THE SCHOOL OF SPENSER AND THE TRIBE OF BEN
The reign of James I. is not, in mere poetry, quite such a brilliant period
as it is in drama. The full influence of Donne and of Jonson, which
combined to produce the exquisite if not extraordinarily strong school of
Caroline poets, did not work in it. Of its own bards the best, such as
Jonson himself and Drayton, were survivals of the Elizabethan school, and
have accordingly been anticipated here. Nevertheless, there were not a few
verse-writers of mark who may be most conveniently assigned to this time,
though, as was the case with so many of their contemporaries, they had
sometimes produced work of note before the accession of the British
Solomon, and sometimes continued to produce it until far into the reign of
his son. Especially there are some of much mark who fall to be noticed
here, because their work is not, strictly speaking, of the schools that
flourished under Elizabeth, or of the schools that flourished under
Charles. We shall not find anything of the first interest in them; yet in
one way or in another there were few of them who were unworthy to be
contemporaries of Shakespere.
Joshua Sylvester is one of those men of letters whom accident rather than
property seems to have made absurd. He has existed in English literature
chiefly as an Englisher of the Frenchman Du Bartas, whom an even greater
ignorance has chosen to regard as something grotesque. Du Bartas is one of
the grandest, if also one of the most unequal, poets of Europe, and Joshua
Sylvester, his translator, succeeded in keeping some of his grandeur if he
even added to his inequality. His original work is insignificant compared
with his translation; but it is penetrated with the same qualities. He
seems to have been a little deficient in humour, and his portrait--crowned
with a singularly stiff laurel, throated with a stiffer ruff, and clothed,
as to the bust, with a doublet so stiff that it looks like textile
armour--is not calculated to diminish the popular ridicule. Yet is
Sylvester not at all ridiculous. He was certainly a Kentish man, and
probably the son of a London clothier. His birth is guessed, on good
grounds, at 1563; and he was educated at Southampton under the famous
refugee, Saravia, to whom he owed that proficiency in French which made or
helped his fame. He did not, despite his wishes, go to either university,
and was put to trade. In this he does not seem to have been prosperous;
perhaps he gave too much time to translation. He was probably patronised by
James, and by Prince Henry certainly. In the last years of his life he was
resident secretary to the English company of Merchant Venturers at
Middleburgh, where he died on the 28th September 1618. He was not a
fortunate man, but his descendants seem to have flourished both in England,
the West Indies and America. As for his literary work, it requires no doubt
a certain amount of good will to read it. It is voluminous, even in the
original part not very original, and constantly marred by that loquacity
which, especially in times of great inspiration, comes upon the uninspired
or not very strongly inspired. The point about Sylvester, as about so many
others of his time, is that, unlike the minor poets of our day and of some
others, he has constant flashes--constant hardly separable, but quite
perceivable, scraps, which show how genially heated the brain of the nation
was. Nor should it be forgotten that his Du Bartas had a great effect for
generations. The man of pure science may regret that generations should
have busied themselves about anything so thoroughly unscientific; but with
that point of view we are unconcerned. The important thing is that the
generations in question learnt from Sylvester to take a poetical interest
in the natural world.
John Davies of Hereford, who must have been born at about the same time as
Sylvester, and who certainly died in the same year, is another curiosity of
literature. He was only a writing-master,--a professor of the curious,
elaborate penmanship which is now quite dead,--and he seems at no time to
have been a man of wealth. But he was, in his vocation or otherwise,
familiar with very interesting people, both of the fashionable and the
literary class. He succeeded, poor as he was, in getting thrice married to
ladies born; and, though he seems to have been something of a coxcomb, he
was apparently as little of a fool as coxcombry will consist with. His work
(of the most miscellaneous character and wholly in verse, though in subject
as well as treatment often better suiting prose) is voluminous, and he
might have been wholly treated (as he has already been referred to) with
the verse pamphleteers, especially Rowlands, of an earlier chapter. But
fluent and unequal as his verse is--obviously the production of a man who
had little better to offer than journalism, but for whom the times did not
provide the opening of a journalist--there is a certain salt of wit in it
which puts him above the mere pamphleteers. His epigrams (most of which are
contained in _The Scourge of Folly_, undated, like others of his books) are
by no means despicable; the Welsh ancestors, whom he did not fail to
commemorate, seem to have endowed him with some of that faculty for
lampooning and "flyting" which distinguished the Celtic race. That they are
frequently lacking in point ought hardly to be objected to him; for the age
had construed the miscellaneous examples of Martial indulgently, and Jonson
in his own generation, and Herrick after him (two men with whom Davies
cannot compare for a moment in general power), are in their epigrams
frequently as pointless and a good deal coarser. His variations on English
proverbs are also remarkable. He had a respectable vein of religious
moralising, as the following sonnet from _Wit's Pilgrimage_ will show:--
"When Will doth long to effect her own desires,
She makes the Wit, as vassal to the will,
To do what she, howe'er unright, requires,
Which wit doth, though repiningly, fulfil.
Yet, as well pleased (O languishing wit!)
He seems to effect her pleasure willingly,
And all his reasons to her reach doth fit;
So like the world, gets love by flattery.
That this is true a thousand witnesses,
Impartial conscience, will directly prove;
Then if we would not willingly transgress,
Our will should swayed be by rules of love,
Which holds the multitude of sins because
Her sin morally to him his servants draws."
