman in 
 " Troilus and Cressida," and as he attacked his old 
 and vague ideals in " Love's Labor's Lost," so, in 
 this later play, he satirizes the new gods of his 
 worship. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LUS AND CRESSIDA," IN 1598. 
 
 IN irany important respects " Troilus and Cres- 
 sida " stands apart from all of Shakespeare's plays. 
 Us history, as well as its matter, has been a most 
 fruitful source of speculation for the critics. Pre- 
 vious to its final inclusion in the folio of 1623 it 
 seems to have had a most checkered career. The 
 theory here evolved, regarding the personal rela- 
 tions of Shakespeare and Chapman, throws a very 
 strong and new light both upon the play and its 
 history. 
 
 The first actual mention which we have of it is in 
 the year 1603, when it was entered for publication 
 in the " Stationers' Register " in the following 
 terms : " Master Roberts Feb'y 7th 1603. Entered 
 for his copy in full court holden this day, to print 
 when he hath got sufficient authority for it, the 
 book of Troilus and Cressida as it is acted by the 
 Lord Chamberlain's men." No publication fol- 
 lowed this entry ; we may, therefore, assume that the 
 authority to print was denied by the Lord Cham- 
 berlain. This qualifying clause, " When he hath 
 got sufficient authority for it," appears in the 
 " Stationers' Register," against entries for plays for 
 publication made by this man Roberts, seven times 
 
 167 
 
l68 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 between the year 1598 and 1603. In every instance 
 the plays are those which have been acted by the 
 Lord Chamberlain's men ; we find a like clause en- 
 tered occasionally against other publishers in those 
 years, but the entry of the clause against Roberts 
 outnumbers the entries against all other publishers 
 during that period. In 1598 a William Jones 
 entered Chapman's " Blind Beggar of Alexandria " 
 for publication, and against this entry appear the 
 words : " Upon condition that it belong to no other 
 man." From this we may infer that applicants for 
 entry of plays had to prove their ownership of the 
 plays to be entered, and failing to do so, that entry 
 was either refused or qualified as in the case of 
 Roberts' applications. This would certainly seem 
 to imply that Roberts had come by the manuscripts 
 of these plays dishonestly, and that he failed to 
 secure the necessary license to publish, through his 
 inability to prove ownership. Roberts at this 
 period, and for several years later, owned the right 
 or contract to print the players' bills for this com- 
 pany. This connection placed him in a very ad- 
 vantageous position to secure old manuscripts, or 
 to copy new ones. Roberts sold this right in 1613 
 to William Jaggard, who, with his son, ten years 
 later, printed the first folio edition of Shakespeare's 
 plays. 
 
 It has been supposed by some critics that the 
 play of " Troilus and Cressida," entered in 1603 in 
 the " Stationers' Register " by Roberts, was not 
 Shakespeare's, but one of Dekker and Chettle's, of 
 the same name. In Henslow's papers there are 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 169 
 
 entries of moneys advanced to these writers in 1599 
 for a promised play of this name. 
 
 This play was produced a short time after the 
 date of these entries, under the name of " Agamem- 
 non " ; the name, no doubt, being changed because 
 of the previous production of Shakespeare's " Troi- 
 lus and Cressida." However, that Roberts' entry 
 in 1603 refers to Shakespeare's " Troilus and Cres- 
 sida " is fully proved by the fact that all the other 
 entries made by this man, at this period, were of 
 plays previously produced by the Lord Chamber 
 Iain's company; the manuscripts of which he 
 secured through his business connection with tin- 
 theater ; and also by the fact that license to publish 
 was in every case refused by the Lord Chamberlain. 
 
 After the year 1603 the next actual mention that 
 we have of this play is in 1609, when it was pub- 
 lished by Bonian and Walley, twice in the same 
 year. The title-page of the first issue reads : " The 
 Historic of Troylus and Cresseida. As it was 
 acted by the King's Majesty's servants at the Globe. 
 Written by William Shakespeare. London. Im- 
 printed by G. Eld for Richard Bonian and Henry 
 Walley and are to be sold at the Spred Eagle* in 
 Paules Church Yeard, Over against the great North 
 doore. 1609." The title-page of the second issue 
 differs somewhat from the first, although the text 
 of the play in both issues is identical; it reads as 
 follows : 
 
 " The Famous Historic of Troylus and Cresseid. 
 Excellently expressing the beginning of their loves, 
 with the conceited wooing of Pandarus Prince of 
 
17 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Licia. Written by William Shakespeare. Lon- 
 don. Imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. 
 Walley, and are to be sold at the Spred Eagle in 
 Paules Church-yeard, over against the great north 
 doore. 1609." 
 
 It is now generally recognized that these were 
 not really two editions, but one edition in which for 
 some reason the title-page was changed. The 
 second issue of 1609, besides contradicting the 
 assertion made in the first issue, that it had been 
 " acted by the King's servants," differs from all the 
 quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays in that it was 
 published with a prefatory address, as follows : 
 
 "A NEVER WRITER TO AN EVER 
 READER. 
 
 " NEWS. 
 
 " Eternal reader, you have here a new play, never 
 staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with 
 the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the 
 palm comical; for it is a birth of your brain that 
 never undertook anything comical vainly : and were 
 btft the vain names of comedies changed for titles 
 of commodities or of plays for pleas, you should see 
 all those grand censors that now style them such 
 vanities flock to them for the main grace of their 
 gravities ; especially this author's comedies that are 
 so framed to the life, that they serve for the most 
 common commentaries of all the actions of our 
 lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit, 
 that the most displeased with plays are pleased with 
 
SHAfCESl'r.AXE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. I?' 
 
 his comedies. And all such dull and heavy-witted 
 worldlings as were never capable of the wit of a 
 comedy, coming by report of them to his representa- 
 tions have found that wit that they never found in 
 themselves, and have parted better witted than they 
 came; feeling an edge of wit set upon them more 
 than ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it 
 on. So much and such savoured salt of wit is in 
 his comedies, that they seem (for their height of 
 pleasure,) to be born in that sea that brought forth 
 Venus. Amongst all there is none more witty than 
 thi> ; and had I time I would ccinuu-nt upon it. 
 though I know it needs not (for so much as \\ill 
 make you think your testern well bestowed) ; but for 
 so much worth as even poor I know to be stuffed 
 in it, it deserves such a labour as well as the best 
 comedy in Terence or Plautus. And believe this, 
 that when he is gone unl his complies out of sale, 
 you will scramble for them and set up a new Eng- 
 lish Inquisition. Take this for a warning and at 
 the peril of your pleasure's loss and judgements, re- 
 fuse not nor like this the less for not being sullied 
 with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank 
 fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you 
 since by the grand possessors' wills I believe you 
 should have prayed for them rather than been 
 prayed. And so I leave all such to be prayed for 
 (for the states of their wits' health) that will not 
 praise it. Vale." 
 
 This play was not again printed till 1623, when 
 it was included in the folio; but even there it still 
 
172 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 seems to have been beset by accident ; it stands apart 
 from the other plays, in that no mention is made 
 of it in the catalogue, and that it occupies a place by 
 itself between the Histories and the Tragedies. It 
 seems to have been the first intention of the pub- 
 lishers to have included it in the Tragedies follow- 
 ing " Romeo and Juliet." All of its pages except 
 tfie first six are unnumbered, and those six run 
 from 79 to 84. " Romeo and Juliet " ends with 79, 
 but pages 77 and 78 are missing. ;< Timon of 
 Athens," which evidently takes the place of " Troi- 
 lus and Cressida," ends with page 98, and " Julius 
 Qesar," following it, begins with page 109. 
 "Troilus and Cressida " would just fill the lacking 
 number of pages. The reason for this change in 
 position must remain a matter of conjecture. A 
 comparison of the quarto edition of 1609 with the 
 text of the play as it appears in the folio shows 
 plainly that the folio edition is a revision or a com- 
 pilation made from the quarto and an older and 
 unrevised copy of the play, which was probably 
 used in the theater, and the manuscript of which 
 was, no doubt, held by Hemminge and Condell. 
 As the copyright of the quarto was owned by 
 Bonian and Walley or their successors, the pub- 
 lishers of the folio may have had some difficulty in 
 securing its use for their publication, which was not 
 adjusted till the remainder of the plays, including 
 the catalogue, were printed. This seems more rea- 
 sonable than the suggestion that it was removed 
 from the Tragedies to the Histories owing to a 
 doubt as to its class, as, in that event, the catalogue 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 173 
 
 of plays would have record of it, either in one class 
 or the other. 
 
 The title-page of both the issues of the quarto in 
 1609 reads, " The Historic of Troylus and Cres- 
 seida " ; the title-page of the folio reads, " The 
 Tragedy of Troylus and Cresseida " ; yet there can 
 be no doubt but that much of the new matter of the 
 revision of 1609 is included in the text of the folio; 
 consequently, the title-page of the folio was prob- 
 ably taken from an earlier and unrevised manu- 
 script, which was, as I have suggested, the property 
 of Hemminge and Condell and the version used in 
 the theater previous to 1609. 
 
 A very casual reading of " Troilus and Cressida " 
 fully establishes the fact of revision, and I am in- 
 clined to believe, of more than one revision. 
 
 To those students of Shakespeare who have fol- 
 lowed the development of the poet's style and art in 
 his plays, the characteristics of the early plays are 
 plainly discernible in " Troilus and Cressida," as 
 well as the matured style of his later years, but 
 should the internal evidence of style and matter not 
 be sufficient to some minds to definitely settle the 
 fact of the early production of this play, we have 
 one distinct outside reference that puts it beyond 
 peradventure. In the old play of " Histrio- 
 Mastix " written about 1598, and generally ac- 
 credited to Marston, appears the following passage : 
 
 " Troylus. Come, Cressida, my cresset light, 
 Thy face doth shine both day and night, 
 Behold, behold thy garter blue 
 
174 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Thy knight his valiant elbow wears, 
 That when he Shakes his furious Speare, 
 The foe, in shivering fearful sort. 
 May lay him down in death to snort. 
 
 " Cressida. O knight, with valour in thy face, 
 Here take my skreene, wear it for grace ; 
 Within thy helmet put the same, 
 Therewith to make thy enemies lame." 
 
 This passage obviously refers to an incident in 
 Shakespeare's play in Act V. scene 2, where Cres- 
 sida parts with Troilus' love token to Diomed. 
 
 The play upon the name of Shakespeare in the 
 line, 
 
 " That when he Shakes his furious Speare" 
 
 alone proves that the reference is to Shakespeare's 
 play. Thus we see that " Troilus and Cressida," 
 though not published before 1609, was in existence 
 and had probably been acted previous to 1599. 
 
 Another piece of evidence exists which, if looked 
 at critically, appears to be a reference to " Troilus 
 and Cressida" in or about 1598. In the list of 
 Shakespeare's plays which Meres gives us in 1598, 
 he mentions " Henry IV." ; whether or not the 
 second part of this play is included in this mention 
 is still a matter of conjecture. There can be no 
 doubt, however, that the Second Part of " Henry 
 IV." preceded " Henry V.," and we have fairly 
 definite proof that this latter play was acted in 
 1599, and probably written also in that year. The 
 proof to which I allude is the well-known reference 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. i?5 
 
 to the Earl of Essex* expected return from the 
 Irish wars, in the following passage in the Chorus 
 to Act V. : 
 
 " Were now the general of our gracious empress, 
 As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, 
 Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, 
 How many would the peaceful city quit 
 To welcome him ! " 
 
 Now in the Epilogue to Henry IV. Part II. we 
 have an allusion to some play of Shakespeare's that 
 was evidently produced, last preceding this one. 
 When the date is borne in mind, and the nature of 
 the allusion considered, it seems to refer very 
 plainly to " Troilus and Cressida." I do not know 
 of any other play of Shakespeare's, which, from any 
 known data or plausible inference, we can assign to 
 this period, and make fit the allusion, which is as 
 follows : 
 
 " Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was 
 lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray 
 your patience for it and to promise you a better. I 
 meant indeed to pay you with this." 
 
 In the list of extant plays of Shakespeare's which 
 Meres gives us early in 1598, in his " Palladis 
 Tamia," " Troilus and Cressida " is not mentioned ; 
 we may infer, then, that it was produced sometime 
 between the middle of 1598 and the spring of 1599. 
 It has been sometimes claimed that " Troilus and 
 Cressida " was Shakespeare's contribution to, or 
 
176 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 share in, what is commonly known as the " War of 
 the Theatres," and that he personified Jonson in the 
 character of Ajax, and Marston or Dekker as Ther- 
 sites. This play, as I have before suggested, shows 
 plain evidence of revision, and perhaps of more 
 than one revision: Shakespeare may have altered it 
 somewhat, in 1600 or 1601, for the purpose sug- 
 gested; but, whether he did so or not, it was not 
 originally produced with this intention. We have 
 very strong evidence that Shakespeare took no sides 
 in this quarrel, and even if he did, " Troilus and 
 Cressida " was produced, as has been proved, pre- 
 vious to its inception. That it was written in 1598, 
 as a satirical attack upon Chapman's Homer- 
 worship, I am convinced and believe 1 can prove, 
 and also that it was revised by the poet himself, and 
 published in 1609, m answer to a new attack of 
 Chapman's of that date. I have already pointed 
 out that " Love's Labor's Lost " was written in 
 1594-95, in answer to Chapman's slurs at Shakes- 
 peare, in his publications of that period, and how 
 later, in 1598, it was revised and published, in an- 
 swer to Chapman's new attempts upon his patron's 
 favor with his seven books of Homer. The title- 
 page of the quarto of 1598 reads : " Newly cor- 
 rected and augmented by William Shakespeare," 
 but, without this evidence, we can plainly see the 
 traces of revision in the play; we may, therefore, 
 conclude that Shakespeare was fully cognizant of 
 its publication, and that he revised it with this in- 
 tention. So with " Troilus and Cressida," it was 
 written in 1598 as a travesty upon Chapman's fill- 
 
StfAA'ESPE AXE'S SATIKE OA' CHAPMAN. 177 
 
 some laudation of Homer and his Greek heroes, 
 which is so strongly displayed in the prefaces and 
 addresses to the seven books of the Iliad, issued 
 that year; and was revised and published in 1609, 
 upon the publication of Chapman's " Tears of 
 Peace," in which poem he not only attacks Shakes- 
 peare, but also prepares his public for the twelve 
 books of Homer; which he issued later in the same 
 year with a great flourish of trumpets. 
 
 It is impossible, now, to definitely divide the 
 earlier play from the revised portions of the later 
 period, or to show all the satirical passages which 
 distinctly indicate each period, though many indica- 
 tive passages may be shown which are palpably 
 of the earlier year. 
 
 In attempting to separate the satirical allusions of 
 each period, I am guided not only by the more 
 openly personal touches which show the earlier 
 years, or more formative stage of Shakespeare's 
 art, and the greater frequency of rhyme which indi- 
 cates the early plays of the Sonnet period, but also 
 by the strong light of the personal theory of the 
 Sonnets as touching the " dark lady," who, I be- 
 lieve, is here introduced in the character of Cres- 
 sida, as she was introduced in 1594-95 in "Love's 
 Labor's Lost " in the character of Rosaline. 
 
 I have already shown the touches of satire in 
 " Love's Labor's Lost," but they are little more than 
 touches. It was produced in the springtide of the 
 poet's infatuation for this woman; the shafts of 
 Chapman's envy and malice scarcely penetrated the 
 armor of life's gladness with which this exultant 
 
I7 8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 passion at that period clothed him, and his satire 
 hides itself in playful comedy. Fame was fresh and 
 love was young ; the world smiled upon him, and his 
 idol, Southampton, called him friend; but in 1598 
 the times are changed, or changing. Sonnets 78 to 
 96 reveal the strength of his rival and show a wan- 
 ing of his friend's love. He is evidently left in 
 doubt as to Southampton's intentions regarding 
 Chapman, and a period of coolness follows. 
 
 Many of the Sonnets from 100 onwards, written 
 sometime later, show plainly that there has been an 
 estrangement between the poet and his friend. 
 
 Shakespeare's love for the " dark lady " has lost 
 now its ideality ; he is disillusioned ; he has come to 
 see that fickleness is inherent with her; that she is 
 absolutely sensuous and a light-o'-love. 
 
 Sonnet 140 foreshadows the catastrophe: 
 
 " If I might teach thee wit, better it were, 
 Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so ; 
 As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, 
 No news but health from their physicians know ; 
 For, if I should despair, I should grow mad, 
 And in my madness might speak ill of thee : 
 Now this ill-wrestling world is grown so bad, 
 Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. 
 That I may not be so, nor thou belied. 
 Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart 
 go wide." 
 
 This is the beginning of the end; the end itself 
 is pictured in Cressida's faithlessness. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 1 79 
 
 Sonnet 129, on the sexual passion, is evidently 
 of this period ; we find it almost paraphrased in Act 
 I. scene 2 of " Troilus and Cressida " : 
 
 " Women are angels wooing : 
 Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing: 
 That she beloved knows nought that knows not 
 
 this: 
 
 Men prize the thing ungained more than it is ; 
 That she was never yet, that ever knew 
 Love got so sweet as when desire did sue: 
 Therefore this maxim out of love I teach 
 Achievement is command ; ungained, beseech." 
 
 His love proves false, his friend grows cold, and 
 his rival gains in power. These changes have come 
 rapidly ; Shakespeare, so recently smiled upon in 
 all his goings, is not prepared for them; it is too 
 sudden to be calmly digested. His mind has not 
 yet resolved adversity ; the matured wisdom of the 
 period of " The Tempest " has yet to be attained : 
 his opponent angers him his unnatural views of 
 life, his Greek idolatry, and his constant and spite- 
 ful abuse disgust him, and he vents his anger and 
 disgust in satire. 
 
 " Troilus and Cressida " is a satire pure and 
 simple, and Shakespeare's conception is not attained 
 if it is read in any other light. 
 
 In Roberts' entry the play is called " The book of 
 Troilus and Cressida " ; the quartos name it a 
 " Historic " ; the folio a " Tragedy " ; and the prefa- 
 
l8o SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 tory address a " Comedy." What it was in Shakes- 
 peare's eyes, we may judge from the prefatory ad- 
 dress in the second issue of the quarto in 1609. 
 There can be little doubt, from the tone of this ad- 
 dress, that the writer of it was fully in Shakespeare's 
 confidence as to the purport of the play as it ap- 
 peared in that year. Nearly all critics have taken 
 this play seriously as a Tragedy or History. 'Her- 
 man Ulrici recognizes the satire; he supposes it 
 to be an impersonal satirical tragedy reflecting upon 
 the classicist cult in general. It is rather sug- 
 gestive, then, that the writer of the prefatory address 
 should so plainly indicate the satire, and practically 
 tell the public that there is a hidden meaning in the 
 play if they will seek it ; he several times mentions 
 it as a comedy and says : " So much and such 
 savoured salt of wit is in his comedies, that they 
 seem for the height of pleasure to be born in the 
 sea that brought forth Venus. Amongst all there 
 is none more witty than this, and had I time I 
 would comment on it; but for so much worth as 
 even poor I know to be stuffed in it, it deserves such 
 a labour as well as the best comedy in Terence or 
 Plautus," etc., etc. This is very strange language 
 to use in speaking of what so many critics have ac- 
 cepted as a dark and bloody tragedy. Whoever 
 was the writer of this address, I doubt if he would 
 so plainly have seen what has escaped the eyes of 
 many later critics, if he had not been taken into the 
 confidence of the writer of the play. The words, 
 " but for so much worth as even poor I know to be 
 stuffed in it," bespeak a knowledge deeper than that 
 
S A TIKE ON CHAPMAN. 181 
 
 which would have come from his own unaided 
 reading. 
 
 This writer seems also to defend Shakespeare 
 from the very attack made by Chapman, which I 
 believe induced him to revise and publish the play 
 in 1609. He says: 
 
 " And were but the vain names of comedies 
 changed for titles of commodities, or of plays for 
 pleas, you should see all those grand censors that 
 now style them such vanities, flock to them for the 
 main grace of their gravities, and all such dull and 
 heavy-witted worldlings as were never capable of 
 the wit of a comedy, coming by report of them to 
 his representation, have found that wit that they 
 never found in themselves, and have parted better 
 witted than they came, feeling an edge of wit set 
 upon them, more than ever they dreamed they had 
 brain to grind it on." 
 
 Though the writer generalizes here, and uses the 
 plural all through the passage, he merely does as 
 Chapman does in his attacks upon Shakespeare, but 
 that that poet in his wrath sometimes gets his num- 
 bers mixed ; he at times begins a sentence as if indi- 
 cating a class, using the plural " those," and " they," 
 and ends his sentence as if indicating an individual, 
 using the singular " he," " him," and " his " ; his 
 venom proving too strong for his grammar, which, 
 notwithstanding his erudition, often becomes in- 
 volved when he grows argumentative. 
 
 The fact that the writer of the prefatory address 
 
182 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 refers to the " grand censors " whom he attacks, 
 as " Never " having been " capable of the wit of a 
 comedy," warrants the assumption that the person 
 or persons he had in mind were writers who had at 
 least tried their hands at matter of that nature ; and 
 were in all probability rival dramatists. This prefa- 
 tory address, however, did not appear until 1609, 
 when it was printed in the second issue of the play 
 in that year; and of course may be read as appli- 
 cable only to the satire of that date. 
 
 Those touches of satire directed against Chap- 
 man that are indicative of the earlier period, and 
 which it is now possible to trace, are milder, though 
 more personal, than the satire of the later period. 
 
 The love episodes, with the faithlessness of Cres- 
 sida, are undoubtedly of the earlier year. From the 
 I/ evidence of the Sonnets I am led to the belief that 
 Shakespeare's connection with the "dark lady." 
 which had now lasted from three to four years, had 
 a disagreeable ending about this time, and that its 
 culmination is depicted in Cressida's perfidy. 
 
 The character of Achilles, as given us by Shakes- 
 peare, belongs also, I believe, to 1598, and was the 
 central point of Shakespeare's satire upon Chap- 
 man's Greek worship at that date. In dedicating 
 the seven books of the Iliad to the Earl of Essex, 
 Chapman lauds that nobleman's " Achillean vir- 
 tues," and compares him to that character. This 
 dedication, or an equally fulsome one, was, no 
 doubt, first addressed to Southampton, and was the 
 cause of Shakespeare's Sonnets against Chapman 
 at that time, and also the reason for the satire in 
 
SHAXESPEAKE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 183 
 
 " Troilus and Cressida," which he probably wrote 
 while still in doubt as to whether or not his patron 
 intended to accept Chapman's advances. The fact 
 that there are no extant dedications from Chapman 
 to Southampton, of this or the earlier period in 1594 
 or 1595, proves that Shakespeare was successful in 
 his expostulations with Southampton, in defeating 
 Chapman's encroachments. I have already proved 
 that Chapman must have read Shakespeare's series 
 of Sonnets, 78 to 96, at about this time, and cer- 
 tainly while they were still in manuscript ; the refer- 
 ences which he makes to them in his poem to Har- 
 riots are in two or three instances very plain. It 
 is, therefore, reasonable to infer that Shakespeare 
 had also seen Chapman's dedications and poems in 
 manuscript this year while they were in Southamp- 
 ton's hands, and previous to their publication. 
 
 The character of " Achilles," which Chapman so 
 belauds, becomes in Shakespeare's play that of a 
 brutal coward and bully. The play was, no doubt, 
 produced very shortly after the publication of Chap- 
 man's Iliad, and its intention very evidently at once 
 recognized by that poet, as within a few months 
 of the issue of the seven books of the Iliad he pro- 
 duced, separately, a single book the i8th Iliad, 
 under the title of " Achilles' Shield " ; dedicating it 
 also, very fulsomely, to Essex. Both the title and 
 dedication of this publication denote a defensive 
 attitude. It is very evident that his gods have been 
 attacked, and that he issued this book as a defense, 
 as well as a counter-attack upon his assailant. He 
 never before or afterwards published a book of the 
 
I$4 SHAKESPEARE AXD THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Iliad singly. To " Achilles' Shield " he appended 
 the poem to his friend Harriots wherein he attacks 
 Shakespeare, and clearly indicates him as the con- 
 temner of his hero Achilles, whom he defends. The 
 passages indicating Shakespeare in that poem will, I 
 believe, convince all of their indicative intention 
 who will compare them critically with those Sonnets 
 of Shakespeare's to which I have suggested that 
 they allude. It will be noticed that Shakespeare, in 
 his version of the story of Achilles, represents him 
 as sulking in his tent from wounded vanity, and also 
 because of an intrigue in which he is involved with 
 Polyxena, one of Priam's daughters; against which 
 version of the story Chapman issued the i8th book 
 of the Iliad, in order to give Homer's version 
 of Achilles' reasons for inaction. In attacking 
 Shakespeare in the poem which he appends to this 
 book, he very evidently alludes to the inaccuracy of 
 Shakespeare's sources when he says : 
 
 " Absurd and vain, 
 
 Most students in their whole instructions are, 
 But in traditions more particular; 
 Leaning like rotten houses on out beams." 
 
 To the earlier period, also, I would assign a cer- 
 tain passage in which the sense very obviously 
 points at Chapman, and in which his name is, I 
 think, actually mentioned. I assign this passage to 
 1598, because it reveals a too strongly personal and 
 subjective phase of Shakespeare's art to be at- 
 tributed to the later period. It seems, too, to be 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 185 
 
 practically a repetition of a very similar indicative 
 passage which I find in " Love's Labor's Lost " ; 
 which latter play was revised and published that 
 year, with the same intention that " Troilus and 
 Cressida" was written : both were intended as traves- 
 ties upon Chapman and his ideas. In each of these 
 passages in the two plays, the word " Chapmen " is 
 used, and in both instances the sense of the passage, 
 as well as the actual word, points at Chapman ; the 
 sense, too, when applied to the context in the play, 
 appears in both cases somewhat strained. 
 
 These two are the only plays of which we have 
 any proof that they were revised by Shakespeare 
 himself for publication. 
 
 The title-page of the quarto of " Love's Labor's 
 Lost " states clearly that it was " revised and aug- 
 mented by William Shakespeare," and the text of 
 the play plainly shows extensive alterations. The 
 prefatory address, as well as the title-page of the 
 second issue of the quarto of 1609, state that the 
 play is practically a new one; having been written 
 and revised by Shakespeare. These are also the 
 only plays in which caricature or satire is strongly 
 suggested; they are the only plays in which this 
 word " Chapmen " is used ; not once again in all his 
 poems or plays can it be found. In the light of all 
 this it will hardly be denied that the word was used 
 by Shakespeare as a personality. 
 
 We will first consider the passage in " Love's 
 Labor's Lost " in which this word appears. 
 
 In the 2 ist Sonnet I have conclusively proved 
 that Shakespeare refers satirically to Chapman's 
 
1 86 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 poem entitled " The Amorous Zodiac," and that he 
 compares the purely private character of his own 
 Sonnets to his patron with the avowed purpose to 
 publish which Chapman acknowledges in his poem, 
 when he says: 
 
 " Yet will I thee, through all the world disperse, 
 If not in heaven among those braving fires 
 Yet here, thy beauty, which the world admires, 
 Bright as those flames shall glister in my verse." 
 
 Against which Shakespeare in the 2ist Sonnet 
 says: 
 
 " And then believe me, my love is as fair 
 As any mother's child, though not so bright 
 As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air ; 
 
 Let them say more that like of hearsay well ; 
 
 I will not praise that purpose not to sell." 
 
 When this stroke, which Shakespeare makes at 
 Chapman's mercenary motives, is compared with the 
 passage from " Love's Labor's Lost," as follows, 
 
 " My beauty, though but mean, 
 Needs not the painted flourish of your praise ; 
 Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye, 
 Not uttered by base sale of chapmen's tongues," 
 
 the same idea is found to be repeated, and the word 
 " chapmen " is merely used to give the intended 
 personal point, it has no relation whatever to the 
 play as shown in the context. Lord Boyet, the 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAX. 187 
 
 Princess' attendant, to whom she addresses these 
 words in answer to his flattering praise of her per- 
 sonal charms, is certainly no " chapman," nor is 
 he making any " base sale." 
 
 Again, when in " Troilus and Cressida " the word 
 " chapmen " is used, in a somewhat different sense, 
 it indicates Chapman in a new light in 1598. 
 
 Diomed, addressing Paris and speaking of Helen, 
 says: 
 
 " Diomed. She's bitter to our country : hear me, 
 
 Paris : 
 
 For every false drop in her bawdy veins 
 A Grecian's life hath sunk ; for every scruple 
 Of her contaminated carrion weight, 
 A Trojan hath been slain: since she could speak, 
 She hath not given so many good words breath 
 As for her Greeks and Trojans suffered death. 
 
 Paris. Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do, 
 Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy : 
 But we in silence hold this virtue well, 
 We'll not commend what we intend to sell." 
 
 No poet at that time, and in fact all through his 
 life, so persistently sought the patronage of the 
 great as Chapman ; and none so bitterly condemned 
 a like spirit in other poets. No poet so eagerly 
 sought fame, yet none so abused and belittled it: 
 in this way he constantly " dispraised the thing " 
 that he " desired to buy." It is this trait of Chap- 
 man's to which Shakespeare alludes in the first two 
 lines of Paris' speech. 
 
1 88 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 In the next two lines, 
 
 " But we in silence hold this virtue well, 
 We'll not commend what we intend to sell," 
 
 Shakespeare makes a thrust at the fulsomely lauda- 
 tory commendations which Chapman gives his own 
 works in the prefaces, poems, and addresses with 
 which he usually heralds his publications. 
 
 A critical reading of this play will, I believe, 
 justify my contention that the satirical indications 
 here noted belong to the earlier period. 
 
 In considering the satirical nature of the play 
 relative to the period of 1609, I shall, in the next 
 chapter, first show Shakespeare's reasons for the 
 enlargement and publication of his satire in that 
 year. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE UPON CHAPMAN IN "TROI- 
 
 LUS AND CRESSIDA," IN 1609. 
 
 ALL of Chapman's original poems, from the ear- 
 liest to the latest, reveal in that poet a most abnor- 
 mal sel f -consciousness ; he seems to find it impos- 
 sible ever to forget himself or his woes. 
 
 This fault, inherent with him, grows stronger 
 with the years; the plaintive self-pitying note we 
 find in the poems of 1594 and 1595 becomes, in his 
 poem to Harriots in 1598, a savage snarl, and by 
 1609 develops, in " The Tears of Peace," into ran- 
 corous and abusive misanthropy. 
 
 His ill success in winning patronage and friends 
 for his undoubtedly great works was, no doubt, in a 
 large measure due to his unfortunate disposition. 
 He seems to have had a most overweening sense of 
 his own importance ; to have been absolutely tactless, 
 and quite destitute of a sense of humor. 
 
 In his early poems he abuses his rivals and scorns 
 the ignorant multitude; in his later poems he runs 
 amuck, and all classes and conditions come within 
 the measure of his wrath. 
 
 In his poem to Harriots he breaks out in this wise : 
 
 " Continue then your sweet judicial kindness 
 To your true friend, that though this lump of 
 blindness 
 
 180 
 
190 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 This scornful, this despised, inverted world, 
 Whose head is fury-like with adders cuiTd 
 And all her bulk a poison'd porcupine, 
 Her stings and quills darting at worths divine, 
 Keep under my estate with all contempt, 
 And make me live even from myself exempt, 
 Yet if you see some gleams of wrestling fire 
 Break from my spirit's oppression, showing desire 
 To become worthy to partake your skill, 
 Since virtue's first and chief step is to will, 
 Comfort me with it, and prove you affect me, 
 Though all the rotten spawn of earth reject me." 
 
