CHAPTER XXIII.

LATE JACOBEAN AND CAROLINE PROSE.

Burton.

Robert Burton, author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," would have

been despised by Overbury both as "a mere Fellow of a House" and as

"a melancholy man," while to Milton he must have seemed one of those

spiritual pastors whose "hungry sheep look up and are not fed," with

sufficiency of sermons. Burton (born 1577) was of a landholding

family, in Leicestershire, was educated at the grammar schools of

Nuneaton and Sutton Coldfield, went to Brasenose, Oxford, in 1593,

and got a "studentship" (the House's name for a fellowship) at Christ

Church. He never married, though he professes himself not ignorant

of love, and he held one living in Leicestershire, and another in

Oxford. He lived to do the work that he was born to do, "The Anatomy

of Melancholy," first published in 1621, with great success and with a

following of later and amplified editions. He escaped the Civil War,

which hit no class of men harder than the clergy, by dying in 1640.

Melancholy, we have seen, was then a literary and social fashion.

Burton analysed it, reduced it to a vast number of classes or

categories, explored all its causes, physical, pathological, amorous,

magical (witchcraft), and "immediately from God"; all its cures, lawful

and unlawful--incantation, prayer, diet, exercise; all its moral

alleviations; all medical prescriptions--blood-letting, purging, herbs;

everything. He made an encyclopædia of melancholy. The reader had but

to ask, "What kind of melancholy is mine, amorous, worldly, witch-sent,

or religious?" look up the right chapter, and forget his gloom in the

huge collection of anecdotes and curious, vast, classic, medical and

pleasantly useless learning. "The Anatomy" was what Thackeray called "a

bedside book," but for the inconvenience of the edition in folio. The

modern reader escapes trouble by using Mr. Shilleto's edition in three

handy volumes. To the modern reader trouble is otherwise caused by the

abundance of Latin, and by endless names of authors whom all the world

has, for the most part not unjustly, forgotten.

Under "Exercise Rectified" will be found matter for Izaak Walton,

matter on angling, from which pastime, says Nic. Heinselius, in his

Silesiographia, the Silesians are so eccentric as to suck great

pleasure. James Dubravius, an author dear to Walton, once met a

Moravian nobleman in waders, "booted up to the groins," but this

unworthy Earl was not angling, he was netting; or, as he described

his pitiful pastime, "hunting carps". In England, says Burton, many

gentlemen wade "up to the armholes," but not after salmon, not in

Frank's "glittering and resolute streams of Tweed" with salmon rod in

hand. They are "hunting carps," a fish that loves the mud, a kind of

ground-game. Burton admires "false flies," he does not appear to have

used them much. But he is always wise, so much so that he steals the

contemplative man's consolation (when his creel is empty) _without

acknowledgment_, from the charming passage in the "treatise pertaining

to fish," printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496. This treatise influences

all angling books, Leonard Mascal's, Walton's, and the rest.

Burton cannot have been a melancholy man; he was too laborious in

omnivorous reading, and in writing was so copious and so pleasantly

successful. His face, if his portrait at Brasenose be authentic (the

ruff seems of an earlier date), is that of a pleasant old humorist.

He is charitably disposed towards suicides; we know so little! He

leaves them to the measureless mercy of Him who, understanding all, can

pardon all. He is a very serious consoler of persons under religious

despair; perhaps Cowper studied him unavailingly, Bunyan probably did

not try his cures. It is vain, he says, to reason with the insane,

the hallucinated, "who hear and see, many times, devils, bugbears,

and Mormeluches, noisome smells, etc.". He has prescribed for these

curses when they arise from normal "internal causes". Sapphires,

chrysolites, carbuncles may be worn by the afflicted: "Pennyroyal, Rue,

Mint, Angelica, Piony" may be exhibited. There is no harm in trying St.

John's wort. The physician of the Emperor Augustus relied on betony.

Where spirits haunt, fumigations are useful.

A stout Protestant, Burton has no belief in exorcisms, though

Presbyterians used them in the eighteenth century. The clerical father

of the poet James Thomson tried exorcism on a ghost, but failed, and

was slain by a ball of fire, says legend.

Ye wretched, Hope!

Ye that are happy, Beware!

ends Burton.

Burton's style is admirable, if we do not weary of very long sentences,

weighted with a dozen references to his queer authorities. But the art

of skipping can meet the occasion, and Burton can write as tersely as

any man when he pleases. If Burton left his rural parish to a curate,

he preached well and wisely to the largest of congregations. If he

really were, at heart, a melancholy moping man, he found happiness in

the long task of his life; the book which teaches the lesson of the

Vanity of Melancholy.

Herbert of Cherbury.

Born in 1583, the brother of George Herbert, the poet, Lord Herbert of

Cherbury is best remembered for his curious and amusing autobiography

(edited and published by Horace Walpole in 1764). Wealthy, beautiful,

and, by his own account a desperate swordsman, Herbert was deaf in

childhood, spoke late, and then asked his nurse how he had come into

this world; for an answer to this problem "I could not imagine," and

no wonder. He pursued his reflections on the theme of birth and death

in Latin verse' and in prose. His soul, he averred, had developed

faculties "almost useless for this life," hope, faith, love, and joy.

