My deere Sone,--The king dothe approve well of your going into
Spane, and for my part I thinke it will be the best of your traviles
by reson that the king doth discours moust of that plase. I am much
afflicted for feare of Mr. Mason, but I hope our Lord well send him
well home againe. I pray do not torment me with your going into the
danger of the plauge any more. So with my blessing I take my leave.
Your loveing Mother,
For my deare Sonne theise. SU. DENBIGH.
The Verse-Letters to the Countess of Denbigh (vol. i. pp. 295-303) will
be read with renewed interest in the light of the all-but certain fact
that it was Susan, sister of Buckingham--every way a memorable
woman--who was 'persuaded' by Crashaw to 'join' Roman Catholicism, as
did her mother.[29] Reverting to the names which I have endeavoured to
commemorate, where hitherto scarcely anything has been known, it will be
perceived that the circle of Crashaw's friendships was a narrow one, and
touched mainly the two things--his University career, and his great
'change' religiously or rather ecclesiastically. Of the Poets of his
period, except Cowley and Ford, no trace remains as known to or
influential over him. When Crashaw entered Cambridge, Giles Fletcher
had been dead ten years; Phineas Fletcher and Herrick had left about the
same number of years; Herbert, for four or five; and Milton was just
going. His most choice friends were among the mighty dead. Supreme names
later lay outside of his access. I wish he had met--as he might have
done--Milton. I pass next to
III. _His characteristics and place as a Poet._ It is something 'new
under the sun' that it should be our privilege well-nigh to double the
quantity of the extant Poetry of such a Singer as Richard Crashaw, by
printing, for the first time, the treasure-trove of the Sancroft-Tanner
MSS.; and by translating (also for the first time) the whole of his
Latin poetry. Every element of a true poetic faculty that belongs to his
own published Poems is found in the new, while there are new traits
alike of character and genius; and our Translations must be as the
'raising' of the lid of a gem-filled casket, shut to the many for these
(fully) two hundred years. The admirer of Crashaw hitherto has thus his
horizon widened, and I have a kind of feeling that perchance it were
wiser to leave the completed Poetry to make its own impression on those
who come to it. Nevertheless I must, however briefly, fulfil my promise
of an estimate of our Worthy. Four things appear to me to call for
examination, in order to give the essentials of Crashaw as a Poet, and
to gather his main characteristics: (_a_) Imaginative-sensuousness;
(_b_) Subtlety of emotion; (_c_) Epigrams; (_d_) Translations and
(briefly) Latin and Greek Poetry. I would say a little on each.
(_a_) _Imaginative-sensuousness._ Like 'charity' for 'love,' the word
'sensuous' has deteriorated in our day. It is, I fear, more than in
sound and root confused with 'sensual,' in its base application. I use
it as Milton did, in the well-known passage when he defined Poetry to be
'simple, _sensuous_, and passionate;' and I qualify 'sensuousness' with
'imaginative,' that I may express our Poet's peculiar gift of looking at
everything with a full, open, penetrative eye, yet through his
imagination; his imagination not being as spectacles (coloured) astride
the nose, but as a light of white glory all over his intellect and
entire faculties. Only Wordsworth and Shelley, and recently Rossetti and
Jean Ingelow, are comparable with him in this. You can scarcely err in
opening on any page in your out-look for it. The very first poem, 'The
Weeper,' is lustrous with it. For example, what a grand reach of
'imaginative' comprehensiveness have we so early as in the second
stanza, where from the swimming eyes of his 'Magdalene' he was, as it
were, swept upward to the broad transfigured sky in its wild
ever-varying beauty of the glittering silver rain!
'Heauns thy fair eyes be;
Heauens of ever-falling starres.
'Tis seed-time still with thee;
And starres thou sow'st whose haruest dares
Promise the Earth to counter-shine
Whateuer makes heaun's forehead fine.'
How grandly vague is that 'counter-shine _whatever_,' as it leads
upwards to the 'forehead'--superb, awful, God-crowned--of the 'heauns'!
Of the same in kind, but unutterably sweet and dainty also in its
exquisiteness, is stanza vii.:
'The deaw no more will weep _dew_
The primrose's pale cheek to deck:
The deaw no more will sleep
Nuzzel'd in the lily's neck;
Much rather would it be thy tear,
And leaue them both to tremble there.'
Wordsworth's vision of the 'flashing daffodils' is not finer than this.
A merely realistic Poet (as John Clare or Bloomfield) would never have
used the glorious singular, 'thy tear,' with its marvellous
suggestiveness of the multitudinous dew regarding itself as outweighed
in everything by one 'tear' of such eyes. Every stanza gives a text for
commentary; and the rapid, crowding questions and replies of the Tears
culminate in the splendid homage to the Saviour in the conclusion,
touched with a gentle scorn:
'We goe not to seek
The darlings of Aurora's bed,
The rose's modest cheek,
Nor the violet's humble head,
Though the feild's eyes too Weepers be,
Because they want such teares as we.