The defect of Davies, as of not a few of his contemporaries, is that,
having the power of saying things rememberable enough, he set himself to
wrap them up and merge them in vast heaps of things altogether
unrememberable. His successors have too often resembled him only in the
latter part of his gift. His longer works (_Mirum in Modum_, _Summa
Totalis_, _Microcosmus_, _The Holy Rood_, _Humours Heaven on Earth_, are
some of their eccentric titles) might move simple wonder if a century which
has welcomed _The Course of Time_, and _Yesterday, To-day, and For Ever_,
not to mention examples even more recent than these, had any great reason
to throw stones at its forerunners. But to deal with writers like Davies is
a little difficult in a book which aims both at being nothing if not
critical, and at doing justice to the minor as well as to the major
luminaries of the time: while the difficulty is complicated by the
necessity of _not_ saying ditto to the invaluable labourers who have
reintroduced him and others like him to readers. I am myself full of the
most unfeigned gratitude to my friend Dr. Grosart, to Professor Arber, and
to others, for sparing students, whose time is the least disposable thing
they have, visits to public libraries or begging at rich men's doors for
the sight of books. I should be very sorry both as a student and as a lover
of literature not to possess Davies, Breton, Sylvester, Quarles, and the
rest, and not to read them from time to time. But I cannot help warning
those who are not professed students of the subject that in such writers
they have little good to seek; I cannot help noting the difference between
them and other writers of a very different order, and above all I cannot
help raising a mild protest against the encomiums which are sometimes
passed on them. Southey, in that nearly best of modern books unclassified,
_The Doctor_, has a story of a glover who kept no gloves that were not
"Best." But when the facts came to be narrowly inquired into, it was found
that the ingenious tradesman had no less than five qualities--"Best,"
"Better than Best," "Better than better than Best," "Best of All," and the
"Real Best." Such language is a little delusive, and when I read the
epithets of praise which are sometimes lavished, not by the same persons,
on Breton and Watson, I ask myself what we are to say of Spenser and
Shakespere.
Davies has no doubt also suffered from the fact that he had a contemporary
of the same name and surname, who was not only of higher rank, but of
considerably greater powers. Sir John Davies was a Wiltshire man of good
family: his mother, Mary Bennet of Pyt-house, being still represented by
the Benett-Stanfords of Dorsetshire and Brighton. Born about 1569, he was a
member of the University of Oxford, and a Templar; but appears to have been
anything but a docile youth, so that both at Oxford and the Temple he came
to blows with the authorities. He seems, however, to have gone back to
Oxford, and to have resided there till close of middle life; some if not
most of his poems dating thence. He entered Parliament in 1601, and after
figuring in the Opposition during Elizabeth's last years, was taken into
favour, like others in similar circumstances, by James. Immediately after
the latter's accession Davies became a law officer for Ireland, and did
good and not unperilous service there. He was mainly resident in Ireland
for some thirteen years, producing during the time a valuable "Discovery of
the Causes of the Irish Discontent." For the last ten years of his life he
seems to have practised as serjeant-at-law in England, frequently serving
as judge or commissioner of assize, and he died in 1626. His poetical work
consists chiefly of three things, all written before 1600. These are _Nosce
Teipsum_, or the immortality of the soul, in quatrains, and as light as the
unsuitableness of the subject to verse will allow; a singularly clever
collection of acrostics called _Astraea_, all making the name of Elizabetha
Regina; and the _Orchestra_, or poem on dancing, which has made his fame.
Founded as it is on a mere conceit--the reduction of all natural phenomena
to a grave and regulated motion which the author calls dancing--it is one
of the very best poems of the school of Spenser, and in harmony of metre
(the seven-lined stanza) and grace of illustration is sometimes not too far
behind Spenser himself. An extract from it may be fitly followed by one of
the acrostics of _Astraea_:--
"As the victorious twins of Leda and Jove,
(That taught the Spartans dancing on the sands
Of swift Eurotas) dance in heaven above,
Knit and united with eternal bands;
Among the stars, their double image stands,
Where both are carried with an equal pace,
Together jumping in their turning race.
"This is the net, wherein the sun's bright eye,
Venus and Mars entangled did behold;
For in this dance, their arms they so imply,
As each doth seem the other to enfold.
What if lewd wits another tale have told
Of jealous Vulcan, and of iron chains!
Yet this true sense that forged lie contains.
"These various forms of dancing Love did frame,
And besides these, a hundred millions more;
And as he did invent, he taught the same:
With goodly gesture, and with comely show,
Now keeping state, now humbly honouring low.
And ever for the persons and the place
He taught most fit, and best according grace."
* * * * *
"Each day of thine, sweet month of May,
Love makes a solemn Holy Day.
I will perform like duty;
Since thou resemblest every way
Astraea, Queen of Beauty.
Both you, fresh beauties do partake,
Either's aspect, doth summer make.
Thoughts of young Love awaking,
Hearts you both do cause to ache;
And yet be pleased with aching.
Right dear art thou, and so is She,
Even like attractive sympathy
Gains unto both, like dearness.
I ween this made antiquity
Name thee, sweet May of majesty,
As being both like in clearness."
The chief direct followers of Spenser were, however, Giles and Phineas
Fletcher, and William Browne. The two first were, as has been said, the
cousins of John Fletcher the dramatist, and the sons of Dr. Giles Fletcher,
the author of _Licia_. The exact dates and circumstances of their lives are
little known. Both were probably born between 1580 and 1590. Giles, though
the younger (?), died vicar of Alderton in Suffolk in 1623: Phineas, the
elder (?), who was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge (Giles
was a member of Trinity College in the same university), also took orders,
and was for nearly thirty years incumbent of Hilgay-in-the-Fens, dying in
1650.
