But he was too closely connected with Stella's
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las, I lie : rage hath this error bred : Love is not dead ; Ix)ve is not dead, but sleepeth In her unmatched mind, ■^ INTRODUCTION. xxv Where she his counsell keepethTill due deserts she find.Therefore from so vile fancieTo call sucn wit a franzie,"^Tio love can tem(>er thus,Good Lord deliver us ! So Sidney wrote, making his last verse a palinodefor the bitterness of its three predecessors. But thepalinode has more mischief in it than the invective,and the mischief is more pronounced in the quaintlytitled " Smokes of Melancholy " from which we havealready quoted. Penelope Devereux was married toLord Rich, and Sidney — Sidney, the embodiment ofall that is pure, and wise, and brave in his times — wasdetermined to remain her lover. The shock is great,and it is small wonder that his biographers pass hastilyover his relations with Stella as an unpleasant episodein a noble career. Yet that the steady pertinacity ofaim which is the characteristic of Sidney's public lifeshould have been lacking in his love, would havestamped him as made in a weaker mould than wewould willingly accept as his. To regard an enforcedmarriage as no marriage may be a cruelty to itsvictim, but marks the lover neither as wanton noras base; and though once and again in the latersonnets Sidney returns to his lament that his love xxvi INTRODUCTION, was leading him to forget his higher mission, thereis no other trace in them of any doubt as to therectitude of his suit Of the progress of this suit thereis no need here to give a detailed account; it is written,as in a journal, in the sonnets and songs. The 31stand 32nd in their calm and splendid beauty form amagnificent pause before the turbid eloquence of theirsuccessors. If they were not written just before thenews of Stella's marriage, it was a fine literary judg-ment which assigned them their position. With the33rd, " I might ! unhappie word — O me, I might ! ^ —we plunge into the storm. Even if Dr. Grosart beright in referring it only to an interview missed, thesympathetic reader will hardly fail to conjecture thatthat interview was the first at which Sidney was togreet Stella as Lady Rich, and in the words in whichhe mourns his mistake there is blended a sorrow fora deeper error and a deeper loss. In the succeedingsonnets he pursues and comments on his suit in allthe different notes of love's gamut. And not withoutresult. As in Sidney sorrow had given new force andpassion to his verse, so in Stella misery had procuredhim a more ready listener. She does not repulse, butexpostulates with him. She affects to regard hispoems as impersonal and lets him hear her read or INTRO D UCTION. xxvii sing them. She praises him in his absence. Hecatches her gaze directed to him when she thinks heis not looking. She plays the metaphysician : hislove for her is to make him cease loving, her own forhim to wish him " anchor fast " himself " on virtue'sshore." But love has made himself of their company,and in the 6ist sonnet Sidney can record that Stellahas confessed to it. Soon afterwards he finds hersleeping, and awakes her with a kiss. She is angry,but a few sonnets further on her anger is only againstkisses become too passionate to be borne in peace." Sonnets are not bound prentise to annoy," and for alittle while Sidney's express all the raptures of ahappy lover. But the climax of the drama is expressedin the songs. Twice, these tell us, Sidney asked thatthedr passion should have its full course. TwiceStella repulsed him, the second time finally and forever, but in words of tenderness and beauty unsur-passable : Astrophel, sayd she, my love, Cease, in these effects, to prove 5 Now be still ; yet still beleeve me,
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