Much lesse mean to trace
The fortune of inferior gemmes,
Preferr'd to some proud face,
Or pertch't vpon fear'd diadems:
_Crown'd heads are toyes. We goe to meet_
A worthy object, our _Lord's feet_.'
'Feet' at highest; mark the humbleness, and the fitness too. Even more
truly than of Donne (in Arthur Wilson's Elegy) may it be said of
Crashaw, here and elsewhere, thou 'Couldst give both life and sense unto
a flower,'--faint prelude of Wordsworth's 'meanest flower.'
Dr. Macdonald (in 'Antiphon') is perplexingly unsympathetic, or, if I
may dare to say it, wooden, in his criticism on 'The Weeper;' for while
he characterises it generally as 'radiant of delicate fancy,' he goes
on: 'but surely such tones are not worthy of flitting moth-like about
the holy sorrow of a repentant woman! Fantastically beautiful, they but
play with her grief. Sorrow herself would put her shoes off her feet in
approaching the weeping Magdalene. They make much of her indeed, but
they show her little reverence. There is in them, notwithstanding their
fervour of amorous words, a coldness, like that which dwells in the
ghostly beauty of icicles shining in the moon' (p. 239). Fundamentally
blundering is all this: for the Critic ought to have marked how the
Poet's 'shoes' are put off his feet in approaching the weeping
Magdalene; but that _she_ is approached as far-back in the Past or in a
Present wherein her tears have been 'wiped away,' so that the poem is
dedicate not so much to The Weeper as to her Tears, as things of beauty
and pricelessness. Mary, 'blessed among women,' is remembered all
through; and just as with her Divine Son we must 'sorrow' in the vision
of His sorrows, we yet have the remembrance that they are all done,
'finished;' and thus we can expatiate on them not with grief so much as
joy. The prolongation of 'The Weeper' is no 'moth-like flitting about
the holy sorrow of a repentant woman,' but the never-to-be-satisfied
rapture over the evidence of a 'godly sorrow' that has worked to
repentance, and in its reward given loveliness and consecration to the
tears shed. The moon 'shining on icicles' is the antithesis of the
truth. Thus is it throughout, as in the backgrounds of the great
Portrait-painters as distinguished from Land-scapists and Sea-scapists
and Sky-scapists--Crashaw inevitably works out his thoughts through
something he has looked at as transfigured by his imagination, so that
you find his most mystical thinking and feeling framed (so to say) with
images drawn from Nature. That he did look not at but into Nature, let
'On a foule Morning, being then to take a Journey,' and 'To the Morning;
Satisfaction for Sleepe,' bear witness. In these there are penetrative
'looks' that Wordsworth never has surpassed, and a richness almost
Shakesperean. Milton must have studied them keenly. There is this
characteristic also in the 'sensuousness' of Crashaw, that while the
Painter glorifies the ignoble and the coarse (as Hobbima's Asses and
red-cloaked Old Women) in introducing it into a scene of Wood, or
Way-side, or Sea-shore, his outward images and symbolism are worthy in
themselves, and stainless as worthy (passing exceptions only
establishing the rule). His epithets are never superfluous, and are,
even to surprising nicety, true. Thus he calls Egypt '_white_ Egypt'
(vol. i. p. 81); and occurring as this does 'In the glorious Epiphanie
of ovr Lord God,' we are reminded again how the youthful Milton must
have had this extraordinary composition in his recollection when he
composed his immortal Ode.[30] Similarly we have '_hir'd_ mist' (vol. i.
p. 84); '_pretious_ losse' (ib.); '_fair-ey'd_ fallacy of Day' (ib. p.
85); '_black_ but faithfull perspectiue of Thee' (ib. p. 86); '_abased_
liddes' (ib. p. 88); '_gratious_ robbery' (ib. p. 156); 'thirsts of
loue' (ib.); '_timerous_ light of starres' (ib. p. 172); '_rebellious_
eye of Sorrow' (ib. p. 112); and so in hundreds of parallels. Take this
from 'To the Name above every Name' (ib. p. 60):
'O come away ...
O, see the weary liddes of wakefull Hope--
Love's eastern windowes--all wide ope
With curtains drawn,
To catch the day-break of Thy dawn.
O, dawn at last, long-lookt-for Day,
Take thine own wings, and come away.'
Comparing Cowley's and Crashaw's 'Hope,' Coleridge thus pronounces on
them: 'Crashaw seems in his poems to have given the first ebullience of
his imagination, unshapen into form, or much of what we now term
sweetness. In the poem Hope, by way of question and answer, his
superiority to Cowley is self-evident;' and he continues, 'In that on
the Name of Jesus, equally so; but his lines on St. Teresa are the
finest.' 'Where he does combine richness of thought and diction, nothing
can excel, as in the lines you so much admire,
Since 'tis not to be had at home
. . . . .
