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We have mentioned incidently the "Ekatompatia, or Passionate Century of Love," by Thomas Watson. Watson first appeared as an author in 1581, with a translation into Latin of the "Antigone" of Sophocles. The "Passionate Century" (that is, Hundred) was published in 1582. Three years after, he executed a Latin elegiac poem, entitled "Amyntas." He continued the practice of Latin verse alongside of English: in 1590 he published an "Eglogue upon the Death of Sir Francis Walsingham" in Latin and English, adopting in this case the title of "Meliboeus." In 1593, in which year he was mentioned as if then dead,[1] his last work was published--a collection of sixty sonnets, entitled "The Tears of Fancy, or Love Disdained."
Neither the "Century of Love" nor the "Tears of Fancy" belongs to a high order of poetry. The "Century" was avowedly an exercise of skill: the love-passion, he tells us in the Preface, was "but supposed." With this the critic has no quarrel: so far Watson differs from many of his poetical brethren, only in the perhaps superfluous candour of the avowal. The misfortune is that the supposition, the imaginative passion, is weak. There is no constructive vitality in his lines; the words and images seem brought together by a process of mechanical accumulation. The "Tears of Fancy" are decidedly superior to the "Love-passions," but here also there is a fatal lack of spontaneity and freshness: the superiority has every appearance of being due to the author's study of Spenser.
The "Passionate Century" is worth reading as a repertory of commonplace lover's hyperboles. There never was so sweet a lady, never so fond nor so distraught a lover. Hand, foot, lip, eye, brow, and golden locks are all incomparable. The ages never have produced, and never will produce, such another; Apelles could not have painted her, Praxiteles could not have sculptured her, Virgil and Homer could not have expressed her, and Tully would not have ventured to repeat the number of her gifts. She is superior to all the mythological paramours of Jove. The various goddesses have contributed their best endowments, mental and physical, to make her perfect. Her voice excels Arion's harp, Philomela's song, Apollo's lute; yea--
The despair produced in the lover's heart by the disdain of such a paragon is in a corresponding ratio. Vesuvius is nothing to the fire that consumes his heart. The pains of hell would be a comparative relief. He suffers the combined tortures of Tantalus, Ixion, Tityus, and Sisyphus:--
These sonnets, with or without the following beginning of Watson's 22d Love-passion--
[1] See the introduction to Mr Arber's reprint.
[2] A writer in the "Quarterly Review," No. 267, ascribes the suggestion of this song to a sonnet by Jacopo da Lentino. The sonnet is not known to have been printed before 1661, but the writer supposes Shakespeare to have seen it in MS and considers it a proof that Shakespeare could read Italian; if not that he had been in Italy! The coincidence is certainly striking, but the birthplace of Love or Fancy in the eyes was a commooplace. I have remarked several English poems of the time quite capable of having given the suggestion.
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