to the 'hard arguments' of _Nosce Teipsum_ is a mere imagination. But
besides, the 'metallic threads' are not for warmth but for splendour.
The lining of the 'splendidly curious' garment is to be looked for for
warmth. Similarly the 'hard arguments' would have been unpoetical as
unphilosophical had they been 'warm' with the warmth of the 'clothing'
in similes and fancies. The 'hardness' is where it ought to be--in
the thinking: but it is a hardness like the bough that is green with
leafage and radiant with bloom and odorous with 'sweet scent' and
pliant to every lightest touch of the breeze. The leaf and bloom start
from the 'hard' bough rightly, fittingly 'hard' to its utmost twig. The
alleged 'too much labour' is singularly uncharacteristic. As for the
'madness' I can but exclaim--Oh for more of such 'fine lunacy' as in
Donne is condemned! His and compeers' 'madness' is worth cart-loads of
most men's sanity.
In our own day Dr. George Macdonald has spoken more wisely if still
somewhat superficially of "_Nosce Teipsum_" in his charming "England's
Antiphon." Having explained that by "Immortality of the Soul" is
intended "the spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity
of existence," he proceeds:--"It [_Nosce Teipsum_] is a wonderful
instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means
of imaginative or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot
of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well
it may comport itself when there naturalized; and consequently,
although there are most poetic no less than profound passages in the
treatise, a light scruple arises whether its constituent matter can
properly be called poetry. At all events, however, certain of the
more prosaic measures and stanzas lend themselves readily, and with
much favour, to some of the more complex of logical necessities. And
it must be remembered that in human speech, as in the human mind,
there are no absolute divisions: power shades off into feeling; and
the driest logic may find the heroic couplet render it good service."
(pp. 105-6). The 'scruple' must be 'light' indeed that has to decide
whether the 'reasoning' of "Nosce Teipsum" be or be not 'poetry.' It
is astounding that at this time o' day any should attempt to exclude
the highest region of the intellect and its noblest occupation from
poetry. Poetry I must hold absolutely is poetry, whatever be its matter
and form if the thinking be glorified by imagination or tremulous with
emotion. It is sheer folly to refuse to the Poet any material within
the compass of the universe. Especially deplorable is it to have to
argue for possibilities of poetry in the greatest of all thinking,
viz., metaphysics, in the face of such actualities of achievement as in
Davies and Lord Brooke and Donne.
A second characteristic of "Nosce Teipsum" that calls for notice
is its _perfection of workmanship_ shown in the _mastery of an
extremely difficult stanza_, as well as its solidity of material.
Here unquestionably Sir John Davies far excels Lord Brooke and Donne,
and later, Sir William Davenant in "Gondibert." The two former are
occasionally (it must be granted) semi-inarticulate, and the last
is very often monotonous and trying. "Nosce Teipsum" is throughout
articulate and unmistakeable, and never flags. You have a fear o'
times that a metaphor will prove grotesque or mean: or a vein of
thought pinch and go out from ore to bare limestone. But invariably an
imaginative touch, or a colour-like epithet, or a thrill of emotion,
lifts up the mean into a transfiguring atmosphere as of sun-set purples
and crysolites, and gives to grotesquest gargoyles (as of cathedrals)
a strange fitness. Then when a thought or illustration seems about
to end, debasedly, another forward-carrying and ennobling, swiftly
succeeds.
There is more than dexterity, there is consummate art--the art of a
conscious master--in the inter-weaving of the lines and stanzas of
"Nosce Teipsum." Professor Craik recognised the difficulty and the
triumph, but fails by ultra-ingenuity in accounting for either the
selection of the measure or the miracle of its continuous success.
