1. in_ernet_dli_2015_170259_2015_170259_A-History-Of-English-Poetry-Volumeiii

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

A

HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH

POETRY

BY

W.

J.

COURTHOPE,

C.B.

M.A.,

D

LITT

,

LL.D.

LATE

PROFESSOR

OF

POETRY

IN

THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

OXFORD

HON.

FELLOW

OF

NEW

COLLEGE,

OXFORD

VOL.

III

THE

INTELLECTUAL

CONFLICT

OF

THE

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY:

DECADENT

INFLUENCE

OF

THE

FEUDAL

MONARCH

GROWTH

OF

THE

NATIONAL

GENIUS

MACMILLAN

AND

CO.,

LIMITED

ST.

MARTIN'S

STREET,

LONDON

1911

First

Edition

1903

Reprinted

1911

PREFATORY NOTE

IN the first volume of this History I expressed the hope

that my work might be completed by the close of the

last century. I have observed without surprise that by

my failure to make good this anticipation I have ex-

posed myself to some, perhaps not unmerited, reproach.

But I venture to think I am not without excuse. Had

it indeed been my purpose to make this History a

mere record of biographical facts and isolated studies of

individual poets, I might have been able to perform

what I promised. But to accomplish the task that I

have proposed to myself—namely, to trace through our

poetry the growth of the national imagination, and to

estimate the place occupied by each poet in a continuous

movement of art — steady concentration of thought is

required; and here circumstances have been against me.

For to say nothing of my official duties, my election in

1895 to the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, which I could not

have foreseen when making my first calculations, turned

the thoughts of my leisure hours in a different direc-

tion, and it was not until the close of 1900 that I was

able to resume my interrupted work. If allowance be

made for this five years' interval, I trust it may be

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

found that, should I be spared to write the two volumes,

which will complete the history in the manner I designed,

my original anticipation as to the amount of time necessary

for the execution of the task will not have been un-

reasonably exceeded.

W. J. C.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

ENGLISH POETRY AFTER THE SPANISH ARMADA

1

CHAPTER II

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS : SAMUEL DANIEL

9

CHAPTER III

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS : MICHAEL DRAYTON; WILLIAM BROWNE

27

CHAPTER IV

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS : SIR JOHN DAVIES ; JOSEPH HALL ; JOHN MARSTON

54

CHAPTER V

THE TRANSLATORS UNDER ELIZABETH AND JAMES I.

74

CHAPTER VI

NATURE AND ORIGIN OF POETICAL 'WIT'

103

CHAPTER VII

SCHOOLS OF POETICAL 'WIT' UNDER ELIZABETH AND JAMES I. : SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL WIT

118

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAPTER VIII

Schools of Poetical "Wit" under Elizabeth and

James I . School of Metaphysical Wit

147

CHAPTER IX

Schools of Poetical "Wit" under Elizabeth and

James I : School of Court Wit

169

CHAPTER X

Schools of Poetical "Wit" in the Reign of

Charles I.

200

CHAPTER XI

Cavalier and Roundhead

285

CHAPTER XII

The Last Days of Poetical "Wit"

334

CHAPTER XIII

John Milton .

378

CHAPTER XIV

The Versification, Vocabulary, and Syntax of

Milton .

422

CHAPTER XV

The Restoration : The Poets of the Court

452

CHAPTER XVI

The Restoration : John Dryden and the Satirists

of the Country Party

482

ANALYSIS

OF

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I

INFLUENCE

OF

THE

CROWN

IN

POLITICS

AND

POETRY

DURING

ELIZABETH'S

REIGN

Perplexity

of

feeling

in

the

English

People

after

the

Reformation.

Ideas

of

National

Unity

centred

in

the

Queen.

Poetical

reflection

of

national

feeling

in

The

Faery

Quecn.

CHANGE

OF

NATIONAL

FEELING

AFTER

THE

SPANISH

ARMADA

Gradual

disappearance

of

the

Queen's

old

Ministers.

Declining

influence

of

the

Crown

in

Elizabeth's

last

years.

Growing

consciousness

of

power

in

the

Nation.

Growth

of

the

language

in

capacity

for

philosophical

expression.

IDEA

OF

NATIONAL

UNITY

Illustrated

by

theories

of

Government

:-

(1)

Hooker's

theory

of

Church

and

State.

(2)

Bacon's

theory

of

Government

by

Prerogative.

Impossibility

of

continuing

the

system

of

Constitutional

Absolutism

under

James

I.

Antagonism

between

the

life

of

the

Court

and

the

life

of

the

Nation.

Dissolution

of

the

elements

of

Mediæval

Poetry

combined

in

The

Faery

Queen.

Sectional

ideals

in

the

Court

and

the

Universities.

Sketch

of

the

different

lines

of

advance

in

English

Poetry

during

the

period

between

the

Spanish

Armada

and

the

Revolution

of

ix

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAPTER II

SUCCESSION TO SPENSER

Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again.

Criticism of the different Court poets.

Praise of Daniel.

SAMUEL DANIEL

His birth, education, history, and character.

Ideal of a patriotic Court and a refined language.

"Delia" and "Complaint of Fair Rosamond."

Geperal praise bestowed on them.

"The Civil Wars."

Contıary opinions : Drayton, Coleridge, Wordsworth.

Imitation of Lucan's Pharsalia.

Daniel's political ideal embodied in his Defonce of Ryme.

Defects of The Civil Wars as a poem.

"Panegyric Congratulatorie."

Praise of James I.

Praise of Absolutism as a remedy for Feudal Anarchy.

Appeal to the King to restore the standard of "plain living and high thinking."

"Musophilus."

Daniel's ideal a mixture of Catholicism and Humanism.

Dialogue between Philocosmus and Musophilus.

Musophilus' plea for the recognition of literature at Court.

Enthusiastic vision of the imperal growth of the English Language.

"Ballad of Ulysses and the Siren."

CHAPTER III

SUCCESSION TO SPENSER

Pastoralism of the Court.

Court patronage.

MICHAEL DRAYTON

His birth and poetical education under Sir H. Goodere.

"Harmony of the Church."

Poem confiscated by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

"Idea: The Shepherd's Garland."

"Idea's Mirror."

Idea, a name for Lucy, Countess of Bedford.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

Her patronage of Drayton.

She is praised in

"Mortimeriados,"

and in

"Endimion and Phœbe."

Drayton revises and recasts his poems in praise of Lady Bedford.

"The Barons' Wars."

A recast of Mortimeriados.

All references to Lady Bedford removed from Drayton's poems.

Causes of Drayton's quarrel with the Countess.

He transfers the praises of Idea to Anne Goodere.

He attempts by flattery to secure the favour of James I., but is unsuccessful.

He is patronised by Sir Walter Aston.

"Polyolbion"

Dedicated to Prince Henry.

Drayton complains in the Preface of his neglect at Court.

He is patronised by the Earl of Dorset, to whom he dedicates his later

poems.

His death and burial in Westminster Abbey.

Character of his Genius.

His receptivity, versatility, and learning.

His gifts spoilt by obsequiousness to the tastes of patrons.

His originality shown in

"England's Heroical Epistles,"

"Sonnets under the Title of Idea,"

"Ballad on Agincourt,"

"Nymphidia."

Pastoralism of the Country.

Its poetical descent.

WILLIAM BROWNE

His birth, education, history, and character.

A disciple of Drayton.

"Britannia's Pastorals."

"The Shepherd's Pipe."

Browne's love of his native county.

Adaptation of Arcadian imagery to Devonshire scenery.

His early maturity.

His Euphuism.

Probable influence on Herrick and Suckling.

CHAPTER IV

SUCCESSION TO SPENSER

Didactic tendency in Mediæval Poetry.

Allegory of Dante and Langland.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Spenser's Satirical Allegory : Mother Hubb'd's Title.

Modification of mediæval style by didactic writers of Latin verse : Vida Pontanus, Fracastoro.

SIR JOHN DAVIES

Birth, education, history, and character.

Imitator in English of the Latin verse-writers of Italy.

"Orchestra."

Elegance of its design and execution.

"Nosce Teipsum."

Subject-matter borrowed from Nemesius De Natura Hominis.

Design of the poem and specimens of its style.

Davies's use of the decasyllabic quatrain with alternate rhymes.

"Epigrams."

Imitation of Martial· general character and style.

Satiric epigram on Drayton.

JOSEPH HALL

Birth, education, history, and character.

"Virgidemiarum."

Claims to be the first English Satirist : Grounds of the claim examined

Milton's attack on Hall.

Hall's Satires of the nature of Epigrams.

Specimens of his Satires.

Causes of his failure to naturalise in English the manner of the Latin Satirists.

JOHN MARSTON

Birth, education, history, and character.

"Pigmalion."

Licentious character of the poem.

It is saturised by Hall.

Marston's change of front : pretends that Pigmalion was not written seriously.

"The Scourge of Villanie."

Marston's fear and hatred of Hall.

His Calvinism : his obscure and extravagant style.

Attempted imitation of Persius.

Specimens of his style.

Ben Jonson's estimate of him justified by the character of his poetry.

CHAPTER V

ENGLISH TRANSLATORS UNDER ELIZABETH AND JAMES I.

Enlargement of national ideas by translations of the Classics and modern European poets.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

SIR JOHN HARINGTON

Birth, education, histoiy, and charactei.

Translation of the “Orlando Furioso.”

Harington’s Preface.

Specimens of the translation compared with the original.

EDWARD FAIRFAX

Birth and history.

Translation of the “Gerusalemme Liberata.”

Comparison of the characteristics of Tasso and Fairfax.

Specimens of Godf’rey of Bulloigne compared with Gerusalemme Liberata.

Translation of the “SemaineS” of Du Bartas.

Character of Du Baitas and his poetry.

JOSHUA SYLVESTER

His birth, education, character, and history.

His love of the country.

His influence on Browne, Milton, and othei poets.

Characteristics of his style.

Specimen of his tianslation compared with the original.

GEORGE CHAPMAN

His birth, education, charactei, and histoiy.

His original poems and dramas.

Translation of Homer.

Chapman’s enthusiastic admination for Homer.

Specimens of his translation.

Character of his style : slovenliness of the last part of the translation.

GEORGE SANDYS

His birth, education, character, and history.

His adventurous travels in the East.

Specimen of his original poetry.

Translation of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”

Elegance and refinement of Sandys’ style.

Specimen of Sandys’ translation compared with Golding’s.

CHAPTER VI

NATURE AND ORIGIN OF POETICAL “WIT”

“Wit” as defined by Johnson.

Failure to trace its origin : views of Johnson, Garnett, Lanson, Settembrini.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

"Wit" traced by reference to the decay of the mediæval system of thought

in contact with the thought of the Renaissance.

(1) Paradox in "Wit."

Decay of Logic in the theology of the Schoolmen.

Effect of the study of Logic on early European poetry.

Analogy between the Logic of the early, as compared with the late,

Schoolmen, and the poetry of Dante, as compared with that of

Donne.

(2) Hyperbole in "Wit."

Germs of the hyperbole of Donne and Cowley traced in the poetry

of the Troubadours.

"Wit" in Petrarch and Serafino.

(3) Excess of Metaphor in "Wit."

The use of metaphor encouraged by the predominance of allegory

in the Middle Ages.

Specimen of metaphorical writing in the Paradiso.

Specimen of Gongora's metaphorical writing.

Marino's metaphor.

Effect on Mediæval Thought of the Classical Renaissance.

Jesuit system of education after the Council of Trent.

Illustration of the influence of the Jesuits on art in Roman Catholic

countries.

Tasso's correspondence with Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga as to the allegory

in the Gerusalemme Liberata.

Marino's pretended allegory in the Adone.

"Wit" in England.

Its varieties due to the national craving for novelty and curiosity.

Encouraged by the pedantic learning of James I.

CHAPTER VII

THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF WIT

Paradoxes naturally contained in the dogmas of Christianity.

Memorials of Godliness and Christianity.

Return of the English poets of the seventeenth century to the Christian

Latin poets.

Giles Fletcher's Preface to Christ's Death and Victory.

Chidiock Tichborne's poem written on the eve of his execution.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL

Birth, education, history, and character.

Antithetical and paradoxical character of his style.

The Burning Babe.

Specimens of concetti in his poetry.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

JOHN DAVIES OF HEREFORD

Birth, education, history, and character.

A disciple of Sir John Davies and of Joshua Sylvester.

Specimens of his poetry.

THE FLETCHERS

Calvinism and Humanism at Cambridge.

Cartwright, Grindal, Spenser.

Giles Fletcher the elder : his life at Cambridge as referred to by Phineas.

Fletcher in his Piscatory Eclogues.

His family history, his political fortunes, and his poetiy.

PHINEAS FLETCHER

Education, history, and character.

GILES FLETCHER THE YOUNGER

Education, history, and character.

Common characteristics of the two brothers : opposite views as to their poetical merits.

Occupy a position midway between Spenser and Milton : Phineas admiration for Virgil and Spenser.

"Christ's Death and Victory."

Characteristics of Giles Fletcher's poetical style.

Specimen of his poetry.

"The Purple Island."

Comparison between the styles of Spenser and Phineas Fletcher.

Specimens of Phineas' poetry.

Giles Fletcher's faulty use of impersonation.

Nosce Teipsum and The Purple Island.

Phineas Fletcher's "witty" allegory.

Giles Fletcher's diction : his Latin neologism.

Phineas Fletcher's love of verbal antithesis.

CHAPTER VIII

METAPHYSICAL SCHOOL OF WIT

Pyrrhonism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : Lawlessness of fancy.

JOHN DONNE

His birth, education, history, and character.

Changes in his life and opinions.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

"Satires," "Songs," Elegies," "Metempsychosis, or Progress of the Soul."

Founded on complete scepticism.

Specimens of the verse in Metempsychosis.

Sceptical treatment of the medieval law of Love.

Specimens of Donne's love-poetry.

Degradation of the chivalrous principles of the Court d'Amour.

"The Anatomy of the World"

Occasion of the poem.

Violence of the conception : Donne's explanation of his meaning.

"Verse Letters."

Comparatively subdued style.

"Divine Poems."

Metamorphosis of Donne's amorous into his religious manner

The characteristics of Donne's "Wit," Abstraction and Metaphorical Imagery.

The Pimrose Hill.

Effect on Donne's imagination of the new philosophy.

Paradoxical treatment of the passion of Love.

Harmony of Donne's simpler modes of expression.

Harshness and obscurity of his metaphysical style

Estimate of his place in English Poetry.

CHAPTER IX

SCHOOL OF COURT WIT

The romantic style of Euphuism as originated by Lyly.

Transition under James I. from romantic to classical Euphuism.

THOMAS CAMPION

Birth, history, and character.

His contempt for rhyme expressed in Observations on the Art of English Poesy.

"Books of Airs" (1601, 1613, 1617) : "The Lords' Masque."

Campion makes no attempt to practise his critical precepts.

Specimens of his poetical style : mixture of the old and new Euphuism.

SIR HENRY WOTTON

Birth, education, history, and character.

Verses sent to Izaak Walton from his death-bed : traces of the older Euphuism.

Specimen of Euphuistic poetry written in Wotton's youth.

"On his Mistress the Queen of Bohemia" : "The Happy Life."

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

Contrast of the old and new Euphuism.

Imperfect execution of The Happy Life.

"On a Bank as I sat A-Fishing: A Description of Spring."

Classical finish.

BEN JONSON

His learning.

His sympathy with the Italian critics of the Renaissance.

Imitation of classical models.

"Satirical Epigrams."

Not superior to the epigrams of Harington and Davies.

"Complimentary Poems."

Adaptations of Virgil, Martial, and Cicero in epigrams on William Rowe,

Salathiel Pavy, and Sir Henry Saville.

Address to the Countess of Bedford: its excellence.

Address to Penshurst : its charm of many good-breeding.

"Love Poems."

Imitation of the Greek epigrammatists : adaptation of the style to the

Provençal love-code.

"Drink to me only with thine eyes" : beauty of Jonson's adaptation of

Philostratus.

Jonson's style inspired rather by the spirit than the form of classical poetry

Examples of imperfect workmanship.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND

His birth, education, history, and character.

Continues the English tradition of James I. of Scotland.

"Poems, Amorous, Funeral, etc."

His polished and harmonious style.

Imitated by Milton and Pope.

Specimens of his poetry.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT

His birth, education, history, and character.

His didactic genius.

Predecessor of Dryden in his use of the heroic couplet.

His complimentary style inferior to Drummond's.

His poetical criticism, Concerning the True Form of English Poetry.

"Sacred Poems."

Specimens of his poetical style.

CHAPTER X

SCHOOLS OF POETICAL "WIT" UNDER CHARLES I.

General character of the poetry in Charles I.'s reign.

A reflection of the social disintegration of the time.

VOL. III

b

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL WIT : FRANCIS QUARLES

His birth, education, history, and character.

Carries on the manner of theological wit proper to James I.'s reign.

The exclusively religious character of his poems.

"Emblems."

The last product of the allegorical system of the Middle Ages.

Specimens of his Emblems.

His excessive use of metaphor.

GEORGE HERBERT

His birth, education, history, and character.

Monastic tendency in his poems.

"The Temple."

Mixture of worldly experience and monastic feeling.

Herbert's introspection.

His didactic style inferior to that of Sir John Davies.

His power of abstract thought.

Adapts the "metaphysical" style of Donne to religious meditation

Specimens of his poetry.

Beauties and defects of his verse.

RICHARD CRASHAW

His birth, education, history, and character.

Cowley's elegy on him : its merits examined.

Crashaw's emotional religious temperament and artistic organisation.

"Epigrammata Sacra."

Crashaw's imitative genius.

Adaptation of Martial's style to Christian purposes.

"Steps to the Temple."

Pope's criticism on Crashaw : how far just.

Richness and variety of Crashaw's versification illustrated.

His want of thought and of constructive power.

Illustrated from his translation of Marino and The Weeper.

His materialistic fancy.

HENRY VAUGHAN

His birth, education, history, and character.

Change in his character to be inferred from his poems.

"Olor Iscanus" : "Silex Scintillans."

Secular spirit of Olor Iscanus.

Vaughan converted by George Herbert's religious poetry.

His imitations of Herbert in Silex Scintillans.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

Vaughan's peculiar characteristics : his influence on Wordsworth.

Specimens of his poetry.

His beauties and defects.

SCHOOL OF COURT WIT

Decline of chivalrous traditions in the Court of Charles I.

THOMAS CAREW

His birth, education, history, and character.

Clarendon's mention of him.

His occasional indecency.

His effeminate manner.

Imitation of Ben Jonson.

Laborious polish and Alexandrian prettiness.

Specimens of his poetry : its beauties and defects.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING

His birth, education, history, and character.

Hallam's estimate of his verse examined.

Suckling's affectation of "ease" in writing.

His imitation of Donne.

Specimens of his verse : its beauties and defects.

INFLUENCE OF THE RENAISSANCE ON THE COURT OF CHARLES I.

Cultivation of painting, music, and the classics.

ROBERT HERRICK

His birth, education, history, and character.

Influence of the Renaissance on Herrick's imagination.

"Hesperides."

Herrick's semi-pagan feeling : imitations of Anacreon and Horace.

His insensibility to the state of public affairs.

His adaptation of the rustic spirit in Roman poetry to English country life.

Specimens of his country poems.

"Noble Numbers."

Materialistic feeling in Herrick's religious poetry.

Specimens of his religious verse.

His materialism not to be taken quite seriously.

His artistic instinct.

Euphuistic use of words and images.

His Fairy Poems.

Specimens of their beauties.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

TRANSITION FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW STANDARD OF COURT "WIT"

Old "Wit" defined as discordia concors new "Wit" as "correctness" of expression.

WILLIAM HABINGTON

His birth, education, character, and history.

"CASTARA."

Attempt to oppose the Provençal tradition to the licentiousness of modern love-poetry.

Habington's ideal in Castara inconsistent with the laws of the Courts of love-poetry.

His imitations of Propertius, Carew, Donne, and Drummond.

His expansion of Hadrian's Animula, vagula, blandula.

Estimate of his poetical merits.

EDMUND WALLER

His birth, education, history, and character.

His claim to have reformed the English heroic couplet examined.

Extent of his obligations to Fairfax.

Rightly recognised as the founder of the familiar style in complimentary poetry.

Specimens of his complimentary style.

His greatness of mind not equal to his artistic capacity.

SIR JOHN DENHAM

His birth, education, history, and character.

His chief poetical qualities strength and judgment, as opposed to Waller's smoothness.

His didactic genius.

"COOPER'S HILL."

Artistic arrangement of materials in Cooper's Hill.

Specimens of Denham's style.

Great reputation of Cooper's Hill.

CHAPTER XI

CAVALIER AND ROUNDHEAD

Oppositions of principle in the Civil War.

The political spirit of the time reflected in its poetry.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE

His birth and education.

His opposition to Absolutism and Presbyterianism.

His surviving poems.

RICHARD LOVELACE

His birth, education, history, and character.

General character of his poetry.

Imitation of Donne and Herrick.

His two poems, To Lucasta and To Althea.

LUCIUS CARY, VISCOUNT FALKLAND

His birth and education.

Clarendon's account of his character.

Suckling's reference to him in his Session of the Poets.

A disciple of Ben Jonson.

His pastoral elegy on Lady Hamilton.

His epitaph on the Countess of Huntingdon.

JOHN CLEVELAND

His birth, education, history, and character.

His letter from prison to Cromwell.

His hatred of the Scots and the Presbyterians expressed in his satires.

His humorous poems on his experiences in the Civil War.

His union of metaphysical conceit and personal satire.

Specimens of his satirical style : his merits and defects.

SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT

His birth, education, history, and character.

"Gondibert."

Written during Davenant's exile in France: continued during his imprisonment by the Parliament.

His letter to Hobbes, explaining his design : a reflection of his personal character.

Praises of Gondibert by Cowley and Waller : Denham's satire.

Davenant's merits estimated. His song, "The lark now leaves his watery nest."

ANDREW MARVELL

His birth, education, history, and character.

His early sympathy with the Royalists.

"Rural Poems."

xxii

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Written while living in the family of Fairfax at Nun Appleton.

Union of Donne's metaphysical style, Vaughan's feeling for Nature, and Herrick's feeling for Art.

The Garden; Damon the Mower; The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Fawn.

Exquisiteness in the selection of words and images.

"State Poems."

Marvell's Horatian Ode: Royalist sympathy mixed with admiration for Cromwell as a de facto ruler.

His First Anniversary of the Government under his Highness the Lord Protector.

His attack on the "Fifth-Monarchy-Men."

Merits and defects of his panegyrical poems: compared with Waller.

GEORGE WITHER

His birth and education.

Wither's poems often autobiographical.

"Abuses Stript and Whipt."

His general attack upon all interests and classes causes him to be imprisoned in the Marshalsea.

"The Shepherd's Hunting"; "Fidelia"; "Fair Virtue."

His period of pastoral composition.

"Wither's Motto."

He renews his satirical attacks: satirised by Ben Jonson.

"Britain's Remembrancer."

His growing Puritanism.

"Emblems."

Flattering dedication to the King and Queen.

Wither helps the King against the Scots with a troop of horse.

"Britain's Second Remembrancer."

Wither joins the Parliamentary party.

His ill-fortune during the war.

His fortunes after the Restoration.

Specimens of his pastoral and satirical poetry.

Estimate of his merits and defects.

THOMAS MAY

His birth, education, history, and character.

Clarendon's reference to his political ingratitude.

Marvell's satire upon him.

Translation of Lucan's "Pharsalia."

Panegyric of Ben Jonson: how far deserved.

Specimens of the translation compared with the original.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII

LAST DAYS OF POETICAL “WIT”

Similarities and differences between Cowley and Butler.

ABRAHAM COWLEY

His birth, education, history, and character.

Pope’s and Johnson’s reasoning on the causes of Cowley’s transient popu-

larity examined.

The Pyrrhonism of society in the seventeenth century.

Cowley’s qualifications to please such a society.

His early maturity and imitative faculty.

“Pyramus and Thisbe.”

His imitation of Ovid.

“The Mistress.”

Imitation of Petrarch, Donne, and Waller.

Specimens of his “Provençal” style.

“Anacreontics.”

The Grasshopper : superiority to Lovelace’s poem on the subject

“Pindarics.”

His explanation of his imitative method.

Specimens of his style in his Pindaric Odes : his pessimism : his particu-

larity of detail.

“Davideis.”

Imitation of Homer, Virgil, Marino.

Cowley’s great learning : his over-particularity in description.

“Discourses by way of Essays in Verse and Prose.”

Pope’s praise of Cowley’s Essays.

Johnson disparages their sentiment.

The justice of Johnson’s criticism examined.

Specimens of Cowley’s verse in his Essays.

SAMUEL BUTLER

His birth, education, history, and character.

“Hudibras.”

Criticism of Dryden and Johnson examined.

Difference in the respective designs of Don Quixote and Hudibras.

The hero of Hudibras : Sir Samuel Luke.

The subordinate characters.

The treatment of the action in Hudibras not entirely successful.

Dramatic merits of the speeches in Hudibras : Johnson’s criticism.

The burlesque style of the poem : its original : James Smith : specimen

of his verse.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Description of Hudibras falling on the bear, and on the stocks.

Specimen of the dialogue in Hudibras.

Butler's metaphysical fancy.

Specimens of his poetical imagery.

Johnson's reasoning on the poetical foundation of Hudibras.

Butler's attack not on the religious side of Puritanism, but on the ecclesiastical tyranny of the Presbyterians.

Hudibras not a satire on chivalry, but on the anomaly of applying the rules of chivalry to the age of Charles II.

Question as to the sincerity of Butler's satire.

His scholastic learning.

His ridicule of modern scientific theories.

"The Elephant in the Moon."

Hudibras a reflection of the Pyrrhonism of the time.

Seventeenth-century Pyrrhonism illustrated by the Preface to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

General estimate of the place of Cowley and Butler in English Poetry.

CHAPTER XIII

JOHN MILTON

False idea of the character of Milton's genius raised by Wordsworth's sonnet.

Milton's birth and education.

School and college friendship with Charles Diodati.

Calvinism and Humanism at Cambridge.

"Poems written during Residence at Cambridge."

Hymn on the Nativity: At a Vacation Exercise, etc. : Latin Epistles in Verse.

Influence of Milton's habit of Latin verse composition on his early poetry.

Milton resolves not to take orders.

His residence at Horton.

"Poems written during Residence at Horton."

L'Allegro; Il Penseroso.

Inspired by The Anatomy of Melancholy.

Frequency of classical allusion.

Plan of the two poems.

Arcades.

Occasion of the poem.

Suggestions given by The Faithful Shepherdess and Ben Jonson's Masques.

Comus.

Occasion of the Masque.

Henry Lawes.

Comus suggested by The Faithful Shepherdess.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

History of The Faithful Shepherdess on the stage.

Milton transforms the conception from a tragi-comedy to a masque.

Other constituent elements in Comus: obligations to the Odysssey.

Structural excellence of Comus.

Sir H. Wotton's opinion of the poem.

Lycidas.

Previous attempts to reproduce the Doric style of the Greek pastoral in

English : Spenser's eclogue on the death of Dido.

Milton's borrowing of details from classical and from English poets.

Grandeur of stucture in Lycidas.

Milton travels in Italy.

He hears on his way home of the death of Charles Diodati.

"Epitaphium Damonis."

He forms in his mind the intention to write a great English poem.

First conception of Paradise Lost

He postpones the execution of his intention owing to the disturbed state

of politics.

"Poems written during the Civil War and Commonwealth."

Autobiographical in character.

Sonnet on behalf of his house, viii.

Sonnets to personal friends, x. xiv. xx. xxi. xxii.

Sonnets connected with his first marriage, xi. xii.

Rupture with the Presbyterians. Sonnets xi. xii.; Sonnet "On the New

Forcers of Conscience."

Sonnets, political, xv. xvi. xvii. xviii

Sonnets relating to his blindness and his second marriage, xix. xxiii.

Milton after the Restoration in danger of his life.

He resumes his interrupted work in poetry.

"Paradise Lost."

Transformation of the original conception of Paradise Lost.

Question as to the originality of Milton's sacred poems.

William Lauder.

The Rev. George Edmundson.

Milton's appropriations of thought in L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus,

Lycidas.

His essential originality in these poems.

Milton's predecessors in Paradise Lost.

Hugo Grotius : Adamus Exul.

Giovanni Battista Andreini : Adamo.

Joost van den Vondel : Lucifer, Adam in Ballingschap, etc.

Vondel's additions to the invention of Grotius.

His defective perception of the necessary poetical form.

Milton's obligations to Grotius, Andreini, Vondel.

His originality shown in his epic treatment of the subject.

"Paradise Regained."

Vondel's Joannes Boetgezant.

Essential difference in Vondel's and Milton's designs.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

"Samson Agonistes."

Vondel's Samson of de Heilige wraak.

Essential differences between the two poems.

Milton's genius at once receptive and creative.

Union in his earlier poems of the forces of the Renaissance and the

Reformation.

Effects of the Civil War on his imagination.

Union in Paradise Lost of Catholicism, Puritanism, Humanism, and

Romance.

The character of Satan.

The astronomical system of Paradise Lost.

Milton's supreme judgment shown in his handling of pagan literature.

His last days.

CHAPTER XIV

MILTON'S VERSIFICATION, ETC.

Milton's attack on rhyme in the Prefatory Note to Paradise Loſt.

The justice of his criticism examined.

Rival theories of English prosody.

Dr. Guest's system.

Mr. Mayor's system.

Principles of each system examined.

Different rhythmical movements in the Saxon and Latin elements of the

English language.

Mr. Bridges' theory of Milton's verse considered.

Effects of the cæsura in English verse.

Gascoigne's theory as to the cæsura and its incidence.

Puttenham's theory.

Pope's theory.

Gradual development of English blank verse from the rhyming heroic

metre.

Surrey's blank verse.

Marlowe's blank verse.

Milton's use of the cæsura.

His system of alliteration.

MILTON'S VOCABULARY

Common European movement for the refinement of the various vulgar

tongues.

The Pleiad in France.

The Spanish movement beginning with Guevara.

Spenser's poetical vocabulary.

New coinage of words by Giles and Phineas Fletcher.

Milton influenced by Spenser and the Fletchers.

Archaic words and Latinisms in Milton's vocabulary.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

MILTON'S SYNTAX

Effects of rhyme on the syntax of Spenser and the Fletche1s.

Frequency of inversion.

Approach in Milton's syntax to the structure of prose.

Influence of the Latin orators on English prose style.

Lyly, Burton, Sir Thomas Browne.

Specimens of Burton's and Browne's prose styles.

Specimens of Milton's alliterative formation of sentences and of his Latin constructions.

General survey of the character of Milton's poetical art.

CHAPTER XV

THE RESTORATION

Doubt as to the influence likely to be exercised by the Crown.

Character of Charles II.

Reaction from the Puritan régime.

Dryden's description of art and literature in the reign of Charles II

Charles's want of religion.

His dislike of the traditions of chivalry.

Imitation of the Court of Louis XIV.

Caricature of French manners in England : Etherege's Man of Mode.

POETS OF THE COURT

Immoral character of " Wit " in the Court of Charles II.

Influence of Hobbes.

Characteristics of the Court reflected in the poetry of the courtiers.

GEORGE VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM

His birth, education, history, and character.

Imitation of Cowley in elegy on Fairfax.

Lampoon on Arlington.

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER

His birth, education, history, and character.

Excellence of his style and critical judgment.

Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of Horace.

Imputation to him of physical cowardice : Scroop's epigram.

Adoption of Hobbes's principles.

His Satire on Man, Address to Nothing.

Graceful lyric style.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

SIR CHARLES SEDLEY

His birth, education, history, and character.

"The mannerly obscene."

Character of his poetry.

His verses, "Love still has something of the sea."

CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET

His birth, education, history, and character.

"The best good man with the worst-natured Muse": specimens of his satire.

His graceful lyrical gift.

Specimen of his lyric poetry.

JOHN SHEFFIELD, EARL OF MULGRAVE, AFTERWARDS DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

His birth, education, history, and character

Author of the Essay on Satire.

Specimens of the Essay.

Essay on Poetry.

Specimens of Mulgrave's didactic criticism.

Anticipations of Pope.

WENTWORTH DILLON, EARL OF ROSCOMMON

His birth, education, history, and character.

His moral superiority to his companions.

Ode on Solitude.

Essay on Translated Verse.

Influence on Pope.

Specimens of Roscommon's poetry.

THE COUNTRY PARTY

Attitude of expectation and of opposition to the Court Party.

CHAPTER XVI

JOHN DRYDEN AND THE SATIRISTS OF THE COUNTRY PARTY

Dryden's birth: education at Cambridge.

"Heroic Stanzas on Cromwell."

The genius of the Protectorate not favourable to the metaphysical style.

Rise of the panegyrical manner after the Restoration.

"Panegyrical Poems."

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

Astrea Redux ; Lines on the Coronation ; Address to the Lord Chancellor Hyde ; To the Dutchess of York ; Annus Mirabilis.

Mixture of the styles of Cowley and Waller.

Dryden gains his livelihood by writing for the Stage.

Is made Poet Laureate.

Causes of the decline of the panegyrical style.

Naval victories of the Dutch.

Banishment of Clarendon.

Formation of the Cabal Ministry.

Dissolution of the Cabal Ministry and ascendancy of Danby.

Subordination of England to France : Roman Catholic revival.

Growth of the Country Party.

ANDREW MARVELL'S "SATIRES"

Parodies on the panegyrical style : Instructions to a Painter.

Attack on Clarendon : Clarendon's House-warming.

Attacks on the Cabal Ministry : Further Instructions to a Painter : Nos-tradamus' Prophecy.

Attack on Danby's policy : Britannia and Raleigh : Dialogue between Two Horses.

Specimens of Marvell's satires.

The Popish Plot.

Marvell's satirical style no longer suited to the exalted temper of the people.

JOHN OLDHAM

His birth and education.

Usher at Croydon : his satirical description of an usher's life.

Style of his early poems.

His poems in MS. attract the attention of Rochester and Dorset.

"SATIRES ON THE JESUITS."

Specimens of these satires : their merits and defects.

Oldham comes to London : fails to obtain any reward from the Whigs.

"SATIRE DISSUADING FROM POETRY."

Oldham's allusion to the neglect of Butler.

"SATIRE IN IMITATION OF THE THIRD SATIRE OF JUVENAL."

Oldham's satire on London Society.

He is received into the house of the Earl of Kingston.

His death.

Dryden's elegy on Oldham.

His growing contempt for the Stage.

He enters into the political conflict.

"ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL."

Real object and occasion of the poem.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Decline of the Whig Party in popular favour : reaction in favour of the

Crown.

Dryden's predecessors in the Scriptural treatment of his subject.

Moderation of his political satire.

Propriety of the Scripture parallels.

Satirical descriptions of the Jebusites, the Levites, the Jews.

Personal satire : Lord Howard of Escrick ; Slingsby Bethel.

"The Medal."

Shaftesbuiy's acquittal by the Grand Jury of Middlesex.

Whig replies to Dryden's satire : Shadwell's intervention.

Dryden's retaliation.

"Mac-Flecknoe."

Design of the satire : its merits.

Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel."

Characters of Doeg and Og contributed by Dryden.

"Religio Laici."

Political origin of the poem.

Specimen of its argument and style.

Ungrateful treatment of Dryden by Charles II. : arrears of his salary.

Death of the King.

"Threnodia Augustalis."

Dryden's elegy on Charles II. : panegyric on James II.

Increase in his salary.

He joins the Roman Church.

"The Hind and the Panther."

Reply of Prior and Montague.

Design of Dryden's poem : its merits and defects.

"Britannia Rediviva."

Revival of the panegyrical style.

Hyperbolical adulation.

Specimen of "Wit."

Unfortunate prophecy : "The little thunderer."

Dryden's fidelity to the cause of James II.

Loss of his official position as Laureate.

He has recourse to the Stage : ill success of his later plays.

Private patronage : he is aided by the Earl of Dorset.

"Eleanora."

Return to the metaphysical style.

Specimen of the style of the poem.

Lord Abingdon's remuneration of his work.

Dryden's poetical aid sought by the musicians.

"Alexander's Feast."

St. John's story as to its composition examined.

Remuneration by the Stewards of St. Cecilia's Feast.

Poet and publisher.

Jacob Tonson's "Miscellanies."

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS

Dryden's translations from Theocritus, Virgil, Horace.

His translations from the Iliad and Ovid's Metamorphoses.

"Translation of Virgil's Works."

Amount received by Dryden.

Design of translating Homer.

Translations from the Iliad and Metamorphoses.

Dryden's principles of translation.

Specimens of his translation.

"Fables."

Attacks on Dryden by Blackmore and Collier.

Dryden's death.

Comparison between the genius of Milton and that of Dryden.

ERRATA IN VOLUMES I. II.

I take the opportunity of correcting a few obvious mistakes that I have myself noticed in the pieceding volumes. I shall be much obliged to any reader who will point out to me errors of fact in any of the published volumes, that I may call attention to them when the complete list of errata is drawn up at the conclusion of the work.

Vol. I.

Page 73. In the 6th line of the text from the foot of the page for "Dante" read "Sannazzaro." I have already called attention to this mistake in vol. ii. p. 218, footnote.

Page 163, line 14, for "Of the feudal principle of inheritance . he looks with profound contempt," read "On the feudal principle of inheritance, etc."

Page 388, line 13. Æneas Sylvius is said wrongly to have written eclogues of court life. His Miscellaneæ Curialium, in which Barclay found materials for some of his Eclogues, is an epistle in Latin prose.

Page 432, line 4, delete the words "and Heracleitus."

Page 443, lines 7 and 16, for "Roman de Cliget" read "Roman de Cligès."

Page 444, line 9, for "démonuement" read "reversal of fortune."

Vol. II.

Page 296, line 12, for "Ciceronianus" read "Ciceroniansm."

Page 301. In the second paragraph it is said, erroneously as I now think, that the name Amyntas alludes to Thomas Watson, who died in 1592. I understood the lines—

Both did he other which could pipe maintaine,

And eke could pipe himself with passing skill—

to refer to Watson's Latin poem Amyntas, which helped to maintain the pipe of Watson's fiend and translator, Abraham Fraunce. But this interpretation does not explain the allusion to "Amaryllis," who is also mentioned, later in the poem, as belonging to the same family as Spenser himself. Amyntas is, I think, Ferdinando, 5th Earl of Derby, who was himself a poet, as well as a patron of poets, and who died in 1594 (the year before the publication of Colin Clout's Come Home Again), leaving a widow, Alice, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Spencer of Althorp.

Page 315. In the last sentence of the first paragraph, Donne is said to have become a member of the Roman Catholic Church. This is an error. Donne was born of a Roman Catholic family.

Page 317. In the last line of the second stanza of the Report sung in a Dream read—

Will ye close your eyes with winking?

xxxii

CHAPTER I

ENGLISH POETRY AFTER THE SPANISH ARMADA

The defeat of the Spanish Armada is a turning-point alike in the history of the English Constitution and of

English Poetry. In the last volume I noticed the air of ambiguity and hesitation that characterises the work of

our poets during the earlier portion of Elizabeth's reign. This uncertainty of design is the result not merely of the

difficulties felt by all the writers of an infant literature in handling an unformed language : it is the reflection of an

intellectual perplexity in the mind of the people. By the revolt of Henry VIII. from the authority of Rome, the

kingdom was torn from that Catholic European system in which the separate functions of the Spiritual and the

Temporal Power had been universally recognised. Though the English king was duly proclaimed head of the national

Church, his supremacy was denied, both by those of his subjects who adhered to the old order, and by the ex-

treme section of the Protestant Reformers. The great body of the nation were in doubt how the new system

was to be brought into harmony with their customary beliefs. Scarcely any attempt was yet made to express

national ideas in an imaginative form. Except in the Moralities, there was no sign in literature that the poets of

the time were aware of the nature of the forces then revolutionising English life. Wyatt and Surrey contented

themselves with an effort to refine poetical diction by adapting the Provençal tradition, common as this was to the

VOL. III

B

whole of feudal Europe, to the actual manners of the English

Court. Their immediate successors made little advance on

their practice, beyond extending the sphere of translation,

and trying a few experiments in metrical composition.

By degrees the ideas of the people began to form

themselves round the person of the Queen. Elizabeth

was the head both of the national Church and of the

State ; in both capacities she was well fitted to represent

to her subjects the nature of the great social change

which had been effected. She combined in her character

the qualities of a man and a woman. As a ruler she

mixed with a manly patriotism a feminine genius for

intrigue, and by her skilful diplomacy contrived to give

assistance to communities defending their civil and re-

ligious liberties against arbitrary power ; at the same

time she utterly disavowed their actions as rebels against

lawful sovereignty. By her wise policy and thrift the

nation advanced so rapidly in wealth and strength that,

by the middle of her reign, it had come to regard its

monarch as the concrete image of its own greatness.

