-poetry--how that it is of imagination all compact, and that
actual occurrences are much oftener occasions and bases than causes and
material of it. It is of the smallest possible importance or interest to a
rational man to discover what was the occasion of Sidney's writing these
charming poems--the important point is their charm. And in this respect
(giving heed to his date and his opportunities of imitation) I should put
Sidney third to Shakespere and Spenser. The very first piece of the series,
an oddly compounded sonnet of thirteen Alexandrines and a final heroic,
strikes the note of intense and fresh poetry which is only heard afar off
in Surrey and Wyatt, which is hopelessly to seek in the tentatives of
Turberville and Googe, and which is smothered with jejune and merely
literary ornament in the less formless work of Sidney's contemporary,
Thomas Watson. The second line--

"That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,"

the couplet--

"Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain,"

and the sudden and splendid finale--

"'Fool!' said my muse, 'look in thy heart and write!'"

are things that may be looked for in vain earlier.

A little later we meet with that towering soar of verse which is also
peculiar to the period:

"When Nature made her chief work--Stella's eyes,
In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright?"--

lines which those who deprecate insistence on the importance of form in
poetry might study with advantage, for the thought is a mere commonplace
conceit, and the beauty of the phrase is purely derived from the cunning
arrangement and cadence of the verse. The first perfectly charming sonnet
in the English language--a sonnet which holds its own after three centuries
of competition--is the famous "With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbst the
skies," where Lamb's stricture on the last line as obscure seems to me
unreasonable. The equally famous phrase, "That sweet enemy France," which
occurs a little further on is another, and whether borrowed from Giordano
Bruno or not is perhaps the best example of the felicity of expression in
which Sidney is surpassed by few Englishmen. Nor ought the extraordinary
variety of the treatment to be missed. Often as Sidney girds at those who,
like Watson, "dug their sonnets out of books," he can write in the learned
literary manner with the best. The pleasant ease