 This passage is fairly representative of the misan- 
 thropic strain which runs through all his original 
 verse, and many passages can be shown of even a 
 bitterer tone. While he abuses the world in general 
 so bitterly, he reserves the very dregs of his spleen 
 for his great rival. We may almost trace the 
 growth of Shakespeare's fortune and estate, as well 
 as of his literary prestige, by chronologically follow- 
 ing and noting the tone of Chapman's invectives 
 against him. 
 
 In 1609 Chapman produced what was up till that 
 time the most ambitious literary effort of his life; 
 the translation of twelve books of the Iliad, which 
 he issued under the title of " Homer, Prince of 
 Poets." So conscious is he of the importance of 
 his work that, not content with the fulsome poetical 
 and prose dedications to Prince Henry, he, in six- 
 teen sonnets, calls upon as many noblemen to the 
 following of Homer and incidentally to the patron- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 191 
 
 age of Chapman. A few months previous to this 
 publication he issued a poem called " The Tears of 
 Peace," dedicating it also to Prince Henry of Wales. 
 This poem was meant as a precursor to, or adver- 
 tisement for, his coming twelve books of the Iliad. 
 
 In this poem, as well as in the prose dedications 
 to his Homeric translations, and also in two of the 
 sixteen dedicatory sonnets, he covertly indicates and 
 scurrilously attacks Shakespeare. 
 
 Shakespeare did not wait for the publication of 
 the Iliad, but, recognizing the intended personalities 
 of Chapman in " The Tears of Peace," immediately 
 revised and published " Troilus and Cressida " as a 
 counter-attack. It is rather suggestive that Shakes- 
 peare used the same publishers to issue this play 
 that Chapman had shortly before employed to pub- 
 lish his " Tears of Peace." The prefatory address, 
 which very evidently makes allusions to Chapman's 
 strictures on Shakespeare's plays in " The Tears of 
 Peace," in all likelihood emanated from these pub- 
 lishers. 
 
 In " The Tears of Peace " Chapman commences 
 with an induction, in which he introduces the spirit 
 of Homer and the spirit of Peace, and also pictures 
 himself as being in the spirit ; he then follows with 
 an invocation in which he first calls upon the nine 
 Muses, then upon Henry, Prince of Wales; he be- 
 seeches the Prince to dry the eyes of the mournful 
 Muses and of weeping Peace, which shed tears of 
 
 " The precious blood 
 Of Heaven's dear Lamb that freshly bleeds in them." 
 
I9 2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE Rll'AL POET. 
 
 He then invokes the Prince to 
 
 " Deign to raise 
 
 The heavy body of my humble Muse 
 That thy great Homer's spirit in her may use 
 Her topless flight, and bear thy fame above 
 The reach of mortals and their earthly love ; 
 To that high honour his Achilles won, 
 And make thy glory far outshine the sun." 
 
 Shakespeare has been accused of being too ful- 
 some in his praise of his patron's grace and merits 
 in certain of his Sonnets. The most flattering of 
 his Sonnets sinks into commonplace greeting when 
 compared with this incongruous and impious non- 
 sense. After indulging in this tearfully sentimental 
 religiosity, he commences " The Tears of Peace " 
 proper; wherein, while apparently chanting a 
 psalm of pious resignation, extolling peace, poverty, 
 and contentment, and deprecating fame and fortune 
 as things of little moment to his religious and philo- 
 sophic soul, he most extravagantly belauds his com- 
 ing publication and abuses and berates the world 
 and all that therein is. He also spitefully attacks 
 and indicates Shakespeare. 
 
 In this poem there are many fine lines and 
 passages; in fact, Chapman here reaches in many 
 places a higher point of poetic excellence than in 
 any of his original verse : he is also clearer and more 
 logical than usual, and holds more consistently to his 
 argument. In it he evidently eased his soul of all 
 that he tried, but failed, to utter some years before 
 in " The Shadow of Night." 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 193 
 
 The envious and misanthropic state of Chapman's 
 mind at this period, as revealed in this poem, and the 
 broad and general slurs which he casts at Shakes- 
 peare, cannot be fully shown by extracts; it is in- 
 fused into the spirit of the whole poem, which HUM 
 be read for it to be fully apprehended, 
 
 In a few passages which I shall quote, \\\> indica- 
 tions are fairly definite. Representing the spirit of 
 Peace as speaking, he says : 
 
 "Of men there are three sorts that most foes be 
 To Learning and her love, themselves and me. 
 Active, Passive, and Intellective men, 
 Whose self-loves, learning and her love disdain. 
 
 . . . Your Passive men 
 So call'd of only passing time in vain 
 Pass it in no good exercise, but are 
 In meats and cups laborious, and take care 
 To lose without all care their soul-spent time. 
 And since they have no means nor spirits to 
 
 climb, 
 
 Like fowls of prey, in any high affair, 
 See how like kites they bangle in the air 
 To stoop at scraps and garbage, in respect 
 Of that which men of true peace should select, 
 And how they trot out in their lives the ring 
 With idly iterating oft one thing 
 A new-fought combat, an affair at sea, 
 A marriage, or a progress, or a plea. 
 No news but fits them as if made for them, 
 Though it be forged, but of a woman's dream ; 
 
194 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 And stuff with such stolen ends their manless 
 
 breasts 
 Sticks, rags, and mud they seem mere puttocks' 
 
 This passage, critically read, reveals not only 
 Chapman's usual and characteristic slings at Shakes- 
 peare's lack of learning, but shows expressions pur- 
 posely used to indicate our poet, and in the last lines 
 almost names his plays ; it actually does name Un- 
 well-known materials from which he constructs 
 them. Besides these indications, it also gives strong 
 corroborative evidence of the truth of the persistent 
 rumors which have come down to us of Shakes- 
 peare's sociable habits ; and throws a side light upon 
 those merry meetings where conviviality, tempered 
 by wit and wisdom, fired the spirits of Shakespeare, 
 Ben Jonson, and their compeers, to the wit combats 
 recorded by Beaumont in the lines: 
 
 " What things have we seen 
 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
 As if that everyone from whence they came, 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
 And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life." 
 
 To Chapman's dyspeptic soul this was " passing 
 time in vain " ; being " in meats and cups laborious," 
 and " passing without all care their soul-spent time." 
 In the next lines of this passage Chapman harps on 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 195 
 
 his old theme of Shakespeare's ignorance of the 
 classics and his general lack of learning, as follows : 
 
 " And since they have no means nor spirits to 
 
 climb, 
 
 Like fowls of prey, in any high affair, 
 See how like kites they bangle in the air 
 To stoop at scraps and garbage, in respect 
 Of that which men of true peace should select." 
 
 I have hitherto shown that Chapman refers to 
 Shakespeare's " small Latin and lees Greek " in 
 other poems, where he writes of 
 
 " Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify," 
 
 and of those who are 
 
 " Absurd and vain 
 ... in their whole instructions . . . 
 
 Leaning like rotten houses on out beams," 
 
 indicating by these expressions the stray transla- 
 tions from which Shakespeare borrowed the plots 
 of certain of his poems and plays. 
 
 In the passage just quoted from " The Tears of 
 Peace " he used the terms " scraps and garbage " in 
 the same disdainful sense, and alluded to the miscel- 
 laneous and fragmentary sources of the plots of 
 Shakespeare's plays, in contradistinction to his own 
 continuously followed theme and purpose of 
 Homeric translation. 
 
 The next passage is so plainly leveled at Shakes- 
 peare that it does not need elucidation: 
 
I9 6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 " And how they trot out in their lives the ring 
 With idly iterating oft one thing 
 A new-fought combat, an affair at sea, 
 A marriage, or a progress, or a pica. 
 No news but fits them as if made for them, 
 Though it be forged, but of a wnnun's dream; 
 And stuff with such stolen ends their manless 
 
 breasts 
 Sticks, rags, and mud they seem mere Buttocks' 
 
 nests." 
 
 Here we have a list of the well-known stock ma- 
 terials of Shakespeare's plays. There is no other 
 Elizabethan writer to whom this stroke can be ap- 
 plied, as no other writer of that day used all these 
 materials, and as Chapman says " iterated " them. 
 In this passage, however, our poet is indicated 1>\ a 
 veiled allusion, as well as this very palpable refer- 
 ence to his plays. In an earlier chapter I have 
 shown that Spenser very evidently alludes to Shakes- 
 peare under the name of " ^tion," in the lines : 
 
 " And there, though last not least, is JEtion ; 
 A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found : 
 Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, 
 Doth like himself heroically sound." 
 
 Besides making a very palpable allusion to the 
 name of Shakespeare in the last line of this passage, 
 Spenser here indicates Shakespeare's well-known 
 falcon crest by the use of the word " ^Etion," which 
 is derived from the Greek aetos, an eagle. In the 
 passage from Chapman just analyzed, that poet indi- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 19? 
 
 cates Shakespeare in the same manner, but that he 
 uses as mean types of the falcon family as he can 
 find" kite " and " puttock." If this was the only 
 place where Chapman used these or synonymous 
 terms, the indication I suggest might be deemed 
 strained ; but when we see the same idea twice again 
 used, and avowedly used in an indicative sense, in 
 another attack which Chapman makes upon our 
 poet, it passes mere coincidence and lays bare the 
 intended point. 
 
 In the preface to the complete edition of the 
 Iliad published in 1611, Chapman says: 
 
 " But there's a certain envious windsucker that 
 hovers up and down engrossing all the air with his 
 luxurious ambitions, and buzzing into every ear my 
 detraction ; affirming I turn Homer out of the latin 
 only, that sets all his associates and the whole rabble 
 of my maligners on the wing with him to hear about 
 my impair and poison my reputation. One that as 
 he thinks whatever he gives to others he takes from 
 himself, so that whatsoever he takes from others he 
 adds to himself; one that in this kind of robbing 
 doth like Mercury, but stole good, and supplied it 
 with counterfeit bad still ; one like the two gluttons 
 Philoxenus and Gnatho, that would spit upon the 
 dishes they loved, that no man might eat but them- 
 selves ; for so this kestrel, with too hot a liver and 
 lust after his own glory, and to devour all himself, 
 discourageth all appetite to the fame of another. / 
 have stricken; single him if you can." 
 
19 8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Here is a distinct challenge : " Single him if you 
 can." These words prove that Chapman in this 
 passage has given some indication by which his foe 
 may be discerned. He commences by calling him 
 a " windsucker " and ends by naming him a " kes- 
 trel." Now a windsucker, a kestrel, a puttock, and 
 a kite are practically the same thing; they are all 
 mean species of the falcon family, and the words are 
 undoubtedly used in both passages derisively, and 
 to indicate Shakespeare, as referring to his falcon 
 crest. Chapman would not use these terms four 
 times unless with an indicative object ; when he 
 grows merely abusive he can use, and does use, 
 much nastier epithets. 
 
 In this poem, " The Tears of Peace," there are 
 many other less indicative allusions to Shakespeare 
 which a critical reading will reveal. It was written, 
 as I have already noted, as a precursor to his twelve 
 books of the Iliad, which were published a few 
 months later in the same year. 
 
 In two of the sixteen dedicatory sonnets to this 
 publication I find what I believe to be an intended 
 thrust at Shakespeare. Among the noblemen whose 
 favor he seeks he addresses both the Earl of South- 
 ampton and the Earl of Pembroke. These being the 
 only two noblemen of whom we have any definite 
 record of their having shown favor to Shakespeare, 
 it is interesting to notice that, in the prefatory 
 lines to each of the sonnets addressed to these noble- 
 men. Chapman uses a characteristic expression, 
 indicative of his feeling towards Shakespeare, which 
 is not to be found in any of the other sonnets, writ- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 199 
 
 ten at the same time, and with the same avowed 
 object, to the other noblemen whom he addresses. 
 We have seen in previous poems and dedications 
 how often Chapman refers to and indicates Shakes- 
 peare by the use of the terms " ignorants," and 
 " ignorance." " Ignorance and impiety " is a com- 
 mon charge of his against our poet. The induc- 
 tion to the sonnet to Southampton reads : 
 
 " To the right valorous and virtuous Lord, the 
 Earl of Southampton, etc. 
 
 " The Muses' great herald, Homer, especially 
 calls to the following of our most forward Prince, 
 in his sacred expedition against Ignorance and Im- 
 piety." 
 
 The address to the sonnet to Pembroke reads : 
 
 " To the learned and most noble patron of learn- 
 ing, the Earl of Pembroke," etc. 
 
 " Against the two Enemies of Humanity and Re- 
 ligion (Ignorance and Impiety) the awaked spirit of 
 the most knowing and divine Homer, calls to at- 
 tendance of our heroical Prince, the most honoured 
 and uncorrupted hero, the Earl of Pembroke," etc. 
 
 Seeing that these words, " Ignorance and Im- 
 piety," occur, out of all the sixteen dedications, 
 only in those addressed to the two noblemen whom 
 we know showed favor to Shakespeare, and that the 
 same term is constantly used in other attacks against 
 our poet, it is but reasonable to infer that Shakes- 
 peare is here again intended. 
 
200 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 The charge of " ignorance," which Chapman 
 makes against Shakespeare, is found in the earliest 
 as well as the latest attacks ; but the charge of 
 " impiety " commences only after the production of 
 Shakespeare's satire in " Troilus and Cressida " 
 upon Chapman's Homer-worship. It will be no- 
 ticed that Chapman, in many places, makes most 
 absurd and incongruous claims for the sanctity of 
 Homer and his Greeks. 
 
 I shall now endeavor, in a general way, to outline 
 the satire in the play of " Troilus and Cressida," 
 which belongs to the period of its revision and pub- 
 lication in 1609. 
 
 In the years that have elapsed between the pro- 
 duction of the play in 1598 and its revision and pub- 
 lication in 1609, Shakespeare has thoroughly mas- 
 tered the dramatic art. He no longer uses mere 
 personalities to indicate Chapman, as in " Love's 
 Labor's Lost " and in those parts of " Troilus and 
 Cressida " which we can assign to the same period. 
 In 1609 the hostility between the two poets was, no 
 doubt, a matter of wider public cognizance, and the 
 shafts they aimed at each other, even when not so 
 personal, were better understood than in the earlier 
 period of their rivalry. Chapman's inordinate 
 praise of Homer has by now developed with him 
 almost into a religion. He never speaks of him but 
 as " divine Homer," and he even begins to claim a 
 like moral pre-eminence, not only for the characters 
 in Homer's Iliad, but also some shadow of it for 
 himself. I shall quote a passage from " Troilus and 
 Cressida " which I believe is of this period and is 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 201 
 
 intended by Shakespeare to indicate this pose of 
 Chapman's mind. Hector, speaking of Helen, says 
 to Troilus : 
 
 " Hect. Brother, she is not worth what she doth 
 
 cost 
 The holding. 
 
 " Tro. What's aught, but as 'tis valued? 
 
 " Hect. But value dwells not in particular will ; 
 It holds its estimate and dignity 
 As well wherein 'tis precious of itself 
 As in the prizer ; 'tis mad idolatry 
 To make the service greater than the god; 
 And the will dotes, that is attributive 
 To what infectiously itself affects, 
 Without some image of the affected merit." 
 
 While I believe this passage to be a side stroke at 
 Chapman, it is so veiled that it reads perfectly into 
 the sense of the context, in which Priam's sons 
 argue the merits of the cause of the war. This 
 argument between the brothers is very evidently of 
 the later period, and strongly shows the falsity of 
 Chapman's claims for the moral and religious worth 
 with which he tries to invest Homer and his heroes. 
 Hector says : 
 
 " If Helen then be wife to Sparta's king, 
 As it is known she is ; these moral laws 
 Of nature and of nations speak aloud 
 To have her back return'd : thus to persist 
 In doing wrong, extenuates not wrong, 
 But makes it much more heavy. Hector's opinion 
 
202 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Is this in way of truth : yet, ne'ertheless, 
 
 My spritely brethren, I propend to you 
 
 In resolution to keep Helen still; 
 
 For 'tis a cause that hath no mean dependence 
 
 Upon our joint and several dignities. 
 
 " Tro. Why, there you touch'd the life of our 
 
 design : 
 
 Were it not glory that we more affected 
 Than the performance of our heaving spleens, 
 I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood 
 Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, 
 She is a theme of honour and renown ; 
 A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds, 
 Whose present courage may beat down our foes, 
 And fame in time to come canonize us : 
 For, I presume, brave Hector would not lose 
 So rich advantage of a promised glory 
 As smiles upon the forehead of this action 
 For the wide world's revenue." 
 
 Here Shakespeare plainly divests Helen and the 
 cause of the war of all the moral altitude claimed by 
 Chapman, and attributes to the characters the same 
 mere thirst for martial glory which fired the breasts 
 of warriors in his own day. 
 
 In this play Shakespeare has woven his satire so 
 intimately into the subject, and with such masterly 
 objective art, that hitherto, even to the most analytic 
 critics, the idea of satire has been merely a matter 
 of supposition, and many have failed entirely to per- 
 ceive it. 
 
 In all his plays Shakespeare follows the narrative 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 203 
 
 very closely, as it appears in the sources from which 
 he works. " Troilus and Cressida " is no excep- 
 tion to this rule. There can be little doubt that, for 
 the general outline of his play, Shakespeare used 
 Chaucer's poem, of " Troylus and Cryseyde." He 
 also made some use of Lydgate's " Troye Book/' and 
 Caxton's " Recuyell of the historyes of Troye,"' but 
 there are no incidents used in* this play, which are 
 found in these two latter sources, that' are not also 
 to be found in Chaucer's poem. Chapman's transla- 
 tion of the seven books of Homor, published in 1598, 
 is also mentioned by many critics as one of Shakes- 
 peare's sources. The only feature of the play di- 
 rectly traceable to this work of Chapman's is the 
 character of Thersites, and in using this character, 
 I am convinced that Shakespeare intentionally cas- 
 tigates Chapman with a rod of his own making. I 
 do not think that this character was used in the 
 earlier pla*y of 1598, but, if it was, it was enlarged 
 and deepened, upon the revision of the play in 1609, 
 as a personal attack upon Chapman. Thersites, as 
 shown us by Chapman in a short passage in the 2d 
 book of the Iliad, is a deformed and foul-mouthed 
 jester. As depicted by Shakespeare, the physical 
 deformity is scarcely noticed, but a misanthropic, 
 spiteful, and envious, though strong and analytic, 
 mentality appears. He becomes satire and misan- 
 thropy personified. Coleridge, who was quite un- 
 conscious of the personalities, and oblivious of the 
 satire intended by Shakespeare, describes Thersites 
 as the " admirable portrait of intellectual power, de- 
 serted by all grace ; wise enough to detect the weak 
 
204 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 head, and fool enough to provoke the armed fist of 
 his betters." In Shakespeare's play none are too 
 high nor too sacred to be free from the venom of 
 his tongue. Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon himself, 
 and even old Nestor, all come in for his abuse; he 
 even abuses himself ; he berates Trojans and Greeks, 
 individually and collectively, the war, and the ob- 
 ject of the war, with all the scurrilous invective of 
 an analytic and inventive, but distorted and envious, 
 mentality. 
 
 In personifying Chapman's repellent disposition 
 and envious nature in this character, the subtlety and 
 strength of the attack revealed against that poc 
 ceed, in satirical point and force, anything of a like 
 nature in our tongue. 
 
 If the personal touches in Chapman's original 
 poems, from the earliest to the latest, be followed, a 
 most abnormally envious, self-centered, and misan- 
 thropic individuality, accentuating in bitterness with 
 the years, will be displayed. The character of 
 Thcrsites, extravagant caricature as at first sight it 
 may appear, pales into a resemblance very near to 
 portraiture, when compared with the personality 
 there to be found. Much of the force and sting of 
 the satire lies in the fact that Shakespeare uses 
 Chapman's own personality in this character, to cast 
 in clear relief the moral obliquity and low ethical 
 standards of the gods of that poet's own ardent wor- 
 ship and fulsome praise. 
 
 Chapman claims supremacy for Homer, not only 
 as a poet, but as a moralist, and, as I have hitherto 
 noticed, extends his claims for moral altitude to in- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SATIRE ON CHAPMAN. 205 
 
 elude the heroes of his epics. Shakespeare divests 
 the Greek heroes of the glowing, but misty, nimbus 
 of legend and mythology, and presents them to us in 
 the light of common day, and as men in a world of 
 men. In a modern Elizabethan setting he pictures 
 these Greeks and Trojans, almost exactly as they 
 appear in the sources from which he works. He 
 does not stretch the truth of what he finds, nor draw 
 willfully distorted pictures, and yet, the Achilles, 
 the Ulysses, the Ajax, etc., which we find in the 
 play, have lost their demigodlike pose. How does 
 he do it ? The masterly realistic and satirical effect 
 he produces comes wholly from a changed point of 
 view. He displays pagan Greek and Trojan life in 
 action with its low ideals of religion, womanhood, 
 and honor ; with its bloodiness and sensuality upon 
 a background front which he has eliminated his- 
 torical perspective. Thus, in the light of Chris- 
 tian civilization and chivalric ideals, Achilles be- 
 comes a disgruntled bully and coward ; Ajax a 
 frothy boaster ; Patroclus a pimp ; Nestor a dotard ; 
 Diomed a libertine; Agamemnon a mock king; 
 Ulysses a Machiavellian opportunist ; and Helen and 
 Cressida wantons. The satirical effect is vastly 
 enhanced, and its intention revealed, by the intro- 
 duction of the character of Thersites, which runs as 
 a scornful and gibing commentary through the 
 whole play. 
 
 While Shakespeare was, no doubt, moved in the 
 first place to this satire by personal considerations 
 incidental to his enmity to Chapman, I cannot but 
 believe that, in Chapman's exorbitant claims for 
 
206 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POLL 
 
 " divine Homer," and in the incongruous religiosity 
 with which he invested Homer's heroes, and the high 
 moral plane upon which he placed them, Shakes- 
 peare's sane and judicial mind not only recognized 
 the falsity and sham, but, to some extent, appre- 
 hended the evil effect which such an extravagant 
 admiration and indiscriminate acceptance of old- 
 world and pagan ideals might have, not only upon 
 our budding English literature, but even upon Eng- 
 lish life. 
 
 After the death of Shakespeare, and indeed for 
 some time before it, the classicist movement inaugu- 
 rated by the Renaissance gained by slow, but sure, 
 stages upon our distinctively English literature and 
 threatened for a long period to quite engulf it, but 
 the healthy growth which it had already attained in 
 Elizabethan days, and the established status which 
 the dominant pen of Shakespeare, and the fine dis- 
 crimination of the translators of the authorized ver- 
 sion of the Bible had given our English tongue, en- 
 abled it in time to reassert itself, strengthened and 
 beautified by the classicist purgation through which 
 it had passed. 
 
 It is curious and interesting, then, to notice al- 
 most at the inception of the classicist movement the 
 unavowed, but real champions of these divergent 
 schools, moved apparently by a personal enmity, 
 locking horns in combat, unconsciously, but none the 
 less really, over an issue which it took two more 
 centuries to decide. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I DOUBT if any reader who has followed the argu- 
 ments and proofs which I have adduced in the fore- 
 going pages will fail to see that the patron, the rival, 
 and the mistress of the Sonnets, were living actuali- 
 ties. The identity of the patron and rival, I believe, 
 is definitely proved ; I have not attempted to prove 
 that of the " dark lady," but think that it may yet be 
 done. In 1594, on September 3, a poem called 
 " Willobie his Avisa " was licensed for publication. 
 In the following prefatory verses to that poem we 
 have one of the earliest extant mentions of Shakes- 
 peare's name. 
 
 " In La vine land, though Livy boast 
 There hath been seen a constant dame ; 
 Though Rome lament that she have lost 
 The garland of her rarest fame; 
 Yet now we see that here is found, 
 As great a faith in English ground. 
 Though Collatine have dearly bought 
 To high renown a lasting life 
 And found, that, most in vain have sought 
 To have a fair and constant wife 
 Yet Tarquin pluckt his glittering grape 
 And Shakespeare paints poor Lucrece' rape," 
 
 207 
 
208 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Here we have Shakespeare mentioned by name. 
 Two of the characters in the story of this poem have 
 initials which coincide exactly with those of Shakes- 
 peare and Southampton : " Henry Willobie and W. 
 S." The libelous nature and intention of the poem 
 is revealed in the fact that, upon its second issue in 
 1596, it was condemned by the public censor and 
 withdrawn from print. 
 
 I am strongly of the opinion, held by many critic. 
 that this poem refers to Shakespeare and Southamp- 
 ton, and to their acquaintance with the " dark- 
 lady " of the Sonnets, who is here given the name of 
 " Avisa," but I do not agree with those same critics 
 in the opinion that this poem refers to the period of 
 the affair with the " dark lady " revealed in the 
 Sonnets, but am inclined to believe that it alludes to 
 an earlier period of Shakespeare's acquaintance 
 with this woman, which antedates this affair by 
 nearly two years. 
 
 Shakespeare's attack upon Chapman's " Amorous 
 Zodiac," in the 2Oth and 2ist Sonnets, and his refer- 
 ences to the " Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy." 
 in the 6o,tlr and 7Oth Sonnets, which I date shortly 
 after the issue of these poems in 1595, were all an- 
 terior to Sonnets 30, 31, and 32, 40, 41, and 42, 
 which reveal Southampton's culpability. The fol- 
 lowing lines from the 7Oth Sonnet are undoubtedly 
 of an earlier time: 
 
 " And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. 
 Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, 
 Either not assail'd, or victor being charged." 
 
CONCLUSION. 209 
 
 If the " H. W. and \V. S." of " Willobie his 
 Avisa " denote Shakespeare or Southampton, the 
 story there told refers to the earlier stages of the 
 poet's friendship with the " dark lady." In the 
 early verses of this poem " Avisa " is unmarried; in 
 the later verses she is married. 
 
 Her home, while she was still unmarried, is de- 
 scribed as being somewhere in the country, as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 " At east of this a castle stands ; 
 By ancient shepherds built of old ; 
 And lately was in shepherds' hands ; 
 Though now by brothers bought and sold. 
 At west side springs a crystal well, 
 There doth this chaste Avisa dwell. 
 
 " In sea-bred soil, on Tempe downs ; 
 Whose silver spring from Neptune's well, 
 With mirth salutes the neighbouring towns," etc. 
 
 The latter verses, which show her as married, de- 
 scribe quite a different residence, which is evidently 
 in London. 
 
 " See yonder house, where hangs the badge 
 Of England's saint, when captains cry 
 Victorious laud to conquering rage, 
 Lo there my hopeless help doth lie; 
 And there that friendly foe doth dwell, 
 That makes my heart thus rage and swell." 
 
 Her connections, now, are also described as of 
 " meanest trade," consequently, " the badge of Eng- 
 
210 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 land's saint " cannot be armorial, but is, very prob- 
 ably, the sign of an inn. Avisa, then, has married 
 an innkeeper; the inn is known as the George, or 
 the St. George and Dragon. 
 
 This will probably account for the fact that 
 Shakespeare and Southampton, nobleman and 
 player, could alike meet her on the same social foot- 
 ing. The very intimate knowledge of tavern life 
 which Shakespeare shows us in many of his plays 
 was, no doubt, the fruit of his experience. The 
 story in this poem shows no indiscretion upon the 
 part of Avisa ; both H. W. and W. S. are represented 
 as being unsuccessful in their intrigues and assaults. 
 This poem, upon its first publication in 1594, was 
 allowed to pass unchallenged; in 1596, however 
 (in which year I date Southampton's infidelity to 
 Shakespeare, during the latter's absence in Strat- 
 ford), upon its second issue, it was immediately con- 
 demned by the public censor as libelous. This 
 action of the censor shows that the object of the 
 libel at this date felt the stroke and complained, and 
 shows also that the complainant was a man of some 
 consequence, to have secured such speedy action 
 from his protest. Many of Shakespeare's Sonnets to 
 the " dark lady " show a much more advanced stage 
 in their affair than that shown in " Willobie 
 his Avisa." Southampton's indiscretion was evi- 
 dently a very temporary thing, and his re- 
 pentance and apology seem to follow closely upon 
 the avowal of his fault. I believe that Shakespeare 
 wrote " The Two Gentlemen of Verona " in 1594, 
 and that the experiences of Proteus and Valentine 
 
CONCLUSION. 211 
 
 to some extent portray the facts in his own and his 
 friend's ease. 
 
 Assuming, then, that Avisa and the " dark lady " 
 are one and the same person, it is not impossible 
 that research might yet reveal her identity. The 
 allusions to her early and later homes which we get 
 in this poem, and which were evidently used with 
 indicative intention, may yet be followed out. It is 
 possible, then, that the identity of the " dark lady " 
 is not an insoluble mystery. There is not much to 
 be gained, however, even could we definitely iden- 
 tify this woman. 
 
 The female characters of Shakespeare's plays 
 which are more plainly his own ideal conceptions of 
 womanhood differ from this recurring sensuous and 
 fleshly personality which first appears in " Love's 
 Labor's Lost " as Rosaline, and later in " Troilus 
 and Cressida " as Cressida, and afterwards as Cleo- 
 patra only in the added sensuousness ; she always 
 retains, to some extent, that captivating elusiveness 
 of all Shakespeare's women. I have used the ex- 
 pression " his own ideal conception of womanhood," 
 but no man, not even Shakespeare, ever evolved 
 from his own consciousness such witchery of fem- 
 ininity as his female characters reveal. To have at- 
 tained such mastery of this subject, he must have 
 closely studied, not women, but a woman, and that 
 woman a very " daughter of Eve " ; one who, even 
 in her faults and vices, preserved an " infinite vari- 
 ety " of charm. 
 
 " Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, 
 That in the very refuse of thy deeds, 
 
212 SHAKESPEARE AND THE KIVAL POET. 
 
 There is such strength, and warrantise of skill, 
 That in my mind, thy worst, all best exceeds ? " 
 
 This woman appears as Rosaline in the initiatory 
 stages of the poet's enslavement in 1594 or 1595 
 (though I think I perceive a few added touches of 
 the date of the revision of this play in this char- 
 acter). She shows as Cressida when the bloom of 
 love is worn away and the ideal is lost in lust, and 
 as Cleopatra some time afterwards, when the whole 
 affair has become a reminiscence : " would I had 
 never seen her ! " says Antony. " O, sir," replies 
 Enobarbus, " you had then left unseen a wonderful 
 piece of work ; which not to have been blessed 
 withal, would have discredited your travel." 
 
 Whatever the real facts concerning Shakespeare's 
 connection with this woman may hare been, there 
 can be no doubt that he loved her and idealized her 
 with his love, and that, finally, his ideal was shat- 
 tered ; but to her influence upon his mind we owe 
 some of his greatest and most inspired work. No 
 one can read " Romeo and Juliet " without feeling 
 and knowing that the writer had experienced the 
 full force of what he pictured ; no one but a lover 
 could have written what Mr. Gollancz calls " This 
 song of songs of romantic passion." 
 
 It has not been my intention, in treating of this 
 matter, either to exaggerate or palliate our poet's 
 fault, but to portray him as he was, and as I believe 
 he himself would prefer to be shown. " Paint the 
 \vart," said Cromwell to his flattering limner. " I 
 am that I am," says Shakespeare, alluding to those 
 
CONCLUSION. 3 13 
 
 who gossiped of his frailties. Let us, then, take him 
 as we find him ; neglecting nothing that will enable 
 us to better understand and appreciate his great 
 genius. 
 