This popular perception of Elizabeth's many-sided

character is reflected in Spenser's Faery Quecn. Strictly

viewed, that poem, as it has come down to us, is a

fragment of an incoherent design. Nevertheless, in the

central figure of Gloriana, who, by Spenser's own avowal,

is meant to typify Elizabeth, the poet has expressed in

his exquisite metrical dialect a vast idea of royal and

national grandeur. Herself invisible in the fairyland of

her Court, Gloriana breathes forth the emanations of her

own nature through the allegorical personages of the poem.

Her valour is embodied in the female warrior, Britomart,

her chastity in the sylvan huntress, Belphœbe. Her knights

are despatched to do battle, sometimes, like the Red Cross

champion, against the deadly errors of the Papacy, some-

times, like Artegal, against the cruel injustice of the

Spanish Geryoneo. Her royal lineage is poetically traced,

partly in the Book of Antiquity shown to Sir Guyon by

Eumnestes, partly in Merlin's prophecy to Britomart.

The antiquities and local features of her country, originally

celebrated in the chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, afterwards popularised by the researches of Leland and Camden, are idealised, among a multitude of other poetical episodes, in the allegorical marriage of the Thames and the Medway.

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the glorified image of the Queen began to fade. The idea of Protestant Chivalry, hitherto expressed in the life of her Court, lost its verisimilitude. Sidney, who had given it form and reality, was no more, and Raleigh had lately been in disgrace. One by one the great masters of Machiavellian statecraft, the Queen's advisers in the most perplexed period of her policy, Burleigh, Nicholas Bacon, Walsingham, Randolph, had passed away from the scene of their labours. Factions divided the Court ; various rivals struggled for the chief place in the Queen's regard, and her last years were embittered by the ingratitude of the reigning favourite. The policy of conformity, which, as head of the Church, she had successfully enforced while the independence of England was still threatened by the Papal and Spanish powers, had procured her the hatred of both the extreme religious parties ; and though the safety of her country was assured, her person had become the object of all the conspiracies of the Jesuits, and her government of all the calumnies of Martin Mar-prelate.

Her declining age, though still glorious, was discontented and unhappy.

But if the personal image of the monarch, hitherto the sole representative of the greatness of the nation, was thus obscured, the nation's consciousness of its destiny was growing always more vivid. By her victory over Spain in 1588, England had not only secured her own independence, but had become the recognised head of the reformed religion in Europe. Her merchants and traders saw a boundless prospect of wealth opening out to them in the East Indies and in the Spanish main. The minds of many of Elizabeth's subjects, absorbed during the previous generation with the dread of foreign invasion, were now turned to the perils which threatened their domestic

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

liberties. They had saved themselves from Pope and

Spaniard by their own energies: they were now inclined

to look on the Crown not so much as their chief weapon

of defence against aliens, as an obstacle to the expansion

of their native powers. Under these circumstances a

body of public opinion began to be organised and to find

expression in Parliament, and the changed political spirit

of the times is vividly illustrated by the opposition offered

in the last Parliament of Elizabeth's reign to the Govern-

ment policy respecting monopolies. Moreover, however

sagaciously the Queen might adapt herself to what she

perceived to be the wishes of her people, she was growing

old, and none could tell what would be the character of

her successor. The day for trifling rhetoric about the

excellences of Gloriana or Cynthia had gone by, and a

generation of settled government had taught men some-

thing of the causes of political phenomena. The language

also had acquired a vocabulary which fitted it for philo-

sophic reasoning; and the result of all these concurrent

tendencies is seen after the Armada in the appearance of

such profound treatises as Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity

and Bacon's speculations as to the nature of the English

Constitution.

The great problem that presented itself for solution in

the seventeenth century was the development, out of con-

flicting powers, of the principle of National Unity. In each

of the earlier volumes of this History I have attempted to

illustrate contemporary ideas of European Unity by examin-

ing their operation in concrete cases, namely, in the matters

dealt with by the Diet of Coblenz in 1338, and by the

Diet of Augsburg in 1518.1 Now that the question has

been removed into the heart of the nation, I shall pursue

the same method by reference to the idea of Unity in the

English Church and State formed by the two great philo-

sophic minds I have just mentioned. It will then be

easier to begin at our new starting-point with a conception

both of the unifying and of the sectional forces which were

working within the spheres of English politics and English

1 Vol. i. pp. 154, 155; vol. ii. pp. 2, 3.

poetry to reform men's imaginative ideas of Nature and

Society.

Hooker defines with admirable precision the effect of

the union of Temporal and Spiritual Powers in the holder

of the Crown, after the separation of England from the

Papacy and from the dual government of the Christian

Republic :-

Wherefore to end this point I conclude : First, that under

dominions of infidels the Church of Christ and her Common-

wealth were two societies independent: Secondly, that, in those

Commonwealths where the Bishop of Rome beareth sway, one

society is both the Church and the Commonwealth; but the

Bishop of Rome doth divide the body into two diverse bodies,

and doth not suffer the Church to depend upon the power of any

civil prince or potentate : Thirdly, that, within the realm of

England the case is neither as in the one nor as in the other

of the former two ; but that from the state of pagans we differ,

in that with us one society is both the Church and the Common-

wealth, which with them it was not; as also from the state of

those nations which subject themselves to the Bishop of Rome,

in that our Church hath dependency upon the chief in our

Commonwealth, which it hath not under him. In a word, our

State is according to the pattern of God's own ancient elect

people, which people was not part of them the Commonwealth

and part of them the Church of God, but the self-same people,

whole and entire, were both under one chief Governor, on whose

supreme authority they all depend.1

Equally well defined is Bacon's idea of the English

Constitution, which is thus described by Mr. Gardiner :-

There can be no doubt whatever that his ideal form of

government was one in which the Sovereign was assisted by

councillors and other ministers selected from among the wisest

men of the kingdom, and in which he was responsible to no one

for his actions within the wide and not very clearly defined

limits of his political prerogative. The House of Commons, on

the other hand, was called upon to express the wishes of the

people, and to enlighten the Government upon the general

feeling which prevailed in the country. Its assent would

be required to any laws which might be requisite, and to any

extraordinary taxation which might be called for in time of war

or of any other emergency. . . . The Sovereign, enlightened by

1 Ecclesiastical Polity, viii. 1, [7].

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

the wisdom of his Council, and by the expressed opinions of the

representatives of the people, would lose no time in embodying

in action all that was really valuable in the suggestions which

were made to him. He would meet with little or no opposition,

because he would possess the confidence of the nation, which

would reverence in their King their guide in all noble progress,

and the image of their better selves.1

What virtue there might be in Bacon's theory of

Constitutional Absolutism evidently depended upon the

wisdom of the reigning Sovereign. When James suc-

ceeded Elizabeth the theory itself collapsed at the founda-

tion. It was impossible for the people to respect, or for

the poet to idealise, "the most learned fool in Christendom."

Blinded by confidence in his knowledge of maxims and

formulæ, James never knew how to deal with facts, and

under him and his successor all the conflicting elements

in the kingdom were allowed to drift on without direction,

till Bacon's idea of government by prerogative was trans-

lated into the practice of Laud and Strafford, and the

counter-idea of parliamentary control generated the republic

of the Fifth Monarchy men.

Not less sectional were the influences that prevailed

in poetry among the successors of Spenser. Spenser had

contrived to group around the allegory of the Faery

Queen all the learning of the Middle Ages, as well as all

the imagery of chivalrous romance and classical mytho-

logy. But when the vision of Gloriana passed away, the

apparent unity of Spenser's creation was seen to be, like the

Macedonian Empire after the death of Alexander, without

cohesion ; and, like the generals who succeeded Alexander,

the poets who followed Spenser settled themselves in the

different provinces of his kingdom, and developed them

without reference to any principle of central unity. One

took possession of his allegorical forms, another of his

pastoral imagery, a third of his antiquarian mythology,

a fourth of his Platonism ; each adapted his style to suit

some taste or tendency in the society to which he

belonged, whether at the Court or the University.

1 Gardiner's History of England (1883), vol. ii. p. 192.

The Court, as it might be regarded in two different aspects, contained within itself two contrary currents of

taste. Considered from the point of view of Castiglione's Cortegiano, it was the comitatus of the Sovereign ; and as

the latter was the representative and leader of his people, so was it expected that the society immediately surround-

ing him should furnish the mirror of manners, and fix the standard of language suitable to the wants of the age.

But from another point of view the Court was a select caste, separated from the body of the nation.* It was

the ark which had preserved all that remained of the institution of chivalry, and since the days of the Cours

d'Amour it had been the aim of the courtier, par excellence, to cultivate mysteries of sentiment, and to invent fashions

of language, which might distinguish him and his fellows from the unsophisticated public.

A similar conflict of tendencies was visible in the Universities. Oxford and Cambridge, welcoming at the

Renaissance the teaching of Erasmus and his fellow-workers, had continued to promote the civic spirit en-

couraged by the literature of the ancient world. But they had not disturbed the foundations which had

been laid in the mediæval system of Encyclopædic Science : hence, while they had within them one party

always ready to modify tradition by accommodating it to the new lights and discoveries of the time, they had

another which dwelt with more affection on the past, and disciplined their minds by a faithful adherence to the

scholastic logic. Moreover, of their scholars some were led by the spirit of action to come to Court, hoping to

advance themselves by their talents and learning, but others were more and more drawn by the genius loci into

a course of contemplation, and, by pursuing this exclu-sively, helped to separate the ideal of the University

sharply from that of the Court.

Accordingly what we shall have to trace in the follow-ing chapters through the hundred years after the Spanish

Armada is, on the one hand, a certain instinctive con-tinuous movement of thought and language in the nation

under the leadership of the Court, showing itself partly

in the simplification of ideas, and partly in the harmonious

mode of expressing them. This line of poetical descent

may be said to run through Daniel, Hall, Sir John Davies,

Drummond of Hawthornden, Sir John Beaumont, Denham,

and Waller, till it reaches its highest point of perfection

in the poems of Dryden. On the other hand, we shall

have to observe by the way classes of poetry, brought

into being not so much by the onward stream of life

in the nation itself, as by sectional and disintegrating

forces at work within the ancient fabric of society, which

stimulated the genius of different poets to novelties of

fancy and diction. Such are the Court pastorals of

Drayton, and his Polyolbion; the country pastorals of

Browne; the various schools of courtly or scholastic

"Wit," represented, among others, by Phincas and Giles

Fletcher, Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, and Cowley.

And yet again, and apart from the influences either of

the immediate present or the decaying past, we shall

have to watch the genius of Milton drawing inspira-

tion from the deepest sources of Catholicism, Chivalry,

the Renaissance, and the Reformation, and blending

mixed materials in the colossal fabric of Paradise Lost.

The equally wide movement of creative imagination, re-

flected contemporaneously in the English drama—a move-

ment in which the active energy of the people is at least

as conspicuous as the controlling taste of the Court—

I shall reserve for treatment in the next volume.

CHAPTER II

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS

The Ideal of Court Patriotism : Samuel Daniel

IN 1595 Spenser published Colin Clout's Come Home Again, a poem of great interest as reflecting the state of

taste at Court in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign. The poet describes, in his artificial vein of pastoral

allegory, a visit which, in the company of the Shepherd of the Sea (Raleigh), he had paid to the Court of

Cynthia (Elizabeth); how graciously he had been received there; who were the favourite poets of that sacred circle,

and what was the prevailing principle of their art. Colin Clout lavishes the riches of his rustic imagination in

glorifying the qualities of his Sovereign :—

Her deeds were like great clusters of ripe grapes,

Which load the branches of the fruitful vine,

Offering to fall into each mouth that gapes,

And fill the same with store of timely wine.

Her lookes were like beams of the morning sun,

Forth looking through the windows of the east,

When first the fleecy cattle have begun

Upon the pearlèd grass to make their feast.

Her thoughts were like the fume of frankincense,

Which from a golden censer forth doth rise,

And throwing forth sweet odours, mounts fro thence

In rolling globes up to the vaulted skies.

There she beholds with high aspiring thought

The cradle of her own creation,

Amongst the seats of angels heavenly wrought,

Much like an angel in her form and fashion.

Fulsome as this flattery appears in its application to the

9

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

old and weary Queen, the verses are not without an ironic pathos when read in the light of history. Time in them might seem to have stood still since the days when Elizabeth, in the prime of her youth and popularity, used to receive the acclamations of her people amid the masques and splendours of some royal progress, or like Queen Amalasunta, would amaze the ambassadors of foreign powers and the vice-chancellors of English universities, by dealing with the business of the moment in fluent speeches of unpremeditated Latin.1 Still more melancholy is the suggestion of the poem, when we recall the personal experiences of its author. It is written in the pastoral style that Spenser had brought into fashion some fifteen or sixteen years before, when he was preparing himself for his flight into Fairyland. Backed by the praise and influence of Sidney, "the president of nobleness and chivalry," he had then every reason to hope for a career of favour and advancement at Court. In the years that intervened he was moved to write with mordant sincerity:-

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried

What hell it is in suing long to bide ;

and the great poet of Gloriana had been left "to eat his heart in bitter discontent."

Time, too, had brought with it changes of taste and literary prestige. Of the circle of poets who had hailed the appearance of The Shepherd's Calendar, the eldest, Thomas Churchyard ("Old Palæmon"), author of the smoothly written and greatly admired "Complaint of Jane Shore" in The Mirror for Magistrates, had not ceased to compose verses, but it was generally recognised that his vein was exhausted. Thomas Watson, reviver of Petrarchism, was dead, and so was Abraham France, who had made the death of Watson the occasion for one of those experiments in English hexameters which for a while attracted attention by their novelty. Though Gabriel Harvey, the founder of the Cambridge school of quantitative versification, and Spenser's college tutor and

1 See vol. ii. p. 196.

friend, was still alive, his reputation had been greatly

lowered by the ridicule of Thomas Nash, one of the

leaders of the romantic clique of poetical Euphuism which

was then directing the course of fashionable taste. The

writers of this school, inspired by the affectations of Lyly

and the romantic fancy of Greene, had produced such

poems as Glaucus and Scilla and Venus and Adonis, the

aim of which was to treat the subject of Love in a spirit

by no means congenial to the chivalrous taste of

Spenser :-

For with lewd speeches and licentious deeds

His mighty mysteries they do prophane,

And use his ydle name to other needs,

But as a compliment for courting vaine.

So him they do not serve as they profess,

But make him serve to them for sordid uses.

But among these younger poets Colin Clout's eye rests

upon one whom he can unreservedly commend :-

A new shepherd late up sprong,

The which doth all before him far surpasse,

Appearing well in that well-tunèd song,

Which late he sung unto a scornful lasse.

And so highly does he appreciate the merit of the new-

comer that he distinguishes him by name, and encourages

him to fresh and loftier exertions :-

Then rouse thy feathers quickly, Daniell,

And to what course thou please thy self advance :

But most, me seemes, thy accent will excell

In tragick plaints and passionate mischance.

It would be satisfactory to recover full details of the

personal character and history of one whom Spenser

seems thus to point out as his worthy successor ; but the

most striking feature in the career of the younger poet is

its course of, on the whole, uninterrupted good fortune, in

contrast to the disappointed ambitions of the author of

The Faery Queen.

Samuel Daniel was born in 1562 near Taunton.

He was the son of a music-master, and was educated at

12

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Magdalen Hall, Oxford, which, however, he left without taking a degree. Like other poets of the time, he travelled in Italy, and made himself acquainted with the state of taste and criticism in that country. His biographers are of course anxious to prove that the “scornful lass” were inspired by real passion, but I have little doubt that—as in the case of Michael Drayton, of which I shall speak hereafter—they were merely the vehicles of courtly compliment to a literary and influential patroness. Delia is indeed represented as no less “cruel” than beautiful; but as her cruelty afforded her poet an opportunity of giving a new and graceful turn to the reproaches which Horace and Wyatt had formerly directed against their inflexible mistresses, it is probable that he was not suffering deeply when he wrote with fine skill :-

When men shall find thy flower, thy glory pass,

And thou with careful brow, sitting alone,

Receiv’d hast thy message from thy glass,

That tells the truth, and says that all is gone ;

Fresh shalt thou see in me the wounds thou mad'st,

Though spent thy flame, in me the heart remaining ;

I that have loved thee thus before thou fad'st,

My faith shall wax when thou art in thy waning.

The world shall find this miracle in me,

That fire can burn when all the matter's spent :

Then what my faith hath been thyself shall see,

And that thou wast unkind thou may'st repent :

Thou may'st repent that thou hast scorned my tears,

When winter snows upon thy sable hairs.

When winter snows upon thy sable hairs,

And frost of age hath nipt thy beauties near,

When dark shall seem the day that never cleaus,

And all lies withered that was held so dear ;

Then take this picture which I here present thee,

Limm'd with a pensill not all unworthy ;

Here see the gifts that God and Nature lent thee,

Here read thyself what I have suffered for thee :

This may remain the lasting monument,

Which happily posterity shall cherish ;

These colours with thy fading are not spent ;

These may remain when thou and I shall perish.

If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby ;

They will remain, and so thou can'st not die.

Delia's seat seems from the sonnets to have been on

the Avon : hence, arguing from the analogy of Drayton's

Idea, the “sweet nymph of Ankor,” whom I shall show

beyond question to have been Lucy, Countess of Bedford,

it may not unreasonably be conjectured that Daniel's

divinity was Mary, Countess of Pembroke, wife of the

owner of Wilton, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and among

the most influential patronesses of literature in the Court

of Elizabeth. One of the sonnets is addressed to the

poet's mistress on the eve of his departure from England ;

and perhaps the Countess of Pembroke may have pro-

vided him with the means of travel, that he might acquire

in Italy the accomplishments befitting the intended tutor

of her son, William Herbert. To that position she at

any rate appointed him on his return home—a fact which

raises the further question whether (on the assumption

that the Mr. W. H., the “ only begetter ” of Shakespeare's

sonnets, was William Herbert) Daniel may not have been

the rival poet alluded to by Shakespeare in several of his

sonnets. Everything connected with the personal history

of those poems must remain in the region of pure con-

jecture ; but we may indulge our fancy on the subject by

remembering that Daniel continued to enjoy the favour

of William Herbert, after the latter had succeeded to the

earldom ; that he dedicated to the Earl, about the time

when Shakespeare was writing the sonnets, his Defence of

Ryme ; and that he was a student of judicial astrology.

We know also that Shakespeare admired Delia, and de-

veloped the vein of thought in the lines I have already

cited through a whole series of his own sonnets.

Encouraged by the praise of Spenser and the favour

of Lady Pembroke, Daniel now entered boldly on an

ambitious poetical career. In 1594 he had published his

rhyming tragedy, Cleopatra, a play composed on Seneca's

model, and in the following year produced the first four

books of his epic, The Civil Wars between the two Houses

of York and Lancaster. The fifth book also appeared in

1595, but the publication of the sixth was delayed till

1601. Meanwhile he constantly advanced in favour with

the leaders of Court society, for we find him between 1595

and 1599 acting as tutor to Anne, daughter of Margaret,

Countess of Cumberland, addressing a didactic Horatian

epistle to the Chancellor, Egerton, and writing poetical

eulogies on Essex and Mountjoy. In 1602 he published

Musophilus and A Defence of Ryme. When James I.

succeeded to the throne of England in 1603, Daniel

welcomed him in A Panegyric Congratulatorie ; and either

this poem or his recognised superiority procured him in

that year the post of licenser of plays to be acted before

the Queen.

Anne of Denmark delighted in masques; Daniel's

compositions therefore now naturally took a dramatic

turn. Between 1604 and 1615 he wrote for the

stage A Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, The Queen's

Arcadia, Tethys' Festival, and Hymen's Triumph, all of

these being masques or comedies. He also produced a

play, Philotas, written after his favourite classical manner,

but as this was believed to have an allegorical reference

to the conspiracy of Essex in the late reign, it brought on

him some odium. He was successful indeed in showing

that the tragedy had been conceived, and much of it written,

before 1600, but the injustice of the accusation weighed

heavily on a spirit which, though naturally retiring and

sensitive, was yet self-respecting. In an Epistle to the

Prince (Henry), prefixed to Philotas in 1605, he says :-

And therefore, since I have outlived the date

Of former grace, acceptance, and delight,

I would my lines, late-born beyond the fate

Of her spent line, had never come to light.

So had I not been taxed for wishing well,

Nor now mistaken by the censuring stage,

Nor in my fame and reputation fell,

Which I esteem more than what all the age

Or th' earth can give. But years have done this wrong,

To make me write too much and live too long.

He did not publish anything more till 1609, when he

added to his Civil War a seventh and eighth book, and

afterwards turned his attention to a History of England

in prose, which he brought out in 1612. The greater part of his life was spent in London, but his declining

years at a farm which he had purchased at Beckington in Somersetshire, where he died in 1619.

Daniel's merit as a poet has been variously estimated. With the exception of Ben Jonson, who described him

as "an honest man, but no poet," and who twice went out of his way to misquote his verse for the purpose of

parody,1 all of his contemporaries spoke with respect of his abilities. General commendation was bestowed upon

his earlier poems Delia and Rosamond. Drayton, who frequently imitated him, addressing him, says of the

former :—

And thou, the sweet Musæus of these times,

Pardon my rugged and unfilèd rhymes,

Whose scarce invention is too mean and base,

When Delia's glorious Muse doth come in place.

Nash, the enemy of Gabriel Harvey, who generally wrote with a failing pen, speaks with enthusiastic admiration of

Rosamond.2 But the critics were not agreed about his Civil Wars. Guilpin, a poetaster of the time, summarises

their diverse opinions :—

Daniel (as some hold) might mount if he list,

But others say that he's a Lucanist.3

Others, again, thought that, though the language of The Civil Wars was pure and lofty, the conception was not

poetical, a criticism vivaciously expressed by Drayton, who, in his Epistle to H. Reynolds, Of Poets and Poesy, after enumerating the chief writers of the time, puts

Amongst these Samuel Daniel, whom if I

May speak of, but to censure do deny,

Only have heard some wise men him rehearse

To be too much historian in verse.

His rhymes were smooth, his metre well did close,

But yet his manner better fitted prose.

1 Every Man in his Humour, Act v. Sc. 1, and The Staple of News, Act iii. Sc. 1.

2 Nash, Piers Penilesse.

3 Guilpin, Skialetheia.

16

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

The echo of both opinions has been prolonged into modern times. Wordsworth, who had evidently read Daniel with sympathy and admiration, does him the honour to quote two of his lines in The Excursion ; 1 while Coleridge, though he speaks of his style with the highest respect, and compares it with that of Wordsworth, repeats the judgment of Drayton. 2

There is much illumination in the analogy suggested by Coleridge between the poetry of Wordsworth and that of Daniel, and the principle of composition adopted by both these poets is the secret alike of the virtues and the defe ts of their poetical styles. Both were idealists and philosophers in the first place, poets only in the second. Both were so strongly moved by the ardour of their thought, that they cared comparatively little to discriminate as to the best vehicle for its expression. And as each was accustomed, by the inclination of his genius, to write in verse, they frequently used this form of diction, even when the subject-matter of their conceptions was more akin to prose. But, on the other hand, as they were both always moved by a genuine enthusiasm, the weight and dignity of their thought seldom fails to penetrate through their prosaic modes of expression, and leaves in the imagination of the reader a sense of strength and character. The prime impulse in Wordsworth's poetry is the spirit of liberty characteristic of the first age of the French Revolution. Daniel's leading idea was the individual energy which was the most worthy feature of the pioneers of Humanism in Italy. This is strongly expressed in the two lines cited by Wordsworth in The Excursion :--

Unless himself above himself he can

Erect himself, how poor a thing is man !

His poetry is inspired by two constant ideals, which become more clearly defined after his Italian travels. In the midst of the decaying institutions of external chivalry,

1 Excursion, book iv. 330, 331.

2 Table Talk, p. 311 ; Biographia Literaria, ii. 82.

Daniel cherishes the idea, suggested to him by his studies

of Castiglione, of a Court concentrating in itself all that

is noble in the customs of the past, and furnishing to

the nation a model of the refinement required by the

present. And again, in the midst of the affectations of

Court Euphuism, he kept steadily before his eyes the

image of the true courtier, as he is presented in the pages

of Il Cortegiano, the modern gentleman, complete in arts

and letters as well as in arms, and assiduous in cultivating

a pure and correct use of his native language.

But as Daniel is a poet of less energetic conception

than Wordsworth, so is there also less of individuality in

his style of metrical expression. In his early poems, at

least, he is content to employ the forms consecrated by

long usage, and to such an extent that his contemporaries

reproached him for his timidity. Thus the author of The

Return from Parnassus, while giving him high praise,

says :—

Only let him more sparingly make use

Of others' wit, and use his own the more,

That well may scorn base imitation.1

Except for the grace and literary skill of passages

resembling those which I have quoted, there is nothing

individually characteristic in Delia; though the lifelong

aim of the poet is already clearly indicated in the oblique

criticism—not invidiously intended—on the archaic re-

vivals recommended by the practice of Spenser —

Let others sing of knights and paladines

In aged accents and untimely words;

Paint shadows in imaginary lines,

Which well the reach of their high wits records.2

The Complaint of Fair Rosamond, which follows the

general lines of composition in The Mirror for Magistrates,

and particularly the tragedy of Shore's Wife by Church-

yard, is remarkable for little beyond the polished purity

of its English.

In the superficial form of The Civil Wars the hand of

1 Return from Parnassus, Act i. Sc. 2. 2 Sonnet lv.

VOL. III

C

18

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

the imitator was no less visible to Daniel's contemporaries. Mr. Grosart, the poet's biographer, seems indeed to be perplexed by the criticism of Guilpin—" others say that he's a Lucanist "—the meaning of which, however, is clear enough, in view of the fact that imitations of Pharsalia may be noticed throughout The Civil Wars.1

Daniel only took hints from Lucan: the spirit in which he constructed his own epic was quite different from the air of deliberate and sustained rhetoric which animates the work of the clever Roman poet. He writes as at once a patriot and a moralist, with the purpose of pointing out in a worthy manner the successive steps by which the kingdom of England grew to its state of greatness and glory out of the disorders of past times. How closely the idea of poetry in his mind was associated with the idea of politics is shown by his eulogy of the English Constitution, in his animated Defence of Ryme:-

Let us go no further, but look upon the wonderful architecture of the State of England, and see whether they were deformed times that could give it such a form : where there is no one the least pillar of majesty but was set with the most profound judgment, and borne with the just conveniency of Prince and People; no Court of Justice but laid by the rule and square of Nature, and the best of the best Commonwealths that ever were in the world: so strong and substantial as it hath stood against all the storms of factions, both of belief and ambition, which so powerfully beat upon it, and all the tempestuous alterations of humorous times whatsoever: being continually in all ages furnished with spirits fit to maintain the majesty of her own greatness, and to match in an equal concurrency all other kingdoms round about with whom it had to encounter.2

It was Daniel's ambition to make his native language worthy of the country whose Constitution he so much admired and loved :-

1 Grosart's edition of Daniel's Works, Memorial-Introduction, p. xi. Compare, for example, Civil Wars, book i. stanzas 2, 3, with Pharsalia, lib. i. 8-66, and Civil Wars, book i. stanzas 109-118, with Pharsalia, lib. i. 523-583, and lib. ii. 16-66.

2 Daniel, Defence of Ryme (Works, Grosart's edition, vol. iv. p. 53).

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS. SAMUEL DANIEL

19

O that the Ocean did not bound our stile

Within these strict and narrow limits so,

But that the melody of our sweet isle

Might now be heard to Tyber, Arne, and Po,

That they might know how far Thames doth outgo

The music of declin'd Italy,

And, listening to our songs another while,

Might learn of thee their notes to purify.1

The thought that all his work is done with an eve to his

noble ideal constantly sustains him :-

But (Madam) this doth animate my mind,

That yet I shall be read among the rest,

And though I do not to perfection grow,

Yet something shall I be, though not the best.2

And in another place:-

I know I shall be read among the rest,

So long as men speak English, and so long

As verse and virtue shall be in request,

Or grace to honest industry belong.3

Nevertheless, in spite of the lofty patriotism which inspires the poem, it must be admitted that Drayton's criticism on The Civil Wars was justified. Daniel was "too much historian in verse." Carried away by his patriotic enthusiasm, he did not reflect that his subject lacked the universal and world-wide interest of the Pharsalia, and that though the wars of Cæsar and Pompey might justify the use of the epic, the example could hardly warrant an English imitator of Lucan in adapting the style to events of such purely local significance as the political changes of Warwick, the King-maker, or the battles of Towton and St. Albans. In making himself the poetical chronicler of his country, Daniel did not do full justice to his genius : in such a subject "his manner better fitted prose."

His poetical ideals are exhibited to far more advan-

1 Dedication of Tragedy of Cleopatra, to Countess of Pembroke. Grosart's edition, vol. iii. p. 26.

2 Ibid. vol. iii. p. 27.

3 Introductory Poem, "To the Reader." Grosart's edition, vol. i. p. 14.

tage in his Horatian Epistles and his didactick poems;

and among these two are deserving of particular notice,

namely, the admirable Panegyric Congratulatorie, addressed

to James I. on his accession, and Musophilus, in which he

throws into the form of a poetical dialogue Castiglione's

views as to the importance of literature in refining the

manners of a Court. No poem of the time illustrates

more vividly than the former of these compositions the

personal influence of an English monarch on the fortunes

of the people. The general tendency of things in all

countries was, as I have said, towards absolutism, and in

the eyes of Daniel, James was an absolute monarch :-

So that the weight of all seems to rely

Wholly upon thine own discretion;

Thy judgment now must only rectify

This frame of power thy glory stands upon :

From thee must come that thy posterity

May joy this peace, and hold this union.

For whilst all work for their own benefit,

Thy only work must keep us all upright.

Daniel, like Bacon and almost all other political reasoners

of that age, had come to the conclusion that the unsettle-

ment of the times, caused by the anarchy of a dying

feudalism, could only be righted by the firm central

government of the Crown. He recalls, with skilful

enthusiasm, the descent of James from Margaret Tudor,

and dwells on the principle from which the reigning

family derived its popular support, namely, the repression

of feudalism by Henry VII. :-

And as he laid the model of this frame,

By which was built so strong a work of State,

As all the powers of changes in the same,

All that excess of a disordinate

And lustful prince, and all that after came,

Nor child, nor stranger, nor yet woman's fate,

Could once disjoint the couplets whereby

It held together in just symmetry, etc.

Glancing for a moment at James's successful struggle

with the feudal nobility of Scotland, Daniel concluded

that the King would not attempt to alter the tradition of

his immediate predecessors.1 He assumed, unfortunately

without warrant, that with his absolutism James would

combine that knowledge of the character of the English

people, which all the Tudor sovereigns possessed instinct-

ively, but which no experience could impart to the

Stuarts. Indeed, the poet himself shows that his own

observation does not penetrate much below the surface

of things. His mind is entirely occupied with the un-

settlement of the times and the decay of manners ; he

says nothing of the difficulties arising out of the rupture

of religious tradition, or of the despotic suppression by the

Crown of the ancient liberties of the country. What he

hopes to see is the Court leading the way back from the

excesses of foreign affectation to the plain living and high

thinking of the good old English times :-

And bring us back unto ourselves again,

Unto our ancient native modesty,

From out these foreign sins we entertain,

These loathsome surfeits, ugly gluttony ;

From this unmanly and this idle vein

Of wanton and superfluous bravery ;

The wreck of gentry, spoil of nobleness,

And square us by thy temperate soberness.

Daniel was in fact one of the now dwindling school of

English Humanists, a convinced follower of More and

Erasmus, in sympathy at once with Catholic tradition and

with the rationalism of the Renaissance, and desirous of

seeing the spirit of ancient art and literature accommo-

dated to the genius of the English language. He em-

bodied his ideal very nobly in Musophilus, a dialogue in

verse between a courtier and a man of letters. The

former (Philocosmus), depreciating the value of Humanism,

points to the neglect of letters, and seeks to persuade his

friend to content himself with making his way at Court :-

And therefore leave the left and out-worn course

Of unregarded ways, and labour how

1 Thou wilt not alter the foundation

Thy ancestors have laid of this estate.

Panegyric Congratulatorie.

22

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

To fit the times with what is most in force.

Be new with men's affections that are new :

Strive not to run an idle counter-course

Out from the scent of humours men allow :

For not discreetly to compose our parts

Unto the form of men (which we must be),

Is to put off ourselves and make our arts

Rebels to nature and society :

Whereby we come to bury our desarts

In the obscure grave of singularity.

Virtue, Musophilus replies, is its own reward. Fashion

does not endure. Knowledge alone is worth living for;

and, with the true enthusiasm of a child of the Renais-

sance, he points out how men may extend their own

spiritual life in the life of literature :-

O blessèd Letters, that combine in one

All ages past, and make one live with all !

By you we do confer with who are gone,

And the dead-living into council call ;

By you th' unborn shall have communion

Of what we feel and what doth us befall.

Though Philocosmus still insists that action without culture

is the more reasonable aim, he is moved by the eloquence

of Musophilus to make an important admission :-

Yet do I not dislike that in some wise

Be sung the great heroical desarts

Of brave renownèd spirits, whose exercise

Of worthy deeds may call up others' hearts,

And serve a model for posterities,

To fashion them fit for like glorious parts ;

But so that all our spirits may tend thereto

To make it not our grace to say but do.

In his reply Musophilus contends that art and letters are

in themselves a species of action, though their value can

only be measured by the “ audience fit but few ” :-

And for my part, if only one allow

The care my labouring spirits take in this,

He is to me a theatre large enow,

And his applause only sufficient is :

All my respect is bent but to his brow ;

1 The usual reading. I suspect Daniel, who was careful in his rhymes

wrote : “ Be now with men's affections that are now ” : i.e. accommodate your-

self to the needs of the present time.

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: SAMUEL DANIEL

23

That is my all; and all I am is his.

And if some worthy spirits be pleasèd too,

It shall more comfort breed, but not more will.

But what if none? It cannot yet undo

The love I bear unto this holy skill.

This is the thing that I was born to do,

This is my scene, this part must I fulfil.

Truly imperial is the following prophetic vision of the

spread of the English language :-

Power above powers, O heavenly Eloquence,

That with the strong rein of commanding words

Dost manage, guide, and master th' eminence

Of men's affections, more than all their swords !

Shall we not offer to thy excellence

The richest treasure that our wit affords ?

Thou, that canst do much more with one poor pen

Than all the powers of princes can effect :

And draw, divert, dispose, and fashion men

Better than force or rigour can direct.

Should we this instrument of glory then

As th' unmaterial fruit of shades neglect ?

Or should we careless come behind the rest

In power of words that go before in worth,

Whereas our accents, equal to the best,

Is able greater wonders to bring forth,

When all that ever hotter spirits exprest

Comes bettered by the patience of the North.

And who in times knows whither we may vent

The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores

This gain of our best glory shall be sent,

T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores ?

What worlds in the yet unformèd Occident

May come refined with accents that are ours ?

Or who can tell for what great work in hand

The greatness of our style is now ordained,

What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command,

What thoughts let out, what humours keep restrained,

What mischief it may powerfully withstand,

And what fair ends may thereby be attained ?

In conclusion, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of

citing at length a poem which illustrates, perhaps more

completely than any other, the character of one of our

worthiest poets, the noble ballad of Ulysses and the Siren ;

and I do so the more readily because it is only to be found

in one or two of our popular anthologies, and is therefore

unknown to many Englishmen who should have it by

heart.

SIREN

Come, worthy Greek, Ulysses, come,

Possess these shores with me ;

The winds and seas are troublesome,

And here we may be free.

Here may we sit and view their toil

That travail in the deep,

Enjoy the day in mirth the while,

And spend the night in sleep.

ULYSSES

Fair nymph, if fame or honour were

To be attained with ease,

Then would I come and rest me there,

And leave such toils as these ;

But here it dwells, and here must I

With danger seek it forth ;

To spend the time luxuriously

Becomes not men of worth.

SIREN

Ulysses, O be not deceived

With that unreal name :

This honour is a thing conceiv'd,

And rests on others' fame :

Begotten only to molest

Our peace, and to beguile

(The best thing of our life) our rest,

And give us up to toil !

ULYSSES

Delicious nymph, suppose there were

No honour, or report,

Yet manliness would scorn to wear

The time in idle sport :

For toil doth give a bitter touch

To make us feel our joy ;

And ease finds tediousness, as much

As labour yields annoy.

21 SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: SAMUEL DANIEL 25

SIREN

Then pleasure likewise seems the shore

Whereto tends all your toil;

Which you forgo to make it more,

And perish oft the while.

Who may disport them diversely

Find never tedious day;

And ease may have variety

As well as action may.

ULYSSES

But natures of the noblest frame

These toils and dangers please,

And they take comfort in the same

As much as you in ease:

And with the thought of actions past

Are recreated still,

When pleasure leaves a touch at last

To show that it was ill.

SIREN

That doth opinion only cause

That's out of custom bred,

Which makes us many other laws

Than ever Nature did.

No widows wail for our delights,

Our sports are without blood;

The world we see by warlike wights

Receives more hurt than good.

ULYSSES

But yet the state of things require

These motions of unrest;

And these great spirits of high desire

Seem born to turn them best;

To purge the mischiefs that increase,

And all good order mar:

For oft we see a wicked peace

To be well changed for war.

SIREN

Well, well, Ulysses, then I see

I shall not have thee here;

26

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

And therefore I will come to thee,

And take my fortune there.

I must be won that cannot win,

Yet lost were I not won ;

For beauty hath created been

T' undo or be undone

CHAPTER III

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS

Pastoralism of the Court and the Country: Michael Drayton : William Browne

With less steadiness of artistic purpose and with a far less elevated spirit, yet with as much industry, perhaps more learning, and certainly greater versatility, Michael Drayton, in his poetical career, proceeded in many directions on the same lines as Daniel, but illustrates in quite another aspect the influence of the Court on English poetry.

Drayton has left behind him more personal references than most poets of his age, and from these it is happily possible, in the absence of a biographer, to recover some idea of the course of his fortunes and the character of his poetical motives. He was born at Hartshill in Warwickshire1 in 1563.2 In his poem called The Owl he says that he was "nobly bred and well allied," and in his Epistle to Henry Reynolds on Poets and Poetry he gives an extremely interesting account of his early inclination to verse :—

For from my cradle you must know that I

Was still inclined to noble Poesie ;

And when that once Pueriles I had read,

And newly had my Cato construèd,

1 Lux Hartshulla tibi (Warwici villa tenebris

Ante tuas cunas obsita) prima fuit.

Lines on Drayton's portrait in Dulwich College.

2 His portrait, engraved by W. Hole and published in 1613, states that it was painted in his fiftieth year.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

In my small self I greatly marvelled then,

Amongst all others, what strange kind of men

These poets were ; and, pleas'd with the name,

To my mild tutor merrily I came

(For I was then a proper goodly page,

Much like a pigmy, scarce ten years of age),

Clasping my slender arms about his thigh ;

O my dear master, cannot you (quoth I)

Make me a poet ? Do it if you can,

And you shall see I'll quickly be a man."

Who me thus answered smiling : "Boy (quoth he),

If you'll not play the wag, but I may see

You ply your learning, I will shortly read

Some poets to you—Phœbus be my speed !"

To't hard went I, when shortly he began,

And first read to me honest Mantuan ;

Then Virgil's Eglogues : being entered thus,

Methought I straight had mounted Pegasus,

And in his full career could make him stop,

And bound upon Parnassus' by-cleft top.

I scorned your ballad then, though it were done,

And had for Finis William Elderton.1

From the dedication of two of England's Heroical Epistles

to the Earl of Bedford, we learn that the knight in whose

household he was being educated at the time he speaks of,

and possibly his actual instructor in poetry, was Sir Henry

Goodere.2 His earliest poetical attempt, entitled The

Harmonie of the Church, was dedicated to the Lady Jane

Devereux in 1590. It consisted of a paraphrase in verse of

various passages of the Bible, "so exactly translated as

the prose would permit" ; but for some reason (probably

an irregularity in publishing), after being entered at the

Stationers' Hall, it was seized by public order, doubtless

issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury as Licenser of

the Press, who directed forty copies to be preserved at

Lambeth. There is nothing in this work which suggests

ardour in poetical composition, but Drayton's next pro-

duction was just of the kind which his account of his

poetical education would lead us to expect. Published in

1 A writer of doggerel ballads in Elizabeth's reign. Died about 1592.

2 "Whose I was whilst he was, whose patience pleased to bear with the

imperfections of my heedless and unstayed youth. That excellent and

matchless gentleman was the first cherisher of my Muse."

1593, it was called Idea: The Shepherd's Garland, and contained nine eclogues modelled on The Shepherd's

Calendar—in other words, pastoral dialogues alluding to persons and events of the day. Drayton's imitative

tendency reveals itself in the form of the eclogues, which, at least in the rustic names of the speakers and

the modern allegory, were a close copy of Spenser's manner. The inspiring motive of the composition,

however, was not, as is usually the case with Spenser, theological,' but purely complimentary. Three ladies are

celebrated in the eclogues, of whom Beta, the most illustrious, is clearly called after the last part of the

Queen's name; the second, Pandora, was Sidney's sister, the all-accomplished Mary, Countess of Pembroke ; the

third, Idea, who is the object of the poet's most enthusiastic praise, has been hitherto supposed to be some

unknown lady with whom Drayton was himself in love! But the style of the pastorals, as well as of Idea's Mirror,

a set of sonnets which followed them in 1594, entirely wanting as it is in natural sentiment and emotion,

proclaims plainly both publications to be tributes from a poet to his patroness ; and a close examination of

the changes afterwards made by Drayton in the form of these poems leaves me in no doubt as to the person

whom he intended to praise. Idea was Lucy, Countess of Bedford, to whose protection Sir Henry Goodere,

on his death-bed, commended the ingenious page trained in his household and hitherto patronised by himself.!