She'l to the Moores and martyrdom.'[31]
And then as never-to-be-forgotten 'glory' of the Hymn to Teresa, he
adds: 'these verses were ever present to my mind whilst writing the
second part of the Christabel; if indeed, by some subtle process of the
mind, they did not suggest the first thought of the whole poem'
(Letters and Conversations, 1836, i. 196). Coleridge makes another
critical remark which it may be worth while to adduce and perhaps
qualify. 'Poetry as regards small Poets may be said to be, in a certain
sense, conventional in its accidents and in its illustrations. Thus
[even] Crashaw uses an image "as sugar melts in tea away;" which
although _proper then_ and _true now_, was in bad taste at that time
equally with the present. In Shakespeare, in Chaucer, there was nothing
of this' (as before). The great Critic forgot that 'sugar' and 'tea'
were not vulgarised by familiarity when Crashaw wrote, that the wonder
and romance of their gift from the East still lay around them, and that
their use was select, not common. Thus later I explain Milton's
homeliness of allusion, as in the word 'breakfast,' and 'fell to,' and
the like; words and places and things that have long been not prosaic
simply, but demeaned and for ever unpoetised. I am not at all careful to
defend the 'sugar' and 'tea' metaphor; but it, I think, belongs also to
his imaginative-sensuousness, whereby orient awfulness almost, magnified
and dignified it to him.
Moreover the canon in 'Antiphon' is sound: 'When we come, in the
writings of one who has revealed master-dom, upon any passage that seems
commonplace, or any figure that suggests nothing true, the part of
wisdom is to brood over that point; for the probability is that the
barrenness lies in us, two factors being necessary for the result of
sight--the thing to be seen, and the eye to see it. No doubt the
expression may be inadequate; but if we can compensate the deficiency by
adding more vision, so much the better for us' (p. 243).
I thank Dr. George Macdonald[32] (in 'Antiphon') for his quaint opening
words on our Crashaw, and forgive him, for their sake, his blind reading
of 'The Weeper.' 'I come now to one of the loveliest of our angel-birds,
Richard Crashaw. Indeed, he was like a bird in more senses than one; for
he belongs to that class of men who seem hardly ever to get foot-hold of
this world, but are ever floating in the upper air of it' (p. 238).
True, and yet not wholly; or rather, if our Poet ascends to 'the upper
air,' and sings there with all the divineness of the skylark, like the
skylark his eyes fail not to over-watch the nest among the grain
beneath, nor his wings to be folded over it at the shut of eve.
Infinitely more, then, is to be found in Crashaw than Pope (in his
Letter to his friend Henry Cromwell) found: 'I take this poet to have
writ like a gentleman; that is, at leisure hours, and more to keep out
of idleness than to establish a reputation: so that nothing regular or
just can be expected of him. All that regards design, form, fable (which
is the soul of poetry), all that concerns exactness, or consent of parts
(which is the body), will probably be wanting; only pretty conceptions,
fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of
verse (which are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of
poetry), may be found in these verses.' Nay verily, the form is often
exquisite; but 'neat' and 'pretty conceptions' applied to such verse is
as 'pretty' applied to Niagara--so full, strong, deep, thought-laden is
it. I have no wish to charge plagiarism on Pope from Crashaw, as
Peregrine Phillips did (see onward); but neither is the contemptuous as
ignorant answer by a metaphor of Hayley to be received. The two minds
were essentially different: Pope was talented, and used his talents to
the utmost; Crashaw had absolute as unique genius.[33]
(_b_) _Subtlety of emotion._ Dr. Donne, in a memorable passage, with
daring originality, sings of Mrs. Drury rapturously:
'Her pure and eloquent soul
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say her body thought.'
I have much the same conception of Crashaw's thinking. It was so
emotional as almost always to tremble into feeling. Bare intellect,
'pure' (= naked) thought, you rarely come on in his Poems. The thought
issues forth from (in old-fashioned phrase) the heart, and its subtlety
is something unearthly even to awfulness. Let the reader give hours to
the study of the composition entitled 'In the glorious Epiphanie of ovr
Lord God, a Hymn svng as by the three Kings,' and 'In the holy Nativity
of ovr Lord God.' Their depth combined with elevation, their grandeur
softening into loveliness, their power with pathos, their awe bursting
into rapture, their graciousness and lyrical music, their variety and
yet unity, will grow in their study. As always, there is a solid
substratum of original thought in them; and the thinking, as so often in
Crashaw, is surcharged with emotion. If the thought may be likened to
fire, the praise, the rapture, the yearning may be likened to flame
leaping up from it. Granted that, as in fire and flame, there are
coruscations and jets of smoke, yet is the smoke that 'smoak' of which
Chudleigh in his Elegy for Donne sings:
'Incense of love's and fancie's _holy smoak_;'
or, rather, that 'smoke' which filled the House to the vision of Isaiah
(vi. 4). The hymn 'To the admirable Sainte Teresa,' and the 'Apologie'
for it, and related 'Flaming Heart,' and 'In the glorious Assvmption of
our Blessed Lady,' are of the same type. Take this from the 'Flaming
Heart' (vol. i. p. 155):
'Leaue her ... the flaming heart:
Leaue her that, and thou shalt leaue her
Not one loose shaft, but Loue's whole quiver.
