Читать книгу Great Ralegh - Hugh De Sélincourt - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Friendship with George Gascoyne—Its importance—Ralegh in London—The arch-gossip Aubrey—Elizabethan London—Ralegh and Sir Humfrey Gilbert—The beginning of the great enterprise.

Ralegh returned from France in 1575 or 1576; and there are three years of his life—important years, from the age of twenty-three to twenty-six—which contain little or no record of his doings. Some authors, on the slenderest authority, maintain that he trailed a pike in the Lowlands, under Sir John Norris. But this is unlikely. The time of his possible presence there has been adroitly whittled down by William Oldys to the early part of the year 1578, and quite recently a document has been discovered bearing his signature, and the date of the deed is April 11th, 1578. If the signature is genuine, and expert evidence points to the fact that it is so, this is an additional, almost conclusive, proof that during these three years he remained in England.

There is another matter, intrinsically small, but exceedingly important because it throws a great light on his pursuits at this time. To George Gascoigne's satirical poem "The Steele Glas" is appended, among other commendatory verses, a poem by Walter Rawely, of the Middle Temple, which runs as follows—

"Swete were the sauce, would please ech kind of tast

The life likewise, were pure that never swerved

For spyteful tongs, in cankred stomaches plaste,

Deeme worst of things, which best (percase) deserved:

But what for that? this medcine may suffyse,

To scorne the rest, and seke to please the wise.

"Though sundry mindes in sundry sorte do deeme

Yet worthiest wights yelde praise for every payne,

But envious braynes, do nought (or light) esteeme

Such stately steppes as they cannot attaine.

For who so reapes, renowne above the rest,

With heapes of hate, shal surely be opprest.

"Wherefore to write, my censure of this booke

This Glasse of Steele impartially doth shewe,

Abuses all, to such as in it looke,

From prince to poore, from high estate to lowe

As for the verse, who lists like trade to trye,

I feare me much, shal hardly reache so high."

Edwards thinks, and rightly, that the verses show an intimate friendship with the poet in whose honour they were written; and "the poem itself to me discovers," writes Oldys, with his own quaint charm, "in the very first line of it a great air of that solid axiomatical vein which is observable in other productions of Ralegh's muse. And the whole middle hexastic is such an indication of his own fortune or fate, such a caution against that envy of superior merit which he himself ever struggled with, that it could proceed from no hand more properly than his own."

And these conjectures are strengthened into fact when it is remembered (and this point seems hitherto to have been passed over) that Gascoigne was a close friend of Sir Humfrey Gilbert, and a kinsman to Martin Frobisher. "Now it happened," writes Gascoigne ("in a letter from my lodging, where I march among the Muses for lacke of exercise in martial exploytes"), "now it happened that my selfe being one (amongst manie) beholding to the said S. Humfrey Gilbert for sundrie curtesies did come to visit him in Winter last past at his house in Limehouse, and beeing verie bolde to demande of him howe he spente his time in this loytering vacation from martial stratagems: he curteously tooke me up into his studie and there shewed me sundrie profitable and verie commendable exercises which he had perfected painefully with his own penne: And amongst the rest this present Discourse. The which as well because it was not long, as also because I understoode that M. Fourboiser (a kinsman of mine) did pretend to travaile in the same Discouverie, I craved at the said S. Humfreyes handes for two or three dayes to reade and peruse. And hee verie friendly granted my request, but still seming to doubt that thereby the same might, contrarie to his former determination be Imprinted."

Ralegh would meet Gascoigne often at Sir Humfrey's house, and to Gascoigne he probably owed his first impulse towards literature. For George Gascoigne was the most considerable man writing at that time; and though his work contained no actual greatness, it was very much on the right lines, that is to say, he was steeped in Chaucer and Gower, and acknowledged them his masters, rather than classical authors. Not that he was ignorant of either Latin or Greek; on the contrary, he was intimate with both, and his "Jocasta," which he adapted from an Italian translation by Dolce of the "Ph[oe]nissæ" of Euripides, was not only one of the first plays in blank verse, but also was the first known attempt to produce translated tragedy upon the English stage.

