There is hardly a line that is not delightful.
They were a wonderful family those Sidneys. Mary, for whom Philip wrote
his chief work, thence called "The Countess of Pembroke's _Arcadia,_" was
a woman of rare gifts. The chief poem known to be hers is called _Our
Saviour's Passion_. It is full of the faults of the age. Sir Philip's
sport with words is so graceful and ordered as to subserve the utterance
of the thought: his sister's fanciful convolutions appear to be there for
their own sake--certainly are there to the obscuration of the sense. The
difficulty of the poem arises in part, I believe, from corruption, but
chiefly from a certain fantastic way of dealing with thought as well as
word of which I shall have occasion to say more when we descend a little
further. It is, in the main, a lamentation over our Saviour's sufferings,
in which the countess is largely guilty of the very feminine fault of
seeking to convey the intensity of her emotions by forcing words,
accumulating forms, and exaggerating descriptions. This may indeed
convince as to the presence of feeling, but cannot communicate the
feeling itself. _The_ right word will at once generate a sympathy of
which all agonies of utterance will only render the willing mind more and
more incapable.
The poem is likewise very diffuse--again a common fault with women of
power; for indeed the faculty of compressing thought into crystalline
form is one of the rarest gifts of artistic genius.
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