_For in Loue's feild was neuer found
A nobler weapon than a wovnd._
Loue's passiues are his actiu'st part,
The wounded is the wounding heart.
. . . . .
Liue here, great heart; and loue and dy and kill,
And bleed and wound; and yeild and conquer still.'
His homage to the Virgin is put into words that pass the bounds which we
Protestants set to the 'blessed among women' in her great renown, and
even while a Protestant Crashaw fell into what we must regard as the
strange as inexplicable forgetfulness that it is The _Man_, not The
Child, who is our ever-living High-Priest 'within the veil,' and that
not in His mother's bosom, but on the Throne of sculptured light, is His
place. Still, you recognise that the homage to the Virgin-mother is to
the Divine Son through her, and through her in fine if also mistaken
humility. 'Mary' is the Muse of Crashaw; the Lord Jesus his 'Lord' and
hers. I would have the reader spend willing time, in slowly,
meditatively reading the whole of our Poet's sacred Verse, to note how
the thinking thus thrills into feeling, and feeling into rapture--the
rapture of adoration. It is miraculous how he finds words wherewith to
utter his most subtle and vanishing emotion. Sometimes there is a
daintiness and antique richness of wording that you can scarcely equal
out of the highest of our Poets, or only in them. Some of his images
from Nature are scarcely found anywhere else. For example, take this
very difficult one of ice, in the Verse-Letter to the Countess of
Denbigh (vol. i. p. 298, ll. 21-26), 'persuading' her no longer to be
the victim of her doubts:
'So, when the Year takes cold, we see
Poor waters _their own prisoners be;
Fetter'd and lock'd-up fast they lie
In a cold self-captivity_.
Th' astonish'd Nymphs their Floud's strange fate deplore,
To find themselves their own severer shoar.'
Young is striking in his use of the ice-metaphor:
'in Passion's flame
Hearts melt; but _melt like ice, soon harder froze_.'
(Night-Thoughts, N. II. l. 522-3.)
But how strangely original is the earlier Poet in so cunningly working
it into the very matter of his persuasion! Our quotation from Young
recalls that in the 'Night-Thoughts' there are evident reminiscences of
Crashaw: _e.g._
'Midnight veil'd his face:
Not such as this, not such as Nature makes;
A midnight Nature shudder'd to behold;
A midnight new; a dread eclipse, without
Opposing spheres, from her Creator's frown.'
(Night IV. ll. 246-250.)
So in 'Gilt was Hell's gloom' (N. VII. l. 1041), and in this portrait of
Satan:
'Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll
His baleful eyes!' (N. IX. ll. 280-1.) and
'the fiery gulf,
That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent;' (Ib. ll. 473-4)
and
'Banners streaming as the comet's blaze;' (Ib. l. 323)
and
'Which makes a hell of hell,' (Ib. l. 340)
we have the impress and inspiration of our Poet.
How infinitely soft and tender and Shakesperean is the 'Epitaph vpon a
yovng Married Covple dead and bvryed together' (with its now restored
lines), thus!--
'Peace, good Reader, doe not weep;
Peace, the louers are asleep.
They, sweet turtles, folded ly
In the last knott that Loue could ty.
And though they ly as they were dead,
Their pillow stone, their sheetes of lead
(Pillow hard, and sheetes not warm),
Loue made the bed; they'l take no harm:
Let them sleep; let them sleep on,
Till this stormy night be gone,
And the aeternall morrow dawn;
Then ...' (vol. i. pp. 230-1.)
The hush, the tranquil stillness of a church-aisle, within which 'sleep'
old recumbent figures, comes over one in reading these most pathetically
beautiful words. Of the whole poem, Dodd in his 'Epigrammatists' (as
onward) remarks, 'after reading this Epitaph, all others on the same
subject must suffer by comparison. Yet there is much to be admired in
the following by Bishop Hall, on Sir Edward and Lady Lewkenor. It is
translated from the Latin by the Bishop's descendant and editor, the
Rev. Peter Hall (Bp. Hall's Works, 1837-9, xii. 331):
'In bonds of love united, man and wife,
Long, yet too short, they spent a happy life;
United still, too soon, however late,
Both man and wife receiv'd the stroke of fate:
And now in glory clad, enraptur'd pair,
The same bright cup, the same sweet draught they share.
Thus, first and last, a married couple see,
In life, in death, in immortality.'