They must therefore be destined to higher employment upon subjects

not transitory, "the perfect, eternal, and infinite". But he was not

orthodox, his "De Veritate," and "Religio Laici," both in Latin, are

deemed heretical.

He was privately educated till he went to University College, Oxford,

where he preferred Greek to Latin composition. While he was a very

young undergraduate his father died, and he was married. He was

all accomplished; astrology and medicine, many languages and music

were mastered by him, with fencing, of course: he dilates on the

fencer's need of good feet and eyes, on the "lunge," and on equestrian

duels. Having provided himself with a family, Herbert went abroad,

distinguished himself at the siege of Juliers under the Prince of

Orange, snubbed de Balagny, a great French duellist, behaved like a

paladin, and writes of himself like a Bobadil. His triumphs with the

sex are equally celebrated, and a husband who deemed himself to be, but

was not "injured," lurked, to murder Herbert, in Scotland Yard, not now

a favourite ambush for criminals. In the fight that followed of one

man against five, Herbert, with a broken sword, fought in a manner to

be described only by himself or Alexandre Dumas. If he fought like _le

brave Bussy_, he was also favoured by a miracle like Colonel Gardiner,

a miracle sanctioning the publication of his book, "De Veritate" (1624).

In 1629 he became a peer of England: in later politics he deserted the

cause of Charles I: finding himself at 60 (1643) extremely debilitated,

and quite disinclined to draw his sword. He died in 1648: his "History

of Henry VIII," much praised by Horace Walpole, was published in

the following year. His verses, in which he uses the metre of "In

Memoriam," were never so popular as his brother George's, but his

autobiography is highly diverting in its exhibition of character.

Browne.

Thomas Browne, best known as Sir Thomas Browne, came of a Cheshire

family. He was born in London on 19 October, 1605. Early left

fatherless, "he was, according to the common fate of orphans," says Dr.

Johnson, "defrauded by one of his guardians," who seems to have lacked

opportunity to strip the orphan absolutely bare. Browne was educated

at Winchester, went on to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, graduated (1629),

travelled in Ireland, took a doctor's degree at Leyden; is said to have

practised medicine at Halifax, and about 1637 settled at Norwich for

the fifty remaining years of his life.

His earliest and probably his most popular book, the "Religio Medici,"

appears to have been written about 1635-1637. Several transcripts

existed; in 1642 one of them, imperfect enough, was printed without

Browne's knowledge and consent, and was criticized by Sir Kenelm Digby

and others. Browne therefore issued an authorized edition, and the work

was extremely successful both in England and on the Continent.

Naturally this confessor of his private ideas about religion was

attacked on all sides, as an atheist, a papist, a deist, by the

scribblers of the hostile sects. Browne, in fact, was a Christian who

did not, as at that time was especially common, regard hatred of all

who differed with him about a surplice or a sermon as a holier thing

than the virtue of charity.

In his preface he says that almost every man suffers by the Press,

and that he "has lived to behold the highest perversion of that

excellent invention," the King defamed, the honour of Parliament

impaired, a flood of printed falsehoods submerging everything, and

carrying erroneous copies of Browne's private papers into the market.

Browne opens his work by declaring that, in spite of his profession

(and of the proverb, "one doctor out of three is an atheist"), he

is a Christian, and a tolerant Christian. "Holy water and crucifix

(dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment, nor abuse my

devotion at all. ...I should violate my own arm rather than a church;

nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At the sight of a

cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the

thought or memory of my Saviour."

At Norwich in the Cathedral the Puritans publicly destroyed and burned

all works of art (including the organ), which they were pleased to

regard as monuments of idolatry: a bitter sight for Browne. "I have

no genius to dispute in religion," says he. As for "sturdy doubts and

boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too

nearly acquainteth us, more of these no man hath known than myself;

which I confess I conquered, not in a martial posture, but on my

knees". In that world of frenzied pamphleteers, "hating each other

for the love of God," the charm and fragrance of Browne's style, the

"_peace! peace!_" which, like Falkland, he "ingeminates," his refined

humour, and smiling pitying sympathy, and curiosity about all things

knowable, made his book delightful; and delightful to readers tolerant

of exquisiteness in manner the "Religio Medici" can never cease to be.

We are astonished, to-day, as much by the things which Browne knows,

or believes, as by those which he does not know and does not believe.

"I do now know that there are witches" has a surprise in it, but

what does he precisely mean by "witches"? "I think at first a great

part of philosophy" (science) "was witchcraft." Here he agrees with

modern writers who regard magic as an early and uninstructed sort of

science. He believes in guardian angels, but his "metaphysics of them

are very shallow," and, in modern terms, what he believes in is "the

subconscious self". As for hell, "the heart of a man is the place the

devils dwell in... Lucifer keeps his court in my breast. Legion is

revived in me."

In short this good physician is a mystic: "we must therefore say that

there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus...

we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep; and the slumbering of

the body seems to be but the wakening of the soul!" a very old belief

of the Greeks.