His criticism is worth recalling, thus:--"A remarkable poem of this
age ... is the 'Nosce Teipsum' of Sir John Davies ... a philosophical
poem, the earliest of the kind in the language. It is written in rhyme,
in the common heroic ten-syllable verse, but disposed in quatrains,
like the early play of Misogonus, already mentioned, and other poetry
of the same era, or like Sir Thomas Overbury's poem of 'The Wife,'
the 'Gondibert' of Sir William Davenant, and the 'Annus Mirabilis' of
Dryden, at a later period. No one of these writers has managed this
difficult stanza so successfully as Davies: it has the disadvantage
of requiring the sense to be in general closed at certain regularly
and quickly-recurring turns, which yet are very ill adapted for an
effective pause; and even all the skill of Dryden has been unable to
free it from a certain air of monotony and languor,--a circumstance of
which that poet may be supposed to have been himself sensible, since he
wholly abandoned it after one or two early attempts. Davies, however,
has conquered its difficulty; and, as has been observed, 'perhaps no
language can produce a poem, extending to so great a length, of more
condensation of thought, or in which fewer languid verses will be
found.' (Hallam, as before.) In fact, it is by this condensation and
sententious brevity, so carefully filed and elaborated, however, as
to involve no sacrifice of perspicuity or fulness of expression, that
he has attained his end. Every quatrain is a pointed expression of a
separate thought, like one of Rochefoucault's maxims; each thought
being, by great skill and painstaking in the packing, made exactly to
fit and to fill the same case. It may be doubted, however, whether
Davies would not have produced a still better poem if he had chosen a
measure which would have allowed him greater freedom and real variety;
unless, indeed, his poetical talent was of a sort that required the
suggestive aid and guidance of such artificial restraints as he had to
cope with in this; and what would have been a bondage to a more fiery
and teeming imagination, was rather a support to his."[49]
[Footnote 49: _A Compendious History of English Literature_, &c., Vol.
I., p. 577, edn. 1866.]
Most of this must be read _cum grano salis_. Davies elected his
measure and stanza with evidently entire spontaneity; and it is an
odd reversal of the simple matter of fact to ascribe the 'artificial
restraints' chosen, to an absence 'of a fiery and teeming imagination,'
when, as all observation demonstrates, the more fiery and fecund
the imagination of a Poet, the more exquisitely obedient is he to
the subtlest and most intricate movements of his measure--just as
the bluest-blooded race-horse is a law to itself whereas your stolid
dray-cart or plough-drawer needs the "artificial restraints" of all
kinds of gear, and the constraint of whip and blow and vociferation. I
can well suppose that but for the "Fairy Queen" Sir John Davies might
have chosen its stanza, but just as to-day "In Memoriam" has taken
to itself its form and music to the exclusion of every other--though
a very ancient English measure--so Spenser's immortal poem precluded
"Nosce Teipsum" following in the same. I cannot admit "artificial
restraints" in the sense of needed restraints or aid. There was the
stanza, and the genius of Sir John Davies appropriated it--since
Spenser's, in all worship, could not be taken--and, like a great Vine,
clad its natural slenderness and poorness of build with wealth of
bright green leafage and clustered fruitage. The nicety and daintiness
of workmanship, the involute and nevertheless firmly-completed and
manifested imagery of "Nosce Teipsum" wherewith this nicety and
daintiness are wrought, place Sir John Davies artistically among the
finest of our Poets. Southey wrote decisively on this:--"Sir John
Davies and Sir William Davenant, avoiding equally the opposite faults
of too artificial and too careless a style, wrote in numbers which, for
precision and clearness, and felicity and strength, have never been
surpassed." For 'felicity' I should have said 'flexibility.'[50]
[Footnote 50: To Southey's praise be it remembered, that he was the
first emphatically to regret that there had been no collective edition
of Sir John Davies's Works, as thus: "It may be regretted that he did
not leave representatives who would have thought it a duty and an
honour to publish all that could be collected of his writings; thus
erecting the best and most enduring monument to his memory." (British
Poets: Chaucer to Jonson: p. 686). Our edition of his Prose and Verse
fulfils Southey's wish.]
Again our examples of the mastery and perfection of workmanship must be
brief; but take these:--
"Nor can her wide imbracements fillèd bee;
For they that most, and greatest things embrace,
Inlarge thereby their minds' capacitie,
As streames inlarg'd, inlarge the channel's space.
_All things receiu'd, doe such proportion take,
As those things haue, wherein they are receiu'd_:
So little glasses little faces make,
And narrow webs on narrow frames be weau'd;
Then what vast body must we make the _mind_
Wherin are men, beasts, trees, towns, seas, and lands;
And yet each thing a proper place doth find,
And each thing in the true proportion stands?
Doubtlesse this could not bee, but that she turnes
Bodies to spirits, by _sublimation_ strange;
As fire conuerts to fire the things it burnes
As we our meats into our nature change.
From their grosse _matter_ she abstracts the _formes_,
And draws a kind of _quintessence_ from things;
Which to her proper nature she transformes,
To bear them light on her celestiall wings:
This doth she, when, from things _particular_,
She doth abstract the _universall kinds_;
Which bodilesse and immateriall are,
And can be lodg'd but onely in our minds:
And thus from diuers _accidents_ and _acts_,
Which doe within her obseruation fall,
She goddesses, and powers diuine, abstracts:
As _Nature_, _Fortune_, and the _Vertues_ all."