There is much beauty also in an anonymous epitaph in the 'Festoon' 143,
'On a Man and his Wife:'
'Here sleep, whom neither life nor love,
Nor friendship's strictest tie,
Could in such close embrace as thou,
Their faithful grave, ally;
Preserve them, each dissolv'd in each,
For bands of love divine,
For union only more complete,
Thou faithful grave, than thine.' (p. 253.)
His 'Wishes to his (supposed) Mistresse' has things in it vivid and
subtle as anything in Shelley at his best; and I affirm this
deliberately. His little snatch on 'Easter Day' with some peculiarities,
culminates in a grandeur Milton might bow before. The version of 'Dies
Irae' is wonderfully severe and solemn and intense. Roscommon
undoubtedly knew it. And so we might go on endlessly. His melody--with
exceptional discords--is as the music of a Master, not mere
versification. Once read receptively, and the words haunt almost
awfully, and, I must again use the word, unearthlily. Summarily--as in
our claim for Vaughan, as against the preposterous traditional
assertions of his indebtedness to Herbert poetically, while really it
was for spiritual benefits he was obligated--we cannot for an instant
rank George Herbert as a Poet with Crashaw. Their piety is alike, or the
'Priest' of Bemerton is more definite, and clear of the 'fine mist' of
mysticism of the recluse of 'Little St. Mary's;' but only very rarely
have you in 'The Temple' that light of genius which shines as a very
Shekinah-glory in the 'Steps to the Temple.' These 'Steps' have been
spoken of as 'Steps' designed to lead into Herbert's 'Temple,' whereas
they were 'Steps' to the 'Temple' or Church of the Living God. Crashaw
'sang' sweetly and generously of Herbert (vol. i. pp. 139-140); but the
two Poets are profoundly distinct and independent. Clement Barksdale,
probably, must bear the blame of foolishly subordinating Crashaw to
Herbert, in his Lines in 'Nympha Libethris' (1651):
'HERBERT AND CRASHAW.
When unto Herbert's Temple I ascend
By Crashaw's Steps, I do resolve to mend
My lighter verse, and my low notes to raise,
And in high accent sing my Maker's praise.
Meanwhile these sacred poems in my sight
I place, that I may learn to write.'
(_c_) _Epigrams._ The title-page of the Epigr. Sacra of 1670 marks out
for us their main dates; that is to say, as it designates him 'Collegii
Petrensis Socius,' which he was not until 1637, the only portion that
belongs to that period must be the additions made in the 1670 edition
(see vol. ii. pp. 3-4). Dr. Macdonald (in 'Antiphon') observes: 'His
Divine Epigrams are not the most beautiful, but they are to me the most
valuable, of his verses, inasmuch as they make us feel afresh the truth
which he sets forth anew. In them some of the facts of our Lord's life
and teaching look out upon us as from clear windows of the Past. As
epigrams, too, they are excellent--pointed as a lance' (p. 240). He
limits himself to the 'English' Epigrams, and quotes after above, Nos.
LIV. (2) and XI.; and continues with No. XIV., and next LIV. (1); on
which he says: 'I value the following as a lovely parable. Mary is not
contented; to see the place is little comfort. The church itself, with
all its memories of the Lord, the Gospel-story, and all theory about
Him, is but His tomb until we find Himself;' and he closes with one
which he thinks is 'perhaps his best,' viz. No. I.[34] We too may give
it:
'_Two went up into the Temple to pray._
Two went to pray! O, rather say,
One went to brag, th' other to pray.
One stands up close, and treads on high,
Where th' other dares not send his eye.
One neerer to God's altar trod;
The other to the altar's God.' (vol. ii. p. 35.)
The admiring critic on this proceeds: 'This appears to me perfect. Here
is the true relation between the forms and the end of religion. The
priesthood, the altar and all its ceremonies, must vanish from between
the sinner and his God. When the priest forgets his mediation of a
servant, his duty of a door-keeper to the temple of truth, and takes
upon him the office of an intercessor, he stands between man and God,
and is a satan, an adversary. Artistically considered, the poem could
hardly be improved' (p. 241). 'Artistically,' nevertheless, it is a
wonder Dr. Macdonald did not detect Turnbull's mis-reading of 'lend' for
'send' (l. 4). Bellew in his Poet's Corner reads 'bend,' which is
equally poor for 'tendit.' There follows No. XLII., 'containing a
similar lesson;' and finally No. XLV. p. 196, whereof he says: 'The
following is a world-wide intercession for them that know not what they
do. Of those that reject the truth, who can be said ever to have truly
seen it? A man must be good to see truth. It is a thought suggested by
our Lord's words, not an irreverent opposition to the truth of them'
(p. 242).