In "Pseudodoxia Epidemica," "Vulgar Errors" (1646), Browne's manner

somewhat resembles that of Burton, but his medley of strange stories,

scientific, pseudo-scientific, or plainly superstitious, is even more

entertaining and much more carefully and artfully written than "The

Anatomy of Melancholy". He consciously aims at harmony and balance of

style, and at selecting the right word (_le mot propre_), while he

ranges over all ancient knowledge and modern fable. "Many and false

conceptions there are of mandrakes," and Browne thinks but little of

them, and less of the false etymologies from which his age had not

delivered itself. He is engaged, like the scholar in Lytton's novel

"The Caxtons," on a "History of Human Error," and with his humour,

sympathy, learning, and irony, he makes a most entertaining book.

His "Urn Burial" with "The Garden of Cyrus" (1658) begins with

antiquarianism, and ends with the famous passages on the vanity of

desiring "to subsist in lasting monuments". "But Man is a noble animal,

splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising nativities and

deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the

infamy" (infimy?) "of his nature." "The Garden of Cyrus" concerning the

mystic virtues of the quincunx (like _cinq_ in dice) is more fantastic

and Pythagorean. The motto for the posthumously published "Christian

Morals" might be selected from one line in its counsels,

Yet hold thou unto old Morality.

It wears better than the new article!

To know Browne's works is no small part of a liberal education. He

lived in quiet and opulence, "his whole house and garden being a

paradise and cabinet of rarities," says Evelyn; he was much occupied in

correspondence with the learned and with his eldest son, and with local

history, till his death on 19 October, 1682.

Charles II had dubbed him knight at Norwich in 1671. Charles, in Dr.

Johnson's phrase, had skill to discover excellence, and virtue to

reward it, with such honorary distinctions, at least, as cost him

nothing.

CAROLINE PROSE.

Milton.

The greater part of Milton's prose works is so deeply concerned with

politics, mainly religious or concerned with Church government, that

it cannot easily be criticized without controversial interruptions,

here out of place. His earliest important piece (1641) treats of the

Reformation in England. It had never come up to Strafford's standard,

_Thorough_, never shaken off "the rags of Rome"--that is Milton's

theme. Nor, in Scotland, had reformation really been more successful,

for the preachers claimed at least all the powers of the priests over

the liberties of the subject.

Milton at once attacks that which, to Laud, was part of "the beauty

of Holiness," Jewish and Catholic survivals of "fantastic dresses,

palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe".

"The piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies" the Church styled

"decency"; Henry VIII "stuck where he did". Under Edward VI, if his

sister Mary were not to be persecuted most righteously, who were the

slaves that interfered to secure for her liberty of conscience? Who but

Bishops! Bishops were therefore "followers of this world," they always

were and always will be. You reply that they, Cranmer and Latimer, were

also martyrs? Well, says Milton, "What then?" A man may "give his body

to the burning and yet not have charity". The Bishops had not charity,

clearly, or they would have aided in depriving the Princess of freedom

of conscience. Elizabeth, aided by Bishops, persecuted Puritans, but

then Puritans _have_ a right to freedom of conscience, for themselves,

and a right to prevent other people from exercising the same privilege.

If there are to be Bishops they must be of popular election, but when

preachers with powers in some respects greater were elected by the

people in Scotland, Milton did not approve of them either.

His next important tract, The Apology for Smectymnuus (five preachers,

Marshal, Calamy, Young, Newcomen and Spurstow, who had attacked

Episcopacy), is of 1642. Bishop Hall, who, in youth, had boasted that

he was the first English satirist, had replied to the Five in his

Defence of the Remonstrance; Milton had answered; Hall in his turn

published "A Modest Confutation," and Milton's Apology for Smectymnuus

ensued. The adversary had made scurrilous remarks, had attacked

Milton's manners and morals, quite causelessly, in the controversial

fashion of the age. Milton replied that his adversary was a "rude

scavenger," and then gave that account of his own way of life in youth

which lends its value to this passage in the discussion. He had never

haunted "bordelloes," houses of ill-fame; he calls the women who keep

them "prelatesses". A Bishop, to Milton, is a male of the same species.

As for the theatre he had seen his fellow-students act at college,

"prostituting the shame of that ministry, which either they had, or

were nigh having, to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies...." He

had always, he declares, been a remarkably pure young man; hence his

life-long love of romances of chivalry, where every knight is bound by

oath to defend, with his life if need be, the chastity of ladies. "The

first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul," he says

nobly.

We need not dwell on his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," written,

it seems, a few weeks after his hapless marriage in 1643. If all men

were Miltons and all women worthy of them, his doctrine of freedom of

divorce would not have thorny consequences.

His "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" was published in February, 1649;

Charles I had been slain on 30 January of that year. It is desirable,

in a history of Literature, to "keep King Charles's head out of the

Memorial".

In the "Areopagitica" (1644) Milton, defending freedom of printing

against these friends of liberty, the then dominant Presbyterians, in

many passages gives us the prose of a great poet. Here is a passage

which must have irritated the Puritans who were not so after the manner

of Milton.

"If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must

rectify our recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man.

No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and

Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or

deportment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be

thought honest: for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than

the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, and violins,

and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle

as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall

silence all the airs and madrigals, that whisper softness in chambers?