 The character of Southampton must necessarily in- 
 terest us on account of his friendship for, and favor 
 shown to, Shakespeare. The faults of this young 
 nobleman's character were largely due to his en- 
 vironment from infancy. Heir to vast estate, and 
 an only son, to whom, at an early age, were lost the 
 firm control and careful guidance of his father; 
 petted and spoiled, no doubt, as a child, and indulged 
 as a youth ; he presents withal, in manhood, a noble 
 figure, and reveals a generous and lovable nature. 
 He was a typical Elizabethan, fully imbued with the 
 virile spirit of the time; a man of action, though 
 hampered, by his wealth and position, in individual 
 effort. He entered, like Raleigh, into the coloniz- 
 ing schemes of the day, as the names of Southamp- 
 ton River, Hampton Hundreds, and Hampton Roads 
 in Virginia, bear record. He was a liberal patron of 
 the arts and a true lover of literature. 
 
 A single-minded and high-tempered man of 
 strong passions, with no capacity for the intrigue of 
 politics, he was yet drawn into its maelstrom by his 
 fidelity to his friends. A favorite at the Court of 
 James, though no courtier nor timeserver, he sacri- 
 ficed his prospects, by opposing the encroachment of 
 the kingly power upon the rights of the people. As 
 a sailor, he won renown in action against the 
 Spanish fleet while still a youth, and he ended his 
 days as a soldier, fighting in the cause of European 
 
214 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 Protestantism, surviving his great protege by but 
 eight years. The debt which the world owes him, 
 for his encouragement and favor to Shakespeare, 
 has never been fully realized. 
 
 In turning from a consideration of Southampton's 
 character to that of Chapman, I do not feel that I 
 can be entirely just to the latter. Southampton is 
 often represented as a pleasure-loving and pampered 
 young aristocrat of somewhat loose principles. 
 George Chapman, as a man, is usually taken at his 
 own valuation ; that is, as a saintly, learned, and dig- 
 nified philosopher, and a contemner of vice. This 
 was undoubtedly his pose, but I am drawn strongly 
 to the belief that he was more or less of a humbug. 
 He protested most vociferously against the imputa- 
 tion that he had translated Homer out of the Latin, 
 and attempted to prove by most inconclusive argu- 
 ments that he used the Greek only. The Rev. Rich- 
 ard Hooper, who writes rather sympathetically than 
 otherwise regarding Chapman, in the preface to his 
 edition of Chapman's Iliad (1875), asserts that 
 Chapman undoubtedly used the Latin of Scapula in 
 nearly all his translations. 
 
 In 1594, in his first poem, "The Shadow of 
 Night," he takes a very lofty pose, scorning and 
 contemning the sensuous trivialities of other poets. 
 His poem, however, won him little fame, and noth- 
 ing more substantial. In the next year, suiting him- 
 self, as he supposes, to his public, he out-Herods 
 Herod, in the first and only effort he makes at sen- 
 suous verse. Failing in this also, he reassumes his 
 high moral altitude, and begins to tell the world of 
 
CONCLUSION. 215 
 
 other great things he will do. As a dramatist, his 
 comedies are dismal failures, and his tragedies 
 cloudy blood and thunder. As a poet, his intense 
 egotism kills his art by precluding objectivity. 
 
 He at various times succeeded in securing the 
 favor of patrons, but seems always to have failed in 
 holding their interest. Where his own unfortunate 
 disposition did not lose them, fate seemed to be 
 against him. Late in 1598 he appears to have in- 
 terested the Earl of Essex ; two years later Essex 
 went to the block. In 1609 Prince Henry of Wales 
 showed him some favor and seemed inclined to con- 
 tinue it ; three years later this young prince died. 
 The nobleman who favored him for the longest 
 period, the Earl of Somerset, was himself a social 
 pariah ; but in this case Chapman's lamentable lack 
 of common sense and tact lost him forever the favor 
 of the Court. 
 
 Chapman outlived Shakespeare by many years, 
 and died as he had lived, scorning humanity, abus- 
 ing and abused. 
 
 His great translations, however, have kept and 
 will, no doubt, keep his name alive. 
 
 It has often been remarked that the greatest of all 
 our English poets is to us only a name. This is true 
 in more senses than one: applied to a grasp of his 
 personality, it is true with even students of Shakes- 
 peare ; applied to a knowledge of his works, it is true 
 with respect to a great many people who consider 
 themselves well read. It has grown into habit with 
 such people to acknowledge Shakespeare's pre- 
 eminence and let it rest there. The woeful lack of 
 
2l6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POl-.T. 
 
 even an elementary knowledge of the poet and his 
 works is exemplified by the comparatively large 
 amount of interest which has been evoked, in recent 
 years, by an attempted recrudescence of what has 
 been called the " Baconian theory." 
 
 The interest which this theory temporarily evoked 
 has, however, been sufficient to kill it, so that it has, 
 after all, done more good than harm, in bringing 
 many people to a study of the poet's works who 
 would otherwise have neglected them. 
 
 None can fail to expand their mental horizon who 
 study Shakespeare, and they who arouse in them- 
 selves an abiding interest in his works have enlarged 
 and intensified their lives. Ben Jonson truly said: 
 " He is not of an age, he is for all time." He is not 
 only perennial, but all-pervading; he arouses as 
 much interest when translated into foreign tongues 
 as in his own, but to the man of his own blood and 
 tongue he is more than a poet or dramatist ; he is the 
 poet and dramatist par excellence. 
 
 As a people, we are supposed to lack artistic 
 sense; Frenchmen shrug their shoulders at our 
 paintings ; Germans and Italians smile askance at 
 our music ; sculpture does not flourish with us. We 
 undoubtedly have and have had great painters, great 
 composers, and even sculptors, but in these branches 
 of art our excellence is not inherent it is borrowed ; 
 other peoples are our masters. Our highest ideal 
 in art is not expressed by color, nor in marble, nor 
 yet with notes of music; the former are too sen- 
 suous and material for our northern imagination, 
 music is too vague for our practical nature. What, 
 
CONCLUSION. 217 
 
 then, is our natural material? The truest medium 
 by which we best express our highest ideal of 
 beauty and of truth? The English language! 
 With this we satisfy, not only the sense, in the har- 
 monious combination of beautiful words, but also 
 the sense of sense intellectual beauty, in the ex- 
 pression of the idea. 
 
 Poetry is the Englishman's art. 
 
 Less sensuous than the pleasure-loving romance 
 peoples, more practical than the theoretical and 
 dreamy Teuton ; that blending of Celt and Norse- 
 Teuton that being of initiative and will, which we 
 call the Anglo-Saxon expresses his highest ideal of 
 beauty, not with dead pigments, nor in cold marble, 
 nor yet by beautiful, but indefinite, sound, but with 
 living and breathing words. So Shakespeare 
 wrought with our material, the word, which is 
 the voice of the spirit of deeds and of things, 
 subordinating, with truest art, beauty to use, till use 
 became beauty. This, then, is the secret of Shakes- 
 peare's unchallenged place in our national life : he is 
 the concrete embodiment of the artistic ideal of our 
 forceful and virile race. What all vaguely feel, he 
 not only felt, but expressed. The dim and nebulous 
 glimmerings of beauty which come at times to all of 
 us, and pass unuttered, found life and expression in 
 his pen. 
 
 The most remarkable thing about the genius of 
 Shakespeare is his wonderful sanity; his perceptive 
 and reflective faculties were equally developed ; 
 nothing escaped his eye, and his mind digests to use, 
 and transmutes to beauty, all that comes into his 
 
218 SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET. 
 
 vision. He has no touch of the madness allied to 
 wit which we so often find in such extremely sensi- 
 tive and susceptible natures. He was one with 
 nature ; his genius was not a sport, it was a develop- 
 ment; it grew as a tree grows, strengthening and 
 spreading with the years, taking more of the sun and 
 the light, yet ever striking its roots deeper into the 
 heart of things. Placed by his fate in a position 
 where he came in contact with all classes, and where 
 he could acquire a varied experience of life, he had 
 not only the power to put on record what he saw 
 and felt of common life, but also to clearly, yet beau- 
 tifully, express the subtlest shades of most ardent 
 and inspired thought. 
 
 His pervasive mind felt and saw all things, not 
 only in detail and outline, but innately and in spirit. 
 He did not, like Chapman, stand apart from the 
 world in brooding and scornful disdain, but entered 
 into it; he gave himself to the world, and the world 
 gave itself to him. He was of no school nature 
 was his book and school. Book-learning he used as 
 mere scaffolding and framework, upon which to 
 build that which he derived from nature. 
 
 The inevitable sadness of human life, the natural 
 result of infinite aspiration linked to finite mortality, 
 never develops with him into a worship of sorrow, 
 but sounds low and sweet like a minor chord, lend- 
 ing proper harmony to the great song of life he 
 sings. 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 
 GEORGE CHAPMAN, 
 
' 
 
 , 
 
THE POEMS OF GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
 THE SHADOW OF NIGHT. 
 [I594-] 
 
 TO 
 MY DEAR AND MOST WORTHY FRIEND 
 
 MASTER MATTHEW ROYDON. 
 
 IT is an exceeding rapture of delight in the deep 
 search of knowledge (none knoweth better than 
 thyself, sweet Matthew) that maketh men manfully 
 indure the extremes incident to that Herculean 
 labour: from flints must the Gorgonean fount be 
 smitten. Men must be shod by Mercury, girt with 
 Saturn's adamantine sword, take the shield from 
 Pallas, the helm from Pluto, and have the eyes of 
 Graea (as Hesiodus arms Perseus against Medusa) 
 before they can cut off the viperous head of be- 
 numbing ignorance, or subdue their monstrous 
 affections to most beautiful judgment. 
 
 How then may a man stay his marvailing to see 
 passion-driven men, reading but to curtail a tedi- 
 ous hour, and altogether hidebound with affection 
 to great men's fancies, take upon them as killing 
 censures as if they were judgment's butchers, or as 
 if the life of truth lay tottering in their verdicts. 
 
 Now what a supererogation in wit this is, to 
 
322 THE POEMS OF 
 
 think Skill so mightily pierced with their loves, that 
 she should prostitutely shew them her secrets, when 
 she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with 
 invocation, fasting, watching; yea, not without hav- 
 ing drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar. 
 Why then should our Intonsi C atones with their 
 profit-ravished gravity esteem her true favours such 
 questionless vanities, as with what part soever 
 thereof they seem to be something delighted, they 
 queamishly commend it for a pretty toy ? Good Lord 
 how serious and eternal are their idolatrous platts 
 for riches! No marvel sure they here do so much 
 good with them. And heaven no doubt will grovel 
 on the earth (as they do) to imbrace them. But I 
 stay this spleen when I remember, my good Matthew, 
 how joyfully oftentimes you reported unto me, that 
 most ingenious Darby, deep-searching Northumber- 
 land, and skill-embracing heir of Hunsdon had 
 most profitably entertained learning in themselves, 
 to the vital warmth of freezing science, and to the 
 admirable lustre of their true nobility, whose high- 
 deserving virtues may cause me hereafter strike 
 that fire out of darkness, which the brightest Day 
 shall envy for beauty. I should write more but my 
 hasting out of town taketh me from the paper, so 
 preferring thy allowance in this poor and strange 
 trifle, to the passport of a whole City of others, I 
 rest as resolute as Seneca, satisfying myself if but 
 a few, if one, or if none like it. 
 
 By the true admirer of thy virtues and perfectly 
 vowed friend, 
 
 G. CHAPMAN. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 223 
 
 HYMNUS IN NOCTEM. 
 
 GREAT goddess, to whose throne in Cynthian fires, 
 This earthly altar endless fumes expires; 
 Therefore, in fumes of sighs and fires of grief, 
 To fearful chances thou send'st bold relief, 
 Happy, thrice happy type, and nurse of death, 
 Who, breathless, feeds on nothing but our breath, 
 In whom must virtue and her issue live, 
 Or die for ever; now let humour give 
 Seas to mine eyes, that I may quickly weep 
 The shipwrack of the world : or let soft sleep 
 (Binding my senses) loose my working soui, 
 That in her highest pitch she may control 
 The court of skill, compact of mystery 
 Wanting but franchisement and memory 
 To reach all secrets: then in blissful trance, 
 Raise her, dear night, to that perseverance, 
 That in my torture, she all Earth's may sing, 
 And force to tremble in her trumpeting 
 Heaven's crystal temples; in her powers implant 
 Skill of my griefs, and she can nothing want. 
 
 Then like fierce bolts, well ramm'd with heat and 
 
 cold 
 
 In Jove's artillery, my words unfold, 
 To break the labyrinth of every ear, 
 And make each frightened soul come forth and 
 
 hear. 
 
224 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Let them break hearts, as well as yielding airs, 
 That all men's bosoms (pierced with no affairs 
 But gain of riches) may be lanced wide, 
 And with the threats of virtue terrified. 
 
 Sorrow's dear sovereign, and the queen of rest, 
 That when unlightsome, vast, and indigest, 
 The formless matter of this world did lie, 
 Fill'd'st every place with thy divinity, 
 Why did thy absolute and endless sway 
 License heaven's torch, the sceptre of the day, 
 Distinguish'd intercession to thy throne, 
 That long before, all matchless ruled alone? 
 Why lett'st thou Order, orderless disperse 
 The righting parents of this universe? 
 When earth, the air, and sea, in fire remain'd ; 
 When fire, the sea, and earth, the air contain'd ; 
 When air, the earth, and fire, the sea enclosed; 
 When sea, fire, air, in earth were indisposed ; 
 Nothing, as now, remain'd so out of kind, 
 All things in gross, were finer than refined, 
 Substance was sound within, and had no being ; 
 Now form gives being, all our essence seeming, 
 Chaos had soul without a body then. 
 Now bodies live without the souls of men, 
 Lumps being digested; monsters in our pride. 
 
 And as a wealthy fount that hills did hide, 
 Let forth by labour of industrious hands, 
 Pours out her treasure through the fruitful strands, 
 Seemly divided to a hundred streams, 
 Whose beauties shed such profitable beams, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 2*5 
 
 And make such Orphean music in their courses, 
 
 That cities follow their enchanting forces; 
 
 Who running far, at length each pours her heart 
 
 Into the bosom of the gulfy clesart, 
 
 As much confounded there and indigest, 
 
 As in the chaos of the hills comprest: 
 
 So all things now (extract out of the prime) 
 
 Are turn'd to chaos, and confound the time. 
 
 A step-dame Night of mind about us clings, 
 Who broods beneath her hell-obscuring wings, 
 Worlds of confusion, where the soul defamed, 
 The body had been better never framed, 
 Beneath thy soft and peaceful covert then 
 (Most sacred mother both of gods and men), 
 Treasures unknown, and more unprized did dwell ; 
 But in the blind-born shadow of this hell, 
 This horrid step-dame, blindness of the mind, 
 Nought worth the sight, no sight, but worse than 
 
 blind, 
 
 A Gorgon, that with brass and snaky brows 
 (Most harlot-like) her naked secrets shows; 
 For in th' expansure, and distinct attire 
 Of light, and darkness, of the sea, and fire; 
 Of air, and earth, and all, all these create, 
 First set and ruled, in most harmonious state, 
 Disjunction shows, in all things now amiss, 
 By that first order what confusion is: 
 Religious curb, that managed men in bounds, 
 Of public welfare, loathing private grounds 
 (Now cast away by self-love's paramours), 
 All are transform'd to Caledonian boars, 
 
226 THE POEMS OF 
 
 That kill our bleeding vines, displough our fields, 
 Rend groves in pieces ; all things nature yields 
 Supplanting: tumbling up in hills of dearth, 
 The fruitful disposition of the earth, 
 Ruin creates men : all to slaughter bent, 
 Like envy, fed with others' famishment. 
 
 And what makes men without the parts of men, 
 Or in their manhoods, less than childeren, 
 But manless natures? All this world was named 
 A world of him, for whom it first was framed, 
 Who (like a tender cheveril) shrunk with fire 
 Of base ambition, and of self-desire, 
 His arms into his shoulders crept for fear 
 Bounty should use them ; and fierce rape forbear, 
 His legs into his greedy belly run, 
 The charge of hospitality to shun. 
 In him the world is to a lump reversed 
 That shrunk from form, that was by form dis- 
 persed, 
 
 And in nought more than thankless avarice, 
 Not rendering virtue her deserved price: 
 Kind Amalthea was transferr'd by Jove, 
 Into his sparkling pavement, for her love, 
 Though but a goat, and giving him her milk; 
 Baseness is flinty, gentry soft as silk, 
 In heavens she lives, and rules a living sign 
 In human bodies : yet not so divine, 
 That she can work her kindness in our hearts. 
 
 The senseless Argive ship, for her deserts, 
 Bearing to Colchos, and for bringing back 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 227 
 
 The hardy Argonauts, secure of wrack, 
 
 The fautor, and the god of gratitude, 
 
 Would not from number of the stars exclude. 
 
 A thousand such examples could I cite 
 
 To damn stone-peasants, that like Typhons fight 
 
 Against their Maker, and contend to be 
 
 Of kings, the abject slaves of drudgery. 
 
 Proud of their thraldom: love the kindest least, 
 
 And hate, not to be hated of the best. 
 
 If then we frame man's figure by his mind, 
 And that at first, his fashion was assigned, 
 Erection in such god-like excellence 
 For his soul's sake, and her intelligence : 
 She so degenerate, and grown depress'd, 
 Content to share affections with a beast; 
 The shape wherewith he should be now endued 
 Must bear no sign of man's similitude. 
 Therefore Promethean poets with the coals 
 Of their most genial, more-than-human souls 
 In living verse, created men like these, 
 With shapes of Centaurs, Harpies, Lapithes, 
 That they in prime of erudition, 
 When almost savage vulgar men were grown, 
 Seeing themselves in those Pierian founts, 
 Might mend their minds, ashamed of such ac- 
 counts : 
 
 So when ye hear the sweetest Muse's son, 
 With heavenly rapture of his music won 
 Rocks, forests, floods, and winds to leave their 
 
 course 
 In his attendance: it bewrays the force 
 
228 THE POEMS OF 
 
 His wisdom had, to draw men grown so rude 
 To civil love of art and fortitude, 
 And not for teaching others insolence 
 Had he his date-exceeding excellence 
 With sovereign poets, but for use applied, 
 And in his proper acts exemplified. 
 
 And that in calming the infernal kind, 
 To wit, the perturbations of his mind, 
 And bringing his Eurydice from hell 
 (Which justice signifies) is proved well. 
 But if in right's observance any man 
 Look back, with boldness less than Orphean, 
 Soon falls he to the hell from whence he n 
 The fiction then would temperature dispose 
 In all the tender motives of the mind, 
 To make man worthy his hell-daunting kind. 
 The golden chain of Homer's high device 
 Ambition is, or cursed avarice, 
 Which all gods haling being tied to Jove, 
 Him from his settled height could never nu> 
 Intending this, that though that powerful chain 
 Of most Herculean vigour to constrain 
 Men from true virtue, or their pristine states 
 Attempt a man that manless changes hates, 
 And is ennobled with a deathless love 
 Of things eternal, dignified above: 
 Nothing shall stir him from adorning still 
 This shape with virtue, and his power with will. 
 
 But as rude painters that contend to show 
 Beasts, fowls, or fish, all artless to bestow 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 220 
 
 On every side his native counterfeit, 
 Above his head, his name had need to set : 
 So men that will be men, in more than face 
 (As in their foreheads), should in actions place 
 More perfect characters, to prove they be 
 No mockers of their first nobility, 
 Else may they easily pass for beasts or fowls : 
 Souls praise our shapes, and not our shapes our 
 souls. 
 
 And as when Chloris paints th' enamell'd meads, 
 A flock of shepherds to the bagpipe treads 
 Rude rural dances with their country loves : 
 Some afar off observing their removes, 
 Turns, and returns, quick footing, sudden stands, 
 Reelings aside, odd actions with their hands; 
 Now back, now forwards, now lock'd arm in 
 
 arm, 
 
 Not hearing music, think it is a charm, 
 That like loose froes at bacchanalian feasts, 
 Makes them seem frantic in their barren jests. 
 And being cluster'd in a shapeless crowd, 
 With much less admiration are allow'd ; 
 So our first excellence, so much abused, 
 And we (without the harmony was used, 
 When Saturn's golden sceptre struck the strings 
 Of civil government) make all our doings 
 Savour of rudeness and obscurity, 
 And in our forms show more deformity, 
 Than if we still were wrapt and smothered 
 In that confusion out of which we fled. 
 
*5 THE POEMS Of 
 
 And as when hosts of stars attend thy flight, 
 Day of deep students, most contentful night, 
 The morning (mounted on the Muses' steed) 
 Ushers the sun from Vulcan's golden bed, 
 And then from forth their sundry roofs of rest, 
 All sorts of men, to sorted tasks address'd, 
 Spread this inferior element, and yield 
 Labour his due: the soldier to the field, 
 Statesmen to council, judges to their pleas, 
 Merchants to commerce, mariners to seas: 
 All beasts, and birds, the groves and forests range, 
 To fill all corners of this round Exchange, 
 Till thou (dear Night, O goddess of most worth) 
 Lett'st thy sweet seas of golden humour forth ; 
 And eagle-like dost with thy starry wings 
 Beat in the fowls and beasts to Somnus' lodgings 
 And haughty Day to the infernal deep, 
 Proclaiming silence, study, ease, and sleep. 
 All things before thy forces put in rout, 
 Retiring where the morning fired them out. 
 
 So to the chaos of our first descent 
 (All days of honour and of virtue spent) 
 We basely make retreat, and are no less 
 Than huge impolish'd heaps of filthiness. 
 Men's faces glitter, and their hearts are black, 
 But thou (great mistress of heaven's gloomy rack) 
 Art black in face, and glitter'st in thy heart. 
 There is thy glory, riches, force, and art; 
 Opposed earth beats black and blue thy face 
 And often doth thy heart itself deface, 
 For spite that to thy virtue-famed train, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAtf. 231 
 
 All the choice worthies that did ever reign 
 In eldest age, were still preferr'd by Jove, 
 Esteeming that due honour to his love. 
 There shine they: not to seamen guides alone, 
 But sacred precedents to every one. 
 There fix'd for ever, when the day is driven, 
 Almost four hundred times a year from heaven. 
 In hell then let her sit, and never rise, 
 Till morns leave blushing at her cruelties. 
 
 Meanwhile, accept, as followers of thy train 
 (Our better parts aspiring to thy reign), 
 Virtues obscured and banished the day, 
 With all the glories of this spongy sway, 
 Prison'd in flesh, and that poor flesh in bands 
 Of stone and steel, chief flowers of virtue's gar- 
 lands. 
 
 O then most tender fortress of our woes, 
 That bleeding lie in virtue's overthrows, 
 Hating the whoredom of this painted light : 
 Raise thy chaste daughters, ministers of right, 
 The dreadful and the just Eumenides, 
 And let them wreak the wrongs of our disease, 
 Drowning the world in blood, and stain the skies 
 With their spilt souls, made drunk with tyrannies. 
 
 Fall, Hercules, from heaven, in tempests hurl'd, 
 And cleanse this beastly stable of the world: 
 Or bend thy brazen bow against the sun, 
 As in Tartessus, when thou hadst begun 
 Thy task of oxen: heat in more extremes 
 
23* THE POEMS OF 
 
 Than thou wouldst suffer, with his envious beams. 
 Now make him leave the world to Night and 
 
 dreams. 
 
 Never were virtue's labours so envied 
 As in this light: shoot, shoot, and stoop his 
 
 pride. 
 
 Suffer no more his lustful rays to get 
 The earth with issue: let him still be set 
 In Somnus' thickets: bound about the brows, 
 With pitchy vapours, and with ebon boughs. 
 
 Rich-taper'd sanctuary of the blest, 
 Palace of ruth, made all of tears,* and rest, 
 To thy black shades and desolation 
 I consecrate my life; and living moan, 
 Where furies shall for ever fighting be, 
 And adders hiss the world for hating me, 
 Foxes shall bark, and night-ravens belch in groans, 
 And owls shall halloo my confusions: 
 There will I furnish up my funeral bed, 
 Strew'd with the bones and relics of the dead. 
 Atlas shall let th' Olympic burthen fall, 
 To cover my untombed face withal. 
 And when as well the matter of our kind, 
 As the material substance of the mind, 
 Shall cease their revolutions, in abode 
 Of such impure and ugly period, 
 As the old essence and insensive prime: 
 Then shall the ruins of the fourfold time, 
 Turn'd to that lump (as rapting torrents rise), 
 For ever murmur forth my miseries. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 233 
 
 Ye living spirits then, if any live, 
 Whom like extremes do like affections give, 
 Shun, shun this cruel light, and end your thrall, 
 In these soft shades of sable funeral: 
 From whence with ghosts whom vengeance holds 
 
 from rest, 
 
 Dog-fiends and monsters haunting the distressed, 
 As men whose parents tyranny hath slain, 
 Whose sisters rape, and bondage do sustain. 
 But you that ne'er had birth, nor ever proved, 
 How dear a blessing 'tis to be beloved, 
 Whose friends' idolatrous desire of gold, 
 To scorn and ruin have your freedom sold : 
 Whose virtues feel all this, and show your eyes, 
 Men made of Tartar, and of villanies. 
 Aspire th' extraction, and the quintessence 
 Of all the joys in earth's circumference: 
 With ghosts, fiends, monsters: as men robb'd and 
 
 rack'd, 
 Murther'd in life: from shades with shadows 
 
 black'd : 
 
 Thunder your wrongs, your miseries and hells, 
 And with the dismal accents of your knells 
 Revive the dead, and make the living die 
 In ruth and terror of your tortury : 
 Still all the power of art into your groans, 
 Scorning your trivial and remissive moans, 
 Compact of fiction, and hyperboles 
 (Like wanton mourners cloy'd with too much ease), 
 Should leave the glasses of the hearers' eyes 
 Unbroken, counting all but vanities. 
 But paint, or else create in serious truth, 
 
234 THE POEMS OF 
 
 A body figured to your virtues' ruth, 
 That to the sense may show what damned sin, 
 For your extremes this chaos tumbles in. 
 But woe is wretched me, without a name : 
 Virtue feeds scorn, and noblest honour, shame : 
 Pride bathes in tears of poor submission, 
 And makes his soul the purple he puts on. 
 
 Kneel then with me, fall worm-like on the 
 
 ground, 
 
 And from th' infectious dunghill of this round, 
 From men's brass wits and golden foolery, 
 Weep, weep your souls, into felicity: 
 Come to this house of mourning, serve the Night, 
 To whom pale Day (with whoredom soaked quite) 
 Is but a drudge, selling her beauty's use 
 To rapes, adulteries, and to all abuse. 
 Her labours feast imperial Night with sports, 
 Where loves are Christmass'd, with all pleasure's 
 
 sorts; 
 
 And whom her fugitive and far-shot rays 
 Disjoin, and drive into ten thousand ways, 
 Night's glorious mantle wraps in safe abodes, 
 And frees their necks from servile labour's loads: 
 Her trusty shadows succour men dismay'd, 
 Whom Day's deceitful malice hath betray'd: 
 From the silk vapours of her ivory port, 
 Sweet Protean dreams she sends of every sort : 
 Some taking forms of princes, to persuade 
 Of men deject, we are their equals made, 
 Some clad in habit of deceased friends, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 23$ 
 
 For whom we mourn'd, and now have wish'd 
 
 amends ; 
 
 And some (dear favour) lady-like attired, 
 With pride of beauty's full meridian fired: 
 Who pity our contempts, revive our hearts; 
 For wisest ladies love the inward parts. 
 
 If these be dreams, even so are all things else, 
 That walk this round by heavenly sentinels : 
 But from Night's port of horn she greets our eyes 
 With graver dreams inspired with prophecies, 
 Which oft presage to us succeeding chances, 
 We proving that awake, they show in trances. 
 If these seem likewise vain, or nothing are, 
 Vain things, or nothing come to virtue's share ; 
 For nothing more than dreams with us she finds : 
 Then since all pleasures vanish like the winds, 
 And that most serious actions not respecting 
 The second light, are worth but the neglecting, 
 Since day, or light, in any quality, 
 For earthly uses do but serve the eye ; 
 And since the eye's most quick and dangerous use, 
 Enflames the heart, and learns the soul abuse, 
 Since mournings are preferred to banquetings, 
 And they reach heaven, bred under sorrow's wings ; 
 Since Night brings terror to our frailties still, 
 And shameless Day, doth marble us in ill. 
 
 All you possess'd with indepressed spirits, 
 Endued with nimble, and aspiring wits, 
 Come consecrate with me, to sacred Night 
 Your whole endeavours, and detest the light. 
 Sweet Peace's richest crown is made of stars, 
 
2 $6 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Most certain guides of honour'd mariners, 
 
 No pen can anything eternal write, 
 
 That is not steep'd in humour of the Night. 
 
 Hence beasts, and birds to caves and bushes then, 
 And welcome Night, ye noblest heirs of men, 
 Hence Phoebus to thy glassy strumpet's bed, 
 And never more let Themis' daughters spread 
 The golden harness on thy rosy horse, 
 But in close thickets run thy oblique course. 
 
 See now ascends, the glorious bride of brides, 
 Nuptials, and triumphs, glittering by her sides, 
 Juno and Hymen do her train adorn, 
 Ten thousand torches round about them borne: 
 Dumb silence mounted on the Cyprian star, 
 With becks rebukes the winds before his car, 
 Where she advanced ; beats down with cloudy mace, 
 The feeble light to black Saturnius' palace : 
 Behind her, with a brace of silver hinds, 
 In ivory chariot, swifter than the winds, 
 Great Hyperion's horned daughter drawn. 
 Enchantress-like deck'd in disparent lawn, 
 Circled with charms and incantations, 
 That ride huge spirits, and outrageous passions : 
 Music, and mood, she loves, but love she hates 
 (As curious ladies do, their public cates). 
 This train, with meteors, comets, lightenings, 
 The dreadful presence of our empress sings: 
 Which grant for ever (O eternal Night) 
 Till virtue flourish in the light of light. 
 Explicit Hymnus. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 237 
 
 HYMNUS IN CYNTHIAM. 
 
 NATURE'S bright eyesight, and the Night's fair 
 
 soul, 
 
 That with thy triple forehead dost control 
 Earth, seas, and hell ; and art in dignity 
 The greatest and swiftest planet in the sky. 
 
 Peaceful and warlike, and the power of fate, 
 In perfect circle of whose sacred state 
 The circles of our hopes are compassed: 
 All wisdom, beauty, majesty, and dread, 
 Wrought in the speaking portrait of thy face. 
 Great Cynthia, rise out of thy Latmian palace, 
 Wash thy bright body in th' Atlantic streams, 
 Put on those robes that are most rich in beams ; 
 And in thy all-ill-purging purity 
 (As if the shady Cytheron did fry 
 In sightful fury of a solemn fire), 
 Ascend thy chariot, and make earth admire 
 Thy old swift changes, made a young fix'd prime, 
 O let thy beauty scorch the wings of time, 
 That fluttering he may fall before thine eyes, 
 And beat himself to death before he rise: 
 And as heaven's genial parts were cut away 
 By Saturn's hands, with adamantine harpey, 
 Only to show that since it was composed 
 Of universal matter, it enclosed 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 
 No power to procreate another heaven, 
 
 So since that adamantine power is given 
 
 To thy chaste hands, to cut off all desire 
 
 Of fleshly sports, and quench to Cupid's fire: 
 
 Let it approve : no change shall take thee hence, 
 
 Nor thy throne bear another inference; 
 
 For if the envious forehead of the earth 
 
 Lour on thy age, and claim thee as her birth, 
 
 Tapers nor torches, nor the forests burning, 
 
 Soul-winging music, nor tear-stilling mourning 
 
 (Used of old Romans and rude Macedons 
 
 In thy most sad and black discessions), 
 
 We know can nothing further thy recall, 
 
 When Night's dark robes (whose objects blind us 
 
 all) 
 
 Shall celebrate thy changes' funeral. 
 But as in that thrice dreadful foughten field 
 Of ruthless Cannas, when sweet rule did yield 
 Her beauties' strongest proofs, and hugest love: 
 When men as many as the lamps above, 
 Arm'd Earth in steel, and made her like the skies, 
 That two Auroras did in one day rise. 
 Thus with the terror of the trumpets' call, 
 The battles join'd as if the world did fall : 
 Continued long in life-disdaining fight, 
 Jove's thundering eagles feather'd like the night, 
 Hovering above them with indifferent wings, 
 Till Blood's stern daughter, cruel Tyche, flings 
 The chief of one side, to the blushing ground, 
 And then his men (whom griefs and fears con- 
 found) 
 Turn'd all their cheerful hopes to grim despair, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 239 
 
 Some casting off their souls into the air, 
 Some taken prisoners, some extremely maim'd, 
 And all (as men accursed) on fate exclaim'd. 
 So, gracious Cynthia, in that sable day, 
 When interposed earth takes thee away 
 (Our sacred chief and sovereign general), 
 As crimson a retreat, and steep a fall, 
 We fear to suffer from this peace and height, 
 Whose thankless sweet now cloys us with receipt. 
 
