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Milton's Ideal Day: Its Development as a Pastoral Theme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Sara Ruth Watson
Sara Ruth Watson*
Affiliation:
Fenn College
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Extract

Two of the dominant motives in pastoral literature are the “come-live-with-me” theme, which offers to the loved one as inducements gifts generally of a pastoral nature, and the ideal of the “golden age,” which is based upon a personal desire for a patterned idyllic life. The former has been carefully traced by R. S. Forsythe, but the latter has lain neglected in spite of the fact that two of the best known lyrics in the language, Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, utilize this theme. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that the description of the ideal day is a significant and deeply rooted theme which developed gradually during the whole course of the pastoral tradition. Milton's two days derive from this evolution rather than from a few scattered lyrics which immediately preceded his work, as is generally stated.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 1942, pp. 404 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1942

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References

Note 1 in page 404 R. S. Forsythe, “The Passionate Shepherd and English Poetry,” PMLA, xl (1925), 692–742. Professor Forsythe recognized the listing of pastoral pleasures as part of the inducements extended in the invitation-to-love poems, so that in this respect his article is closely related to the present paper. However, the fundamental poetic impulses behind these two pastoral themes are totally different: the delights or pleasures listed under the “come-live-with-me” theme are gifts offered to the beloved, while the description of life in a “golden age” constitutes a subjective expression of an ideal pattern of living.

Note 2 in page 404 For examples, see William V. Moody's preface to Milton's poems in the Students' Cambridge Edition, pp. 23–24; J. L. Lowes' “L'Allegro and The Affectionate Shepherd,” MLR, vl, 206–209; M. F. Padelford's “An Unnoted Source of L'Allegro” MLN, xxii (1907), 200.

Note 3 in page 405 Theocritus, trans, by Charles S. Calverley (London, 1896), p. 25.

Note 4 in page 405 Ibid., p. 143.

Note 5 in page 405 Greek Bucolic Poets, trans by J. M. Edmonds (Loeb Classical Libr., 1923), No. 3.

Note 6 in page 406 Catullus' Lyrics ed. by Elmer J. Merrill (New York, 1893), no. 31, 7–11; no. 46.

Note 7 in page 406 Tibullus' Elegies, bk. i, no. 1, in Roman Elegiac Poets, ed. by Jesse B. Carter (New York, 1900).

Note 8 in page 406 Ibid., i, no. i, 6–11.

Note 9 in page 406 Ibid., i, no. 5, 21–28. In elegy 1 of book ii, Tibullus listed the gifts of the country gods,—food, houses, plowing and carts, gardens, vineyards, bees, fields, poetry, music, dancing, drama, sacrifices, wool, spinning, weaving, love.

Note 10 in page 406 See Horace's Odes, ii, vi; ii, xv; iii, i; iii, xxix; iv, v, in Horace's Odes and Epodes, ed. by Paul Shorey (New York, 1924). Following Horace, it became fashionable in Renaissance pastoral poetry to list the pursuits of country and town life, pointing out the superiority of the former. For examples, see Phineas Fletcher's The Purple Island, canto xii beginning “Thrice, O Thrice happy Shepherd's life and state”; and no. 104 in England's Helicon entitled “The Heardmans Happie Life.”

Note 11 in page 407 Horace's Odes, iii, i.

Note 12 in page 407 Ibid., Bk. iii, no. xxix.

Note 13 in page 408 See also the Georgics, iii, 322–338, which contain a pastoral description of the shepherd's day in the pastures; and for two models of the “come-live-with-me” pastoral, see eclogue two where the invitiation is addressed to a lad and ecologue nine containing the famous song, “Huc ades, O Galathea.”

Note 14 in page 408 Ovid's Remediorum Amoris, 169–198. (Loeb Classical Libr., vol. xiv).

Note 15 in page 408 W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), p. 18. James H. Hanford found this to be true also of the history of the pastoral elegy. See “The Pastoral Elegy and Milton's Lycidas,” PMLA, xxv (1910), 426; and R. S. Forsythe reached the same conclusion in tracing the “come-live-with-me” motive (op. cit., 696).

Note 16 in page 409 Greg, op. cit., 34.

Note 17 in page 409 Antonio Geraldini, Ecologues, ed. by W. P. Mustard (Baltimore, 1924).

Note 18 in page 409 Lycidas, ll. 64–76 (Student's Cambridge Ed.).

Note 19 in page 409 James H. Hanford, op. cit., 438.

