Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
"Love still hath something of the sea
From which his mother rose,"
and the siren's song, fit for the loveliest of Parthenopes, from
Browne's _Masque of the Inner Temple_, beginning,
"Steer, hither steer your winged pines,
All beaten mariners!"--
songs which severally repeat the fatigue of the sea or that daring
energy of its Elizabethan followers which by a false etymology we term
chivalrous. We do not find the superb lunacy of "Mad Tom of Bedlam" in
the catch beginning, "I know more than Apollo," but we have something
almost as spirited, where John Ford sings, in _The Sun's Darling_,
"The dogs have the stag in chase!
'Tis a sport to content a king.
So-ho! ho! through the skies
How the proud bird flies,
And swooping, kills with a grace!
Now the deer falls! hark! how they ring."
For what is pensive and retrospective in tone we are given a song
of "The Aged Courtier," which once in a pageant touched the finer
consciousness of Queen Elizabeth. The unemployed warrior, whose
"helmet now shall make a hive for bees," treats the virgin sovereign
as his saint and divinity, promising,
"And when he saddest sits in holy cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well!
Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong!
Goddess! allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now, that was your knight."
The feudal feeling can hardly be more beautifully expressed.
From the devotion that was low and lifelong we may turn to the
devotion that was loud and fleeting. The love-songs are many and well
picked: one is the madrigal from Thomas Lodge's _Eitphues' Golden
Legacy,_ which "he wrote," he says, "on the ocean, when every line
was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion counterchecked with
a storm;" and which (the madrigal) had the good fortune to suggest and
name Shakespeare's archest character, Rosalind. We cannot dwell
upon this perfumed chaplet of love-ditties. Mrs. Richardson is here
doubtless in her element, but she does not always lighten counsel
with the wisdom of her words; for instance, when, in Beaumont and
Fletcher's "Beauty clear and fair," she makes an attempted emendation
in the lines--
"Where to live near,
And planted there,
Is still to live and still live new;
Where to gain a favor is
More than light perpetual bliss;
Oh make me live by serving you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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