(pp. 42-44.)
Again:--
_Are they not sencelesse_ then, that thinke the Soule
Nought but a fine perfection of the _Sense_;
Or of the formes which _fancie_ doth enroule,
A _quicke resulting_, and a _consequence_?
What is it then that doth the _Sense_ accuse,
Both of _false judgements_, and _fond appetites_?
What makes vs do what _Sense_ doth most refuse?
Which oft in torment of the _Sense_ delights?
_Sense_ thinkes the _planets_, _spheares_ not much asunder;
What tels vs then their distance is so farre?
_Sense_ thinks the lightning borne before the thunder;
What tels vs then they both together are?
When men seem crows far off vpon a towre,
_Sense_ saith, th'are crows; what makes vs think them men?
When we in _agues_, thinke all sweete things sowre,
What makes vs know our tongue's false iudgement then?
What power was that, whereby _Medea_ saw,
And well approu'd, and prais'd the better course,
When her rebellious _Sense_ did so withdraw
Her feeble powers, as she pursu'd the worse?
Did _Sense_ perswade _Vlisses_ not to heare
The mermaid's songs, which so his men did please;
As they were all perswaded, through the eare
To quit the ship, and leape into the _seas_?
Could any power of _Sense_ the _Romane_ moue,
To burn his own right hand with courage stout?
Could _Sense_ make _Marius_ sit vnbound, and proue
The cruell lancing of the knotty gout?
Doubtlesse in _Man_ there is a _nature_ found,
Beside the _Senses_, and aboue them farre;
'Though most men being in sensuall pleasures drownd,
'It seems their _Soules_ but in their _Senses_ are.'
If we had nought but _Sense_, then onely they
Should haue sound minds, which haue their _Senses_ sound;
But _Wisdome_ growes, when _Senses_ doe decay,
And _Folly_ most in quickest _Sense_ is found.
If we had nought but _Sense_, each liuing wight,
Which we call _brute_, would be more sharp then we;
As hauing _Sense's apprehensiue might_,
In a more cleere, and excellent degree.
But they doe want that _quicke discoursing power_,
Which doth in vs the erring _Sense_ correct;
Therefore the _bee_ did sucke the painted flower,
And _birds_, of grapes, the cunning shadow, peckt.
_Sense_ outsides knows; the Soule throgh al things sees;
_Sense_, _circumstance_; she, doth the _substance_ view;
_Sense_ sees the barke, but she, the life of trees;
_Sense_ heares the sounds, but she, the concords true.
(pp. 35-38.)
Once more:--
I know my bodie's of so fraile a kind,
As force without, feauers within can kill;
I know the heauenly nature of my minde,
But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will:
I know my _Soule_ hath power to know all things,
Yet is she blinde and ignorant in all;
I know I am one of Nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.
I know my life's a paine and but a span,
I know my _Sense_ is mockt with euery thing:
And to conclude, I know my selfe a MAN,
Which is a _proud_, and yet a _wretched_ thing.
(p. 24.)
If the pathos and grandeur of Pascal be anticipated in
these lines, Pope has certainly appropriated Davies'
favourite metaphor of the 'spider.' Witness the Sense
of Feeling illustrated:--
Much like a subtill spider, which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If ought doe touch the vtmost thred of it,
Shee feeles it instantly on euery side.
(p. 70).
So in the _Essay of Man_:--
"The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line."
Another now familiar 'metaphor' also occurs in "Nosce Teipsum":--
"Heere _Sense's apprehension_, end doth take;
As when a stone is into water cast,
One circle doth another circle make,
Till the last circle touch the banke at last."
(p. 72.)
These two characteristics, viz., (1) _deep and original thinking_,
(2) _perfection of workmanship, or mastery of an extremely difficult
stanza_--embrace that in "Nosce Teipsum," regarded broadly, which
I am anxious to have the Reader recognize and 'prove' for himself.