Now that, besides the (relatively) few Epigrams which were translated by
Crashaw himself, the whole are translated (for the first time), and now
too that, exclusive of longer Latin poems, a goodly addition has been
made by us to them, the reader will find it rewarding to turn and return
on this remarkable section of Crashaw's poetry. Conceits there are,
grotesque as gargoyles of a cathedral, oddities of symbolism, even
passing into unconscious playing with holy words and things never to be
played with; but each has a jewel of a distinct thought or sentiment,
and often the wording is felicitous, albeit, as in all his Latin verse,
not invariably without technical faults of quantity and even syntax. I
had marked very many for specific criticism; but I must refrain. Our
translation is perhaps a better commentary. To my co-workers and myself
it has been a labour of love. I must close our notice of Crashaw as an
Epigrammatist with some parallels from 'The Epigrammatists' of the Rev.
Henry Philip Dodd, M.A. (1870). Under No. CXVII., 'On Pontius Pilate
washing his hands,' he has this: 'In Elsum's Epigrams on Paintings,
1700, is one on a picture by Andrea Sacchi of Pilate washing his hands,
translated from Michael Silos, De Romana Pictura et Sculptura' (Ep. 17):
'O cursed Pilate, villain dyed in grain,
A little water cannot purge thy stain;
No, Tanais can't do't, nor yet the main.
Dost thou condemn a Deity to death,
Him whose mere love gave and preserv'd thy breath?'
Similarly, under No. LI. 'On the Blessed Virgin's Bashfulness,' he has
this: 'Some lines "To the Blessed Virgin at her Purification," by the
old epigrammatist Bancroft, are almost as beautiful in sentiment as
this exquisite piece (Book ii. 86):
Why, favourite of Heaven, most fair,
Dost thou bring fowls for sacrifice?
Will not the armful thou dost bear,
That lovely Lamb of thine, suffice?'
Of the exceptionally celebrated, not exceptionally superior Epigram on
'The Water turned Wine,' which somehow has been given by a perverse
continued blunder to Dryden, Aaron Hill's masterly translation may be
read along with those given by us in the place (vol. ii. pp. 96-7):
'When Christ at Cana's feast by pow'r divine
Inspir'd cold water with the warmth of wine;
See! cried they, while in red'ning tide it gush'd,
The bashful stream hath seen its God, and _blush'd_.'
Dryden's 'The conscious water saw its God, and blush'd,' is a mere
remembrance of Crashaw.[35]
(_d_) _Translations and (briefly) Latin and Greek Poetry._ It may seem
semi-paradoxical to affirm it, but in our opinion the genius of Crashaw
shines with its fullest splendour in his Translations, longer and
shorter. Even were there not his wonderful 'Suspicion of Herod' and
'Musick's Duell,' this might be said; for in his 'Dies Irae,' and
'Hymne out of Sainte Thomas,' and others lesser, there are felicities
that only a genuine Maker could have produced. His 'Dies Irae' was the
earliest version in our language. Roscommon and Scott alike wrote after
and 'after' it. But it is on the two truly great Poems named we found
our estimate. Turning to 'Musick's Duell,' as we ask the reader to do
now (vol. i. 197-203), we have only to read critically the Latin of
Strada, from whence it is drawn, to discern the creative gift of our
Poet. Here it is:
Jam Sol a medio pronus deflexerat orbe
Mitius, e radiis vibrans crinalibus ignem.
Cum Fidicen, propter Tiberina fluenta, sonanti
Lenibat plectra curas, aestumque levabat,
Ilice defensus nigra scenaque virenti.
Audiit hunc hospes silvae Philomela propinquae
Musa loci, nemoris siren, innoxia siren;
Et prope succedens stetit abdita frondibus, alte
Accipiens sonitum, secumque remurmurat, et quos
Ille modos variat digitis, haec gutture reddit.
Sensit se Fidicen Philomela imitante referri,
Et placuit ludum volucri dare; plenius ergo
Explorat citharam, tentamentumque futurae
Praebeat ut pugnae, percussit protinus omnes
Impulsu pernice fides, nec segnius illa.
Mille per excurrens variae discrimina vocis,
Venturi specimen praefert argutula cantus.
Tunc Fidicen per fila movens trepidantia dextram,
Nunc contemnenti similis diverberat ungue,
Depectitque pari chordas, et simplice ductu:
Nunc carptim replicat, digitisque micantibus urget
Fila minutatim, celerique repercutit ictu.
Mox silet. Illa modis totidem respondet, et artem
Arte refert. Nunc seu rudis aut incerta canendi
Projicit in longum, nulloque plicatile flexu
Carmen init, simili serie, jugique tenore,
Praebet iter liquidum labenti e pectore voce;
Nunc caesim variat, modulisque canora minutis.
Delibrat vocem, tremuloque reciprocat ore.
Miratur Fidicen parvis e faucibus ire
Tam varium, tam dulce melos; majoraque tentans
Alternat mira arte fides; dum torquet acutas
Inciditque, graves operoso verbere pulsat,
Permiscetque simul certantia rauca sonoris,
Ceu resides in bella viros clangore lacessat.
