§ 4 On the Pastorals
There were good reasons for Court and country being associated ideas, if only in contrast. Thus Touchstone states, when drolling with Colin, as to a Pastoral employment:—“Truly, shepherd in respect of itself it is a good life; but in respect it is not in the Court, it is tedious.” The large proportion of pastoral songs and poems in Choyce Drollery is one other noticeable characteristic. Even as Utopian schemes, with dreams of an unrealized Republic where laws may be equally administered, and cultivation given to all highest arts or sciences, are found to be most popular in times of discontent and tyranny, when no encouragement for hope appears in what the acting government is doing; even so, amid luxurious times, with artificial tastes predominant, there is always a tendency to dream of pastoral simplicity, and to sing or paint the joys of rural life. In the voluptuous languor of Miladi’s own boudoir, amid scented fumes of pastiles and flowers, hung round with curtains brought from Eastern palaces, Watteau, Greuze, Boucher, and Bachelier were employed to paint delicious panels of bare-feeted shepherdesses, herding their flocks with ribbon-knotted crooks and bursting bodices; while goatherd-swains, in satin breeches and rosetted pumps, languish at their side, and tell of tender passion through a rustic pipe. The contrast of a wimpling brook, birds twittering on the spray, and daintiest hint of hay-forks or of reaping-hooks, enhanced with piquancy, no doubt, the every-day delights of fashionable wantonness. And as it was in such later times with courtiers of La belle France surrounding Louis XV., so in the reign of either Charles of England—the Revolution Furies crept nearer unperceived.
Recurrence to Pastorals in Choyce Drollery is simply in accordance with a natural tendency of baffled Cavaliers, to look back again to all that had distinguished the earlier days of their dead monarch, before Puritanism had become rampant. Even Milton, in his youthful “Lycidas,” 1637, showed love for such Idyllic transformation of actual life into a Pastoral Eclogue. (A bitter spring of hatred against the Church was even then allowed to pollute the clear rill of Helicon: in him thereafter that Marah never turned to sweetness.) Some of these Pastorals remain undiscovered elsewhere. But there can be no mistaking the impression left upon them by the opening years of the seventeenth, if not more truly the close of the sixteenth, century. Dull, plodding critics have sneered at Pastorals, and wielded their sledge-hammers against the Dresden-china Shepherdesses, as though they struck down Dagon from his pedestal. What then? Are we forbidden to enjoy, because their taste is not consulted?——
“Fools from their folly ’tis hopeless to stay!
Mules will be mules, by the law of their mulishness;
Then be advised, and leave fools to their foolishness,
What from an ass can be got but a bray?”
Always will there be some smiling virtuosi, here or elsewhere, who can prize the unreal toys, and thank us for retrieving from dusty oblivion a few more of these early Pastorals. When too discordantly the factions jar around us, and denounce every one of moderate opinions or quiet habits, because he is unwilling to become enslaved as a partisan, and fight under the banner that he deems disgraced by falsehood and intolerance, despite its ostentatious blazon of “Liberation” or “Equality,” it is not easy, even for such as “the melancholy Cowley,” to escape into his solitude without a slanderous mockery from those who hunger for division of the spoil. Recluse philosophers of science or of literature, men like Sir Thomas Browne, pursue their labour unremittingly, and keep apart from politics; but even for this abstinence harsh measure is dealt to them by contemporaries and posterity whom they labour to enrich. It is well, no doubt, that we should be convinced as to which side the truth is on, and fight for that unto the death. Woe to the recreant who shrinks from hazarding everything in life, and life itself, defending what he holds to be the Right. Yet there are times when, as in 1656, the fight has gone against our cause, and no further gain seems promised by waging single-handedly a warfare against the triumphant multitude. Patience, my child, and wait the inevitable turn of the already quivering balance!—such is Wisdom’s counsel. Butler knew the truth of Cavalier loyalty:—
“For though out-numbered, overthrown,
And by the fate of war run down,
Their Duty never was defeated,
Nor from their oaths and faith retreated:
For Loyalty is still the same
Whether it lose or win the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shone upon.”
Some partizans may find a paltry pleasure in dealing stealthy stabs, or buffoons’ sarcasms, against the foes they could not fairly conquer. Some hold a silent dignified reserve, and give no sign of what they hope or fear. But for another, and large class, there will be solace in the dreams of earlier days, such as the Poets loved to sing about a Golden Pastoral Age. Those who best learnt to tell its beauty were men unto whom Fortune seldom offered gifts, as though it were she envied them for having better treasure in their birthright of imagination. The dull, harsh, and uncongenial time intensified their visions: even as Hogarth’s “Distressed Poet”—amid the squalour of his garret, with his gentle uncomplaining wife dunned for a milk-score—revels in description of Potosi’s mines, and, while he writes in poverty, can feign himself possessor of uncounted riches. Such power of self-forgetfulness was grasped by the “Time-Poets,” of whom our little book keeps memorable record.
So be it, Cavaliers of 1656. Though Oliver’s troopers and a hated Parliament are still in the ascendant, let your thoughts find repose awhile, your hopes regain bright colouring, remembering the plaints of one despairing shepherd, from whom his Chloris fled; or of that other, “sober and demure,” whose mistress had herself to blame, through freedoms being borne too far. We, also, love to seek a refuge from the exorbitant demands of myriad-handed interference with Church and State; so we come back to you, as you sit awhile in peace under the aged trees, remote from revellers and spies, “Farre in the Forest of Arden”—O take us thither!—reading of happy lovers in the pages of Choyce Drollery. Since their latest words are of our favourite Fletcher, let our invocation also be from him, in his own melodious verse:—
“How sweet these solitary places are! how wantonly
The wind blows through the leaves, and courts and plays with ’em!
Will you sit down, and sleep? The heat invites you.
Hark, how yon purling stream dances and murmurs;
The birds sing softly too. Pray take your rest, Sir.”
J. W. E.
September 2nd, 1875.