livre ii

. No. iii.) and Lodge's translation in _Phillis_. Lodge gave two other translations of the same sonnet of Desportes--in his romance of _Rosalind_ (Hunterian Society's reprint, p. 74), and in his volume of poems called _Scillaes Metamorphosis_ (p. 44). Sonnet xxxiii. of Lodge's _Phillis_ is rendered with equal literalness from Ronsard. But Desportes was Lodge's special master,

{104a} See Drummond's _Poems_, ed. W. C. Ward, in Muses' Library, 1894, i. 207 seq.

{104b} Seve's _Delie_ was first published at Lyons in 1544.

{104c} 1530-1579.

{105} In two of his century of sonnets (Nos. xiii. and xxiv. in 1594 edition, renumbered xxxii. and liii. in 1619 edition) Drayton hints that his 'fair Idea' embodied traits of an identifiable lady of his acquaintance, and he repeats the hint in two other short poems; but the fundamental principles of his sonnetteering exploits are defined explicitly in Sonnet xviii. in 1594 edition.

Some, when in rhyme, they of their loves do tell, . . . Only I call [_i.e._ I call only] on my divine Idea.

Joachim du Bellay, one of the French poets who anticipated Drayton in addressing sonnets to 'L'Idee,' left the reader in no doubt of his intent by concluding one poem thus:

La, o mon ame, au plus hault ciel guidee, Tu y pourras recognoistre l'Idee De la beaute qu'en ce monde j'adore.

(Du Bellay's _Olive_, No. cxiii., published in 1568.)

{106a} Ben Jonson pointedly noticed the artifice inherent in the metrical principles of the sonnet when he told Drummond of Hawthornden that 'he cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short.' (Jonson's _Conversation_, p. 4).

{106b} See p. 121 _infra_.

{107a} They were first printed by Dr. Grosart for the Chetham Society in 1873 in his edition of 'the Dr. Farmer MS.,' a sixteenth and seventeenth century commonplace book preserved in the Chetham Library at Manchester, pt. i. pp. 76-81. Dr. Grosart also included the poems in his edition of Sir John Davies's _Works_, 1876, ii. 53-62.

{107b} Davies's Sonnet viii. is printed in Appendix IX.

{107c} See p. 127 _infra_.

{108} _Romeo and Juliet_, II. iv. 41-4.

{110} Mr. Fleay in his _Biographical Chronicle of the English Stage_, ii. 226 seq., gives a striking list of parallels between Shakespeare's and Drayton's sonnets which any reader of the two collections in conjunction could easily increase. Mr. Wyndham in his valuable edition of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_, p. 255, argues that Drayton was the plagiarist of Shakespeare, chiefly on bibliographical grounds, which he does not state quite accurately. One hundred sonnets belonging to Drayton's _Idea_ series are extant, but they were not all published by him at one time. Fifty-three were alone included in his first and only separate edition of 1594; six more appeared in a reprint of _Idea_ appended to the _Heroical Epistles_ in 1599; twenty-four of these were gradually dropped and thirty-four new ones substituted in reissues appended to volumes of his writings issued respectively in 1600, 1602, 1603, and 1605. To the collection thus re-formed a further addition of twelve sonnets and a withdrawal of some twelve old sonnets were made in the final edition of Drayton's works in 1619. There the sonnets number sixty-three. Mr. Wyndham insists that Drayton's latest published sonnets have alone an obvious resemblance to Shakespeare's sonnets, and that they all more or less reflect Shakespeare's sonnets as printed by Thorpe in 1609. But the whole of Drayton's century of sonnets except twelve were in print long before 1609, and it could easily be shown that the earliest fifty-three published in 1594 supply as close parallels with Shakespeare's sonnets as any of the forty-seven published subsequently. Internal evidence suggests that all but one or two of Drayton's sonnets were written by him in 1594, in the full tide of the sonnetteering craze. Almost all were doubtless in circulation in manuscript then, although only fifty-three were published in 1594. Shakespeare would have had ready means of access to Drayton's manuscript collection. Mr. Collier reprinted all the sonnets that Drayton published between 1594 and 1619 in his edition of Drayton's poems for the Roxburghe Club, 1856. Other editions of Drayton's sonnets of this and the last century reprint exclusively the collection of sixty-three appended to the edition of his works in 1619.

{111} Almost all sixteenth-century sonnets on spring in the absence of the poet's love (cf. Shakespeare's Sonnets xcviii., xcix.) are variations on the sentiment and phraseology of Petrarch's well-known sonnet xlii., 'In morte di M. Laura,' beginning:

Zefiro torna e 'l bel tempo rimena, E i fiori e l'erbe, sua dolce famiglia, E garrir Progne e pianger Filomena, E primavera candida e vermiglia. Ridono i prati, e 'l ciel si rasserena; Giove s'allegra di mirar sua figlia; L'aria e l'acqua e la terra e d'amor piena; Ogni animal d'amar si riconsiglia, Ma per me, lasso, tornano i piu gravi Sospiri, che del cor profondo tragge, &c.

See a translation by William Drummond of Hawthornden in Sonnets, pt. ii. No. ix. Similar sonnets and odes on April, spring, and summer abound in French and English (cf. Becq de Fouquiere's _OEuvres choisies de J.-A. de Baif_, passim, and _OEuvres choisies des Contemporains de Ronsard_, p. 108 (by Remy Belleau), p. 129 (by Amadis Jamyn) et passim). For descriptions of night and sleep see especially Ronsard's _Amours_ ( livre i . clxxxvi., livre ii . xxii.; _Odes_, livre iv . No. iv., and his _Odes Retranchees_ in _OEuvres_, edited by Blanchemain, ii. 392-4.) Cf. Barnes's _Parthenophe and Parthenophil_, lxxxiii. cv.

{112a} Cf. Ronsard's _Amours_,