Note 20 in page 410 Their passages in praise of country life depend solely upon Horace's lines in praise of the “mean estate”: for example, see nos. 41, 42 and 52 in Padelford's Poems of Surrey (Seattle, 1928); satires 1 and 2 in Poems of Sir Thomas Wiat, ed. by A. K. Foxwell (London, 1913); and in Tottel's Miscellany, ed. by H. E. Rollins (Cambrige, 1928) nos. 170 by Grimaid, nos. 191, 194, 200, 295, by other Elizabethan poets. In all this early poetry there is very little pastoralism. Tottel's Miscellany contains two lyrics which give in some detail pastoral delights. Though not strictly in the pastoral vein, no. 15 by Surrey recounts his youthful pleasures at Windsor and is highly subjective; no. 278, which may have been written by Sir Thomas Sackville, paints in its opening lines a picture of pastoral life from dawn to dusk, see Padelford's “An Unnoted Source of L'Allegro,” op. cit.

Note 21 in page 410 Available in Arber's English Reprints, (London, 1871).

Note 22 in page 410 See E. A. Greenlaw's statement that “Milton well understood Spenser,” in “The Shepheardes Calendar,” PMLA, xix (1911), 435.

Note 23 in page 411 Colin's first speech in the November eclogue presents similar imagery.

Note 24 in page 412 The Faerie Queene, bk. vi, canto ix. This passage of Spenser's is imitated by Francis Sabie in Pan's Pipe, eclogue ii, which depicts pastoral sport and pastimes (“Pan's Pipe” by J. W. Bright and W. P. Mustard in Mod. Phil., vii, 4).

Note 25 in page 412 J. H. Hanford, Milton Handbook (New York, 1933), p. 149.

Note 26 in page 413 Drayton, Works, ed. by J. William Hebel (Oxford, 1931), i, Seventh. Eclogue.

Note 27 in page 413 Ibid., ii, 27–56.

Note 28 in page 413 Ibid., iii,172–220.

Note 29 in page 414 Ibid., iii, the “Sixth Nympall” of Muses Elizium.

Note 30 in page 414 Barnfield, Poems, (1594–1598) (Fortune Press Ed., 1939), pp. 5–6.

Note 31 in page 415 Ibid., The Shepheardes Content, pp. 29–34.

Note 32 in page 415 See England's Helicon, ed. by H. E. Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 1935).

Note 33 in page 415 J. L. Lowes, “L'Allegro and The Passionate Pilgrim,” MLR, vi, 206–209.

Note 34 in page 415 England's Helicon, no. 12, p. 27.

Note 35 in page 415 Ibid., no. 104, p. 139.

Note 36 in page 415 H. E. Cory, “Spenser, the School of the Fletchers, and Milton,” Mod. Phil., ii, no. 5 (June 17, 1912), pp. 352–353.

Note 37 in page 416 Poems of William Browne of Tavistock, ed. by Gordon Goodwin, Muses' Libr. (London, 1894), i, song 2, ll. 264–266.

Note 38 in page 416 Ibid., iii, iv, 171–205.

Note 39 in page 417 Ibid., see the “fifth Eclogue” of The Shepherd's Pipe.

Note 40 in page 417 See above, p. 407 for a discussion of this Horatian epode.

Note 41 in page 418 Poetry of George Wither (Bullen ed. 1902), ii, Eclogue five of Shepherd's Hunting, ll. 151–182.

Note 42 in page 418 See Poetical Works of William Basse (London, 1893), note on p. 99, where the editor Richard W. Bond claims that a description of Hymen in Basse's A Morning After Mourning is a likely source for l. 125 of L'Allegro.

Note 43 in page 418 Ibid., p. 72.

Note 44 in page 418 Poems of Phineas Fletcher, Grosart Ed. (1869), ii, 323–324. Another passage in praise of the fisherman's life may be found in Sicelides: A Piscatorie, iii, 51.

Note 45 in page 418 Ibid., iii, 213–215.

Note 46 in page 418 Ibid., “The Purple Island,” iv, canto i, stanzas 28–30, pp. 50–51.

Note 47 in page 419 Ibid., iv, canto xii, stanza 2 ff. Reprinted in E. K. Chambers' English Pastorals (New York, 1895), pp. 184–186.

Note 48 in page 419 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, from Romances and Prose Tracts of the Elizabethan Age (Bullen Ed. 1890), pp. 108–110.

Note 49 in page 420 Edward A. Tenney, Thomas Lodge (Oxford Univ. Press, 1935), pp. 101–103.