SYDNEYS Sos -- I speak of the best of them -- are among the very best of their sort. They fall below the plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet modest spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his positions of a similar structure. They are in truth what Milton, suring the Arcadia, says of that work (to which they are a sort of after-tune or application), "vain and amatorious" enough, yet the things in their kind (as he fesses to be true of the romance) may be "full of worth and wit." They savour of the Courtier, it must be allowed, and not of the ohsman. But Milton was a Courtier when he wrote the Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still more a Courtier when he posed the Arcades. Wheional struggle was to begin, he beingly cast these vanities behind him; and if the order of time had thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis which preceded the Revolution, there is no reason why he should not have acted the same part in that emergency, which has glorified the name of a later Sydney. He did not want for plainness or boldness of spirit. His letter on the French match may testify, he could speak his mind freely to Prihe times did not call him to the scaffold.
The Sos which we ofte call to mind of Miltohe positions of his maturest years. Those of Sydney, which I am about to produce, were written in the very hey-day of his blood. They are stuck full of amorous fancies -- far-fetched ceits, befitting his occupation; for True Love thinks no labour to send out Thoughts upon the vast, and more than Indian voyages, t home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifi self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the Beloved. We must be Lovers -- or at least the cooling touch of time, the circum praecordia frigins, must not have so damped our faculties, as to take away our recolle that we were once so -- before we duly appreciate the glorious vanities, and graceful hyperboles of the passion. The images which lie before our feet (though by some ated the only natural) are least natural for the high Sydnean love to express its fancies by. They may serve for the loves of Tibullus, or the dear Author of the Sistress; for passions that creep and whine in Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved at this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses (ad Leonoram I mean) have rather erred on the farther side; and that the poet came not much short of a religious inde, when he could thus apostrophise a singing-girl: --
Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes)
Obtigit aetheriis ales ab ordinibus.
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major,
Nam tua praesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum?
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe meia coeli,
Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens;
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda
Sensim immortal assuescere posse sono.
QUOD SI CTA QUIDEM DEUS EST, PER CTAQUE FUSUS,
IN TE UNA LOQUITUR, CAETERA MUTUS HABET.
This is loving in a strange fashion; and it requires some dour of stru (besides the slight darkening of a dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly appearance of something very like blasphemy in the last two verses. I think the Lover would have been staggered, if he had gone about to express the same thought in English. I am sure, Sydney has no flights like this. His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with his mortal passions.
With how sad steps, O