Giles's extant work is a poem in four cantos or parts, generally entitled
_Christ's Victory and Triumph_. He chose a curious and rather infelicitous
variation on the Spenserian stanza _ababbccc_, keeping the Alexandrine but
missing the seventh line, with a lyrical interlude here and there. The
whole treatment is highly allegorical, and the lusciousness of Spenser is
imitated and overdone. Nevertheless the versification and imagery are often
very beautiful, as samples of the two kinds will show:--
"The garden like a lady fair was cut
That lay as if she slumber'd in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut;
The azure fields of Heav'n were 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flow'rs of light:
The flow'rs-de-luce, and the round sparks of dew,
That hung upon their azure leaves did shew
Like twinkling stars, that sparkle in the evening blue.
"Upon a hilly bank her head she cast,
On which the bower of Vain-delight was built,
White and red roses for her face were placed,
And for her tresses marigolds were spilt:
Them broadly she displayed like flaming gilt,
Till in the ocean the glad day were drowned:
Then up again her yellow locks she wound,
And with green fillets in their pretty cauls them bound.
"What should I here depaint her lily hand,
Her veins of violets, her ermine breast,
Which there in orient colours living stand:
Or how her gown with living leaves is drest,
Or how her watchman, armed with boughy crest,
A wall of prim hid in his bushes bears
Shaking at every wind their leafy spears
While she supinely sleeps, nor to be waked fears."
* * * * *
"See, see the flowers that below,
Now as fresh as morning blow,
And of all the virgin rose,
That as bright Aurora shows:
How they all unleaved die,
Losing their virginity;
Like unto a summer shade,
But now born and now they fade.
Everything doth pass away,
There is danger in delay.
Come, come gather then the rose,
Gather it, or it you lose.
All the sand of Tagus' shore
Into my bosom casts his ore:
All the valleys' swimming corn
To my house is yearly borne:
Every grape of every vine
Is gladly bruis'd to make me wine,
While ten thousand kings, as proud,
To carry up my train have bow'd,
And a world of ladies send me
In my chambers to attend me.
All the stars in Heaven that shine,
And ten thousand more, are mine:
Only bend thy knee to me,
Thy wooing shall thy winning be."
_The Purple Island_, Phineas Fletcher's chief work, is an allegorical poem
of the human body, written in a stanza different only from that of
_Christ's Victory_ in being of seven lines only, the quintet of Giles being
cut down to a regular elegiac quatrain. This is still far below the
Spenserian stanza, and the colour is inferior to that of Giles. Phineas
follows Spenser's manner, or rather his mannerisms, very closely indeed,
and in detached passages not unsuccessfully, as here, where the transition
from Spenser to Milton is marked:--
"The early morn lets out the peeping day,
And strew'd his path with golden marigolds:
The Moon grows wan, and stars fly all away.
Whom Lucifer locks up in wonted folds
Till light is quench'd, and Heaven in seas hath flung
The headlong day: to th' hill the shepherds throng
And Thirsil now began to end his task and song:
"'Who now, alas! shall teach my humble vein,
That never yet durst peep from covert glade,
But softly learnt for fear to sigh and plain
And vent her griefs to silent myrtle's shade?
Who now shall teach to change my oaten quill
For trumpet 'larms, or humble verses fill
With graceful majesty, and lofty rising skill?
"'Ah, thou dread Spirit! shed thy holy fire,
Thy holy flame, into my frozen heart;
Teach thou my creeping measures to aspire
And swell in bigger notes, and higher art:
Teach my low Muse thy fierce alarms to ring,
And raise my soft strain to high thundering,
Tune thou my lofty song; thy battles must I sing.
"'Such as thou wert within the sacred breast
Of that thrice famous poet, shepherd, king;
And taught'st his heart to frame his cantos best
Of all that e'er thy glorious works did sing;
Or as, those holy fishers once among,
Thou flamedst bright with sparkling parted tongues;
And brought'st down Heaven to Earth in those all-conquering songs.'"
But where both fail is first in the adjustment of the harmony of the
individual stanza as a verse paragraph, and secondly in the management of
their fable. Spenser has everywhere a certain romance-interest both of
story and character which carries off in its steady current, where carrying
off is needed, both his allegorising and his long descriptions. The
Fletchers, unable to impart this interest, or unconscious of the necessity
of imparting it, lose themselves in shallow overflowings like a stream that
overruns its bank. But Giles was a master of gorgeous colouring in phrase
and rhythm, while in _The Purple Island_ there are detached passages not
quite unworthy of Spenser, when he is not at his very best--that is to say,
worthy of almost any English poet. Phineas, moreover, has, to leave
_Britain's Ida_ alone, a not inconsiderable amount of other work. His
Piscatory Eclogues show the influence of _The Shepherd's Calendar_ as
closely as, perhaps more happily than, _The Purple Island_ shows the
influence of _The Faerie Queene_, and in his miscellanies there is much
musical verse. It is, however, very noticeable that even in these
occasional poems his vehicle is usually either the actual stanza of the
_Island_, or something equally elaborate, unsuited though such stanzas
often are to the purpose. These two poets indeed, though in poetical
capacity they surpassed all but one or two veterans of their own
generation, seem to have been wholly subdued and carried away by the mighty
flood of their master's poetical production. It is probable that, had he
not written, they would not have written at all; yet it is possible that,
had he not written, they would have produced something much more original
and valuable. It ought to be mentioned that the influence of both upon
Milton, directly and as handing on the tradition of Spenser, was evidently
very great. The strong Cambridge flavour (not very perceptible in Spenser
himself, but of which Milton is, at any rate in his early poems, full)
comes out in them, and from _Christ's Victory_ at any rate the poet of
_Lycidas_, the _Ode on the Nativity_, and _Paradise Regained_, apparently
"took up," as the phrase of his own day went, not a few commodities.