The windows also, and the balconies must be thought on; there are

shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall

prohibit them? shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have

their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck

reads, even to the ballatry, and the gamut of every municipal fiddler,

for these are the countryman's Arcadias and his Monte Mayors." The

famous sentence "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue"

is familiar to all memories, but such things are not common in his

prose: the search for the limbs of slain and mutilated Truth compared

to the search for the fragments of "the good Osiris" by Isis, might

not have been written had Milton remembered the details of that savage

fable, common to ancient Egypt and the Australian Arunta. His cause

has triumphed, as triumph it must, in a world where no all-wise and

infallible Licenser of Books can be found.

"The defence of the people of England" in answer to Salmasius's

"Defence of the King," had not, perhaps, the right client. It was not

the People of England who slew the King. Milton tells his own story of

that unhappy reign (in "Eikonoklastes," his reply to "Eikon Basilike,"

attributed to Charles, really, as is believed, by Gauden) it may be

read with more profit in the history of Mr. S. R. Gardiner. Milton

declares the charge against the Scots of "selling their king" to be

"a foul infamy and dishonour". The Scots, every soul of them who had

a touch of chivalry, took up the sword to cleanse the blot, died on

the field, or on the scaffold, or were sold as slaves, or were starved

to death in Durham Cathedral. There are, in short there could not but

be, noble and harmonious and stirring passages in Milton's prose; but

poetry was his native language, and his themes were such as to place

sobriety of view, and delicate discrimination of good and evil almost

beyond his power. For, as Argyll said, of himself, he was "a distraught

man in distraught times". Otherwise Milton, the proudest of men, would

not have answered railing with railing.

Jeremy Taylor.

Among the pulpit orators of the seventeenth century, none has left a

name more fragrant than Jeremy Taylor. His devotional works, such as

"Holy Living," and still more "Holy Dying," are still in the hands of

the devout. But it is not easy to suppose that many readers who are

not profound students of style in prose often read the many volumes

of sermons, works of casuistry, and works of controversy which Jeremy

has left. He is not of our world or way of thinking; he dwells, for

example, on "special" and easily distinguishable "providences". Now

when a tempest flooded a river, so that Montrose's men could not cross

and despoil the lands of a contemporary of Jeremy's, Brodie of Brodie,

that devout Covenanter confided to his journal the occurrence of this

"special providence". But when the river fell, and Montrose crossed

and drove the kye, Brodie remarks in his journal that we ought not to

interpret the Divine Will, for we may be mistaken. Jeremy insists on

his own interpretations. "From Adam to the Flood, by the patriarchs

were eleven generations; but by Cain's line there were but eight, so

that Cain's posterity were longer lived: _because_ God, intending to

bring the flood upon the world, took delight to rescue his elect from

the dangers of the present impurity and the future deluge." In the

same way Abraham lived five years less than his son Isaac, and Jeremy

knows why. "The Jewish doctors" inform him that the idea was to prevent

Abraham from seeing "the iniquity of his grandchild, Esau". Later,

speaking of other times and lands, Jeremy says that "such fancies do

seldom serve either the ends of truth or charity,"--for which he has

the highest Authority in the Gospel.

We are no longer apt to reason as Taylor does about the Patriarchs, or

on hundreds of other points, and this cannot but diminish our pleasure

in reading his books. But he pleases us, exactly as Burton does in

"The Anatomy of Melancholy," by illustrations drawn from his amazing

knowledge of books. Thus, immediately after the passage last cited,

he says "Pierre Cauchon died under the barber's hand: there wanted

not some who said it was a judgement upon him for condemning to the

fire the famous Pucelle of France, who prophesied the expulsion of the

English out of the kingdom. They that thought this believed her to be

a prophetess" (as she certainly was), "but others that thought her a

witch, were willing to find out another conjecture for the sudden death

of the gentleman." "The sudden death of the gentleman" is a courteous

phrase to apply to Cauchon; and very unexpected in "The History of the

Life and Death of the Holy Jesus". But whence did Jeremy get his story

of Cauchon? From the Latin hexameters of Valerandus, a book so entirely

out of the common way that perhaps not three persons in the England of

to-day have read it.

So our author runs on, telling of "that famous person and of excellent

learning, Giacchettus of Geneva," whose morals were not Genevan,

while his death was, in an extreme degree, remarkable. Jeremy more

than once insists that many thousand men were slain, in one night, in

the Assyrian camp, for committing the offence of that famous person,

Giacchettus. Nobody has ever found out his authority for his statement;

he may have learned it "from the Jewish doctors". In any case, however

entertaining and instructive his divine works may be, he often raises a

smile which he never dreamed of provoking. Other times, other tastes!

Jeremy Taylor was born under James VI and I, was the son of a barber

in Cambridge, and was baptized on 15 August, 1613. Unless he was

christened two years after his birth, it is not plain how he could

have been in his fifteenth year when (August, 1626) he was admitted to

Caius College as a sizar (at Oxford, "servitor"); Jeremy's eloquence

attracted the notice of Archbishop Laud, who had him made a Fellow of

All Souls, Oxford (1636). At Oxford, a Cavalier University, Jeremy

studied casuistry, the topic of his large book "Ductor Dubitantium," a

Guide to the Doubting. In 1638, Jeremy obtained the cure of souls at

Uppingham, and in the same year preached, in the University pulpit, a

Guy Fawkes Day sermon. In 1639 he married. In 1640, Laud was impeached

of treason; in 1642, as chaplain, Jeremy served under the standard of

King Charles. Parliament abolished Bishops; Jeremy defended Episcopacy

("Of the Sacred Order of Episcopacy"). In February, 1645, he was

captured in a Royalist defeat, but was protected by Lord Carbery,

and became his private chaplain at Golden Grove in Carmarthenshire,

where he was safe from the persecution of the friends of freedom of

conscience that called themselves "the godly". At Golden Grove, though

far from what had been his library, he wrote "An Apology for Liturgy"