 The Romans set sweet music to her charms, 
 To raise thy stoopings, with her airy arms : 
 Used loud resoundings with auspicious brass: 
 Held torches up to heaven, and flaming glass, 
 Made a whole forest but a burning eye, 
 T f admire thy mournful partings with the sky. 
 The Macedonians were so stricken dead, 
 With skill-less horror of thy changes dread; 
 They wanted hearts, to lift-up sounds, or fires, 
 Or eyes to heaven ; but used their funeral tyres, 
 Trembled, and wept; assured some mischief's fury 
 Would follow that afflicting augury. 
 
 Nor shall our wisdoms be more arrogant 
 (O sacred Cynthia), but believe thy want 
 Hath cause to make us now as much afraid : 
 Nor shall Democrates, who first is said, 
 To read in nature's brows thy changes' cause, 
 Persuade our sorrows to a vain applause. 
 
 Time's motion, being like the reeling sun's, 
 Or as the sea reciprocally runs, 
 
^40 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Hath brought us now to their opinions ; 
 As in our garments, ancient fashions 
 Are newly worn ; and as sweet poesy 
 Will not be clad in her supremacy 
 With those strange garments (Rome's hexam- 
 eters), 
 
 As she is English ; but in right prefers 
 Our native robes (put on with skilful hands 
 English heroics) to those antic garlands, 
 Accounting it no meed, but mockery, 
 Y\ hen her steep brows already prop the sky, 
 'lo put on start-ups, and yet let it fall. 
 No otherwise (O queen celestial) 
 Can we believe Ephesia's state will be 
 But spoil with foreign grace, and change with 
 
 thee 
 
 The pureness of thy never-tainted life, 
 Scorning the subject title of a wife, 
 Thy body not composed in thy birth, 
 Of such condensed matter as the earth. 
 Thy shunning faithless men's society, 
 Betaking thee to hounds and archery, 
 To deserts, and inaccessible hills, 
 Abhorring pleasure in Earth's common ills, 
 Commit most willing rapes on all our hearts : 
 And make us tremble, lest thy sovereign parts 
 (The whole preservers of our happiness) 
 Should yield to change, eclipse, or heaviness. 
 And as thy changes happen by the site, 
 Near, or far distance, of thy father's light, 
 Who (set in absolute remotion) reaves 
 Thy face of light, and thee all darken'd leaves : 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 241 
 
 So for thy absence to the shade of death 
 
 Our souls fly mourning, winged with our breath. 
 
 Then set thy crystal and imperial throne, 
 Girt in thy chaste and never-loosing zone, 
 'Gainst Europe's Sun directly opposite, 
 And give him darkness that doth threat thy light. 
 
 O how accursed are they thy favour scorn ! 
 Diseases pine their flocks, tares spoil their corn: 
 Old men are blind of issue, and young wives 
 Bring forth abortive fruit, that never thrives. 
 
 But then how bless'd are they thy favour graces, 
 Peace in their hearts, and youth reigns in their 
 
 faces : 
 
 Health strengths their bodies, to subdue the seas, 
 And dare the Sun, like Theban Hercules, 
 To calm the furies, and to quench the fire : 
 As at thy altars, in thy Persic empire, 
 Thy holy women walk'd with naked soles 
 Harmless, and confident, on burning coals: 
 The virtue-temper'd mind, ever preserves, 
 Oils, and expulsatory balm that serves 
 To quench lust's fire in all things it anoints, 
 And steels our feet to march on needles' points: 
 And 'mongst her arms hath armour to repel 
 The cannon and the fiery darts of hell : 
 She is the great enchantress that commands 
 Spirits of every region, seas, and lands, 
 Round heaven itself, and all his sevenfold heights, 
 Are bound to serve the strength of her conceits. 
 
242 THE POEMS OF 
 
 A perfect type of thy Almighty state, 
 That hold'st the thread, and rulest the sword of 
 fate. 
 
 Then you that exercise the virgin court 
 Of peaceful Thespia, my muse consort, 
 Making her drunken with Gorgonean dews, 
 And therewith all your ecstasies infuse, 
 That she may reach the topless starry brows 
 Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs 
 Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing 
 Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring 
 (As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind, 
 And in her force, the forces of the mind: 
 An argument to ravish and refine 
 An earthly soul, and make it mere divine. 
 Sing then withal, her palace brightness bright, 
 The dazzle-sun perfections of her light; 
 Circling her face with glories, sing the walks, 
 Where in her heavenly magic mood she stall 
 Her arbours, thickets, and her wondrous game, 
 (A huntress, being never match'd in fame), 
 Presume not then ye flesh-confounded souls, 
 That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls, 
 Which sever mounting spirits from the senses, 
 To look in this deep fount for thy pretences: 
 The juice more clear than day, yet shadows 
 
 night, 
 
 Where humour challengeth no drop of right: 
 But judgment shall display, to purest eyes 
 With ease, the bowels of these mysteries. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 243 
 
 See then this planet of our lives descended 
 To rich Ortygia, gloriously attended, 
 Not with her fifty ocean nymphs ; nor yet 
 Her twenty foresters: but doth beget 
 By powerful charms, delightsome servitors 
 Of flowers and shadows, mists and meteors: 
 Her rare Elysian palace she did build 
 With studied wishes, which sweet hope did gild 
 With sunny foil, that lasted but a da\ : 
 For night must needs importune IKT away. 
 The shapes of every wholesome flower and tree 
 She gave those types of her felicity. 
 And Form herself she mightily conjured 
 Their priceless values might not be obscured, 
 With disposition baser than divine, 
 But make that blissful court others to shine 
 With all accomplishment of architect, 
 That not the eye of Phoebus could detect. 
 Form then, 'Uvixt two superior pillars framed 
 This tender building, Pax Imperii named, 
 Which cast a shadow like a Pyramis. 
 Whose basis in the plain or back part is 
 Of that quaint work: the top so high extended, 
 That it the region of the moon transcended: 
 Without, within it, every corner fill'd 
 By beauteous form, as her great mistress will'd. 
 Here as she sits, the thunder-loving Jove 
 In honours past all others shows his love, 
 Proclaiming her in complete Empery, 
 Of whatsoever the Olympic sky 
 With tender circumvecture doth embrace, 
 The chiefest planet that doth heaven enchase. 
 
244 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Dear goddess, prompt, benign, and bounteous, 
 That hears all prayers, from the least of us 
 Large riches gives, since she is largely given, 
 And all that spring from seed of earth and heaven 
 She doth command : and rules the fates of all, 
 Old Hesiod sings her thus celestial. 
 And now to take the pleasures of the day, 
 Because her night-star soon will call away, 
 She frames of matter intimate before 
 (To wit, a white and dazzling meteor), 
 A goodly nymph, whose beauty, beauty stains 
 Heavens with her jewels ; gives all the reins 
 Of wished pleasance; frames her golden wings, 
 But them she binds up close with purple strings, 
 Because she now will have her run alone, 
 And bid the base to all affection. 
 And Euthimya is her sacred name, 
 Since she the cares and toils of earth must tame: 
 Then straight the flowers, the shadows and the 
 
 mists 
 
 (Fit matter for most pliant humourists), 
 She hunters makes : and of that substance hounds 
 Whose mouths deaf heaven, and furrow earth with 
 
 wounds, 
 
 And marvel not a nymph so rich in grace 
 To hounds' rude pursuits should be given in chase. 
 For she could turn herself to every shape 
 Of swiftest beasts, and at her pleasure 'scape; 
 Wealth fawns on fools; virtues are meat for vices, 
 Wisdom conforms herself to all Earth's guises, 
 Good gifts are often given to men past good, 
 And Noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 245 
 
 The hounds that she created, vast, and fleet 
 Were grim Melampus, with th' Ethiop's feet, 
 White Leucon ; all-eating Pamphagus, 
 Sharp-sighted Dorceus, wild Oribasus, 
 Storm-breathing Lelaps, and the savage Theron, 
 Wing-footed Pterelas, and hind-like Ladon, 
 Greedy Harpyia, and the painted Stycte, 
 Fierce Trigis, and the thicket-searcher Agre, 
 The black Melaneus, and the bristled Lachne, 
 Lean-lustful Cyprius, and big-chested Aloe. 
 These and such other now the forest ranged, 
 And Euthimya to a panther changed, 
 Holds them sweet chase; their mouths they freely 
 
 spend, 
 
 As if the earth in sunder they would rend. 
 Which change of music liked the goddess so, 
 That she before her foremost nymph would go, 
 And not a huntsman there was eagerer seen 
 In that sport's love (yet all were wondrous keen) 
 Than was their swift and windy-footed queen. 
 But now this spotted game did thicket take, 
 Where not a hound could hunger'd passage make: 
 Such proof the covert was, all arm'd in thorn, 
 With which in their attempts the dogs were torn, 
 And fell to howling in their happiness: 
 As when a flock of school-boys, whom their mistress 
 Held closely to their books, gets leave to sport, 
 And then like toil-freed deer, in headlong sort, 
 With shouts, and shrieks, they hurry from the 
 
 school. 
 
 Some strew the woods, some swim the silver pool: 
 All as they list to several pastimes fall, 
 
246 THE POEMS OF 
 
 To feed their famish'd wantonness withal. 
 When straight, within the woods some wolf or bear, 
 The heedless limbs of one doth piecemeal tear, 
 Affrighteth other, sends some bleeding back, 
 And some in greedy whirl-pits suffer wrack. 
 So did the bristled covert check with wounds 
 The licorous haste of these game-greedy hounds. 
 
 In this vast thicket (whose description's task 
 The pens of furies, and of fiends would ask : 
 So more than human-thoughted horrible) 
 The souls of such as lived implausible, 
 In happy empire of this goddess' glories, 
 And scorn'd to crown her fanes with sacrifice, 
 Did ceaseless walk ; exspiring fearful groans, 
 Curses and threats for their confusions. 
 Her darts, and arrows, some of them had slain, 
 Others her dogs eat, painting her disdain, 
 After she had transformed them into beasts : 
 Others her monsters carried to their nests, 
 Rent them in pieces, and their spirits sent 
 To this blind shade, to wail their banishment. 
 The huntsmen hearing (since they could not hear) 
 Their hounds at fault ; in eager chase drew near, 
 Mounted on lions, unicorns, and boars, 
 And saw their hounds lie licking of their sores, 
 Some yearning at the shroud, as if they chid 
 Her stinging tongues, that did their chase forbid: 
 By which they knew the game was that way gone. 
 Then each man forced the beast he rode upon, 
 T' assault the thicket; whose repulsive thorns 
 So gall'd the lions, boars, and unicorns, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. *47 
 
 Dragons, and wolves ; that half their courages 
 Were spent in roars, and sounds of heaviness : 
 Yet being the princeliest, and hardiest beasts, 
 That gave chief fame to those Ortygian forests, 
 And all their riders furious of their sport, 
 A fresh assault they gave, in desperate sort: 
 And with their falchions made their ways in 
 
 wounds, 
 
 The thicket open'd, and let in the hounds. 
 But from her bosom cast prodigious cries, 
 Wrapt in her Stygian fumes of miseries: 
 Which yet the breaths of these courageous steeds 
 Did still drink up, and clear'd their venturous heads : 
 As when the fiery coursers of the sun, 
 Up to the palace of the morning run, 
 And from their nostrils blow the spiteful day : 
 So yet those foggy vapours made them way. 
 But pressing further, saw such cursed sights, 
 Such ^tnas fill'd with strange tormented sprites, 
 That now the vaporous object of the eye 
 Out-pierced the intellect in faculty. 
 Baseness was nobler than Nobility : 
 For ruth (first shaken from the brain of Love, 
 And love the soul of virtue) now did move, 
 Not in their souls (spheres mean enough for such), 
 But in their eyes; and thence did conscience touch 
 Their hearts with pity, where her proper throne 
 Is in the mind, and there should first have shone: 
 Eyes should guide bodies, and our souls our eyes, 
 But now the world consists on contraries. 
 So sense brought terror, where the mind's presight 
 Had saved that fear, and done but pity right. 
 
248 THE POEMS Of 
 
 But servile fear, now forged a wood of darts 
 Within their eyes, and cast them through their 
 
 hearts : 
 
 Then turn'd they bridle, then half slain with fear, 
 Each did the other backwards overbear, 
 As when th' Italian Duke, a troop of horse 
 Sent out in haste against some English force, 
 From stately-sighted sconce-torn Nimiguen, 
 Under whose walls the wall most Cynthian, 
 Stretcheth her silver limbs loaded with wealth, 
 Hearing our horse were marching down by stealth. 
 (Who looking for them) war's quick artisan, 
 Fame-thriving Vere, that in those countries wan 
 More fame than guerdon ; ambuscadoes laid 
 Of certain foot, and made full well appaid 
 The hopeful enemy, in sending those 
 The long-expected subjects of their blows 
 To move their charge; which straight they give 
 
 amain, 
 
 When we retiring to our strength again, 
 The foe pursues, assured of our lives, 
 And us within our ambuscado drives; 
 Who straight with thunder of the drums and shot, 
 Tempest their wraths on them that wist it not. 
 Then (turning headlong) some escaped us so, 
 Some left to ransom, so to overthrow, 
 In such confusion did this troop retire, 
 And thought them cursed in that game's desire: 
 Out flew the hounds, that there could nothing find, 
 Of the sly panther, that did beard the wind, 
 Running into it full, to clog the chase, 
 And tire her followers with too much solace. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 249 
 
 And but the superficies of the shade, 
 
 Did only sprinkle with the scent she made, 
 
 As when the sunbeams on high billows fall, 
 
 And make their shadows dance upon a wall, 
 
 That is the subject of his fair reflectings. 
 
 Or else; as when a man in summer evenings, 
 
 Something before sunset, when shadows be 
 
 Rack'd with his stooping, to the highest degree, 
 
 His shadow climes the trees, and scales a hill, 
 
 While he goes on the beaten passage still : 
 
 So slightly touch'd the panther with her scent, 
 
 This irksome covert, and away she went, 
 
 Down to a fruitful island sited by, 
 
 Full of all wealth, delight, and empery, 
 
 Ever with child of curious architect, 
 
 Yet still deliver'd; paved with dames select, 
 
 On whom rich feet in foulest boots might tread, 
 
 And never found them: for kind Cupid spread 
 
 Such perfect colours on their pleasing faces, 
 
 That their reflects clad foulest weeds with graces. 
 
 Beauty strikes fancy blind ; pied show deceives us, 
 
 Sweet banquets tempt our healths, when temper 
 
 leaves us, 
 
 Inchastity is ever prostitute, 
 Whose trees we loathe, when we have pluck'd their 
 
 fruit. 
 
 Hither this panther fled, now turn'd a boar, 
 More huge than that th' yEtolians plagued so sore, 
 And led the chase through noblest mansions, 
 Gardens and groves, exempt from paragons, 
 In all things ruinous, and slaughtersome, 
 
2 50 THE POEMS OF 
 
 As was that scourge to the ^tolian kingdom : 
 After as if a whirlwind drave them on, 
 Full cry, and close, as if they all were one 
 The hounds pursue, and fright the earth with 
 
 sound, 
 
 Making her tremble ; as when winds are bound 
 In her cold bosom, fighting for event: 
 With whose fierce ague all the world is rent. 
 
 But Day's arm (tired to hold her torch to them) 
 Now let it fall within the Ocean stream, 
 The goddess blew retreat, and with her blast, 
 Her morn's creation did like vapours waste : 
 The winds made wing into the upper light, 
 And blew abroad the sparkles of the night. 
 Then (swift as thought) the bright Titanides, 
 Guide and great sovereign of the marble s-. 
 With milk-white heifers, mounts into her sphere, 
 And leaves us miserable creatures here. 
 
 Thus nights, fair days, thus griefs do joys sup- 
 plant : 
 
 Thus glories graven in steel and adamant 
 Never supposed to waste, but grow by wasting 
 (Like snow in rivers fall'n), consume by lasting. 
 O then thou great elixir of treasures, 
 From whom we multiply our world of pleasures, 
 Descend again, ah, never leave the earth, 
 But as thy plenteous humours gave us birth, 
 So let them drown the world in night and death 
 Before this air, leave breaking with thy breath. 
 Come, goddess, come; the double father'd son, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 251 
 
 Shall dare no more amongst thy train to run, 
 Xor with polluted hands to touch thy veil: 
 His death was darted from the scorpion's tail, 
 For which her form to endless memory, 
 With other lamps, doth lend the heavens an eye, 
 And he that shovv'd such great presumption, 
 Is hidden now, beneath a little stone. 
 
 If proud Alpheus offer force again, 
 Because he could not once thy love obtain, 
 Thou and thy nymphs shall stop his mouth with 
 
 mire, 
 
 And mock the fondling, for his mad aspire. 
 Thy glorious temple, great Lucifera, 
 That was the study of all Asia, 
 Two hundred twenty summers to erect, 
 Built by Chersiphrone thy architect, 
 In which two hundred twenty columns stood, 
 Built by two hundred twenty kings of blood, 
 Of curious beauty, and admired height, 
 Pictures and statues, of as praiseful sleight, 
 Convenient for so chaste a goddess' fane 
 (Burnt by Herostratus), shall now again 
 Be re-exstruct, and this Ephesia be 
 Thy country's happy name, come here with thee, 
 As it was there so shall it now be framed, 
 And thy fair virgin-chamber ever named. 
 And as in reconstruction of it there, 
 There ladies did no more their jewels wear, 
 But frankly contribute them all to raise 
 A work of such a chaste religious praise : 
 So will our ladies ; for in them it lies, 
 
252 THE POEMS OF 
 
 To spare so much as would that work suffice. 
 Our dames well set their jewels in their minds, 
 Insight illustrates; outward bravery blinds, 
 The mind hath in herself a deity, 
 And in the stretching circle of her eye 
 All things are compass'd, all things present still, 
 Will framed to power, doth make us what \ve will. 
 But keep your jewels, make ye braver yet, 
 Elysian ladies; and (in riches set, 
 Upon your foreheads) let us see your hearts; 
 Build Cynthia's temple in your virtuous parts, 
 Let every jewel be a virtue's glass: 
 And no Herostratus shall ever rase 
 Those holy monuments : but pillars stand, 
 Where every Grace and Muse shall hang her gar- 
 land. 
 
 The mind in that we like, rules every limb, 
 Gives hands to bodies, makes them make them trim ; 
 Why then in that the body doth dislike, 
 Should not his sword as great a veney strike? 
 The bit and spur that monarch ruleth still, 
 To further good things and to curb the ill, 
 He is the Ganymede, the bird of Jove, 
 Rapt to her sovereign's bosom for his love, 
 His beauty was it, not the body's pride, 
 That made him great Aquarius stellified. 
 And that mind most is beautiful and high, 
 And nearest comes to a Divinity, 
 That furtherest is from spot of Earth's delight, 
 Pleasures that lose their substance with their 
 sight, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 253 
 
 Such one, Saturnius ravisheth to love, 
 And fills the cup of all content to Jove. 
 
 If wisdom be the mind's true beauty then, 
 And that such beauty shines in virtuous men, 
 If those sweet Ganymedes shall only find, 
 
 Love of Olympus, are those wizards wise, 
 That nought but gold, and his dejections prize? 
 This beauty hath a fire upon her brow, 
 That dims the sun of base desires in you, 
 And as the cloudy bosom of the tree, 
 Whose branches will not let the summer see 
 His solemn shadows; but do entertain 
 Eternal winter: so thy sacred train, 
 Thrice mighty Cynthia, should be frozen dead, 
 To all the lawless flames of Cupid's godhead. 
 To this end let thy beams' divinities 
 For ever shine upon their sparkling eyes, 
 And be as quench to those pestiferent fires, 
 That through their eyes impoison their desires. 
 Thou never yet wouldst stoop to base assault, 
 Therefore those poets did most highly fault, 
 That feign'd thee fifty children by Endymion, 
 And they that write thou hadst but three alone, 
 Thou never any hadst, but didst affect, 
 Endymion for his studious intellect. 
 Thy soul-chaste kisses were for virtue's sake, 
 And since his eyes were evermore awake, 
 To search for knowledge of thy excellence, 
 And all astrology : no negligence 
 Or female softness fed his learned trance, 
 
2$4 POEMS OF 
 
 Nor was thy veil once touch'd with dalliance. 
 
 Wise poets feign thy godhead properly 
 
 The thresholds of men's doors did fortify, 
 
 And therefore built they thankful altars there, 
 
 Serving thy power in most religious fear. 
 
 Dear precedent for us to imitate, 
 
 Whose doors thou guard'st against imperious fate, 
 
 Keeping our peaceful households safe from sack, 
 
 And free'st our ships when others suffer wrack. 
 
 Thy virgin chamber then that sacred is, 
 
 No more let hold an idle Salmacis, 
 
 Nor let more sleights Cydippe injury: 
 
 Nor let black Jove, possessed in Sicily, 
 
 Ravish more maids, but maids subdue his might, 
 
 With well-steel'd lances of thy watchful sight. 
 
 Then in thy clear and icy pentacle, 
 Now execute a magic miracle: 
 Slip every sort of poison'd herbs and plants, 
 And bring thy rabid mastiffs to these haunts. 
 Look with thy fierce aspect, be terror-strong, 
 Assume thy wondrous shape of half a furlong : 
 Put on thy feet of serpents, viperous hairs, 
 And act the fearfull'st part of thy affairs : 
 Convert the violent courses of thy floods, 
 Remove whole fields of corn, and hugest woods, 
 Cast hills into the sea, and make the stars 
 Drop out of heaven, and lose thy mariners. 
 So shall the wonders of thy power be seen, 
 And thou for ever live the planets' queen. 
 Explicit Hymnits. 
 
 Omnis ut umbra. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 255 
 
 OVID'S BANQUET OF SENSE. 
 [I595-] 
 
 TO 
 THE TRULY LEARNED AND MY WORTHY FRIEND, 
 
 MASTER MATTHEW ROYDON. 
 
 SUCH is the wilful poverty of judgments, sweet 
 Matthew, wandering like passportless men, in con- 
 tempt of the divine discipline of Poesy, that a man 
 may well fear to frequent their walks. The pro- 
 fane multitude I hate, and only consecrate my 
 strange poems to those searching spirits, whom 
 learning hath made noble, and nobility sacred; en- 
 deavouring that material oration, which you call 
 Schema; varying in some rare fiction, from popular 
 custom, even for the pure sakes of ornament and 
 utility; this of Euripides exceeding sweetly relish- 
 ing with me; Lentcm coqitens ne quicquam dentis 
 addito. 
 
 But that Poesy should be as pervial as oratory, 
 and plainness her special ornament, were the plain 
 way to barbarism, and to make the ass run proud 
 of his ears, to take away strength from lions, and 
 give camels horns. 
 
 That Energia, or clearness of representation, re- 
 quired in absolute poems, is not the perspicuous 
 
256 THE POEMS OF 
 
 delivery of a low invention ; but high and hearty in- 
 vention expressed in most significant and unaffected 
 phrase. It serves not a skilful painter's turn to 
 draw the figure of a face only to make known who 
 it represents ; but he must limn, give lustre, shadow, 
 and heightening; which though ignorants will es- 
 teem spiced, and too curious, yet such as have the 
 judicial perspective will see it hath motion, spirit, 
 and life. 
 
 There is no confection made tcHast, but it is ad- 
 mitted more cost and skill than presently-to-be-used 
 simples ; and in my opinion, that which being with a 
 little endeavour searched, adds a kind of majesty to 
 Poesy, is better than that which every cobbler may 
 sing to his patch. 
 
 Obscurity in affection of words and indigested 
 conceits, is pedantical and childish; but where it 
 shroudeth itself in the heart of his subject, uttered 
 with fitness of figure and expressive epithets, with 
 that darkness will I still labour to be shadowed. 
 Rich minerals are digged out of the bowels of the 
 earth, not found in the superficies and dust of it ; 
 charms made of unlearned characters are not con- 
 secrate by the Muses, which are divine artists, but 
 by Euippe's daughters, that challenged them with 
 mere nature, whose breasts I doubt not had been 
 well worthy commendation, if their comparison had 
 not turned them into pyes. 
 
 Thus (not affecting glory for mine own slight 
 labours, but desirous others should be more worthily 
 glorious, nor professing sacred Poesy in any de- 
 gree), I thought good to submit to your apt judg- 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 257 
 
 merit, acquainted long since with the true habit of 
 Poesy; and now, since your labouring wits en- 
 deavour heaven-high thoughts of Nature, you have 
 actual means to sound the philosophical conceits, 
 that my new pen so seriously courteth. I know 
 that empty and dark spirits will complain of pal- 
 pable night ; but those that beforehand have a radi- 
 ant and light-bearing intellect, will say they can 
 pass through Corinna's garden without the help of 
 a lantern. 
 
 Your own most worthily 
 
 and sincerely affected, 
 
 GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
358 THE POEMS Of 
 
 NARRATIO. 
 
 THE earth from heavenly light conceived heat, 
 
 Which mixed all her moist parts with her dry, 
 When with right beams the Sun her bosom beat, 
 
 And with fit food her plants did nutrify. 
 They which to Earth as to their mother cling, 
 
 In forked roots now sprinkled plenteously 
 With her warm breath, did hasten to the spring, 
 Gather their proper forces and extrude 
 All power but that with which they stood endued. 
 
 Then did Cyrrhus fill his eyes with fire, 
 Whose ardour curl'd the foreheads of the trees, 
 And made his green-love burn in his desire ; 
 When youth and ease, collectors of love's fees, 
 
 Enticed Corinna to a silver spring, 
 Enchasing a round bower which with it sees, 
 
 As with a diamant doth an amell'd ring, 
 Into which eye most pitifully stood, 
 Niobe shedding tears that were her blood. 
 
 Stone Niobe, whose statue to this fountain, 
 In great Augustus Caesar's grace was brought 
 From Sypilus, the steep Mygdonian mountain ; 
 That statue 'tis, still weeps for former thought, 
 
 Into this spring Corinna's bathing place, 
 So cunningly to optic reason wrought 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 259 
 
 That afar off it show'd a woman's face, 
 Heavy and weeping; but more nearly view'd 
 Nor weeping, heavy, nor a woman show'd. 
 
 In summer only wrought her ecstasy, 
 
 And that her story might be still observed, 
 
 Octavius caused in curious imagery 
 
 Her fourteen children should at large be carved, 
 
 Their fourteen breasts with fourteen arrows 
 
 gored ; 
 And set by her, that for her seed so starved, 
 
 To a stone sepulchre herself deplored; 
 In ivory were they cut, and on each breast, 
 In golden elements their names imprest. 
 
 Her sons were Sypilus, Agenor, Phcedimus, 
 Ismenus, Argus, and Damasicthen, 
 The seventh call'd, like his grandsire, Tantalus. 
 Her daughters were the fair Astiochen, 
 
 Chloris, Naeera, and Pelopie, 
 Phaeta, proud Phthia, and Eugigen; 
 
 All these apposed to violent Niobe, 
 Had looks so deadly sad, so lively done, 
 As if Death lived in their confusion. 
 
 Behind their mother two pyramides, 
 Of freckled marble, through the arbour view'd, 
 On whose sharp brows, Sol and Tytanides, 
 In purple and transparent glass were hew'd, 
 
 Through which the sunbeams on the statues 
 
 staying, 
 Made their pale bosoms seem with blood imbrued, 
 
260 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Those two stern planets' rigours still bewraying 
 To these dead forms came living beauty's essence, 
 Able to make them startle with her presence. 
 
 In a loose robe of tinsel forth she came, 
 Nothing but it betwixt her nakedness 
 And envious light. The downward-burning flame 
 Of her rich hair did threaten new access 
 
 Of venturous Phaeton to scorch the fields; 
 And thus to bathing came our poet's goddess, 
 
 Her handmaids bearing all things pleasure 
 
 yields 
 
 To such a service; odours most delighted, 
 And purest linen which her looks had whited. 
 Then cast she off her robe and stood upright, 
 As lightning breaks out of a labouring cloud ; 
 Or as the morning heaven casts off the night, 
 Or as that heaven cast off itself, and show'd 
 
 Heaven's upper light, to which the brightest 
 
 day 
 Is but a black and melancholy shroud ; 
 
 Or as when Venus strived for sovereign sway 
 Of charmful beauty in young Troy's desire, 
 So stood Corinna, vanishing her 'tire. 
 
 A soft enflower'd bank embraced the fount; 
 Of Chloris' ensigns, an abstracted field 
 Where grew melanthy, great in bees' account, 
 Amareus, that precious balm doth yield, 
 
 Enamell'd pansies, used at nuptials still, 
 Diana's arrow, Cupid's crimson shield, 
 
 Ope-morn, night-shade, and Venus' navil, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 261 
 
 Solemn violets, hanging head as shamed, 
 And verdant calaminth, for odour famed. 
 
 Sacred nepenthe, purgative of care, 
 And sovereign rumex, that doth rancour kill, 
 Sya and hyacinth, that furies wear, 
 White and red jasmines, merry, meliphil, 
 
 Fair crown-imperial, emperor of flowers, 
 Immortal amaranth, white aphrodil, 
 
 And cup-like twillpants, strow'd in Bacchus' 
 
 bowers. 
 
 These cling about this nature's naked gem, 
 To taste her sweets, as bees do swarm on them. 
 
 And now she used the fount where Niobe, 
 Tomb'd in herself, pour'd her lost soul in tears 
 Upon the bosom of this Roman Phoebe ; 
 Who, bached and odour'd, her bright limbs she 
 rears, 
 
 And drying her on that disparent round, 
 Her lute she takes to enamour heavenly ears, 
 
 And try, if with her voice's vital sound, 
 She could warm life through those cold statues 
 
 spread, 
 And cheer the dame that wept when she was dead. 
 
 And thus she sung, all naked as she sat, 
 Laying the happy lute upon her thigh, 
 Not thinking any near to wonder at 
 The bliss of her sweet breast's divinity. 
 
262 THE POEMS OF 
 
 THE SONG OF CORINNA. 
 
 'Tis better to contemn than love, 
 
 And to be fair than wise, 
 
 For souls are ruled by eyes: 
 
 And Jove's bird seized by Cypris' dove 
 
 It is our grace and sport to see, 
 
 Our beauty's sorcery, 
 
 That makes, like destiny, 
 
 Men follow us the more we flee; 
 
 That sets wise glosses on the fool, 
 
 And turns her cheeks to books, 
 
 Where wisdom sees in looks, 
 
 Derision, laughing at his school, 
 
 Who, loving, proves profaneness holy, 
 Nature our fate, our wisdom folly. 
 
