is ascribed) to Saturn, wherein our days are sad and overcast, and in which we find by dear and lamentable experience, and by the loss which can never be repaired, that of all our vain passions and affections past, the sorrow only abideth.'

We turn now to the Hatfield fragment, where we stand on surer ground. This important poem consists of about 520 lines, written on 15 folio pages, exclusive of 2 pages of prefatory matter; the whole alleged by good judges to be in Raleigh's hand. The main portion is headed. The 21st and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia.' At its close is written: The end of the boockes of the Ocean's love to Scinthia, and the beginning of the 22 book, entreatinge of sorrow.' This last piece contains only 21 lines in 7 stanzas of 3 lines each. The chief poem runs on in the MS., nearly like Colin Clout,' without division of stanzas; but falls naturally into stanzas of 4 lines each, as it is printed.

It is important to settle, if we can, the date of this composition, and its relation to the poem which Raleigh read to Spenser at Kilcolman in 1589. And first we think it must be admitted that the Editor of 1870 was misled by Mr. C. J. Stewart's catalogue of the Cecil MSS. to choose the less probable of the two alternatives which he lays before his readers on p. xvi by ascribing the poem to the commencement of Raleigh's long imprisonment in 1603. On the other hand, we can scarcely doubt that Mr. E. Gosse carries the date too far back when he regards the main poem as a canto, almost complete, of the lost Epic of 1589.* It is far more probable that this twentyfirst book was a distinct and later performance, and ought to be ascribed to the time of Raleigh's disgrace and short imprisonment in connexion with his marriage in 1592. It has been suggested, with great probability, that the MS. was then given to Sir Robert Cecil to lay before the Queen; which would account for our finding it at Hatfield. The whole spirit of the piece, independent of the express words of the introductory verses, breathes of a more serious and threatening calamity than the conventional sorrows over which he was lamenting at Kilcolman. The only date he gives would be consistent with this judgment: '

"Twelve years entire I wasted in this war,

Twelve years of my most happy younger days.'

It is not easy to work out the exact chronology of his Court

* "Life of Raleigh,' p. 46.

·

† See a convincing argument in favour of the date 1592 in the North British Review' for July, 1870, No. civ., pp. 543-4.

favour;

favour; but it would be not unreasonable to date it from about 1580 (before his first Irish campaign) to 1592. The titles which we have quoted seem clearly descriptive of a separate and additional poem, though it is startling to note that, if we take them literally, the twenty books of the lost poem would consist of not less than 10,000 lines. Be that as it may, the history of the two poems seems distinct and plain; and the simplest inference from the evidence is this, that the longer poem, which we have lost, and the shorter one, now happily recovered, differed in date and character and circumstance, though not in subject, and were only mechanically connected by the title. The longer one was read to Spenser in 1589. The shorter one was probably written in the Tower between June and September 1592, and then fell into the hands of Cecil. Some preliminary verses which are prefixed to the MS. would be quite consistent with their purely supplementary character:If Cynthia be a Queen, a princess, and supreme, Keep these among the rest, or say it was a dream.'

Another of the preliminary pieces distinctly describes him as writing from prison, and there is no evidence to interfere with the natural conclusion, that these pieces belong to the same date as the main poem, and were brought along with it to Hatfield.*

Passing from these subordinate questions, we proceed to give some account of the contents of the 21st book of Cynthia.' The language throughout is sombre, grave, and dignified. There is not a trace of the absurd affectation of passion which is recorded in some contemporary correspondence. He begins by setting forth his sorrow :

If to the living were my muse addressed,

Or did my mind her own spirit still inhold,
Were not my living passion so repressed

As to the dead,† the dead did these unfold,
'Some sweeter words, some more becoming verse,
Should witness my mishap in higher kind;
But my love's wounds, my fancy in the hearse,
The idea but resting of a wasted mind,

The blossoms fallen, the sap gone from the tree,
The broken monuments of my great desires,--
From these so lost what may the affections be?
What heat in cinders of extinguished fires?'

His language is perfectly consistent with (but less hysterical than) that of his well-known letter from the Tower to Cecil in July, 1592; Edwards, vol. ii.

p. 51.

t

= 'As though to the dead.'

'All

All in the shade, even in the fair sun days,
Under these healthless trees I sit alone,
Where joyful birds sing neither lovely lays,
Nor Philomen recounts her direful moan.
'No feeding flocks, no shepherd's company,
That might renew my dolorous conceit,
While happy then, while love and fantasy
Confined my thoughts on that fair flock to wait;
'No pleasing streams fast to the ocean wending,
The messengers sometimes of my great woe;
But all on earth, as from the cold storms bending,
Shrink from my thoughts in high heavens or below.'
'Oh, princely form, my fancy's adornment,
Divine conceit, my pains' acceptance!

