CONSTABLE, (HENRY.) - Diana. Or, The excellent conceitful Sonnets of H. C. augmented with diuers Quatorzains of honorable and lerned personages. Deuided into viij. Decads. Vincitur a facibus, qui jacet ipse faces. At London, Printed by James Roberts for Richard Smith. 1594. 12mo, pp. 80. This very rare and curious little volume is the production of Henry Constable, a sonnet writer of great reputation among his contemporaries, who was of St. John's Coll., Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.A. in 1579. Being a zealous Roman Catholic, and living at a period when the restless agitations and plots of the English Jesuits made all the professors of that religion suspected, he was compelled to fly from his native country, and remained for some years abroad, but afterwards venturing to return, he was committed to the Tower, and kept a prisoner there till near the close of the year 1604. Of his future fate or of the time of his death we have no account. He is supposed by Warton to have been the author of another rare work called The Forest of Fancy, 4to, 1594, but this writer seems to have founded his conjecture solely upon the initials of H. C. prefixed to the volume, for the difference of style renders the supposition most improbable. Anthony Wood calls him one of the best sonneteers of his time, and says, quoting from Bolton's Hypercritica, "there was no gentleman of our nation had a more pure, quick, or higher deliverie of conceit than he.”—Wood's Athen. Oxon., vol. i. P. 14. In that singular play of The Returne from Parnassus, or The Scourge of Simony, 4to, 1606, in which there are some curious and interesting notices of our early Poets, we are informed that Sweet Constable doth take the wond'ring ear And lays it up in willing prisonment.. His sonnet prefixed to King James I., Poetical Exercises, 4to, 1591, and addressed to that Monarch, was most especially admired, and is reprinted in Hawkins's Origin of the English Drama, vol. iii. p. 212; but though held in such high estimation in former days as a sonnet writer, Constable's fame will now be thought much exaggerated, and as hardly deserving a secondary place amongst this class of writers. The present work is mentioned in Brydges's Restituta, vol. iv. p. 447; and in Park's Supplement to 3 L VOL. II. PART II. the Harleian Miscell., vol ix. p. 491, some sonnets of Constable's are inserted from an unpublished MS. volume in the possession of the Rev. H. J. Todd. In the second volume of the Heliconia, Mr. Park has given another set of sonnets by Constable, sixteen in number, never before printed, entitled "Spirituall Sonnettes to the Honour of God, and hys Sayntes by H. C.," from a MS. in the Harleian Collect., No. 7553. There are also four sonnets by Henry Constable prefixed to the very rare edition of Sidney's Apologie of Poetrie, 4to, 1595, which had never been reprinted till they were given in Collier's Poet. Decam., vol. ii. p. 104. Another sonnet of his is to be found in Bolton's Elements of Armories, 4to, 1610, and in that rare work Englands Helicon, 4to, 1600, are four poems by H. C.[onstable], the last of which "The Shepheards Song of Venus and Adonis,” for delicacy and harmony of expression, is perhaps as favourable an example of his style as can be produced. It was reprinted by Mr. Malone in his edition of Shakespeare, vol x. p. 74, who was of opinion that it preceded Shakespeare's poem on the same subject. Perhaps we may have yielded too far in the above brief analysis, to the opinion of others in assigning so many scattered pieces to the pen of this writer on the authority of the initials alone, and we can only plead in excuse the extreme difficulty of arriving at any certain results in such matters. It may, however, be safely admitted that none are here ascribed to him involving too great contrarieties of style to be the work of the same writer, and in many cases identity of initials and similarity of composition must be accepted in the place of more positive evidence. The first edition of the present work, entitled Diana, "the praises of his Mistres in certaine sweete Sonnets by H. C." was published in 1592, in 4to, of which a copy, considered to be unique, was sold at Mr. Heber's sale, pt. iv. No. 513, for 97. 