 While this was singing, Ovid young in love 
 With her perfections, never proving yet 
 How merciful a mistress she would prove, 
 Boldly embraced the power he could not let, 
 
 And, like a fiery exhalation, 
 Follow'd the sun he wish'd might never set ; 
 
 Trusting herein his constellation, 
 Ruled by love's beams, which Julia's eyes erected, 
 Whose beauty was the star his life directed. 
 
 And having drench'd his ancles in those seas, 
 He needs would swim, and cared not if he drown'd, 
 Love's feet are in his eyes; for if he please 
 The depth of beauty's gulfy flood to sound, 
 
 He goes upon his eyes, and up to them 
 At the first step he is; no shadier ground 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 263 
 
 Could Ovid find ; but in love's holy stream 
 Was past his eyes, and now did wet his ears, 
 For his high sovereign's silver voice he hears. 
 
 Whereat his wit assumed fiery wings, 
 Soaring above the temper of his soul ; 
 And he the purifying rapture sings 
 _ Of his ears' sense, takes full the Thespian bowl, 
 
 And it carouseth to his mistress' health, 
 Whose sprightful verdure' did dull tlesh control; 
 And his conceit he crowneth with the wealth 
 Of all the muses in his pleased senses, 
 When with the ears' delight he thus commences : 
 
 " Now, Muses, come, repair your broken wings, 
 Pluck'd and profaned by rustic ignorance, 
 With feathers of these notes my mistress sings ; 
 And let quick verse her drooping head advance 
 
 From dungeons of contempt to smite the stars; 
 In Julia's tunes, led forth by furious trance, 
 
 A thousand muses come to bid you wars. 
 Dive to your spring, and hide you from the stroke, 
 All poets' furies will her tunes invoke. 
 
 " Never was any sense so set on fire 
 With an immortal ardour, as mine ears; 
 Her fingers to the strings doth speech inspire 
 And number'd laughter, that the descant bears 
 
 To her sweet voice, whose species through my 
 
 sense, 
 My spirits to their highest function rears ; 
 
 To which impress'd with ceaseless confluence, 
 
264 THE POEMS OF 
 
 It useth them, as proper to her power, 
 Marries my soul, and makes itself her dower. 
 
 " Methinks her tunes fly guilt, like Attic bees, 
 To my ears' hives with honey tried to air; 
 My brain is but the comb, the wax, the lees, 
 My soul the drone that lives by their affair. 
 
 O so it sweets, refines and ravisheth. 
 And with what sport they sting in their repair : 
 
 Rise then in swarms and sting me thus to death, 
 Or turn me into swound, possess me whole 
 Soul to my life, and essence to my soul. 
 
 " Say, gentle Air, O does it not thee good, 
 Thus to be smit with her correcting voice? 
 Why dance ye not, ye daughters of the wood? 
 Wither for ever, if not now rejoice. 
 
 Rise stones, and build a city with her notes, 
 And notes infuse with your most Cynthian noise, 
 
 To all the trees, sweet flowers, and crystal floats, 
 That crown and make this cheerful garden quick, 
 Virtue, that every touch may make such music. 
 
 " O that as man is call'd a little world, 
 The world might shrink into a little man, 
 To hear the notes about this garden hurl'd, 
 That skill dispersed in tunes so Orphean 
 
 Might not be lost in smiting stocks and trees, 
 That have no ears, but grown as it began 
 
 Spread their renowns as far as Phoebus sees 
 Through earth's dull veins; that she like heaven 
 
 might move 
 In ceaseless music, and be fill'd with love. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 265 
 
 "In precious incense of her holy breath, 
 My love doth offer hecatombs of notes 
 To all the gods, who now despise the death 
 Of oxen, heifers, wethers, swine, and goats. 
 
 A sonnet in her breathing sacrificed, 
 Delights them more than all beasts' bellowing 
 throats, 
 
 As much with heaven as with my hearing prized, 
 And as guilt atoms in the sun appear, 
 So greet these sounds the grissels of mine ear. 
 
 " Whose pores do open wide to their regreet, 
 And my implanted air, that air embraceth, 
 Which they impress; I feel their nimble feet. 
 Tread my ear's labyrinth ; their sport amazeth, 
 
 They keep such measure; play themselves and 
 
 dance, 
 And now my soul in Cupid's furnace blazeth, 
 
 Wrought into fury with their dalliance: 
 And as the fire the parched stubble burns, 
 So fades my flesh and into spirit turns. 
 
 " Sweet tunes, brave issue, that from Julia come, 
 Shook from her brain, arm'd like the queen of Ire, 
 For first conceived in her mental womb, 
 And nourish'd with her sours discursive fire, 
 
 They grew into the power of her thought ; 
 She gave them downy plumes from her attire, 
 
 And then to strong imagination brought, 
 That to her voice; wherein most movingly 
 She, blessing them with kisses, lets them fly ; 
 
266 THE POEMS OF 
 
 " Who fly rejoicing ; but, like noblest minds, 
 In giving others life, themselves do die, 
 Not able to endure earth's rude unkinds 
 Bred in my sovereign's parts too tenderly. 
 1)\ O that as intellects themselves transite, 
 
 To each intelligible quality, 
 
 My life might pass into my love's conceit, 
 Thus to be form'd in words, her tunes, and breath, 
 And with her kisses sing itself to death. 
 
 " This life were wholly sweet, this only bliss, 
 Thus would I live to die, thus sense were feasted, 
 My life that in my flesh a chaos is 
 Should to a golden world be thus digested; 
 1$ Thus should I rule her face's monarchy 
 
 Whose looks in several empires are invested, 
 
 Crown'd now with smiles, and then with modesty, 
 Thus in her tunes' division I should reign, 
 For her conceit does all, in every vein. 
 
 " My life then turn'd to that, t' each note and word, 
 Should I consort her look, which sweeter sings, 
 Where songs of solid harmony accord, 
 Ruled with love's rule, and prick'd with all his 
 
 stings ; 
 
 / Thus should I be her notes before they be, 
 
 While in her blood they sit with fiery wings, 
 
 Not vapour'd in her voice's 'stillery. 
 Nought are these notes, her breast so sweetly 
 
 frames, 
 But motions, fled out of her spirit's flames. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 267 
 
 " For as when steel and flint together smit, 
 With violent action spit forth sparks of fire, 
 And make the tender tinder burn with it ; 
 So my love's soul doth lighten her desire 
 
 Upon her spirits in her notes' pretence, 
 And they convey them, for distinct attire, 
 
 To use the wardrobe of the common sense; 
 From whence in veils of her rich breath they fly, 
 And feast the ear with this felicity. 
 
 " Methinks they raise me from the heavy ground, 
 And move me swimming in the yielding air ; 
 As Zephyr's flowery blasts do toss a sound, 
 Upon their wings will I to heaven repair, 
 
 And sing them so, gods shall descend and hear, 
 Ladies must be adored that are but fair, 
 
 But apt besides with art to tempt the ear 
 In notes of nature, is a goddess' part, 
 Though oft men's nature's notes please more than 
 Art. 
 
 " But here are Art and Nature both confined, 
 Art casting Nature in so deep a trance 
 That both seem dead because they be divined. 
 Buried is heaven in earthly ignorance, 
 
 Why break not men then strumpet Folly's bounds, 
 To learn at this pure virgin utterance? 
 
 No, none but Ovid's ears can sound these sounds, 
 Where sing the hearts of Love and Poesy; 
 Which make my muse so strong, she works too 
 
 high." 
 
268 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Now in his glowing ears her tunes did sleep, 
 And as a silver bell, with violent blow 
 Of steel or iron, when his sounds most deep 
 Go from his sides and air's soft bosom flow, 
 ^O A great while after murmurs at the stroke, 
 
 Letting the hearer's ears his hardness know, 
 
 So chid the air to be no longer broke ; 
 And left the accents panting in his ear, 
 Which in this banquet his first service were. 
 
 oifactus. Herewith, as Ovid something nearer 
 
 drew 
 
 Her odours, odour'd with her breath and breast 
 Into the censer of his savour flew, 
 As if the phoenix hasting to her rest 
 
 Had gather'd all th' Arabian spicery 
 T' embalm her body in her tomb, her nest, 
 
 And there lay burning 'gainst Apollo's eye ; 
 Whose fiery air straight piercing Ovid's brain, 
 Inflamed his muse with a more odorous vein. 
 
 And thus he sung, " Come, sovereign odours, come 
 Restore my spirits now in love consuming, 
 Wax hotter, air, make them more favoursome, 
 My fainting life with fresh-breathed soul per- 
 fuming. 
 
 The flames of my disease are violent, 
 And many perish on late helps presuming, 
 
 With which hard fate must I yet stand content, 
 As odours put in fire most richly smell, 
 So men must burn in love that will excel. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 269 
 
 " And as the air is rarefied with heat, 
 But thick and gross with summer-killing cold, 
 So men in love aspire perfection's seat, 
 When others, slaves to base desires, are sold. 
 
 And if that men near Ganges lived by scent 
 Of flowers and trees, more I a thousand-fold 
 
 May live by these pure fumes that do present 
 My mistress* quickening and consuming breath 
 Where her wish flies with power of life and death. 
 
 " Methinks, as in these liberal fumes I burn, 
 My mistress' lips be near with kiss-entices, 
 And that which way soever I can turn, 
 She turns withal, and breathes on me her spices, 
 
 As if too pure for search of human eyes, 
 She flew in air disburdening Indian prizes, 
 
 And made each earthly fume to sacrifice. 
 With her choice breath fell Cupid blows his fire, 
 And after, burns himself in her desire. 
 
 " Gentle and noble are their tempers framed, 
 That can be quicken'd with perfumes and sounds, 
 And they are cripple-minded, gout-wit lamed, 
 That lie like fire-fit blocks, dead without wounds, 
 
 Stirr'd up with nought but hell-descending 
 
 gain, 
 The soul of fools that all their soul confounds, 
 
 The art of peasants and our nobles' stain, 
 The bane of virtue and the bliss of sin, 
 Which none but fools and peasants glory in. 
 
270 THE POEMS OF 
 
 " Sweet sounds and odours are the heavens on 
 
 earth 
 
 Where virtues live, of virtuous men deceased, 
 Which in such like receive their second birth 
 By smell and hearing endlessly increased. 
 
 They were mere flesh were not with them de- 
 lighted, 
 And every such is perish'd like a beast, 
 
 As all they shall that are so foggy-sprighted : 
 Odours feed love, and love clear heaven discovers, 
 Lovers wear sweets then sweetest minds be lovers. 
 
 " Odour in heat and dryness is consite ; 
 Love, then a fire, is much thereto affected; 
 And as ill smells do kill his appetite, 
 With thankful savours it is still protected. 
 
 Love lives in spirits ; and our spirits be 
 Nourish'd with odours, therefore love refected ; 
 
 And air, less corpulent in quality 
 Than odours are, doth nourish vital spirits, 
 Therefore may they be proved of equal merits. 
 
 " O sovereign odours ; not of force to give 
 Food to a thing that lives nor let it die, 
 But to add life to that did never live; 
 Nor to add life, but immortality. 
 
 Since they partake her heat that like the fire 
 Stolen from the wheels of Phoebus' waggonry, 
 
 To lumps of earth can manly life inspire, 
 Else be these fumes the lives of sweetest dames 
 That, dead, attend on her for novel frames. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
 " Rejoice, blest clime, thy air is so refined, 
 That while she lives no hungry pestilence 
 Can feed her poison'd stomach with thy kind; 
 But as the unicorn's pregredience 
 
 To venom'd pools doth purge them with his 
 
 horn, 
 And after him the desert's residence 
 
 May safely drink, so in the wholesome morn 
 After her walk, who there attends her eye, 
 Is sure that day to taste no malady." 
 
 Thus was his course of odours sweet and slight, 
 Because he long'd to give his sight assay, 
 And as in fervour of the summer's height, 
 The sun is so ambitious in his sway; 
 
 He will not let the night an hour be placed, 
 So in this Cupid's night oft seen in day, 
 
 Now spread with tender clouds these odours 
 
 cast 
 
 Her sight, his sun so wrought in his desires, 
 His savour vanish'd in his visual fires. 
 
 So vulture love on his increasing liver, 
 And fruitful entrails eagerly did feed, 
 And with the golden'st arrow in his quiver, 
 Wounds him with longings that like torrents bleed. 
 4 To see the mine of knowledge that enrich'd 
 
 His mind with poverty, and desperate need. 
 
 A sight that with the thought of sight bewitch'd ; 
 A sight taught magic his deep mystery 
 Quicker in danger than Diana's eye. 
 
272 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Stay, therefore, Ovid; venture not; a sight 
 May prove thy rudeness more than show thee lov- 
 ing; 
 And make my mistress think thou think'st her 
 
 <fr Hght ' 
 
 Which thought with lightest dames is nothing 
 
 moving. 
 
 The slender hope of favour thou hast yet, 
 Should make thee fear, such gross conclusions 
 
 proving : 
 
 Besides, the thicket Flora's hands hath set 
 To hide thy theft, is thin and hollow-hearted; 
 Not meet to have so high a charge imparted. 
 
 And should it keep thy secrets, thine own eye 
 Would fill thy thoughts so full of lightenings 
 That thou must pass through more extremity, 
 Or stand content to burn beneath their wings. 
 i\% Her honour 'gainst thy love in wager laid, 
 
 Thou would'st be prick'd with other senses' stings, 
 
 To taste, and feel, and yet not there be stay'd : 
 These casts he cast and more, his wits more quick 
 Than can be cast by wit's arithmetic. 
 
 Forward and back and forward went he thus, 
 Like wanton Thamysis that hastes to greet 
 The brackish court of old Oceanus; 
 And as by London's bosom she doth fleet, 
 
 Casts herself proudly through the bridge's twists, 
 Where, as she takes again her crystal feet, 
 
 She curls her silver hair like amourists, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 273 
 
 Smoothes her bright cheeks, adorns her brow with 
 
 ships, 
 And, empress-like, along the coast she trips. 
 
 Till coming near the sea, she hears him roar, 
 Tumbling her churlish billows in her face, 
 Then, more dismay'd than insolent before, 
 m Charged to rough battle for his smooth embrace, 
 She croucheth close within her winding banks. 
 And creeps retreat into her peaceful palace; 
 
 Yet straight high-flowing in her female pranks 
 Again she will be wanton, and again, 
 By no means staid, nor able to contain. 
 
 So Ovid with his strong affections striving, 
 Mask'd in a friendly thicket near her bower, 
 Rubbing his temples, fainting and reviving, 
 Fitting his garments, praying to the hour, 
 
 Backwards and forwards went, and durst not 
 
 venture 
 To tempt the tempest of his mistress' lour, 
 
 Or let his eyes her beauty's ocean enter, 
 At last with prayer he pierceth Juno's ear, 
 Great goddess of audacity and fear. 
 
 " Great goddess of audacity and fear, 
 
 Queen of Olympus, Saturn's eldest seed, 
 
 That dost the sceptre over Samos bear, 
 
 And rulest all nuptial rites with power and meed, 
 
 Since thou in nature art the mean to mix 
 Still sulphur humours, and canst therefore speed 
 
 Such as in Cyprian sports their pleasures fix, 
 
274 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Venus herself, and Mars by thee embracing, 
 Assist my hopes, me and my purpose gracing. 
 
 " Make love within me not too kind but, pleasing, 
 Exiling aspen fear out of his forces, 
 My inward sight with outward seeing, easing, 
 /& And if he please further to stretch his courses, 
 
 Arm me with courage to make good his charges ; 
 Too much desire to please, pleasure divorces, 
 
 Attempts, and not entreats, get ladies' largess. 
 Wit is with boldness prompt, with terror daunted, 
 And grace is sooner got of dames than granted." 
 
 Visus. This said, he charged the arbour with 
 
 his eye, 
 
 Which pierced it through, and at her breasts re- 
 flected, 
 
 Striking him to the heart with ecstasy ; 
 As do the sunbeams 'gainst the earth prorected, 
 
 With their reverberate vigour mount in flames, 
 And burn much more than where they were di- 
 rected, 
 
 He saw th' extraction of all fairest dames : 
 The fair of beauty, as whole countries come 
 And show their riches in a little room. 
 
 Here Ovid sold his freedom for a look, 
 And with that look was ten times more enthrall'd, 
 j^Q He blush'd, look'd pale, and like a fever shook, 
 And as a burning vapour being exhaled, 
 Promised by Phoebus' eye to be a star, 
 Heaven's walls denying to be further scaled, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 275 
 
 The force dissolves that drew it up so far: 
 And then it lightens 'gainst his death and falls, 
 So Ovid's power, this powerful sight appals. 
 
 This beauty's fair is an enchantment made 
 By Nature's witchcraft, tempting men to buy. 
 With endless shows, what endlessly will fade, 
 Yet promise chapmen all eternit 
 
 But like to goods ill got, a fate it hath, 
 Brings men enrich'd therewith to beggary, 
 
 Unless th' enricher be as rich in faith, 
 Enamour'd, like good self-love, with her own, 
 Seen in another, then 'tis heaven alone. 
 
 For sacred beauty is the fruit of sight, 
 The courtesy that speaks before the tongue, 
 The feast of souls, the glory of the light, 
 Envy of age, and everlasting young. 
 
 Pity's commander, Cupid's richest throne, 
 Music entranced, never duly sung, 
 
 The sum and court of all proportion ; 
 And that I may dull speeches best afford 
 All rhetoric's flowers in less than in a word. 
 
 Then in the truest wisdom can be thought 
 Spite of the public axiom worldings hold, 
 That nothing wisdom is that getteth nought, 
 This all-things-nothing, since it is no gold. 
 
 Beauty enchasing love, love gracing beauty, 
 To such as constant sympathies enfold, 
 
 To perfect riches doth a sounder duty 
 Than all endeavours, for by all consent, 
 All wealth and wisdom rests in true content. 
 
2 7 6 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Contentment is our heaven, and all our deeds 
 Bend in that circle, seld' or never closed, 
 More than the letter in the word precedes, 
 And to conduce that compass is reposed. 
 
 More force and art in beauty join'd with love 
 Than thorns with wisdom, joys of them composed 
 
 Are arms more proof 'gainst any grief we prove 
 Than all their virtue-scorning misery, 
 Or judgments graven in stoic gravity. 
 
 But as weak colour always is allow'd 
 
 The proper object of a human eye, 
 
 Though light be with a far more force endow'd 
 
 In stirring up the visual faculty, 
 
 This colour being but of virtuous light 
 A feeble image ; and the cause doth lie 
 
 In th' imperfection of a human sight, 
 So this for love and beauty, love's cold fire 
 May serve for my praise, though it merit higher. 
 
 With this digression we will now return 
 To Ovid's prospects in his fancy's storm. 
 He thought he saw the arbour's bosom burn, 
 Blazed with a fire wrought in a lady's form ; 
 
 Where silver pass'd the least ; and Nature's vaunt 
 Did such a precious miracle perform, 
 
 She lay, and seem'd a flood of diamant 
 Bounded in flesh ; as still as Vesper's hair, 
 When not an aspen-leaf is stirr'd with air. 
 
 She lay at length, like an immortal soul 
 At endless rest in blest Elysium; 
 
GEORGE CtiAPAtAN. 277 
 
 And then did true felicity enrol 
 
 So fair a lady figure of her kingdom. 
 
 Now Ovid's muse as in her tropic shined, 
 And he, struck dead, was mere heaven-born be- 
 come, 
 
 So his quick verse in equal height was shrined ; 
 Or else blame me as his submitted debtor, 
 That never mistress had to make me better. 
 
 Now as she lay attired in nakedness, 
 
 His eye did carve him on that feast of feasts ; 
 
 " Sweet fields of life which Death's foot dare not 
 
 press, 
 Flower'd with th' unbroken waves of my love's 
 
 breasts, 
 
 Unbroke by depth of those her beauty's floods ; 
 See where, with bent of gold curl'd into nests 
 In her head's grove, the spring-bird lameat 
 
 broods ; 
 
 Her body doth present those fields of peace, 
 Where souls are feasted with the soul of ease. 
 
 ' To prove which paradise that nurseth these, 
 
 See, see the golden rivers that renew it ; 
 
 Rich Gehon, Tigris, Phison, Euphrates, 
 
 Two from her bright Pelopian shoulders crown it. 
 
 And two out of her snowy hills do glide, 
 That with a deluge of delights do drown it ; 
 
 The highest two their precious streams divide 
 To ten pure floods that do the body duty, 
 Bounding themselves in length but not in beauty. 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 
 " These wind their courses through the painted 
 
 bowers, 
 
 yAnd raise such sounds in their inflection 
 As ceaseless start from Earth fresh sorts of flowers, 
 And bound that book of life with every section. 
 
 In these the muses dare not swim for drowning, 
 Their sweetness poisons with such blest infection, 
 
 And leaves the only lookers on them swooning, 
 These forms so decks, and colour makes so shine 
 That gods for them would cease to be divine. 
 
 " Thus though my love be no Elysium 
 That cannot move from her prefixed place; 
 Yet have her feet no power from thence to come, 
 For where she is, is all Elysian grace. 
 
 And as those happy men are sure of bliss, 
 That can perform so excellent a race, 
 
 As that Olympiad where her favour is, 
 So she can meet them, blessing them the rather, 
 And give her sweets, as well as let men gather. 
 
 " Ah ! how should I be so most happy then 
 T' aspire that place, or make it come to me? 
 To gather, or be given, the flower of women ? 
 Elysium must with virtue gotten be, 
 
 With labours of the soul and continence, 
 And these can yield no joy with such as she, 
 
 She is a sweet Elysium, for the sense, 
 And nature doth not sensual gifts infuse 
 But that with sense she still intends their use. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 279 
 
 * The sense is given us to excite the mind, 
 And that can never be by sense excited, 
 But first the sense must her contentment mind, 
 3 We therefore must procure the sense delighted, 
 
 That so the soul may use her faculty; 
 Mine eye then to this feast hath her invited, 
 
 That she might serve the sovereign of mine eye, 
 She shall bid Time, and Time so feasted never 
 Shall grow in strength of her renown for ever. 
 
 " Betwixt mine eye and object, certain lines 
 Move in the figure of a pyramis, 
 Whose chapter in mine eye's gray apple shines 
 The base within my sacred object is ; 
 
 On this will I inscribe in golden verse 
 The marvels reigning in my sovereign's bliss, 
 
 The arcs of sight and how her arrows pierce : 
 This in the region of the air shall stand 
 In Fame's brass court, and all her trumps command. 
 
 " Rich Beauty, that each lover labours for, 
 Tempting as heaps of new-coin'd glowing gold 
 Rack'd of some miserable treasurer 
 Draw his desires, and them in chains enfold, 
 
 Urging him still to tell it, and conceal it, 
 But beauty's treasure never can be told, 
 
 None can peculiar joy, yet all must steal it. 
 O Beauty ! this same bloody siege of thine 
 Starves me that yield, and feeds me till I pine. 
 
 " And as a taper burning in the dark 
 
 As if it threaten'd every watchful eye 
 
 That viewing burns it makes that eye his mark 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 
 And hurls gilt darts at it continually, 
 
 Or as it envied, any eye but it 
 tL Should see in darkness, so my mistress' beauty 
 
 From forth her secret stand, my heart doth hit ; 
 And like the dart of Cephalus doth kill 
 Her perfect lover, though she mean no ill. 
 
 " Thus, as the innocence of one betray'd 
 Carries an Argus with it, though unknown, 
 And fate to wreak the treachery bewray'd ; 
 Such vengeance hath my mistress' beauty shown 
 7 On me, the traitor to her modesty, 
 
 So unassail'd, I quite am overthrown, 
 
 And in my triumph bound in slavery. 
 O Beauty ! still thy Empire swims in blood, 
 And in thy peace war stores himself with food. 
 
 " O Beauty, how attractive is thy power! 
 For as the life's heat clings about the heart, 
 So all men's hungry eyes do haunt thy bower. 
 Reigning in Greece, Troy swam to thee in Art, 
 
 Removed to Troy, Greece follow'd thee in fears ; 
 Thou drew'st each sireless sword, each childless 
 dart, 
 
 And pull'd'st the towers of Troy about thine 
 
 ears; 
 
 Shall I then muse that thus thou drawest me? 
 No, but admire, I stand thus far from thee." 
 
 Herewith she rose like the autumnal star, 
 Fresh burnish'd in the lofty ocean flood, 
 ^ That darts his glorious influence more far 
 
 Than any lamp of bright Olympus' brood; 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 281 
 
 She lifts her lightning arms above her head, 
 And stretcheth a meridian from her blood, 
 
 That slept awake in her Elysian bed: 
 Then knit she up, lest loose, her glowing hair 
 Should scorch the centre and incense the air. 
 
 Thus when her fair heart-binding hands had tied 
 Those liberal tresses, her high frontier part 
 She shrunk in curls, and curiously plied 
 Into the figure of a swelling heart ; 
 
 And then with jewels of device, it graced: 
 One was a sun graven at his even's depart, 
 
 And under that a man's huge shadow placed, 
 Wherein was writ, in sable charactery, 
 Decresccnte nobilitatc, crcscunt obscuri. 
 
 Another was an eye in sapphire set, 
 
 And close upon it, a fresh laurel spray, 
 
 The skilful poise was: Medio caret, 
 
 To show not eyes but means must truth display. 
 
 The third was an Apollo with his team 
 About a dial and a world in way. 
 
 The motto was, Teipsum et orbem, 
 Graven in the dial; these exceeding rare 
 And other like accomplements she ware. 
 
 Not Tigris, Nilus, nor swift Euphrates, 
 Quoth Ovid now, can more subdue my flame, 
 I must through hell adventure to displease, 
 To taste and touch, one kiss may work the same : 
 
 If more will come, more then much more I will; 
 Each natural agent doth his action frame, 
 
 To render that he works on like him still ; 
 
28 a THE POEMS OF 
 
 The fire on water working doth induce 
 Like quality unto his own in use. 
 - But heaven in her a sparkling temper blew 
 
 As love in me and so will soon be wrought. 
 Good wits will bite at baits most strange and new, 
 And words well placed, move things were never 
 
 thought ; 
 
 What goddess is it Ovid's wits shall dare, 
 And he disgrace them with attempting nought? 
 
 My words shall carry spirits to ensnare, 
 The subtlest hearts affecting suits importune, 
 " Best loves are lost for wit when men blame for- 
 tune." 
 
 Narratio. With this, as she was looking in her 
 
 glass, 
 
 She saw therein a man's face looking on her ; 
 Whereat she started from the frighted grass 
 As if some monstrous serpent had been shown 
 
 her: 
 
 Rising as when, the sun in Leo's sign, 
 Auriga with the heavenly goat upon her, 
 
 Shows her horn'd forehead with her kids divine, 
 Whose rise kills vines, heaven's face with storms 
 
 disguising 
 No man is safe at sea, the Haedy rising. 
 
 So straight wrapt she her body in a cloud 
 And threatened tempests for her high disgrace, 
 Shame from a bower of roses did unshroud 
 And spread her crimson wings upon her face ; 
 When running out poor Ovid humbly kneeling 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 283 
 
 Full in the arbour's mouth, did stay her race 
 And said, " Fair nymph, great goddess, have 
 
 some feeling 
 
 Of Ovid's pains ; but hear, and your dishonour 
 Vainly surmised, shall vanish with my horror." 
 
 " Traitor to ladies' modesties," said she, 
 
 " What savage boldness harden'd thee to this ? 
 
 Or what base reckoning of my modesty? 
 
 What should I think thy facts' proud reason is ? " 
 
 " Love, sacred madam, love exhaling me 
 Wrapt in his sulphur, to this cloud of his 
 
 Made my affections his artillery, 
 Shot me at you his proper citadel 
 And losing all my forces, here I fell." 
 
 " This gloss is common, as thy rudeness strange 
 Not to forbear these private times," quoth she, 
 " Whose fixed rites none should presume to change, 
 Not where there is adjudged inchastity ; 
 
 Our nakedness should be as much conceal'd 
 As our accomplishments desire the eye: 
 
 It is a secret not to be reveal'd, 
 But as virginity, and nuptials clothed, 
 And to our honour all to be betrothed. 
 
 " It is a want, where our abundance lies, 
 
 Given a sole dower t' enrich chaste Hymen's bed, 
 
 A perfect image of our purities 
 
 And glass by which our actions should be dress'd. 
 
 That tells us honour is as soon defiled, 
 And should be kept as pure, and incompress'd. 
 
 But sight attainteth it: for Thought, Sight's child, 
 
THE POEMS Of 
 
 Begetteth sin; and Nature bides defame, 
 When light and lawless eyes bewray our shame." 
 
 " Dear mistress," answer'd Ovid, " to direct 
 Our actions, by the straitest rule that is, 
 We must in matters moral quite reject 
 Vulgar opinion, ever led amiss, 
 
 And let authentic Reason be our guide, 
 The wife of Truth, and Wisdom's governess: 
 
 The nature of all actions must be weigh 'd, 
 And as they then appear, breed love or loathing: 
 Use makes things nothing huge, and huge things 
 nothing. 
 
 " As in your sight, how can sight simply being 
 A sense receiving essence to his flame, 
 Sent from his object, give it harm by seeing 
 Whose action in the seer hath his frame? 
 
 All excellence of shape is made for sight. 
 Else, to be like a beast were no defame ; 
 
 Hid beauties lose their ends, and wrong their 
 
 right. 
 
 And can kind love, where no harm's kind can be, 
 Disgrace with seeing that is given to see? 
 
 " 'Tis I, alas ! and my heart-burning eye 
 Do all the harm, and feel the harm we do : 
 I am no basilisk, yet harmless I 
 fl Poison with sight, and mine own bosom too; 
 
 So am I to myself a sorceress 
 Bewitch'd with my conceits in her I woo: 
 
 But you unwrong'd and all dishonourless, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 285 
 
 No ill dares touch, affliction, sorcery, 
 One kiss of yours can quickly remedy. 
 
 " I could not times observe, as others might, 
 Of cold affects and watery tempers framed, 
 Yet well assured the wonder of your sight 
 Was so far off from seeing you defamed 
 
 That ever in the fane of memory 
 Your love shall shine by it, in me inflamed. 
 
 Then let your power be clad in lenity, 
 Do not, as others would, of custom storm, 
 But prove your wit as pregnant as your form. 
 
 " Nor is my love so sudden since my heart 
 Was long love's Vulcan, with his pants' unrest, 
 Hammering the shafts bred this delightsome smart : 
 And as when Jove at once from east and west, 
 
 Cast off two eagles, to discern the sight 
 Of this world's centre, both his birds join'd breast 
 
 In Cynthian Delphos, since Earth's navel hight: 
 So casting off my ceaseless thoughts to see 
 My heart's true centre, all do meet in thee. 
 
 " Cupid that acts in you, suffers in me 
 To make himself one triumph-place of twain, 
 Into your tunes and odours turned he, 
 And through my senses flew into my brain 
 
 Where rules the Prince of sense whose throne he 
 
 takes, 
 And of my motions' engines framed a chain 
 
 To lead me where he list ; and here he makes 
 Nature, my fate, enforce me; and resigns 
 The reins of all to you in whom he shines. 
 
286 7 HE POEMS OF 
 
 11 For yielding love then, do not hate impart, 
 Nor let mine eye, your careful harbinger 
 That hath purvey'd your chamber in my heart, 
 Be blamed for seeing who it lodged there; 
 
 The freer service merits greater meed, 
 Princes are served with unexpected cheer, 
 
 And must have things in store before they need : 
 Thus should fair dames be wise and confident, 
 Not blushing to be noted excellent/' 
 
 Now, as when Heaven is muffled with the vapours, 
 His long since just divorced wife the Earth, 
 In Envy's breaths, to mask his spurry tapers 
 From the unrich abundance of her birth, 
 
 When straight the western issue of the air 
 Beats with his flowery wings those brats of dearth, 
 
 And gives Olympus leave to show his fair, 
 So fled th' offended shadows of her cheer, 
 And show'd her pleased countenance full as clear. 
 