This famous lady was the eldest daughter of John Harington, afterwards Baron Harington, of Exton, in the

county of Rutland, and was married to Edward, third Earl of Bedford. She divided with the Countess of Pem-

broke the admiration of the Court, and took pride and pleasure in advancing the fortune of the best writers of

the day. Daniel, Jonson, and Donne, have each of them honoured her with compliments in verse, but Drayton

surpassed all his contemporaries in the extravagance of his flattery. To Lady Bedford he dedicated his Endimion

1 Dedication of Heroical Epistles.

and Phæbe in (probably) 1595, and his Mortimeriados in

1596. In the dedicatory lines prefixed to the latter

poem he says his purpose is

That Virtue lively pictured foith in thee

May truly be discerned what she should be;

and in the poem itself he speaks of her as the "mirror of

virtue." In both dedications he describes the Countess

as the source and origin of his inspiration. The sonnet

prefixed to Endimion and Phæbe shows that the praises

lavished upon the patroness were rewarded in the time-

honoured fashion that the scop or scald expected:-

Unto thy fame my Muse her self shall task,

Which rain'st upon me thy sweet golden showers,

Upon whose praise my soul shall spend her powers.

That the bounteous Countess was also the lady whose

praises are so enthusiastically sounded under a fictitious

name both in The Shepherd's Garland and in Idea's Mirror

is an inference which can hardly be resisted in view of the

following facts. The first mention of Idea is found in the

"Fifth Elog" of The Shepherd's Garland as it appeared

in 1593, where the shepherd Rowland is called upon by

his companion

To tune his reed unto Idea's praise,

And teach the woods to wonder at her name :

this being merely a pastoral translation of what Drayton

himself says to the Countess when personally addressing

her in the dedicatory lines cited above; while the identity

of Lady Bedford with the goddess of The Shepherd's

Garland is further indicated both by an anonymous poet

E. P.--in a sonnet praising Idea, placed before Endimion

and Phæbe, next to Drayton's sonnet addressed to the

Countess in person--and by Drayton himself, who not

only calls the poem just mentioned by the sub-title Idea's

Latmus, but concludes it with an address to the "sweet

nymph of Ankor":-

1 See vol. i. p. 83, and pp. 432-433.

If ever Nature of her work might boast,

Of thy perfection she may glory most;

To whom fair Phœbe hath her bow resigned,

Whose excellence doth live in thee refined;

And that thy praise Time never should impair,

Hath made my heart thy never-moving sphere.

Then if my Muse give life unto thy fame,

Thy virtues be the causer of the same;

And from thy tomb some Oracle shall rise,

To whom all pens shall yearly sacrifice.

To suppose that Drayton meant to flatter two ladies

at the same time and in the same way is to conclude him

wanting equally in poetical ingenuity and in knowledge

of human nature. And that the “sweet nymph of Ankor,”

addressed in Endimion and Phœbe, was the Countess of

Bedford is shown by the fact that Combe Abbey, near

Coventry, the Warwickshire seat of Lord Harington, was

situated on the banks of the Ankor.

No interruption in the smooth course of patronage and

compliment appears publicly till 1603, when Drayton

issued a re-cast of his Mortimeriados in ottava rima,

instead of the seven-line or royal stanza, and with the title

of The Baron's Wars, accompanied by a reprint of

England's Heroical Epistles, and by forty-seven sonnets

under the heading of Idea, quite differently conceived

from the set of “Amours” called Idea's Mirror published

in 1594. From the historical poem he withdrew the

dedicatory sonnet to the Countess of Bedford, prefixed to

Mortimeriados, and all allusions to her in the narrative.

The poem itself was now divided into books after the epic

fashion, and at the end of the second book was inserted

an address to Idea :-

O wretched age ! had not these things been done,

I had not now, in these more calmer times,

Into the search of former troubles run;

Nor had my virgin unpolluted rhymes

Altered the course wherein they first begun,

To sing these bloody and unnatural crimes :

My lays had still been of Idea's bower,

Of my dear Ankor or her loved Stoure.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Or for our subject your fair worth to choose,

Your truth, your virtue, and your high respects,

That gently deign to patronise our Muse,

Who our free soul ingeniously elects

To publish your deserts, and all your dues,

Maugre the Momists, and Satyric sects,

Whilst my great verse eternally is sung,

You still may live with me in spite of wrong.

It is evident from this that in 1603 things did not

stand in the same position as in 1596. Idea has removed

her dwelling from the Ankhor, near Coventry, to the Stoure,

which flows through the vale of Evesham ; and moreover,

there are “ Momists and Satyric sects ” who speak mali-

ciously of her association with the poet. The sonnets

also betray a change of feeling. They are no longer Idea's

Mirror—

Wonder of Heaven, glass of Divinity,

Rare beauty, Nature's joy, perfection's mother,

The work of that united Trinity,

Wherein each fairest part excelleth other, etc.

This sonnet, with others like it, has disappeared, and

Collier naïvely suggests, as the reason for its suppression,

that the allusion to the Trinity in the first quatrain may have

been found objectionable.1 He does not, however, explain

why the author of Idea's Mirror, who had in that work

exhausted the treasury of amorous conceits in praising his

divinity, should have carefully informed the readers of

Sonnets under the Title of Idea that (although many of

these poems had appeared in the previous collection) the

later set were not to be taken seriously.

To the Reader of his Poems.

Into these loves who but for passion looks,

At this first sight here let him lay them by,

And seek elsewhere in turning other books,

Which better may his labour satisfy.

No far-fetched sigh what ever wound my breast ;

1 Poems by Michael Drayton. Edited by J. Payne Collier, 1856. See p.

183. It is fair to add that, though Collier has not any suspicion as to the

reason of the alterations made by Drayton in his poems, it was through his

careful editing that my attention was called to the changes themselves.

III SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: MICHAEL DRAYTON

33

Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring ;

Nor, in "ah mes !" my whining sonnets dressed,

(A Libertine) fantastickly I sing ;

My verse is the true motion of my mind,

Ever in motion, still desiring change,

To choice of all variety inclined,

And in all humours sportively I range.

My active Muse is of the world's right strain,

That cannot long one fashion entertain.

The Second to his Reader.

Many there be excelling in this kind,

Whose well-tricked rhymes with all invention swell,

Let each commend, as best shall like his mind,

Some Sidney, Constable, or Daniel.

That thus their names familiarly I sing,

Let none think them disparagèd to be ;

Poor men with reverence may speak of a king,

And so may these be spoken of by me :

My wanton verse ne'er keeps one certain stay,

But now at hand, then seeks invention far,

And with each little motion runs astray,

Wild, madding, jocund, and irregular.

Like me that list, my honest merry rhymes

Nor care for critic, nor regard the times.

What then had caused the flattering shepherd, Row-

land, to sing in this rather over-jovial tone of independence?

He himself lets us into the secret in a new edition of the

Pastorals, published in 1605. In this revised version

he largely retrenched the praises he had formerly bestowed

upon Pandora, and in the same eclogue poured obloquy

on the conduct of one Selena :-

So once Selena seemed to regard

That faithful Rowland her so highly praised,

And did his travail for a while reward,

As his estate she purpos'd to have raised ;

But soon fled from him, and the swain defies ;

Ill is he stead that on such faith relies.

And to deceitful Cerberon she cleaves,

That beastly clown, so vile of to be spoken,

And that good shepherd wilfully she leaves,

And falsely all her promises hath broken,

And all those beauties whilom that her graced,

With vulgar breath perpetually defaced!

VOL. III

D

34

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Let age sit soon and ugly on her brow,

No shepherd's praises living let her have,

To her last end no creature pay one vow,

Nor flower be strewed on her forgotten grave,

And to the last of all-devouring time

Ne'er be her name remembered more in rhyme.1

The “sweet golden showers” had in fact ceased to

rain upon Drayton : through the fickleness of his patroness

he had been disappointed of his promised promotion, and

it seemed to him only just that the poetical crown formerly

bestowed upon the Countess of Bedford should be trans-

ferred to some other brow. He therefore proceeds :-

Then since the world's distemperature is such,

And man made blind by her deceitful show,

Small virtue in their weaker sex is much,

And to it in them much the Muses owe,

And praising some may happily inflame

Others in time with liking of their name.

As those two sisters, most discreetly wise,

That virtue's hests religious obey,

Whose praise my skill is wanting to comprise,

The eldist of which is that good Panape,

In shady Arden her dear flock that keeps,

Where mournful Ankor for her sickness weeps.

The younger then, her sister not less good,

Bred where the other lastly doth abide,

Modest Idea, flower of womanhood,

That Rowland hath so highly deified,

Whom Phœbus' daughters worthily prefer,

And give their gifts abundantly to her;

Driving her flocks up to the fruitful Mene,

Which daily looks upon the lovely Stowre,

Near to that vale which of all vales is queen,

Lastly forsaking of her former bower,

And of all places holdeth Cotswold dear,

Which now is proud because she lives it near.

It will thus be seen that, after Drayton's desertion by

the Countess of Bedford, he entered upon a very elaborate

course of retaliation. In the first place, he sought to

1 For these and the following stanzas see Collier's edition of Drayton's

Poems (1856).

remove almost every trace of the praises he had lavished

on her in her own name. When he published his Baron's

Wars he suppressed the eulogistic lines which he had

prefixed to Mortimeriados, and the allusions to the

Countess in the body of that poem ; he recast his Endi-

mion and Phœbe in the form of The Man in the Moon,

taking from it all those personal references to Idea which

once associated it closely with Lady Bedford ; his Pas-

torals were reissued with a prefatory discourse on bucolic

poetry, thus suggesting to the reader that they were

merely a literary exercise. While, however, he suppressed

Endimion and Phœbe in the volume of his poems pub-

lished in 1599 (probably while the quarrel was only in

its infancy), he preserved the dedicatory sonnet, with the

significant alteration of the line,

Sweet lady, then grace this poor Muse of mine,

into

Sweet lady, yet grace this poor Muse of Mine.

No response being made to this overture, he inserted

in his Pastorals (1605) the bitter invective against Selena,

clearly pointing by this name at the Countess of Bedford

to whom, under the name of Idea, as he had said in

Endimion and Phœbe, "fair Phœbe (i.e. Selene, the Moon)

had her bow resigned." Nor was he content with merely

depriving his patroness of the honours previously paid to

her ; he was resolved that she should see them bestowed

upon another. Idea lived, and still honoured her poet,

but, by a very subtle stroke of art, she was transformed

into the younger sister of Panape (Lady Bedford being

the elder of Lord Harington's two daughters), and had her

abode in Gloucestershire instead of in Warwickshire.

To point out even more clearly, though still enig-

matically, the name of his new patroness, Drayton, at a

later date, paid an ingenious compliment to her in his

Polyolbion. After describing Coventry, and mentioning

in connection with it the story of St. Ursula and the

eleven thousand virgins, he alludes to the legend of Lady

Godiva, and then proceeds to say that the neighbourhood

36

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP

derives its true fame from the birth of the lady whom he always celebrates :-

The first part of whose name, Godiva, doth fore-rede Th’ first syllable of hers, and Goodere half doth sound,

For by agreeing words great matters have been found ;

But farther than this place the mystery extends ·

What Arden hath begun in Ankor lastly ends .

For in the British tongue the Britons could not find

Wherefore to her that name of Ankor was assigned,

Nor yet the Saxons since, nor times to come had known,

But that her being here was by that name foreshown,

As prophesying her. For as the first did tell

Her sirname, so again doth Ankor lively spell

Her christened title, Anne. And as those virgins there

Did sanctify the place, so holy Edith here

A recluse long time lived, in that fair abbey placed

Which Alared enriched, and Powlesworth highly graced,

A princess being born and abbess, with those maids

All noble like herself; and bidding of their beads,

Their holiness bequeathed upon her to descend,

Which there should after live : in whose dear self should end

Th’ intent of Ankor’s name, her coming that decreed,

As hers (the place of birth) fair Coventry that freed.1

Idea, in her metempsychosis, was therefore Anne Goodere,

and the significance and propriety of Drayton’s description is further illustrated by the following passage from Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire :-

The Abbey of Powlesworth was sold to Francis Goodere,

gentleman, which Francis had issue Sir Henry Goodere, knight,

his son and heir (a gentleman much accomplished and of eminent note in the county, whilst he lived, having suffered imprisonment in behalf of that magnanimous lady, Mary, Queen of Scotland,

of whom he was a great honourer), who had issue two daughters only, scilicet, Frances and Anne; the one married to Sir Henry Goodere, knight, son and heir to Sir William (brother to the before-specified Sir Henry), the other to Henry Rainsford of Clifford in Com. Glouc.2

From another poem of Drayton, a hymn in honour of his lady’s birthplace, it appears that Anne Goodere (Idea) was born in Coventry on the 4th of August :-

1 Polyolbion, song xiii.

2 Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 1114.

311 SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: MICHAEL DRAYTON 37

Of thy streets which thou hold'st best

And most frequent of the rest,

Happy Mich-park, every year

On the fourth of August, there

Let thy maids from Flora's bowers,

With their choice and daintiest flowers,

Deck them up, and from their store

With brave garlands crown that door.1

To Frances, the elder of the two sisters, Drayton had already dedicated one of England's Heroical Epistles, in gratitude for the bounties which he had received from the family of Goodere. He now praised her under the name of Panape.

I have dwelt at length on details, in themselves trivial, because of the light they throw both on the real nature of the supposed amorous poetry of the time, as we find it embodied in pastorals and sonnets, and also on the character and artistic motives of an eminent English poet.

Perhaps the only parallel in the history of our poetry to the mingled spite and ingenuity of Drayton's revenge is to be found in the minute art with which Pope transferred his satire, under the same fictitious name, from one person to another, according as he was moved by the passion of the moment.

Lady Bedford's fickleness was not the only disappointment which Drayton had to endure. In an epistle written to George Sandys, the translator of Ovid, he gives us a glimpse of the high hopes he had built on the favour of James I., to whom, while still only King of Scotland, he had addressed a flattering sonnet, and whose accession to the English throne he welcomed in 1603 with a A Gratulatorv Poem, followed up in the next year with a "Pcan Triumphall, composed for the Societie of the Gold-smiths of London." These efforts brought him no reward :—

It was my hap before all other men

To suffer shipwreck by my forward pen,

When King James entered : at which joyful time

I taught his title to this isle in rhyme,

1 Collier's edition of Drayton's Poems, p. 418.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

And to my part did all the Muses win

With high-pitched pæans to applaud him in.

When cowardice had tied up every tongue,

And all stood silent, yet for him I sung ;

And when before by danger I was dared,

I kicked her from me, nor a jot I spared.

Yet had not my clear spirit, in fortune's scorn,

Me above earth and her afflictions borne,

He, next my God, on whom I built my trust,

Had left me trodden lower than the dust.

As we see from Daniel's Panegyric Congratulatorie,

Drayton was by no means alone in his welcome of James,

nor could he have been exposed to any real danger in

espousing a cause which was decidedly popular. But he

was doubtless soured by his various disappointments, and

these may even have rendered his livelihood for a while

precarious, for we find him in 1599 and 1600 assisting,

as one of several hack playwrights, in the production of

third-rate historical dramas. In 1603, however, he secured

a new patron, Walter Aston, to whom he dedicated in

succession The Owl—a poem written in imitation of

Spenser's Mother Hubberd's Tale on the unworthy treat-

ment of men of letters at Court,—the edition of Poems,

Lyric and Pastoral spoken of above, and The Legend of

Great Cromwell, which in 1607 he published in a volume

with the legends he had already written on Matilda,

Gaveston, and Robert, Duke of Normandy. When Aston,

at the coronation of James I., received the order of knight-

hood, he made Drayton one of his esquires. To him the

poet makes a grateful allusion in the preface to the first

eighteen books of his Polyolbion, which in 1613 he

published, with a dedication to Prince Henry (then

recently dead) ; and we may therefore conclude that his

patron had at least placed him in a position which relieved

him from the necessity of having to write for his living.

A competence, however, was far from satisfying the poet's

ambition. The note of discontent sounds plainly in the

following passage from the same preface :-

And to any that shall demand wherefore, having promised

this poem of the general island so many years, I now publish

only this part of it, I plainly answer ; that many times I had

determined with myself to have left it off, and have neglected my

papers sometimes two years together, finding the times since his

majesty's happy coming in to fall so heavily on my distressed

fortunes, after my zealous soul had laboured so long in that,

which, with the general happiness of the kingdom, seemed not

then impossible somewhat also to have advanced me. But

I instantly saw all my long-nourished hopes even buried alive

before my face : so uncertain in this world be the ends of our

clearest endeavours.

The concluding twelve songs of the Polyolbion were

published in 1622. Five years later appeared a small

folio containing The Battle of Agincourt (not the ballad on

the same subject which had appeared in Poems, Lyric

and Pastoral), The Miseries of Queen Margaret, Nymphidia,

The Quest of Cinthia, The Shepherd's Sirena, and The

Moon-Calf. In 1630 this was followed by The Muses'

Elysium, Moses, his Birth and Miracles, Noah's Flood,

David and Goliath. The new volume was dedicated to

Edward, fourth Earl of Dorset, to whom the poet says :-

I have ever found that constancy in your favours, since your

first acknowledging of me, that their durableness has now made

me one of your family ; and I am become so happy in the title

to be called yours, that, for retribution, could I have found a

fitter way to publish your bounties, my thankfulness before this

might have found it out.

Drayton died on the 23rd December 1631, and was

buried in Westminster Abbey. He lies beneath a monu-

ment erected to him by the Countess of Dorset, the

inscription on which was written by Quarles.

The above sketch will enable the reader to divine

why it is that a poet who enjoyed so great a reputation

in his own day, who undoubtedly possessed many rare

qualities, and who wrote so much, and often so well, as

Drayton, should have left so little behind him which

posterity finds of value. His works fill a volume as large

as Spenser's, but the only complete poems of his which

can be said to be still alive are the fine ballad on the

battle of Agincourt, the sonnet beginning : “Since there's

no help, come let us kiss and part!” and the charming

fairy epic, Nymphidia. His contemporaries, as usually

happens, failed to note either his merits or defects in

their right proportions. They gave him the name of

“Golden-mouth,” intending to signify by it their apprecia-

tion of “the purity and preciousness of his style and

phrase.”1 But Drayton was much more than what is

called in the literary cant of our own day a “stylist.”

In fineness of fancy, in delicacy of humour, as well as in

manly vigour of diction, he has few superiors among his

contemporaries, and, with the exception of Ben Jonson,

there were none of them who equalled him in versatility

of invention and in the extent of his learning. He tried

many kinds of poetry, and wrote well in them all.

Some critics of his time charged him, as they did

Daniel, with imitation.2 Their criticism was superficially

just. The Shepherd's Garland was imitated from the

Shepherd's Calendar. Many, if not most, of the sonnets

in Idea's Mirror are based on conceits first invented by

Daniel or Constable. Endimion and Phoebe was inspired

by Marlowe's Hero and Leander ; and if Drayton had not

witnessed the same poet's Edward II., he would perhaps

never have conceived the character of Mortimer, the hero

of his Baron's Wars. When his critics spoke of him as

an imitator, they were probably thinking of his England's

Heroical Epistles, which were, of course, suggested by the

Heroïdes of Ovid. Spenser and Shakespeare both sup-

plied him with some fundamental ideas. From the

episode of the marriage of the Thames and the Med-

way in the Faery Queen he got the structural design of

1 Meres' Palladis Tamia. The epithet “golden-mouth” was first given

him by Fitzgeoffrey in a poem on Drake.

2

Drayton's condemned of some for imitation,

But others say, 'twas the best poets' fashion.

In spite of sick opinion's crooked doom

Traitor to kingdom mind, true judgment's tomb,

Like a worthy Roman he hath won

A threefold name affinèd to the sun,

When he is mounted in the glorious south ;

And Drayton's justly surnamed golden-mouth.

Guilpin, Skialetheia.

the Polyolbion, and from the description of Queen Mab in Romeo and Juliet the framework of Nymphidia.

All this is just what we should expect from the account Drayton gives us of his early inclination to verse-

making: he became a poet by reading and admiring the works of other poets. His genius, receptive and many-

sided, required to be set in motion from without, but, once supplied with materials, it stamped on them the

impress of its own character. He imitated after the fashion of the best poets. Seed, sown by the hands of

others in the quick soil of his imagination, brought forth a new variety of fruit. The ideas he borrowed were

reinvested to advantage, and the poetical fortune he made out of them was honestly earned by his own judgment

and invention.

What he lacked was loftiness and resolution of artistic purpose. With more respect for himself and his art, he

would have been able to turn his many fine qualities towards some worthy end. As it was, he could not

"himself above himself erect himself." Instead of leading the taste of his day, he sought to follow it, and to

make his art an instrument of his own promotion. Un-

fortunately for him, the taste of the Court was in itself so frivolous and uncertain that it could not guide his inven-

tion into right channels. Since Sidney's disappearance the great ideal of chivalry had decayed, and the garb of

romantic allegory and Arcadianism, in which that poet and Spenser had sought to ennoble courtly manners, had fallen

out of fashion. Those of the courtiers who were conscious of great merit attempted to mark their pre-eminence

by external magnificence and the ostentatious patronage of letters. The praises of ingenious poets were eagerly

sought for: hence the leading motive of all Drayton's earlier poems, The Shepherd's Garland, Idea's Mirror,

Endimion and Phœbe, and even Mortimeriados, was to gratify the vanity, while pleasing the imagination, of the

Countess of Bedford and her circle. Poetry cannot rise above the taste that inspires it, any more than water can

rise above its own level.

42

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

England's Heroical Epistles display more independence of spirit, and therefore deservedly achieve a higher artistic success. There was some originality in the design of applying Ovid's invention of poetical letter-writing to famous characters in English history, and considerable versatility of imagination is shown in conceiving the different situations of the various lovers. But there are traces of mechanical workmanship in the execution of the design. Ovid divides the last six epistles of his Heroides between the letters, with the answers to them, of three pairs of lovers. Drayton follows this plan through all of his twenty-four epistles, with the result that his style necessarily becomes monotonous. Nevertheless, these poems contain vigorous and harmonious passages, of which the best is perhaps the following from the epistle of Surrey to the Lady Geraldine :-

When time shall turn those amber locks to gray,

My verse again shall gild and make them gay,

And trick them up in knotted curls anew,

And to thy autumn give a summer's hue :

That sacred power that in my ink remains,

Shall put fresh blood into thy withered veins,

And on thy red decayed, thy whiteness dead,

Shall set a white more white, a red more red.

When thy dim sight thy glass cannot descry,

Nor thy crazed mirror can discern thine eye,

My verse, to tell the one what th' other was,

Shall represent them both, thine eye and glass,

When both thy mirror and thine eye shall see

What once thou saw'st in that, that saw in thee ;

And to them both shall tell the simple truth,

What that in pureness was, what thou in youth.

The reader will observe in this passage how characteristically Drayton borrows the idea from Daniel,1 but fits it to his own epistolary method, and also with what rare art he has adapted the leading features of Ovid's elegiac verse to the English decasyllabic line. In his terse epigrams and antitheses we have the germs of the style which reached its last development in Pope's treatment of the heroic couplet.

1 See p. 12.

III SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: MICHAEL DRAYTON 43

The freedom and fluency with which England's Heroical Epistles are written give the measure of the advance made by Drayton when disembarrassed of the necessity of paying compliments in verse. Fresh energy was added to his style after his quarrel with the Countess of Bedford, and it is artistically instructive to compare the insincerity of such a sonnet as that beginning "Wonder of Heaven" in Idea's Mirror with the manly directness of the sonnets prefatory to the later collection, Sonnets under the Title of Idea, and still more with the famous and splendid lines in which it is now clear that he symbolised, under the imagery of lovers' parting, his final rupture with his patroness :-

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part !

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I myself can free ;

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

And, when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now, at the last gasp of love's failing breath,

When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,

When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,

From death to life thou mightst him still recover.

Had Drayton valued his art at the same rate as he here values himself, he might have produced some great poem. But it was not to be. The necessities of living were too strong for him. He was forced now to write down to the public taste. Mortimeriados, originally designed for the amusement of the Countess of Bedford, was based, after Marlowe's fashion, upon the character of Mortimer. When the Countess had to be deprived of her share of the inspiration, the poem was converted, for the benefit of the general reader, into a formal epic on The Baron's Wars. It thus became a rival of Daniel's Civil Wars, and consequently liable to the sentence which Drayton himself passed on the latter composition. In the

same way—as we see from the preface—the Polyolbion

was evidently designed to catch the interest of the

numerous readers who were patriotically interested in the

archæology of their own counties. The conception was

not primarily poetical ; and in spite of its vast learning

and accurate descriptions, in spite, too, of the mythological

impersonations, by means of which the poet seeks to raise

the narrative out of the sphere of prose, nothing can save

the work from the censure of being “antiquity in verse.”

There are passages in the thirty songs, which constitute

the poem, full of ingenious fancy ; but, as a whole, the

mechanical conduct of the action and the monotony of

the Alexandrine verse (the character of which may be

judged by the extract given above ¹) make it unreadable.

The admirable ballad on the battle of Agincourt was

evidently struck off at a heat under the inspiration of the

metrical tune in Thomas Heywood's song, “Agincourt,

Agincourt! know ye not Agincourt?” but the epic nar-

rative of the battle, which Drayton afterwards built out of

the ballad, is nothing more than versified prose. Only

once again in his later years did he soar into a divine

region above the heavy and gross atmosphere of hack-

writing. This was in the delightful fairy epic Nymphidia,

in which he burlesques the action both of A Midsummer

Night's Dream and the Orlando Furioso. Many years

before he had struck upon the happy thought of imitating

Chaucer's lay of Sir Thopas in the pastoral ballad of

Dowsabell, which is the only valuable portion of The

Shepherd's Garland. In a development of this metre he

now found an epic vehicle for the narrative of the madness

of the fairy king Oberon, caused by a not unwarranted

jealousy of Pigwiggen, one of his knights, whose rela-

tions with Queen Mab seem to have resembled those

existing between Launcelot and Guinevere. The action

of the poem is made up of the adventures arising out

of an assignation granted by the Queen to Pigwiggen,

which Oberon, hearing of, resolves to interrupt. Oberon's

madness is, on an elfin scale, the exact counterpart of

¹ See p. 36.

III SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: MICHAEL DRAYTON 45

Orlando's, the relative heroic proportion being preserved throughout, and the incidents imagined with the most excellent humour and invention. Nymphidia, a fairy, perceiving Oberon's intentions, contrives to save the Queen's honour, by hiding her with all her Court inside a hazel-nut, which she makes invisible to Puck or Hobgoblin, who has been sent by Oberon to discover the place of the lovers' meeting. The following stanzas, describing her procedure and the magic charm, will give the reader an idea of the poem :-

And first her fern-seed doth bestow

The kernel of the mistletoe,

And here and there as Puck should go,

With terror to affright him,

She night-shade strews to work him ill,

Therewith her vervain, and her dill

That hindereth witches of their will,

Of purpose to despite him.

Then sprinkles she the juice of rue,

That groweth underneath the yew,

With nine drops of the midnight dew

From lunary distilling ;

The molewart's brain mixt therewithal,

And with the same the pismire's gall,

For she in nothing short would fall,

The fairy was so willing.

Then thrice under a briar doth creep,

Which at both ends was rooted deep,

And over it three times did leap,

Her magic much availing :

Then on Proserpina doth call,

And so upon her spell doth fall,

Which here to you repeat I shall,

Not in one tittle failing.

" By the croaking of the frog,

By the howling of the dog,

By the crying of the hog,

Against the storm arising ;

By the evening curfew bell,

By the doleful dying knell,

O let this my direful spell,

Hob, hinder thy surprising ?

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

"By the mandrake's dreadful groans,

By the Lubrican's sad moans,

By the noise of dead mens' bones,

In charnel-houses rattling;

By the hissing of the snake,

The rustling of the fire-drake,

I charge thee this place forsake,

Nor of Queen Mab be prattling!

"By the whirlwind's hollow sound,

By the thunder's dreadful stound,

Yells of spirits underground,

I charge thee not to hear us!

By the scritch-owl's dismal note,

By the black night's raven throat,

I charge thee, Hob, to tear thy coat

With thorns, if thou come near us'

Drayton, by his ingenuity and versatility, exercised great influence on the minds of his contemporaries. In his Epistle to Henry Reynolds he mentions some of his chief scholars :--

Then the two Beaumonts and my Browne arose,

My dear companions, whom I freely chose

My bosom friends, and in their several ways

Rightly born poets, and in these last days

Men of much note and no less noble parts,

Such as have freely told to me their hearts,

As I have mine to them.

Of the two Beaumonts the elder, Sir John, is the one who shows the more distinct traces of Drayton's influence, particularly in his versification, which is modelled on that of the Heroical Epistles. But the poet who learned most from him was William Browne of Tavistock — "my Browne," as he is affectionately called in the verses cited above—whose Britannia's Pastorals is in a direct line of descent from the Polyolbion, as The Shepherd's Pipe is the offspring of Idea's Mirror. He was the son of Thomas Browne of Tavistock—a member of a family tracing their origin to the Brownes of Betchworth Castle in Surrey—and was born about 1591. After receiving his first education in Tavistock Grammar School, he entered

Exeter College, Oxford, about the beginning of the reign of James I., but left the University, without taking a degree, for Clifford's Inn, from which, on 1st March 1611-12, he passed to the Inner Temple. Very little is known of his life. The first book of Britannia's Pastorals was published in 1613, and The Shepherd's Pipe in 1614. In the latter year he lost his first wife. The second book of the Pastorals appeared in 1616, with a dedication to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. In 1624 Browne returned to Exeter College, as tutor to Robert Dormer, afterwards Earl of Carnarvon ; and in the same year he took the degree of M.A. After this he entered the family of the Herberts at Wilton, where, according to the statement of Anthony Wood, "he got wealth and purchased an estate." He may thus have been enabled to marry his second wife, curiously named Timothy, daughter of Sir Thomas Eversfield, of Horsham, to whom he was united 24th December 1628 ; and perhaps his "estate" was in the neighbourhood of Dorking, the original cradle of his family.1 He sympathised with the Parliamentary party. A letter from him to Sir Benjamin Rudyard has been preserved, in which he congratulates his correspondent on a speech in Parliament (1640), "wherein they believe the spirit which inspired the Reformation and the genius which dictated Magna Charta possessed you."2 It does not appear, however, that he took any active part in the war that was so soon to break out ; if he be the same William Browne whose burial is recorded in the Tavistock register, 27th March 1643, he died before victory had inclined to the side of the Parliament.

Though Browne's genius received so strong an impulse from Drayton's pastoral manner, he in no way followed his master's example of making the pastoral a vehicle for Court flattery. On the contrary, he is among those poets — Breton, Barnfield, and others — whose

1 In the Act of Administration granted to his widow, 6th November 1645, he is described as "late of Dorking, in the county of Surrey, Esquire." Browne's Poems, edited by Gordon Goodwin, p. xxvi.

2 Ibid. p. 27.

characteristic note it is to dwell on the contrast between

the simplicity of country and the artificiality of Court

life. Indeed, he himself directly derives his poetical

origin from Sidney :-

Happy Arcadia ! while such lovely strains

Sung of thy valleys, rivers, lakes, and plains ;

Yet most unhappy, other joys among,

That never heard'st his music nor his song.

Deaf men are happy so, whose virtues' praise

(Unheard of them) are sung in tuneful lays.

And pardon me, ye sisters of the mountain,

Who wail his loss from the Pegasian fountain,

If, like a man for portraiture unable,

I set my pencil to Apelles' table ;

Or dare to draw his curtain, with a will

To show his true worth, when the artist's skill

Within that curtain fully doth express

His own arts-mastery, my unableness.

He sweetly touchèd what I harshly hit,

Yet thus I glory in what I have writ ;

Sidney began, and (if a wit so mean

May taste with him the dews of Hippocrene)

I sung the Pastoral next ; his Muse, my mover,

And on the plains full many a pensive lover

Shall sing to us their loves, and praising be

My humble lines the more for praising thee.1

Browne reproduces in his verse all Sidney's ideal

Arcadianism, of which the following lines—describing

the amusements of Arcadia, and containing, as will be

seen, that often-repeated image of the piping shepherd

lad which first set in motion such a train of pastoral

fantasy—are an example :-

But since her stay was long, for fear the sun

Should find them idle, some of them begun

To leap and wrestle, others threw the bar ;

Some from the company removèd are

To meditate the songs they meant to play,

Or make a new round for next holiday.

Some tales of love their love-sick fellows told :

Others were seeking stakes to pitch their fold.

This all alone was mending of his pipe :

That for his lass sought fruits most sweet, most ripe :

1 Britannia's Pastorals, book i. song ii. 257-278.

Here from the rest a lovely shepherd's boy

Sits piping on a hill, as if his joy

Would still endure, or else that age's frost

Should never make him think what he had lost.1

The characteristic note of Britannia's Pastorals, however,

and that which constitutes their charm, is the localisation

of Arcadia in Devonshire. Browne writes of Pan and

Maenalus and the "silver Ladon," but his heart is never

far away from the Tavy and Dartmoor. An ardent love

for his birthplace and a pride in the heroes of his county

breathe in his verse :-

Hail, thou, my native soil! thou blessed plot,

Whose equal all the world affordeth not !

Show me who can so many crystall rills ;

Such sweet-clothed valleys or aspiring hills ;

Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines ;

Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines ;

And if the earth can show the like again,

Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men.

Time never can produce men to o'ertake

The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake,

Of worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more

That by their power made the Devonian shore

Mock the proud Tagus ; for whose richest spoil

The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil

Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost

By winning this, though all the rest were lost.2

He grows melancholy as he thinks of all the vessels

fitted out against Spain by the men of Devon in Elizabeth's

time, now rotting on the beach under her slothful successor.

All the beasts and birds that haunt the hills or rivers of

his county are known to him, and the homely sights he

has marked in his rambles furnish him with matter for

his numerous similes. He is a learned antiquary, who

loves to continue

The lay that aged Robert sung of yore;3

and to embellish his local descriptions with the same

research that his master, Drayton, had displayed in his

1 Britannia's Pastorals, book iii. song ii. 23-36. Compare vol. ii. p. 223.

2 Ibid. book ii. song ii. 601-616. 3 Ibid. book ii. song iv. 236.

VOL. III

E

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Polyolbion. He knows what Suetonius has said about

the pearls of Britain, and what his countryman, Joseph

of Exeter, records as to the landing of the Trojans on

the shores of Devonshire. All this science, mixed up

with the mythology of Arcadia, with realistic painting of

rural sports and customs, and with marvellous lore derived

from Pliny's Natural History, makes Britannia's Pastorals

resemble in its subject matter—as the author himself

suggests—one of the classical landscapes of Claude or

Poussin :—

And as within a landskip that doth stand

Wrought by the pencıl of some curious hand,

We may descry here meadow, there a wood;

Here standing ponds, and there a running flood;

Here on some mount a house of pleasure vanted,

Where once the roaring cannon had been planted;

There on a hill a swain pipes out the day,

Out-braving all the quiristers of May;

A huntsman here follows his cry of hounds,

Drying the hare along the fallow grounds,

Whilst one at hand seeming the sport t'allow

Follows the hounds and careless leaves the plough;

There in another place some high-raised land

In pride bears out her breasts unto the strand;

Here stands a bridge and there a conduit head;

Here round a Maypole some the measures tread;

There boys the truant play and bear their book;

Here stands an angler with a baited hook;

There for a stag one lurks within a bough;

Here sits a maiden milking of her cow;

There on a goodly plain (by time thrown down)

Lies buries in his dust some ancient town,

Who now invillaged, there's only seen

In his vast ruins what his state has been;

And of all these in shadows so expressed

Make the beholders' eyes to take no rest.

In such a medley of images it would be idle to look for

any principle of external unity. The Pastorals are

supposed to contain a story, the action of which lies in

the adventures of a certain shepherdess, Marina, who has

been deserted by her lover, Celandine; and with these

are connected by a slight thread the histories of other

shepherds and shepherdesses. But the narrative is in fact

only a series of episodes which provide an opportunity

for rural descriptions or personal reflections ; and as the

human actors in the poem are associated with heathen

deities and allegorical abstractions, the reader is in no

way moved by the changes in their fortune. As with

Spenser's Faery Queen, the poem is harmonised by the

sense of beauty in the poet, who succeeds in blending his

strangely assorted materials in an ideal atmosphere

emanating from his own mind.

Browne's style, as befitting the unreality of his subject,

is characterised by a kind of romantic Euphuism, which

makes Britannia's Pastorals resemble in verse what the

Arcadia is in prose. The vocabulary contains, like the

Faery Queen, many archaic words: the metre imitates

the use of the heroic couplet by Sylvester, translator of

Du Bartas' Weeks of Creation, with whose enthusiastic

love of the country Browne was in deep sympathy : the

diction and versification unite to form a style of conscious

naïveté which, in its easy flow, suggests the placid move-

ment of a brook, gliding noiselessly under pollarded

willows, and irrigating the level meadows through which

it passes.

Browne was one of those poets who mature early,

and whose art lies within a narrow compass. The first

two books of Britannia's Pastorals were written before

he was twenty.1 Besides that poem, The Shepherd's Pipe,

Lydford Journey, and the Two Elegies on Henry, Prince of

Wales, nothing of his work was published in his lifetime.

The MS. of the third book of the Pastorals and of a few

other poems was discovered in the library of Salisbury

Cathedral by the late Beriah Botfield, and was printed for

the Percy Society in 1852. The Inner Temple Masque,

preserved in a MS. of Emmanuel College, Cambridge,

1 O how (methinks) the imps of Mneme bring

Dews of invention from their sacred spring.

Here could I spend that spring of poesy,

Which not twice ten suns have bestowed on me,

And tell the world the Muses' lore appears

In nonaged youth as in the length of years

Book i. song v. 50.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Library, was printed in 1772, and other poems of Browne

have been collected from the Lansdowne MSS. in the

British Museum, and from a MS. in the library of

Trinity College, Dublin. But in none of these is there

any advance on the charming freshness and the fine

workmanship of the first two books of Britannia's Pastorals.

Even in The Shepherd's Pipe, which appeared in 1614,

there is a comparative lack of invention : no note is struck

in the series of eclogues that had not already been heard

in the poems of Spenser, Breton, Barnfield, and Drayton.1

What, however, is observable in all Browne's work is

the delicate Euphuism which amid the confusion of

elements in the Pastorals—rural images, antiquarian

learning, and personal allusion—furnishes the leaven of

the style. Sometimes his excessive bias towards Euphu-

ism carries him beyond the proper mark, as in the second

stanza of the fine epitaph, so often erroneously ascribed

to Ben Jonson :-

Underneath this sable hearse

Lies the subject of all verse,

Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother;

Death, ere thou hast slain another,

Fair, and learn'd, and good as she,

Time shall throw a dart at thee.

Marble piles let no man raise

To her name ; for after days

Some kind woman born as she,

Reading this, like Niobe

Shall turn marble, and become

Both her mourner and her tomb.

On the other hand, there is complete propriety in the

charmingly Euphuistic description of Oberon's banquet,

in the unpublished third book of the Pastorals, which, as

it was probably written about 1625,2 was doubtless read

1 In this poem Wither claims to have had a hand. See his Fides Anglicana.

2 Commendatory verses written in praise of Browne's Pastorals were

found by Crofton Croker inscribed in a copy of that poem printed in 1625. As

they are all by members of Exeter College, they probably were collected, in

view of the continuation of the Pastorals, at the time when Browne had

returned to Exeter as tutor of Robert Dormer.

in MS. by Herrick, and furnished him with the suggestion for his beautiful series of fairy fantasies. In the same way, I imagine, Sir John Suckling drew the inspiration of his well-known Ballad at a Wedding from the lively movement of Browne's Lydford Journey, which appeared in print as early as 1630.

CHAPTER IV

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS

Beginnings of Didactic, Epigrammatic, and Satiric Poetry:

Sir John Davies . Joseph Hall : John Marston

IT is unnecessary to insist upon the fact that the germs of

didactic poetry are contained in the religious system of the

Middle Ages. The course of this History has shown that

when the Church ceased to be alarmed at the fascinations

of literary art and fiction, she sought to turn them to her

own purposes. She originated the Miracle Play. She

metamorphosed the secular tales of the Gesta Romanorum

into sacred allegories. Allegory became in her hands

the great instrument for the interpretation of Nature.