The same rich borrower owed something to William Browne, who, in his turn,
like the Fletchers, but with a much less extensive indebtedness, levied on
Spenser. Browne, however, was free from the _genius loci_, being a
Devonshire man born and of Exeter College, Oxford, by education. He was
born, they say, in 1591, published the first part of _Britannia's
Pastorals_ in 1613, made many literary and some noble acquaintances, is
thought to have lived for some time at Oxford as a tutor, and either in
Surrey or in his native county for the rest of his life, which is (not
certainly) said to have ended about 1643. Browne was evidently a man of
very wide literary sympathy, which saved him from falling into the mere
groove of the Fletchers. He was a personal friend and an enthusiastic
devotee of Jonson, Drayton, Chapman. He was a student of Chaucer and
Occleve. He was the dear friend and associate of a poet more gifted but
more unequal than himself, George Wither. All this various literary
cultivation had the advantage of keeping him from being a mere
mocking-bird, though it did not quite provide him with any prevailing or
wholly original pipe of his own. _Britannia's Pastorals_ (the third book of
which remained in MS. for more than two centuries) is a narrative but
extremely desultory poem, in fluent and somewhat loose couplets,
diversified with lyrics full of local colour, and extremely pleasant to
read, though hopelessly difficult to analyse in any short space, or indeed
in any space at all. Browne seems to have meandered on exactly as the fancy
took him; and his ardent love for the country, his really artistic though
somewhat unchastened gift of poetical description and presentment enabled
him to go on just as he pleased, after a fashion, of which here are two
specimens in different measures:--
"'May first
(Quoth Marin) swains give lambs to thee;
And may thy flood have seignory
Of all floods else; and to thy fame
Meet greater springs, yet keep thy name.
May never newt, nor the toad
Within thy banks make their abode!
Taking thy journey from the sea
May'st thou ne'er happen in thy way
On nitre or on brimstone mine,
To spoil thy taste! This spring of thine,
Let it of nothing taste but earth,
And salt conceived in their birth.
Be ever fresh! Let no man dare
To spoil thy fish, make lock or wear,
But on thy margent still let dwell
Those flowers which have the sweetest smell.
And let the dust upon thy strand
Become like Tagus' golden sand.
Let as much good betide to thee
As thou hast favour shew'd to me.'"
* * * * *
"Here left the bird the cherry, and anon
Forsook her bosom, and for more is gone,
Making such speedy flights into the thick
That she admir'd he went and came so quick.
Then, lest his many cherries should distaste,
Some other fruit he brings than he brought last.
Sometime of strawberries a little stem
Oft changing colours as he gather'd them,
Some green, some white, some red, on them infus'd,
These lov'd, these fear'd, they blush'd to be so us'd.
The peascod green, oft with no little toil
He'd seek for in the fattest, fertil'st soil
And rend it from the stalk to bring it to her,
And in her bosom for acceptance woo her.
No berry in the grove or forest grew
That fit for nourishment the kind bird knew,
Nor any powerful herb in open field
To serve her brood the teeming earth did yield,
But with his utmost industry he sought it,
And to the cave for chaste Marina brought it."
_The Shepherd's Pipe_, besides reproducing Occleve, is in parts reminiscent
of Chaucer, in parts of Spenser, but always characterised by the free and
unshackled movement which is Browne's great charm; and the same
characteristics appear in the few minor poems attributed to him. Browne has
been compared to Keats, who read and loved him, and there are certainly not
a few points of resemblance. Of Keats's higher or more restrained
excellences, such as appear in the finest passages of _St. Agnes' Eve_, and
_Hyperion_, in the _Ode to a Grecian Urn_, and such minor pieces as _In a
Drear-Nighted December_, Browne had nothing. But he, like Keats, had that
kind of love of Nature which is really the love of a lover; and he had,
like Keats, a wonderful gift of expression of his love.[57] Nor is he ever
prosaic, a praise which certainly cannot be accorded to some men of far
greater repute, and perhaps of occasionally higher gifts both in his own
time and others. The rarest notes of Apollo he has not, but he is never
driven, as the poet and friend of his, to whom we next come, was often
driven, to the words of Mercury. This special gift was not very common at
the time; and though that time produced better poets than Browne, it is
worth noting in him. He may never reach the highest poetry, but he is
always a poet.
[57] Something of the same love, but unluckily much less of the same gift,
occurs in the poems of a friend of Browne's once hardly known except by
some fair verses on Shakespere ("Renowned Spenser," etc.), but made fully
accessible by Mr. R. Warwick Bond in 1893. This was William Basse, a
retainer of the Wenman family near Thame, the author, probably or
certainly, of a quaint defence of retainership, _Sword and Buckler_ (1602),
and of other poems--_Pastoral Elegies_, _Urania_, _Polyhymnia_,
etc.--together with an exceedingly odd piece, _The Metamorphosis of the
Walnut-Tree of Boarstall_, which is not quite like anything else of the
time. Basse, who seems also to have spelt his name "Bas," and perhaps lived
and wrote through the first forty or fifty years of the seventeenth
century, is but a moderate poet. Still he is not contemptible, and deserves
to rank as a member of the Spenserian family on the pastoral side; while
the _Walnut-Tree_, though it may owe something to _The Oak and the Brere_,
has a quaintness which is not in Spenser, and not perhaps exactly anywhere
else.