Hoc etiam Philomela canit: dumque ore liquenti
Vibrat acuta sonum, modulisque interplicat acquis;
Ex inopinato gravis intonat, et leve murmur
Turbinat introrsus, alternantique sonore
Clarat, et infuscat ceu martia classica pulset.
Scilicet erubuit Fidicen, ...
Non imitabilibus plectrum concentibus urget.
Namque manu per fila volat, simul hos, simul illos
Explorat numeros, chordaque laborat in omni,
Et strepit, et tinnit, crescitque superbius, et se
Multiplicat religens, plenoque choreumate plaudit.[36]
It will be noted by the student that such word-painting as in these
lines belongs to Crashaw, not Strada:
'and streightway she
_Carves out her dainty voyce as readily_.
. . . . .
Through the sleeke passage of her open throat
_A clear unwrinckled song_;
. . . . .
closes the sweet quarrell, rowsing all,
_Hoarce, shrill at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of Death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands_:'
. . . . .
staggers in a warbling doubt
_Of dallying sweetnesse_, hovers o'er her skill,
_And folds in wav'd notes with a trembling bill_
. . . . .
a tide
Of streaming sweetnesse, _which in state doth ride
On the wav'd backe of every swelling straine,
Rising and falling in a pompous traine_.
. . . . .
Thus high, thus low, _as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voyce of War's hoarce bird_.
... his hands sprightly as fire, he flings
And with _a quavering coynesse tasts the strings_.
The sweet-lip't sisters, musically frighted,
Singing their feares, are fearefully delighted,
_Trembling as when Appolo's golden haires
Are fan'd and frizled, in the wanton ayres
Of his own breath: which marryed to his lyre_
Doth tune the spheares.
. . . . .
with nectar drop,
_Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup_.
. . . . .
_The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heav'd on the surges of swolne rapsodyes,_
. . . . .
_Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone_.'
In the words of Willmott (as before), 'We shall seek in vain in the
Latin text for the vigour, the fancy, and the grandeur of these lines.
These remain with Crashaw, of whose obligations to Strada we may say, as
Hayley [stupidly, if picturesquely] remarked of Pope's debt to Crashaw,
that if he borrowed anything from him in this article, it was only as
the sun borrows from the earth, when, drawing from thence a mere vapour,
he makes it the delight of every eye, by giving it all the tender and
gorgeous colouring of heaven' (vol. i. p. 323). The richness and fulness
of our Poet as a Translator becomes the more clear when we place beside
his interpretation of Strada the 'translations' of others, as given in
the places (vol. i. pp. 203-6). A third (anonymous) version we
discovered among the Lansdowne MSS. 3910, pt. lxvi., from which we take
a specimen:
'Now the declininge sunn 'gan downward bende
From higher heauene, and from his locks did sende
A milder flame; when neere to Tyber's flowe
A Lutaniste allayde his carefull woe,
With sondinge charmes, and in a greeny seate
Of shady oake, toke shelter from the heate.
A nitingale ore-hard hym that did use
To soiourne in y^e neighbour groues, the Muse
That files the place, the syren of the wood:
Poore harmeles Syren, steling neere she stood
Close lurkinge in the leaues attentiuely:
Recordinge that vnwonted mellodye,
She condt it to herselfe, and every straine
His fingers playde, her throat return'd againe.'
And so to the end (MS. 3910, pp. 114-17). We have reserved until now
incomparably the second, but only a far-off second, to Crashaw's, from
John Ford's 'Lover's Melancholy' (1629); which probably was our Poet's
guide to Strada. Here is the substance of the fine reminiscent version,
from act i. scene 1:
_Menaphon._ A sound of music touched mine ears, or rather,
Indeed, entranced my soul. As I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, I saw
This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute,
With strains of strange variety and harmony,
Proclaiming, as it seemed, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the wood, the birds,
That as they flocked about him all stood silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wondered too.
_Amethus._ And do so I: good, on.
_Men._ A nightingale,
Nature's best-skilled musician, undertakes
The challenge, and for every several strain
The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her own:
He could not run division with more art
Vpon his quaking instrument than she
The nightingale did with her various notes
Reply to: for a voice and for a sound,
Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe
That such they were, than hope to hear again.
_Ameth._ How did the rivals part?
_Men._ You term them rightly.
For they were rivals, and their mistress, Harmony.
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird,
Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice.
To end the controversy, in a rapture,
Vpon his instrument he plays so swiftly
So many voluntaries, and so quick,
That there was curiosity and cunning,
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.
_Ameth._ Now for the bird.
_Men._ The bird, ordained to be
Music's first master, strove to imitate
These several sounds; which when her warbling throat
Failed in, for grief down dropped she on his lute,
And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness,
To see the conqueror upon her hearse
To weep.[37]
Comment is needless on such pale, empty literality, as compared with the
vitality and _elan_ of Crashaw, in all but Ford's; while even Ford's is
surpassed in every way by the 'Musick's Duell.'