We have seen how Dante declares that theology con-

descends by means of sensible images to reveal to the

human understanding the highest spiritual truths ; how

the Church explains to Langland the meaning of the

vision of the field full of folk ; and how Spenser makes

use of her ancient methods for the glorification of his

sovereign in the "dark allegorie" of the Faery Queen, or

veils his covert satire on the Court under the discourses

of his animals in Mother Hubberd's Tale.

When the scholastic system of the Church began to

be undermined by the Renaissance, allegory necessarily

ceased to be an effective instrument for the interpretation

of Nature. But the didactic impulse in poetry was as

strong as ever, and the poets, seeking new vehicles of

expression for their changed ideas of Nature and society,

found models convenient for their purpose in the elegant

54

imitations of Virgil's or Horace's didactic manner, produced by such late Latin verse-writers as Pontanus, author of Urania, Fracastoro, author of De Morbo Gallico, and Vida, author of the Ludus Scacchia and the Ars Poetica.

The first to introduce the classic style into the Court of Elizabeth was John Davies, author of Nosce Teipsum, who, though he was the earliest, remains in many respects the finest didactic poet in the English language.

The third son of John Davies, a gentleman of Wiltshire, he was born at Tisbury, in that county, in 1569, and was educated first at Winchester, afterwards either at New College or (according to other authorities) Queen's College, Oxford.

In 1587 he was admitted as a member of the Society of the Middle Temple, and in 1590 took his B.A. degree at Oxford.

His first published poem, Orchestra, was licensed for printing as early as 1593, but no edition is found earlier than 1596.

It was dedicated in a laudatory sonnet to his friend, Richard Martin, a member of the same Inn;

but in 1597 the latter must have given Davies deep offence, for the poet struck him publicly in the Middle Temple Hall, while seated at dinner.

In consequence of this breach of discipline and good manners, Davies was disbarred, and returned for a while to Oxford, where he occupied himself with the composition of his famous poem, Nosce Teipsum.

He himself records the spirit in which his work was conceived and written :-

If ought can teach us ought, Affliction's looks

(Making us look into ourselves so near)

Teach us to know ourselves beyond all books,

Or all the learned schools that ever were.

This mistress lately plucked me by the ear,

And many a golden lesson hath me taught;

Hath made my senses quick and reason clear,

Reformed my will, and rectified my thought.

She within lists my ranging mind hath brought,

That now beyond my self I list not go :

My self am centre of my circling thought,

Only my self I study, learn, and know.

I know my body of so frail a kind,

As force without, fevers within, can kill ;

I know the heavenly nature of my mind ;

But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will.

I know my soul hath power to know all things ;

Yet is she blind and ignorant in all ;

I know I am one of Nature's little kings ;

Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

I know my life's a pain and but a span ;

I know my sense is mocked with every thing :

And, to conclude, I know myself a MAN,

Which is a proud, and yet a wretched, thing.

Nosce Teipsum deservedly brought Davies a high poetical

reputation. It did more. Dedicated to the Queen, and

accompanied by Hymns to Astræa, it procured him the

opportunity of providing Elizabeth with an "entertain-

ment" when she made a progress to Harefield, the seat

of the Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere; and through the

influence of the latter Davies, after making a public

apology for his offence, was restored to his position at the

Bar and to his seniority. In 1601 he was returned to

Parliament as member for Corfe Castle, and spoke strongly

against the Monopolies. After the death of the Queen, in

1603, he was sent to announce at Edinburgh the acces-

sion of James I., and his new sovereign, who knew what

good writing was, embraced him as the author of Nosce

Teipsum. In the same year he was appointed Solicitor-

General in Ireland, under Lord Mountjoy, the new

Viceroy, and was knighted at Dublin. Being now

occupied completely with State affairs, he ceased to write

poetry, so that it becomes unnecessary to follow his career

in detail. He married, while in Ireland, Eleanor, daughter

of Lord Audley, a woman whose native eccentricity gradu-

ally grew into insanity. Returning to England in 1619,

he sat in the House of Commons as M.P. for Newcastle-

under-Lyne, and, being raised to the English Bench, was

appointed Lord Chief Justice in succession to Crewe, who

had been deprived of his position ; but before Davies

could enter on his office, he died on the 8th of December

With what intelligence Davies apprehended the art and grace of Vida's Latin style, and with what originality

he developed it in English, may be seen from the structure of his earliest didactic poem, Orchestra.

He imagines Antinous, the suitor of the chaste Penelope, endeavouring, in the absence of Ulysses, to persuade the Queen to dance

by all the devices of fanciful rhetorical argument, showing how the principles of dancing are inherent in the constitution of Nature.

Penelope replies with objections, which furnish Antinous with fresh starting-points for ingenious reasoning.

Finally, all his efforts proving vain, he calls upon Love, who descends from heaven with a magic glass, in which Antinous shows the Queen, as an argument of irresistible force, a vision of the future, namely,

the elegant revels of Cynthia and her Court, with which refined compliment the poem is brought to an abrupt conclusion.

Orchestra is professedly no more than a graceful tour de force of pagan invention.

Nosce Teipsum is a much greater work. The subject is the nature of the human soul ; and Mr. Grosart, Davies's editor, is at pains to prove

that the matter, as well as the form of the poem, is original. Such anxiety is uncalled for.

Every great didactic poem that the world preserves is founded on a basis of science provided by some philosophic predecessor.

Lucretius derived his didactic materials from the science of Democritus and Epicurus ; Virgil took his from Hesiod ; Pope found the line of philosophic reasoning, such as it is, in the Essay on Man, in Bolingbroke, Leibnitz, Pascal, and many others.

What is wanted of the didactic poet is, that he should so completely assimilate the philosophy of his subject as to be able to present it in a lucid and persuasive form, and with all the ornament proper to the art of poetry.

There can neither be any doubt that, before setting to work on his poem, Davies had deeply studied the subject as a whole in the most authoritative text-books of philosophy and theology, nor

that in some of these, notably Nemesius' De Natura Hominis, he found the suggestion of the organic ideas on

which his composition is built. On the other hand, the

order and method of the argument, the beauty of the

illustrations, and the harmony and dignity of the versifica-

tion are his own, and in view of the profundity and

difficulty of his subject, it will be generally allowed that

the poet's mastery of his materials raises Nosce Teipsum,

as far at least as the art is concerned, to the same rank as

the De Rerum Natura: in imagination, of course, neither

Davies- nor any other didactic poet can compare with

Lucretius.

The first part of the poem is occupied with a considera-

tion of the nature of the soul. After examining several

erroneous opinions on the subject, Davies states his own

conclusion :-

The soul a substance and a spirit is,

Which God Himself doth in the body make;

Which makes the Man; for every man from this

The nature of a man and name doth take.

And though this spirit be to the body knit,

As an apt mean her powers to exercise,

Which are life, motion, sense, and will, and wit,

Yet she survives although the body dies.

This conclusion he establishes by argument and illustra-

tion, proving in due course that the soul is a thing inde-

pendent of the body, and that the number of individual

souls is not limited from eternity, but that each is created

by God, concurrently with the production of new bodies,

by natural generation. He is hence led to consider an

objection raised by divines, who desire to clear the Creator

of all appearance of accountability for the corruption of

the human soul :-

How can we say that God the soul doth make,

But we must make Him author of her sin ?

Then from man's soul she doth beginning take,

Since in man's soul corruption did begin.

But this opinion he shows to be opposed both to

reason and revelation; and as to the difficulty of God's

foreknowledge coexisting with man's free-will, he deals

with it in the following passage, which is a good example of his great power of reasoning ingeniously in verse :-

Lastly the soul were better so to be

Born slave to sin, than not to be at all :

Since (if she do believe) One sets her free,

That makes her mount the higher for her fall.

Yet thus the curious wits will not content ;

They yet will know (sith God foresaw this ill)

Why His high Providence did not prevent

The declination of the first man's will.

If by His Word He had the current stayed

Of Adam's will, which was by nature free,

It had been one as if His Word had said,

I will henceforth that Man no man shall be.

For what is Man without a moving mind,

Which hath a judging wit and choosing will ?

Now if God's power should her election bind,

Her motions then would cease and stand all still.

And why did God in Man this soul infuse,

But that he should his Maker know and love ?

Now if Love be compelled and cannot choose,

How can it grateful or thankworthy prove ?

Love must free-hearted be and voluntary,

And not enchanted, or by fate constrained ;

Nor like that love which did Ulysses carry

To Circe's isle, with mighty charms enchained.

Besides, were we unchangeable in will,

And of a wit that nothing could misdeem ;

Equal to God, whose Wisdom shineth still,

And never errs, we might ourselves esteem.

So that if Man would be invariable,

He must be God, or like a rock or tree ;

For even the perfect angels were not stable,

But had a fall more desperate than we.

Then let us praise that Power which makes us be

Men as we are, and rest contented so ;

And knowing Man's fall was curiosity,

Admire God's counsels, which we cannot know.

And let us know that God the Maker is

Of all the souls in all the men that be :

Yet their corruption is no fault of His,

But the first man that broke God's first deceit.

He then goes on to show how the soul is united to

the body, and how it controls the different faculties of

sense. This is naturally the most fanciful and decorative

part of the poem. Davies shows the finest art in invent-

ing illustrations to elucidate his doctrine. Here, for

example, is an image illustrating the power of touch, which

at once conveys the general idea to the understanding :-

Lastly the feeling power, which is life's root,

Through every living part itself doth shed,

By sinews, which extend from head to foot,

And, like a net, all o'er the body spread.

Much like a subtle spider, which doth sit

In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide :

If ought do touch the utmost thread of it,

She feels it instantly on every side.

The operations of Fantasy—“ merc hand-maid of the

mind ”—in storing the impressions of outward objects in

the sensitive memory are thus described :-

The ledger-book lies in the brain behind,

Like Janus' eye which in his poll was set :

The lay-man's tables, the store-house of the mind,

Which doth remember much, and much forget.

Here Sense's apprehension end doth take ;

As, when a stone is into water cast,

One circle doth another circle make,

Till the last circle touch the bank at last.

Finally the supreme command of the soul over the society

of the faculties is illustrated in a passage which deserves

to be quoted at length, as exemplifying in a brief space the

poet's splendid power of reasoning, as well as the terseness

of his expression, the beauty of his imagery, his accurate

selection of philosophical terms, and his harmonious

versification :-

Our Wit is given Almighty God to know,

Our Will is given to love Him being known :

But God could not be known to us below

But by His works, which through the sense are shown.

iv SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS : SIR JOHN DAVIES 61

And as the Wit doth reap the fruits of Sense,

So doth the quickening power the senses feed :

Thus whilc they do their sundry gifts dispense,

The best the service of the least doth need.

Even so the King his Magistrates do serve,

Yet Commons feed both Magistrate and King :

The Commons' peace the Magistrates preserve

By borrowed power, which from the Prince doth spring.

The quickening power would be, and so would rest ;

The sense would not be only, but be well ;

But Wit's ambition longeth to the best,

For it desires in endless bliss to dwell.

And these three powers three sorts of men do make :

For some, like plants, their veins do only fill ;

And some, like beasts, their senses' pleasure take ;

And some, like angels, do contemplate still.

Therefore the fables turned some men to flowers,

And others did with brutish forms invest ;

And did of others make celestial powers,

Like angels, which still travail, yet still rest.

Yet these three powers are not three souls but one ;

As one and two are both contained in three,

Three being one number in itself alone :

A shadow of the Blessed Trinity.

The question then naturally arises whether this com-

plex organism is destroyed by death, and the remainder

of Nosce Teipsum is occupied with an examination of

reasons advanced for and against the immortality of the

soul. Each is stated and handled with the same facility

of expression that shines in the extracts from the poem

already made. Though not absolutely the first to write

in the decasyllabic quatrain with alternate rhymes, Davies

certainly employs the metre with finer skill and versatility

than any English poet who has used it on a large scale.

Neither the Gondibert of Davenant nor the Annus Mirabilis

is equal in flow and harmony of movement to Nosce Teipsum;

and though Davies does not attain—as indeed he does not

attempt—the depth of pathos found in Gray's Elegy, it

seems certain that the style of that noble poem could not

have been preserved through a great number of stanzas

without becoming monotonous.

52

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Davies obtained his mastery over his metre by having at

an early age used alternate rhymes, rather than the couplet,

for the purpose of epigram. Though there is no record

of the date of the publication of his epigrams, the allusions

they contain to matters of ephemeral interest suggest

that they must have been written some years before

the appearance of Orchestra. They number forty-eight,

and the first of them defines their scope and character—

Fly; merry Muse, unto that merry town,

Where thou mayst plays, revels, and triumphs see;

The house of Fame and theatre of renown,

Where all good wits and spirits love to be.

Fall in between their hands that praise and love thee,

And be to them a laughter and a jest.

But as for them which scorning shall reprove thee,

Disdain their wits, and think thine own the best.

But if thou find any so gross and dull

That think I do to private taxing lean,

Bid him go hang, for he is but a gull,

And knows not what an epigram doth mean,

Which taxeth, under a peculiar name,

A general vice, which merits public blame.

The field for the operations of the epigram was the

Court; and the appearance of this species of poem

shows that, in the Court of Elizabeth, the civil standard

of morals, manners, and taste had so far prevailed, that

persons who exceeded or fell short of it had become

marks for social ridicule. Each of the epigrams reflects

pointedly on some folly or affectation of behaviour, as

exhibited in different hangers - on of the Court and

fashionable society — “gulls,” gamblers, common de-

bauchees, loose women, bad poets, or clownish pretenders.

The standard of measurement is practically what is

recommended by Castiglione in the Courtier. Martial is

the model for style: the matter, as might be expected, is

generally gross, sometimes obscene, showing the author

to have been young, and the code of manners semi-

barbarous ; yet the point made is, as a rule, just and

reasonable. The following lines, satirising one of Drayton's

sonnets in praise of Idea, will illustrate the relation of

iv SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS : JOSEPH HALL 63

these classic epigrams to the romantic extravagances of

the age :-

Audacious painters have Nine Worthies made,

But poet Decius, more audacious far,

Making his mistress march with men of war,

With title of " Tenth Worthy " doth her lade.

Me thinks that Gull did use his terms as fit,

Which termed his love " a giant for her wit." 1

Court follies first suggested to Davies to write in the

manner of Martial. The epigrammatic subject-matter of

Davies, joined to an imitation of the satiric manner of

Juvenal and Persius, became the starting-point for Eng-

lish satire. The first public attempt at the Roman style

of satire in England was undoubtedly made in a collec-

tion of poems with the title of Virgidemiarum, which

appeared in 1597. The author himself laid claim to

the merit of originality :-

I first adventure with foolhardy might

To tread the steps of perilous despite.

I first adventure, follow me who list,

And be the second English satirist.

Joseph Hall, the writer of these verses, was born, as

he himself tell us, " 1st July 1574, at five of the clock in

the morning, in Bristow Park, within the parish of

Ashby-de-la-Zouch." He was educated in the grammar

school of the town, and, as he was one of twelve children,

his father, who was of the household of the Earl of

Huntingdon, had intended not to send him to a university.

The intervention of others, however, procured Joseph

admission, at the age of fifteen, to Emmanuel College,

Cambridge, of which he was elected first scholar and

then fellow. " I spent," he says, " in that society six or

1 The point of the epigram is explained by Ben Jonson, who told Dium-

mond of Hawthornden : " Sir J. Davies played on an epigram on Drayton's,

who in a sonnet concluded his Mistress might have been the Ninth Worthy ;

and said he used a phrase like Dametas in Arcadia, who said, For Wit his Mistress

might be a giant." The sonnet was Amour 8 in Idea's Mirror (see p. 29).

It was suppressed in consequence of Drayton's quarrel with the Countess of

Bedford, and perhaps too from a perception that Davies's ridicule was just.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

seven years more with such contentment as the rest of

my life hath in vain shown to yield." He enjoyed a

great reputation as a lecturer on rhetoric, and it was

during this period that he published the first three books

of the satires above referred to. The remaining three

books were issued with the same title in 1598, but, as

Hall was then mixed up in a quarrel with Marston, his

satires were seized, at the same time with those of his

rival, by order of the Bishop of London, and were

ordered to be burned on the ground of their supposed

indecency. Such a charge was ridiculous with respect to

Hall's work, which was soon released by the authorities,

and was reprinted in 1599 and 1602. It was the last

poetical production of the writer, the rest of whose life

was devoted to the service of the Church.

In this his advancement was steady, and his career, with

the exception of the closing years of his life, prosperous.

He was appointed in rapid succession to the livings of Hal-

stead, Waltham, and the prebend of Willenhall ; James I.

sent him to the Synod of Dort to reconcile, if possible,

the differences between the Calvinists and the Arminians ;

he also made him Dean of Gloucester. Under Charles I.

he was raised first to the Bishopric of Exeter, and after-

wards to that of Norwich. In the latter capacity he

suffered much from the Long Parliament, whose seques-

trators deprived him of the rents due both from his

spiritual and temporal lands, allowing him instead a

maintenance of £400 a year. After supporting himself

in his trials, for some years, with great dignity and patience,

Bishop Hall died on the 8th of September 1656, being

then in the eighty-second year of his age. He was, as a

divine, too reasonable for the times in which he lived.

When he wrote against what he himself calls " the

damnable corruption of the Roman Church," he found

himself " suddenly exposed to the rash censures of many

well-affected and zealous Protestants," because he dwelt

on the necessity of a visible Church. When he tried to

be tolerant of the Puritans he fell under the suspicion of

Laud ; on the other hand, his very moderate apology for

IV

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS : JOSEPH HALL

65

Episcopal Government brought down upon him the savage invective of Milton.

Milton, in the worst style of controversy, fell, for lack of argument, upon the title of his adversary's satires, which Hall had rather pointlessly called Toothless.

"That such a poem," says the Puritan pamphleteer, "should be toothless I still affirm it to be a bull, taking away the essence of what it calls itself. For if it bite neither the persons nor the vices, how is it a satire? And if it bites either, how is it toothless? So that toothless satires are as if he had said toothless teeth."1

In this there was some justice. The nature of satire, in the Roman sense of the word, was as yet little understood. Hall, was indeed, technically speaking, scarcely entitled to call himself the "first English satirist." Spenser's Mother Hubberd's Tale is a satirical apologie, and in 1593 Thomas Lodge had published five satires in his Fig for Momus, saying of them : "My satires, to speak truth, are by pleasure rather placed here to prepare and try the ear than to feed it ; because, if they pay well, the whole centon of them already in my hands shall suddenly be published." Lodge's satires were, however, of a kind that could interest nobody, being mere abstract sermons upon things in general, smoothly written, but without pith or pungency, so that Hall in his assertion,

I first adventure : follow me who list,

And be the second English satirist,

might very well be ignorant of the claims of any predecessor (especially as Donne's satires were not published), and was, indeed, really the first to attempt an imitation in English of Juvenal's manner.

His poems were nevertheless rather of the nature of epigrams than satires. They were contained in six books, of which the first three, published before the rest, were classified as (1) Poetical ; (2) Academical ; (3) Moral. By far the best are those in the first book. These are directed against the poetical taste of the day, and are

1 Apology against a Pamphlet, etc.

VOL. III

F

lively and humorous, besides being sometimes written in harmonious verse. But as the longest of them does not much exceed fifty lines, the shortest being confined to twelve, there is scarcely more room for treatment of the subject than Davies took in his epigrams. Each kind of fashionable or popular poem of the time—the bombastic tragedy, the tragic romance, the Complaint in the style of the Mirror for Magistrates, the metrical paraphrase of Scripture, the English hexameter, the Petrarcan sonnet — falls in turn under the lash of the satirist; but no attempt is made to view the subject of poetry from any elevated critical standpoint. The following satire, on the sacred poems of the period, is a good example of the style employed :-

SATIRE VIII

Hence, ye profane mell 1 not with holy things,

That Sion's Muse from Palestina brings.

Parnassus is transformed to Sion hill,

And Jewry palms her steep ascents doon fill.

Now good St. Peter weeps pure Helicon,

And both the Maries make a music moan : 2

Yea, and the prophet of the heavenly lyre,

Great Solomon, sings in the English quire ;

And is become a new-found sonnetist,

Singing his love, the holy spouse of Christ ; 3

Like as she were some light-skirts of the rest,

In mightiest ink-hornisms he can thither wrest.

Ye Sion Muses shall by my dear will,

For this your zeal and far-admirèd skill,

Be straight transported from Jerusalem,

Unto the holy house of Bethlehem.

In the second book, which dwells on the different kinds of neglect to which polite learning is subject, the following picture of the condition of a domestic tutor is characteristic :-

A gentle squire would gladly entertain

Into his house some trencher-chappellain;

1 Meddle.

2 See Southwell's poems, mentioned on pp. 121-123.

3 Alluding to Drayton's Harmonic of the Church, in which the Song of Solomon is versified.

iv SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: JOSEPH HALL 67

Some willing man that might instruct his sons,

And that would stand to good conditions :

First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed,

Whiles his young master lieth o'er his head ;

Secondly, that he do, on no default,

Ever presume to sit above the salt ;

Third, that he never change his trencher twice ;

Fourth, that he use all common courtesies ;

Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait ;

Last, that he never his young master beat,

But he must ask his mother to define

How many jerks she would his breech should line.

All these observed, he could contented be,

To give five marks and winter livery.1

The third book satirises the extravagance of con-

temporary manners and fashions in a style like the

following :—

Great Osmond knows not how he shall be known,

When once great Osmond shall be dead and gone,

Unless he rear up some rich monument,

Ten furlongs nearer to the firmament.

Some stately tomb he builds, Egyptian wise,

Rex regum written on the pyramis :

Whereas great Arthur lies in ruder oak,

That never felt none but the feller's stroke.

Small honour can be got with gaudy grave,

Nor it thy rotten name from death can save.

The fairer tomb, the fouler is thy name ;

The greater pomp procuring greater shame.

Thy monument make thou thy living deeds ;

No other tomb than that true virtue needs.

What ! had he nought whereby he might be known,

But costly pilements of some curious stone ?

The matter nature's, and the workman's frame

His purse's cost : where then is Osmond's name ?

Deserved'st thou ill ? well were thy name and thee,

Wert thou inditchèd in great secrecy ;

Whereas no passenger might curse thy dust,

Nor dogs sepulchral sate their gnawing lust.

Thine ill deserts cannot be graved with thee,

So long as on thy grave they engraved be.

All these show ingenuity in their kind, but the kind

is rather that of Martial than Juvenal or Persius. And

1 This may be compared with Oldham's satire on the same subject.

See p. 503.

though in his last three books Hall considerably extended

the length of his satires, he did not thereby approach any

nearer to the style of the masters he sought to imitate.

He had read the Roman poets, and especially the satirists,

with great advantage to his taste : they had refined his

literary perceptions, quickened his sense of proportion,

and taught him how to enliven his verse with pleasant

and witty turns of expression. But the time had not yet

come when it was possible to imitate the spirit of the

Roman satirist. Refined vice was not widely enough

spread through society, or practised on a sufficiently large

scale, to afford opportunities for those moral and philo-

sophical invectives, picturesquely illustrated by living

portraits, which give an undying interest to the satire of

Juvenal. Nor had the nation advanced so far in self-

government as to fix the public attention on the sayings

and doings of ambitious statesmen, contending factions,

and rival wits ; this was to come in the days of Dryden

and Pope, under the rule of the English Parliament. At

present all the social energy of the nation was confined

within the narrow circle of the Court ; and the vices and

follies of individual courtiers were felt to be visited with

adequate chastisement when they were pilloried in the

light epigrams of Harington and Davies, or scourged on

the stage in the new Moralities of Ben Jonson.

The failure of the attempt to extend the province of

satire beyond the range of epigram is more conspicuous

in the satires of John Marston than in those of Hall, in

proportion as the attempt itself is more ambitious. Of

Marston (who was born about 1575, who matriculated at

Brasenose College, Oxford, in February 1692, and died on

25th June 1634) I shall have more to say in his capacity of

dramatist. But his first appearance before the public was

as the author of Pigmalion, a composition of the same

class as Venus and Adonis, but falling as far below the

latter in richness of imagery, as it transcended it in lewd-

ness of description. Apparently public opinion decided

that the limits of what was permissible had been passed,

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS: JOHN MARSTON

69

and when Pigmalion found its way to Cambridge, Joseph

Hall wrote a severe epigram on it, which he caused to be

pasted on every copy offered for sale. Marston, seeing

that judgment was given against him, immediately turned

round, and, pretending that Pigmalion was a veiled satire

on the amorous poetry of the day, republished it (1598)

in a volume followed by "certain satyrs," with an address

from "the author to his precedent poem." In this he

asked sarcastically :-

Is not my pen complete? Are not my lines

Right in the swaggering humour of these times?

but ended with announcing that, having cheated readers

into the belief that Pigmalion was written seriously, he

would now show the age up in its real colours, by writing

as a satirist :-

Now by the whips of epigrammatists

I'll not be lashed for my dissembling shifts :

And therefore I'll use Popeling's discipline,

Lay ope my faults to Mastigophoros' eyne ;

Censure myself, 'fore others me deride,

And scoff at me as if I had denied,

Or thought my poem good, when that I se

My lines are froth, my stanzas sapless be.

Thus having railed against myself a while,

I'll snarl at those which do the world beguile

With maskèd shows. Ye changing Proteans, list,

And tremble at a barking satirist !

Doubtless being afraid that the world would be sceptical of

his sincerity, he reverts again and again to his intention :-

I that e'en now lisped like an amorist,

Am turned into a snap-haunch satirist.

And

A partial praise shall never elevate

My settled censure of my own esteem,

A cankered verdict of malignant hate

Shall ne'er provoke me worse myself to deem.

Spite of despite and rancour's villainy,

I am myself, so is my poesy.

And

Curio, knowst my sprite ?

Yet deemst that in sad seriousness I write

Such nasty stuff as is Pigmalion?

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

His mingled fear and hate of his antagonist Hall are always appearing. He attacks him in one satire as an envious railer against the poets of the time : in another he professes contempt for the hostile epigram :--

Smart jerk of wit ! Did ever such a strain

Rise from an apish schoolboy's childish brain ?

And, under the name of "Judicial Musus," he writes against him as an envious, railing pedant :--

Musus, here's Rhodes, let's see thy boasted leap,

Or else avaunt, lewd cur, presume not speak,

Or with thy venom-sputtering chaps to bark

Gainst well-penned poems in the tongue-tied dark.

Though he claimed to be inspired by his hatred of the Titanic vices of his time, the subjects of his satire are for the most part the follies and extravagances of such persons as are lashed in the light epigrammatic verse of Davies and Hall--the hulking braggart, the whining sonneteer, the over-dressed gull, the gluttonous Puritan ; he hints, however, at darker vices, and it is of course possible that under the names of Curio, Tubrio, Ruscus, Luxurio, he may have had in view particular persons of the "Inglese Italianato" school. It is significant that the groundwork of all his descriptions of vice is the sin of lechery, which he had sought in Pygmalion to decorate with as much brilliancy of colour as he could command, and, as he announces to the reader that it is his intention to chastise himself in his satires, it is likely enough that, in seeming to satirise the world without him, he is usually holding up the mirror to his own prurient mind. His view of human nature is founded on extreme Calvinism : he holds man to be born in a state of absolute and utter corruption, from which the only salvation is by divine grace. In the following lines, taken from a satire entitled Cras ("To-morrow"), his philosophy reaches its high-water mark :--

If not to-day (quoth that Nasonian),

Much less to-morrow. "Yes," saith Fabian,

SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS. JOHN MARSTON

71

"For ingrained habits, dyed with often dips,

Are not so soon discolourèd. Young slips

New set are easily moved and plucked away,

But elder roots clip faster in the clay."

I smile at thee, and at the Stagyrite,

Who holds the liking of the appetite,

Being fed with actions often put in ure,

Hatchèth the soul in quality impure,

Or pure; may be in virtue: but for vice

That comes by inspiration with a trice.

Young Furius, scarce fifteen years of age,

But is straightway right fit for marriage

Unto the devil; for sure they would agree,

Betwixt their souls there is such sympathy.

O where's your sweaty habit, when each ape

That can but spy the shadow of his shape,

That can no sooner ken what's virtuous,

But will avoid it and be vicious,

Without much do or far-fetched habiture?

In earnest thus: It is a sacred cure

To salve the soul's dread wounds; Omnipotent

That Nature is that cures the impotent

Evn in a moment. Sure Grace is infused

By Divine Favour, not by actions used,

Which is as permanent as Heaven's bliss

To them that have it; then no habit is.

There is perhaps no passage in the satire of the period

that approaches so nearly to the spirit of Persius. For

Persius is the master whom Marston is always attempting

to copy, though with but a scant measure of success. It

was easier from the lofty, if arrogant, platform of Stoicism

to take a measure of the decaying morals of the Roman

State, than to apply the narrow theological dogmas of

Calvin to the swelling tide of national life in the England

of Elizabeth.

To imitate the external manner of the Roman satirist

was unfortunately a less difficult task; and his studied

harshness, obscurity, and violence of metaphor, are repro-

duced in Marston with all the ill-judged admiration of a

copyist. Marston's satirical style is stuffed with sudden

apostrophes, abrupt questions, interjections, such as

"What!" "How now?" "Fie, fie!" "Tush!" "But ho!"

etc., etc. In order to contrast himself with the smooth

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

sonneteers of the time, he affects a rugged contempt for harmony :—

Then hence, base ballad stuff! my poetry

Disclaims you quite ; for know my liberty

Scorns rhyming laws. Alas, poor idle sound !

Since I first Phœbus knew I never found

Thy interest in sacred poesy ;

Thou to invention add'st but surquedry,

A gaudy ornature, but hast no part

In that soul-pleasing high infused art.1

He chooses also the coarsest and harshest terms, by way of displaying his contempt for false refinement.

"Putrid slime," "guzzel dogs," "yerking rhyme," "slubbered devotion," "rezed bacon," "dunghill peasants," "belching blasphemy," "to lusk," "jobbernoule," "muddy scum," are the kind of phrases with which he attempts to add force and character to his verse.

When he speaks of a class of persons, his habit is to tack the syllable "an " on to any proper name—for example, "Priapian," "Janian," "Adrastian," "Lamians," "Briarians," "Aquinians" ; and by tricks like these he fancied that his poetry acquired an air of originality.

On the whole, Ben Jonson, who ridiculed this satirist's mannerisms with great effect, judged his merits justly in the title of the play which contains the character of Crispinus.

Marston was a "poetaster," with sufficient intelligence to perceive the drift of public taste, but with no more skill than sufficed to gratify that taste with brazen impudence, loud tones, and glaring colours.

He is always striking an attitude to call attention to himself.

At one time he invokes the aid of Melancholy :—

Thou nursing mother of fair Wisdom's lore,

Ingenuous Melancholy, I implore

Thy grave assistance : take thy gloomy seat—

Enthrone thee in my blood !

At another he dedicates his satires " to Everlasting Oblivion "2 :—

1 Satire iv.

2 On his tombstone in the Temple Church was the inscription "Oblivioni Sacrum."

Thou mighty gulf, insatiate cormorant,

Deride me not, though I seem petulant

To fall into thy chops. Let others pray

For ever their fair poems flourish may :

But as for me, hungry Oblivion,

Devour me quick, accept my orison,

My earnest prayers, which do importune thee,

With gloomy shade of thy still empery,

To vail both me and my rude poesie.

Theatrical appeals like these, followed by a general

invective against vice, come to very little. What can be

an easier form of satire than to suppose one's age a

seething mass of corruption, and one's self inspired by

hatred of villainy to unmask the shows and hypocrisies by

which one is surrounded ? Marston's indiscriminate attack

on everything and everybody resulted in monotonous

repetitions. He has left behind him no single portrait

which (and this, in the eyes of posterity, is the best justi-

fication of satire) helps to preserve in verse the standard

of moral truth, or an image of the manners and characters

of the time.

CHAPTER V

THE TRANSLATORS UNDER ELIZABETH AND JAMES I.

Sir John Harington : Edward Fairfax : Joshua Sylvester :

George Chapman : George Sandys

While the course of English culture thus followed a line of inward native development, the volume of our

poetry was swelled, and its mixed character rendered still more complex, by ideas imported into it from

without, through translations of the most famous poems of classical antiquity, or of modern works which had

attained a wide celebrity on the continent of Europe. I have already traced this movement of translation in

its initial stages during the reign of Henry VIII. and the first years of Elizabeth : the revival of the translating

impulse at the close of the reign of the last of the Tudors, and under the first of the Stuarts, is important, for the

purposes of history, both as showing a change of spirit since the earlier period in the minds of the translators

themselves, and also on account of the influence which their work exerted on the character of later original

composition.

The first translation which it is necessary to mention is that of the Orlando Furioso by Sir John Harington.

This poet was born in 1561. He was the son of Sir John Harington and his second wife, Isabella Markham, and

was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He studied law at Lincoln's Inn, but most of his time

seems to have been spent at Court, where, to amuse his companions, he translated the episode of Giocondo from

74

the 28th canto of the Orlando Furioso. The Queen, who

was his godmother, reproved him for his attempt to

corrupt the morals of her ladies, and ordered him to

leave the Court, and as a punishment, to translate in his

own house the whole of the Orlando Furioso. His task

accomplished, he returned to Court in 1591, but irre-

pressible in his wit he scattered epigrams right and left,

and in 1596 was again expelled, having incurred the

Queen's anger through a satire called The Metamorphosis

of Ajax, which was supposed to contain some reflections

on the Earl of Leicester. He accompanied Essex into

Ireland in 1598, and returned with the Earl when the

latter sought to excuse himself to the Queen after the

expedition against Tyrone. Elizabeth received him

harshly, and bade him "go home." "I did not stay,"

says Harington, "to be bidden twice : if all the Irish

rebels had been at my heels, I should not have had

better speed ; for I did now flee from one whom I both

loved and feared too." To propitiate the Queen, he

afterwards put into her hands a journal which he kept

of Essex's proceedings in Ireland, thus saving himself by

the sacrifice of his chief. When the Queen was dying he

sent, as a New Year's gift, to James VI. in Scotland, a

lantern constructed so as to typify the waning splendour

of Elizabeth and the glory that was to come; at the

same time he published a tract defending the claims of

James to the throne of England against those of the

Spanish Infanta. In spite of this flattery, he was

unable for some time to gain the ear of the new

king ; but he eventually seems to have been appointed

tutor to Prince Henry, whose favour he contrived to

retain till his own death in 1612 at Kelston, the

country seat which his father had acquired by his

marriage with his first wife, Joanna Dyngley, a natural

daughter of Henry VIII.

In the last volume I dwelt upon the character of the

Orlando Furioso. I showed that remarkable poem to be

the product of the sceptical, contemplative, and humorous

1 Nugae Antiquae (1804), vol. i. p. 356.

genius of the Italians; at the period of their political

decline, viewing critically, in the light of the classical

Renaissance, the marvels of chivalrous romance be-

queathed to the world by the monkish chroniclers. I

further showed that the greater spirits of Elizabeth's

Court, such as Sidney and Spenser, were, by the temper

of the society about them, disqualified from appreciating

the true significance of Ariosto's poem ; that Spenser

accordingly regarded it as a work composed in a vein

not less serious than the Iliad; and that, in taking the

Orlando for his model in the structure of the Faery Queen,

he was convinced that Ariosto was inspired by the moral

motives that animated his own work.1

In some respects Harington was better fitted to be

the interpreter of the Orlando Furioso than the grave

and enthusiastic Spenser. A wit, a courtier, a man of

pleasure, he could sympathise with that large element

in the Italian poem which Ariosto derived from the

Decameron of Boccaccio, and which Boccaccio himself

had developed from the fabliaux of the trouvères. His

translation, as we have seen, originated in his chance

rendering of the story of Giocondo ; but when he was

forced to translate the poem as a whole, his instinct

told him that he would obtain no credit, either from his

Queen or his countrymen, if he executed his task in the

spirit that was most congenial to him. He has left us

an interesting account in his Preface of the manner in

which he solved the different æsthetic and moral problems

which presented themselves to him for solution :-

Some grave men misliked that I should spend so much good

time on such a trifling work as they deemed a poem to be.

Some more nicely found fault with so many two-syllabled and

three-syllabled rhymes. Some not undeservedly reproved the

fantasticalness of the notes, in which they say I have strained

myself to make mention of some of my kindred and friends,

that might well be left out. And one fault more there is which

I will tell myself, though many would never find it ; and that is

that I have cut short some of his cantos, in leaving out many

1 Vol. ii. pp. 259-267.

ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS 77

staves of them, and sometimes put the matter of two or three

staves into one. To these reproofs I shall pray you, gentle or

noble readers, with patience hear my defence, and then I will

end. For the first reproof, either it is already excused, or it

will never be excused; for I have, I think, sufficiently proved

both the art to be allowable and the work to be commendable;

yet I will tell you an accident that happened unto myself.

When I was entered a pretty way into the translation, about the

seventh book, coming to write that where Melissa, in the person

of Rogero's tutor, comes and reproves Rogero in the fourth stave,

Was it for this that I in youth thee fed

With marrow, etc.;

and again,

Is this a means or ready way you trow

That other worthy men have trod before,

A Cæsar or a Scipio to grow?

straight I began to think that my tutor, a grave and learned

man, and one of a very austere life, might say to me in this

sort, Was it for this that I read Aristotle and Plato to you,

and instructed you carefully both in Greek and Latin, to have

you become a translator of Italian toys? But while I thought

thus, I was aware that it was no toy that put such an honest and

serious consideration into my mind. Now for them that find

fault with polysyllable metre, methink they are like those that

blame men for putting sugar in their wine, and chide too bad

about it, and say they mar all, but yet end with God's blessing

in their hearts. For indeed if I had known their diets, I could

have saved some of my cost, at least some of my pain; for when

a verse ended with civility, I could easier, after the ancient

manner of rhyme, have made see or flee or decree to answer it,

leaving the accent upon the last syllable, than hunt after three-

syllable words to answer it with facility, gentility, tranquillity,

hostility, scurrility, debility, agility, fragility, mobility, nobility,

which who mislike may taste lamp-oil with their ears. And as

for two-syllable metres, they be so approved in other languages,

that the French call them the feminine rhyme, as the sweeter,

and the one-syllable the masculine. But in a word, to answer

this, and to make them for ever hold their peaces of this

point, Sir Philip Sidney not only useth them, but affecteth them :

signify; dignify; shamed is, named is; blamed is; hide away, bide

away. Though, if my many blotted papers that I have made

in this kind might afford me authority to give a rule of it,

I would say that to part them with a one-syllable metre between

them, would give it best grace. For men use to sow with

the hand, and not with the whole sack, so I would have the ear fed, but not cloyed, with these pleasures and sweet falling metres.

He then deals shortly with the other two objections brought against his translation; and concludes his Apology of Poetry with an advertisement to the reader as to the spirit in which the poem should be read. In order to propitiate the austere critics to whom he had alluded, Harington inserted, at the end of each canto of his translation, a short commentary explaining the Moral, the History, the Allegory, and the Allusion :-

The Moral, that we may apply it to our own manners and disposition to the amendment of the same.

The History, both that the true ground of the poem may appear (for learned men hold that a perfect poem must ground of a truth, as I show more at large in another place), as also to explain some things that are lightly touched by him as examples of all times, either of old or of late.

The Allegory, of some things that are merely fabulous, yet having an allegorical sense, which everybody at the first show cannot receive.

The Allusion, of fictions to be applied to something done or written of in times past, as also where it may be applied without offence to the time present.

To any one who appreciates the ironic vein in which Ariosto treated his romantic materials, Harington's method of interpreting the Orlando Furioso will appear amusingly inappropriate ; but it is full of instruction, as a mirror of the moral and intellectual atmosphere of Elizabeth's Court. Here, for example, is an allegorical explanation of the meaning of certain marvellous events related by Ariosto, which is worthy to stand with Porphyry's note on the Grotto of the Nymphs in the Odyssey:-1

In the destruction of the Isle of Ebuda, and all that hath been said of it before, with the monsters that are said to devour women naked and forsaken, this allegorical sense is to be picked out, though to some perhaps it will seem greatly strained. By

1 Vol. i. p. 344.

the Island is signified Pride and looseness of life, that they are brought to by pirates, which signify flatterers that go roving about to tice them hither, robbing them naked of all their comely garments of modesty and sobriety, and at last leave them naked upon the shore, despised and forsaken, to be devoured of most ugly and misshapen monsters signified by the Ork, as filthy diseases, deformities, and all kind of contemptible things, which monsters a good plain friend with an anchor of fidelity will kill, as Orlando did this, and so clothe again the nakedness that before pride and flattery made us lay open to the world.

Viewed on its purely poetical side, Harington's translation has many merits. It shows a considerable command of a plain, manly, and copious vocabulary, in itself well fitted to reproduce the beautifully idiomatic verse in which Ariosto conducts his narrative, and of the essence of his style. On the other hand, Harington had not genius enough to find a proper equivalent, either for Ariosto's exquisite finish and elegance, or for his irony. This may be seen if we take the Italian poet's very pathetic account of the parting scene between Zerbino and Isabella, after the former has received his mortal wound :-

A questo la mestissima Isabella,

Declinando la faccialacrimosa

E congiungendo la sua bocca a quella

Di Zerbin languidetta come rosa,

Rosa non colta in sua stagion, si ch' ella

Impallidisca in su la siepe ombrosa;

Disse: "Non vi pensate già, mia vita,

Far senza mi quest' ultima partita.