The comparative impotence of even the best criticism to force writers on
public attention has never been better illustrated than in the case of
George Wither himself. The greater part of a century has passed since
Charles Lamb's glowing eulogy of him was written, and the terms of that
eulogy have never been contested by competent authority. Yet there is no
complete collection of his work in existence, and there is no complete
collection even of the poems, saving a privately printed one which is
inaccessible except in large libraries, and to a few subscribers. His
sacred poems, which are not his best, were indeed reprinted in the Library
of Old Authors; and one song of his, the famous "Shall I Wasting in
Despair," is universally known. But the long and exquisite poem of
_Philarete_ was not generally known (if it is generally known now, which
may be doubted) till Mr. Arber reprinted it in the fourth volume of his
_English Garner_. Nor can _Fidelia_ and _The Shepherd's Hunting_, things
scarcely inferior, be said to be familiar to the general reader. For this
neglect there is but one excuse, and that an insufficient one, considering
the immense quantity of very indifferent contemporary work which has had
the honour of modern publication. What the excuse is we shall say
presently. Wither was born at Brentworth, in the Alresford district of
Hampshire (a district afterwards delightfully described by him), on 11th
June 1588. His family was respectable; and though not the eldest son, he
had at one time some landed property. He was for two years at Magdalen
College, Oxford, of which he speaks with much affection, but was removed
before taking his degree. After a distasteful experience of farm work,
owing to reverses of fortune in his family he came to London, entered at
Lincoln's Inn, and for some years haunted the town and the court. In 1613
he published his _Abuses Stript and Whipt_, one of the general and rather
artificial satires not unfashionable at the time. For this, although the
book has no direct personal reference that can be discovered, he was
imprisoned in the Marshalsea; and there wrote the charming poem of _The
Shepherd's Hunting_, 1615, and probably also _Fidelia_, an address from a
faithful nymph to an inconstant swain, which, though inferior to _The
Shepherd's Hunting_ and to _Philarete_ in the highest poetical worth, is a
signal example of Wither's copious and brightly-coloured style. Three years
later came the curious personal poem of the _Motto_, and in 1622
_Philarete_ itself, which was followed in the very next year by the _Hymns
and Songs of the Church_. Although Wither lived until 2d May 1667, and was
constantly active with his pen, his _Hallelujah_, 1641, another book of
sacred verse, is the only production of his that has received or that
deserves much praise. The last thirty years of his long life were eventful
and unfortunate. After being a somewhat fervent Royalist, he suddenly
changed his creed at the outbreak of the great rebellion, sold his estate
to raise men for the Parliament, and was active in its cause with pen as
well as with sword. Naturally he got into trouble at the Restoration (as he
had previously done with Cromwell), and was imprisoned again, though after
a time he was released. At an earlier period he had been in difficulties
with the Stationers' Company on the subject of a royal patent which he had
received from James, and which was afterwards (though still fruitlessly)
confirmed by Charles, for his _Hymns_. Indeed, Wither, though a man of very
high character, seems to have had all his life what men of high character
not unfrequently have, a certain facility for getting into what is vulgarly
called hot-water.
The defect in his work, which has been referred to above, and which is
somewhat passed over in the criticisms of Lamb and others, is its amazing
inequality. This is the more remarkable in that evidence exists of not
infrequent retouching on his part with the rather unusual result of
improvement--a fact which would seem to show that he possessed some
critical faculty. Such possession, however, seems on the other hand to be
quite incompatible with the production of the hopeless doggerel which he
not infrequently signs. The felicity of language and the command of
rhythmical effect which he constantly displays, are extraordinary, as for
instance in the grand opening of his first Canticle:--
"Come kiss me with those lips of thine,
For better are thy loves than wine;
And as the poured ointments be
Such is the savour of thy name,
And for the sweetness of the same
The virgins are in love with thee."
Compare the following almost unbelievable rubbish--
"As we with water wash away
Uncleanness from our flesh,
And sometimes often in a day
Ourselves are fain to wash."
Even in his earlier and purely secular work there is something, though less
of this inequality, and its cause is not at all dubious. No poet, certainly
no poet of merit, seems to have written with such absolute spontaneity and
want of premeditation as Wither. The metre which was his favourite, and
which he used with most success--the trochaic dimeter catalectic of seven
syllables--lends itself almost as readily as the octosyllable to this
frequently fatal fluency; but in Wither's hands, at least in his youth and
early manhood, it is wonderfully successful, as here:--
"And sometimes, I do admire
All men burn not with desire.
Nay, I muse her servants are not
Pleading love: but O they dare not:
And I, therefore, wonder why
They do not grow sick and die.
Sure they would do so, but that,
By the ordinance of Fate,
There is some concealed thing
So each gazer limiting,
He can see no more of merit
Than beseems his worth and spirit.
For, in her, a grace there shines
That o'erdaring thoughts confines,
Making worthless men despair
To be loved of one so fair.
