'That we hereafter may advance
To shake the very Crown of France.'
Possibly it refers to an episode of the fight which may have escaped
the notice of the illustrious historian. This much, however, is
certain, that the exploits of the British Admiral were caricatured in a
street play, probably got up for political purposes.
Admiral Killigrew has been described in the following terms by one G.
Wood, his clerk, who sailed with him to the Mediterranean:
'A young man in the flower of his age but a man of great experience
and to add to his experience he's a man of undaunted Courage Prudence
and Conduct, making it his study in all his actions to doe nothing
(though never so much to his own advantage) but that which is truely
honorable and altogeither tending to the honor and advantage of his
King and Country. Hee likewise carry'd his com̄and w^{th} so much
gravity and wisdome that he was both belov'd and fear'd by all y^e
squad^n from y^e highest to y^e lowest; and for his Prudence and
Dilligence in managing of his Ma^{tie's} affairs.... I might inlarge
much more and speak nothing but truth of this hono^{ble} comand^s yett
fear I should be look't upon as a flatterer by those y^t knows him
not.'
Whilst serving in the Mediterranean, in chase of a _Salletine_ frigate,
he was severely wounded by the bursting of a gun in his own ship,
the splinters breaking both bones of his right leg, and frightfully
wounding his head.
I have been unable to ascertain whom Admiral Henry married; but he
had a son who bore the same name as himself, and who settled at St.
Julian's in Hertfordshire. I think it must have been he who was a
Major in Lord Strafford's Royal Regiment of Dragoons, the composition
of which corps and the pay of its members are set forth in the Add^l.
MSS. 22,231 in the British Museum. It would, however, be uninteresting
to trace farther the descent of this branch of the family.
James, the younger brother, when only twenty-one years of age,
and unmarried, was killed in a sea engagement off Leghorn, in
January 1694/5, on board the _Plymouth_; like Nelson, 'in the arms
of victory.'[90] His ship was a fast sailer, and outstripped her
companions, so that when Captain James Killigrew came up with the
French he had to engage two ships at once, both bigger than his own,
one of which, however, he sunk, and the other he took. He sustained
the unequal combat, it is said, for four hours. Besides losing his
own life, fifty of his men were killed and wounded when the remainder
of the British ships at length came up to his assistance. 'Characters
like his need no encomium,' observes Charnock. Some accounts attribute
cowardice to his comrades on this occasion.
We have now nearly completed our task, and have come to the last of the
Killigrews whose history is likely to be entertaining, or instructive.
ANNE,
'quæ stabat ubique victrix forma, ingenio, religione,'
as her epitaph (now destroyed) in the chancel of St. John the Baptist,
in the Savoy Chapel, once described her;[91] and most gratifying it is
to close our account of the Killigrews with the story of this admirable
woman.
She was born in 1660, in St. Martin's Lane; and, the Restoration
not having then been effected, was (according to Cibber's 'Lives
of the Poets') christened in a private chamber, the offices of the
Common Prayer-book not being at that time publicly allowed. Early
distinguished for her skill in poetry and in painting, and for her
learning, taste, and purity of life, for her fame she is not indebted
to that which alone would have been sufficient to perpetuate it--I mean
Dryden's renowned ode. This, exaggerated as its terms may appear, is
nevertheless said, by those who knew her, to be hardly too strongly
expressed. Even the ascetic Anthony Wood wrote of her the well-known
line,
'A Grace for beauty, and a Muse for wit;'
and he assures us that 'there is nothing spoken of her which she
was not equal to, if not superior.' That she was an accomplished
artist Dryden's verse records, and that this was a talent possessed
by at least one of her ancestors we have seen in the account of Sir
Henry Killigrew, the diplomatist; but I am not aware that any of her
paintings remain to us; but Walpole saw her portrait by herself,
and thought more highly of her painting than of her poetry. The
portrait has been admirably engraved in mezzotint by Becket and by
Blooteling. She painted James II. and his Queen, as well as several
'history-pieces,' landscapes, and still-life subjects, which Dryden
mentions in the poem that Dr. Johnson pronounced 'the noblest ode that
our language has produced.' I am aware that Warton somewhat differs
from the great critic as to this; but it would be difficult to point to
a finer English threnody; and, notwithstanding the probability of its
being familiar, if not to all, yet to most of my readers, I venture to
think that the reproduction here of such parts as particularly refer to
Anne Killigrew may not be unacceptable. The noble strain thus opens:
'Thou youngest virgin daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest:
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest;
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wandering race;
Or, in procession fixed and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace;
Or, call'd to more superior bliss,
Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:--
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.
Hear then a mortal muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse,[92]
But such as thy own voice did practise here,
When thy first fruits of poesy were given,
To make thyself a welcome inmate there;
While yet a young probationer
And candidate of heaven.'
Exaggerated language perhaps, but sincerely meant. And the master of
the 'long-resounding line' concludes:
'When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate,
And there the last assizes keep
For those who wake, and those who sleep;--
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with life, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred Poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet Saint! before the choir shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hadst learnt below.'
