Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 3

he was satirised in a Cambridge student's Common-place Book in
1611. Heywood mentions him in 1609 among the six most famous
physicians in England, and in the _Return from Parnassus_, a play
acted in 1602, he is described as "turning over Galen every day."
Yet no one had been in the last twenty years the sixteenth century more
responsive than Lodge to the shifting moods of that excitable period.
Lodge was the son of a Lord Mayor of London, and was a
contemporary at Oxford with Sidney, Gosson, Chapman, Lyly, Peele
and Watson. His life included a round of varied experiences. A student
at Lincoln's Inn, a young aspirant for literary honours, friends with
Greene, Rich, Daniel, Drayton, Lyly and Watson, a taster of the
sorrows that many of the University wits endured when usurers got
their hands upon them, for a time perhaps a soldier, certainly a sailor
following the fortunes of Captain Clarke to Terceras and the Canaries,
and of Cavendish to Brazil and the Straits of Magellan, in London
again making plays with Greene, off to Avignon to take his degree in
medicine, back again to be incorporated an M.D. at Oxford and to
practise in London, adopting secretly the Roman Catholic faith, and
sometimes hiding on the continent as a recusant from persecution at
home, imprisoned perhaps once for debt, and entertaining a concourse
of patients of his own religion till his death in 1625:--the life of Lodge

thus presents a view of the ups and downs possible in that picturesque
age.
The wide variety of his literary ventures reflects the interests of his life.
Some controversial papers, some unsuccessful plays, two dull historical
sketches in prose, some satirical and moralising works in prose and in
verse, two romantic tales in verse and three in prose, a number of
eclogues, metrical epistles and lyrics, some ponderous translations from
Latin and French, and two medical treatises; these widely differing
kinds of writing are the products of Lodge's industry and genius. All,
however, have but an antiquarian interest save two; the prose romance
called _Rosalynde, Euphues' Golden Legacy_, could not be spared
since Shakespeare borrowed its charming plot for _As You Like It_;
and _Phillis_, bound up with a sheaf of his lyrics gathered from the
pages of his stories and from the miscellanies of the time, should be
treasured for its own sake and should keep Lodge's memory green for
lovers of pure poetry.
Lodge's lyric genius was a clear if slender rill. His faults are the more
unpardonable since they spring from sheer carelessness and a lack of
appreciation of the sacred responsibility of creative power. He took up
the literary fashion of the month and tried his hand at it; that done, he
was ready for the next mode. He did not wait to perfect his work or to
compare result with result; therefore he probably never found himself,
probably never realised that after three centuries he would be esteemed,
not for the ponderous tomes of his translation of Josephus, not for all
the catalogues of his satirical and religious and scientific writings, but
for mere lyrics like the "Heigh ho, fair Rosaline," and "Love in my
bosom like a bee," heedlessly imbedded in the heart of a prose
romance.
Lodge was one of the earliest to follow the example of Sidney in
linking a sequence of sonnets together into a sonnet-cycle. The
_Astrophel and Stella_ was published in 1591, though it had doubtless
before this been handed about, as was the Elizabethan fashion, in
manuscript. Early in 1591 also when Daniel was probably abroad,
twenty-seven of the fifty-seven sonnets that a year later formed the

sonnet-cycle _Delia_ were published in his absence. Now in August of
1591 Lodge set sail with Cavendish on that long voyage to Brazil and
the Straits of Magellan from which he did not return till early in
ninety-three, and it was during his absence that Daniel's and
Constable's sonnet-cycles came out. It is possible that Lodge saw
Daniel's series, as he doubtless did Sidney's, in manuscript before he
left England, but the Induction to _Phillis_, which carries a message to
Delia's "sweet prophet," was almost certainly written later, and in the
absence of further proof it seems no more than fair to allow Lodge to
share with Daniel and Constable the honour of being the earliest to take
the hint Sidney had offered.
On the whole, Lodge's sonnets show a much more cheerful and buoyant
temper than Daniel's "wailing verse." The "sad horror, pale grief,
prostrate despair" that inform the _Delia_, are replaced in the _Phillis_
by a spirit of airy toying, a pleasure in the graces of fancy even when
they cluster around a feeling of sadness. During Lodge's absence, his
friend Robert Green published several pieces for him, and