Yea the Destinies agree
Some good judgments blind should be:
And not gain the power of knowing
Those rare beauties, in her growing.
Reason doth as much imply,
For, if every judging eye
Which beholdeth her should there
Find what excellences are;
All, o'ercome by those perfections
Would be captive to affections.
So (in happiness unblest)
She for lovers should not rest."
Nor had he at times a less original and happy command of the rhymed
decasyllabic couplet, which he sometimes handles after a fashion which
makes one almost think of Dryden, and sometimes after a fashion (as in the
lovely description of Alresford Pool at the opening of _Philarete_) which
makes one think of more modern poets still. Besides this metrical
proficiency and gift, Wither at this time (he thought fit to apologise for
it later) had a very happy knack of blending the warm amatory enthusiasm of
his time with sentiments of virtue and decency. There is in him absolutely
nothing loose or obscene, and yet he is entirely free from the
milk-and-water propriety which sometimes irritates the reader in such books
as Habington's _Castara_. Wither is never mawkish, though he is never
loose, and the swing of his verse at its best is only equalled by the rush
of thought and feeling which animates it. As it is perhaps necessary to
justify this high opinion, we may as well give the "Alresford Pool" above
noted. It is like Browne, but it is better than anything Browne ever did;
being like Browne, it is not unlike Keats; it is also singularly like Mr.
William Morris.
"For pleasant was that Pool; and near it, then,
Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen.
It was not overgrown with boisterous sedge,
Nor grew there rudely, then, along the edge
A bending willow, nor a prickly bush,
Nor broad-leafed flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush:
But here, well ordered, was a grove with bowers;
There, grassy plots, set round about with flowers.
Here, you might, through the water, see the land
Appear, strewed o'er with white or yellow sand.
Yon, deeper was it; and the wind, by whiffs,
Would make it rise, and wash the little cliffs;
On which, oft pluming, sate, unfrighted then
The gagling wild goose, and the snow-white swan,
With all those flocks of fowl, which, to this day
Upon those quiet waters breed and play."
When to this gift of description is added a frequent inspiration of pure
fancy, it is scarcely surprising that--
"Such a strain as might befit
Some brave Tuscan poet's wit,"
to borrow a couplet of his own, often adorns Wither's verse.
Two other poets of considerable interest and merit belong to this period,
who are rather Scotch than English, but who have usually been included in
histories of English literature--Drummond of Hawthornden, and Sir William
Alexander, Earl of Stirling. Both, but especially Drummond, exhibit equally
with their English contemporaries the influences which produced the
Elizabethan Jacobean poetry; and though I am not myself disposed to go
quite so far, the sonnets of Drummond have sometimes been ranked before all
others of the time except Shakespere's.
William Drummond was probably born at the beautiful seat whence he derived
his designation, on 13th December 1585. His father was Sir John Drummond,
and he was educated in Edinburgh and in France, betaking himself, like
almost all young Scotchmen of family, to the study of the law. He came back
to Scotland from France in 1610, and resided there for the greater part of
his life, though he left it on at least two occasions for long periods,
once travelling on the continent for eight years to recover from the grief
of losing a lady to whom he was betrothed, and once retiring to avoid the
inconveniences of the Civil War. Though a Royalist, Drummond submitted to
be requisitioned against the Crown, but as an atonement he is said to have
died of grief at Charles I.'s execution in 1649. The most famous incidents
of his life are the visit that Ben Jonson paid to him, and the much
discussed notes of that visit which Drummond left in manuscript. It would
appear, on the whole, that Drummond was an example of a well-known type of
cultivated dilettante, rather effeminate, equally unable to appreciate
Jonson's boisterous ways and to show open offence at them, and in the same
way equally disinclined to take the popular side and to endure risk and
loss in defending his principles. He shows better in his verse. His sonnets
are of the true Elizabethan mould, exhibiting the Petrarchian grace and
romance, informed with a fire and aspiring towards a romantic ideal beyond
the Italian. Like the older writers of the sonnet collections generally,
Drummond intersperses his quatorzains with madrigals, lyrical pieces of
various lengths, and even with what he calls "songs,"--that is to say, long
poems in the heroic couplet. He was also a skilled writer of elegies, and
two of his on Gustavus Adolphus and on Prince Henry have much merit.
Besides the madrigals included in his sonnets he has left another
collection entitled "Madrigals and Epigrams," including pieces both
sentimental and satirical. As might be expected the former are much better
than the latter, which have the coarseness and the lack of point noticeable
in most of the similar work of this time from Jonson to Herrick. We have
also of his a sacred collection (again very much in accordance with the
practice of his models of the preceding generation), entitled _Flowers of
Sion_, and consisting, like the sonnets, of poems of various metres. One of
these is noticeable as suggesting the metre of Milton's "Nativity," but
with an alteration of line number and rhyme order which spoils it. Yet a
fourth collection of miscellanies differs not much in constitution from the
others, and Drummond's poetical work is completed by some local pieces,
such as _Forth Feasting_, some hymns and divine poems, and an attempt in
Macaronic called _Polemo-Middinia_, which is perhaps not his. He was also a
prose writer, and a tract, entitled _The Cypress Grove_, has been not
unjustly ranked as a kind of anticipation of Sir Thomas Browne, both in
style and substance. Of his verse a sonnet and a madrigal may suffice, the
first of which can be compared with the Sleep sonnet given earlier:--
"Sleep, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,
Prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds which are oppressed;
Lo, by thy charming rod, all breathing things
Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd,
And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou spar'st, alas! who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, O come, but with that face
To inward light, which thou art wont to show,
With feigned solace ease a true felt woe;
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace,
Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath:
I long to kiss the image of my death."