"Di ciò, cor mio, nessun timor vi tocchi :

Ch' io vo' seguirvi o in ciel o nell' inferno.

Convien che l' uno e l' altro spirito scocchi,

Insieme vada, insieme stia in eterno.

Non si tosto vedrò chiudervi gliocchi,

O che m' ucciderà il dolore interno,

O se quel non può tanto, io vi prometto

Con questa spada oggì passarmi il petto.

"De' corpi nostri ho ancor non poca speme

Che me' morti, che vivi, abbian ventura

Qui forse alcun capiterà, ch' insieme,

Mosso a pietà, darà lor sepultura."

80

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Così dicendo, le reliquie estreme

Dello spirto vital che morte fura,

Va ricogliendo con le labbre meste,

Fin ch’ una minima aura ve ne reste.1

Harington translates this as follows, cutting down the

original, on the principle to which he calls attention, to

two stanzas :—

To this the woful Isabel replies

With watered eyes, and heart suffused with anguish,

Her face to his, and joining her fair eyes

To his that like a withered rose did languish,

“No thought (said she), my dear, in thee arise

For me, for know I neither do nor can wish

Thee to survive, I will be thine for ever;

Life could not, and death shall not, us dissever.

“No sooner shall thy breath thy breast forsake,

But I will follow thee, I care not whither :

Grief, or this sword, of me an end shall make;

And if some stranger after shall come hither,

I hope of us such pity he will take

To lay our bodies in one grave together.”

This said, about his neck her arms she clasped,

And draws the fainting breath that oft he gasped.

Compare again the admirably picturesque humour

and irony in the following description by Ariosto of

Orlando’s prowess in the midst of a troop of Dutchmen

with Harington’s version of the same in English :—

Il cavalier d’ Anglante, ove più spesse

Vide le genti e l’ arme, abbassò l’ asta ;

Ed uno in quella e poscia un altro messe,

E un altro e un altro, che sembrar di pasta :

E fin a sei ve n’ infilzò ; e li resse

Tutti una lancia : e perchè ella non basta

A più capir, lasciò il settimo fuore

Ferito sì, che di quel colpo muore

Non altrimenti nell’ estrema arena

Veggiam le rane di canali e fosse

Dal cauto arcier nei fianchi e nella schiena

L’ una vicina all’ altra esser percosse ;

Ne dalla freccia, fin che tutta piena

Non sia da un capo all’ altro, esser rimosse.

La grave lancia Orlando da se scaglia,

E colla spada entrò nella battaglia.2

1 Orlando Furioso, canto xxiv. st. 80-82.

2 Ibid. canto ix. st. 68-69.

v ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS 81

Here is Harington :--

The noble Earl, with couchèd spear in hand,

Doth ride whereas he finds the thickest prease,

Two, three, and four, that in his way did stand

The spear doth pierce, nor at the fifth did cease,

It passed the sixth the broadness of a hand,

Nor that same hand-breadth maketh any peace,

The seventh so great that a blow therewith he strake,

That down he fell, and never after spake.

Ev'n as a boy that shoots abroad for sport,

And finds some frogs that in a ditch have bred,

Doth prick them in an arrow in such sort

One after one until such store be dead,

As that for more his shaft may seem too short,

From feathers filled already to the head;

So with his spear Orlando him bestirr'd,

And that once left, he draweth out his swoid.

Inferior as Harington is to his original, his translation

furnishes the first example of the capacity of the English

language for naturalising the free conversational irony

and the burlesque metrical effects of the Italian poets,

which were afterwards developed with so much success

by Byron in Don Juan.

The work of Tasso was far more comprehensible to

the poets of Elizabeth's Court than was that of his ironic

predecessor. Tasso's admirable poetical genius was in

all directions retrenched and limited by the environment

in which destiny compelled it to move. But the mood in

which Gerusalemme Liberata was conceived was grave and

religious, and not altogether unlike that in which Spenser

wrote his preface to the Faery Queen; and among those

Englishmen who read that preface with sympathy and

admiration Tasso was fortunate in finding for his great

poem a translator of genius.

Edward Fairfax was the son--some say the natural

son--of Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton in Yorkshire, and

was therefore great-uncle to the famous general of the

Parliament in the civil wars. The date of his birth is

unknown, nor is much recorded of him beyond the fact

that he lived in scholastic seclusion at Newhall, in the

parish of Fuiston, Yorkshire, where he helped his brother,

VOL. III

G

the first Lord Fairfax, in the education of his children.

Besides the translation of Jerusalem Delivered, he wrote twelve eclogues, only one of which has been preserved, and (in 1621) A Discourse of Witchcraft, which was occasioned by the belief that two of his daughters had been bewitched.

He died in 1635 at Fuiston, where he was buried.

Fairfax's translation of the Jerusalem, published in 1600, bears in every stanza the impress of an original and poetical mind.

He had been anticipated in his labours by a translator modestly describing himself as " R. C., Esquire "—usually identified with Richard Carew, the Cornish antiquary,—who, in 1594, had industriously reproduced the first five books of Tasso's poem, endeavouring to find an equivalent English phrase for every word of the Italian.

The result, it need hardly be said, was a wooden and lifeless work.

Fairfax understood that, if the life of his original was to be preserved, it must undergo metempsychosis ; and, while faithfully adhering to the substance of his author, he did not shrink from radically altering his form, so as to allow his spirit full freedom of movement in the new medium.

Tasso's aim was to find a form of epic dignity for the Italian genius of romance, as embodied in the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto ; and he sought to achieve his object by combining the marvellous episodical incidents of his predecessors with historical matter treated after the classical manner of Homer and Virgil.

In this combination the element of romance was predominant.

Though the Jerusalem teems with reminiscences of the Iliad and the Æneid in the shape of images, metaphors, and particular imitations and allusions, yet Tasso takes the greatest pains to get rid of all pagan associations of idea, and, in spite of the classic restrictions voluntarily imposed upon it, his style never fails to recall the free Italian character which the tradition of Boiardo and Ariosto had rendered indispensable in all narrative poems written in ottava rima.

To preserve these characteristics in English was neither useful nor possible.

Fairfax saw that, in his translation, the element of epic dignity must prevail over

ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS

that of romance, and that, while it was his duty to

preserve, as far as possible, the meaning and exquisite

melody of his original, he could not do this if he followed

R. C.'s plan of reproducing phrases in detail. Hence,

though he has translated the Jerusalem in (I believe)

exactly the same number of lines as the Italian, he has

used the greatest freedom in modifying the form of

expression within each stanza. It is evident that he

came to his task after a careful study of the best English

poets of his time, particularly Spenser, and that he was

well acquainted with all the arts of epigram, antithesis,

and alliteration, which had been introduced into the

language by Lyly. While Tasso, with the fear of the

Inquisition before his eyes, abstained from the slightest

mention of a heathen deity, though he might be imitating

passages in the classics recording the intervention of such

deities, Fairfax, who had, like all the English poets of

his time, ranged with delight through Greek and Latin

poetry, never hesitated to import into his translation

mythological terms and allusions, even where Tasso had

made no mention of them. Hence the main elements

of his style comprised at once the archaic words and

terminations of Spenser, the combination of substantive

and adjective characteristic of the Latin poets, and the

elaborate concetti cultivated by the modern Italians; all

these contrary principles being harmonised in his verse

by a fine ear and an unerring judgment—qualities that

conspire to give Godfrey of Bulloigne a character as dis-

tinct as Pope's translation of the Iliad. A few examples

will illustrate to the reader the essential differences be-

tween the style of the original and that of the translation.

In the first book Tasso describes how the angel

Gabriel is sent by the Almighty to Godfrey. He

grounds himself entirely on Virgil's description of

Mercury's message to Æneas, where the god alights

on Mount Atlas; but he avoids any word which might

betray the heathen source of his inspiration :--

Così parlogli, e Gabriel s' accinse

Veloce ad eseguir l' imposte cose.

84

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

La sua forma invisibil d' aria cinse,

Ed al senso mortal la sottopose

Umane membra, aspetto uman sì finse

Ma di celeste maestà, il compose :

Tra giovane e fanciullo età confine

Prese, ed ornò di raggi il biondo crine.

Ali bianche vestì, ch' han d' or le cime

Infaticabilmente agili e preste ;

Fende i venti e le nubi e va sublime

Sovra la terra, e sovra il mar con queste.

Così vestito indiriżżossi all' ime

Parti del mondo il Messaggier celeste.

Pria sul Libano monte ci si ritenne,

E si librò sull' adeguate penne.

E ver le piaggie di T'ortosa poi

Drizzò precipitandolo il volo in giuso.

Sorgeva il nuovo Sol da' lidi Eoi

Parte già fuor, ma 'l più nell' onde chiuso ;

E porgea matutini i preghi suoi

Goffredo a Dio com' egli avea per uso ;

Quando a paro col sol, ma più lucente,

L' Angelo gli apparì dall' oriente.

Fairfax, it will be seen from the following, does not

hesitate to speak polytheistically of “Titan” and “Phœbus”

where Tasso only speaks of “ the sun ”:-

This said, the angel swift himself prepared

To execute the charge imposed aright :

In form of airy members fair imbarred,

His spirits pure were subject to our sight ;

Like to a man in show and shape he fared

But full of heavenly majesty and might ;

A stripling seemed he thrice five winters old,

And radiant beams adorned his locks of gold.

Of silver wings he took a shining pair

Fringèd with gold, unwearied, nimble, swift.

With these he parts the winds, the clouds, the air,

And over seas and earth himself doth lift ;

Thus clad he cut the spheres and circles fair,

And the pure skies with sacred feathers clift.

On Libanon at first his foot he set,

And shook his wings, with rory May-dews wet.

1

Gerusalemme Liberata, I. xiii.-xv. Compare Virgil, Æneid, iv. 238 :-

Dixerat. Ille patris magni parere parabat

Imperio, etc.

ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS

85

Then to Tortosa's confines swiftly sped

The sacred messenger, with headlong flight ;

Above the eastern wave appearèd red

The rising sun, yet scantly half in sight ;

Godfrey e'en then his morn devotions said,

As was his custom, when with Titan bright

Appeared the angel, in his shape divine,

Whose glory far obscurèd Phœbus' shine.

In the following stanzas, describing Armida, it will be

seen how audaciously Fairfax extends the concetti of

Tasso :—

Le guance asperse di que' vivi umori,

Che già cadean sin della veste al lembo,

Parean vermigli insieme e bianchi fiori,

Se pur gli irriga un rugiadoso nembo,

Quando sull' apparir de' primi albori

Spiegano all' aure liete il chiuso grembo ;

E l' Alba che li mira e se n' appaga

D' adornarsene il crin diventa vaga

Ma il chiaro umor, che di sì spesse stille

Le belle gote e 'l seno adorno rende,

Opra effetto di foco, il qual in mille

Petti serpe celato e vi s' apprende.

O miracol d' Amor, che le faville

Tragge del pianto, e il cor nell' acqua accende !

Sempre sovra natura egli ha possanza ;

Ma in virtù di costei sì stesso avanza.

Her cheeks, on which this streaming nectar fell,

Stilled through the limbeck of her diamond eyes,

The roses white and red resembled well,

Whereon the rory May-dew sprinkled lies,

When the fair morn first blusheth from her cell,

And breatheth balm from open'd paradise :

Thus sighed, thus mourned, thus wept this lovely Queen,

And in each drop bathèd a grace unseen.

Thrice twenty Cupids unperceivèd flew

To gather up this liquor ere it fall,

And of each drop an arrow forgèd new ;

Else, as it came, snatched up the crystal ball,

And at rebellious hearts for wild-fire threw.

O wondrous love ! thou makest gain of all ;

For if she weeping sit, or smiling stand,

She bends thy bow, or kindleth else thy brand.1

1 Godfrey of Bulloigne, c. iv. st. lxxv.-lxxvi.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

The following admirable description of the coquetries of Armida will show, to any one who chooses to compare it with the original, the mingled fidelity and freedom with which Fairfax reproduced the ideas of his author :-

While thus she them torments 'wixt frost and fire,

'Twixt joy and grief, 'twixt hope and restless fear,

The sly enchantress felt her gain the nigher :

These were her flocks that golden fleeces bear :

But if some one durst utter his desire,

And by complaining make his griefs appear;

He labour'd hard rocks with plaints to move,

She had not learned the gamut then of love.

For down she bent her bashful eyes to ground,

And donned the weed of women's modest grace;

Down from her eyes well'd the pearlës round

Upon, the bright enamel of her face :

Such honey drops on springing flowers are found,

When Phœbus holds the crimson morn in chase.

Full seemed her looks of anger and of shame,

Yet pity shone transparent through the same.

If she perceiv'd by his outward cheer,

That any would his love by talk bewray,

Sometimes she heard him, sometimes stopped her ear,

And play'd fast and loose the live-long day :

Thus all her lovers kind deluded were,

Their earnest suit got neither yea nor nay;

But like the sort of weary huntsmen fare,

That hunt all day, and lose at night the hare.1

Thus for the first time (setting aside the slight experiment of Surrey) the English language was made to prove its capacity as the vehicle for a subject of epic greatness. The lofty and harmonious diction of Spenser, freed from its affected archaism, was refined by the idiomatic simplicity of Tasso, and the abstract spirit of the Faery Queen, brought into relation with historic matter, was humanised after the manner of the angel Gabriel :-

Like to a man in show and shape he far'd,

But full of heavenly majesty and might.

It is no wonder that so fine a performance should have

1 Godfrey of Bulloigne, c. iv. st. xciii.-xcv.

consoled kings in their misfortunes, and have helped to

form the style of original poets. We are told by Brian

Fairfax, the translator's descendant, that “King James

valued it above all other English poetry ; and King

Charles, in the time of his confinement, used to divert

himself by reading it.” For its influence on the course of

our language we have the high testimony of Dryden:-

Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen

Elizabeth : great masters in our language, and who saw much

further into the beauties of our numbers than those who imme-

diately followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenser

and Mr. Waller of Fairfax ; for we have our lineal descents and

clans as well as other families. Spenser more than once in-

sinuates that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body,

and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his

decease. Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his

original ; and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller

own that he derived the harmony of his numbers from Godfrey

of Bulloigne, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax.1

Through Harington's translation of the Orlando

Furioso, the English reader was introduced to a view of

Nature and Society formed by the ironic and courtly wit

of the Italian Renaissance : Fairfax's translation of the

Gerusalemme Liberata presented to him an idea of the

chivalrous past of Europe, as seen through the medium

of Catholic orthodoxy and classical humanism, sanctioned

by the directors of the counter-Reformation : it remained

for him to be familiarised with an ideal conception of the

world as it appeared to the imagination of a French poet,

trained in the theological school of Luther and Calvin. In

many respects this ideal offers a strong contrast to the

art of the romantic poets of Italy. The spirit of Pro-

testant humanism was equally opposed to the semi-

pagan genius of Ariosto and to the Catholic sentimentalism

of Tasso. It animated, on the one side, nobles and

warriors—to whom the traditions of Teutonic chivalry

conveyed a meaning that was unintelligible to the

sceptical citizens of the Italian Republics—on the other,

1 Preface to Fables.

grave merchants and lawyers, who sought to order their

lives by a rule contrary to that of the Roman Church.

The authority on which its votaries relied was the text

of Scripture : the form of society towards which it tended

was a theocratic republic, under the direction of a local

aristocracy, half civil and half ecclesiastical : the com-

munities in which it was most powerful were the Huguenot

confederacies of France: and its poetical representative

was Guillaume de Saluste, Seigneur du Bartas, author of

the famous Semaines.

Du Bartas belonged, artistically, to the school of the

Pleiad, that aristocratic group of French poets, who sought

to gain distinction for themselves and elevation for their

native language, by novel experiments in thought and

diction, apart from the mediæval traditions to which

Marot had attempted to add an air of Court refinement.

He was of the Huguenot section of the nobility, and

his friends put him forward as the rival, and even the

superior, of Ronsard, who had distinguished himself by

the fervour of his Catholic orthodoxy. As the latter had

drawn his inspiration mainly from Greek models, Du

Bartas, by a kind of instinctive opposition, grounded him-

self on the theory of Eusebius, which derived all the

refinements of art and culture from the Mosaic dispensa-

tion. His Semaines is a work of encyclopædic vastness,

in which the origin of the world and of human society is

treated with reference to the account of the Creation, the

Fall, the Flood, and the patriarchal ages, given in the

book of Genesis. It is composed of the most miscel-

laneous elements. Philosophic speculation, resembling

that of the De Rerum Natura, is combined with the schol-

astic method of Dante; epic invocations of the Muse,

after the manner of Homer, are found side by side with

rhetorical invectives, in which the Huguenot poet, like

his contemporary D'Aubigné, discharges his spleen against

the wickedness of society with the indignation of Juvenal.

The execution is as unequal as the conception is

irregular. Du Bartas had selected for his poem a sub-

ject as vast as the mind of man can conceive. This he

adorned with all the treasures of a vigorous, learned, and

imaginative genius ; and he expatiated on his theme with

immense ardour and animation, passing from detail to

detail with touches sometimes of sublime thought, some-

times of philosophical intuition, sometimes of poetical fancy,

rarely without a sense of the greatness and dignity of the

task he had to accomplish. His happiest efforts are

probably to be found in episodical passages, in which he

has an opportunity of giving expression to his own feel-

ings about religion or politics. On such occasions the

long roll of his Alexandrine verse becomes a fitting vehicle

for ethical satire and invective, as for example in the fol-

lowing passage, in which he makes the smallness of the

earth, compared with the stars, the starting-point of an

address to the sovereigns of the age :-

Vous, Princes, qui couvrez les campagnes des morts,

Pour un travers de poitil borner plus loins vos boirds :

Magistrats corrompus, juges qui sur vos chaires

Mettez sordidement la Justice aux enchères,

Qui, traîquans le droict, profanez vos estats

Pour laisser une blétre a vos enfans ingrats ;

Vous qui faîtes produire usures aux usures,

Vous qui falsifiez les poids et les mesures,

A fin que deux cens beufs a l'advenir pour vous

Le soc brise guerés tirassent de leurs couls.

Et vous et vous encor, qui pour sans titre acquerre

Dessus vostre voisin quelque pouce de terre,

D'une main sacrilege a l'emblée arracheż

Les confins moitoyens par vos aieuls fiches ;

Helas ! que gagnez vous? Quand par ruse ou par guerre

Un prince auroit conquis tout le rond de la terre

Un pointe d'aiguille, un atome, un fétu,

Seroit tout le loyer de sa rare vertu :

Un point seroit son regne : un rien tout son empire :

Et si moindre que rien, rien ici se peut dire.1

On the other hand, his treatment of the subject is

marred by certain fatal artistic defects. He entered upon

his undertaking without having formed any clear idea as

to whether he intended to treat it didactically, like

Lucretius, or epically, like Virgil. Throughout the whole

of the First Week of Creation he proceeds didactically,

1 Troisieme Jour de la Semaine.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

by way of description and speculation ; but in the Second Week, containing the account of the Fall and the subsequent history of mankind, he slides instinctively into an epic manner. Yet even here his tendency to use his imagination analytically prevails, and whenever a curious problem offers itself to his imagination, he never hesitates to quit the direct course of his narrative and to sail away in pursuit of it. Hence his poem, like the primeval chaos he describes, is without form and void, a vast ocean of unconnected details, which we navigate at the mercy of the most capricious of pilots. Moreover, his inorganic method of conception reflects itself in his style. As it is his main object to impress single ideas, relating to the spiritual world, on his readers' imagination, he proceeds, to a considerable extent, after the manner of Dante, and endeavours to render his account of the Creation intelligible by means of familiar images and an abundance of metaphor and simile. These he employs with a singular lack of taste and judgment. He will liken the bursting of a rain-cloud to a page breaking two glasses of wine ; he describes the contraction of the waters of the deep by comparing them with liquor poured into a smaller tun ; and he calls the sun "a postillion who never comes to the end of his journey." So much, indeed, is his imagination impressed with the resemblance between the movements of the heavenly bodies and those of the coaches of the great, that he invokes the Holy Spirit to be his coachman !

In the midst of this bad taste and wrong judgment there was much vitality of imagination, and, as often happens, the very defects of Du Bartas' style increased his popularity. His poem was translated into almost all the languages of Europe, and in England he found an interpreter of sympathetic genius, who was not afraid to reproduce and exaggerate all his peculiarities.

Joshua Sylvester was the son of a Kentish clothier, and was born in 1563. He was sent to school in his ninth year to Dr. Hadrianus Saravia at Southampton, where he received a special kind of instruction in French.

v ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS 91

Robert Ashley, his schoolfellow, says that the school was

confined to "sixteen or twenty youths of good family";

and that "it was a rule in it that all should speak

French ; he who spoke English, though only a sentence,

was obliged to wear a fool's cap at meals, and continue

to wear it till he caught another in the same fault."1 This

kind of teaching was no doubt adopted with a view to

the preparation of the scholars for a mercantile life of

the kind to which Sylvester was apparently very early

destined, for he was removed from school in his thirteenth

year, and—as he himself tells, in some verses gratefully

recalling Saravia's care of him—was never at either of the

English universities.2 How he was employed it is impos-

sible to say with certainty, but we know that in 1590-91 he

was a member of the Merchant Adventurers' Company, to

which, in 1597, through the influence of the Earl of

Essex, he sought to become secretary. In this hope he

was disappointed ; and he did not obtain the post he

desired till 1617, when he was obliged, by the nature of

his duties, to reside at Middleburgh. Here he died on

28th September 1618.

It is plain that Sylvester's heart was not in com-

merce, and that he would have preferred to maintain

himself by his pen, for he began his work of translation

as early as 1591, in which year his rendering of Du

Bartas' Battle of Ivry is entered in the Register of the

Stationers' Company. His Essay of the Second Week of

the noble, learned, and divine Saluste du Bartas was

published in 1598 ; and in 1604 he dedicated to the

King The Divine Weeks of the World's Birth. The

translation of Du Bartas' Weeks was completed in 1606.

Though it brought its author much popularity and repu-

tation, it does not seem that he was directly patronised

1 Grosart's edition of Sylvester's Works, vol. i. p. x.

2 His love and labour apted so my wit,

That when Urania after rapted it,

Through Heaven's strong working, weakness did produce

Leaves of delight and fruits of sacred use ;

Which had my Muse t' our either Athens flown,

Or followed him, had been much more my own :

Then was the fault that so it fell not out.—Elegy on Mrs. Saravia.

by the King. Prince Henry, however, made him his

Groom of the Privy Chamber, and to him Sylvester

dedicated his translation of the Tetrastika of Pibrac, and

afterwards that of Du Bartas' Second Week. Henry

Peachem, in his Truth of Our Times (1638), speaks of the

translator "having had very little or no reward at all for

his pains or dedications" ; yet his needs were considerable,

as he had a family of six persons dependent on him.1

The style of the translation is very noteworthy.

Sylvester warmly admired and sympathised with Du

Bartas' religious views, as well as with his poetical

qualities, and he reproduces, on the whole, with great

fidelity the matter of his original. But with it he mingles

much that is peculiar to himself and his circumstances.

His taste had been formed in the school of the poetical

Euphuists, so that he never fails to heighten the capricious

flights of Du Bartas by elaborate conceits of his own.

The metre he adopted was a loosely-knit variety of the

heroic couplet, which, wandering on from line to line, with

an air of conversational ease, gave ample opportunity to

the poet to stamp on each individual expression the

impress of his own taste and character. Sylvester was,

like many of his contemporaries, a lover of country life,

and he writes with particular zest whenever his translation

offers him an opportunity to make a digression descriptive

of the neighbourhood of his own home. Here, for example,

is a characteristic passage :—

Let me, good Lord, among the great un-kend

My days of rest in the calm country end.

Let me deserve of my dear Eagle-Brood

For Windsor Forest walks in Almes-Wood :

Be Hadley-Pond my sea ; Lambs-bourn my Thames ;

Lambourn my London ; Kennet's silver streams

My fruitful Nile ; my Singers and Musicians

The pleasant Birds with warbling repetitions ;

1 Unless, by others' help or by your own,

The tender pity of your princely hand

Quick hale me out, I perish instantly,

Haléd in again by six that hang on me.

Dedicatory Sonnet to the Second Session of the

Parliament of Vertues Royal.

v ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS 93

My Company pure thoughts, to work Thy will ;

My Court a cottage on a lowly hill ;

Where without let I may so sing Thy name,

That time to come may wonder at the same.

In lines like these we have plainly before us one of the sources of inspiration of William Browne's Britannia's

Pastorals, which afterwards themselves exerted a powerful influence on the genius of Keats. Indeed, the translation

generally, with its vast field of allusion, its multitude of isolated images, and its quaintness of individual expres-

sion, proved full of suggestion for later poets. Milton, among others, evidently derived many hints from Sylvester

for Paradise Lost. The latter also, by the naturalisation of Du Bartas' style in English, helped to promote the

rapidly increasing tendency to poetical "wit," of which we shall presently have to note so many varieties.

He could never resist the temptation to embody in his verse a jingle of words, a pun, or a paradox,

as in the following lines from the Elegy on Mrs. Saravia :—

Such was her Minor-age ; such Maiden-life,

Such Woman-state ; and such she was a Wife

To my Saravia ; to whose reverend name

Mine owns the honour of Du Bartas' fame.

For as our London (else for drought undone)

Sucks from the paps (the pipes) of Middleton

(Whose memory mine never shall forget,

But to Hugh's name add the surname of Great,

For his great work, abundant streams to drench,

Cool, cleanse, and clear, and fearful flames to quench),

From the ample cisterns of his sea of skill

Sucked I (my succour) my short shallow rill,

In three poor years at three times three years old.

The general character of his translation, exemplifying at once its fidelity to the spirit of his original and the

freedom and amplification of its details, may be gathered by his rendering of the passage I have already quoted

from Du Bartas, viz. his appeal to the princes of Europe to abstain from war :—

O Princes (subjects unto pride and pleasure)

Who (to enlarge but a hair's-breadth the measure

Of your dominions) breaking oaths of peace

Cover the fields with bloody carcasses !

O magistrates, who (to content the great)

Make sale of Justice on your sacred seat !

And breaking laws for bribes, profane your place

To leave a leek to your unthankful race !

You strict extorters that the poor oppress,

And wrong the widow and the fatherless,

To leave your offspring rich (of others' good)

In houses built of rapine and of blood !

You city-vipers that incestious joyn

Use upon use, begetting coin of coin !

You marchant-mercers and monopolites,

Gain-greedy chapmen, perjured hypocrites,

Dissembling brokers, made of all deceipts,

Who falsify your measures and your weights,

T' enrich yourselves, and your unthrifty sons

To gentilise with proud possessions !

You that for gain betray your gracious Prince,

Your native country, or your dearest frinds !

You that, to get you but an inch of ground,

With cursed hands remove your neighbour's bound

(The ancient bounds your ancestors have set),

What gain you all ? alas, what do you get ?

Yea, though a king by will or war had won

All the round earth to his subjection ;

Lo here the guerdon of his glorious pains,

A needle's point, a mote, a mite he gains,

A nit, a nothing (did he all possess),

Or if than nothing anything be less.1

Interest of another kind is excited by the work of

George Chapman, the first English translator of Homer's

Iliad. Born in 1559, and bred at Hitchin in Hertford-

shire, Chapman is said by Antony Wood to have been

educated at Oxford, where, however, he took no degree ;

and Warton (who ought to have been well informed on this

point) states that he was a member of Trinity College.

Though almost all the latter part of his life was devoted

to the pursuit of literature, we have no record of any work

of his produced before 1594, when he published Σκíα

νυκτός, The Shadow of Night, Two Poetical Hymns,

1 For the original French, see p. 89.

which was followed in 1595 by Ovid's Banquet of Sense,

with other poems, and in 1598 by a continuation of

Marlowe's Hero and Leander. From this date onward

to 1613 Chapman appears mainly to have supported

himself by writing for the stage, while at the same time

he pushed forward his translation of the Iliad, the first

seven books of which he published in 1598, completing

the whole work in 1611. In 1614 he added a transla-

tion of the Odyssey, and completed his version of Homer

with the Batrachomyomachia, the Hymns, and Epigrams

in 1624.

His plays, of which I shall have something more to

say hereafter, comprise The Blind Beggar of Alexandria

(1598); The World runs on Wheels, or All Fools but the

Fool, and A Humorous Day's Mirth (1599); Eastward

Hoe, written in partnership with Ben Jonson and Marston

(1605); The Gentleman Usher (1606); Bussy d'Ambois

(1607); The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608);

May Day (1611); The Widow's Tears (1612); The

Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois (1613). He was also the

author of several masques, of which the only one that

survives is The Memorable Maske of the two Honorable

Houses or Inns of Court, the Middle Temple and Lincoln's

Inn, written for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth,

15th February 1614. Ben Jonson couples his name

with Fletcher's as the only two men who, besides himself,

were capable of making a masque.

His original poems, which are strongly tinctured with

the Euphuistic pedantry of the period, besides those

which I have already mentioned, include Peristeros, or The

Male Turtle, Euthymia Raptus, or The Tears of Peace;

Epicede, or Funeral Song, on the death of Prince Henry;

Andromeda Liberata, an allegorical poem on the marriage

of the Earl of Somerset and the divorced Countess of

Essex, the unfortunate title and subject of which were the

cause of much offence; Eugenia, or True Nobilitie's Trance,

an elegy on the death of William, Lord Russell. He

also translated in 1616 the Divine Poems of Musæus,

and in 1618 The Georgicks of Hesiod. Among his

patrons he numbered Prince Henry, the Earl of Essex,

Lady Walsingham, and the Earl of Somerset. In

spite, however, of their influence, and of his own re-

putation, his life seems to have been a struggle maintained

against difficulties with dignity and firmness ; and after

his death in 1634, Habington, in his Castara, alludes

to his grave being outside the church of St. Giles in the

Fields, and hopes that some lover of poetry may be

" in the warm church to build him a tomb."1

To have been the first to attempt anything so great as

a translation of Homer would have been in itself suffi-

cient to save Chapman's name from oblivion. But

indeed everything that he wrote bears the stamp of a

grave, elevated, and self-respecting mind, and his chief

recommendation as a translator of Homer is, that he has

sufficient nobility of feeling to enter into the spirit and

sense of his author. In the fragment of his work which

he first presented to the world he thus defines his idea of

a good translation :-

The worth of a skilful and worthy translator is to observe the

sentences, figures, and forms of speech proposed in his author ;

his true sense and height ; and to adorn them with figures and

forms of oration, fitted to the original in the same tongue to

which they are translated.2

In a second specimen, entitled Achilles' Shield, his

enthusiasm for Homer breaks forth in a bitter attack on

Scaliger, as Homer's detractor, after which he proceeds to

speak of his own translation :-

But also Homer is not now to be lift up by my weak arm,

more than he is now depressed by more feeble opposition, if

any feel not their conceits so ravished with the eminent beauties of

1 Dictionary of National Biography, "Chapman."

2 Seven Bookes of the Iliades of Homere, Prince of Poets, 1598. (In the

copy of this book in the British Museum is an autograph of Ben Jonson.)

Speaking of the failure of previous translators of Homer, Chapman says:-

They failed to search his deep and treasurous heart.

The cause was since they wanted the fit key

Of Nature, in their downright strength of art,

With Poesy to open Poesy.

Lines prefixed to his translation of the Iliad.

v ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS 97

his essential muse, as the greatest men of all sorts and all ages

have been. Their most modest course is (unless they will be

powerfully insolent) to ascribe the defect to their apprehension,

because they read him but slightly, not in his surmised frugalities

of object, that really and most feastfully pours out himself in

right divine occasion.

This intense love and enthusiasm for his original

inspires Chapman always vividly to realise Homer's

thought, and to master his imagery, so that he never

shrinks from adding details to his text where he thinks it

necessary to do so for the purpose of bringing out more

forcibly in English the spirit of the Greek. Witness the

simile to which he himself calls attention, whereby

Homer describes the character of the fight between the

Greeks and the Trojans for the body of Patroclus.

Literally translated, the passage runs as follows :—

And as when a man gives to his people the hide of a

mighty bull to stretch out drunken with oil; and they, having

received it, standing round in a circle, stretch it, and immediately

the moisture comes out of it, and the oil goes into it, while many

pull at it, and the while it is stretched tight all round : thus they

tugged on both sides at the dead body, on this side and on that,

within a little space.

Chapman gives this with admirable fidelity, adding a

few details of his own, which serve to heighten the

picture :—

And as a huge ox-hide

A currier gives among his men, to supple and extend

With oil till it be drunk withal, they tug, stretch out, and spend

Their oil and labour liberally, and chafe the leather so

They make it breathe a vapour out, and in their liquors go,

A number of them set a work, and in an orb they pull,

That all way, all parts of the hide they may extend at full ;

So here and there did both hosts hale the corse in little place,

And wrought it all ways with their sweat.

He can rise too to the sublimity of Homer's conceptions,

as in the description of Poseidon coming to Ægæ from

his mountain in Samothrace :—

VOL. III

H

98

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

He took much ruth to see the Greeks by Troy sustain such ill,

And mightily incenst with Jove stooped straight from that steep hill,

That shook as he flew off, so hard his parting prest the height

The woods and all the great hills near trembled beneath the weight

Of his immortal moving feet. Three steps he only took

Before he far-off Ægæ reached, but with the fourth it shook

With his dread entry. In the depth of those seas he did hold

His bright and glorious palace built of never-rusting gold ;

And there arrived he put in coach his brazen-tooted steeds,

All golden-maned, and par't with wings ; and all in golden weeds

He clothed himself. The golden scourge most elegantly done

He took, and mounted to his seat ; and then the god begun

To drive his chariot through the waves. From whirl-pits every way

The whales exulted under him, and knew their king ; the sea

For joy did open, and his horse so swift and lightly flew,

The under axletree of brass no drop of water drew ;

And thus these deathless coursers brought their king to th' Achive

ships.

Had Chapman been able to maintain this level of

style throughout his translation, there would have been

no need to render Homer into English a second time.

But his powers of execution were by no means equal to

his imagination and grandeur of thought. His versifica-

tion is lumbering and unmelodious ; the structure of his

sentences obscure and involved. As I have already said,

comparing his style with Marlowe's in Hero and Leander,

it has more smoke than flame, and this unfortunate

characteristic is particularly marked in the last twelve

books of the translation, which exhibit all the symptoms

of scrambling haste, having been completed, as he himself

tells us, in fifteen weeks. The poet seems to have satis-

fied himself with reproducing the narrative literally, in

verses without any calculated pause or period, throwing in

the rhymes almost at haphazard, and taking the words as

they occurred to him, with scarcely an attempt at selec-

tion. The result may be seen in such a passage as this,

describing the approaching death of Hector :-

But how chanced this ? How all this time could Hector bear the knees

Of fierce Achilles with his own, and keep off destinies,

If Phœbus, for his last and best, through all that course had failed

To add his succours to his nerves, and, as his foe assailed

v ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS 99

Near and within him, fed his scape? Achilles yet well knew

His knees would fetch him, and gave signs to some friends (making shew

Of shooting at him) to forbear, lest they detracted so

From his full glory in first wounds, and in the overthrow

Make his hand last. But when they reached the fourth time the two founts,

Then Jove his golden scales weighed up, and took the last accounts

Of fate for Hector, putting in for him and Peleus' son

Two fates of bitter death; of which high heaven received the one,

The other hell; so low declined the light of Hector's life.

The last of the translators under James I., whom it will

be necessary to mention, affords a curious contrast to

Chapman, as well in his own character and history as in

the subject of his translation and his style. George

Sandys, the translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses, was the

seventh son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, and

was born at Bishopsthorpe on 2nd March 1577-78. He

matriculated at St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, in 1589, but

took no degree. He appears to have been of an adven-

turous temper, and extended his travels farther into the

East than was then customary. Of these he published a

narrative in prose in 1615, and at the close of his

Paraphrase of the Psalms, about twenty years afterwards,

he referred to them again in a poetical address, Deo

Optimo Maximo, a passage from which may be cited as

an illustration of Sandys' character and metrical style:-

My grateful verse Thy goodness shall display,

O Thou, who went'st along in all my way,

To where the morning with perfum'd wings

From the high mountains of Panchæa springs;

To that new-found-out world, where sober night

Takes from th' antipodes her silent flight;

To those dark seas where horrid winter reigns,

And binds the stubborn flood in icy chains;

To Libyan wastes, whose thirst no showers assuage,

And where swoln Nilus cools the lion's rage.

Thy wonders in the deep have I beheld,

Yet all by those on Judah's hills excelled:

There where the Virgin's Son his doctrine taught,

His miracles and our redemption wrought:

Where I, by Thee inspired, his praises sung,

100

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

And on his sepulchre my offering hung,1

Which way soe'er I turn my face or feet

I see Thy glory, and Thy mercy meet,

Met on the Thracian shore, when in the strife

Of fiantic Simoans Thou preserv'dst my life :2

So when th' Arabian thieves belayed us round,

And when by all abandoned, Thee I found.

That false Sidonian wolf whose craft put on

A sheep-soft fleece and me, Bellerophon,

To ruin by his cruel letter sent

Thou didst by Thy protecting hand prevent.3

Thou sav'dst me from the bloody massacres

Of faithless Indians ; from their treacherous wars ;

From raging fevers ; from the sultiy breath

Of tainted air which cloyed the joys of death.

Preserv'd from swallowing seas, when towering waves

Mix'd with the clouds, and open'd their deep graves :

From barbarous pirates ransomed : by those taught,

Successfully with Sabian Moors we fought.

Thou brought'st me home in safety, that this earth

Might bury me which fed me from my birth,

Blest with a healthful age, a quiet mind

Content with little, to this work designed,

Which I at length have finished by Thy aid,

And now my vows have at Thy altar laid.4

Most of the incidents recorded in the latter part of

these verses occurred after his return from travelling in

the East. In 1621 he was made treasurer of the Virginia

Company, and having settled for the time in America,

was twice reappointed by the Crown a member of

the Virginia Council. He seems, however, not to have

worked in harmony with his fellow-emigrants, and he

finally left Virginia in 1631. There is no external evi-

dence to show at what period of his life he was taken by

pirates and fought against the Sabian Moors. On his

return from Virginia he was appointed Gentleman of the

1

I.e. a poem of twelve lines, beginning : “Saviou1 of mankind.”

2

In his book on his travels in the East, Sandys tells us that he took ship

in a bark called the Armado of Simo. The captain in a drunken fit attacked

him just before his arrival at Constantinople. “Turning upon me only

armed with stones, as God would have it, he stumbled by the way, and there

lay like a stone for two hours together.” Travels (1632), p. 29.

3

Though Sandys mentions his visit to Sidon in his Travels, he says

nothing in his prose narrative of this adventure, or of his danger from the

Arabs.

4

Address, Deo Optimo Maximo.

v ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN TRANSLATORS 101

Privy Chamber to Charles I., and became an intimate

friend of Falkland and other eminent persons of the

time. His translation of the Metamorphoses was begun

before his departure from England for Virginia, and five

books of it were published by William Barratt in 1621.

The ten remaining books were completed in America and

published in England in 1626. Sandys afterwards wrote

a metrical paraphrase of the Psalms and Hymns dis-

persed through the Old and New Testaments, which was

published in 1636, with music composed by the well-

known Henry Lawes. He also translated and published

in 1640 Christ's Passion, from the Latin of Grotius. His

last work was a paraphrase of the Song of Solomon in

heroic verse (1641). He lived to see the outbreak of the

Civil War, and died, unmarried, at his residence, Bexley

Abbey, near Maidstone, in 1644.

The passage of original composition which I have

already cited from Sandys shows how strongly his

imagination and style were affected by his study of

Ovid. It is probable that the English model of his

versification was England's Heroical Epistles of his

friend Drayton; but in the terseness of his metrical

antitheses, the ingenious turns of his sentences, the variety

of his periods, the ease and harmony of his numbers,

Sandys' metrical style shows a great advance upon most

of his predecessors. His version of the Metamorphoses is, I

believe (with the exception of Gavin Douglas's Æneid and

Chapman's Odyssey), the first exampleof the use of the heroic

couplet in the translation of a classical author. Chapman,in

translating the Iliad, had followed the lead of Arthur Gold-

ing, who, as we saw in the last volume, used the long ballad

metre for the translation of the Metamorphoses, and whose

versification, though meritorious, in view of its early date,

compares ill with the elegance and refinement of Sandys.

Here, for example, is the latter's rendering of the story of

Pyramus and Thisbe, which may be set side by side with

the equivalent passage in Golding already cited :-

Young Pyramus (no youth so beautiful

Through all the East) and Thisbe (who for fair

102

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP. V

Might with immortal goddesses compare)

Joined houses where Semiramis enclosed

Her stately town with walls of brick composed.

This neighbourhood their first acquaintance bred ;

That grew to love ; love sought a nuptial bed,

By parents cross'd : yet equal flames their blood

Alike increas'd, which could not be withstood.