 Which for his fourth course made our Poet court 
 her, etc. 
 
 Gustus. " This motion of my soul, my fantasy 
 Created by three senses put in act. 
 Let justice nourish with thy sympathy, 
 
 Aiterationem Putting my other senses into fact, 
 
 pati est * , 
 
 sentire. If now thou grant not, now 
 
 changed that offence; 
 
 To suffer change doth perfect sense compact: 
 Change then, and suffer for the use of sense, 
 We live not for ourselves, the ear, and eye, 
 And every sense must serve society. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 287 
 
 " To furnish then this banquet where the taste 
 Is never used, and yet the cheer divine 
 The nearest mean, dear mistress, that thou hast 
 To bless me with it, is a kiss of thine, 
 Which grace shall borrow organs of my touch 
 T'advance it to that inward taste of mine, 
 
 Which makes all sense, and shall delight as much. 
 Then with a kiss, dear life, adorn thy feast, 
 And let, as banquets should, the last be best." 
 
 Corinna. I see unbidden guests are boldest still, 
 And well you show how weak in soul you are, 
 That let rude sense subdue your reason's skill, 
 And feed so spoilfully on sacred fare: 
 
 In temper of such needless feasts as this, 
 We show more bounty still the more we spare, 
 
 Chiefly where birth and state so different is : 
 Air too much rarefied breaks forth in fire, 
 And favours too far urged do end in ire. 
 
 Ovid. The difference of our births, imperial 
 
 dame, 
 
 Is herein noted with too trivial eyes 
 For your rare wits; that should your choices frame 
 To state of parts, that most doth royalize, 
 
 Not to commend mine own ; but that in yours 
 Beyond your birth, are peril's sovereignties 
 
 Which, urged, your words had struck with 
 
 sharper powers ; 
 
 Tis for mere look-like-ladies, and for men 
 To boast of birth that still be childeren, 
 
288 THE POEMS OF 
 
 " Running to father straight to help their needs ; 
 True dignities and rites of reverence, 
 Are sown in minds, and reap'd in lively deeds, 
 */ And only policy makes difference 
 
 'Twixt states, since virtue wants due imperance 
 Virtue makes honour, as the soul doth sense, 
 
 And merit far exceeds inheritance, 
 The Graces fill love's cup, his feasts adorning 
 Who seeks your service now, the Graces scorning." 
 
 " Pure love," said she, " the purest grace sues, 
 And there is contact not by application 
 Of lips or bodies, but of bodies' virtues, 
 As in our elemental nation 
 
 Stars by their powers, which are their heat and 
 
 light, 
 
 Do heavenly works, and that which hath proba- 
 tion 
 
 By virtual contact hath the noblest plight, 
 Both for the lasting and affinity 
 It hath with natural divinity." 
 
 Ovid replied : " In this thy virtual presence, 
 Most fair Corinna, thou canst not effuse 
 The true and solid parts of thy pure essence, 
 But dost thy superficial beams produce 
 
 Of thy rich substance ; which because they flow 
 Rather from form than from the matter's use, 
 
 Resemblance only of thy body show 
 Whereof they are thy wondrous species, 
 And 'tis thy substance must my longings ease. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 289 
 
 " Speak then, sweet air, that givest our speech 
 
 event, 
 
 And teach my mistress tractability, 
 That art to motion most obedient, 
 qjj And though thy nature swelling be and high, 
 
 And occupiest so infinite a space, 
 Yet yield'st to words, and art condensed thereby 
 
 Past nature press'd into a little place; 
 Dear sovereign, then, make air thy rule in this, 
 And me thy worthy servant with a kiss." 
 
 " Ovid," said she, " I am well pleased to yield : 
 Bounty by virtue cannot be abused : 
 Nor will I coyly lift Minerva's shield 
 Against Minerva, honour is not bruised 
 
 With such a tender pressure as a kiss, 
 Nor yielding soon to words, though seldom used, 
 
 Niceness in civil favours folly is : 
 Long suits make never good a bad detection, 
 Nor yielding soon makes bad a good affection. 
 
 " To some, I know, and know it for a fault, 
 Order and reverence are repulsed in scaling, 
 When pride and rudeness enter with assault, 
 Consents to fall are worse to get than falling; 
 
 Willing resistance takes away the will, 
 And too much weakness 'tis to come with calling; 
 
 Force, in these frays, is better man than skill, 
 Yet I like skill, and, Ovid, if a kiss 
 May do thee so much pleasure, here it is." 
 
 Her moving towards him made Ovid's eye 
 Believe the firmament was coming down 
 
290 THE POEMS OF 
 
 To take him quick to immortality, 
 
 And that th' Ambrosian kiss set on the crown ; 
 
 She spake in kissing, and her breath infused 
 Restoring syrup to his taste, in swoon : 
 
 And he imagined Hebe's hands had bruised 
 A banquet of the gods into his sense, 
 Which fill'd him with this furious influence. 
 
 " The motion of the heavens that did beget 
 The golden age, and by whose harmony 
 Heaven is preserved, in me on work is set ; 
 All instruments of deepest melody, 
 
 Off Set sweet in my desires to my love's liking; 
 
 With this sweet kiss in me, their tunes apply 
 
 As if the best musician's hands were striking ; 
 This kiss in me hath endless music closed, 
 Like Phoebus' lute on Nisus' towers imposed. 
 
 " And as a pebble cast into a spring, 
 We see a sort of trembling circles rise, 
 One forming other in their issuing, 
 Till over all the fount they circulize ; 
 QQ So this perpetual-mot ion-making kiss 
 
 Is propagate through all my faculties, 
 
 And makes my breast an endless fount of bliss, 
 Of which, if gods could drink, their matchless fare 
 Would make them much more blessed than they are. 
 
 " But as when sounds do hollow bodies beat, 
 Air gather'd there, compress'd and thickened, 
 . . The self -same way she came doth make retreat, 
 
 And so effects the sound re-echoed, 
 Only in part because she weaker is 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 291 
 
 In that reddition, than when first she fled; 
 
 So I, alas ! faint echo of this kiss, 
 Only reiterate a slender part 
 Of that high joy it worketh in my heart. 
 
 " And thus with feasting, love is famish'd more, 
 Without my touch are all things turned to gold, 
 And till I touch I cannot joy my store ; 
 To purchase others, I myself have sold ; 
 
 Love is a wanton famine, rich in food, 
 But with a richer appetite controll'd ; 
 
 An argument in figure and in mood, 
 Yet hates all arguments ; disputing still 
 For sense 'gainst reason with a senseless will. 
 
 " Then, sacred madam, since my Tactus. 
 
 other senses 
 
 Have in your graces tasted such content, 
 Let wealth not to be spent fear no expenses, 
 But give thy bounty true eternizement ; 
 
 Making my sense's ground-work, which is feel- 
 ing, 
 Effect the other, endless, excellent, 
 
 Their substance with flint-softening softness 
 
 stealing ; 
 
 Then let me feel, for know, sweet beauty's queen, 
 Dames may be felt, as well as heard or seen. 
 
 " For if we be allow'd to serve the Ear 
 With pleasing tunes, and to delight the Eye 
 With gracious shows, the Taste with dainty cheer, 
 The Smell with odours, is't immodesty 
 
29 a THE POEMS OF 
 
 To serve the senses' Emperor, sweet Feeling, 
 With those delights that fit his empery? 
 
 Shall subjects free themselves and bind their 
 
 king? 
 
 Minds taint no more with bodies* touch or tire, 
 Than bodies nourish with the mind's desire. 
 
 " The mind then clear, the body may be used, 
 Which perfectly your touch can spiritualize ; 
 As by the great elixir is transfused 
 Copper to gold, then that deed of prize : 
 ^t Such as transform into corrupt effects 
 
 What they receive from nature's purities, 
 
 Should not wrong them that hold her due re- 
 spects ; 
 
 To touch your quickening side then give me leave, 
 Th' abuse of things must not the use bereave." 
 
 Herewith, even glad his arguments to hear, 
 Worthily willing to have lawful grounds 
 To make the wondrous power of heaven appear 
 In nothing more than her perfections found. 
 fo (5 Close to her navel she her mantle wrests, 
 
 Slacking it upwards, and the folds unwound, 
 
 Showing Latona's twins, her plenteous breasts, 
 The sun and Cynthia in their triumph-robes 
 Of lady-skin, more rich than both their globes. 
 
 Whereto she bade blest Ovid put his hand; 
 He, well acknowledging it much too base 
 For such an action, did a little stand, 
 Ennobling it with titles full of grace, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
 And conjures it with charge of reverend verse 
 To use with piety that sacred place, 
 
 And through his Feeling's organ to disperse 
 Worth to his spirits, amply to supply 
 The pureness of his flesh's faculty. 
 
 And thus he said : " King of the king of senses, 
 Engine of all the engines under heaven, 
 To health and life defence of all defences, 
 Bounty by which our nourishment is given, 
 
 Beauty's beautifier, kind acquaintance-maker, 
 Proportion's oddness that makes all things even. 
 
 Wealth of the labourer, wrong's revengement 
 
 taker, 
 
 Pattern of concord, lord of exercise, 
 And figure of that power the world did guise: 
 
 " Dear hand, most duly honoured in this, 
 And therefore worthy to be well employ 'd, 
 Yet know that all that honour nothing is, 
 Compared with that which now must be enjoy'd ; 
 
 So think in all the pleasures these have shown 
 Liken'd to this, thou wert but mere annoy'd, 
 
 That all hands' merits in thyself alone 
 With this one touch, have more than recompence, 
 And therefore feel with fear and reverence. 
 
 " See Cupid's Alps, which now thou must go over, 
 Where snow that thaws the sun doth ever lie, 
 Where thou may'st plain and feelingly discover 
 The world's fore-past, that flow'd with milk and 
 
 honey ; 
 Where like an empress seeing nothing wanting 
 
294 THE POEAfS OP 
 
 That may her glorious child-bed beautify 
 
 Pleasure herself lies big with issue panting; 
 Ever deliver'd, yet with child still growing, 
 Full of all blessing, yet all bliss bestowing." 
 
 This said, he laid his hand upon her side, 
 Which made her start like sparkles from a fire, 
 Or like Saturnia from th' Ambrosian pride 
 Of her morn's slumber, frighted with admire, 
 HO When Jove laid young Alcides to her breast, 
 
 So startled she, not with a coy retire, 
 
 But with the tender temper she was blest, 
 Proving her sharp, undulFd with handling yet, 
 Which keener edge on Ovid's longings set. 
 
 And feeling still he sigh'd out this effect; 
 " Alas! why lent not heaven the soul a tongue? 
 Nor language, nor peculiar dialect, 
 To make her high conceits as highly sung? 
 It I But that a fleshly engine must unfold 
 
 A spiritual notion : birth from princes sprung, 
 
 Peasants must nurse, free virtue wait on gold, 
 And a profess'd, though flattering enemy, 
 Must plead my honour and my liberty. 
 
 " O, nature! how dost thou defame in this 
 Our human honours, yoking men with beasts, 
 And noblest minds with slaves; thus beauty's bliss, 
 Love and all virtues that quick spirit feasts 
 
 Surfeit on flesh ; and thou that banquet'st minds, 
 Most bounteous mistress, of thy dull-tongued guests 
 
 Reap'st not due thanks ; thus rude frailty binds 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 295 
 
 What thou givest wings ; thus joys I feel in thee 
 Hang on my lips and will not utter'd be. 
 
 " Sweet touch, the engine that love's bow doth bend, 
 
 The sense wherewith he feels him deified, 
 
 The object whereto all his actions tend, 
 
 In all his blindness his most pleasing guide, 
 
 For thy sake will I write the Art of Love, 
 Since thou dost blow his fire and feed his pride, 
 
 Since in thy sphere his health and life cloth move, 
 For thee I hate who hate society, 
 And such as self-love makes his slavery. 
 
 " In these dog-days how this contagion smothers 
 The purest blood with virtue's diet fined, 
 Nothing their own, unless they be some other's 
 Spite of themselves, are in themselves confined, 
 
 And live so poor they are of all despised, 
 Their gifts held down with scorn should be divined, 
 
 And they like mummers mask, unknown, un- 
 prized : 
 
 A thousand marvels mourn in some such breast, 
 Would make a kind and worthy patron blest. 
 
 " To me, dear sovereign, thou art patroness, 
 And I, with that thy graces have infused, 
 Will make all fat and foggy brains confess 
 Riches may from a poor verse be deduced : 
 ( And that gold's love shall leave them grovelling 
 
 here, 
 
 When thy perfections shall to heaven be mused, 
 Deck'd in bright verse, where angels shall appear, 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 
 The praise of virtue, love, and beauty singing, 
 Honour to noblesse, shame to avarice bringing." 
 
 Here Ovid, interrupted with the view 
 Of other dames, who then the garden painted, 
 Shrouded himself, and did as death eschew 
 All note by which his love's fame might be tainted 
 lib And as when mighty Macedon had won 
 
 The monarchy of earth, yet when he fainted. 
 
 Grieved that no greater action could hi- done, 
 And that there were no more worlds to subdue. 
 So love's defects, love's conqueror did rue. 
 
 But as when expert painters have displayed 
 To quickest life a monarch's royal hand, 
 Holding a sceptre, there is yet bewray M 
 But half his fingers ; when we understand 
 / J 7 The rest not to be seen ; and never blame 
 
 The painter's art, in nicest censures scann'd. 
 
 So in the compass of this curious frame 
 Ovid well knew there was much more intended, 
 With whose omission none must be offended. 
 
 Intentio, aninii actio. 
 Explicit convivium. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 297 
 
 A CORONET FOR HIS MISTRESS 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 MUSES that sing Love's sensual empery, 
 And lovers kindling your enraged fires 
 
 At Cupid's bonfires burning in the eye, 
 
 Blown with the empty breath of vain desires, 
 
 You that prefer the painted cabinet 
 
 Before the wealthy jewels it doth store yee, 
 
 That all your joys in dying figures set, 
 
 And stain the living substance of your glory, 
 
 Abjure those joys, abhor their memory, 
 And let my love the honour'd subject be 
 Of love, and honour's complete history ; 
 Your eyes were never yet let in to see 
 
 The majesty and riches of the mind, 
 
 But dwell in darkness ; for your God is blind. 
 
 u. 
 
 But dwell in darkness, for your God is blind, 
 Humour pours down such torrents on his eyes; 
 Which, as from mountains, fall on his base kind, 
 And eat your entrails out with ecstasies. 
 
 Colour, whose hands for faintness are not felt, 
 Can bind your waxen thoughts in adamant; 
 And with her painted fires your heart doth melt, 
 
298 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Which beat your souls in pieces with a pant. 
 But my love is the cordial of souls, 
 Teaching by passion what perfection is, 
 In whose fix'd beauties shine the sacred scroll, 
 And long-lost records of your human bliss, 
 Spirit to flesh, and soul to spirit giving, 
 Love flows not from my liver but her living. 
 
 in. 
 
 Love flows not from my liver but her living, 
 From whence all stings to perfect love are darted 
 All power, and thought of prideful lust depriving 
 Her life so pure and she so spotless-hearted. 
 
 In whom sits beauty with so firm a brow, 
 
 That age, nor care, nor torment can contract it ; 
 Heaven's glories shining there, do stuff allow, 
 And virtue's constant graces do compact it. 
 
 Her mind the beam of God -draws in the fires 
 Of her chaste eyes, from all earth's tempting 
 
 fuel; 
 
 Which upward lifts the looks of her desires, 
 And makes each precious thought in her a jewel. 
 
 And as huge fires compress'd more proudly flame, 
 
 So her close beauties further blaze her fame. 
 
 IV. 
 
 So her close beauties further blaze her fame; 
 
 When from the world, into herself reflected ; 
 
 She lets her shameless glory in her shame, 
 
 Content for heaven to be of earth rejected. 
 She thus depress'd, knocks at Olympus' gate, 
 
 And in th' untainted temple of her heart 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 299 
 
 Doth the divorceless nuptials celebrate 
 
 Twixt God and her; where love's profaned dart 
 Feeds the chaste flames of Hymen's firmament, 
 
 Wherein she sacrificeth, for her part ; 
 
 The robes, looks, deeds, desires and whole de- 
 scent 
 
 Of female natures, built in shops of art, 
 Virtue is both the merit and reward 
 Of her removed and soul-infused regard. 
 
 v. 
 
 Of her removed and soul-infused regard, 
 
 With whose firm species, as with golden lances, 
 She points her life's field, for all wars prepared, 
 And bears one chanceless mind, in all mischances; 
 
 Th' inverted world that goes upon her head, 
 And with her wanton heels doth kick the sky, 
 My love disdains, though she be honoured, 
 And without envy sees her empery 
 
 Loathes all her toys, and thoughts cupidinine, 
 Arranging in the army of her face 
 All virtue's forces, to dismay loose eyne, 
 That hold no quarter with renown or grace. 
 
 War to all frailty ; peace of all things pure, 
 
 Her look doth promise and her life assure. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Her look doth promise and her life assure ; 
 A right line forcing a rebateless point, 
 In her high deeds, through everything obscure, 
 To full perfection ; not the weak disjoint 
 
3 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Of female humours ; nor the Protean rages 
 
 Of pied-faced fashion, that doth shrink and swell, 
 
 Working poor men like waxen images, 
 
 And makes them apish strangers where they 
 
 dwell, 
 
 Can alter her, titles of primacy, 
 Courtship of antic gestures, brainless jests, 
 Blood without soul of false nobility, 
 Nor any folly that the world infests 
 Can alter her who with her constant guises 
 To living virtues turns the deadly vices. 
 
 VII. 
 
 To living virtues turns the deadly vices ; 
 For covetous she is of all good parts, 
 Incontinent, for still she shows entices 
 To consort with them sucking out their hearts, 
 
 Proud, for she scorns prostrate humility, 
 And gluttonous in store of abstinence, 
 Drunk with extractions still'd in fervency 
 From contemplation, and true continence, 
 
 Burning in wrath against impatience, 
 And sloth itself, for she will never rise 
 From that all-seeing trance, the band of sense, 
 Wherein in view of all souls' skill she lies. 
 
 No constancy to that her mind doth move, 
 
 Nor riches to the virtues of my love. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Nor riches to the virtues of my love, 
 Nor empire to her mighty government; 
 Which fair analysed in her beauties' grove, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 301 
 
 Shows Laws for care, and Canons for content ; 
 
 And as a purple tincture given to glass, 
 
 By clear transmission of the sun doth taint 
 
 Opposed subjects ; so my mistress' face 
 
 Doth reverence in her viewers' brows depaint, 
 
 And like the pansy, with a little veil, 
 
 She gives her inward work the greater grace; 
 Which my lines imitate, though much they fail 
 Her gifts so high, and times' conceit so base ; 
 
 Her virtues then above my verse must raise her, 
 
 For words want art, and Art wants words to praise 
 her. 
 
 IX. 
 
 For words want art, and Art wants words to praise 
 
 her; 
 
 Yet shall my active and industrious pen 
 Wind his sharp forehead through those parts that 
 
 raise her, 
 And register her worth past rarest women. 
 
 Herself shall be my Muse ; that well will know 
 Her proper inspirations ; and assuage 
 With her dear love the wrongs my fortunes 
 
 show, 
 Which to my youth bind heartless grief in age. 
 
 Herself shall be my comfort and my riches, 
 And all my thoughts I will on her convert; 
 Honour, and error, which the world bewitches, 
 Shall still crown fools, and tread upon desert, 
 
 And never shall my friendless verse envy 
 
 Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify. 
 
302 THE POEMS OF 
 
 X. 
 
 Muses that Fame's loose feathers beautify, 
 And such as scorn to tread the theatre, 
 As ignorant: the seed of memory 
 Have most inspired, and shown their glories there 
 
 To noblest wits, and men of highest doom, 
 That for the kingly laurel bent affair 
 The theatres of Athens and of Rome, 
 Have been the crowns, and not the base impair. 
 
 Far, then, be this foul cloudy-brow'd contempt 
 From like-plumed birds: and let your sacred 
 
 rhymes 
 
 From honour's court their servile feet exempt, 
 That live by soothing moods, and serving times: 
 
 And let my love adorn with modest eyes, 
 
 Muses that sing Love's sensual emperies. 
 
 Lucidius olim. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 303 
 
 THE AMOROUS ZODIAC, 
 i. 
 
 I NEVER see the sun, but suddenly 
 
 My soul is moved with spite and jealousy 
 
 Of his high bliss, in his sweet course discern'd : 
 And am displeased to see so many signs, 
 As the bright sky unworthily divines, 
 
 Enjoy an honour they have never earn'd. 
 
 ii. 
 
 To think heaven decks with such a beauteous show, 
 A harp, a ship, a serpent, or a crow ; 
 
 And such a crew of creatures of no prices, 
 But to excite in us th' unshamefaced flames, 
 With which, long since, Jove wrong'd so many 
 dames, 
 
 Reviving in his rule their names and vices. 
 
 in. 
 
 Dear mistress, whom the Gods bred here below, 
 T' express their wondrous power, and let us know 
 
 That before thee they nought did perfect make; 
 Why may not I as in those signs, the sun 
 Shine in thy beauties, and as roundly run, 
 
 To frame, like him, an endless Zodiac, 
 
304 THE POEMS OF 
 
 IV. 
 
 With thee I'll furnish both the year and sky, 
 Running in thee my course of destiny: 
 
 And thou shalt be the rest of all my moving, 
 But of thy numberless and perfect graces, 
 To give my moons their full in twelve months' 
 spaces, 
 
 I choose but twelve in guerdon of my loving. 
 
 v. 
 
 Keeping even way through every excellence, 
 I'll make in all an equal residence 
 
 Of a new Zodiac ; a new Phoebus guising, 
 When, without altering the course of nature, 
 I'll make the seasons good, and every creature 
 
 Shall henceforth reckon day, from my first rising. 
 
 VI. 
 
 To open then the spring-time's golden gate, 
 And flower my race with ardour temperate, 
 
 I'll enter by thy head, and have for house 
 In my first month, this heaven Ram-curled tress, 
 Of which Love all his charm-chains doth address, 
 
 A sign fit for a spring so beauteous. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Lodged in that fleece of hair, yellow and cuifd, 
 I'll take high pleasure to enlight the world, 
 And fetter me in gold, thy crisps implies 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 35 
 
 Earth, at this spring, spongy and languorsome 
 With envy of our joys in love become, 
 
 Shall swarm with flowers, and air with painted 
 flies. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Thy smooth embow'd brow, where all grace I see, 
 My second month, and second house shall be; 
 
 Which brow, with her clear beauties shall delight 
 The Earth, yet sad, and overture confer 
 To herbs, buds, flowers, and verdure-gracing Ver, 
 
 Rendering her more than Summer exquisite. 
 
 IX. 
 
 All this fresh April, this sweet month of Venus, 
 I will admire this brow so bounteous; 
 
 This brow, brave court of love and virtue buildecl ; 
 This brow, where Chastity holds garrison; 
 This brow, that blushless none can look upon, 
 
 This brow, with every grace and honour gilded. 
 
 x. 
 
 Resigning that, to perfect this my year, 
 I'll come to see thine eyes, that now I fear; 
 
 Thine eyes, that, sparkling like two twinborn 
 
 fires, 
 
 Whose looks benign, and shining sweets do grace 
 May's youthful month with a more pleasing face; 
 
 Justly the Twins'-sign hold in my desires. 
 
306 THE POEMS OF 
 
 XI. 
 
 Scorch'd with the beams these sister-flames eject, 
 The living sparks thereof, Earth shall effect ; 
 
 The shock of our join'd fires the summer starting : 
 The season by degrees shall change again, 
 The days their longest durance shall retain ; 
 
 The stars their amplest light and ardour darting. 
 
 XII. 
 
 But now, I fear, that throned in such a shrine, 
 Playing with objects, pleasant and divine, 
 
 I should be moved to dwell there thirty days. 
 O no, I could not in so little space 
 With joy admire enough their plenteous grace, 
 
 But ever live in sunshine of their rays. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Yet this should be in vain, my forced will 
 My course design'd, begun, shall follow still ; 
 
 So forth I must, when forth this month is wore, 
 And of the neighbour signs be born anew, 
 Which sign, perhaps, may stay me with the view, 
 
 More to conceive, and so desire the more. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 It is thy nose, stern to thy bark of love, 
 
 Or which, pine-like, doth crown a flowery grove, 
 
 Which nature strived to fashion with her best, 
 That she might never turn to show more skill, 
 And that the envious fool, used to speak ill, 
 
 Might feel pretended fault choked in his breast. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 37 
 
 XV. 
 
 The violent season in a sign so bright, 
 
 Still more and more, become more proud of light, 
 
 Should still incense me in the following sign ; 
 A sign, whose sight desires a gracious kiss, 
 And the red confines of thy tongue it is, 
 
 Where, hotter than before, mine eyes would shine. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 So glow those corals, nought but fire respiring, 
 With smiles or words, or sighs her thoughts at- 
 tiring; 
 
 Or, be it she a kiss divinely frameth ; 
 Or that her tongue shoots forward, and retires, 
 Doubling, like fervent Sirius, summer's fires, 
 
 In Leo's month, which all the world enflameth. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 And now to bid the Boreal signs adieu, 
 I come to give thy virgin-cheeks the view 
 
 To temper all my fire, and tame my heat, 
 Which soon will feel itself extinct and dead, 
 In those fair courts with modesty dispread, 
 
 With holy, humble, and chaste thoughts replete. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The purple tinct thy marble cheeks retain, 
 The marble tinct thy purple cheeks doth stain. 
 
 The lilies duly equall'd with thine eyes, 
 The tinct that dyes the morn with deeper red 
 Shall hold my course a month if, as I dread, 
 
 My fires to issue want not faculties. 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 
 XIX. 
 
 To balance now thy more obscured graces, 
 'Gainst them the circle of thy head enchases 
 
 Twice three months used, to run through twice 
 
 three houses 
 
 To render in this heaven my labour lasting, 
 I haste to see the rest, and with one hasting, 
 
 The dripping time shall fill the Earth carouses. 
 
 xx. 
 
 Then by the neck my autumn I'll commence, 
 Thy neck, that merits place of excellence 
 
 Such as this is, where with a certain sphere, 
 In balancing the darkness with the light, 
 It might so weigh with scales of equal weight, 
 
 Thy beauties seen with those do not appear. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Now past my month t' admire for built most pure 
 This marble pillar and her lineature, 
 
 I come t' inhabit thy most gracieus teajs 
 Teats that feed Love upon the white rhiphees, 
 Teats where he hangs his glory and his trophies, 
 
 When victor from the gods' war he retreats. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Hid in the vale 'twixt these two hills confined, 
 This vale the nest of loves, and joys divined, 
 
 Shall I enjoy mine ease ; and fair be pass'd 
 Beneath these parching Alps ; and this sweet cold 
 Is first, this month, heaven doth to us unfold ; 
 
 But there shall I still grieve to be displaced. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAtf. 309 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 To sort from this most brave and pompous sign, 
 Leaving a little my ecliptic line 
 
 (Less superstitious than the other sun), 
 The rest of my autumnal race I'll end 
 To see thy hand, whence I the crown attend, 
 
 Since in thy past parts I have slightly run. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Thy hand, a lily gender'd of a rose 
 
 That wakes the morning, hid in night's repose: 
 
 And from Apollo's bed the veil doth twine, 
 That each where doth th' Idalian minion guide 
 That bends his bow ; that ties, and leaves untied 
 
 The silver ribands of his little ensign. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 In fine, still drawing to th' Antarctic pole, 
 The tropic sign I'll run at for my goal; 
 
 Which I can scarce express with chastity, 
 I know in heaven 'tis called Capricorn; 
 And with the sudden thought my case takes horn, 
 
 So, heaven-like, Capricorn the name shall be. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 This, wondrous fit, the wintry solstice seazeth, 
 Where darkness greater grows and day decreaseth, 
 
 Where rather I would be in night than day ; 
 But when I see my journeys do increase, 
 I'll straight despatch me thence, and go in peace 
 
 To my next house, where I may safer stay. 
 
3*0 THE POEMS OF 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 This house alongst thy naked thighs is found, 
 Naked of spot; made fleshy, firm, and round, 
 
 To entertain love's friends with feeling sport; 
 These Cupid's secret mysteries enfold, 
 And pillars are that Venus' fane uphold, 
 
 Of her dear joys the glory and support. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Sliding on thy smooth thighs to this month's end ; 
 To thy well-fashion'd calves I will descend, 
 
 That soon the last house I may apprehend, 
 Thy slender feet, fine slender feet that shame 
 Thetis' sheen feet, which poets so much fame ; 
 
 And here my latest season I will end. 
 
 L'ENVOY. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Dear mistress, if poor wishes heaven would hear, 
 I would not choose the empire of the water ; 
 
 The empire of the air, nor of the earth, 
 But endlessly my course of life confining, 
 In this fair Zodiac for ever shining, 
 
 And with thy beauties make me endless mirth. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 But gracious love, if jealous heaven deny 
 My life this truly-blest variety, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
 Yet will I thee through all the world disperse; 
 If not in heaven, amongst those braving fires, 
 Yet here thy beauties, which the world admires, 
 
 Bright as those flames shall glister in my verse. 
 
THE POEMS Of 
 
 TO 
 
 MY ADMIRED AND SOUL-LOVED FRIEND, MASTER OF ALL 
 ESSENTIAL AND TRUE KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 M. HARRIOTS. 
 
 To you, whose depth of soul measures the height 
 And all dimensions of all works of weight, 
 Reason being ground, structure and ornament, 
 To all inventions grave and permanent, 
 And your clear eyes, the spheres where reason 
 
 moves ; 
 
 This artizan, this God of rational loves, 
 Blind Homer, in this Shield, and in the rest 
 Of his seven books, which my hard hand hath 
 
 dress'd 
 
 In rough integuments, I send for censure, 
 That my long time and labours' deep extensure, 
 Spent to conduct him to our envious light, 
 In your allowance may receive some right 
 To their endeavours ; and take virtuous heart, 
 From your applause, crown'd with their own desert. 
 Such crowns suffice the free and royal mind, 
 But these subjected hang-byes of our kind, 
 These children that will never stand alone, 
 But must be nourish'd with corruption, 
 Which are our bodies : that are traitors born 
 To their own crowns, their souls ; betray'd to scorn, 
 To gaudy* insolence and ignorance, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 3 *3 
 
 By their base flesh's frailties, that must dance 
 Profane attendance at their states and birth, 
 That are mere servants to this servile earth; 
 These must have other crowns for meeds than 
 
 merits, 
 
 Or starve themselves, and quench their fiery spirits. 
 Thus as the soul upon the flesh depends, 
 Virtue must wait on wealth ; we must make friends 
 Of the unrighteous mammon, and our sleights 
 Must bear the forms of fools or parasites. 
 Rich mine of knowledge, O that my strange muse 
 Without this body's nourishment could use 
 Her zealous faculties, only t' aspire, 
 Instructive light from your whole sphere of fire; 
 But woe is me, what zeal or power so ever, 
 My free soul hath, my body will be never 
 Able t' attend; never shall I enjoy 
 The end of my hapless birth ; never employ 
 That smother'd fervour that in loathed embers 
 Lies swept from light, and no clear hour remembers. 
 O, had your perfect eye organs to pierce 
 Into that chaos whence this stifled verse 
 By violence breaks; where, glowworm-like, doth 
 
 shine 
 
 In nights of sorrow, this hid soul of mine ; 
 And how her genuine forms struggle for birth, 
 Under the claws of this foul panther earth: 
 Then under all those forms you should discern 
 My love to you, in my desire to learn. 
 Skill and the love of skill, do ever kiss ; 
 No band of love so strong as knowledge is; 
 Which who is he, that may not learn of you, 
 
3 '4 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Whom learning doth with his light's throne endow ? 
 