* * * * *
"To the delightful green
Of you, fair radiant een,
Let each black yield, beneath the starry arch.
Eyes, burnish'd Heavens of love,
Sinople[58] lamps of Jove,
Save all those hearts which with your flames you parch
Two burning suns you prove;
All other eyes, compared with you, dear lights
Are Hells, or if not Hells, yet dumpish nights.
The heavens (if we their glass
The sea believe) are green, not perfect blue;
They all make fair, whatever fair yet was,
And they are fair because they look like you."
[58] In heraldry (but not English heraldry) = "green."
Sir William Alexander, a friend and countryman of Drummond (who bewailed
him in more than one mournful rhyme of great beauty), was born in 1580 of a
family which, though it had for some generations borne the quasi-surname
Alexander, is said to have been a branch of the Clan Macdonald. Alexander
early took to a court life, was much concerned in the proposed planting of
Nova Scotia, now chiefly remembered from its connection with the Order of
Baronets, was Secretary of State for Scotland, and was raised to the
peerage. He died in 1640. Professor Masson has called him "the second-rate
Scottish sycophant of an inglorious despotism." He might as well be called
"the faithful servant of monarchy in its struggle with the encroachments of
Republicanism," and one description would be as much question-begging as
the other. But we are here concerned only with his literary work, which was
considerable in bulk and quality. It consists chiefly of a collection of
sonnets (varied as usual with madrigals, etc.), entitled _Aurora_; of a
long poem on _Doomsday_ in an eight-lined stanza; of a _Paraenesis_ to
Prince Henry; and of four "monarchic tragedies" on _Darius_, _Croesus_,
_Alexander_, and _Caesar_, equipped with choruses and other appliances of
the literary rather than the theatrical tragedy. It is perhaps in these
choruses that Alexander appears at his best; for his special forte was
grave and stately declamation, as the second of the following extracts will
prove. The first is a sonnet from _Aurora_:--
"Let some bewitched with a deceitful show,
Love earthly things unworthily esteem'd,
And losing that which cannot be redeemed
Pay back with pain according as they owe:
But I disdain to cast my eyes so low,
That for my thoughts o'er base a subject seem'd,
Which still the vulgar course too beaten deem'd;
And loftier things delighted for to know.
Though presently this plague me but with pain,
And vex the world with wondering at my woes:
Yet having gained that long desired repose
My mirth may more miraculous remain.
That for the which long languishing I pine,
It is a show, but yet a show divine."
* * * * *
"Those who command above,
High presidents of Heaven,
By whom all things do move,
As they have order given,
What worldling can arise
Against them to repine?
Whilst castled in the skies
With providence divine;
They force this peopled round,
Their judgments to confess,
And in their wrath confound
Proud mortals who transgress
The bounds to them assigned
By Nature in their mind.
"Base brood of th' Earth, vain man,
Why brag'st thou of thy might?
The Heavens thy courses scan,
Thou walk'st still in their sight;
Ere thou wast born, thy deeds
Their registers dilate,
And think that none exceeds
The bounds ordain'd by fate;
What heavens would have thee to,
Though they thy ways abhor,
That thou of force must do,
And thou canst do no more:
This reason would fulfil,
Their work should serve their will.
"Are we not heirs of death,
In whom there is no trust?
Who, toss'd with restless breath,
Are but a drachm of dust;
Yet fools whenas we err,
And heavens do wrath contract,
If they a space defer
Just vengeance to exact,
Pride in our bosom creeps,
And misinforms us thus
That love in pleasure sleeps
Or takes no care of us:
'The eye of Heaven beholds
What every heart enfolds.'"
Not a few of his other sonnets are also worth reading, and the unpromising
subject of _Doomsday_ (which connects itself in style partly with Spenser,
but perhaps still more with _The Mirror for Magistrates_), does not prevent
it from containing fine passages. Alexander had indeed more power of
sustained versification than his friend Drummond, though he hardly touches
the latter in point of the poetical merit of short isolated passages and
poems. Both bear perhaps a little too distinctly the complexion of
"_Gentlemen_ of the Press"--men who are composing poems because it is the
fashion, and because their education, leisure, and elegant tastes lead them
to prefer that form of occupation. But perhaps what is most interesting
about them is the way in which they reproduce on a smaller scale the
phenomenon presented by the Scotch poetical school of the fifteenth
century. That school, as is well known, was a direct offshoot from, or
following of the school of Chaucer, though in Dunbar at least it succeeded
in producing work almost, if not quite, original in form. In the same way,
Drummond and Alexander, while able to the full to experience directly the
foreign, and especially Italian influences which had been so strong on the
Elizabethans, were still in the main followers of the Elizabethans
themselves, and formed, as it were, a Scottish moon to the English sun of
poetry. There is little or nothing that is distinctively national about
them, though in their following of the English model they show talent at
least equal to all but the best of the school they followed. But this fact,
joined to those above noted, helps, no doubt, to give an air of want of
spontaneity to their verse--an air as of the literary exercise.