Signs only utter their unwitness'd loves :

But hidden fire the violenter proves.

A cranny in the parting wall was left,

By shrinking of the new-laid mortar cleft.

This, for so many ages undescried

(What cannot Love find out ?), the lovers spied,

By which their whispering voices softly trade,

And passion's amorous embassy conveyed.

On this side and on that, like snails, they cleave,

And greedily each other's breath receive

"O envious wall !" (said they) "who thus divide

Whom Love hath joined ! O give us leave to slide

Into each other's arms ! if such a bliss

Transcend our fates, yet suffer us to kiss !

Nor are we ingrate : much we confess we owe

To you who this dear liberty bestow."

At night they bid farewell. Their kisses greet

The senseless stone with lips that cannot meet.1

1 For Golding's translation of the passage see vol. ii. pp. 142-143.

CHAPTER VI

NATURE AND ORIGIN OF POETICAL "WIT"

The qualities and character of poetical wit have been nowhere better defined than by Johnson in his Life of Cowley, where he says :—

Wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors, a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.

Admirable too is Johnson's description, in the same Life, of the characteristics of the "metaphysical" poets :—

Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety that subtlety, which in its original import means exility of particles, is taken, in its metaphorical meaning, for nicety of distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon.

Johnson does not take the trouble to account, except in the most superficial manner, for the poetical phenomena which he thus accurately describes. All that he says in explanation of the origin of the "metaphysical" school of English poetry is :—

103

104

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Wit, like other things subject by their nature to the choice of

men, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes

different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century

appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical

poets, of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not

improper to give some account.

Though later critics have bestowed more attention on

the subject, yet as each has confined the scope of his in-

vestigations to some particular language, their accounts of

the origin of "Wit" have been somewhat contradictory.

Some have explained its appearance in European litera-

ture on a purely æsthetic principle. Dr. Garnett, for

example, in his excellent History of Italian Literature,

following Muratori, and concurring on the whole with

Johnson, holds that the corrupt style of writers like Marino

springs from an ambition in these men, almost inherent in

the nature of things, to shoot beyond the proper perfection

of their art as attained by their predecessors.1 Others

again, observing the prevalence of the phenomena of

"Wit" in almost all European countries, suppose that

the fashion was gradually propagated from Spain and

Italy through the influence of individual writers. Thus

the eminent historian of French literature, M. Lanson,

describes the concetti as a product of the late and

degenerate Italian Renaissance, and imagines that the

French Precieux—les attardés, as he picturesquely calls

them — received their inspiration from Marino and

Gongora, having themselves strayed (égarés) from the true

line of the Renaissance, maintained in France through a

line of legitimate successors from Malherbe to Molière,

La Fontaine, and Boileau.2 On the other hand, the able

1 History of Italian Literature, p. 272.

"L'Italie d'abord cette fois encore fut nôtre institutrice : mais l'Italie dégénérée, folle de l'artificielle beauté des concetti, depensant tout son genie en inventions montrueuses d'hyperbole, d'antithesis, et de metaphore . . . Antonio Perez fut un des premiers habitués de la Chambre Bleue, et initia les amis de la Marquise aux deliers raffinés du bel esprit. Il fit un voyage à Londres, et y trouve aussi l'Italianisme etabli par l'Euphues de John Lilly : partout, du moins dans tous les pays qui n'etaient pas barbares, des causes analogues inclinaient au même moment la vie aristocratique et le goût litteraire vers le même ideal" (Histoire de la Littérature Française, 2nd edition, 1895, pp. 376-377).

vi NATURE AND ORIGIN OF POETICAL “WIT” 105

Italian critic, Settembrini, accounts for what he, in common

with all the other writers I have mentioned, justly recog-

nises as the decadence of Italian literature after the

Council of Trent, on purely religious and political grounds :

“ Il Secentismo,” he says, “è il Gesuitesimo nell' arte.”1

These theories are incorrect only in so far as they are

inadequate. If, for example, we content ourselves with

Johnson's explanation, that the “Wit” of the seventeenth

century was merely the casual “choice” of the men of

the period, we are perplexed to know why so many

writers in different languages should have chosen, at a

particular time, to aim at the same very peculiar manner of

expression. If we accept Dr. Garnett's view, that “Wit”

is the exaggerated art of men attempting to surpass the

artistic perfection of their predecessors, we are still con-

fronted with the hitherto unanswered question, What is

absolute perfection in art? M. Lanson's theory seems

equally incomplete, for, though it is true that “analogous

causes were, in the seventeenth century, directing aristo-

cratic life and literary taste towards the same ideal,” con-

temporaneously, in the different countries of Europe, the

origin of this movement must be sought much deeper than

in the imitation of the corrupt practice of Marino and

Gongora, since Lyly had produced his Euphues years before

the appearance of Marino's Adone or Gongora's Soledades.

Nor is Settembrini's generalisation comprehensive enough,

failing, as it does, to explain why “False Wit” should

have taken such firm and early root in England, where

the Jesuits figured only as conspirators.

We have then to account, first, for the identity of

essence in the “Wit” which began to be fashionable in

almost every European country about the time of the

Council of Trent, and, next, for the great variety of form

under which it exhibited itself in different places ; and I

think that the general causes of these phenomena are to

be found in the decay of the scholastic philosophy and of

the feudal system, common to the whole of Europe, and in

the revival, at the same time, of the civic standards of

1 Lezioni di Letteratura Italiana, vol. ii. p. 227.

106

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

antiquity operating on the genius of many rising nations and languages. Such a collision of forces is plainly sufficient to account for that discordia concors which Johnson describes as the essence of “Wit”; and further analysis will enable us to trace to the same origin what are generally recognised to be the leading features of “Wit,” namely, (1) Paradox, (2) Hyperbole, (3) Excess of Metaphor. All these qualities, which flourish exuberantly in the poetry of the seventeenth century, appear germinally in the poetry of the fourteenth ; it is therefore not an unfair conclusion that they belong to a single system of thought, and that their predominance in the later age signifies the efflorescence of decay.

(1) The habit of startling the imagination with paradoxical reasoning about the order of the universe, physical and moral, which is so striking a characteristic of the metaphysical school of Donne, is, I think, the final result of the exaggerated importance attached by the schoolmen to the study of logic.

Logic, as we have seen, rose into paramount importance among the subjects of encyclopædic education in the Church in consequence of the tendency to define scientifically the most mysterious dogmas of the Christian religion. The doctrines of the Trinity in Unity, of the Incarnation, of free will, and, at a later period, of the nature of the Sacraments, were at first simply accepted as matters of faith. But the almost accidental incorporation of Porphyry’s logic in the scheme of Christian education led insensibly to the debate on the great question of Universals, which involved all the essential doctrines of Christianity ; and the attempted settlement of each problem in the syllogistic manner first formulated in Abelard’s book, Sic et Non, led gradually to the perfection of school logic in the Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas. Logic then took a downward course, and became super-subtle in the hands of Duns Scotus, analytic and destructive in the hands of William of Ockham, absurd and grotesque in the hands of the contemporaries of Erasmus.

VI

NATURE AND ORIGIN OF POETICAL “WIT”

107

The course of the development of school logic finds

an exact analogy in the history of mediæval poetry,

especially when the poet is dealing with theological

subjects. Every reader of the Divine Comedy is aware

how closely Dante in his interpretation of Nature follows

the syllogistic reasoning of Aquinas. Beatrice in the

Paradiso is continually moved to smile at the simplicity

of the ideas suggested to her pupil by his unenlightened

reason : it is her logic that ultimately reveals to him the

real causes of things. Only the skilled theologian was

able to form the syllogism required to define the true

doctrine of the Scriptures ; hence the surprising nature of

Dante's conclusions. Nevertheless the reasoning of the

Divine Comedy is evidently quite natural ; and it stands to

Donne's metaphysical tours de force precisely in the same

relation as the logic of Aquinas stands to that of the

doctors who, on the eve of the Reformation, disputed

how many angels could dance on the point of a

needle.

(2) With the habit of reasoning paradoxically was

intimately associated the habit of writing hyperbolically.

The spirit of the logician penetrated not only the poetry

which derived its inspiration from theology, but also that

which had its source in chivalrous action and sentiment.

In the first volume of this History I showed that the poetry

of the troubadours was based upon an instinct prompting

the feudal aristocracy to separate their caste from the

vulgar by all the refinements of art and imagination. In

order to establish the necessary social distinctions, they

added to the subtlety of the theologian the casuistry

of the lawyer, and invented a Code of Love which pre-

scribed the rules of chivalrous manners. Cases arising

out of the stringency of this Code were duly tried and

decided, mainly by female judges, in the institutions

known as Cours d'Amour ; and, as we have seen, the

casuistry of these courts, and the glosses on the different

articles of the law of love, are duly collected in the book

of André le Chapelain, De Amore.1 The points raised

1 Vol. i. p. 172-175.

between the disputing troubadours, and tried by ladies in

the Courts of Love, were of a metaphysical and subtle

character, such as could only be satisfactorily dealt with

by advacates familiar with the logic of the schools.

Nostradamus, for example, records that in one of these

tensons, as they were called, the question submitted to

the judgment of the court was: Which is loved the most,

a lady present or a lady absent? Are the eyes or the

heart the stronger influence in love? On another occasion

two troubadours disputed: Which is the more worthy of

being loved, he who gives liberally out of a liberal nature,

or he who gives in spite of himself, and in order to deserve

the praise of liberality.

When the minds of the castled aristocracy were so

absorbed with the logic of love, it is easy to understand

how keen was the competition for poetical praise among

women, and that, among poets, the highest esteem should

have been given to him who showed the most ingenuity

in devising compliments. We find therefore in the poetry

of the troubadours the germs of the logical hyperbole

which is the leading feature in the concetti of the seven-

teenth century. In the following examples it will be seen

that the aim of the poet is to arrive at a surprising con-

clusion in his mistress's honour, either by giving a new

logical turn to the law of love, or by dwelling on the

unheard-of sufferings which she causes him :-

Ah, what a tender look she sent me, if indeed there was no

deceit in it ! O the look that her eyes cast with so much grace

upon those who please her ! But her words seem to give the lie

to her eyes. No matter; it is her eyes I shall believe: for

sometimes one speaks constraining one's heart; but no power

can inspire the looks with the charm of love but love himself

(Sordello).1

O gentle lady, who possess so highly the art of pleasing, I

dare not praise you; I dare not record all the fascinations of

your beauty and your delightful manners, so sweet and seducing,

nor, in a word, the thousand gifts which forbid any lady to be

your equal. For if, in praising your charms and brilliant qualities,

1 Translated from Raynouard's rendering. Choix des Troubadours, vol. ii.

p. xxvi.

vi NATURE AND ORIGIN OF POETICAL “WIT” 109

I said all that the truth permitted me to say, every one would recognise immediately her whom I love (Blacasset).1

Without ceasing I turn my prayers and adorations towards the country my lady inhabits. Does there come from this fortunate region a simple shepherd ; does he speak of her ; I honour him as though he were the most powerful Seigneur. Do not let it be imagined, however, that my indiscreet transports shall ever disclose the castle in which she holds her Court (Arnaud de Mareuil).2

All those who have the happiness to approach you are soon convinced of the perfection of your brilliant qualities ; they find in you beauty and reason, grace and merit, and all that wins the esteem of mortal men. But in the judgment of Love you will be guilty of all my ills and misfortunes. Yes, the attachment that I have to you will cost me my life ; and I should not die if your virtue were less severe, less perfect (Arnaud de Mareuil).3

The spiritual logic of the following is particularly subtle and precise :—

No knight can answer duly to the sentiments inspired by love, unless all that he can do to give proofs of it appears small in comparison with what he judges it his duty to do ; he does not love with genuine passion, if he thinks that he loves ardently enough. Such an opinion abases and degrades love ; but it is not thus that I love ; I swear—and I can swear by her to whom I am devoted heart and soul—that the more I cherish her, the less it seems to me that I cherish her as she deserves (Aimeri de Bellinoc).4

In all these passages we observe, in spite of the artistic effort, a certain naïveté, simplicity, and delicacy of sentiment, which shows the poetry of the troubadours to be the natural reflection of an age of warlike enthusiasm and religious faith. But it is plain that, in dealing with a subject so rigidly limited, the possible modes of expression were few in number, and that this form had accordingly an inherent tendency to become mechanical. Even in

1 Choix des Troubadours, vol. ii. p. xxv. The logic being, that he would so offend against the 2nd article of the Code : Qui non celat amare non potest.

2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. xxvii. Here the reference in the concluding words is also to article 2 of the Code.

3 Ibid. p. xxvii. The note here struck is identical with that running all through the sonnets of Petrarch

4 Ibid. p. xxi.

the poetry of Petrarch it can be seen that the natural flow

of Provençal sentiment has been exchanged for a steady

artistic resolve to claborate a single spiritual paradox ; to

polish it into the most perfect form of which it is capable ;

to illustrate it with every variety of image ; to adorn it

with metaphor, and to approach it from a number of dif-

ferent sides until its poetical substance is exhausted. As

the original inspiring impulse of a warlike atmosphere

became enfeebled, the form of poetical conception was

gradually stereotyped. Successive generations of poets

endeavoured to outdo each other in mere ingenuity.

Serafino followed Petrarch, and reduced the concetti of

the sonnet to the concettu of the epigram. Long before

the seventeenth century, therefore, a poetical habit had

been created which anticipated the hyperbolical manner

of Donne and Cowley.

(3) If the metaphysical turn of thought in the poets

of the seventeenth century has its origin in the mixture

of theology, chivalrous sentiment, and logic in mediæval

education, their excessive use of metaphor is to be

explained by the decay of allegory as a natural mode

of poetical expression. I have attempted to trace the

manner in which the poetical allegory of the Middle Ages

arose out of the allegorical principle of interpreting both

Nature and Scripture, sanctioned by the authority of the

Church, the most striking examples of which are to be

found in the Divine Comedy. Whenever Dante is parti-

cularly anxious to make clear to his readers the order of

Nature in the invisible world, he speaks to their under-

standing by means of a sensible image ; and in order to

show the intimate connection between things and their

spiritual causes, he is in the habit of describing one object

through the medium of another. Hence his style abounds

in metaphors, similes, and allusions, of which the following

passage, describing the poet's rise from the fifth to the

sixth heaven, may be taken as a sample :-

I turned on my right side to see my duty signified to me in

Beatrice either by speech or act; and I saw her eyes so clear

and pleasant that her appearance surpassed even its highest wont.

vi NATURE AND ORIGIN OF POETICAL “WIT” iii

And as a man by working well becomes aware in himself day by day of advancing power, so was I aware that my revolution with

the heavens had increased its arc, when I saw that wonder in greater beauty. And even as is the transfiguration in a little

moment of time of a pale lady when her countenance discharges its cargo of shame, such was that which I now beheld when I had

turned round, in consequence of the whiteness of the temperate sixth star, which had received me within itself. I beheld in that

torch of Jupiter the sparkling of the love that was in it making clear to my eyes the meaning of our speech. And as birds risen

from a river side, as though rejoicing together in their pasture, make of themselves a band, round or otherwise, so within the lights holy

creatures sang as they flew, and made of themselves figures, now D, now L. At first in their song they moved to their

own note ; afterwards as they passed into one of these characters they paused a little, and became silent. O Pegasean goddess !

thou that makest glorious our minds, and renderest them long-lived, as they, by means of thee, render cities and kingdoms,

pour thy light into me so that I may bring into relief these figures as I have conceived them : let thy power appear in these

brief lines. They showed themselves then in five times seven vowels and consonants, and I noted the different parts as they

appeared spoken to me. Diligite justitiam were the first verb and noun of the whole picture: Qui judicatis terram were

the last. Afterwards they remained in the M of the fifth word, so arranged that Jupiter appeared silver flecked there with gold.

And I saw other lights descend where was the head of the M, and rest there, singing, I believe, the Good which moved them

towards itself. Then as in the striking of burning logs arise innumerable sparks, whence simple men are wont to take omens,

there appeared to rise thence more than a thousand lights, and to mount, one much and another little, in proportion as the sun

which kindles them determined ; and each resting in its place, I saw represented in the shape of that flame the head and neck

of an eagle.1

1 Translated from Paradiso, canto xviii. 52-108.

In this passage it is plain that the enigmatical character of the imagery and the abundance of the metaphor are the

logical and necessary consequences of the subject-matter. Dante is describing something of vital importance to his

hearers, namely, the nature of the unseen world, and the only way in which he can make the reality of his experi-

ence clear to their understanding is by likening the objects

which he saw in the celestial regions to earthly objects with which his hearers are familiar. Passing over three centurics, we find Gongora using nearly the same enigmatical style in praise of a history, in prose, of three Popes, published by his friend, Louis de Bavia. The following is Ticknor's literal rendering of the Spanish sonnet :-

This poem which Bavia has now offered to the world, if not tied up in numbers, yet filed down into a good arrangement, and licked into shape by learning, is a cultivated history, whose gray-headed style, though not metrical, is well combed, and robs three pilots of the sacred bark from Time, and rescues them from Oblivion. But the pen, that thus immortalises the heavenly turnkeys on the bronze of history, is not a pen, but the key of ages. It opens to their names not the gates of failing memory which stamps shadows on masses of foam, but the gates of immortality.1

Both Dante and Gongora proceed along the same path, in so far as they each seek to describe one thing by means of another, but the pompous inanity of the later style, contrasted with the simplicity of the Paradiso, shows how far away Gongora lived from the days when allegory was regarded as a key to unlock the secrets of Nature. He uses allegorical language merely to disguise the essential commonplace of his subject-matter ; and, in the same way, his contemporary Marino confesses to a correspondent that his use of metaphor is prompted entirely by the desire for novelty in expression :-

I have printed certain of my sacred discourses which have been received with considerable applause, not so much on account of their erudition and the purity of their style as of their novelty in point of invention, each of them being always made to turn on a single metaphor.2

Such was the natural course of decay in the modes of Catholic thought and expression ; and if we add to the dissolving framework of things the operation of the religious and political forces of the time, we shall comprehend why poetical " wit " should have taken such a diversity of forms

1 Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature (1888), vol. iii. p. 23.

2 Marino, Lettere, No. 8. Al San Vitale.

in the different countries of Europe. The Council of Trent,

itself the soul of the counter-Reformation, may be said to

have aimed at "a kind of discordia concors, a combination

of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances

in things apparently unlike." Its object was to reconcile

the spirit of Catholicism with the spirit of the Renaissance,

individual liberty with ecclesiastical authority, the dogmas

of the Church with pagan literature. The art and letters

of classical antiquity, once regarded as snares of the evil

one, but long established in the courts of princes, had

to be brought under clerical supervision. The Jesuits,

who after the Council of Trent became all-powerful in

Spain and Italy, and exerted great influence even in

France, carried out the policy of the Council with rare

sagacity, by giving a new application to the old school

principle of allegory. Under their direction mythological

stories and images were allowed to pass unchallenged, so

long as these were professedly employed in the service of

the Church. Angels were transformed into Cupids ; the

Assumption of Saint or Virgin took the form of a pagan

apotheosis ; the victorious princes of Christendom were,

like the Roman emperors, exalted by the painters before

their deaths into the company of the gods of Olympus.

At the same time a strict watch was kept by the Holy

Office over the works of artists, whether painter or poet,

and heresy was scented in regions which ought to have

been filled with the air of pure imagination. A striking

illustration of the manner in which "Wit," in the form of

Allegory, was employed in Roman Catholic countries, to

yoke incongruous ideas, is furnished by the correspondence

between Tasso and the Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga about

various details in the Gerusalemme Liberata.

When Tasso designed his poem it is plain, from what

he himself tells us, that the uppermost thought in his

mind was to combine the principles underlying respectively

the classical epic of Virgil and the romantic epic of

Ariosto. How far his design was artistically just is a

point which we need not consider. But what he did not

foresee, when he formed it, was that it would bring him

VOL. III

I

into difficulties with ecclesiastical authority. Magic was

under the ban of the Church ; hence, though Armida

is represented by Tasso as being an agent of the evil one,

yet, as the events related in the poem are supposed to be

historical, Tasso's ecclesiastical critics found fault with the

supernatural powers which the narrative seemed to assign

to the black art. The poet, who was most anxious about

his own orthodoxy, was greatly distressed, and was ready

to resort to any means to remove the appearance of hetero-

doxy from his epic. His first step was to show that the

main thought in his mind, in conceiving the poem, was

moral, philosophical, and allegorical. In assigning this

character to the Jerusalem, he was forced to admit that,

when he began his task, he had no intention of allegory ;

but he alleges that, after arriving at a certain point, he

saw that what he had written admitted of a second mean-

ing. Nevertheless, he shows himself exceedingly anxious

that some influential person shall undertake the task of

pointing out wherein the true significance of the poem

lies. "I fear, above all," he says in a letter to Scipio

Gonzaga, "that I have not known how to apply rightly

this moral philosophy [i.e. that of Plato and Aristotle] to

the Christian theology. But if, as I feel sure, I have

made mistakes in it, it is for your Lordship and Signor

Flamminio, not only to correct them, but also to instruct

me further in what way I can adapt myself to the

character of these times."1 At the same time he urges

that the person who is to demonstrate the orthodoxy of

the Jerusalem shall not be over-theological in his methods.

"Let him take heed," he says, "to mix as little theological

conception as possible with my conceptions, because I

wish, on the one hand, that the apology may be considered

my work, and on the other, I do not wish to pretend to

know theology, for which I have an excessive natural

repugnance."2

It is somewhat pitiful to observe the readiness with

which Tasso professes his readiness to sacrifice his poetical

1 Letter to Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga, 15th June 1575.

2 Ibid.

imaginations to the exigencies of Church authority. "I have

written to your Lordship," he says, "that if the name of

'Mage' offends those gentlemen, I will remove it from the

few places in which it occurs, putting 'Sage' in its place.

I now say further that if that enchanted wand, or that

miraculous opening of the waters, is an offence to any

would-be bishop or cardinal, I am quite content to

make them go underground through a cave without

any of this marvellous machinery. I have already

removed the miracle of the buried man, the transforma-

tion of the knights into fish, the marvellous ship; I have

considerably modified the freedom of the last stanzas of

the twentieth canto, although this was examined, tolerated,

and almost praised by the Inquisitor. I shall remove

the marvels from the seventeenth canto, take out the

stanzas about the parrot, the stanza about the kisses, and

others in this and some of the other cantos which dis-

please Monsignor Silvio, not to speak of very many verses

and words. And all this I have done or will do, not

from a fear about having any difficulty to encounter in

Venice, but simply and solely because I fear that some

impediment may arise at Rome."1

But while the noble and truly religious work of Tasso

was thus mutilated, with the consent of its own author,

out of deference to the prying suspiciousness of ecclesi-

astical authority, the really corrupt poetry of Marino

passed into the hands of the public, not only unquestioned,

but accredited with a certain character for grave respect-

ability. Marino's epic poem Adone extends to over

40,000 lines. The hero of the poem is neither more nor

less than a Neapolitan cavalier servante. Lazy, selfish,

and effeminate, he has nothing to recommend him beyond

his good looks. The enormous volume of words in which

his story is told commemorates no action on his part of

energy or virtue : the narrative is mostly occupied with

luxurious description, and the style depends for its attrac-

tions on strings of metaphors, similes, and allusions, all

derived from pagan sources. Yet unchristian as the

1 Letter to Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga, 14th April 1576.

116

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

poem is to its core, the author calmly professes that it is

inspired by a moral intention, and that its twenty cantos

all converge to the exposition of a deep spiritual

truth :-

Ombruggia il ver Parnaso e non rivela

Gli alti misteri ai semplici profani .

Ma con scorza mentita asconde e cela

(Quasi in rozzo Silen) celesti arcani.

Però dal vel che tesse or la mia tela

In molti versi favolosi e vani,

Questo senso verace altri raccoglia :

Smoderato piacer termina in doglia.1

The plea of allegory was apparently quite sufficient for

the justification of Marino. We do not hear that he was

ever called to account for his poem, like Tasso, by

the authorities of the Church. The Adone touched no

Christian doctrine ; therefore it could raise no question of

heresy : if it was full of incredible fictions of marvel and

magic, still these did not occur, like the romantic episodes

of the Gerusalemme Liberata, in the midst of a story

professing to celebrate the actions of Christian heroes ; if

the objects it represented were thoroughly vicious, it

nevertheless professed an excellent moral. Within all

was corrupt, but externally no rule of Christian discipline

was violated. This was enough for the Inquisition.

In England, on the other hand, men were pleased with

the exercise of poetical " wit " for its own sake, because it

answered to their notions of unrestrained liberty. There

all sects and opinions were tolerated, so long as they did

not interfere with the course of civil government. Roman

Catholics might be educated abroad in the traditions of

scholasticism, and might convert them into any form of

poetry they chose at home. The Anglican was free to mix

up ideas of Rome, Geneva, and ancient Athens, provided

that he yielded strict obedience to the Act of Uni-

formity. The problem each man had to solve for himself

was an internal one, namely, how to reconcile in his life

the religious and moral teaching of the Reformation with

1 Adone, canto i. st. 10.

the æsthetic doctrines of the Renaissance. As to the

standard of style, the ideas of the average man resembled

those which he held about dress. Travelled Englishmen

had long been the laughing-stock of their neighbours on the

Continent, from their habit of copying and exaggerating

every foreign peculiarity of manners and costume, without

reference to reason or fitness. In the same way English-

men were best pleased with the poets who showed them-

selves apt in the invention of curious novelties, and they

liked to have their wonder roused by “discordia concors,

the combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of

occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.”

If they were prepared to follow any one's guidance, it

was that of their King and his Court ; and the tastes of

James I. were of a kind to encourage the pedantry of

“ wit.” Under the tuition of George Buchanan he had

become a fairly skilful logician and a good classical

scholar. An encounter with Cardinal Bellarmine in the

field of theological controversy had raised in his mind an

extravagant belief in his own powers of dialectic ; his

good memory and considerable learning convinced him of

his infallibility as a judge of literature. Though he had

himself no great love for the stage, his wife, Anne of

Denmark, was as passionately fond of pageants as Eliza-

beth ; hence in the Court the main currents of taste, as

far as they were determined by the personal influence of

the King and Queen, were turned into the channels of

logical disputation, classical learning, and mythological

masquerade.

Such an atmosphere was favourable to the genius of

men like Ben Jonson, Phineas and Giles Fletcher, and

Donne ; and the various schools of English “ wit,” which

sprang into complete existence in the reign of James I.,

may be separately considered under the following heads :

(1) the School of Theological Wit ; (2) the School of

Metaphysical Wit ; (3) the School of Court or Classical

Wit.

CHAPTER VII

SCHOOLS OF POETICAL "WIT" UNDER ELIZABETH

AND JAMES I.

The School of Theological Wit : Robert Southwell : John

Davies of Hereford : Phineas and Giles Fletcher

The universal paradox out of which spring the various

modes of theological "wit" is to be found in the subject-

matter of Christianity itself. The vanity and unreality of

the things of sense; the eternal reality of the unseen

world; the probationary character of human existence;

the immortality of the individual soul; the consequent

duty of man to live according to the law of the Church—

these are the considerations which have engaged the

attention of the loftiest minds from St. Augustine to

Pascal. With such elementary truths are inseparably

associated the paradoxical doctrines derived from them by

the Church out of the study of Scripture, and formulated

from age to age in the Creeds and the Articles of Faith,

showing what is to be believed in respect of mysteries

like the Trinity in Unity, the Incarnation, Grace, "Fore-

Knowledge, Fate, and Will," and other similar points,

many of which are enumerated in a popular book pub-

lished about the middle of the seventeenth century, and

entitled Memorials of Godliness and Christianity.1

On this foundation, from a very early age in the history

of Christianity, was built the work of a school of Christian

poetry which, following the traditional lines of Latin

1 The author (once supposed to be Bacon) was Herbert Palmer, Master

of Queen's College, Cambridge. See Grosart's reprint (1865).

118

verse composition, illustrated the idea of Nature, and particularly human nature, set forth in the Scriptures.

"What," says Giles Fletcher, in an apology for reverting to the practice, "should I speak of Juvencus, Prosper, and wise Prudentius? the last of which, living in Hierom's time, twelve hundred years ago, brought forth in his declining age so many and so religious poems, straitly charging his soul not to let pass so much as one either night or day without one divine song, Hymnis continuet dies, Nec nox ulla vacet, quin Dominum canat.

And as sedulous Prudentius so prudent Sedulius was famous in poetical divinity,the coétan of Bernard,who sung the history of Christ with as much devotion in himself as admiration to others; all of which were followed by the choicest wits of Christendom ; Nonnius translating all Saint John's Gospel into Greek verse ; Sannazar, the late living image and happy imitator of Virgil, bestowing ten years upon a song only to celebrate that one day when Christ was born to us on earth, and we (a happy change) unto God in heaven ; thrice-honoured Bartas, and our (I know no other name more glorious than his own) Mr. Edmund Spenser (two blessed souls), not thinking ten years enough, laying out their whole lives upon this one study."1

This early intermingling of theological matter with classical form caused the genius of Christian poetry to exhibit itself, at different periods and in the different countries of Europe, under the most varied aspects.

Appearing in England after the rupture with Rome was complete, and just at the time when our language was striving to accommodate itself to new conditions, it inspired those who felt its influence to clothe their thoughts in all the artificial refinements that were agreeable to the taste of the day.

Naturally the men who were at first most congenially influenced by it were Roman Catholics, and in England those Roman Catholics were generally conspirators.

Young, enthusiastic, fanatic, their imaginations were exalted in proportion as the cause to which they were devoted appeared to be depressed.

The

1 Preface to Christ's Death and Victory.

supremacy of the Pope was their watchword ; Mary Queen of Scots was the visible centre towards which all their hopes gravitated.

Taking their lives in their hands, ardent youths, like Babington and Chidiock Tichborne, were ready, with a stoical submission, to sacrifice them for the advancement of the cause which they believed to be that of God and their country.

The following verses, written by the latter on the eve of his execution, express, in the antithetical manner of the poetical Euphuists, the sense of vanity in all earthly things felt by an imagination brought face to face with the greatest of spiritual realities :-

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares ;

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain ;

My crop of corn is but a field of tares ;

And all my good is but vain hope of gain ;

The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun ;

And now I live, and now my life is done.

The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung ;

The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green ;

My youth is gone, and yet I am but young ;

I saw the world, and yet I was not seen ;

My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun ;

And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death, and found it in my womb ;

I looked for life, and saw it was a shade ;

I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb ;

And now I die, and now I am but made ;

The glass is full, and now my glass is run ;

And now I live, and now my life is done.1

Others there were, whose spirit, yet more fervent and elevated, coveted the privilege of martyrdom.

Of these was Robert Southwell, who may be called the earliest of the specifically religious poets of England after the Re-formation.

He was the third son of Richard Southwell of Horsham St. Faith, in the county of Norfolk, and was born in 1561.

Educated at Douai and in Paris, he came early under the influence of Thomas Darbyshire, who, being Archdeacon of Essex in the reign of Mary, had resigned on the accession of Elizabeth.

From this master

1 Poems of Raleigh, Wotton, etc. (Hannah), p. 114.

Southwell learned how to suffer for conscience sake, and gave proof of his willingness to make a complete surrender of himself to his cause by his entrance into the Society of Jesus in 1577. In 1588 he was sent with Garnet into England to minister to the spiritual needs of those who adhered to the ancient faith. Here for several years he continued to pass from house to house, concealed by the care and fidelity of his friends, till he was at last betrayed, by the treachery of one Ann Bellamy, to the informer Topcliffe, by whose means he was arrested and sent to the Tower in 1592. After being put to the rack thirteen times, he was hanged, bowelled, and quartered at Tyburn, in February 1594-95. On the scaffold he pleaded that he “never entertained any designs or plots against the Queen or kingdom,” neither “had I,” said he, “any other design in returning home to my native country than to administer the sacraments to those that desired them.”

Southwell's poems were published posthumously in 1595. Most of them were doubtless written in prison. They breathe, through the historic persons of Holy Writ, and especially St. Peter and Mary Magdalene, the contempt of the writer for life, repentance for sin, and the desire of St. Paul, “to be with Christ which is far better.” Here, for example, is a stanza from Mary Magdalene's Complaint at Christ's Death :-

Sith my life from life is parted,

Death, come take thy portion ;

Who survives when life is murdered,

Lives by mere extortion.

All that live, and not in God,

Couch their life in death's abode.

And again, in a poem called Life is Loss, he says, in the same antithetical vein as Chidiock Tichborne :-

For that I love I long, but that I lack ;

That others love I loathe, and that I have ;

All worldly freights to me are deadly wrack ;

Men present hap, I future hope do crave :

They, loving when they live, long life require ;

To live where best I love, death I desire.

122

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Speaking in the person of Mary Queen of Scots, he triumphs in the idea of death :-

A prince by birth, a prisoner by mishap,

From crown to cross, from throne to thrall I fell;

My right my ruth, my tutles wrought my trap,

My weal my woe, my worldly heaven my hell.

By death from prisoner to a prince enhanced,

From cross to crown, from thrall to throne again;

My ruth my right, my trap my style advanced

From woe to weal, from hell to heavenly reign.

Compared with the poems of later Roman Catholic writers, like Crashaw, Southwell's style is pure and simple. The foregoing extracts show how skilfully he adapted the poetical Euphuism of his day to the paradoxical character of his thought. Though Hall says of his poetry satirically,

Now good Saint Peter weeps pure Helicon,

And both the Maries make a music moan,

the unprejudiced reader will find in Southwell a mirror of genuine emotion, without any attempt at wit for wit's sake. The ardour of his imagination, as well as the glow of his religious faith, is felt in the following beautiful little poem, which Ben Jonson knew by heart :-

THE BURNING BABE

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,

Surprised I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye, to view what fire was near,

A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorchèd with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,

As though His floods should quench His flames which His tears were fed;

"Alas!" quoth He, "but newly born in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts, or feel my fire, but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;

The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defilèd souls,

For which as now on fire I am, to work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in My blood."

With this He vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto my mind that it was Christmas Day.

vi1 SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL "WIT" 123

The allegorical representation of spiritual emotion by means of material images, which appears in mediæval poetry as early as the Divine Comedy, and which crystal­lises itself in the isolated metaphors of Petrarch, is here exhibited in an admirably balanced form. In other of Southwell's poems the tendency to isolate single concetti, and to illustrate them by means of far-fetched imagery, is carried to excess. St. Peter's Complaint, for example, is a composition of 132 stanzas, each consisting of six lines, in which the Apostle is made to bewail his denial of his Master by extracting a moral reflection from every incident mentioned in the Gospel narrative of the Crucifixion. Thus the recorded fact that Peter warmed himself at the fire gives rise to this apostrophe :-

O hateful fire ! (ah ! that I ever saw it),

Too hard my heart was frozen for thy force ;

Far hotter flames it did require to thaw it,

Thy hell-resembling heat did freeze it worse.

O that I rather had congealed to ice,

Than bought thy warmth at such a damning price !

When it is written that Jesus turned to look on Peter, the poet writes of Christ's eyes :-

Sweet volumes, stored with learning fit for saints,

Where blissful quires imparadise their minds ;

Wherein eternal study never faints,

Still finding all, yet seeking all it finds :

How endless is your labyrinth of bliss,

Where to be lost the sweetest finding is !

Sometimes the discordia concors is produced by the con­junction round a single idea of a number of contrary images. Christ's bloody sweat, for example, is com­pared to

Fat soil, full spring, sweet olive, grape of bliss,

That yields, that streams, that pours, that dost distill,

Untilled, undrawn, unstamped, untouched of press,

Dear fruit, clear brooks, fair oil, sweet wine at will !

Thus Christ, unforced, prevents in shedding blood

The whips, the thorns, the nails, the spear, and rood.

124

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Very different in character and style is the "wit" of

John Davies of Hereford, who appears from contemporary

evidence to have been also a Roman Catholic.1 Born at

Hereford about 1565,2 he was educated, probably, at the

grammar school in that town. He seems not to have

been a member of an English university, though he

resided at Oxford, where it is likely that he exercised his

profession of writing-master, and wrote two sonnets in

praise of Magdalen College. Fuller bears testimony to his

pre-eminence in his own art, calling him "the greatest master

of the pen that England in her age beheld, whether for 'fast

writing,' 'fair writing,' 'close writing,' or 'various writing.'"3

Davies himself speaks of his "pen" as being his "plough,"4

meaning that it procured him his livelihood ; and he leads

us to suppose that it gave him the means of frequent and

familiar intercourse with the nobility.5 We may therefore

suppose that he passed his life quietly and in easy circum-

stances, enjoying the company (as we may gather from

his Wit's Pilgrimage (1610)) of the leading men of

letters in his time, such as Ben Jonson, Chapman, Browne,

and Sylvester. His other works are of a uniformly

religious character : Mirum in Modum (1602); Micro-

cosmos (1603); Humour's Heaven in Earth, with The

Triumph of Death (1605); Summa Totalis (1607); Holy

Roode (1609); Scourge of Folly (1610); Muses' Sacrifice,

or Divine Meditations (1612). He died in 1618, and was

buried at St. Dunstan's in the West.

Davies's work shows none of the genius and originality

of Southwell's. He has two main originals—his namesake,

Sir John Davies, author of Nosce Teipsum, and Sylvester,

the translator of Du Bartas. From the former he obtained

the suggestion for Mirum in Modum, a long theological

discourse on the nature of the soul, written in rhyming

stanzas, arranged on the model of the Spenser stanza,

1 Statement of Arthur Wilson. See Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, p. 461.

2 Davies's age is determined by his marriage license in the Bishop of

London's office, dated June 1613, in which he is said to be "about 48."

3 Worthies (1672), Herefordshire, p. 40. 4 Microcosmos.

5 Funeral Elegy on Mrs. Anne Dutton: "Oft have I been embosomed

with Lords."

with a decasyllabic, instead of an Alexandrine, verse for

the close. Summa Totalis, a philosophic poem on the

nature of God, is also inspired from the same source.

On the other hand, Microcosmos, a long rambling medita-

tion on the world in general, evidently owes its being to

Sylvester's Holy Weeks; and the same may be said of

The Holy Roode and The Muses' Sacrifice; while in Wit's

Pilgrimage and The Scourge of Folly he uses the satiric

and epigrammatic vein which, after being worked by

Harington and Davies, had been further developed by

Ben Jonson.

Davies of Hereford possesses neither the strong

reasoning power of the author of Nosce Teipsum, nor the

ingenious fancy of Sylvester; but like the latter he

cultivates the habit of flitting in bee-like fashion from one

conceit to another, and of perpetually playing upon words.

Here, for example, is the opening of Mirum in Modum :-

Wit yield me words ; Wit's words Wisdom bewray;

My soul, infuse thyself int' saws divine.

The froth of Wit, O Wisdom, scum away ;

Powder these lines with thy preserving brine ;

Refresh their saltness, salt their freshness fine,

That Wit's sweet words of Wisdom's salt may taste ;

Which can from crude conceit corruption stay,

And make the same eternally to last,

Though in oblivion be buried ay

The scum of Wit, the witty scum's repast,

Which, like light scum, with those lewd scums doth waste.

The following passage from Summa Totalis, describ-

ing the omnipresence of God, when compared with the

close reasoning in verse of Nosce Teipsum, will suggest to

the reader the difference in the mental calibre of the two

poets :-

If so, then so he must be everywhere,

He is, and is not so : but sith this strain

May strain my wit, I will the same forbear,

While greater clerks about it beat their brain :

For Life or Death's life-blood lies in this vein.

From questions of this kind (sith questionless

They endless seem) I willingly refrain,

And seek a Power expressless to express,

That is to show what God I do profess.

126

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

Many autobiographical touches in his poems recall the

quaint digressions of Sylvester. For example, in

Microcosmos :-

Enough, my Muse, of that, which ne'er enough

Can well be said, and let me (restless) rest :

For I must ply my pen which is my plough,

Sith my life's sun is almost in the west,

And I provided yet but for unrest :

Time flies away, these numbers number time,

But goods they number not : for their int'rest

Is nought but air, which, though to heaven it climb,

Is but mere vapour rising but from slime.

Yet he has his happy moments, as may be seen in this

sonnet taken from The Muses' Sacrifice, which will show,

by comparison with the extracts given from Southwell,

the elemental identity, in the midst of all their structural

variety, of the different styles of theological wit :-

As in the sacrifices of the Law

There was an Altar, Priest, Host, Fire, and Wood :

So this to that in likeness near doth draw,

And wants but Holy Fire to make it good.

The Altar is my Hope ; the Host my Heart ;

The Priest my Faith ; my Love the Fuel is :

All these, O Lord, are ready, but the art

To fire the Fuel wants : then do Thou this !

I am but passive in this holy Act,

Thou the sole Agent : yet O make me fit

To work with Thee together in this Fact

With all the forces of my Will and Wit !

And sith, dear Lord, all things so ready be,

Give Fire to sacrifice my Heart to Thee.