 What learned fields pay not their flowers t' adorn 
 
 Your odorous wreath ? Compact, put on, and worn 
 
 By apt and adamantine industry, 
 
 Proposing still demonstrate verity 
 
 For your great object, far from plodding gain, 
 
 Or thirst of glory ; when, absurd and vain, 
 
 Most students in their whole instruction are, 
 
 But in traditions more particular; 
 
 Leaning like rotten houses, on out beams, 
 
 And with true light fade in themselves like dreams. 
 
 True learning hath a body absolute, 
 
 That in apparent sense itself can suit, 
 
 Not hid in airy terms, as if it were 
 
 Like spirits fantastic, that put men in fear, 
 
 And are but bugs form'd in their foul conceits, 
 
 Nor made for sale, glazed with sophistic sleights, 
 
 But wrought for all times proof, strong to bid 
 
 prease 
 
 And shiver ignorants, like Hercules, 
 On their own dung-hills ; but our formal clerks, 
 Blown for profession, spend their souls in sparks, 
 Framed of dismember'd parts that make most show, 
 And like to broken limbs of knowledge go, 
 When thy true wisdom by thy learning won, 
 Shall honour learning while there shines a sun ; 
 And thine own name in merit, far above 
 Their tympanies of state, that arms of love, 
 Fortune, or blood shall lift to dignity ; 
 Whom though you reverence and your empery 
 Of spirit and soul, be servitude they think 
 And but a beam of light broke through a chink 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 315 
 
 To all their waterish splendour ; and much more 
 To the great sun, and all things they adore, 
 In staring ignorance ; yet your self shall shine 
 Above all this in knowledge most divine, 
 And all shall homage to your true worth owe, 
 You comprehending all, that all, not you. 
 
 And when thy writings that now Error's night 
 Chokes earth with mists, break forth like eastern 
 
 light, 
 
 Showing to every comprehensive eye 
 High sectious brawls becalm'd by unity, 
 Nature made all transparent, and her heart 
 Gript in thy hand, crushing digested Art 
 In flames unmeasured, measured out of it, 
 On whose head for a crown thy soul shall sit, 
 Crown'd with heaven's inward brightness showing 
 
 clear 
 
 What true man is, and how like gnats appear, 
 O fortune-glossed pompists, and proud misers, 
 That are of arts such impudent despisers; 
 Then past anticipating dooms and scorns, 
 Which for self-grace each ignorant suborns, 
 Their glowing and amazed eyes shall see 
 How short of thy soul's strength my weak words be ; 
 And that I do not like our poets prefer 
 For profit, praise, and keep a squeaking stir 
 With call'd-on muses to unchild their brains 
 Of wind and vapour: lying still in pains 
 Of worthy issue; but as one profess'd 
 In nought but truth's dear love the soul's true 
 
 rest. 
 Continue then your sweet judicial kindness 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 
 To your true friend, that though this lump of blind- 
 ness, 
 
 This scornful, this despised, inverted world, 
 Whose head is fury-like with adders curl'd 
 And all her bulk a poison'd porcupine, 
 Her stings and quills darting at worths divine, 
 Keep under my estate with all contempt, 
 And make me live even from myself exempt. 
 Yet if you see some gleams of wrestling fire 
 Break from my spirit's oppression, showing desire 
 To become worthy to partake your skill, 
 Since virtue's first and chief step is to will, 
 Comfort me with it, and prove you affect me, 
 Through all the rotten spawn of earth reject me. 
 For though I now consume in poesy, 
 Yet Homer being my root I cannot die. 
 But lest to use all poesy in the sight 
 Of grave philosophy show brains too light 
 To comprehend her depth of mystery, 
 I vow 'tis only strong necessity 
 Governs my pains herein, which yet may use 
 A man's whole life without the least abuse. 
 And though to rhyme and give a verse smooth feet, 
 Uttering to vulgar palates passions sweet 
 Chance often in such weak capricious spirits, 
 As in nought else have tolerable merits, 
 Yet where high Poesy's native habit shines, 
 From whose reflections flow eternal lines, 
 Philosophy retired to darkest caves 
 She can discover: and the proud world's braves 
 Answer in anything but impudence 
 With circle of her general excellence. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 317 
 
 For ample instance Homer more than serveth, 
 
 And what his grave and learned Muse deserveth, 
 
 Since it is made a courtly question now, 
 
 His competent and partless judge be you; 
 
 If these vain lines and his deserts arise 
 
 To the high searches of your serious eyes 
 
 As he is English: and I could not choose 
 
 But to your name this short inscription use, 
 
 As well assured you would approve my pain 
 
 In my traduction ; and besides this vein 
 
 Excuse my thoughts as bent to others' aims 
 
 Might my will rule me, and when any flames 
 
 Of my press'd soul break forth to their own show, 
 
 Think they must hold engraven regard of you. 
 
 Of you in whom the worth of all the graces 
 
 Due to the mind's gifts, might embrue the faces 
 
 Of such as scorn them, and with tyrannous eye 
 
 Contemn the sweat of virtuous industry. 
 
 But as ill lines new fill'd with ink undried 
 
 An empty pen with their own stuff applied 
 
 Can blot them out: so shall their wealth-burst 
 
 wombs 
 Be made with empty pen their honours' tombs. 
 
318 THE PQEMS OF 
 
 THE TEARS OF PEACE.* 
 [1609.] 
 
 TO THE HIGH-BORN PRINCE OF M1N, 
 
 HENRY, 
 
 THRICE-ROYAL INHERITOR TO THE UNITED KINGDOMS OF 
 GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 INDUCTIO. 
 
 Now that our sovereign, the great King of Peace, 
 
 Hath, in her grace, outlabour'd Hercules; 
 
 And past his pillars, stretch'd her victories ; 
 
 Since (as he were sole soul t' all royalties) 
 
 He moves all kings in this vast universe 
 
 To cast chaste nets on th' impious lust of Mars ; 
 
 See all and imitate his goodness still 
 
 That, having clear'd so well war's outward ill) 
 
 He, god-like, still employs his firm desires 
 
 To cast learn'd ink upon those inward fires, 
 
 That kindle worse war in the minds of men, 
 
 Like to incense the outward war again : 
 
 Self-love inflaming so men's sensual blood 
 
 That all good public drowns in private good ; 
 
 *" Euthymia Raptus; or tht Teares of Peace: With Inter- 
 locutions. By Geo. Chapman. At London, Printed by If. L. for 
 Rich. Bonian, and H. Walley: and are to be solde at the spread- 
 eagle, neere the great North-door of St. Pauls Church. 1609." 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAX. 319 
 
 And that sinks under his own overfreight ; 
 
 Men's reasons and their learnings, shipwrack'd 
 
 quite ; 
 
 And their religion, that should still be one, 
 Takes shapes so many that most know't in none. 
 Which I admiring, since in each man shined 
 A light so clear that by it all might find, 
 Being well inform'd, their object, perfect peace, 
 Which keeps the narrow path to happiness, 
 In that discourse, I shunn'd, as is my use, 
 The jarring preace, and all their time's abuse, 
 T' enjoy least trodden fields, and freest shades; 
 Wherein (of all the pleasure that invades 
 The life of man, and flies all vulgar feet, 
 Since silent meditation is most sweet) 
 I sat to it ; discoursing what main want 
 So ransack 'd man, that it did quite supplant 
 The inward peace I spake of, letting in 
 At his loose veins, sad war and all his sin. 
 When suddenly, a comfortable light 
 Brake through the shade ; and, after it, the sight 
 Of a most grave and goodly person shined, 
 With eyes turn'd upwards, and was outward, blind ; 
 But inward, past and future things he saw, 
 And was to both, and present times, their law. 
 His sacred bosom was so full of fire 
 That 'twas transparent, and made him expire 
 His breath in flames, that did instruct, methought, 
 And (as my soul were then at full) they wrought. 
 At which, I casting down my humble eyes, 
 Not daring to attempt their fervencies; 
 He thus bespake me : " Dear mind, do not fear 
 
320 THE POEMS OF 
 
 My strange appearance; now 'tis time t' outwear 
 Thy bashful disposition, and put on 
 As confident a countenance as the Sun. 
 For what hast thou to look on, more divine 
 And horrid, than man is; as he should shine, 
 And as he doth ? what freed from this world's strife, 
 What he is entering and what ending life? 
 All which thou only studiest, and dost know ; 
 And more than which is only sought for show. 
 Thou must not undervalue what thou hast, 
 In weighing it with that which more is graced ; 
 The worth that weigheth inward should not long 
 For outward prices. This should make thee strong 
 In thy close value ; nought so good can 1 >e 
 As that which lasts good betwixt God and thee. 
 Remember thine own verse : * Should heaven turn 
 
 hell, 
 For deeds well done, I would do ever well.' ' 
 
 This heard, with joy enough, to break the twine 
 Of life and soul, so apt to break as mine; 
 I brake into a trance, and then remain'd, 
 Like him, an only soul; and so obtained 
 Such boldness by the sense he did control, 
 That I set look to look, and soul to soul. 
 I view'd him at his brightest; though, alas, 
 With all acknowledgment, of what he was 
 Beyond what I found habited in me; 
 And thus I spake : " O thou that, blind, dost see 
 My heart and soul, what may I reckon thee, 
 Whose heavenly look shows not, nor voice sounds 
 
 man?" ' 
 " I am," said he, " that spirit Elysian, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 3** 
 
 That in thy native air, and on the hill 
 
 Next Hitchin's left hand, did thy bosom fill 
 
 With such a flood of soul, that thou wert fain, 
 
 With exclamations of her rapture then, 
 
 To vent it to the echoes of the vale ; 
 
 When, meditating of me, a sweet gale 
 
 Brought me upon thee ; and thou didst inherit 
 
 My true sense, for the time then, in my spirit ; 
 
 And I, invisibly, went prompting thee 
 
 To those fair greens where thou didst English me.' 
 
 Scarce he had utter'd this, when well I knew 
 It was my Prince's Homer whose dear view 
 Renew'd my grateful memory of the grace 
 His Highness did me for him ; which in face 
 Methought the Spirit show'd, was his delight, 
 And added glory to his heavenly plight : 
 Who told me, he brought stay to all my state ; 
 That he was Angel to me, Star, and Fate ; 
 Advancing colours of good hope to me; 
 And told me my retired age should see 
 Heaven's blessing in a free and harmless life, 
 Conduct me, thro' earth's peace-pretending strife, 
 To that true Peace, whose search I still intend, 
 And to the calm shore of a loved end. 
 
 But now, as I cast round my ravish'd eye, 
 To see if this free soul had company, 
 Or that, alone, he lovingly pursued 
 The hidden places of my solitude ; 
 He rent a cloud down with his burning hand 
 That at his back hung, 'twixt me and a land 
 Never inhabited, and said : " Now, behold 
 What main defect it is that doth enfold 
 
3** THE POEMS OF 
 
 The world, in ominous flatteries of a Peace 
 
 So full of worse than war; whose stern increase 
 
 Devours her issue." With which words, I view'd 
 
 A lady, like a deity indued, 
 
 But weeping like a woman, and made way 
 
 Out of one thicket, that saw never day, 
 
 Towards another; bearing underneath 
 
 Her arm, a coffin, for some prize of death ; 
 
 And after her, in funeral form, did go 
 
 The wood's four-footed beasts, by two and two : 
 
 A male and female match 'd, of every kind; 
 
 And after them, with like instinct inclined, 
 
 The airy nation felt her sorrow's stings ; 
 
 Fell on the earth, kept rank, and hung their wings. 
 
 Which sight I much did pity and admire. 
 
 And long'd to know the dame that could inspire 
 
 Those bestials with such humane form and ruth ; 
 
 And how I now should know the hidden truth 
 
 (As Homer promised) of that main defect 
 
 That makes men all their inward peace reject 
 
 For name of outward ; then he took my hand ; 
 
 Led to her, and would make myself demand 
 
 (Though he could have resolved me) what she was, 
 
 And from what cause those strange effects had 
 
 pass? 
 
 For whom she bore that coffin, and so mourn 'd ? 
 To all which, with all mildness, she return'd 
 Answer, that she was Peace, sent down from 
 
 heaven 
 
 With charge from th' Almighty Deity given 
 T' attend on men, who now had banish'd her 
 From their societies, and made her err 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
 In that wild desert; only human love, 
 Banish'd in like sort, did a long time prove 
 That life with her; but now, alas, was dead, 
 And lay in that wood to be buried ; 
 For whom she bore that coffin and did mourn ; 
 And that those beasts were so much humane born, 
 That they in nature felt a love to peace; 
 For which they follow'd her, when men did cease. 
 This went so near her heart, it left her tongue; 
 And, silent, she gave time to note whence sprung 
 Men's want of peace, which was from want of love ; 
 And I observed now, what that peace did prove 
 That men made shift with and did so much please. 
 For now, the sun declining to the seas, 
 Made long misshapen shadows ; and true Peace 
 (Here walking in his beams) cast such increase 
 Of shadow from her, that I saw it glide 
 Through cities, courts, and countries; and descried 
 How, in her shadow only, men there lived, 
 While she walk'd here i'th' sun ; and all that thrived 
 Hid in that shade their thrift ; nought but her shade 
 Was bulwark 'gainst all war that might invade 
 Their countries or their consciences ; since Love 
 (That should give Peace, her substance) now they 
 
 drove 
 
 Into the deserts ; where he suffer'd Fate, 
 And whose sad funerals beasts must celebrate. 
 With whom I freely wish'd I had been nursed, 
 Because they follow nature, at their worst, 
 And at their best, did teach her. As we went 
 I felt a scruple, which I durst not vent, 
 No, not to Peace herself, whom it concerned, 
 
3*4 THE POEMS OF 
 
 For fear to wrong her ; so well I have learn'd 
 To shun injustice, even to doves or flies; 
 But to the Devil, or the Destinies, 
 Where I am just, and know I honour Truth, 
 I'll speak my thoughts, in scorn of what ensueth. 
 Yet, not resolved in th' other, there did shine 
 A beam of Homer's freer soul in mine, 
 That made me see, I might propose my doubt ; 
 Which was : if this were true Peace I found out, 
 That felt such passion ? I proved her sad part ; 
 And pray'd her call her voice out of her heart 
 (There kept a wrongful prisoner to her woe), 
 To answer, why she was afflicted so. 
 Or how, in her, such contraries could fall, 
 That taught all joy and was the life of all? 
 She answer'd : " Homer told me that there are 
 Passions, in which corruption hath no share ; 
 There is a joy of soul ; and why not then 
 A grief of soul, that is no scathe to men? 
 For both are passions, though not such as reign 
 In blood and humour, that engender pain. 
 Free sufferance for the truth, makes sorrow sing, 
 And mourning far more sweet than banquetting. 
 Good, that deserveth joy, receiving ill, 
 Doth merit justly as much sorrow still: 
 And is it a corruption to do right ? 
 Grief that dischargeth conscience, is delight; 
 One sets the other off. To stand at gaze 
 In one position, is a stupid maze, 
 Fit for a statue. This resolved me well 
 That grief in peace, and peace in grief might dwell. 
 And now fell all things from their natural birth : 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 3 2 5 
 
 Passion in Heaven; Stupidity, in Earth, 
 Inverted all; the Muses, Virtues, Graces, 
 Now suffer'd rude and miserable chases 
 From men's societies to that desert heath; 
 And after them, Religion (chased by death) 
 Came weeping, bleeding to the funeral: 
 Sought her dear Mother Peace, and down did fall 
 Before her, fainting, on her horned knees ; 
 Turn'd horn, with praying for the miseries 
 She left the world in ; desperate in their sin ; 
 Marble her knees pierced ; but heaven could not win 
 To stay the weighty ruin of his glory 
 In her sad exile ; all the memory 
 Of heaven and heavenly things, razed of all hands ; 
 Heaven moves so far off that men say it stands ; 
 And Earth is turn'd the true and moving Heaven; 
 And so 'tis left; and so is all Truth driven 
 From her false bosom; all is left alone, 
 Till all be order'd with confusion. 
 
 Thus the poor brood of Peace, driven and dis- 
 
 tress'd, 
 
 Lay brooded all beneath their mother's breast ; 
 Who fell upon them weeping, as they fell: 
 All were so pined that she contain'd them well. 
 And in this Chaos, the digestion 
 And beauty of the world lay thrust and thrown. 
 In this dejection Peace pour'd out her tears, 
 Worded, with some pause, in my wounded ears. 
 
3*6 THE POEMS OF 
 
 INVOCATIO. 
 
 O ye three-times- thrice sacred Quiristers 
 Of God's great Temple, the small Universe 
 Of ruinous man (thus prostrate as ye lie 
 Brooded and loaded with calamity, 
 Contempt and shame in your true mother Peace) 
 As you make sad my soul with your misease, 
 So make her able fitly to disperse 
 Your sadness and her own in sadder verse. 
 Now, old, and freely banish'd with yourselves 
 From men's societies, as from rocks and shelves, 
 Help me to sing and die, on our Thames' shore ; 
 And let her lend me her waves to deplore, 
 In yours, and your most holy Sisters' falls, 
 Heaven's fall, and human Love's last funerals. 
 
 And thou, great Prince of men, let thy sweet 
 
 graces 
 
 Shine on these tears ; and dry at length the faces 
 Of Peace and all her heaven-allied brood ; 
 From whose doves' eyes is shed the precious blood 
 Of heaven's dear Lamb, that freshly bleeds in them. 
 Make these no toys then ; gird the diadem 
 Of thrice Great Britain with their palm and bays; 
 And with thy Eagle's feathers, deign to raise 
 The heavy body of my humble Muse; 
 That thy great Homer's spirit in her may use 
 Her topless flight, and bear thy fame above 
 The reach of mortals and their earthly love; 
 To that high honour his Achilles won, 
 And make thy glory far outshine the sun. 
 
GEORGE CHAP MAX. 3 2 7 
 
 While this small time gave Peace, in her kind 
 
 throes, 
 
 Vent for the violence of her sudden woes ; 
 She turn'd on her right side, and (leaning on 
 Her tragic daughter's bosom) look'd upon 
 My heavy looks, drown'd in imploring tears 
 For her and that so wrong'd dear race of hers, 
 At which even Peace expressed a kind of spleen. 
 And, as a careful mother I have seen 
 Chide her loved child, snatch'd with some fear from 
 
 danger : 
 So Peace chid me ; and first shed tears of anger. 
 
328 THE POEMS OF 
 
 THE TEARS OF PEACE. 
 
 Peace. Thou wretched man, whom I discover, 
 
 born 
 
 To want and sorrow, and the vulgar's scorn ; 
 Why haunt'st thou freely these unhaunted places 
 Empty of pleasures? empty of all graces, 
 Fashions and riches ; by the best pursued 
 With broken sleep, toil, love, zeal, servitude, 
 With fear and trembling, with whole lives and 
 
 souls ? 
 While thou break'st sleeps, digg'st under earth, like 
 
 moles, 
 
 To live, to seek me out, whom all men fly; 
 And think'st to find light in obscurity, 
 Eternity in this deep vale of death ; 
 Look'st ever upwards, and livest still beneath ; 
 Fill'st all thy actions with strife what to think, 
 Thy brain with air, and scatter'st it in ink, 
 Of which thou makest weeds for thy soul to wear, 
 As out of fashion, as the body's are. 
 Interlo. I grant their strangeness, and their too 
 
 ill grace, 
 
 And too much wretchedness, to bear the face 
 Or any likeness of my soul in them : 
 Whose instruments I rue with many a stream 
 Of secret tears for their extreme defects, 
 In uttering her true forms ; but their respects 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 329 
 
 Need not be lessen'd for their being strange 
 Or not so vulgar as the rest that range 
 With headlong raptures, through the multitude; 
 Of whom they get grace for their being rude. 
 Nought is so shunn'd by virtue, thrown from truth, 
 As that which draws the vulgar dames and youth. 
 Pe. Truth must confess it; for where lives there 
 
 one, 
 
 That Truth or Virtue, for themselves alone, 
 Or seeks or not contemns? All, all pursue 
 Wealth, Glory, Greatness, Pleasure, Fashions new. 
 Who studies, studies these ; who studies not 
 And sees that study, lays the vulgar plot 
 That all the learning he gets living by 
 Men but for form or humour dignify 
 (As himself studies but for form and show, 
 And never makes his special end, to know) 
 And that an idle, airy man of news, 
 A standing face, a property to use 
 In all things vile, makes bookworms, creep to him; 
 How scorns he books and bookworms! O how 
 
 dim 
 
 Burns a true soul's light in his bastard eyes! 
 And as a forest overgrown breeds flies, 
 Toads, adders, savages, that all men shun; 
 When on the south-side, in a fresh May sun, 
 In varied herds, the beasts lie out and sleep, 
 The busy gnats in swarms a buzzing keep, 
 And gild their empty bodies (lift aloft) 
 In beams, that though they see all, difference 
 
 nought : 
 So in men's merely outward and false peace, 
 
33 THE POEMS OP 
 
 Instead of polish'd men, and true increase, 
 She brings forth men with vices overgrown : 
 Women, so light, and like, few know their own; 
 For mild and human tongues, tongues fork'd that 
 
 sting: 
 
 And all these (while they may) take sun, and spring, 
 To help them sleep, and flourish ; on whose beams 
 And branches, up they climb, in such extremes 
 Of proud confusion, from just laws so far, 
 That in their peace, the long robe sweeps like war. 
 
 In. That robe serves great men: why are great 
 so rude? 
 
 Pe. Since great and mean are all but multitude. 
 For regular learning, that should difference set 
 Twixt all men's worths, and make the mean or 
 
 great, 
 
 As that is mean or great, or chief stroke strike. 
 Serves the plebeian and the lord alike. 
 Their objects show their learnings are all one ; 
 Their lives, their objects, learning loved by none. 
 
 In. You mean, for most part; nor would it dis- 
 please 
 
 That most part if they heard : since they profess 
 Contempt of learning, nor esteem it fit 
 Noblesse should study, see, or countenance it. 
 
 Pe. Can men in blood be noble, not in soul? 
 Reason abhors it; since what doth control 
 The rudeness of the blood and makes it noble, 
 Or hath chief means, high birthright to redouble 
 In making manners soft, and manlike mild, 
 Not suffering humanes to run proud or wild, 
 In soul and learning; (or in love, or act) 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 331 
 
 In blood where both fail, then lies noblesse 
 
 wrack'd. 
 
 In. It cannot be denied ; but could you prove 
 As well that th' act of learning, or the love 
 Love being the act in will should difference set 
 Twixt all men's worths, and make the mean or 
 
 great 
 
 As learning is, or great or mean in them, 
 Then clear her right stood to man's diadem. 
 Pe. To prove that learning the soul's actual 
 
 frame, 
 
 Without which 'tis a blank, a smoke-hid flame 
 Should sit great arbitress of all things done, 
 And in your souls, like gnomons in the sun, 
 Give rules to all the circles of your lives; 
 I prove it by the regiment God gives 
 To man, of all things; to the soul of man, 
 To learning, of the soul. If then it can 
 Rule, live; of all things best is it not best? 
 O who, what God makes greatest dares make least? 
 But to use their terms : Life is root and crest 
 To all man's coat of noblesse ; his soul is 
 Field to that coat ; and learning differences 
 All his degrees in honour, being the coat. 
 And as a statuary, having got 
 An alabaster big enough to cut 
 A human image in, till he hath put 
 His tools and art to it hewn, form'd, left none 
 Of the redundant matter in the stone 
 It bears the image of a man no more 
 Than of a wolf, a camel, or a boar: 
 So when the soul is to the body given 
 
33 * THE POEMS OF 
 
 Being substance of God's image sent from heaven 
 
 It is not his true image till it take 
 
 Into the substance those fit forms that make 
 
 His perfect image; which are then impress'd 
 
 By learning and impulsion, that invest 
 
 Man with God's form in living holiness, 
 
 By cutting from his body the excess 
 
 Of humours, perturbations, and affects, 
 
 Which Nature, without Art, no more ejects 
 
 Than without tools a naked artisan 
 
 Can in rude stone cut th' image of a man. 
 
 In. How then do ignorants, who, oft we try, 
 Rule perturbations, live more humanly 
 Than men held learn'd? 
 
 Pe. Who are not learn'd indeed 
 More than a house framed loose, that still doth need 
 The haling up and joining, is a house. 
 Nor can you call men mere religious, 
 That have goodwills to knowledge, ignorant: 
 For virtuous knowledge hath two ways to plant 
 By power infused, and acquisition: 
 The first of which those good men graft upon, 
 For good life is the effect of learning's act, 
 Which th' action of the mind did first compact, 
 By infused love to Learning 'gainst all ill 
 Conquest's first step is, to all good, the will. 
 
 In. If learning then in love or act must be 
 Means to good life and true humanity, 
 Where are our scarecrows now, or men of rags, 
 Of titles merely, places, fortunes, brags, 
 That want and scorn both ? those inverted men, 
 Those dungeons, whose souls no more contain 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 333 
 
 The actual light of Reason than dark beasts? 
 Those clouds, driven still 'twixt God's beam and 
 
 their breasts? 
 
 Those giants, throwing golden hills 'gainst heaven, 
 To no one spice of one humanity given? 
 Pe. Of men there are three sorts that most foes 
 
 be 
 
 To Learning and her love, themselves and me. 
 Active, Passive, and Intellective men, 
 Whose self-loves learning and her love disdain. 
 Your Active men consume their whole life's fire 
 In thirst of State-height, higher still and higher, 
 Like seeled pigeons mounting to make sport 
 To lower lookers-on, in seeing how short 
 They come of that they seek, and with what trouble 
 Lamely, and far from Nature, they redouble 
 Their pains in flying more than humbler wits, 
 To reach death more direct. For death that sits 
 Upon the fist of Fate, past highest air, 
 Since she commands all lives within that sphere, 
 The higher men advance, the nearer finds 
 Her sealed quarries; when, in bitterest winds, 
 Lightnings and thunders, and in sharpest hails 
 Fate casts her off at States ; when lower sails 
 Slide calmly to their ends. Your Passive men 
 So call'd of only passing time in vain 
 Pass it in no good exercise, but are 
 In meats and cups laborious, and take care 
 To lose without all care their soul-spent time. 
 And since they have no means nor spirits to climb, 
 Like fowls of prey, in any high affair, 
 See how like kites they bangle in the air 
 
334 THE POEMS OF 
 
 To stoop at scraps and garbage, in respect 
 
 Of that which men of true peace should select, 
 
 And how they trot out in their lives the ring 
 
 With idly iterating oft one thing 
 
 A new-fought combat, an affair at sea, 
 
 A marriage, or a progress, or a plea. 
 
 No news but fits them as if made for them, 
 
 Though it be forged, but of a woman's dream ; 
 
 And stuff with such stolen ends their manless 
 
 breasts 
 Sticks, rags, and mud they seem mere puttocks' 
 
 nests : 
 
 Curious in all men's actions but their own, 
 All men and all things censure, though know none. 
 Your Intellective men, they study hard 
 Not to get knowledge but for mere reward ; 
 And therefore that true knowledge that should be 
 Their studies' end, and is in nature free, 
 Will not be made their broker: having power 
 With her sole self to bring both bride and dower. 
 They have some shadows of her, as of me 
 Adulterate outward peace, but never see 
 Her true and heavenly face. Yet those shades 
 
 serve, 
 
 Like errant-knights that by enchantments swerve 
 From their true lady's being, and embrace 
 An ugly witch with her fantastic face, 
 To make them think Truth's substance in their 
 
 arms; 
 
 Which that they have not, but her shadow's charms, 
 See if my proofs be like their arguments, 
 That leave Opinion still her free dissents. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 335 
 
 They have not me with them ; that all men know 
 The highest fruit that doth of knowledge grow; 
 The bound of all true forms, and only act; 
 If they be true they rest, nor can be rack'd 
 Out of their posture by Time's utmost strength, 
 But last the more of force the more of length ; 
 For they become one substance with the soul, 
 Which Time with all his adjuncts shall control. 
 But since men wilful may perchance 
 In part of Error's twofold ignorance, 
 111 disposition, their skills look as high, 
 And rest in that divine security, 
 See if their lives make proof of such a peace ; 
 For learning's truth makes all life's vain war cease ; 
 It making peace with God, and joins to God; 
 Whose information drives her period 
 Through all the body's passive instruments, 
 And by reflection gives them soul-contents. 
 Besides, from perfect Learning you can never 
 Wisdom with her fair reign of passions sever. 
 For Wisdom is nought else than Learning fined, 
 And with the understanding power combined; 
 That is, a habit of both habits standing, 
 The blood's vain humours ever countermanding. 
 But if these show more humour than th' unlearn'd 
 If in them more vain passion be discern'd 
 More mad ambition, more lust, more deceit, 
 More show of gold than gold, than dross less 
 
 weight, 
 
 If flattery, avarice have their souls so given, 
 Headlong, and with such devilish furies driven, 
 That fools may laugh at their imprudency 
 
POEMS OF 
 
 And villains blush at their dishonesty; 
 
 Where is true Learning proved to separate these, 
 
 And seat all forms in her soul's height in peace? 
 
 Raging Euripus, that in all their pride 
 
 Drives ships 'gainst roughest winds with his fierce 
 
 tide, 
 
 And ebbs and flows seven times in every day, 
 Toils not on Earth with more irregular sway, 
 Nor is more turbulent and mad than they. 
 And shine like gold-worms, whom you hardly find 
 By their own light, not seen, but heard, like wind. 
 But this is Learning ; to have skill to throw 
 Reins on your body's powers that nothing know, 
 And fill the soul's powers so with act and art 
 That she can curb the body's angry part ; 
 All perturbations ; all affects that stray 
 From their one object, which is to obey 
 Her sovereign empire ; as herself should force 
 Their functions only to serve her discourse; 
 And that, to beat the straight path of one end, 
 Which is to make her substance still contend 
 To be God's image; in informing it 
 With knowledge : holy thoughts, and all forms fit 
 For that eternity ye seek in way 
 Of his sole imitation ; and to sway 
 Your life's love so that he may still be centre 
 To all your pleasures ; and you here may enter 
 The next life's peace; in governing so well 
 Your sensual parts that you as free may dwell, 
 Of vulgar raptures here as when calm death 
 Dissolves that learned empire with your breath. 
 To teach and live thus is the onely use 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 337 
 
 And end of Learning. Skill that doth produce 
 
 But terms, and tongues, and parroting of art 
 
 Without that power to rule the errant part, 
 
 Is that which some call learned ignorance; 
 
 A serious trifle, error in a trance. 
 
 And let a scholar all Earth's volumes carry, 
 
 He will be but a walking dictionary, 
 
 A mere articulate clock that doth but speak 
 
 By others' arts; when wheels wear, or springs 
 
 break, 
 
 Or any fault is in him, he can mend 
 No more than clocks ; but at set hours must spend 
 His mouth as clocks do: if too fast speech go, 
 He cannot stay it, nor haste if too slow. 
 So that, as travellers seek their peace through 
 
 storms, 
 
 In passing many seas for many forms 
 Of foreign government, endure the pain 
 Of many faces seeing, and the gain 
 That strangers make of their strange-loving hu- 
 mours, 
 Learn tongues; keep note-books; all to feed the 
 
 tumours 
 
 Of vain discourse at home, or serve the course 
 Of state employment, never having force 
 T J employ themselves ; but idle compliments 
 Must pay their pains, costs, slaveries, all their rents ; 
 And though they many men know, get few friends. 
 So covetous readers, setting many ends 
 To their much skill to talk ; studiers of phrase ; 
 Shifters in art; to flutter in the blaze 
 Of ignorant countenance ; to obtain degrees 
 
33 8 THE POEMS OF 
 
 And lie in Learning's bottom, like the lees 
 
 To be accounted deep by shallow men ; 
 
 And carve all language in one glorious pen; 
 
 May have much fame for learning, but th' effect 
 
 Proper to perfect Learning to direct 
 
 Reason in such an art as that it can 
 
 Turn blood to soul, and make both one calm man ; 
 
 So making peace with God, doth differ far 
 
 From clerks that go with God and man to war. 
 