(abolished by Parliament in 1645). In 1647 appeared his "Liberty of

Prophesying," a plea for toleration. Such pleas always came from

the religious party which was being persecuted, though, even when

persecuted, the Covenanters always denounced "the vomit of toleration,"

their aim being, in power or out of power, to force all mankind to

be presbyterian covenanters. The frenzy of armed religious fanatics

made Taylor, like Falkland, as described by Clarendon, "ingeminate

peace! peace!" But he himself was to be in prisons often, under the

persecution of the Commonwealth, and when he unhappily became, under

the Restoration, Bishop of Dromore in a covenanting part of Ireland, he

replaced the Presbyterian ministers by Anglican clergymen.

Taylor's plea for toleration was an offence to all parties. These years

of the King's disasters and death must have been bitterness to Taylor.

He now composed his work "The Great Exemplar," a Life of Christ,

filled with persuasions to godliness, with reflections far fetched

but charmingly phrased, and he did not disdain legends destitute of

scriptural authority. "In the country of Thebais, whither they first

arrived, the child Jesus being by design or providence carried into a

temple, all the statues of the Idol gods fell down, like Dagon at the

presence of the Ark, and suffered their timely and just dissolution

and dishonour." The book makes no attempt at criticism, and is of an

immense length: in those days "a great book" was not deemed "a great

evil".

He also wrote his manual of devotion, "Holy Living" (1650), followed

in 1651 by the more charming "Holy Dying". Sermons for each week in

the year, sermons preached at Golden Grove, appeared in 1653. In 1655,

"Unum Necessarium," a treatise on repentance, was thought less than

orthodox, and gave displeasure to the retired bishop to whom it was,

without his permission, dedicated. Jeremy had his doubts as to whether

Man, after the Fall, was so abjectly and utterly corrupt a creature

as other divines held him to be. From 1655 onwards he suffered much,

losing his refuge at Golden Grove, reduced to extreme poverty, and

now and again imprisoned. In 1657 he lost two young sons. He wrote

a work on Friendship for a very friendly lady, Katherine Philips, a

poetess, called "The Matchless Orinda"; in this he quoted the ancients

freely. Later, unfortunately, he was employed in Ireland as chaplain

to Lord Conway at Portmore, and was much disturbed by the Presbyterian

preachers. Then came the Restoration (29 May, 1660), and by 6 August,

Taylor was sent to the Irish bishopric of Down and Connor, and

Dromore, where he was so troubled by the Presbyterians that he asked

the Duke of Ormonde to let him withdraw to "a parsonage in Munster"; or

to reorganize Trinity College, Dublin. But, after ejecting a number of

the Presbyterian ministers, he died in September, 1667, worn out, it

may be, by the civil and religious ferocities of his time.

Taylor's writings are by no means all of them very copiously decorated

with ornaments of style, and musical with organ tones of language. Even

when highly decorated, and when the music of his periods is prolonged,

his sentences are lucid. "So have I seen" (thus he introduces his

similes), "a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, at

first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as

a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin

modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it

began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms

of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its stalk; and at night,

having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the

portion of weeds and outworn faces." It is not Herrick's and Ronsard's

lesson of the roses; with Taylor it is a persuasion to piety, nor is

any preacher more sweetly persuasive. But Jeremy, though he wrote a

work to persuade the Irish Catholics of the errors of Rome, did not

alter their doctrines, and, as to them that are "the godly party,"

"the good people of God," he speaks his mind thus: "They may disturb

kingdoms, and break the peace of a well-ordered Church, and rise up

against their fathers, and be cruel to their brethren, and stir up the

people to sedition; and all this with a cold stomach and a hot liver,

with a hard heart and a tender conscience, with humble carriage and a

proud spirit."

Preaching to "the little but excellent University of Dublin," Taylor

laid before them every way by which men, since the Reformation, had

sought religious peace and had failed to find it. The last way was

toleration, "a way of peace rather than of truth". "If we cannot have

both, for heaven's sake give us peace," was the view of some good men,

but, as each sect thought that it possessed truth, each, as it had the

opportunity, tried to make peace by forcing the others into conformity.

The godly "are not content that you _permit_ them; for they will not

permit you, but rule over your faith, and say that their way is not

only true, but necessary". Taylor gave his own counsel thus, "the way

to judge of religion is by doing our duty; and theology is rather a

Divine life than a Divine knowledge.... Let your adversaries have no

evil thing to say of you, and then you will best silence them...."

Leighton tried this method in Scotland, Taylor in Ireland, but who can

number "all the horrid things they said" about these prelates in both

countries!