There are other writers who might indifferently come in this chapter or in
that on Caroline poetry, for the reign of James was as much overlapped in
this respect by his son's as by Elizabeth's, and there are others who need
but slight notice, besides yet others--a great multitude--who can receive
no notice at all. The doggerel of Taylor, the water-poet (not a bad prose
writer), received both patronage and attention, which seem to have annoyed
his betters, and he has been resuscitated even in our own times. Francis
Beaumont, the coadjutor of Fletcher, has left independent poetical work
which, on the whole, confirms the general theory that the chief execution
of the joint plays must have been his partner's, but which (as in the
_Letter to Ben Jonson_ and the fine stoicism of _The Honest Man's Fortune_)
contains some very good things. His brother, Sir John Beaumont, who died
not so young as Francis, but at the comparatively early age of forty-four,
was the author of a historical poem on _Bosworth Field_, as well as of
minor pieces of higher merit, including some remarkable critical
observations on English verse. Two famous poems, which everyone knows by
heart, the "You Meaner Beauties of the Night" of Sir Henry Wotton and the
"Tell Me no more how fair She is" of Bishop Henry King, are merely perfect
examples of a style of verse which was largely if not often quite so
perfectly practised by lesser or less known men, as well as by greater
ones.[59]
[59] The most interesting collection and selection of verse of this class
and time is undoubtedly Dr. Hannah's well-known and charming but rather
oddly entitled _Poems of Raleigh, Wotton, and other Courtly Poets_ in the
Aldine Series. I say oddly entitled, because though Raleigh and Wotton were
certainly courtiers, it would be hard to make the name good of some of the
minor contributors.
There is, moreover, a class of verse which has been referred to
incidentally before, and which may very likely be referred to incidentally
again, but which is too abundant, too characteristic, and too charming not
to merit a place, if no very large one, to itself. I refer to the
delightful songs which are scattered all over the plays of the period, from
Greene to Shirley. As far as Shakespere is concerned, these songs are well
enough known, and Mr. Palgrave's _Treasury_, with Mr. Bullen's and Bell's
_Songs from the Dramatists_, have given an inferior currency, but still a
currency, to the best of the remainder. The earlier we have spoken of. But
the songs of Greene and his fellows, though charming, cannot compare with
those of the more properly Jacobean poets. To name only the best of each,
Ben Jonson gives us the exquisite "Queen and Huntress," which is perhaps
the best-known piece of his whole work; the pleasant "If I freely may
discover," and best of all--unsurpassed indeed in any language for rolling
majesty of rhythm and romantic charm of tone--"Drink to me only with thine
eyes." Again the songs in Beaumont and Fletcher stand very high, perhaps
highest of all next to Shakespere's in respect of the "woodnote wild." If
the snatch of only half articulate poetry of the "Lay a garland on my
hearse," of _The Maid's Tragedy_, is really Fletcher's, he has here
equalled Shakespere himself. We may add to it the fantastic and charming
"Beauty clear and fair," of _The Elder Brother_, the comic swing of "Let
the bells ring," and "The fit's upon me now;" all the songs without
exception in _The Faithful Shepherdess_, which is much less a drama than a
miscellany of the most delightful poetry; the lively war-song in _The Mad
Lover_, to which Dryden owed not a little; the catch, "Drink to-day and
drown all sorrow;" the strange song of the dead host in _The Lover's
Progress_; the exquisite "Weep no more," of _The Queen of Corinth_; the
spirited "Let the mill go round," of _The Maid in the Mill_; the "Lovers
rejoice," of _Cupid's Revenge_; the "Roses, their sharp spines being gone,"
which is one of the most Shakesperean things of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_;
the famous "Hence, all you vain-delights," of _The Nice Valour_, which
Milton expanded into _Il Penseroso_, and the laughing song of the same
play. This long catalogue only contains a part of the singularly beautiful
song work of the great pair of dramatists, and as an example we may give
one of the least known from _The Captain_:--
"Tell me, dearest, what is love?
'Tis a lightning from above;
'Tis an arrow, 'tis a fire,
'Tis a boy they call Desire.
'Tis a grave,
Gapes to have
Those poor fools that long to prove.
"Tell me more, are women true?
Yes, some are, and some as you.
Some are willing, some are strange
Since you men first taught to change.
And till troth
Be in both,
All shall love to love anew.
"Tell me more yet, can they grieve?
Yes, and sicken sore, but live,
And be wise, and delay
When you men are as wise as they.
Then I see,
Faith will be
Never till they both believe."
The dirge of _Vittoria Corombona_ and the preparation for death of _The
Duchess of Malfi_ are Webster's sole but sufficient contributions to the
list. The witch songs of Middleton's _Witch_, and the gipsy, or rather
tramp, songs of _More Dissemblers besides Women_ and _The Spanish Gipsy_,
have very high merit. The songs of _Patient Grissell_, which are pretty
certainly Dekker's, have been noticed already. The otherwise worthless play
of _The Thracian Wonder_, attributed to Webster and Rowley, contains an
unusual number of good songs. Heywood and Massinger were not great at
songs, and the superiority of those in _The Sun's Darling_ over the songs
in Ford's other plays, seems to point to the authorship of Dekker. Finally,
James Shirley has the song gift of his greater predecessors. Every one
knows "The glories of our blood and state," but this is by no means his
only good song; it worthily closes the list of the kind--a kind which, when
brought together and perused separately, exhibits, perhaps, as well as
anything else of equal compass, the extraordinary abundance of poetical
spirit in the age. For songs like these are not to be hammered out by the
most diligent ingenuity, not to be spun by the light of the most
assiduously fed lamp. The wind of such inspiration blows where, and only
where, it listeth.