And therein lies Gascoigne's chief quality. He was an innovator and original, and that bespeaks force of character, a trait which must have drawn young Ralegh to him. For like attracts like in a mysterious manner.

Gascoigne holds an interesting place in the literature of the time. Since the publication of "Tottel's Miscellany," in 1557, there had, for some thirty years, been a distinct lull in the output of poetry, and the work of Gascoigne was a prelude to the revival that came about the years 1579–1582, when Sidney, Spenser, Watson, and Lyly first made their appearance, the true harbingers of the mighty tempest of song that broke upon the world in 1590, and continued for some twenty amazing years.

He tried his hand, diffidently, as became a gentleman, at every form; realizing and pointing out, as it were, the capacity of the great instrument of the English language. "It is no mean feat," as an eminent scholar says, "to rank in history as George Gascoigne ranks with fair documentary evidence to prove his title as the actual first practitioner in English of comedy in prose, satire in regular verse, short prose tales, translated tragedy and literary animadversion" (in which word the eminent scholar refers to a short technical account of the making of English verse, prefixed to the "Steele Glas").

And apart from his writing, to which he devoted specially the last years of his life, there would be much that he would have in common with young Ralegh. Indeed, his life resembles in little the subsequent career of Ralegh himself, and the device, "Tam Marti quam Mercurio," suited him as nicely as it suited Ralegh who afterwards, by adopting the device, made it famous. He was the son of a gentleman of Bedfordshire, Sir John Gascoigne, and after going to Cambridge and being a member of Grays Inn, he served in Holland fighting for the Dutch under William, Prince of Orange, and had many strange adventures. On his return to London he had some post at Court, the exact nature of which is not known, and he sat twice as Member of Parliament for Bedfordshire. What is of special interest is, that he was in close touch with the Earl of Leicester, and Lord Grey de Wilton; for in 1575, when the Queen made her famous visit to Kenilworth, it was Gascoigne who was commissioned to devise masks for her entertainment; and it is Lord Grey de Wilton to whom he dedicates the chief of his poems. Therefore it is extremely probable that young Ralegh owed to him, if not his actual introduction to Leicester, at any rate a great furtherance of Leicester's notice of Ralegh. It is surely more than coincidence that Gascoigne's chief patrons should have also been among Ralegh's principal helpers.

And Gascoigne's early death, at the age of forty, in 1577, would impress his influence upon his young friend, and that influence is discoverable in the directness and freedom from literary affectation of any kind, which is very noticeable in the work of both. And it is interesting to speculate whether, without Gascoigne, Ralegh would ever have possessed knowledge and insight enough to realize later Spenser's worth, which the scholar Harvey (no mean authority at that time) completely failed to see. Be that as it may, the friendship of Gascoigne and Ralegh anticipates pregnantly that friendship of his with Spenser which was of importance to the literature of the world.

But Ralegh was no paragon of a young man continually engaged in staid discourse with his elders. It is refreshing to have authority for a different and delightfully human glimpse of his life. The authority is Aubrey, and Aubrey loved gossip—and especially scandalous gossip—so fervidly, that his stories bear the hall-mark of truth, apart from the fact that they are too ridiculous to be worth even Aubrey's while to fabricate. This is the tale, which Aubrey is careful to mention (his solemnity in telling his gossip comes little short of genius), was recounted to him by Dr. John Gell. "In his youthful time was one Charles Chester, that often kept company in his acquaintance: he was a bold, impertinent fellow, and they could never be at quiet for him; a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drumme in a roome. So one time at a taverne Sir W. R. beates him and seales up his mouthe (i.e. his upper and neather beard) with hard wax." Probably Charles Chester took this summary Elizabethan hint, but Aubrey throws no light on the hint's effect.