Other Anglican divines can scarcely be treated within our space, of

these Robert South (born at Hackney, 1634, and educated at Westminster

and Christ Church) lived till 1716. He was in controversies often, and

a rather tart critic of both Fuller and Jeremy Taylor; he had much

force and not a little wit. Chillingworth, Hales, and others, are to

us little more than shadows of great names, with Isaac Barrow, equally

great in Greek and mathematics, and a preacher whom Charles II could

hear with pleasure. Richard Baxter (1615-1691), whose conscience after

the Restoration caused him to throw in his lot with the Nonconformists,

by his "Saints' Everlasting Rest" (1650) won and deserved popularity;

he shared with Glanvill and Henry More the love of a good ghost story,

and has left on record an excellent death-wraith. Ralph Cudworth

(1617-1688) and Henry More (1614-1687), in verse and prose a mystic and

a Platonist or Neo-platonist, are still dear to a fit though limited

audience.

Thomas Fuller.

Thomas Fuller, born (1608) like Dryden, later, at the village of

Aldwinkle, is a writer of the same group as Jeremy Taylor and Sir

Thomas Browne: that is, his manner is quaint and his matter is full of

learning from all quarters. Though a Royalist and in orders, during the

Civil War, he was not an extremist; and his humour and love of a jest

qualified him for the post of a chaplain in a Cavalier army.

No great harm befell him when the Royal cause was ruined, but he died

(1661) too soon after the Restoration to be rewarded or disappointed.

His "Holy and Profane States" (1642) is a set of sketches of historic

characters; most readable, especially in the first edition, with the

curious engravings. Despite the vivacity of Fuller's most popular work,

he is but little read, in face of the hearty commendations of Charles

Lamb, a critic who imparted his own merits to all his favourites.

Fuller never could resist a joke, a humorous parallel or allusion; and

in works on serious subjects, "The Worthies of England," and "Church

History," his severe contemporaries detected more than "a little

judicious levity". Fuller loved antiquarian details and historical

study, but history to history as Amurath to Amurath succeeds, and

Fuller is read, when he is read, for his quaintnesses and for the

humour that runs away with him.

Hobbes.

It is impossible, within our space, to give an adequate account of the

life and works of Thomas Hobbes. Born in April, 1588, when his mother's

fear of the Spanish Armada is said to have hastened his appearance in

this world, Hobbes lived into the reign of terror of the Titus Oates's

Plot, in 1679. He was born at Malmesbury, the son of an unlettered

clergyman, and, about 1603, went to Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he

liked neither the puritanism of the seniors, nor the roistering ways

of the juniors. He took no interest in logic and philosophy as then

taught in Oxford, and is said to have never seen an Euclid till he was

middle-aged. It might have been better for him had he never seen Euclid

at all. Taking his degree in 1608, Hobbes became tutor in the family of

the Earls of Devonshire (Cavendish), and, with a few interruptions, was

their obliged friend till he died at Hardwick Hall, built by the famous

"Bess of Hardwick," the she-jailer of Mary Queen of Scots.

Hobbes travelled with his pupil, making the acquaintance of foreign

men of science. In England, in 1629, a man of 40, Hobbes published his

first book, a translation of the great Athenian historian, Thucydides.

The English is excellent, but the translation is extremely free, and

of no use to the reader who desires a "crib," or literal version. The

ideas of Thucydides about the qualities of a democracy, as in Athens,

were congenial to Hobbes, while the task of rendering into idiomatic

English a writer so condensed as Thucydides, combined with study of the

other classics, and practice in Latin prose composition, made up for

the indolence of his youth. In 1631 he became tutor to the new young

Earl of Devonshire, and gave him an admirable education, including law,

astronomy, logic, rhetoric and the "opinions of a good Christian".

In 1634 he went to Paris, Florence, and Rome with his pupil, returning

to England in 1637. He now, at 55, began to reckon himself as a

philosopher in a kind of metaphysics, and physics about which he did

not know much. An unfortunate accident had led him to read "Euclid,"

Book I, proposition 47. "Begad," said Hobbes, "this is impossible!"

He pursued his studies, found out that it was possible, and became

convinced that it is also possible to square the circle. Easy as it

seems, this feat has never been accomplished with pedantic accuracy,

and Hobbes, from about 60 to 80, was engaged in controversy on the

subject.

Oxford mathematicians, annoyed by his attacks on the University,

replied with scientific precision, and such banter as mathematicians

enjoy when they would be merry among themselves. In this long war,

Hobbes was mercilessly handled, partly by way of discrediting his

ideas in politics and religion. He had laid out for himself a system

of the Universe, "Of the Body," "Of the Man," "Of the Citizen". In the

political storm and stress of the Great Rebellion he wrote, in Latin,

his book of "The Citizen," "De Cive," much of which he had already

done, with other such work, in English.

These papers had been circulated; Hobbes thought himself in danger--it

was "time for him to go," and in 1640 he fled to Paris. He hated

Puritans without loving Bishops. In 1642 he published "De Cive"; he

then turned to philosophy, and next worked at his great work on the

relations of rulers and ruled, and on religion, called "Leviathan". In

1646-1647 he tutored Charles, Prince of Wales, in Jersey, and Charles

always liked him as a witty companion.