The course of theological wit having passed from the

purely lyrical vein of Southwell to the didactic and epi-

grammatic style of Davies of Hereford, Phineas and

Giles Fletcher found for it a new channel, by using, in

Spenser's manner, the pastoral eclogue and the allegorical

epic as vehicles for school divinity. A complete union

was effected by these poets between the classical mythology

revived by the Renaissance and the dogmatic theology

of the Middle Ages, in a style closely imitated from the

diction of Ovid and Virgil.

The nursery of their school of wit was the University

of Cambridge. Cambridge was the chief home and rally-

ing-point for the Calvinistic divines, who, after fleeing

from the country during the Marian persecutions, returned

on the accession of Elizabeth with imaginations full of

the religious and political ideas they had acquired during

their residence in Geneva. The opinions of the party

were represented in the most extreme form by Cartwright,

Margaret Professor of Divinity, whose semi-republican

and anti-episcopal principles became the logical starting-

point for the still more violent faction famous under the

name of Martin Mar-prelate. A milder and more

tolerant body of opinion was represented by Grindal, of

Pembroke College, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,

who, by dealing over-tenderly with the Puritan Non-

conformists, was brought into disgrace with Elizabeth.

Among the Cambridge followers of Grindal were Gabriel

Harvey and his pupil Spenser, both members of Pembroke

College, together with other Cambridge men, who blended

an ardent attachment to the doctrines of the theological

Reformers, and a patriotic antipathy to the claims of the

Papacy, with the vague Platonism then cultivated with

enthusiasm by all European Humanists. Out of this

curious mixture of Protestant doctrine and pagan philoso-

phy arose the tradition which reached its final artistic

goal in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

Phineas and Giles Fletcher may be said to belong

to the Cambridge school of theological wit by family

descent. Their grandfather was Richard Fletcher, who

(according to his epitaph) suffered hardships during the

reign was appointed Vicar of Cranbrook in Kent.

His eldest son, Richard, was made Bishop, first of Bristol,

afterwards of London, and as a divine stood high in the

favour of Elizabeth. He was the father of John Fletcher

the dramatist. Of Giles Fletcher, second son of the Vicar

of Cranbrook, interesting glimpses, veiled under pastoral

images, are given in the Piscatory Eclogues of Phineas

Fletcher, who calls his father Thelgon. Educated at

Eton, and afterwards at King's College, Cambridge, Giles

made for himself an academical reputation as a poet and

scholar by some eclogues in Latin verse (an art which

was then in its infancy at the University), celebrating the

history of the colleges on the banks of the Cam. It

appears that, as a reward for these poetical compliments,

he obtained preferment at Cambridge,1 while the fame

of his abilities induced some statesman of influence to

bring him to Court.2 Here the Queen employed him on

several diplomatic errands, first to Germany, then to

Russia, and finally to Scotland. Unfortunately the

transfer of his allegiance from College to Court did not

prove so much to his advantage as he had hoped. After

engaging in the service of the State, he seems to have lost

his appointment at Cambridge. Under the circumstances

there is nothing in this to cause surprise, but Phineas, his

son, speaking poetically, in the persons both of Thelgon

and Thirsil, made it the starting-point for a series of

complaints against the injustice of their University.3 Nor

was Giles recompensed at Court according to the value

which he himself set on his services. The Queen's

ambassador, under whom he served in Scotland, promised

1 In the first Piscatory Eclogue, Thelgon (Giles Fletcher, the elder), after

enumerating his poetical compositions, is made to say of Chamus, the genius

of the University :-

The while his goodly nymphs, with song delighted,

My notes with choicest flowers and garlands sweet requited.

Thirsil (Phineas Fletcher), however, in the second Eclogue shows that

Thelgon received something more than an honorary reward :-

To him the River gives a costly boat,

That on his waters he might safely float,

The song's reward.

2 Thelgon says in the first Eclogue :-

From thence a shepherd great, pleased with my song,

Drew me to Basilissa's courtly place.

3 Speaking of Chamus' treatment of Thelgon, Thirsil says in the second

Eclogue :-

Scarce of the boat he yet was full possest,

When, with a mind more changing than his wave,

Again bequeathed it to a wandering guest,

Whom then he only saw.

him some valuable preferment which never came ;1 though

he was not left altogether neglected, for in 1596 he was

made Master of Requests, and in 1597 his name appears

as Treasurer of St. Paul's. Meantime he seems to have

turned his thoughts again towards Cambridge, and (if

Phineas may be trusted) actually repurchased his old

appointment, only to be again deprived of it by an

academical "job."2 No doubt his feelings of resentment

were embittered by pecuniary difficulties. In 1580 he

had married Joan Sheaf, the daughter of a Kentish clothier,

by whom he had several children. Besides the care of

his own family, the charge of many nephews and nieces

was thrown upon him in 1596, when his brother Richard

died, leaving his family without any provision. Giles,

who had become security to the Exchequer for a debt of

his brother for first-fruits and tenths, was forced to sell

the office he held, and, the proceeds of this being insuf

ficient, was thrown into prison. He seems also in 1600

to have been out of favour politically, through his connec-

tion with the Earl of Essex.3 Nevertheless he obtained

fresh diplomatic employment, being appointed in 1610

negotiator of a commercial treaty with Denmark, on

behalf of the Company of Eastland Merchants. This is

1 Thelgon calls the ambassador Amyntas, and says in the fi$t Eclogue '—

Yet once he said—which I, then fool, believed—

(The words of it, and Damon, witness be)

When in fair Albion's fields he first arrived :

" When I forget true Thelgon's love to me,

The love which ne'er my certain hope deceived,

The wavering sea shall stand and rocks remove."

He said, and I believed ; so credulous is love !

2 After enumerating all Thelgon's political services, Thirsil says in the

second Eclogue :—

Yet little thank and less reward he got :

He never learned to sooth the itching ear :

One day (as chanced) he spied that painted boat

Which once was his ; though his of right it were,

He bought it now again, and bought it dear ;

But Cham to Gripus gave it once again,

Gripus, the basest and most dunghill swain

That ever drew a net or fished in fruitful main.

All this need not be taken very seriously. Thelgon may only have been dis-

appointed in the result of a university or college election.

3 Grosart's edition of Phineas Fletcher's poems, vol. i. pp. lvii-lviii.

VOL. III

K

the last recorded event in his life: he died in February

1610-11. Besides the Latin verses before spoken of, he

was the author of a volume of sonnets, entitled Licia,

written in the Petrarcan vein rendered fashionable for the

time by the practice of Sidney, Watson, Constable, and

other Euphuistic poets. He wrote also a historical poem

on the usurpation of Richard III. He may therefore

fairly be said to have laid the foundation of the family

genius for poetry, which his sons and his nephew after-

wards raised into eminence.1

His children were left in straitened circumstances.

In his Father's Testament, Phineas Fletcher says to his

own children: “The great legacy which I desire to confer

upon you is that which my dying father bequeathed unto

me, and from him (through God's grace) descended upon

me ; whose last and parting words were these: ‘My sons,

had I followed the course of this world and taken bribes,

I might (haply) have made you rich : but now must leave

you nothing but your education, which (I bless God) is

such as I am well assured you choose rather that I should

die in peace than yourselves live in plenty.'” Of these sons,

Phineas, the elder, was born in 1582, and, like his father,

was educated first at Eton, and afterwards at King's

College, Cambridge. He was admitted into King's

College in the Michaelmas term 1600, became B.A. in

1604, and M.A. in 1608. His name does not appear in

the college books after 1616, and from his Piscatory

Eclogues it appears that he left Cambridge in consequence

of having, like his father before him, lost the emoluments

(perhaps a fellowship) which he had hitherto enjoyed.2

1 In some verses prefixed to The Purple Island, W. Benlowes says :-

For thou art poet born ; who know thee know it,

Thy brother, sire, thy very name's a poet.

2 Thomalin, having asked Thirsil why the latter is removing “his boat and

mind ” from Chamus, the latter replies :-

The Muses me forsake, not I the Muses.

Thomalin, thou know'st how I them honoured ever :

Not I my Cham, but me proud Cham refuses ;

His froward spite my strong affections sever ;

Else from his banks could I have parted never.

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL "WIT"

Being in want of employment, he applied to Thomas Murray, tutor of Charles, Prince of Wales, sending to the former a copy of his Latin poem Locustæ, together with some verses addressed to the Prince himself. His epistle to Murray must have been written later than 1614, the year in which Prince Henry died, but Locustæ—which may have been accompanied by The Apollyonists, its English equivalent—was, by the poet's own avowal, the work of an earlier period, having been no doubt conceived while the Gunpowder Plot was still fresh in men's memory.1 We may assume that Murray listened to his appeal, and that, through his influence, Fletcher was—about the year 1616—appointed domestic chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby.2 From his new patron he obtained, in 1621, the living of Hilgay in Norfolk, of which parish he certainly remained Rector till 1648. As there is no record of his burial in the place, and as another person was admitted "Minister" there in 1650 by a Parliamentary Committee, it is a not unreasonable inference that Fletcher was among the clergy ejected from their livings under the Long Parliament. He died not later than 1650, in which year his will was proved.

No considerable poem written by Phineas Fletcher is known to have been published before 1627, in which year appeared Locustæ and The Apollyonists. These were

His stubborn hands my net have broken quite,

My fish, the guerdon of my toil and pain,

He causeless seized, and, with ungrateful spite,

Bestowed upon a less deserving swain.

Second Piscatory Eclogue.

1 "The verses," he tells Murray, "are indeed ill-turned, nor have they been returned to the anvil, and they were composed among distractions of business unfavourable to the Muses." The concluding address to Chaales I. in The Apollyonists must of course have been written to fit the circumstances of the year when the poem was published.

2 In dedicating his Way of Blessedness (1621) to Sir H. Willoughby, Fletcher says: "Most worthy Patron, I have been bold to entitle you and your worthy Lady to this labour, not only in remembrance of your much love and my long courteous entertainment in your house (such as I never saw any gentleman give unto their Minister): or that first I initiated my weak ministry in your family and hamlet: but especially because I acknowledge myself and whatsoever is mine yours in the Lord Jesus Christ." The interval between his leaving Cambridge and his appointment to Hilgay would thus seem to be accounted for.

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A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

followed, in 1631, by a piscatory comedy which had been acted many years before in the University of Cambridge ;

last of all came, in 1633, what appears to have been the earliest of his compositions, The Purple Island. No better

reason for this tardiness of publication is assigned than the severity of the poet's own judgment on his youthful

work 1. If Fletcher was sincere in his reluctance to give the world a moral poem like The Purple Island, this

would be a strong argument against his being the author of the amorous Britain's Ida—published anonymously in

1628—which has, however, been assigned to him on what is certainly strong internal evidence, and which (if

his) must have been the work of his young days at Cambridge.2

Giles Fletcher, Phineas's younger brother, was not restrained by any scruples of false modesty in making

an early appearance as an author. The date of his birth indeed cannot be exactly ascertained, though the

place of it is known to have been London. He was admitted as a scholar in Trinity College, Cambridge,

from Westminster School, in 1605, and, as he is not likely to have been more than 18 at that time, he can

hardly have been born before 1587. While still at school he had given proof of his poetical powers in

some verses written to commemorate the death of Elizabeth, which were published in 1603, with others

composed by his brother Phineas, in a volume entitled

1 In his dedication of The Purple Island to Edward Benlowes, Fletcher speaks of "these raw essays of my very unripe years and almost childhood."

"How unseasonable," he continues, "are blossoms in autumn (unless perhaps in this age when there are more flowers than fruit) : I am entering upon my winter, and yet these blooms of my first spring must now show themselves to our ripe wits, which certainly will give them no other entertainment but derision." And W. Benlowes, in his praise of the poem, says :-

How many barren wits would gladly own,

How few o' the pregnantest own such another?

Thou father art, yet blushest to be known,

And though 't may call the best of Muses mother,

Yet thy severer judgment would it smother.

2 For the evidence as to the authorship of Britain's Ida, see Grosart's edition of Phineas Fletcher's Works (Letter to Sir J. D. Coleridge).

vi1

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL "WIT"

133

Sorrow's Joy. As the production of a boy of 16 or 17,

this "memorial canto" was remarkable, and it perhaps

brought the poet to the notice of Dr. Nevile, Dean of

Canterbury and Master of Trinity, to whom, in his

dedication of Christ's Death and Victory, Giles acknow-

ledges that he owes his scholarship. The latter poem

was published in 1610, and is Giles's only monument in

verse. In 1612 he edited the remains of Nathaniel

Pownall—probably his cousin—a young Oxford scholar,

who then enjoyed a considerable reputation both as a

divine and a linguist. Giles was afterwards appointed,

perhaps on the recommendation of Bacon, to the living

of Alderton in Suffolk, which remote parish, if Fuller

is to be believed, showed little appreciation of the genius

of its learned Rector, and where his life was shortened

by his uncongenial surroundings.1 He died in 1623.

The two Fletchers were evidently united by a strong

fraternal affection, which reveals itsclf, not only in their

mutual allusions to each other's work, but also in their

common poetical aim. Both educated in the same

university, they were equally inspired by the Cambridge

genius. Their poetical object was to embody the

spirit of Calvinistic theology in the allegorical forms of

the Middle Ages, combined with the framework and

diction of Latin epic or bucolic verse.

Their artistic merits have been very variously judged.

Campbell and other critics, following the eighteenth-cen-

tury canon of taste, have disparaged them as second-rate

copyists of Spenser.2 In our own day they have been

exalted, by a natural reaction, but with a tendency to

exaggeration, as the forerunners and masters of Milton.3

The true proportion of their genius and their place in

our literature may be more justly determined, if we regard

them as forming the middle and connecting stage in

the progress of English poetry from one of these great

writers to the other.

1 Fuller, Worthies (1811), vol. 11. p. 82.

2 Lives of the Poets (1848), p. 178.

3 See Grosart's edition of P. Fletcher's Works, vol. i. pp. clxi-ccclxiii.

Spenser's genius is inspired almost exclusively by the

Middle Ages. The chivalrous matter of his poems is

mediæval : so is his allegorical spirit : so is his quasi-

archaic diction. Enthusiastic admirer of the classics as

he is, all that he really draws from them is a frequent

allusion to the tales of Greek mythology, and a certain

concinnity in the metrical combination of words and

phrases, which he imitates from the style of the Latin

poets. The structure of his composition is in every

sense of the word "romantic."

The Fletchers are almost as mediæval in spirit as

Spenser. Like him they make their starting-point in the

scholastic and allegorical interpretation of Nature : their

theological matter, for all its Calvinistic dress, is essenti-

ally the same as had been taught in the schools of

Christian divinity since the time of Augustine. But in

the form of their poetry they show themselves far

more open than their master to the influence of the

classical Renaissance. While Spenser founds himself

primarily on the example of Ariosto, I doubt if an allusion

to the Orlando Furioso occurs in the works of either

Fletcher. Giles, as we have seen, looks, for the models

and precedents of his epic style, to the Christian suc-

cessors of Virgil : he copies Prudentius and Sedulius, and

announces, like any Latin epic poet, the subject of his

song. Phineas, while expressing his love and admiration

for Spenser, goes back for his pastoral and epic forms to

Virgil. He says of his style :-

Two shepherds most I love with just adoring,

That Mantuan swain, who changed his slender reed

To trumpet's martial voice and war's loud roaring,

From Corydon to Turnus' derring-deed;

And next our home-bred Colin's sweetest firing;

Their steps not following close, but far admiring;

To lackey one of these is all my pride's aspiring.

But though they thus deliberately employed a

pastoral-epic form, the real poetical motive of the

Fletchers was didactic, descriptive, epigrammatic, rather

than narrative. True children of their age, they were

alive to all the influences expressed in the word "wit,"

and they perceived that the dogmas of theology offered

to the imagination a wide field for the development of

the poetical resources of Christian paradox. Giles in

particular turned his attention in this direction: Phineas

Davies in Nosce Teipsum; in both of their epics the

theological or scientific motive modifies the structure of

the action, and determines the character of the diction.

Christ's Death and Victory is professedly an epic

narrative of the supernatural events on which is founded

the Christian philosophy of human nature. The poet

sets forth his subject in the classical epic style as follows:-

The birth of Him that no beginning knew,

Yet gives beginning to all that are born ;

And how the Infinite far greater grew ;

By growing less, and how the rising Morn

That shot from Heaven, did back to Heaven return :

The obsequies of Him that could not die ;

And death of life ; and of eternity ;

How worthily He died that died unworthily ;

How God and Man did both embrace each other;

Met in one Person Heaven and Earth did kiss ;

And how a Virgin did become a Mother,

And bore that Son who the world's Father is

And Maker of His Mother ; and how bliss

Descended from the bosom of the High,

To clothe Himself in naked misery,

Sailing at length to Heaven and Earth triumphantly ;

Is the first flame wherewith my whiter Muse

Doth burn in heavenly love such love to tell.

It is to be observed that Giles Fletcher does not deal

with all the subjects he here enumerates. His poem is

divided into four parts: the action of the first, Christ's

Victory in Heaven, begins towards the close of Christ's

actual life on earth, so that all the facts mentioned in the

second of the above stanzas are presupposed ; Christ's

Victory on Earth is a fanciful version of the incidents of

the Temptation ; Christ's Triumph over Death relates (as

far as it can be called narrative at all) the Saviour's

Crucifixion and Burial; Christ's Triumph after Death is

a description of the Resurrection and Ascension. The

events recorded are real, not allegorical, though in the

"machinery" of the poem frequent use is made of the

usual accompaniment of allegory, abstract impersonation.

The tendency of the poet's genius is sufficiently dis-

closed in the opening verses just cited, and it is

maintained throughout the poem, almost every stanza

of which is devoted to the elaboration of some para-

doxical conceit. Having allowed his imagination to

settle on an idea, Giles turns it all round to see of how

many varieties of expression it is capable; how the

contrasts of thought can be rendered most striking; how

the antitheses of phrase can be most effectively arranged;

and when the particular vein has been exhausted, he

makes a fresh start in another direction, and exhausts, on

similar principles, a fresh batch of refinements. The

following succession of stanzas will give the reader a

good idea of his so-called epic style:-

Whoever saw Honour before ashamed;

Afflicted Majesty; debasèd Height;

Innocence guilty; Honesty defamed;

Liberty bound; Health sick; the Sun in night?

Our night is day, our sickness Health is grown,

Our shame is veiled: this now remains alone

For us: since He was ours that we be not our own.

Night was ordained for rest, and not for pain,

But they, to pain their Lord, their rest contemn;

Good laws to save what bad men would have slain,

And not bad judges, with one breath, by them

The innocent to pardon, and condemn:

Death for revenge of murderers, not decay

Of guiltless blood: but now all headlong sway,

Man's murderer to save, man's Saviour to slay.

Frail multitude! whose giddy law is list,

And best applause is windy flattering,

Most like the breath of what it doth consist

No sooner blown, but as soon vanishing,

As much desired as little profiting;

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL "WIT"

137

That makes the men that have it oft as light

As those that give it ; which the proud invite

And fear ; the bad man's friend, the good man's hypocrite

It was but now their sounding clamours sung,

" Blessed is He that comes from the Most High !"

And all the mountains with "Hosanna !" rung ;

And now, "Away with him, away !" they cry,

And nothing can be heard but "Crucify !"

It was but now the crown itself they save,

And golden name of King unto Him gave,

And now, no king, but only Cæsar they will have.

It was but now they gathered blooming May,

And of his arms disrobed the branching tree,

To strow with boughs and blossoms all the way ;

And now the branchless trunk a cross for Thee,

And May dismayed a coronet must be ·

It was but now they were so kind to throw

Their own best garments where Thy feet should go,

And now Thy self they strip, and bleeding wounds they show 1

Proceeding on the same principle, though in a different manner, Phineas Fletcher conceived allegorically the structure of The Purple Island. This poem is occupied almost entirely with a physiological and psychological account of man's nature. It consists of twelve books, ten of which are taken up with description ; that is to say, in describing, through the narrative of the shepherd Thirsil, the construction of the human body, allegorised under the configuration of an island, and the faculties of the mind, impersonated as moral abstractions. The entire action of the poem—if any action it can be said to have—is crowded into a few stanzas in the last two books. Phineas is not less strongly attracted than his brother by the fascinations of wit, but, since he has not got his subject ready provided for him, and has mainly to make his own roads, he leaves paradoxes of idea, and devotes all his attention to the elaboration of paradoxical imagery. It is his object to find out striking and novel resemblances between the anatomy of the body and the natural features of an island ; hence his genius shines most in his painting, and

1 Christ's Triumph over Death, st. 29-33.

his method is simply to pass on from one part of the body to another, conveying to the reader a scientific idea of its constitution by means of an elaborate picture of each thing to which it is likened. An idea of his manner may be given by taking the following scientific footnotes describing the organisation of the heart, and comparing them with his translation of the facts into poetical diction :--

Though the heart be an entire body, yet it is severed into two partitions, the right and left ; of which the left is the more excellent and noble :

The city's self's in two partitions reft,

That on the right, this on the other side :

The right—made tributary to the left--

Brings in his pension at his certain tide,

A pension of liquors strangely wrought ;

Which first by Hepar's streams are hither brought,

And here distilled with art beyond or words or thought.

Two skinny additions (from their likeness called the ears) receive the one the thicker blood (that called the right), the other (called the left) takes in the air sent by the lungs :

At each hand of the left two streets stand by,

Of several stuff and several working framed

With hundred crooks and deep-wrought cavity :

Both like the ears in form, and so are named.

I' the right hand street the tribute liquor sitteth :

The left forced air into his concave getteth,

Which subtle wrought and thin for future workmen fitteth.

The left side of the heart takes in the air and blood ; and concocting them both in his hollow bosom, sends them out by the great artery into the whole body :

The city's left side—by some hid direction

Of this thin air and of that right side's rent,

Compound together—makes a strange confection,

And in one vessel, both together meynt,1

Stills2 them with equal never-quenchèd firing ;

Then in small streams, through all the Island wiring,

Sends into every part both heat and life inspiring.3

The position of the Fletcher's, then, in English poetry

1 Mixed. 2 Distils. 3 Purple Island, canto iv. st. 18, 20, 21.

may be summed up by saying that the main character of

their work is determined by the spirit of theological or

reflective wit prevailing in their own age; that for the

elements of their style they are indebted to the great

founder of the Cambridge school, from whom they borrow

the pastoral imagery of The Shepherd's Calendar, together

with the moral allegory and the abstract impersonations

of The Faery Queen; and that, in their adoption of the

forms of Latin epic poetry and in the Latinism of their

diction, they anticipate Milton. But the poetry of both

lacks the spirit of action, which animates, allegorically, the

romantic epic of The Faery Queen, and, directly, the classic

epic of Paradise Lost.

In the case of Phineas Fletcher, the action of The

Purple Island, compared with that of The Faery Queen,

exhibits a classic simplicity of form: the narrative (such

as it is) proceeds regularly from point to point, and has a

beginning, middle, and end. The descriptive details are

often closely imitated from Spenser, but, in consequence

of the steady gaze which Phineas fixes on his moral end,

his pictorial style has far less vivacity than his master's,

whose rich and versatile fancy carries him discursively

from one romantic situation to another, with little regard

to the unity of the action as a whole. Take, for ex-

ample, the impersonation of Gluttony in The Purple

Island, where Fletcher has evidently had before him the

following description of Spenser in the Masque of the

Seven Deadly Sins:-

And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,

Deform'd creature, on a filthy swine,

His belly was up-blown with luxury,

And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne :

And like a crane his neck was long and fine,

With which he swallowed up excessive feast,

For want whereof poor people oft did pine;

And all the way, most like a brutish beast,

He spued up his gorge, that all him did detest.

In green vine-leaves he was right fitly clad,

For other clothes he could not wear for heat,

And on his head an ivy garland had,

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A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

From under which fast trickled down the sweat.

Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat.

And in his hand did bear a bouzing can,

Of which he sipped so oft that on his seat

His drunken corse he scarce upholden can :

In shape and life more like a monster than a man.

Unfit he was for any worldly thing,

And eke unhable once to stir or go,

Not meet to be of counsel to a king ;

Whose mind in meat and drink was drownèd so,

That from his friend he seldom knew his foe :

Full of diseases was his carcase blew,

And a dry dropsy through his flesh did flow,

Which by misdiet daily greater grew.

Such one was Gluttony, the second of that crew.1

Phineas Fletcher writes :--

With Methos Gluttony, his guttling brother,

Twin parallels, drawn from the self-same line,

So foully like was either to the other,

And both most like a monstrous-paunched swine.

His life was either a continued feast,

Whose surfeits upon surfeits him oppressed,

Or heavy sleep, that helps so great a load digest.

Meantime his soul, weighed down with muddy chains,

Can neither work nor move in captive bands ;

But dulled in vaporous fogs all careless reigns,

Or rather serves strong appetite's commands .

That when he now was gorged with crammed down store,

And porter, wanting room, had shut the door,

The glutton signed that he could gourmandise no more.

His crane-like neck was long, unlaced ; his breast,

His gouty limbs, like to a circle round,

As broad as long ; and for his spear in rest,

Oft with his staff he beats the yielding ground ;

Wherewith his hands did help his feet to bear,

Else would they ill so huge a burden steer :

His clothes were all of leaves ; no armour could he wear.

Only a target light upon his arm

He careless bore, on which old Gryll was drawn,

Transformed into a hog with cunning charm,

In head, and paunch, and soul itself a brawn :

1 Faery Queen, book i. canto i. st. 21-23.

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL "WIT"

143

Half drowned within, without, yet still did hunt

In his deep trough for swill, as he was wont,

Cased all in loathsome mire : no word, Gryll could but grunt.1

Spenser's impersonation is introduced episodically.

As regards its necessary relation to the action and moral

of the poem, it is not presumptuous to say that it might

have been inserted with equal propriety in almost any

other place of the first or second books of The Faery Queen.

But, taking it as a detail, nothing can surpass the strength,

the vivacity, and the brilliancy of the painting. Every-

thing is of a piece: the external presentation of the

abstract figure exactly symbolises the spiritual character

of the vice. Fletcher perceived the absence of unity in

Spenser's design, and, while admiring the splendour of his

ornaments, thought to reproduce them in a more artistic

form. There is indeed more unity in The Purple Island

than in The Faery Queen: the figure of Gluttony takes his

proper place as one of the warriors of the fleshly host who

are warring against the Prince of the Island, and the

moral purpose of the abstraction is clearly marked. But

there is an almost entire absence of warlike action in

the poem; and the necessity of presenting Gluttony as a

warrior, while Spenser describes him as unable to wear

clothes, indicates the comparatively mechanical character

of Fletcher's invention. Though he has evidently studied

Spenser's manner with great care, he is far from rivalling

him in the richness and glow of his poetical colours.

Moreover, his impersonations want the relief that is

afforded by the discursive method of Spenser's romantic

narrative: he goes on describing one allegorical figure

after another, until all distinction of moral significance,

as well as all picturesqueness of composition, is lost on his

crowded canvas.

Giles's impersonations suffer from a different fault.

He mixes his abstractions with real personages. In

Christ's Victory on Earth the Tempter guides the Saviour

to the Cave of Despair (who is described, with all Spenser's

minuteness, as if he were a real being), with the intention

1 Purple Island, canto vii. st. 80-83.

of making Him pass the night in it: he afterwards brings

Him to the Gardens of Vain-Glory, which are painted like

those of Armida or Adonis. On the other hand, with an

astonishing want of judgment, he gives way to his talent

for description so far as to depict, with the luxuriance of

Marino, the person of the Redeemer :-

His cheeks as snowy apples, soft in wine,

Had their red roses quencht with lilies white,

And like to garden strawberries did shine,

Washt in a bowl of milk, or rosebuds bright,

Unbosoming their breasts against the light.

Here love-sick souls did eat, there drank, and made

Sweet-smelling posies that could never fade.1

These artistic defects in the work of the Fletchers are

traceable to two causes; one, the attempt to reconcile

theological dogma with the incongruous external forms of

classical poetry, in the conception of the subject ; the

other, the prevailing influence of “wit”—that is to say,

the passion for novelty and paradox—in the manner of

expressing the conception. Both tendencies combined are

extremely visible in the opening of The Purple Island.

Here Phineas Fletcher, like Virgil in the Georgics, complains

in the first place of the exhaustion of poetical matter :-

Tell me, ye Muses, what our father ages

Have left succeeding times to play upon :

What now remains, unthought on by those sages,

Where a new Muse may try her pinion :

and after beginning his poem with the following invocation—

Great Prince of Shepherds, thou who late didst deign

To lodge Thyself within this wretched breast,

—Most wretched breast such guest to entertain,

Yet O most happy lodge in such a guest !—

Thou, first and last, inspire Thy sacred skill ;

Guide Thou my hand, grace Thou my artless quill ;

So shall I first begin, so last shall end Thy will—

he defines his subject :-

Hark, then, ah hark, you gentle shepherd crew !

An isle I fain would sing, an island fair,

1 Christ's Victory on Earth, st. 11.

VII

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL "WIT"

143

A place too seldom viewed, yet still in view,

Near as ourselves, yet farthest from our care,

Which we by leaving find, by seeking lost;

A foreign home, a strange though native coast,

Most obvious to all, yet most unknown to most.1

Essentially, therefore, Phíneas's subject is the same as

that treated with so much classical simplicity in Davies's

Nosce Teipsum :—

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,

And pass both Tropics and behold the Poles,

When we come home are to ourselves unknown,

And unacquainted still with our own souls.

But whereas Davies's treatment of his theme is purely

didactic and philosophical, Fletcher, starting from a theo-

logical basis, uses epical and allegorical forms for the

purpose of decorating his moral. Davics accounts thus

for the conflict between Wit (the Understanding) and the

Will :—

And as this Wit should goodness truly know,

We have a Will which that true good should choose,

Though Will do oft (when Wit false forms doth show),

Take ill for good and good for ill refuse.

Fletcher, on the contrary, allegorises the story of man's

Fall. He makes Voletta (the impersonation of Will) the

wife of Intellect, who is the Viceroy of the Almighty in

the Purple Island :—

But (ah !), enticed by her own worth and pride,

She stained her beauty with most loathsome spot,

Her Lord's fixed law and spouse's light denied,

And now all dark is their first morning ray :

What verse might then their former light display,

Where yet their darkest night outshines the brightest day ?2

There is, of course, no reason why the consequences of

the Fall should not be related in poetry either allegori-

cally, as Bunyan related them in his Holy War, or

historically, as Milton related them in Paradise Lost; but

it is evident that, in either case, if they be treated in

epical form, the laws of epical and not of didactic poetry

1 Purple Island, canto i. st. 9, 33, 34.

2 Ibid. canto vi. st. 60.

must be observed : whereas, from what has been already said, the reader will observe that, in the conception of Phineas Fletcher, the requirements of poetical action are subordinated to the fascinations of theological wit. Enough has been said of the structure of Christ's Death and Victory to show that the same false principle prevailed over the judgment of his brother.

As regards their poetical diction, Phineas and Giles seem to have worked on a concerted system. The metres they employ are, as far as I know, peculiar to themselves. They consist of either the first quatrain of Spenser, the first five lines of the royal stanza, or the first six lines of the ottava rima, closed with a rhyming triplet of which the last verse is an Alexandrine. Within these last three lines is generally compressed the point of the epigram at which they almost always aim. Giles Fletcher had as strong a passion for coining new words as any member of the French Pleiád. He models himself on Spenser, but he discards most of the archaic inflections of his master ; on the other hand, he resorts freely to the Latin vocabulary or to old English for the enrichment of his native tongue. The following words and phrases—very few of which have taken root in the language—occur in the various parts of Christ's Death and Victory :-Congies (Victory on Earth, st. 4) ; Befreckeked (V.O.E., 7) ; Spangelets (V.O.E., 10) ; Jets (V.O.E., 13) ; Moduled (V.O.E., 18) ; Peccant (V.O.E., 21) ; Elonging (V.O.E., 24) ; Craples (V.O.E., 28) ; A sprinkle (i.e. a rose of a watering-pot ; V.O.E., 32) ; Aggrate (V.O.E., 39) ; Depastured (V.O.E., 40) ; Eblazed (V.O.E., 41) ; Empurpúled, Graping (V.O.E., 45) ; Inhumed (V.O.E., 52) ; Spumy (V.O.E., 54) ; Orbicles (V.O.E., 59) ; Rutty Jordan (Triumph over Death, 2) ; Punctuals (T.O.D., 12) ; Tumorous (T.O.D., 24) ; Disentrail (T.O.D., 35) ; Debellished (T.O.D., 59) ; Bragg Lamb (Triumph after Death, 1) ; Engladded, Eblazon (T.A.D., 2) ; Flit air (T.A.D., 6) ; Heried (T.A.D., 11) ; Disparagon (T.A.D., 25) ; Depured (T.A.D., 28) ; Militants (T.A.D., 30) ; Indeficient (T.A.D., 37) ; Beaupere (T.A.D., 42) ;

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL "WIT"

145

Emparadiscd (T.A.D., 44); Bclamours (T.A.D., 48); Entreasured (Victory in Heaven, 4); Moory slough (V.I.H., 9); Scoals (V.I.H., 10); Kerchered head (V.I.H., 12), Roaguing (V.I.H., 14); Y-draded (V.I.H., 40); Elamping (V.I.H., 41); Dishadowed (V.I.H. 42); Deprostrate (V.I.H., 43); Indeflourishing Belgards (V.I.H., 46); Discoloured (i.e. two-coloured) plumcs (V.I.H., 47); Vive mirror (V.I.H., 52); Limber mould (V.I.H., 57); Distained (V.I.H., 58); Infuneral (V.I.H., 66); Infanted (V.I.H., 80); Drieth (drouth) (V.I.H., 81); Kingly sophies (V.I.H., 82); Flaskets (V.I.H., 85)

Phineas has comparatively little of this new coinage; his language by the side of his brother's appears pure and simple. Inventing his own allegory, he suffers less from the temptation to contort thought and diction. But like Giles, when he is on theological ground, he has recourse to the arts of epigrammatic contrast and verbal antithesis. Here, for example, is a description of hell :-

Prayers there are idle, death is wooed in vain; In midst of death poor wretches long to die; Night, without day or rest, still doubling pain; Woes spending still, yet still their end less nigh; The soul there restless, helpless, hopeless lies, The body frying roars, and roaring fries; There's life that never lives, there's death that never dies.1

His Piscatory Eclogues abound in verbal conceits. For example :-

Her face two colours pant; the first a flame (Yet she all cold), a flame in rosy dye, Which sweetly blushes, like the morning's shame: The second snow, such as on Alps doth lie, Yet safely there the sun doth bold defy: Yet this cold snow can kindle hot desire! Thou miracle! mar'l not if I admire How flame should coldly freeze, and snow should burn as fire 2

And the shepherd Thirsil reflects on the death of Spenser in the following artificial arrangement of words :-

1 Purple Island, canto vi. st. 37. Eclogue vii. st. 11.

VOL. III L.

Witness our Colin, whom though all the Graces

And all the Muses nursed ; whose well-taught song

Parnassus' self and Glorian embraces,

And all the learned and all the shepherd's throng ;

Yet all his hopes were crossed, all suits denied ;

Discouraged, scorned, his writings vilified :

Poorly—poor man—he lived ; poorly—poor man—he died.1

1 Purple Island, canto i. st. 19.

CHAPTER VIII

SCHOOLS OF POETICAL "WIT" UNDER ELIZABETH

AND JAMES I.

The School of Metaphysical Wit John Donne

Beyond the sphere of theological allegory, in which

the traditions of the schools were still preserved, lay

the region of pure thought ; and here the contradiction

between mediæval and modern ideas furnished ample

materials for the exercise of "wit". Assailed at once

by the forces of the new faith, the new science, and the

growing spirit of civic liberty, the ancient fabric of

Catholicism and Feudalism fell more and more into ruin,

but the innovating philosophy was yet far from having

established a system of order and authority. The reason-

ing of Copernicus and Galileo shook men's belief in the

truth of the Ptolemaic astronomy : the discoveries of

Columbus extended their ideas of the terrestrial globe :

the study of Greek and Hebrew literature in the original

disturbed the symmetrical methods of scholastic logic :

the investigations of the Arabian chemists produced havoc

in the realm of encyclopædic science. Still, the old

learning had rooted itself too firmly in the convictions of

society to be easily abandoned, and the first effect of the

collision between the opposing principles was to propagate

a feeling of philosophic doubt. In the sphere of reason a

new kind of Pyrrhonism sprang up, which expressed itself

in Montaigne's motto, Que sçay je? and this disposition

of mind naturally exerted another kind of influence on

the men of creative imagination. In active life the con-

147

fusion of the times was the opportunity of the buccaneer

and the soldier of fortune, who hoped to advance them-

selves by their swords; and like these, many poets, in

their ideal representations of Nature, seized upon the rich

materials of the old and ruined philosophy to decorate

the structures which they built out of their lawless fancy.

On such foundations rose the school of metaphysical wit,

of which the earliest and most remarkable example is

furnished in the poetry of John Donne.

The external facts in the life of this poet offer useful

landmarks for the interpretation of his genius.1 He was

born about 1573, the son of a London merchant, whose

wife was a daughter of John Heywood, the epigrammatist.

In his eleventh year he was entered at Hart Hall, Oxford,

whence he was removed before he was fourteen to Cam-

bridge, a proof of great precocity of intellect, even in an

age when men's academical education began much earlier

than at present. In neither university did he take a

degree, perhaps because his family was of the Roman

Catholic faith. From Cambridge he was removed to

Lincoln's Inn, and by the death of his father became

master of his fortune. This he seems to have rapidly

dissipated, and after some years of loose living, he joined

Essex in the expedition to Cadiz in 1596, and again in the

voyage to the Azores, during which he wrote his two

poems entitled The Storm and The Calm. From the

latter we gather the causes which prompted him to his

adventures :-

A rotten state, and hope of gain;

Or to disuse me from the queasy pain

Of being beloved and loving, or the thirst

Of honour and fair death, out-pushed me first.

On his return to England he entered the household of

Sir Thomas Egerton, the Chancellor, afterwards Lord

Ellesmere, where he met Anne More—daughter of Sir

George More, Lieutenant of the Tower, and niece of

1 Mr. Edmund Gosse, in his Life and Letters of Donne (1899), has fur-

nished an excellent and exhaustive biography of this singular man.

SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICAL "WIT"

149

Lady Egerton—whom he secretly married in 1601. The marriage gave great offence to the lady's father, who procured that Donne, with two of his friends, Samuel and Christopher Brooke, who had helped him, should be thrown into prison. After remaining there for a short time he was reconciled to Sir George to his wife, lived with her for a while at Peckham and Mitcham, and then entered the household of Sir Robert Drury. He accompanied Sir Robert on an embassy to Paris, where he wrote his Anatomy of the World, in praise of his patron's daughter, Elizabeth Drury, who died in 1610, in her fifteenth year. In 1615, at the express desire of James I., but after long hesitation on his own part, he took orders, was appointed by the King to be his chaplain, and was made D.D. by the University of Cambridge. Two years later he lost his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, and who seems to have been the first steadying influence in his life. Lincoln's Inn appointed him preacher in 1617, and in the same year he accompanied Lord Hay on his embassy to Germany. Being appointed Dean of St. Paul's in 1621, he passed ten years of broken health and domestic solitude till his death, which occurred on 31st March 1631. His mind during the latter part of his life seems to have been occupied with the steady contemplation of his end, in conformity with the advice which he gives to the reader in the second anniversary poem of his Anatomy of the World:-

Think that they shroud thee up, and think from hence They reinvest thee in white innocence.

In his last illness he caused himself to be wrapped in his shroud and laid in his coffin, and in that guise to be painted; his effigy thus portrayed is preserved among the archives of St. Paul's Cathedral.

The character of Donne's poetry reflects very exactly the changes in his life and opinions. Most of his compositions in verse are said to have been written while he was still a young man. To this class belong his Satires, his Songs and Sonnets, his Elegies, and The Progress of

the Soul. A graver and more philosophic period follows,

in which were produced most of the Verse Epistles, his

Epicedes and Obsequies, and The Anatomy of the World,

while the Divine Poems and the paraphrase of the Lamen-

tations of Jeremiath are the work of the time when he was

about to be, or had been, ordained.

Ben Jonson said to Drummond, speaking of The Pro-

gress of the Soul: "Of this he (Donne) never wrote but one

sheet, and now, since he was made Doctor, repenteth highly,

and seeketh to destroy all his poems." The thing is probable

enough. Donne was educated as a Roman Catholic. His

love-poems are those of a man who has assimilated, with

thorough appreciation, all the learning and intellectual

methods of the schoolmen—their fine distinctions, their

subtle refinement, their metaphysical renderings of the

text of Scripture. We know that, at some uncertain

date, he abandoned the Roman Catholic faith, but his

scholastic education had grounded in his mind a doctrine

which, to the close of his life, continued to lie at the root

of all his convictions, and to give form and colour to his

poetical style, namely, the belief in the indestructible

character of the soul. He constantly alludes to the old

theory of the schoolmen respecting the triple nature of

the soul, as in the lines :—

We first have souls of growth and sense; and those,

When our last soul, our soul immortal, came,

Were swallowed into it, and have no name.1

In the middle period of his life, when his opinions were

becoming more settled and religious, he writes of this

individual soul :—

Our soul, whose country's heaven, and God her father,

Into this world, corruption's sink, is sent;

Yet so much in her travel she doth gather,

That she returns home wiser than she went.2

This mixture of strong religious instinct and philo-

sophic scepticism appears in its simplest form in his

1 Verse Letter to the Countess of Bedford.

2 Verse Letter to Sir H. Goodyere.

SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICAL. "WIT

third Satire, which we know to have been among

the earliest of his works. What interest is there, the

poet asks, which can compare with religion? Why,

then, are men prepared to risk their lives for the smallest

material stake—money, adventure, honour—while at the

same time they give no thought to their spiritual foes—

the world, the flesh, and the devil?

