Browne has another claim to immortality;
if it be true as is now thought that he was the author of the epitaph on
the Countess of Pembroke:
"Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Fair and learned and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
then he achieved the miracle of a quintessential statement of the spirit
of the English Renaissance. For the breath of it stirs in these slow
quiet moving lines, and its few and simple words implicate the soul of a
period.
By the end of the first quarter of the century the influence of Spenser
and the school which worked under it had died out. Its place was taken
by the twin schools of Jonson and Donne. Jonson's poetic method is
something like his dramatic; he formed himself as exactly as possible on
classical models. Horace had written satires and elegies, and epistles
and complimentary verses, and Jonson quite consciously and deliberately
followed where Horace led. He wrote elegies on the great, letters and
courtly compliments and love-lyrics to his friends, satires with an air
of general censure. But though he was classical, his style was never
latinized.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108