In 1647, believing himself to be on the point of death, he behaved in

an orthodox manner. To the witness, Dr. Cosin, later Bishop of Durham,

he always referred when his orthodoxy was doubted. When Charles I

had been slain, in 1649, Hobbes, who in 1650 had published his "Human

Nature," the briefest Statement of his general view of mankind, thought

of returning home, for now a Government, that of Cromwell, was firmly

seated, and Hobbes's main political principle was "settled government".

By 1651 he had "Leviathan" fairly written out as a present for Charles

II in Paris. But the King's advisers thought it a most unholy book (not

that Charles himself cared, or had a bad opinion of Hobbes); he was

rebuffed; he was afraid of being murdered for his religion (which, says

De Quincey, "is a high joke; Tom Hobbes afraid of suffering for his

religion!") and he fled back to England.

Hobbes, by 1655, had published his "De Corpore," and with that and

"Leviathan," his most popular work, his philosophy of the Universe was

before the public. He gives his natural history of religion, as (saving

Christianity), the result of curiosity about First Causes, belief in

ghosts (of which he is said to have been afraid), of superstitions

about luck, and of priestly imposture designed to keep men in order.

In politics he believes in an imaginary state of Nature, or anarchy,

from which men, who are naturally equals, sought shelter in a contract,

never to be broken, with a sovereign power, in fact with the State,

though Hobbes prefers a single despot. The sovereign is supreme in

religion as well as in secular matters, and Hobbes hates nothing more

than the so-called "Kingdom of Christ" of the Presbyterian preachers,

which really, he says, means their own domination. Hobbes's general

doctrine, with its reservations and subterfuges, cannot be discussed

here: it made enemies for him in every camp, religious and political,

and now his unlucky mathematics were fallen upon, while he had an

endless controversy with Bishop Bramhall on the Freedom of the Will.

At the Restoration Charles II renewed his friendly intercourse with

his old tutor, granting, him a pension, when Hobbes could get it paid.

In 1666 he was threatened with a persecution for heresy, and went to

church, but did not wait for the sermon.

His "Behemoth," a history of the Civil War, was suppressed by the King,

and was posthumously published. He translated the "Iliad" and the

"Odyssey" into very poor verse; he wrote his autobiography in Latin

verse, and was still writing in 1679 when he died on 4 December.

The style of Hobbes is lucid and succinct, without added ornaments.

He had a clear idea of what he wanted to say, though inconsistencies

appear as his mood varied, or as his argument led him into difficult

places. His ideas provoked many replies which pervade English

literature for long after his death; but such exercises in psychology

and metaphysics belong rather to the history of philosophy than of

literature. The doctrine of Hobbes is not optimistic. "When all the

world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is

War, which provideth for every man, by victory or death." The idea is

that expressed in a Greek poem "the Cypria," of about 750 B.C.

Hobbes thought himself an authority on Epic poetry, among other things,

and especially commended, in Davenant's "Gondibert," the really

pleasing passage which describes the birth of love in the heart of

Bertha. Hobbes expanded his ideas about the Epic in his translation of

Homer. We do not know what he thought of "Paradise Lost".

Izaak Walton.

Born near Stafford in 1593, Izaak Walton went to London, lived in

Fleet Street, two doors west of Chancery Lane, and was in business

as an ironmonger. Donne the poet was then vicar of the neighbouring

church of St. Dunstan's; Walton and he became friends: Walton was

also intimate with Hales of Eton, Sir Henry Wotton, Bishop King, and

Ben Jonson. In 1640 Walton's brief life of Donne, already quoted, was

published. In 1651 Walton had the dangerous task of carrying secretly

to a Royalist in London the smaller George jewel of Charles II, after

the King's crushing defeat at Worcester, on 3 September. A Royalist and

a sound Churchman (his wives were of the families of Cranmer and Ken),

Walton's natural cheerfulness, his sincere religion, and his habit of

angling "with N. and R. Roe," were needed to keep him from melancholy

in the evil days of 1642-1660. But he, for a writer of his age, is

strangely free from the melancholy then in fashion, and his "Compleat

Angler," first published in 1653, might have been composed in days of

idyllic peace. This famous work is too well known to need description

or praise. The natural history is as fantastic as that of Euphues,

the instructions on angling come from a mere fisher with bait, but

the beauty of the style, the sweetness of the thought, keep the book

fresh as with lavender and rosemary. To later editions Charles Cotton

and Colonel Venables added practical instruction on fly fishing, up

stream, in clear water like Cotton's own Dove in Derbyshire. The brief

biographies by Walton of Donne, Wotton, Herbert, Hooker, and Sanderson

are little masterpieces in their manner.

Walton lived in old age at Farnham with Bishop Morley and then at

Winchester where he doubtless fished with worm in the pellucid streams

of the Itchen. Walton's connexion with a pastoral poem "Thealma and

Clearchus," is of doubtful nature. Was he author, or did he edit

the work of Chalkhill? He died at the age of 90, and is buried in

Winchester Cathedral. Byron is almost the only critic who has thrown a

stone at the kind memory of Izaak Walton, to which Wordsworth devoted a

sonnet.

John Bunyan.

The two writers of this period whose works now come most closely home

"to men's bosoms and business" are John Bunyan and Izaak Walton. Copies

of the little plain volumes clad in sheepskin which they published at

a shilling or eighteen-pence, fetch spurns like £1000, more or less,

when they come into the market. The masterpieces of both are constantly

being republished, and though perhaps few people have a fairly good

knowledge of the contents of "The Pilgrim's Progress," or "The Compleat

Angler," yet most people have had these works in their hands.