The 'Suspicion of Herod,' by Marino (c. i.), is a grand poem in the
original. Milton knew it, and was taken by it. Our Poet had glorious
materials whereon to work, accordingly, when he turned Translator of
this all-too-little known Singer of Italy. But Crashaw's soul was more
spacious, his imagination more imperial, his vocabulary wealthier, than
even Marino's. The greatness and grandeur and force of the Italian
roused the Englishman to emulation. Willmott (as before) has placed the
original Italian beside Crashaw's interpretation, and the advance in the
Translator on his original is almost startling. We prefer adducing
Crashaw, and then giving a close rendering of the original: _e.g._
'He saw Heav'n blossome with a new-borne light,
_On which, as on a glorious stranger, gaz'd
The golden eyes of Night_.' (st. xvii.)
literally in Marino:
'_He sees also shining from heaven,
With beauteous ray, the wondrous star_,
Which, brilliant and beautiful, goes
Pointing the way straight towards Bethlehem.'
Again:
'He saw how in that blest Day-bearing Night,
The Heav'n-rebuked shades made hast away;
_How bright a dawne of angels with new light
Amaz'd the midnight world, and made a Day
Of which the Morning knew not_.' (st. xv.)
literally in Marino:
'He sees the quiet shades and the dark
Horrors of the happy, holy Night
Smitten and routed by heavenly voices,
And vanquished by angelic splendours.'
Once more: when Alecto, the most terrible of the infernal sisters,
ascends to Earth at the command of Satan:
'Heav'n saw her rise, and saw Hell in the sight:
The fields' faire eyes saw her, and saw no more,
But shut their flowry lids for ever;' (st. xlviii.)
for
'Parvero i fiori intorno e la verdura
Sentir forza di peste, ira di verno;'
literally:
'soon as Hell had vomited out
This monster from the dark abyss,
_The flowers all around and the verdure appeared
To feel the strength of the plague, the fury of winter_.'
This naked simplicity of wording is very fine: yet do Crashaw's
adornments bring new charm to Marino. The soliloquy of Satan, though
close as the skin to the body, has a ruddiness (so-to-say) from
Crashaw. Nothing in Milton is grander than st. xxv. to xxx.; and in all
there are touches from the cunning hand of Crashaw: _e.g._
'_And for the never-fading fields of light;_' (st. xxvii.)
for Marino's
'Che piu puo farmi omai chi la celeste
_Reggia mi tolse, e i regni i miei lucenti_?'
literally:
'What more can He now do to me, Who took
_From me the heavenly palace and my bright realms_?'
Again:
'_Bow our bright heads before a king of clay;_' (st. xxviii.)
for Marino's
'Volle alle forme sue semplici e prime,
Natura sovralzar corporea e bassa,
E de' membri del ciel capo sublime
Far di limo terrestre eterna massa;'
literally:
'He turns to his simple primitive forms,
To raise Nature above the corporeal and low,
And to make an unworthy mass of earthly clay
The sublime head of the heavenly members.'
Compare also st. x. in Crashaw with the original as literally rendered:
'Disdainefull wretch, how hath one bold sinne cost
Thee all the beauties of thy once bright eyes!
How hath _one black eclipse cancell'd and crost
The glories that did gild thee in thy rise!
Proud morning of a perverse day_, how lost
Art thou unto thy selfe, thou too selfe-wise
Narcissus! foolish Phaeton, who for all
Thy _high-aym'd hopes, gaind'st but a flaming fall_.'
Literally in Marino:
'O wretched Angel, once fairer than light,
How thou hast lost thy primeval splendour!
Thou shalt have from the eternal Requiter
Deserved punishment for the unjust crime:
Proud admirer of thy honours,
Rebellious usurper of another's seat!
Transformed, and fallen into Phlegethon,
Proud Narcissus, impious Phaethon!'
Milton takes from Crashaw, not Marino, in his portrait of the Destroyer:
'From Death's sad shades to the life-breathing ayre
This mortall enemy to mankind's good
Lifts his _malignant eyes, wasted with care,
To become beautifull in humane blood_.' (st. xi.)
Literally in Marino:
'He from the shades of death to the living air,
Envious in truth of our human state,
Lifted aloft his eyes by where
The hollow vent-hole opened straight down.'
Well-nigh innumerable single lines and words are inevitably marked:
_e.g._
'the rebellious eye
Of sorrow.' (st. xlix.)
So the eyes of Satan:
'the sullen dens of Death and Night
Startle the dull ayre with a dismal red;' (st. vii.)
for Marino's
'Negli occhi ove mestizia alberga e morte,
Luce fiammeggia torbida e vermiglia;'
literally:
'In the eyes where sadness dwells and death
A turbid vermilion-coloured light shines.'