The allusion to the grief of her brother Henry, the Admiral, then at
sea, is very fine:
'Meantime her warlike brother on the seas,
His waving streamers to the wind displays,
And vows, for his return, with fond devotion pays.
Ah, generous youth! that wish forbear,--
The winds too soon will waft thee here!
Slack all thy sails! and fear to come;--
Alas! thou know'st not--_thou art wrecked at home_.'
Her skill as a painter he depicts in the following happy lines:
'Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed,
And oft the happy draught surpass'd the image in her mind.
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks,
The fruitful plains, and barren rocks;
Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear
The bottom did the top appear:
Of deeper, too, and ampler floods,
Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods:
Of lofty trees with sacred shades,
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
Where nymphs of brightest form appear,
And shaggy satyrs standing near,
Which them at once admire and fear.
The ruins, too, of some majestic piece
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece;
Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie,
And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;
What Nature, Art, bold Fiction e'er durst frame,
Her forming hand gave feature to the name.'
Dryden then alludes to her portraits of the royal family--and first of
the King:
'For, not content to express his outward part,
Her hand called out the image of his heart.'
Of his Consort's likeness the poet gracefully observes:
'Our phœnix Queen was pourtrayed, too, so bright,
Beauty alone could beauty take so right.'
And, with a grand hyperbole, the poem ends with the above prediction
that at the last day the Poets shall first awake at the sound in
mid-air of the golden trump:
'For they are covered with the lightest ground.'
Mistress Anne Killigrew, as the virgin poetess and paintress was
called, after the fashion of the time, was, like so many others of
her family, attached to the Court. She was Maid of Honour to the
Duchess of York; and, even in those loose days, was unspotted by the
contaminating influences amongst which she found herself. One other
taint, however, she did not escape--the contagion of small-pox, of
which horrible malady this 'cynosure' died at her father's prebendal
house in the Cloister of Westminster Abbey, on the 16th June, 1685, in
the twenty-fifth year of her age.[93]
To her 'Poems,' now a rare book--a thin quarto, which appeared shortly
after her death--are prefixed Dryden's ode, and the mezzotint by
Becket, after her portrait of herself. Sir Peter Lely also painted her
likeness.
It has already been said that none of her paintings remain; but of her
poetical powers we may still judge from the following extracts. They
will, of course, fall somewhat flat after the lofty lines which have
just been cited; yet I venture to think that they will be found worthy
of perusal. At any rate, Dryden writes,
'Thy father was transfused into thy blood,
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain;'
and they were at least considered at the time sufficiently good for the
insinuation that they were not her own--a calumny to which the gentle
Anne replied:
'UPON THE SAYING THAT MY VERSES WERE MADE BY ANOTHER.
* * * * * *
'Th' envious Age, only to Me alone,
Will not allow, what I do write, my Own,
But let 'em rage, and 'gainst a Maide Conspire,
So Deathless Numbers from my Tuneful Lyre
Do ever flow; so Phebus I by thee
Divinely Inspired and possest may be;
I willingly accept Cassandra's Fate,
To speak the Truth, although believ'd too late.'
The following lines also are, I venture to think, far from commonplace:
'AN ODE.
'Arise, my Dove, from midst of Pots arise,
Thy sully'd Habitation leave,
To Dust no longer cleave;
Unworthy they of Heaven that will not view the Skies.
Thy native Beauty reassume,
Prune each neglected Plume
Till, more than Silver white,
Than burnisht Gold more bright,
Thus ever ready stand to take thy Eternal Flight.'
Notwithstanding her modesty, she was not without some confidence that
her poetry would survive her, as it has, in fact, already done for two
centuries; for thus she wrote her own epitaph:
'When I am Dead, few friends attend my Hearse;
And for a Monument I leave my _Verse_;'
a monument, perhaps, _ære perennium_, and which certainly remains
longer than the marble cenotaph which was destroyed by the fire in the
Savoy.[94]
Epitaphs, indeed, seem to have had a charm for her, as if she had a
foreboding of her early death; and the following lines in praise of
Mrs. Phillips may serve for a fair description of herself, and as a
finish to these extracts from her compositions:
'Orinda (Albion's and her sex's grace)
Owed not her glory to a beauteous face,
It was her radiant _soul_ that shone within;
Which struck a lustre through her outward skin;
That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye,
Advanced her height, and sparkled in her eye.
Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame,
But higher 'mong the stars it fixed her name;
What she did write, not only all allowed,
But every laurel to her laurel bowed.'
Perhaps too much has been said of the virtues and graces of this chaste
and accomplished lady; but it must be remembered that women such as
she were rare in the days in which she lived and wrote. Nor must we
forget that we are far removed from the sphere of that _personal_
influence, the attractions of which are so powerful, and which probably
contributed in no small degree to the fame of this fair scion of the
Killigrews.
It was written on her epitaph, according to Ballard:
'Abi, Viator, et plange,
Si eam plangi oporteat
Cui, tam pié morienti,
Vel Cœlites plauserint.'
Even at this distance of time, it is delightful to think that she left
a wicked world and age before a single spot had dimmed the lustre of
her widely admired, but unsullied, fame:
'Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.'