12s. In this first edition there is one sonnet following the title which is not inserted in the later one in 12mo. A short prose address of ten lines from "The Printer to the Reader" is added after the title, and is succeeded by a sonnet by Richard Smith "Vnto her Maiesties sacred honorable Maydes." We subjoin two of the sonnets as specimens of Constable's style. The second Decad. Sonnet X. Faire Sunne, if you wold haue me praise your light, as I haue neede to see them day and night: That by continuall view, my verses might tell all the beames of your diuinitie; which praise to you, and ioy should be to mee, I by your sight, and not you by my verse: neede mortall skill immortall praise rehearse? no, no, though eyes were blind, and verse were dumb, The sixth Decad. Sonnet II. To liue in hell, and heauen to behold, to welcome life, and die a liuing death, to sweat with heate, and yet be freezing cold, To tread a Maze that neuer shall haue end, to burne in sighes, and starue in daily teares, and weepe those wrongs which neuer creature saw, If this be loue, if loue in these be founded, My hart is loue, for these in it are grounded. A facsimile reprint of this little edition, limited to 50 copies, was issued in 1818. The work was also reprinted in 4to, in 1818, by Edward Littledale, Esq., for the members of the Roxburghe Club, of which a copy (nunc penes nos) sold in 1820 at Bindley's sale, pt. iii. No. 1794, for 5l. 58. The present copy belonged to Mr. Bindley, who has written in it "A most rare and curious little book." It originally belonged to Malone, by whom it was given to Mr. Bindley, September 12th, 1796, and sold at his sale in 1820, pt. i. No. 1190, for 7l. 178. 6d. It unfortunately then wanted six leaves. These have since been added from the facsimile reprint. The date has been cut off on the title-page in the binding. Mr. Constable, of Edinburgh, to whom the volume once belonged, has written in it "I was in quest of a copy of this very rare volume for more than twenty years before I met with it. Arch Constable March 1822." See in addition to the works already mentioned, Ritson's Bibliog. Poet., p. 172; Wood's Ath. Oxon., ed. Bliss, vol. i. p. 14; Warton's Hist. Eng. Poet., vol iii. p. 292; Ellis's Specim. Early Eng. Poets, vol. ii. p. 304; Campbell's Introd. to Ditto, p. 120; Brit. Bibliogr., vol. iii. p. xv; Dr. Drake's Shakespeare and his Times, vol. i. p. 609, and vol. ii. p. 55; Todd's Milton, vol. vi. p. 439; and Collier's Cat. of the Bridgewater House Library, p. 283. Collation: Sig. A two leaves; B to F 6 in eights. Bound by C. Lewis. In Green Morocco with joints, Conusaunce Damours. Here begynneth a lytell treatyse cleped La Conusaunce Damours. Imprinted by Rycharde Pynson printer to the Kynges noble grace. Cum priuilegio. n.d. 4to, blk. lett. pp. 32. "The above title is over a fine woodcut of a man sitting down, with his left hand upon a book, his right pointing towards two women approaching, one of them with a branch and ball in her hands: in the back ground to the left is another woman. The whole is evidently of foreign workmanship. The author's prologue of three verses is on the reverse of the title-page." This description of the first leaf of this work is taken from Dibdin's Typogr. Antiq., vol. ii. p. 566, the title to this very rare and curious poetical production in the present copy being unfortunately wanting. The poem is in seven-line stanzas, and is written in a style of elegance and pathos, and of moral sentiment superior to the general average of works of this class at that period. It relates to the stories of Pyramus and Thisbe, Troilus and Cressida, Canace and her brother Machareus, Phillis and Demophon, and many others of classical and romaunt lore. With respect to the first, this is probably one of the earliest forms in which the oft translated story of Pyramus and Thisbe had appeared in an English dress. Dunstan Gale's poem on this subject was not published till 1596, but William Griffiths had licence for printing a book entitled Perymus and Thesbye in 1562; another version was contained in the Gorgeous Gallery of gallant Inventions, 4to, 1578, and others followed later; but as Pynson did not print any after 1531, this may be considered perhaps as the first version. The story of Troilus and Cressida was known to the writer of this poem, whoever he was, through Chaucer's version of it, first printed by Caxton without any date, and again by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517, 4to. It is thus referred to in the poem: What shulde I hereof, longer processe make Theyr great loue is wrytten all at longe And howe he dyed onely for her sake. In his lyfe dayes dyd underfonge To translate and that most plesantly The reader will be anxious to see a short specimen of this curious poem, we therefore transcribe the opening stanzas: The thyrd idus in the moneth of July spery And mouynge many unto sporte and So dyd it me, the treuthe for to saye And as I walked, euer I dyd beholde Goodly yonge people, that them encouraged In suche maner wyse, as though they wolde Ryght gladly haue songe or daunsed Whose demeanynge, made me ryght For to beholde, theyr dedes amorous. To wryte all thynges of plesure that I se The author, who is supposed to be an unhappy lover without hope of success, next introduces some other personages in the following stanzas: Whan I came there, I founde at the dore Dame daunger moued her to that daliaunce. |