Oh, all in one! oh, heaven on earth transparent,
The seat of joys and love's abundance;' &c.

The comparative roughness of the last of the above stanzas, when he begins to be a little more 'passionate,' is one proof among many that the poem had not yet received its final corrections; which makes it all the more likely that the whole had been hastily sent in, probably, as suggested above, for the temporary purpose of shortening his imprisonment. Yet the piece moves on, with a steady step, through one passage after another of much biographical interest, with a sort of stately beauty

:

To seek new worlds, for gold, for praise, for glory,
To try desire, to try love severed far,

When I was gone, she sent her memory,

More strong than were ten thousand ships of war,
To call me back, to leave great honour's thought,
To leave my friends, my fortune, my attempt;
To leave the purpose I so long had sought,

And hold both cares and comfort in contempt.
'Such heat in ice, such fire in frost remained,

Such trust in doubt, such comfort in despair,
Which like the gentle lamb, though lately weaned,
Plays with the dug, though finds no comfort there.

But as a body violently slain

Retaineth warmth although the spirit be gone,
And by a power in nature moves again

Till it be laid below the fatal stone;

'Or as the earth, even in cold winter days,
Left for a time by her life-giving sun,

Doth by the power remaining of his rays

Produce some green, though not as it hath done;

'Or

'Or as a wheel, forced by the falling stream,
Although the course be turned some other way,
Doth for a time go round upon the beam,

Till, wanting strength to move, it stands at stay;
'So my forsaken heart, my withered mind,—
Widow of all the joys it once possessed,

My hopes clean out of sight with forced wind,
To kingdoms strange, to lands far-off addressed,

'Alone, forsaken, friendless, on the shore

With many wounds, with death's cold pangs embraced,
Writes in the dust, as one that could no more,

Whom love, and time, and fortune, had defaced.'

Those who are well acquainted with Raleigh's biography will easily supply the comment on many of the above passages. A few lines lower down, he gives us a remarkable anticipation of the great labour which he undertook at a later date in the Tower, his History of the World;' as if, in the fading evening,

"We should begin by such a parting light

To write the story of all ages past,

And end the same before the approaching night.'

In Spenser's letter to Raleigh he explains that in some places (as we all know), he describes Elizabeth as Belphœbe, fashioning her name according to your own excellent conceit of Cynthia, Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana.' His words seem to imply, that the term Belphobe was not used in the Cynthia' that Raleigh had read to him. But it occurs twice in this twenty-first book, and supplies another proof of its independence:

'Belphoebe's course is now observed no more.'

'A

queen she was to me, no more Belphœbe;
A lion then, no more a milk-white dove.'

A few more stanzas will exhaust our limits :-
'With youth is dead the hope of love's return,

Who looks not back to hear our after-cries:
Where he is not, he laughs at those that mourn ;
Whence he is gone, he scorns the mind that dies.
'When he is absent, he believes no words;

When reason speaks, he, careless, stops his ears;
Whom he hath left he never grace affords,

But bathes his wings in our lamenting tears.'

That spring of joys, that flower of love's own setting,

The

< The idea remaining of those golden ages,

That beauty, braving heavens and earth embalming,
Which after worthless worlds but play on stages,

Such didst thou her long since describe.'

Another proof that we are dealing with a distinct and supplementary poem :

'Oh, love! (the more my woe) to it thou art
'Even as the moisture in each plant that grows;
Even as the sun unto the frozen ground;
Even as the sweetness to the incarnate rose;
Even as the centre in each perfect round.'

To seek for moisture in the Arabian sand
Is but a loss of labour and of rest.'

'On Sestus' shore, Leander's late resort,
Hero hath left no lamp to guide her love.'

Thus home I draw, as death's long night draws on;
Yet every foot, old thoughts turn back mine eyes:
Constraint me guides, as old age draws a stone
Against the hill, which over-weighty lies

For feeble arms or wasted strength to move:
My steps are backward, gazing on my loss,
My mind's affection and my soul's sole love,
Not mixed with fancy's chaff or fortune's dross.
"To God I leave it, who first gave it me,
And I her gave, and she returned again,
As it was hers: so let His mercies be

Of my last comforts the essential mean.

'But be it so or not, the effects are past;

Her love hath end; my woe must ever last.'

These closing lines are singularly sombre and melancholy to have been written by a high-spirited man of only forty, with life still beating strongly in his veins; but they are thoroughly and completely characteristic of Raleigh. He is a remarkable example of the gloom which often waits on the sanguine and hopeful, and no subject ever seems to rouse him to such flights of shadowed eloquence as the contemplation of death. Mr. St. John (i. 26) is inclined to ascribe to him the authorship of a paper written as early as 1577, in which we find the striking phrase:-The wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death.' Near the beginning of his History of the World '(1. ii. 5), he describes how we 'pass on with many sighs, groans, and sad thoughts, and in the end, by

6

the