APPENDIX H.

THE SILENT LOVER.

6

THERE is a lyric generally known by this name; one of the loveliest among Elizabethan love-lyrics. Its authorship has been disputed. The latest editor of Raleigh's poems thinks Sir Walter's claim to it is supported by so many independent testimonies, that we need not hesitate to regard him as the author.' I beg leave to suggest a reconsideration of the subject; and submit one or two items that have been overlooked in the evidence. The poem is here printed with slight variations from the MS. copy in the Ashmole Museum.

'Wrong not, dear Mistress of my heart,

The merits of true passion,

By thinking that he feels no smart

Who sues for no compassion:

Though that my thoughts do not approve

The conquest of your beauty

It comes not from defect of love,
But from excess of duty!

'For knowing that I sue to serve
A saint of such perfection,
As all desire, but none deserve
A place in her affection-

1 MSS., Ashmole, 781. p.

143.

The poem is wrought with great skill; it has the linked strength and graceful movement of a coat of chain-mail; the verses in this copy having no full stop until the lyric has reached its climax in that most naïve of all conceits in the last stanza. I do not think the mind of Raleigh moved thus lightly and naturally in verse. Such of his poetry as can be identified, is altogether wanting in the winsome grace of this song, and has no such quick spirit of fancy. His manner is more set and formal as though the dress of his thought were stillly brocaded. The poem is ascribed to Raleigh in some of the old MS. collections in which his name has been so often misapplied. In one of the Rawl. MSS. the piece is entitled Sir Walter Raleigh to Queen Elizabeth;' another instance, says the Rev. Mr. Hannah, where a right name is coupled with a wrong legend. I suspect the copyist may have been as right with the name, as with the legend, and no more. The copy in the MS. Ashm. is signed Lo. Walden;

'

which is accepted as 'Lord Warden,' and assumed to mean Sir W. Raleigh as Lord Warden of the Stannaries. This signature is eqally favourable however, to the other claimant William, Earl of Pembroke, who was also Lord Warden of the Stannaries, under James. Next the poem is printed as Herbert's in the poems collected by the younger Donne. Here, to say the least, is quite as good authority as any on which the poem is ascribed to Raleigh.

It is almost the sole piece in the collection dedicated by that editor to the Countess of Devonshire, to which his words apply. Whatever was excellently said to any lady in all these poems was meant for you.' Lastly, the germ idea belongs to Shakspeare-he who wrote the tenderest things touching silence in love. In Sonnet 26 the Poet pleads

'O, let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast ;
Who plead for love and look for recompence,

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed!

O learn to read what silent love hath writ:

To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.'

Again, in Sonnet 85 he says

Then others for the breath of words respect;

Me, for my dumb thoughts speaking in effect.'

Now, if there be any value in the authority which assigns the poem to Raleigh, as one addressed by him to the Queen, it goes to prove that the poem was written during the life of her Majesty, or else the subject could not have been given. And I think that whoever wrote the Silent Lover' must have been acquainted with Shakspeare's Sonnets so that if it was written before the Queen's death, the acquaintanceship must have been with the Sonnets in MS. Thus there would be three points in favour of Herbert

THE SILENT LOVER.'

597

in

-the borrowing of the thought from the Sonnets, which the Earl held in MS.-the signature of Lord Warden,' in the Ashmole MS. copy-and the fact of its appearance Herbert's collected poems. When we add to this the internal evidence which is strong against Raleigh's claim, I think the poem may be, with the greater probability, assigned to Herbert. For, not only is Shakspeare's idea the root of it, but I suspect the great Poet retouched it for his young friend, and finished it with that last stanza which is the captain jewel in the carcanet,' and has the flash of our Poet's mind; a thought that he set in many lights. In Much Ado about Nothing' we find 'silence is the perfectest herald of joy.' In 'Troilus and Cressida,' 'See your silence, cunning in dumbness!'

6

Mr. Hannah prints these additional lines:

'Passions are likened best to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb:
So when affections yield discourse, it seems
The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
They that are rich in words, in words discover
That they are poor in that which makes a Lover' –

and seems to think the copy in Herbert's poems imperfect, because the above lines are wanting. As one accustomed to write lyrics, I should say that the man who wrote the 'Silent Lover,' an essential lyric, could by no means have added the above lines. They are a tawdry bit of secondhand trash that has been tagged on! Any MSS. which included them could have no original authority. I should judge that the Ashmole copy contains the original poem, and that the one in Herbert's Poems' was retouched from it. For illustration, the word utter' occurs twice in the first-named copy, and it has been taken out of the 4th stanza of the later version and the word venture' substituted, because utter' was used in a rhyme of stanza 6. Also, in Herbert's Poems' the first stanza has been repeated for a refrain at the end.

APPENDIX I.

KING JOHN.

'We will not line his thin bestainéd cloak

With our pure honors.'

Act. iv. sc. 3.

THE present reading of the sonnets will shed many little glancing lights on the plays. It will open up a richer vein of commentary which I have not been able to work fully for want of space. I believe, for example, that sonnet 67 illustrates the above quotation and comparatively proves 'thin bestained cloak' to be the wrong

reading.

6

'Ah wherefore with infection should he live,
And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve,
And lace itself with his society?'

Here sin lacing or decorating itself assuredly suggests that the cloak to be, or not to be, lined with our pure honors' was sin-bestained, not thin bestained. The cloak might require new lining, either because it was very thin, or much soiled, but Shakspeare would hardly have put forth such a double reason for a single lining. Lastly, our pure honours' necessarily implies his sin bestained

cloak.'