 In. But may this peace and man's true empire 
 
 then 
 By Learning be obtain'd, and taught to men? 
 
 Pe. Let all men judge; who is it can deny 
 That the rich crown of old Humanity 
 Is still your birthright? and was ne'er let down 
 From heaven for rule of beasts' lives, but your 
 
 own? 
 
 You learn the depth of arts, and, curious, dare 
 By them, in nature's counterfeits, compare 
 Almost with God; to make perpetually 
 Motion like heaven's; to hang sad rivers by 
 The air, in air; and earth 'twixt earth and heaven 
 By his own poise. And are these virtues given 
 To powerful art, and virtue's self denied? 
 This proves the other vain and falsified. 
 Wealth, honour, and the rule of realms doth fall 
 In less than reason's compass ; yet what all 
 Those things are given for (which is living well) 
 Wants discipline and reason to compel. 
 O foolish men ! how many ways ye vex 
 Your lives with pleasing them, and still perplex 
 Your liberties with licence ; every way 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 339 
 
 Casting your eyes and faculties astray 
 
 From their sole object. If some few bring forth 
 
 In nature freely something of some worth, 
 
 Much rude and worthless humour runs betwixt, 
 
 Like fruit in deserts with vile matter mixt. 
 
 Nor since they flatter flesh so, they are bold 
 
 As a most noble spectacle to behold 
 
 Their own lives; and like sacred light to bear 
 
 Their reason inward ; for the soul in fear 
 
 Of every sort of vice she there contains, 
 
 Flies out, and wanders about other men's, 
 
 Feeding and fatting her infirmities. 
 
 And as in ancient cities, 'twas the guise 
 
 To have some ports of sad and hapless vent, 
 
 Through which all executed men they sent, 
 
 All filth, all offal, cast from what purged sin, 
 
 Nought chaste or sacred there going out or in; 
 
 So through men's refuse ears will nothing pierce 
 
 That's good or elegant ; but the sword, the hearse, 
 
 And all that doth abhor from man's pure use, 
 
 Is each man's only siren, only muse. 
 
 And thus for one God, one fit good, they prize 
 
 These idle, foolish, vile varieties. 
 
 In. Wretched estate of men by fortune blest, 
 That being ever idle never rest; 
 That have goods ere they earn them, and for that 
 Want art to use them. To be wonder'd at 
 Is Justice; for proportion, ornament, 
 None of the graces is so excellent. 
 Vile things adorn her : methought once I saw 
 How by the sea's shore she sat giving law 
 Even to the streams, and fish most loose and wild, 
 
340 THE POEMS OF 
 
 And was, to my thoughts, wondrous sweet and 
 
 mild; 
 
 Yet fire blew from her that dissolved rocks ; 
 Her looks to pearl turn'd pebble ; and her locks 
 The rough and sandy banks to burnish'd gold ; 
 Her white left hand did golden bridles hold, 
 And with her right she wealthy gifts did give, 
 Which with their left hands men did still receive ; 
 Upon a world in her chaste lap did lie 
 A little ivory book that show'd mine eye 
 But one page only that one verse contain'd 
 Where all arts were contracted and explained 
 All policies of princes, all their forces, 
 Rules for their fears, cares, dangers, pleasures, 
 
 purses, 
 
 All the fair progress of their happiness here 
 Justice converted and composed there. 
 All which I thought on when I had express'd, 
 Why great men of the great states they possessed 
 Enjoy'd so little; and I now must note 
 The large strain of a verse I long since wrote ; 
 Which methought much joy to men poor presented, 
 "God hath made none (that all might be) con- 
 tented." 
 
 Pe. It might for the capacity it bears, 
 Be that concealed and expressive verse 
 That Justice in her ivory manual writ, 
 Since all lines to man's peace are drawn in it. 
 For great men, though such ample stuff they have 
 To shape contentment, yet since like a wave 
 It flits and takes all forms, retaining none 
 Not fitted to their pattern which is one ; 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 34 * 
 
 They may content themselves: God hath not given 
 To men mere earthly the true joys of heaven. 
 And so their wild ambitions either stay, 
 Or turn their headstrong course the better way, 
 For poor men, their cares may be richly eased, 
 Since rich with all they have live as displeased. 
 In. You teach me to be plain. But what's the 
 
 cause 
 
 That great and rich, whose stars win such applause 
 With such enforced and vile varieties; 
 Spend time, nor give their lives glad sacrifice; 
 But when they eat and drink, with tales, jests, 
 
 sounds 
 
 As if like frantic men that feel no wounds, 
 They would expire in laughters? and so err 
 From their right way; that like a traveller, 
 Weariest when nearest to his journey's end, 
 Time best spent ever with most pain they spend? 
 Pe. The cause is want of learning, which, being 
 
 right, 
 
 Makes idleness a pain, and pain delight. 
 It makes men know that they, of all things born 
 Beneath the silver moon and golden morn, 
 Being only forms of God, should only fix 
 One form of life to those forms; and not mix 
 With beasts in forms of their lives. It doth teach 
 To give the soul her empire, and so reach 
 To rule of all the body's mutinous realm, 
 In which, once seated, she then takes the helm 
 And governs freely, steering to one port. 
 Then like a man in health the whole consort 
 Of his tuned body sings, which otherwise 
 
34* THE POEMS OF 
 
 Is like one full of wayward maladies, 
 
 Still out of tune; and like to spirits raised 
 
 Without a circle never is appaised. 
 
 And then they have no strength but weakens them, 
 
 No greatness but doth crush them into stream, 
 
 No liberty but turns into their snare, 
 
 Their learnings then do light them but to err. 
 
 Their ornaments are burthens, their delights 
 
 Are mercenary servile parasites, 
 
 Betraying, laughing; fiends that raised in fears 
 
 At parting shake their roofs about their ears. 
 
 Th* imprison'd thirst the fortunes of the free; 
 
 The free, of rich ; rich, of nobility ; 
 
 Nobility, of kings ; and kngs, gods' thrones 
 
 Even to their lightning flames and thunder-stones. 
 
 O liberal learning, that well used gives use 
 
 To all things good, how bad is thy abuse ! 
 
 When only thy divine reflection can, 
 
 That lights but to thy love, make good a man ; 
 
 How can the regular body of thy light 
 
 Inform and deck him ? the ills infinite, 
 
 That, like beheaded hydras in that fen 
 
 Of blood and flesh in lewd illiterate men, 
 
 Answer their amputations with supplies 
 
 That twist their heads, and ever double rise: 
 
 Herculean Learning conquers ; and O see 
 
 How many and of what foul forms they be ! 
 
 Unquiet, wicked thoughts, unnumber'd passions, 
 
 Poorness of counsels, hourly fluctuations, 
 
 In intercourse, of woes and false delights ; 
 
 Impotent wills to goodness; appetites 
 
 That never will be bridled, satisfied, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 343 
 
 Nor know how or with what to be supplied ; 
 
 Fears and distractions mix'd with greediness ; 
 
 Stupidities of those things ye possess ; 
 
 Furies for what ye lose ; wrongs done for nonce 
 
 For present, past and future things at once, 
 
 Cares vast and endless ; miseries swoln with pride ; 
 
 Virtues despised and vices glorified ; 
 
 All these true learning calms and can subdue. 
 
 But who turns learning this way? All pursue 
 
 War with each other that exasperates these 
 
 For things without, whose ends are inward peace; 
 
 And yet those inward rebels they maintain. 
 
 And as your curious sort of Passive men 
 
 Thrust their heads through the roofs of rich and 
 
 poor 
 
 Through all their lives and fortunes, and explore 
 Foreign and home-affairs, their princes' courts, 
 Their council and bedchambers for reports ; 
 And, like freebooters, wander out to win 
 Matter to feed their mutinous rout within; 
 Which are the greedier still, and overshoot 
 Their true-sought inward peace for outward boot; 
 So learned men in controversies spend 
 Of tongues and terms, reading and labours penn'd, 
 Their whole lives' studies ; glory, riches, place, 
 In full cry with the vulgar giving chase; 
 And never with their learning's true use strive 
 To bridle strifes within them, and to live 
 Like men of peace whom Art of peace begat : 
 But as their deeds are most adulterate, 
 And show them false sons to their peaceful mother 
 In those wars, so their arts are proved no other. 
 
344 THE POEMS OF 
 
 And let the best of them a search impose 
 
 Upon his art; for all the things she knows 
 
 All being referred to all to her unknown 
 
 They will obtain the same proportion 
 
 That doth a little brook that never ran 
 
 Through summer's sun, compared with th* ocean. 
 
 But could he oracles speak, and write to charm 
 
 A wild of savages, take nature's arm 
 
 And pluck into his search the circuit 
 
 Of earth and heaven, the sea's space, and the spirit 
 
 Of every star ; the powers of herbs, and stones ; 
 
 Yet touch not at his perturbations, 
 
 Nor give them rule and temper to obey 
 
 Imperial reason, in whose sovereign sway 
 
 Learning is wholly used and dignified, 
 
 To what end serves he? is his learning tried, 
 
 That comforting and that creating fire 
 
 That fashions men? or that which doth inspire 
 
 Cities with civil conflagrations, 
 
 Countries and kingdoms? That art that atones 
 
 All opposition to good life, is all. 
 
 Live well, ye learn'd, and all men ye enthral. 
 
 In. Alas! they are discouraged in their courses, 
 And, like surprised forts, beaten from their forces. 
 Bodies on rights of souls did never grow 
 With ruder rage, than barbarous torrents flow 
 Over their sacred pastures, bringing in 
 Weeds and all rapine ; temples now begin 
 To suffer second deluge ; sin-drown'd beasts 
 Making their altars crack ; and the 'filed nests 
 Of vulturous fowls filling their holy places, 
 For wonted ornaments and religious graces. 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 345 
 
 Pe. The chief cause is, since they themselves be- 
 tray, 
 
 Take their foes' baits for some particular sway 
 T' invert their universal; and this still 
 Is cause of all ills else, their living ill. 
 
 In. Alas ! that men should strive for others' sway, 
 But first to rule themselves ; and that being way 
 To all men's bliss, why is it trod by none? 
 And why are rules so dully look'd upon 
 That teach that lively rule? 
 
 Pe. O horrid thing! 
 
 'Tis custom pours into your common spring 
 Such poison of example in things vain 
 That reason nor religion can constrain 
 Men's sights of serious things; and th' only cause 
 That neither human nor celestial laws 
 Draw man more compass; is his own slack bent 
 T' intend no more his proper regiment, 
 Where, if your Active men, or men of action, 
 Their policy, avarice, ambition, faction, 
 Would turn to making strong their rule of passion, 
 To search and settle them in approbation 
 Of what they are and shall be, which may be 
 By reason in despight of policy, 
 And in one true course couch their whole affairs 
 To one true bliss worth all the spawn of theirs ; 
 If half the idle speech men Passive spend 
 At sensual meetings, when they recommend 
 Their sanguine souls in laughters to their peace, 
 Were spent in counsels, how they might decrease 
 That frantic humour of ridiculous blood, 
 Which adds, they vainly think, to their lives' flood; 
 
34$ THE POEMS OF 
 
 And so converted in true human mirth 
 To speech, what they shall be, dissolved from earth, 
 In bridling it in flesh, with all the scope 
 Of their own knowledge here, and future hope : 
 If, last of all, your Intellective men 
 Would mix the streams of every jarring pen 
 In one calm current, that like land-floods now 
 Make all zeal's bounded rivers overflow; 
 Firm Truth with question every hour pursue, 
 And yet will have no question, all is true. 
 Search in that troubled Ocean for a ford 
 That by itself runs, and must bear accord 
 In each man's self, by banishing falsehood there, 
 Wrath, lust, pride, earthy thoughts, before else- 
 where. 
 
 (For as in one man is the world enclosed, 
 So to form one it should be all disposed:) 
 If all these would concur to this one end, 
 It would ask all their powers ; and all would spend 
 Life with that real sweetness which they dream 
 Comes in with objects that are mere extreme ; 
 And make them outward pleasures still apply, 
 Which never can come in but by that key; 
 Others' advancements, others' fames desiring, 
 Thirsting, exploring, praising, and admiring, 
 Like lewd adulterers that their own wives scorn, 
 And other men's with all their wealth adorn ; 
 Why in all outraying, varied joys and courses, 
 That in these errant times tire all men's forces, 
 Is this so common wonder of our days, 
 That in poor fore-times such a few could raise 
 So many wealthy temples, and these none? 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 347 
 
 All were devout then ; all devotions one, 
 And to one end converted; and when men 
 Give up themselves to God, all theirs goes then. 
 A few well- given arc a worth a world of ill; 
 And worlds of power not worth one poor good-will. 
 And what's the cause that (being but one) Truth 
 
 spreads 
 
 About the world so many thousand heads 
 Of false opinions, all self-loved as true? 
 Only affection to things more than due, 
 One error kiss'd begetteth infinite. 
 How can men find truth in ways opposite ? 
 And with what force they must take opposite ways, 
 When all have opposite objects? Truth displays 
 One colour'd ensign, and the world pursues 
 Ten thousand colours: see to judge, who use 
 Truth in their arts what light their lives do give, 
 For wherefore do they study but to live? 
 See I Eternity's straight milk-white way, 
 And one in this life's crooked vanities stray; 
 And shall I think he knows Truth following error? 
 This, only this, is the infallible mirror 
 To show why ignorants with learn'd men vaunt, 
 And why your learn'd men are so ignorant. 
 Why every youth in one hour will be old 
 In every knowledge ; and why age doth mould. 
 Then, as in rules of true philosophy 
 There must be ever due analogy 
 Betwixt the power that knows and that is known, 
 So surely join'd that they are ever one; 
 The understanding part transcending still 
 To that it understands ; that to his skill ; 
 
34* THE POEMS OF 
 
 All offering to the soul the soul to God, 
 By which do all things make their period 
 In his high power, and make him All-in-All ; 
 So to ascend the high heaven-reaching scale 
 Of man's true peace, and make his Art entire 
 By calming all his Errors in desire ; 
 (Which must precede that higher happiness) 
 Proportion still must traverse her access 
 Betwixt his power and will, his sense and soul ; 
 And evermore the exorbitance control 
 Of all forms, passing through the body's power, 
 Till in the soul they rest as in their tower. 
 
 In. But as Earth's gross and elemental fire 
 Cannot maintain itself, but doth require 
 Fresh matter still to give it heat and light; 
 And when it is enflamed mounts not upright, 
 But struggles in his lame impure ascent, 
 Now this way works, and then is that way bent, 
 Not able straight to aspire to his true sphere 
 Where burns the fire eternal and sincere ; 
 So best souls here, with heartiest zeals inflamed 
 In their high flight for heaven, earth bruised and 
 
 lamed, 
 
 Make many faint approaches, and are fain 
 With much unworthy matter to sustain 
 Their holiest fire ; and with sick feathers, driven, 
 And broken pinions, flutter towards heaven. 
 
 Pe. The cause is that you never will bestow 
 Your best t' enclose your lives 'twixt God and you ; 
 To count the world's Love, Fame, Joy, Honour, 
 
 nothing ; 
 But life, with all your love, to it, betrothing 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 349 
 
 To his love, his recomfort, his reward; 
 
 Since no good thought calls to him but is heard. 
 
 Nor need you think this strange, since he is there 
 
 Present within you, ever everywhere 
 
 Where good thoughts are ; for Good hath no estate 
 
 Without him, nor himself is without that. 
 
 If then this commerce stand 'twixt you entire, 
 
 Try if he either grant not each desire, 
 
 Or so conform it to his will in stay, 
 
 That you shall find him there in the delay, 
 
 As well as th' instant grant ; and so prove right 
 
 How easy his dear yoke is, and how light 
 
 His equal burthen; whether this commerce 
 
 Twixt God and man be so hard or perverse 
 
 In composition, as the rarity 
 
 Or no- where pattern of it doth imply? 
 
 Or if, in worthy contemplation, 
 
 It do not tempt beyond comparison 
 
 Of all things worldly? Sensuality, 
 
 Nothing so easy; all earth's company 
 
 Like rhubarb, or the drugs of Thessaly 
 
 Compared in taste with that sweet? O, try then 
 
 If that contraction by the God of men, 
 
 Of all the law and prophets, laid upon 
 
 The tempting lawyer, were a load that none 
 
 Had power to stand beneath? If God's dear love 
 
 Thy conscience do not at first sight approve 
 
 Dear above all things ; and, so pass this shelf 
 
 To love withal thy neighbour as thyself. 
 
 Not love as much, but as thyself, in this, 
 
 To let it be as free as thine own is 
 
 Without respect of profit or reward, 
 
350 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Deceit or flattery, politic regard, 
 Or anything but naked Charity. 
 
 In. I call even God himself to testify 
 For men I know but few that far above 
 All to be here desired I rate his love. 
 Thanks to his still-kiss'd hand that so hath framed 
 My poor and abject life, and so inflamed 
 My soul with his sweet all-want-seasoning love 
 In studying to supply, though not remove, 
 My desert fortunes and unworthiness 
 With some wish'd grace from him, that might ex- 
 press 
 
 His presence with me ; and so dignify 
 My life to creep on earth ; behold the sky ; 
 And give it means enough for this low plight ; 
 Though hitherto with no one hour's delight, 
 Hearty or worthy, but in him alone 
 Who like a careful guide hath haled me on 
 And, every minute sinking, made me swim 
 To this calm shore, hid with his Son in him. 
 And here, ay me! as trembling I look back, 
 I fall again, and in my haven wrack ; 
 Still being persuaded by the shameless light 
 That these are dreams of my retired night, 
 That all my reading, writing, all my pains 
 Are serious trifles, and the idle veins 
 Of an unthrifty angel that deludes 
 My simple fancy, and by fate excludes 
 My birth-accursed life from the bliss of men ; 
 And then my hands I wring, my bosom then 
 Beat and could break ope, fill th' enraged air, 
 And knock at heaven with sighs, invoke despair 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 35 * 
 
 At once, to free the tired earth of my load ; 
 
 That these recoils that reason doth explode, 
 
 Religion damns, and my arm'd soul defies 
 
 Wrastles with angels, telling heaven it lies, 
 
 If it deny the truth his Spirit hath writ, 
 
 Graven in my soul and there eternized it 
 
 Should beat me from that rest, and that is this, 
 
 That these prodigious securities 
 
 That all men snore-in drowning in vile lives 
 
 The souls of men because the body thrives 
 
 Xre witchcrafts damnable; that all learnings are 
 
 Foolish and false, that with those vile lives square ; 
 
 That these sour wizards that so gravely scorn 
 
 Learning with good life, kind 'gainst kind suborn; 
 
 And are no more wise than their shades are men, 
 
 Which as my finger can go to my pen 
 
 I can demonstrate that our knowledges 
 
 Which we must learn if ever we profess 
 
 Knowledge of God, or have one notion true 
 
 Are those which first and most we should pursue; 
 
 That in their searches all men's active lives 
 
 Are so far short of their contemplatives, 
 
 As bodies are of souls, this life of next: 
 
 And so much doth the form and whole context 
 
 Of matter, serving one, exceed the other, 
 
 That Heaven our Father is, as Earth our Mother; 
 
 And therefore in resemblance to approve, 
 
 Who are the true-bred, father'd by his love 
 
 As heaven itself doth only virtually 
 
 Mix with the earth, his course keeping high, 
 
 And substance undisparaged, though his beams 
 
 Are drown'd in many dunghills, and their steams 
 
35 2 THE POEMS OF 
 
 To us obscure him, yet he ever shines: 
 So though our souls' beams dig in bodies' mines 
 To find them rich discourses through their senses; 
 And meet with many middens of offences, 
 Whose vapours choke their organs yet should they 
 Disperse them by degrees, because their sway. 
 In power, is absolute; and in that power shine 
 As firm as heaven, heaven nothing so divine. 
 All this I hold ; and since that all truth else, 
 That all else know or can hold, stays and dwells 
 On these grounds' uses, and should all contend 
 (Knowing our birth here serves but for this end, 
 To make true means and ways to our second life), 
 To ply those studies, and hold every strife 
 To other ends more than to amplify, 
 Adorn, and sweeten these, deservedly 
 As balls cast in our race, and but grass-knit 
 From both sides of our path t' ensnare our wit ; 
 And thus, because the gaudy vulgar light 
 Burns up my good thoughts, form'd in temperate 
 
 night, 
 
 Rising to see the good moon oftentimes 
 Like the poor virtues of these vicious times- 
 Labour as much to lose her light as when 
 She fills her waning horns ; and how, like men 
 Raised to high places, exhalations fall 
 That would be thought stars ; I'll retire from all 
 The hot glades of ambition, company, 
 That with their vainness make this vanity; 
 And cool to death in shadows of this vale, 
 To which end I will cast this serpent's scale 
 This load of life in life, this fleshy stone 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 35$ 
 
 This bond and bundle of corruption 
 This breathing sepulchre this sponge of grief 
 This smiling enemy this household thief 
 This glass of air, broken with less than breath 
 This slave bound face to face to death till death; 
 And consecrate my life to you and yours. 
 In which objection, if that Power of Powers 
 That hath relieved me thus far, with a hand 
 Direct and most immediate, still will stand 
 Betwixt me and the rapines of the Earth; 
 And 'give my poor pains but such gracious birth 
 As may sustain me in my desert age 
 With some power to my will, I still will wage 
 War with that false peace that exileth you; 
 And in my pray'd-for freedom ever vow, 
 Tears in these shades for your tears, till mine eyes 
 Pour out my soul in better sacrifice. 
 Peace. Nor doubt, good friend, but God, to whom 
 
 I see 
 
 Your friendless life converted, still will be 
 A rich supply for friends; and still be you 
 Sure convertite to him. This, this way row 
 All to their country. Think how he hath show'd 
 You ways and byways ; what to be pursued 
 And what avoided. Still in his hands be, 
 If you desire to live or safe or free. 
 No longer days take ; Nature doth exact 
 This resolution of thee and this fact, 
 The Foe hails on thy head, and in thy face, 
 Insults and trenches; leaves thee no world's grace; 
 The walls in which thou art besieged, shake. 
 Have done ; resist no more ; but if you take 
 
354 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Firm notice of our speech, and what you see, 
 And will add pains to write all, let it be 
 Divulged too. Perhaps, of all, some one 
 May find some good. But might it touch upon 
 Your gracious Prince's liking, he might do 
 Good to himself and all his kingdoms too ; 
 So virtuous a great example is : 
 And that hath thank'd as small a thing as this, 
 Here being stuff and form for all true peace 
 And so of all men's perfect happiness, 
 To which if he shall lend his princely ear, 
 And give commandment, from yourself to hear 
 My state; tell him you know me, and that I, 
 That am the crown of principality 
 (Though thus cast off by princes) ever vow 
 Attendance at his foot, till I may grow 
 Up to his bosom ; which, being dew'd in time 
 With these my tears, may to my comforts climb; 
 Which when all pleasures into palsies turn, 
 And sunlike pomp in his own clouds shall mourn, 
 Will be acceptive. Mean-space I will pray 
 That he may turn some toward thought this way, 
 While the round whirlwinds of the Earth's de- 
 lights 
 
 Dust betwixt him and me, and blind the sights 
 Of all men ravish'd with them ; whose increase 
 You well may tell him, fashions not true peace. 
 The peace that they inform learns but to squat, 
 While the sly legal foe that levels at 
 War through those false lights, suddenly runs by 
 Betwixt you and your strength ; and while you lie, 
 Couching your ears, and flatting every limb, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 355 
 
 So close to earth that you would seem to him 
 The earth itself; yet he knows who you are, 
 And in that vantage pours on ready war. 
 
 CONCLUSIO. 
 
 THUS by the way to human loves interring 
 
 These marginal and secret tears referring 
 
 To my disposure, having all this hour 
 
 Of our unworldly conference given power 
 
 To her late fainting issue to arise, 
 
 She raised herself and them, the progenies 
 
 Of that so civil desert rising all; 
 
 Who fell with her ; and to the funeral 
 
 She bearing still the coffin all went on. 
 
 And now gives Time her state's description. 
 
 Before her flew Affliction, girt in storms, 
 
 Gash'd all with gushing wounds, and all the forms 
 
 Of bane and misery frowning in her face; 
 
 Whom Tyranny and Injustice had in chase; 
 
 Grim Persecution, Poverty, and Shame; 
 
 Detraction, Envy, foul Mishap and lame; 
 
 Scruple of Conscience ; Fear, Deceit, Despair ; 
 
 Slander and Clamour, that rent all the air; 
 
 Hate, War, and Massacre; uncrowned Toil; 
 
 And Sickness, t' all the rest the base and foil, 
 
 Crept after ; and his deadly weight, trod down 
 
 Wealth, Beauty, and the glory of a Crown. 
 
 These usher'd her far off; as figures given 
 
 To show these Crosses borne, make peace with 
 
 heaven. 
 But now, made free from them, next her before ; 
 
35 6 THE POEMS OF 
 
 Peaceful and young, Herculean Silence bore 
 His craggy club; which up aloft, he hild; 
 With which, and his fore-finger's charm he still'd 
 All sounds in air ; and left so free mine ears, 
 That I might hear the music of the spheres, 
 And all the angels singing out of heaven ; 
 Whose tunes were solemn, as to passion given ; 
 For now, that Justice was the happiness there 
 For all the wrongs to Right inflicted here, 
 Such was the passion that Peace now put on ; 
 And on all went; when suddenly was gone 
 All light of heaven before us ; from a wood, 
 Whose light foreseen, now lost, amazed we stood, 
 The sun still gracing us ; when now, the air 
 Inflamed with meteors, we discover'd fair, 
 The skipping goat ; the horse's flaming mane ; 
 Bearded and trained comets ; stars in wane ; 
 The burning sword, the firebrand-flying snake; 
 The lance ; the torch ; the licking fire ; the drake ; 
 And all else meteors that did ill abode; 
 The thunder chid ; the lightning leap'd abroad ; 
 And yet when Peace came in all heaven was clear, 
 And then did all the horrid wood appear, 
 Where mortal dangers more than leaves did grow ; 
 In which we could not one free step bestow, 
 For treading on some murther'd passenger 
 Who thither was, by witchcraft, forced to err : 
 Whose face the bird hid that loves humans best ; 
 That hath the bugle eyes and rosy breast, 
 And is the yellow Autumn's nightingale. 
 Peace made us enter here secure of all; 
 Where, in a cave that through a rock did eat, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 357 
 
 The monster Murther held his impious seat ; 
 
 A heap of panting harts supported him, 
 
 On which he sat gnawing a reeking limb 
 
 Of some man newly murther'd. As he ate, 
 
 His grave-digg'd brows, like stormy eaves did 
 
 sweat ; 
 
 Which, like incensed fens, with mists did smoke; 
 His hide was rugged as an aged oak 
 With heathy leprosies; that still he fed 
 With hot, raw limbs, of men late murthered. 
 His face was like a meteor, flashing blood; 
 His head all bristled, like a thorny wood ; 
 His neck cast wrinkles, like a sea enraged ; 
 And in his vast arms was the world engaged 
 Bathing his hands in every cruel deed : 
 Whose palms were hell-deep lakes of boiling lead; 
 His thighs were mines of poison, torment, grief; 
 In which digg'd fraud, and treachery for relief ; 
 Religion's botcher, policy; and pride, 
 Oppression, slavery, flattery glorified, 
 Atheism, and tyranny, and gain unjust, 
 Frantic ambition, envy, shag-hair'd lust, 
 Both sorts of ignorance, and knowledge swell'd; 
 And over these, the old wolf avarice held 
 A golden scourge that dropt with blood and vapour, 
 With which he whipped them to their endless la- 
 bour. 
 
 From under heaps cast from his fruitful thighs 
 As ground, to all their damn'd impieties 
 The mournful goddess drew dead Human Love; 
 Nor could they let her entry, though they strove 
 And furnaced on her all their venomous breath; 
 
35* THE POEMS OF 
 
 For though all outrage breaks the peace of death, 
 
 She coffin'd him ; and forth to funeral 
 
 All help'd to bear him. But to sound it all, 
 
 My trumpet fails, and all my forces shrink. 
 
 Who can enact to life, what kills to think? 
 
 Nor can the soul's beams beat through blood and 
 
 flesh, 
 
 Forms of such woe and height as now, afresh 
 Flow'd from these objects; to see Poesy 
 Prepared to do the special obsequy 
 And sing the Funeral Oration. 
 How it did show, to see her tread upon 
 The breast of Death, and on a Fury lean ; 
 How to her fist, as rites of service then, 
 A cast of ravens flew ; on her shoulders, how 
 The fowls that to the Muses' queen we vow 
 The owl and heronshaw sat ; how, for her hair, 
 A hapless comet hurl'd about the air 
 Her curled beams, whence sparks, like falling stars, 
 Vanish'd about her, and with winds adverse 
 Were still blown back ; to which the phoenix flew, 
 And, burning on her head, would not renew. 
 How her divine Oration did move 
 For th' unredeemed loss of Human Love; 
 Object man's future state to reason's eye; 
 The soul's infusion, immortality; 
 And prove her forms firm, that are here impress'd, 
 How her admired strains wrought on every 
 
 breast ; 
 
 And made the woods cast their immanity 
 Up to the air ; that did to cities fly 
 In fuel for them ; and, in clouds of smoke, 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN. 359 
 
 Ever hang over them ; cannot be spoke ; 
 Nor how to Human Love, to Earth now given, 
 A lightning stoop'd and ravish'd him to heaven, 
 And with him Peace with all her heavenly seed: 
 Whose outward Rapture made me inward bleed ; 
 Nor can I therefore my intention keep, 
 Since Tears want words and words want tears to 
 weep. 
 
 COROLLARIUM AD PRINCIPEM. 
 
 THUS shook I this abortive from my brain, 
 
 Which, with it, lay in this unworthy pain. 
 
 Yet since your Homer had his worthy hand 
 
 In venturing this delay of your command 
 
 To end his Iliads ; deign, great Prince of men, 
 
 To hold before it your great shield ; and then 
 
 It may do service worthy this delay, 
 
 To your more worthy pleasure ; and I may 
 
 Re-gather the spersed fragments of my spirits, 
 
 And march with Homer through his deathless 
 
 merits 
 
 To your undying graces. Nor did he 
 Vanish with this slight vision, but brought me 
 Home to my cabin, and did all the way 
 Assure me of your Grace's constant stay 
 To his soul's being, wholly naturalized 
 And made your Highness' subject ; which he prized 
 Past all his honours held in other lands ; 
 And that, because a Prince's main state stands 
 In his own knowledge, and his power within, 
 These works that had chief virtue to begin 
 
360 THE POEMS OF GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
 Those informations you would hold most dear, 
 Since false joys have their seasons to appear 
 Just as they are; but these delights were ever 
 Perfect and needful, and would irk you never. 
 
 I praying for this happy work of heaven 
 In your sweet disposition, the calm even 
 Took me to rest ; and he with wings of fire, 
 To soft Air's supreme region did aspire. 
 
 By the ever most humbly and truly dedicated to 
 your most Princely graces, 
 
 GEO. CHAPMAN. 
 
 tjRiiii 
 
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