Flesh itself's death; and joys which flesh can taste

Thou lovest; and thy fair goodly soul, which doth

Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.

But then he goes on: "Seek true religion, O where?"

Some, he says, seek her in the ancient, decayed authority

of Rome; others in the sullen Protestantism of Geneva;

some put up with Erastianism; others abhor all forms of

religion, just because all cannot be good; others, on the

contrary, think all are equally good. He concludes:—

Doubt wisely; in strange way

To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;

To sleep or run wrong is. On a huge hill,

Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will

Reach her, about must and about must go,

And what th' hill's suddenness resists win so.

Yet strive so, that before age, death's twilight,

Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.

On this principle he himself seems to have proceeded.

Certain it is that, in his poem called The Progress of the

Soul, he had reached a stage of contemplative scepticism.

To this composition, which bears the following title and

date: "Infinitati sacrum, 16 August 1601. Metem-

psychosis. Poema Satyricon," is prefixed a highly charac-

teristic epistle, in which the author says:—

I forbid no reprehender, but him that like the 'Trent Council

forbids not books but authors, damning whatever such a name

hath or shall write. None writes so ill, that he gives not some-

thing exemplary to follow or fly. Now when I begin this book

I have no purpose to come into any man's debt; how my stock

will hold out I know not; perchance waste, perchance increase

in use. If I do borrow anything of antiquity, besides that I

make account that I pay it with as much and as good, you shall

152

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

still find me to acknowledge it, and to thank not only him that

hath digged out treasure for me, but that hath lighted me a

candle to the place; all which I will bid you remember (for I

will have no such readers as I can teach) is, that the Pythagorean

doctrine doth not only carry one soul from man to man, nor

man to beast, but indifferently to plants also; and therefore you

must not grudge to find the same soul in an Emperor, in a Post-

horse, and in a Macaron, since no unreadiness in the soul, but

an indisposition in the organs, works this.

In the poem itself Donne feigns that the soul, which

moves all things--plants and beasts, as well as men--

entered into the world by the plucking of an apple from

the Trec of Life. The subtle and searching analysis of

the poet's imagination may be illustrated by the following

stanza :-

For the great soul which here amongst us now

Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow,

Which, as the moon the sea, moves us ; to hear

Whose story with long patience you will long,

-For 'tis the crown and last strain of my song-

This soul to whom Luther and Mahomet were

Prisons of flesh ; this soul which oft did tear

And mend the wracks of th' Empire, and late Rome,

And lived when every great change did come,

Had first in Paradise a low but fatal room.

By the woman eating the apple, corruption passed by

transmission through the whole race of mankind; and

Donne's "wit" settles on each detail of the metaphysical

conception, thus :-

Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn,

Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born,

That apple grew, which this soul did enlive,

Till the then climbing serpent, that now creeps

For that offence, for which all mankind weeps,

Took it, and to her whom the first man did wive

-Whom and her race only forbiddings drive-

He gave it, she to her husband ; both did eat :

So perished the eaters and the meat;

And we--for treason taints the blood--thence die and sweat.

Man all at once was thus by woman slain,

And one by one we're here slain o'er again

By them. The mother poisoned the well-head,

The daughters here corrupt us, rivulets;

No smallness scapes, no greatness breaks their nets;

She thrust us out, and by them we are led

Astray, from turning to whence we are fled.

Were prisoners judges, 'twould seem rigorous :

She sinned, we bear ; part of our pain is thus

To love them whose fault to this painful love yoked us.

So fast in us did this corruption grow,

That now we dare ask why we should be so.

Would God—disputes the curious rebel—make

A law, and would not have it kept ? Or can

His creature's will cross His ? Of every man

For one will God (and be just) vengeance take ?

'twas not forbidden to the snake,

Nor her, who was not then made ; nor n't will

That Adam cropp'd, or knew, the apple ; yet

The worm, and he, and she, and we endure for it.

The apple once plucked, the soul flics from the Tree

through the aperture, and enters successively into a plant

(the mandrake), the egg of a bird (a sparrow, symbol of

lechery), a fish, a sea-osprey, a whale, a mouse, an ele-

phant, a wolf, an ape, and a woman. All these are

described, with various allegorical and satirical reflections

by the way upon the manners and morals of mankind,

especially at Court. The poem has no conclusion. Ben

Jonson told Drummond : "The conceit of Done's trans-

formation or Μετεμψύχωσις was that he sought the soul

of that apple which Eve pulled, and thereafter made it

the soul of a bitch, then of a she-wolf, and so of a woman :

his general purpose was to have brought in all the bodies

of the heretics from the soul of Cain, and at last left it in

the body of Calvin." Though this description of the

poem is inaccurate in detail, it may well be that Donne

originally designed some satiric stroke against Calvin ; for

his conclusion is steeped in the merest Pyrrhonism :-

Whoe'er thou beest that read'st this sullen writ,

Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it,

Let me arrest thy thoughts ; wonder with me,

Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest

Or most of these arts, whence our lives are blest,

154

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

By cursed Cain's race invented be,

And blest Seth vex'd us with astronomy.

There's nothing simply good or ill alone ;

Of every quality Comparison

The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.

Here we have plainly the utterance of a sceptic in re-

ligion, who, having thrown off the forms of authoritative

belief, indulges his imagination with a reconstruction of

the ruins of Pythagorean and Rabbinical philosophy.

Many allusions to natural history and theological dogma

are scattered through Donne's Songs and Sonnets, and all

are couched in the same reckless spirit.

And as Donne was at this stage a sceptic in religion,

so was he a revolutionist in love. We have seen that,

for many centuries, the law of chivalrous love had been

rigorously defined. The Provençal poets and the female

presidents of the Cours d'Amour had revised and ex-

tended the ancient canons of the art as expounded by

Ovid ; and, while they tacitly recognised the physical

basis of the passion, they disguised it by the elaborate

character of the imaginative superstructure they raised

upon it. In the delicacy of their observation, the nicety

of their distinctions, and the keenness of their logic, they

rivalled the theological science of the schoolmen ; and by

allying the phenomena of love with the loftier virtues of

constancy, patience, loyalty, and self-surrender, they so

spiritualised the former that, under the régime of chivalry

—to use the words of Burke,—“ vice itself lost half its

evil by losing all its grossness.”1

This fine Platonic edifice is ruthlessly demolished in

the poetry of Donne. To him love, in its infinite variety

and inconsistency, represented the principle of perpetual

flux in Nature. At the same time, his imagination was

stimulated by the multitude of paradoxes and metaphors

which were suggested to him by the varying aspects of

the passion. He pushed to extremes the scholastic analysis

and conventional symbolism of the Provençals ; but he

applied them within the sphere of vulgar bourgeois in-

1 Reflections on the French Revolution

trigue, as may be inferred from the following characteristic

lines :-

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love,

And in that sophistry, O ! thou dost prove

Too subtle ; fool, thou didst not understand

The mystic language of the eye nor hand ;

Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air

Of sighs, and say, " This lies, this sounds despair " ;

Nor by th' eye's water cast a malady,

Desperately hot, or changing feverously.

I had not taught thee then the alphabet

Of flowers, how they, devisefully being set

And bound up, might, with speechless secrecy,

Deliver errands mutely and mutually.

Remember since all thy words used to be

To every suitor, " Ay, if my friends agree ";

Since household charms thy husband's name to teach,

Were all the love-tricks that thy wit could reach ;

And since an hour's discourse could scarce have made

An answer in thee, and that ill-natured

In broken proverbs and short sentences.1

The law of love in the Cours d'Amour required

unfailing constancy in both lovers : in the philosophy of

Donne this law is contrary to Nature, and is therefore

heresy :-

Venus heard me sigh this song,

And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore

She heard not this till now ; it should be so no more.

She went, examined, and returned ere long,

And said, " Alas ! some two or three

Poor heretics in love there be,

Which think to 'stablish dangerous constancy.

But I have told them, ' Since you will be true,

You shall be true to them who're false to you.'"2

Over and over again he insists on the essential falsehood

and fickleness of women. He asks, for instance, " where

lives a woman true and fair," and proceeds :-

If thou find'st one let me know ;

Such a pilgrimage were sweet.

Yet do not, I would not go,

Though at next door we might meet.

1 Elegy vii.

2 The Indifferent.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

Though she were true when you met her,

And last till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two or three.1

This is the spirit of Ariosto's story of Giocondo. But Donne goes further, and cynically crects this observed habit of fickleness into a rule for constant, but discriminating, change —

By Nature, which gave it, this liberty

Thou lovest, but O ! canst thou love it and me ?

Likeness glues love; and if that thou so do,

To make us like and love, must I change too ?

More than thy hate I hate it; rather let me

Allow her change, then change as oft as she;

And so not teach, but force, my opinion

To love not any one, nor every one.

To live in one land is captivity,

To run all countries a wild roguery.

Waters stink soon, if in one place they bide,

And in that vast sea are more putrified;

But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this

Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,

There are they purest; change is the nursery

Of music, joy, life, and eternity.2

From this spirit of cynical lawlessness he was perhaps reclaimed by genuine love. To his wife he seems to have been devotedly attached, and in the poems written after his marriage in 1601 we find a complete change of sentiment and style. The old underlying conviction of the indestructible nature of the soul and of the corruption of the material world remains, but it is now made the starting-point for a graver philosophy of conduct. The Verse Letters written to the Countesses of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Salisbury, though all are couched in a vein of metaphorical compliment, are decorous in tone; in The Anatomy of the World Donne seems to have intended to embody his serious thoughts about the meaning and duties of human life. Whether there was any real ground for the

1 Song, “Go and catch a falling star.”

2 Elegy iii.

SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICAL 'WIT'

hyperbolical praise with which he exalts the memory

of Elizabeth Drury, we have no means of knowing. It is

said, indeed, that she was betrothed to Henry, Prince of

Wales; but Ben Jonson probably expressed a general

opinion when he said to Drummond that 'Done's 'Anni-

versarie' was profane and full of blasphemies: that he

told Mr. Done, if it had been written of the Virgin Marie

it had been something; to which he answered that it

described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was.'

Viewed literally, The Anatomy of the World fully

deserves the sentence passed upon it by Jonson. The

poet asserts that after the death of Elizabeth Drury the

whole mortal universe lost its vitality; that nothing but

the shadow of life remained in it; that the disorder in

the constitution of things, the decay and weakness of

mankind, and the failure of the influence of the heavenly

bodies, are all due to her removal from the earthly sphere.

It is no wonder that such absurdities should have pro-

voked matter-of-fact criticism. They are, however, not of

the essence of the composition. 'I hear from England,'

writes Donne in Paris to a correspondent with the initials

Sir G. F., 'of many censures of my book of Mrs. Drury;

if any of these censures do but pardon me my descent in

printing anything in verse (which if they do they are more

charitable than myself; for I do not pardon myself, but

confess that I did it against my conscience, that is against

my own opinion, that I should not have done so), I doubt

not that they will soon give over that other part of the

indictment, which is that I have said so much; for nobody

can imagine that I, who never saw her, could have purpose

in that, than that when I had received so very good

testimony of her worthiness, and was gone down to print

verses, it became me to say, not what I was sure was just

truth, but the best that I could conceive; for that would

have been a new weakness in me to have praised anybody

in printed verse, that had not been capable of the best

verse that I could give.'

The true character of The Anatomy of the World is

indicated in the respective titles of the two 'Anniversaries.'

158 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY CHAP.

That of the first runs : "Wherein, by occasion of the un-

timely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and

decay of this whole world is represented." The subject

of the second is defined thus : "Wherein, by occasion of

the religious death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the in-

commodities of the soul in this life, and her exaltation

in the next, are contemplated." In other words, the early

death and religious character of Elizabeth Drury are

merely the text justifying an elaborate exposition of

Donne's philosophy of life. The girl stood to Donne,

for his poetical purpose, in the same relation as Beatrice

stood to Dante in the Vita Nuova and the Divine

Comedy, being the incarnate symbol of the spiritual per-

fection—the Idea of Woman, as he put it to Ben Jonson

—which he sought to express. When he says that her

death was the cause of all the imperfections of the material

world, he intended, in the first place, to pay a hyper-

bolical compliment to the daughter of his patron, and in

the second, to express the theological doctrine of the

corruption of Nature after the fall of man from his

original state of perfection.

On the whole, it seems to me probable that the publi-

cation of The Anatomy of the World was part of a

deliberate literary design on Donne's part. His affected

depreciation of verse-writing is not to be taken seriously.

His views of life were changing with his years: he was

anxious for either secular or sacred employment: he

regretted the evidences of a dissipated past which existed

in his youthful poems: he hoped to attain the object

of his ambition by giving public proof of the present

gravity of his mind, and by securing the special favour

of the most influential patrons of literature, such as the

famous ladies of the Court, to whom so many of his Verse

Letters are addressed. He writes to a correspondent in

1614: "This made me ask to borrow that old book" (i.e.

an MS. collection of his poems), "which it will be too late

to see, for that use, when I see you : for I must do this

as a valediction to the world before I take orders. But

this it is I am to ask of you : whether you ever made

any such use of the letter in verse à nostre contesse ches

rous, as that I may put it in among the rest to persons of

rank; for I desire it very much that something should

bear her name in the book, and I would be just to my

written words to my Lord Harrington, to write nothing

after that." To Lady Bedford herself he writes, in a

Verse Letter, perhaps the one above referred to:—

So whether my hymns you admit or choose,

In me you've hallow'd a pagan muse,

And denizen'd a stranger who, mistaught

By blamers of the times they'e marred, hath sought

Virtues in corners, which now bravely do

Shine in the world's best part, or all' it,—you.

As to the poems being a "valediction to the world,"

Donne kept his promise. His letter to Sir H. Goodyere was

written within a year of his taking orders, and henceforth

all his publications in prose and verse were of a religious

and theological cast. The last period of his poetical

genius contains the Divine Poems, comprising meditations

on the various mysteries of the Christian faith, a version

of Tremellius' Lamentations of Jeremiah, written after the

death of his much-loved wife, and other religious topics.

As John Chudleigh, one of his panegyrists, said in the

edition of his poems published after his death in 1650:—

Long since this task of tears from you was due,

Long since, O poets, he did die to you,

Or left you dead, when wit and he took flight

On divine wings, and soared out of your sight.

In close friendship with George Herbert and other

divines of the period, he helped during the remainder of

his life to swell the volume of Anglican ascetic thought

which, under the direction of Laud, formed, in the reign

of Charles I., the counterbalancing force to the movement

of iconoclastic Puritanism.

But though his view of life and his object in art were

thus completely altered, his poetical method remained

consistently the same. As his admirer, Chudleigh, again

remarks:—

160

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

He kept his loves, but not his objects : Wit

He did not banish, but transplanted it ;

Taught it his place and use, and brought it home

To piety which it doth best become ;

He showed us how for sins we ought to sigh,

And how to sing Christ's epithalamy.

How just this criticism is may be seen from Donne's

Hymns to Christ at the Author's last going into Germany:-

Nor Thou, nor Thy religion, dost control

The amorousness of an harmonious soul ;

But Thou wouldst have that love Thyself ; as Thou

Art jealous, Lord, so am I jealous now ;

Thou lovest not, till from loving more Thou fleest

My soul ; whoever gives takes liberty ;

Oh, if Thou carest not whom I love,

Alas ! Thou lovest not me.

Seal then this bill of my divorce to all

On whom those fainter beams of love did fall ;

Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be

On fame, wit, hopes—false mistresses—to Thee.

Churches are best for prayer that have least light ;

To see God only I go out of sight ;

And to escape stormy days, I choose

An everlasting night.

Here we have precisely the same kind of paradoxical

logic, the same subtlety of thought and imagery, as we

find in the Elegy on Change, and though the imagination

is now fixed on an unchangeable object, it plays round it

precisely in the same way. The essence of Donne's wit

is abstraction. Whether he is writing on the theme of

sacred or profane love, his method lies in separating the

perceptions of the soul from the entanglements of sense,

and after isolating a thought, a passion, or a quality, in

the world of pure ideas, to make it visible to the fancy

by means of metaphorical images and scholastic allusions.

The most characteristic specimens of his wit are to be

found in his Songs and Sonnets, where he is dealing with

the metaphysics of love, for here his imagination is at

liberty to move whithersoever it chooses ; and the extra-

ordinary ingenuity with which he masters and reduces

to epigrammatic form the most minute distinctions of

SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICAL "WIT"

thought, as well as the facility with which he combines

contrary ideas and images, are well exemplified in a poem

called The Primrose Hill:-

Upon this Primrose Hill,

Where, if heaven would distill

A shower of rain, each several drop might go

To his own primrose, and grow manna so;

And where their form and their infinity

Make a terrestrial galaxy,

As the small stars do in the sky,

I walk to find a true-love, and I see

That 'tis not a mere woman that is she.

But must or more or less than woman be.1

Yet know I not which flower

I wish, a six or four:

For should my true love less than woman be,

She were scarce anything; and then should she

Be more than woman, she would get above

All thought of sex, and think to move

My heart to study her, and not to love.

Both these were monsters; since there must reside

Falsehood in woman, I could more abhor

She were by art than nature falsified.

Live, primrose, then, and thrive

With thy true number five;

And, woman, whom this flower doth represent,

With this mysterious number be content;

Ten is the farthest number; if half ten

Belongs unto each woman, then

Each woman may take half us men:

Or-if this will not serve their turn-since all

Numbers are odd or even, and they fall

First into five, women may take us all.2

But for the purposes of great and true art the flight

1 The conceit of the poem turns on the two facts that the normally

constituted primrose has five segments in its corolla, and that the token of

true love among the country folk of Donne's time was the exceptional prim-

rose, with either four or six segments.

2 The argument in this stanza is drawn from the science of numbers.

Five being half of ten, the farthest number (i.e. the first double number, and

the basis of the whole metric system), women may claim to represent half of

what is in human nature; or, if this be not enough for their ambition, then

(numbers being either odd or even, and falling first into five, i.e. 2+3)

since five is woman's number, women may have the whole of human nature

given over to them.

VOL. III

M

of metaphysical wit soon reveals the limitations of its

powers. Sceptic as he was, Donne never formed any

organic idea of Nature as a whole, and his sole aim, as a

poet, was to associate the isolated details of his accumu-

lations of learning with paradoxes and conceits, which

are of no permanent value. For example, he was ac-

quainted with the Copernican theory, but he is only

interested in it as far as it helps to supply him with a

poetical illustration : —

As new philosophy arrests the sun,

And bids the passive earth about it run,

So we have dulled our mind ; it hath no ends,

Only the body's busy, and pretends.1

The theory that the earth was gradually approaching the

sun suggests to him the following reflection :—

If the world's age and death be argued well

By the sun's fall, which now towards earth doth bend,

Then we might fear that virtue, since she fell

So low as woman, should be near her end.

But he at once corrects this conclusion into an extrava-

gant compliment :—

But she's not stooped but raised ; exiled by men,

She fled to heaven, that's heavenly things, that's you.2

The general scepticism, produced in his mind by the

collision between the new philosophy and the old theology,

is forcibly expressed in his first " Anniversary " :—

The new philosophy calls all in doubt ;

The element of fire is quite put out ;

The sun is lost, and th' earth, and no man's wit

Can well direct him where to look for it.

And freely men confess that the world's spent,

When in the planets and the firmament

They seek so many new ; they see that this

Is crumbled out again to his atomies.

'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,

All just supply and all relation.

1 Verse Letter to Countess of Bedford.

2 Verse Letter to Countess of Huntingdon.

SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICAL "WIT"

163

Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,

For every man alone thinks he hath got

To be a phœnix, and that there can be

None of that kind of which he is, but he.1

The conclusion at which he finally arrived was the one

to which all such souls, who have in them the element of

religion, must be brought.

In this low form, poor soul, what wilt thou do?

When wilt thou shake off this pedantry

Of being taught by sense and fantasy?

Thou look'st through spectacles; small things seem great

Below; but up into thy watch-tower get,

And see all things despoiled of fallacies;

Thou shalt not peep through lattices of eyes,

Nor hear through labyrinths of ears, nor learn

By circuit or collections to discern.

In heaven thou straight know'st all concerning it,

And what concerns it not shalt straight forget.

But before he arrives at this intelligible goal, his soul,

wandering through an infinite maze of metaphysical ideas,

has made shift to embody its transitory perceptions in

the forms of poetical art; and, while he is engaged in a

business which he acknowledges to be vain, he delights in

involving himself and his readers in inextricable labyrinths

of paradox. One of his favourite ideas is that Love is

Death, and this thought he divides and subdivides by

means of an endless variety of images. Thus he finds an

opportunity of associating it with the reflections aroused

by the shortest day, sacred to St. Lucy. All Nature, he

says, seems to have shrivelled into nothing:-

The world's whole sap is sunk;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compared to me, who am their epitaph.

He then calls on all lovers to come and study him as

a "very dead thing,"

1 Anatomy of the World, first "Anniversary," 205-218.

164

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

For whom Love wrought new alchemy ;

For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;

He ruin'd me, and I am rebegot

Of absence, darkness, death--things which are not.

He goes on to intensify the idea of annihilation, by

saying that he is "the grave of all that's nothing"; that he is

Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;

nay, he is something less than nothing :

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light and body must be here,

But I am none.1

In a poem called The Paradox he indulges in still more

intricate logic on the same subject :-

No lover saith I love, nor any other

Can judge a perfect lover ;

He thinks that else none can nor will agree

That any loves but he :

I cannot say I loved, for who can say

He was killed yesterday?

Love with excess of heat, more young than old,

Death kills with too much cold.

We die but once, and who loved best did die,

He that saith twice did lie ;

For though he seem to move and stir awhile,

He doth the sense beguile.

Such life is like the light which bideth yet,

When the life's light is set,

Or like the heat which fire in solid matter

Leaves behind two hours after.

Once I loved and died ; and am now become

Mine epitaph and tomb ;

Here dead men speak their last, and so do I ;

Love slain, lo ! here I lie.

This perpetual endeavour to push poetical conception

beyond the limits of sense and Nature produced its neces-

sary effect on the character of Donne's metrical expres-

sion. When he seeks to embody a comparatively simple

and natural thought, he can write with admirable harmony,

1 A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day.

SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICAL "WIT"

165

as in the following lines, describing love in the Golden

Age :-

What pretty innocence in those days moved !

Man ignorantly walked by her he loved ;

Both sigh'd and interchang'd a speaking eye ;

Both trembled and were sick ; both knew not why.

That natural fearfulness, that struck man dumb,

Might well—those times considered—man become.

As all discoverers, whose first essay

Finds but the place, after, the nearest way,

So passion is to woman's love, about,

Nay, farther off, than when we first set out.

It is not love that sueth or doth contend ;

Love either conquers or but meets a friend ;

Man's better part consists of purer fire,

And finds itself allowed ere it desire.1

Here, too, is an excellent compliment in a Verse Letter

to the Countess of Salisbury, grounded on the idea that

chivalrous love is a liberal education :-

So, though I am born without those eyes to live,

Which Fortune, who hath none herself, doth give,

Which are fit means to see bright courts and you,

Yet, may I see you thus, as now I do·

I shall by that all goodness have discern'd,

And, though I burn my library, be learn'd.

His whole philosophy of life, in his early days, is

condensed in the following couplet :-

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell ;

Inn anywhere : continuance maketh hell.2

And he is most vivid in the presentation of abstract

ideas, as in the famous lines :-

Her pure and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought

That one might almost say her body thought.3

The abrupt and forcible openings of his poems often

strike a key-note of thought which promises completeness

of treatment, but his metaphysical wit and his love of

1 Verse Letter to the Countess of Huntingdon.

2 Verse Letter to Sir H. Wotton.

3 Anatomy of the World, second "Anniversary," 244-246.

166

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

endless distinctions generally cause the composition to

end nowhere. He begins a poem called Love's Deity

thus :-

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,

Who died before the God of Love was born.

The object of the discourse is to be the mystery why

love should be forced from one lover where there is no

return from the other. This is a subject of universal

interest, and the poet, on the assumption that Love, after

being made into a deity, has abused his power, conducts

a striking thought, by means of an appropriate image, to

an intelligible conclusion :-

O were we wakened by this tyranny

To ungod this child again, it could not be

I should love her who loves not me.

But such straightforward logic would not have suited

the super-subtle character of Donne's intellect ; and he

proceeds to invert his reasoning, and to close his poem

with a stanza of pure paradox, leaving the mind without

that sense of repose which art requires :-

Rebel and atheist, why murmur I,

As though I felt the worst that love could do ?

Love may make me leave loving, or might try

A deeper plague, to make her love me too ;

Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see.

Falsehood is worse than hate ; and that must be,

If she whom I love should love me.

Where he thinks simply the reader perceives that his

thoughts are really common enough. He begins a Verse

Letter to Sir H. Goodyere on his favourite subject of the

necessity of change :-

Who makes the last a pattern for next year,

Turns no new leaf, but still the same thing reads ;

Seen things he sees again, heard things doth hear,

And makes his life but like a pair of beads.

This has the simplicity and directness of Sir John Davies

in his Nosce Teipsum. But we soon come to a quatrain

in which the poet is anxious to show his wit :-

SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICAL. "WIT"

167

To be a stranger bath that benefit,

We can beginnings, but not habits choke.

Go—whither? hence. You get, if you forget;

New faults, till they prescribe to us, are smoke.

We certainly do not get anything by the mere negative

act of forgetting; and nobody could gather from the

last line that the meaning was, "new faults, till they

become our masters, are merely smoke." Eagerness for

novelty and paradox leads the poet to obscurity of

expression; and the reader is justly incensed when he

finds that the labour required to arrive at the meaning,

hidden behind involved syntax and unmeasured verse, has

been expended in vain. Ben Jonson does not express this

feeling too strongly when he says, "That Done for not keep-

ing of accent deserved hanging." It is superfluous to justify

this verdict by examples. The reader, in the numerous

extracts I have given from Donne's poems, will have

observed for himself how deliberately he seeks to attract

attention to the extravagance of his thought, by the

difficulty of his grammatical constructions, and by the

dislocation of his accents.

All these things must be taken into account in decid-

ing the place to be assigned to this acute and powerful

intellect in the history of English poetry. Donne's

qualities were essentially those of his age. His influence

on his contemporaries and on the generation that succeeded

him was great. They had all been educated under the

same scholastic conditions as himself; they were all in

touch with his theological starting-point, and set a value

on the subtlety of his metaphysical distinctions. In

Dryden's time, when the prestige of "wit," still represented

by the genius of Cowley, was weakening before the poetical

school which aimed first at correctness of expression, men

continued to speak with reverence of Donne's genius.

But as the philosophy of Bacon, Newton, and Locke

gradually established itself, the traditions of the schoolmen

fell into discredit, so that, in the days of Johnson and

Burke, the practice of the metaphysical wits had come to

be regarded in the light of an obsolete curiosity. The

168

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

chap. viii

revival of mediæval sentiment, which has coloured English

taste during the last three generations, has naturally

awakened fresh interest in the poems of Donne, and there

is perhaps in our own day a tendency to exaggerate his

merits. "If Donne," writes a learned and judicious critic,

" cannot receive the praise due to the accomplished poetical

artist, he has that not perhaps higher, but certainly rarer,

of the inspired poetical creator."1 Poetical creation

implies that organic conception of Nature, and that

insight into universal human emotions, which make the

classical poets of the world—Homer and Dante, and

Chaucer and Milton ; and to this universality of thought,

as I have endeavoured to show, Donne has no claim.

Nor can he be reckoned among the poets who, by their

sense of harmony and proportion, have helped to carry

forward the refinement of our language from one social

stage to another. The praise which Johnson bestows

upon his learning adds little to his fame, for the science

contained in his verse is mostly derived from those ency-

clopædic sources of knowledge which, even in his own

time, were being recognised as the fountains of "Vulgar

Error." On the other hand, to those who see in poetry a

mirror of the national life, and who desire to amplify and

enrich their own imagination by a sympathetic study of

the spiritual existence of their ancestors, the work of

Donne will always be profoundly interesting. No more

lively or characteristic representative can be found of the

thought of an age when the traditions of the ancient faith

met in full encounter with the forces of the new philosophy.

The shock of that collision is far from having spent

its effect, even in our own day ; and he who examines

historically the movements of imagination will find in

Donne's subtle analysis and refined paradoxes much

that helps to throw light on the contradictions of human

nature.

1 Professor Saintsbury, Preface to Poems of John Donne. Edited by

E. K. Chambers.

CHAPTER IX

SCHOOLS OF POETICAL "WIT" UNDER ELIZABETH AND JAMES I.

Court Wit: The School of Transition from Romantic to Classical Euphuism: Thomas Campion; Sir Henry Wotton; Ben Jonson; William Drummond, Sir John Beaumont.

THE aim of the courtier, as such, was to form a "witily" way of conceiving Nature, and a peculiar dialect for expressing his conceptions, which might distinguish his caste from the vulgarity of the world outside the Court. This may be properly described by the word "Euphuism." From the days of Lyly, who was the first to make a systematic study of courtly English style, the discordia concors of wit had been produced by the mixture of two opposing elements - the fashions of chivalry, and the modes of diction peculiar to the Latin orators. The result of the fusion may be seen in the style of Euphues, Arcadia, and, to some slight extent, of The Faery Queen. In all these works the "romantic" element prevails over the "classical"; and the predominance of romance is also marked during Elizabeth's reign by the assiduous cultivation of the Petrarcan love sonnet, the Italian concetti, or the Spanish pastoral love story—styles always closely associated in late books of chivalry—as well as by the studied revival of old English words and grammatical inflections.

In the reign of James I. the course of taste changed. The classical element began to supersede the romantic. The sonnet by degrees fell into disuse, and the courtly

169

poet tried to show the choiceness of his "wit" not so much by curiosity in the selection of words, or by the mechanical balance of sentences, as by what Dryden calls "turns," that is, by combinations of terse phrases and rhythmical effects, strictly imitated in the English from classical originals. From the Italian and Spanish poets men turned to Ovid's elegiacs, the odes and epistles of Horace, and the epigrams of Martial; they even sought for material among the Greek sophists and epigrammatists of the Alexandrian era.

The climax of the earlier Euphuistic style was probably reached in Thomas Campion, who was also the first to unite the old manner with a deliberate imitation of classical models. Nothing is certainly known of the date of his birth or of his parentage; very little of the events of his life. He was apparently educated at Cambridge; and if he is identical with the person of the same name who was admitted a member of Gray's Inn in 1586, he was probably born not earlier than 1560. In 1593 he is addressed by Peele in his Honour of the Garter as an eminent Euphuist:-

Thou

That richly clothest conceit with well-made words;

and in 1601 he confirmed the justice of this praise by publishing his first Book of Airs, containing a number of songs, accompanied with music composed partly by himself, and partly by his friend, Philip Rosseter. The character of the book, indicating the union of native and classical ideals of Euphuistic harmony, appears in the prefatory address "To the Reader," in the course of which Campion says:-

The lyric poets among the Greeks and Latins were first inventors of airs, tying themselves strictly to the number and value of their syllables: of which sort you shall find here only one song in Sapphic verse; the rest are after the fashion of the time, ear-pleasing rhymes, without art.

How much he then despised the "fashion," and what he thought to be the true principle of "art" in English

SCHOOL OF COURT "WIT"

verse, Campion showed by his Observations in the Art of

English Poesy, published in 1602, in which he attacked

"the vulgar and unartificial custom of rhyming," and set

down his notions as to the manner in which the language

might be metrically accommodated to the rules of

quantity. His treatise was answered by Daniel in 1603.

It proceeds throughout on the false theory first introduced

by Gabriel Harvey, but Campion's ear was too good to

suffer him to put up with the monstrous combinations

of dactyls and spondees which Harvey attempted to

naturalise in English; he provided quantities only for

the iambus and the trochee. Though he afterwards

published several Books of Airs (about 1613 and 1617),

Campion made no attempt to pursue his experiments

in English quantity, and it is therefore to be presumed

that he saw the error of his own reasoning. Besides

songs, he wrote masques, three of which survive in outline,

one of them being composed on the occasion of the

marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, and another for the

marriage of the Earl of Somerset and the Countess

of Essex.

Though he was a member of Gray's Inn, he did not

practise (if he was ever called) at the Bar, but supported

himself professionally by his work as a physician. In 1615

he was allowed in that capacity to attend his patron, Sir

Thomas Monson, when the latter was accused, as Lieutenant

of the Tower, of complicity in the murder of Sir Thomas

Overbury by the Earl of Somerset and Countess of

Essex; indeed, the poet-musician was himself examined

as a witness at Monson's trial. The third Book of Airs

is dedicated to Monson with some lines congratulating

him on his pardon and release. Campion died in March

1619-20, and was buried at St. Dunstan's in the West,

Fleet Street.

By far the greater number of his songs have the charac-

teristics of the older Euphuism—namely, antithesis of

words and balance of sententious moral maxims, in "ear-

pleasing rhymes." This style lent itself readily to musical

treatment, and in the skilful hands of Campion produced

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

very charming results, of which the following is a good

example :-

Whether men do laugh or weep,

Whether they do wake or sleep,

Whether they die young or old,

Whether they feel heat or cold ;

There is underneath the sun

Nothing in true earnest done.

All our pride is but a jest ;

None are worst, and none are best ;

Grief and joy, and hope and fear,

Play their pageants everywhere :

Vain opinion all doth sway,

And the world is but a play.

Powers above in clouds do sit,

Mocking our poor apish wit ;

That so lamely, with such state,

Their high glory imitate :

No ill can be felt but pain,

And that happy men disdain.

The next specimen of his verse might be chosen as

a companion to the sentiment of an older Euphuist,

Sidney's rival, the Earl of Oxford, "If women could be

fair and yet not fond ":-

If love loves truth, then women do not love ;

Their passions all are but dissembled shows ;

Now kind and free of favour if they prove,

Their kindness straight a tempest overthrows.

Then as a seaman the poor lover fares ;

The storm drowns him ere he can drown his cares.

But why accuse I women that deceive?

Blame then the foxes for their subtle wile :

They first from Nature did their craft receive :

It is a woman's nature to beguile.

Yet some I grant in loving steadfast grow ;

But such by use are made, not Nature, so.

O why had Nature power at once to frame

Deceit and Beauty, traitors both to Love?

O would Deceit had died when Beauty came

With her divineness every heart to move !

Yet do we rather wish, whate'er befall,

To have fair women false than none at all

SCHOOL OF COURT "WIT"

Campion, however, was also an extremcly good classical scholar. He was well acquainted with all the Latin pocts, and had a particular appreciation of the style of Catullus and Martial, which he carly cxhibited in a collection of Latin epigrams, written by himself, and published in 1594. In his latter days he completely assimilated the Latin genius, and instead of making idle attempts to shackle his native language with long and short syllables, he transferred the elegant simplicity of his models into metres proper to English. The song that follows was written to illustrate a dance of stars, contrived by Inigo Jones for The Lords' Masque in 1613; and it will be observed how far the subtler antithesis of its classical Euphuism has advanced beyond the comparatively mechanical melody of the earlier style.---

Advance your choral motions now, You music-loving lights. This night concludes the nuptial vow, Make this the best of night's So bravely crown it with your beams That it may live in fame As long as Rhenus or the Thames Are known by either name

Once more again, yet nearer move Your forms at willing view; Such fair effects of joy and love None can express but you. Then revel midst your airy bowers Till all the clouds do sweat, That pleasure may be poured in showers On this triumphant seat.

Long since hath lovely Flora thrown Her flowers and garlands here; Rich Ceres all her wealth hath shown, Proud of her dainty cheer. Changed then to human shape, descend, Clad in familiar weed, That every eye may here commend The kind delights you breed.

Another poet, resembling Campion in his Euphuistic tendencies, but with a less complete mastery over his art.

174

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

was Sir Henry Wotton, son, by a second marriage, of

Thomas Wotton of Boughton Hall, Kent. Born in 1568,

he was educated at Winchester, and matriculated at

New College, Oxford, on 5th June 1584, whence he

migrated to Queen's College, taking his B.A. degree in

1588. At Oxford he began an intimacy with Donne

which lasted till the death of the latter in 1631. After

leaving the university, he travelled for seven years on

the Continent, and made himself acquainted with the

language and institutions of the different European

kingdoms. Admitted to the Inner Temple on his return

to England in 1595, he was employed by Essex as his

agent in various foreign negotiations, and after Essex's

death he found it advisable to reside abroad till the

accession of James I.

In 1604 James sent him to Venice, where he remained,

off and on, for nearly twenty years, being, from time to time,

despatched from this centre on diplomatic errands. It was

soon after his arrival in Venice that he inscribed in an album

at Augsburg his celebrated definition of an ambassador :

"Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendum

reipublicæ causa," which he told Walton he would

translate : "An ambassador is an honest man sent to

lie abroad for the good of his country." Elected M.P.

for Appleby in 1614, he supported the King's claim to

tax imports without reference to Parliament. James

appointed him in 1614 his envoy to the Hague to

negotiate, together with the French ambassador, respecting

the disputed inheritance of the duchies of Juliers, Cleves,

and Berg, and he was sent to Vienna to obtain what

terms he could from the Emperor on behalf of the

Elector Palatine. Wotton finally returned home in

1524, when, having spent almost all his fortune in the

public service, he solicited and obtained from Secretary

Conway, in the same year, the Provostship of Eton

College. In order to comply with the statute regulating

this appointment, he took deacon's orders in 1627,1 and

spent the remaining portion of his life at Eton in studious

1 See p. 274.

retirement. His farourite recreation was fishing in the

company of Izaak Walton, who afterwards became his

biographer. To Walton, when he felt himself to be in

his last illness, which ended in 1639, he sent a copy

of verses, enclosed in a letter very characteristic of the

calm and serenity of his life and mind :-

I have in one of those fits endeavoured to make it more

easy by composing a short hymn, and since I have apparelled

my best thoughts so lightly as in verse, I hope I shall be

pardoned a second vanity if I communicate it with such a

friend as yourself: to whom I wish a cheerful spirit and a

thankful heart to value it as one of the greatest blessings of our

good God; in whose dear love I leave you, remaining your

poor friend to serve you,

H. Wotton.

The verses run :-

O Thou great Power, in whom I move,

For whom I live, to whom I die1

li.hold me through the beams of love,

Whilst on this couch of tears I lie;

And cleanse my sordid soul within

By Thy Christ's blood, the bath of sin.

No hallowed oils, no grains I need,

No rags of saints, nor purging fire,

One rosy drop from David's seed

Was worlds of seas to quench Thine ire:

O precious ransom, which, once paid,

That Consummatum est was said;

And said by Him that said no more,

But sealed it with His sacred breath:

Thou then, that hast dispunged my score,

And, dying, wast the death of Death,

Be to me, now on Thee I call,

My life, my strength, my joy, my all!

There is in this composition much of the terseness and

classical finish which was being aimed at in the reigns

of James I. and Charles I. On the other hand, we also

observe in it many touches of the Euphuism character-

istic of the Court of Elizabeth; and Euphuism pure and

simple animates the rhyming echoes of the following

poem, which is stated to have been written by Wotton

in his youth :-

176

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY

CHAP.

O faithless world, and thy most faithless part,

A woman's heart !

The true shop of variety, where sits

Nothing but fits

And fevers of desire, and pangs of love,

Which toys remove

Why was she born to please? or I to trust

Words writ in dust,

Suffering her eyes to govern my despair,

My pain for air,

And fruit of time rewarded with untruth,

The food of youth ?

Untrue she was ; yet I believed her eyes,

(Instructed spies),

Till I was taught that love was but a school

To breed a fool.

Or sought she more by triumphs of denial

To make a trial

How far her smiles commanded my weaknèss ?

Yield, and confess ;

Excuse no more thy folly, but for cure

Blush, and endure

As well thy shame, as passions that were vain ;

And think 'tis gain

To know that love, lodged in a woman's breast,

Is but a guest.1

In these lines may be detected, here and there, a certain obscurity and want of finish, which is characteristic of Wotton, and which reappears in his later poems when he is beginning to modify his old Euphuism so as to suit the change in Court taste. A charming elegance and propriety of sentiment has justly won a place in The Golden Treasury for his two lyrics, "On his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia," and "The Happy Life." The former, composed in the Euphuistic vein, is faultless ; but in the latter, where he is beginning to mix with the quaint turns of Euphuism the terseness of Horace and Martial, he is less entirely successful :--

How happy is he born and taught

That serveth not another's will ;

Whose armour is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill ;

1 Wotton's Poems (Hannah, 1845), p. 4.