Subsidiary to them is one other thing--not shared with many of
our Poets and therefore demanding specific statement--viz. its
_condensation throughout_. Hallam and Craik have called attention to
this; and the student cannot fail to be struck with it. It is not
simply that the stanzas are as so many rings of gold each complete in
itself--much as Proverbs are--but that whether it be idea or opinion or
metaphor there is no beating of it out, as though yards of gold-leaf
or tin-foil were more valuable than the relatively small solid ore
that has been so manipulated: or the common mistake of imagining that
a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of lead. From Dean Donne
until now "comparisons are odious." Nevertheless when one recalls
the attenuated thought and the blatant verbiage of not a few of our
Poets, this resolute sifting out of everything extraneous is not less
noticeable than commendable. It assures us that the Poet was conscious
of his resources--of his unused wealth of thought and imagination and
fancies. He who compacts his carbon into a Koh-i-noor has infinite
supplies of it. Similarly a Poet who could and did so lavishly add
great thought to great thought and vivid metaphor to vivid metaphor,
and still go on adding in smallest possible compass, declares his
intellect to be of the highest. I take two stanzas as illustrative
equally of condensed thought and condensed metaphor concerning our
First Parents:--
When their reasons eye was sharpe and cleare,
And (as an eagle can behold the sunne)
Could haue approcht th' Eternall Light as neare,
As the intellectuall angels could haue done:
Euen then to them the _Spirit of Lyes_ suggests
That they were blind, because they saw not ill;
And breathes into their incorrupted brests
A curious _wish_, which did corrupt their _will_.
Your Rhetorician-poet would have expatiated on his 'Eagle' through
a hundred lines. Your mere Metaphysician would have entangled
himself with distinctions between 'wish' and 'will' endlessly.
Similarly how succinctly memorable is this of man's un-willinghood
to know himself--every stanza a perfect circle but all the circles
interlinked:--
We study _Speech_ but others we perswade;
We _leech-craft_ learne, but others cure with it;
We interpret _lawes_, which other men haue made,
But reade not those which in our hearts are writ.
Is it because the minde is like the eye,
Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees--
Whose rayes reflect not, but spread outwardly:
Not seeing it selfe when other things it sees?
No, doubtlesse; for the mind can backward cast
Vpon her selfe, her vnderstanding light;
But she is so corrupt, and so defac't,
As her owne image doth her selfe affright.
As in the fable of the Lady faire,
Which for her lust was turnd into a cow;
When thirstie to a streame she did repaire,
And saw her selfe transform'd she wist not how:
At first she startles, then she stands amaz'd,
At last with terror she from thence doth flye;
And loathes the watry glasse wherein she gaz'd,
And shunnes it still, though she for thirst doe die:
Euen so _Man's Soule_ which did God's image beare,
And was at first faire, good, and spotlesse pure;
Since with her _sinnes_ her beauties blotted were,
Doth of all sights her owne sight least endure:
For euen at first reflection she espies,
Such strange _chimeraes_, and such monsters there;
Such toyes, such _antikes_, and such vanities,
As she retires, and shrinkes for shame and feare.
And as the man loues least at home to bee,
That hath a sluttish house haunted with _spirits_;
So she impatient her owne faults to see,
Turnes from her selfe and in strange things delites.
For this few _know themselues_: for merchants broke
View their estate with discontent and paine;
And _seas_ are troubled, when they doe reuoke
Their flowing waues into themselues againe.
(pp. 20-22.)
How daintily-put and how divinely ennobled by the sacred reference
is this of the soul's yearning after that higher ideal that is ever
receding horizon-like to our vision:--
Then as a _bee_ which among weeds doth fall,
Which seeme sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay;
She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,
But pleasd with none, doth rise, and soare away;
So, when the _Soule_ finds here no true content,
And, like _Noah's_ doue, can no sure footing take;
She doth returne from whence she first was sent,
And flies to _Him_ that first her wings did make. (p. 87)
For condensed and close-packed thought and imagery the 'Reasons' for
the 'Immortalitie of the Soule' (pp. 83-99) are not to be equalled
anywhere.
We may not linger over "Nosce Teipsum." Passing to the "Hymnes to
Astræa" and "Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dauncing" while they have the
same characteristics with "Nosce Teipsum," they yet suggest another
characteristic in Davies as a Poet--_unexpectedness of brilliant and
great things_. You count on the Lark's up-springing and the Lark's
idyllic song, if you are traversing its bladed or daisied possession;
but you are startled if it rise from the mired or dusty street or
the inodorous slum. You look for the eagle when you have climbed
Shehallion and other Highland mountain fastnesses; but suppose it
were to flap out upon you as you paced into your semi-suburban villa.
So in "Nosce Teipsum," as seen, deep thought perfectly worked is what
knowing the Poet you look for therein; but even in "Hymnes to Astræa"
and "Orchestra" you very soon discover that it is still the Poet of
"Nosce Teipsum" who sings. The moods of thought are airier and more
vivacious substantively, but the thinking and shaping and colouring of
imagination is the same; and 'unexpected' is really _the_ word that
seems to me to express the out-flashing of the higher faculty. Turning
to the "Hymnes to Astræa," how exquisite are the fancy and the flattery
of Hymne V., "To the Larke," as she is wooed by the Poet-Courtier to be
his minstrel to 'sing' of Elizabeth. You do not for a moment feel the
'artificial restraint' of the margin-letters that go to form Elizabetha
Regina:--
Earley, cheerfull, mounting Larke,
Light's gentle vsher, Morning's clark,
In merry notes delighting;
Stint awhile thy song, and harke,
And learn my new inditing.
Beare vp this hymne, to heau'n it beare,
Euen vp to heau'n, and sing it there,
To heau'n each morning beare it;
Haue it set to some sweet sphere,
And let the Angels heare it.
Renownd Astræa, that great name,
Exceeding great in worth and fame,
Great worth hath so renownd it;
It is Astræa's name I praise,
Now then, sweet Larke, do thou it raise,
And in high Heauen resound it.
(p. 133.)
Meet companion to this is Hymne VII., "To the Rose:"--
Eye of the Garden, Queene of flowres,
Love's cup wherein he nectar powres,
Ingendered first of nectar;
Sweet nurse-child of the Spring's young howres,
And Beautie's faire character.
Best iewell that the Earth doth weare,
Euen when the braue young sunne draws neare,
To her hot Loue pretending;
Himselfe likewise like forme doth beare,
At rising and descending.
Rose of the Queene of Loue belou'd;
England's great Kings diuinely mou'd,
Gave Roses in their banner;
It shewed that Beautie's Rose indeed,
Now in this age should them succeed,
And raigne in more sweet manner.
(p. 135.)
That the large and intense homage of Davies (among his illustrious
contemporaries), in these "Hymnes" was genuine not simulated,
spontaneous not mercenary, the apostrophe to Envy protests. With an
echo of the old 'exegi monumentum' or reminiscence of Shakespeare's
then not long published Sonnets, he thus writes:--
Enuy, goe weepe; my Muse and I
Laugh thee to scorne; thy feeble eye
Is dazeled with the glory
Shining in this gay poesie,
And little golden story.
Behold how my proud quill doth shed
Eternall _nectar_ on her head;
The pompe of coronation
Hath not such power her fame to spread,
As this my admiration.
Respect my pen as free and franke
Expecting not reward nor thanke,
Great wonder onely moues it;
I never made it mercenary,
Nor should my Muse this burthen carrie
As hyr'd, but that she loues it.
(p. 154.)
Then in "Orchestra" you are again and again reminded that, mere sport
of wit though it be, "suddaine, rash, half-capreol of my wit," as he
himself calls it to Martin (p. 159), it is a man of rare genius who
sports. So much so that ever and anon you perceive, as Cleopatra of her
Anthony:
------"his delights
Were dolphin-like; _they show'd his tack above_
_The element they lived in_." (v. 2.)
That is, even among the trivialities about 'Dauncing' and the
frivolities of laudation, you are re-called to grander things--as in
the Summer one sees breaks of blue in the over-arching sky above some
miserable Pick-nick party desecrating some glorious forest-dell. I cull
two out of manifold examples of the unexpectedness that I now wish to
point out--as thus of the antiquity yet vitality of 'Dauncing':--
"Thus doth it equall age with age inioy,
And yet in lustie youth for euer flowers;
Like loue his sire, whom Paynters make a boy,
Yet is the eldest of the heau'nly powers;
Or like his brother Time, whose wingèd howers
Going and comming will not let him dye,
But still preserve him in his infancie."
(p. 169.)
That is 'brilliant' but this is 'great,' indeed magnificent, of the
Sea:--
"Loe the _Sea_ that fleets about the Land,
And like a girdle clips her solide waist,
Musicke and measure both doth vnderstand;
For his great chrystall eye is always cast
Vp to the Moone, and on her fixèd fast;
And as she daunceth in her pallid spheere,
So daunceth he about her Center heere." (p. 179.)
I know not where, outside of Milton, to match that personification of
the Sea, with its "great chrystall eye"; and 'palid' is as tenderly
delicate as the other is grand. Coleridge must have carried it in his
omniverous memory, for surely one of the most memorable of the stanzas
in his "Ancient Mariner" drew its inspiration thence, as thus:--
"Still as a slave before his lord,
The ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast--
If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him."
(Pt. VI.)
At this point it may interest some to read Sir John Harington's welcome
to the Poet on the publication of 'Orchestra', thus:--
_Of Master_ John Dauies _Booke of Dancing_. _To Himselfe._