The popularity of Bunyan, the non-resisting ever-preaching Dissenter;

and of Walton, the angling Churchman, rests to a great extent on their

characters. Differing as they did about the right of Bishops to exist,

and about Justification by Faith, could the two men have met, and kept

off these topics, they would "have had good talk". Each had abundant

humour, each was a keen observer of Nature and of human nature, each

was a lover of peace, each had a modest little fount of poetry within

him. Of each it may be said, as of Scott, "he is such a friendly

writer," and each is plain and intelligible, Bunyan had no artifices

of style, though Walton sometimes, by study, is able to rival the

harmonies of Sip Thomas Browne.

Bunyan, who came of a very old landed family which had steadily lost

all its lands to the last acre, was born in a cottage at Elstow, near

Bedford, in 1628. He was taught reading and writing; and pursued his

father's trade--that recommended by Mr. Dick for David Copperfield,--he

was a brasier, or tinker, but not a wandering tinker. In early youth

he was a leader in sports and games; you would have said "he wasna

the stuff they made Whigs o'". Far from that, a native genius for

expression first declared itself in his being "the ungodliest fellow

for swearing"--which was not recognized as a literary exercise. He

was under arms, like other lads of his age, but we have no reason to

suppose that he was ever under fire, and his militia (Parliamentary,

probably) was soon disbanded.

In his "Grace Abounding for the Chief of Sinners" (1666) he writes his

religious autobiography; a work composed in prison, to which he was

consigned because he would not cease to be instant in preaching. "The

Philistines understand me not," he says in his Preface. He writes for

lowly devotees, "Have you forgot the Close, the Milk House, the Stable,

the Barn, and the like where God did visit your souls,"--with "terrors

of conscience and fears of Death and Hell?" Even in his joyous youth,

Bunyan had dreamed of "devils and wicked spirits," which probably did

not trouble Shakespeare or Walton. At 9 years old he suffered from

the nightmares that haunted R. L. Stevenson. His book is the most

vivid description possible of the life of an imaginative lad, standing

between gross pleasures and terrors of hell. A Voice and an Appearance

came to him while playing at a kind of rudimentary cricket: he went on

playing, but fell into religious hypochondria. The vividness of his

imagination conjured up such scenery as he uses in his great Allegory:

he beheld comforting words "that seemed to be writ in _great_ letters,"

and so at last found consolation in faith.

Thus, and in his conflicts against the magistrates, he acted and

suffered, in his youth, all the adventures of his own Christian and

Faithful, in "The Pilgrim's Progress" (published in 1678). He left an

unfading picture of some elements in English society: seventy years

later he might have been a Fielding. "He was a born novelist," it has

been said: but the novels of his day were the interminable romances of

the French type of Scudéry. His "Grace Abounding" is as brilliant in

its way as the "Confessions of Saint Augustine". His secular characters

in "The Pilgrim's Progress" are as good, by way of sketches, as are the

finished portraits in "Tom Jones".

In 1680 he published "The Life and Death of Mr. Badman"; in which Mr.

Wiseman gives convincing reasons for his opinion "that Mr. Badman has

gone to Hell". Mr. Badman, in life's gay morn, like St. Augustine, had

"great pleasure in robbing orchards and gardens". "The beginning of

the Lord's Day was, to Mr. Badman, as if he was going to prison." As

for his eloquence he was "a _Damme_ Blade". In literature his taste

was all for "beastly Romances". In church he either slept or flirted,

like Mr. Pepys. In the long run, Mr. Badman departed from his prodigal

life, "quietly, peaceably, and like a lamb". It cannot be said of

Mr. Badman that he had no redeeming vices; he was ill-tempered and

envious; he occasionally went on the High Toby lay, and his masterpiece

was a fraudulent bankruptcy. Mr. Badman is amusing, but his history,

interwoven with many strong and simple anecdotes of other ruffians,

cannot be compared in merit with "The Pilgrim's Progress," where the

characters are so many and various; the imagination so vivid, many

passages so rich in poetic qualities, and the language so simple. It is

a great prose epic, a great novel of the road; and beside it "The Holy

War" is tame and indistinct.

Bunyan wrote many works, now forgotten, on religious themes, and in

controversial style his weapon was the cudgel. In his later days he was

the most popular of Dissenting preachers. He died just before "King

James was walked out of his kingdom," in 1688. If critics sneered

at Bunyan throughout the nineteenth century, Dr. Johnson, at least,

heartily appreciated the genius of the Non-conformist brasier.

With Bunyan-the student of the religious ferment of England in his age

may well read the "Journal" of the founder of the Society of Friends,

Quakers, George Fox (1624-1691). Like Bunyan, Fox was an untrained

thinker and author; like Bunyan he was persecuted: he had not the

genius, but he had the art of Bunyan in drawing "with his eye on the

object".

Clarendon.

Edward Hyde, later Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674) of a Cheshire family,

was educated at Magdalen Hall, in Oxford, and proceeded to the Middle

Temple. He inherited his family's property, was distinguished for his

legal knowledge, sat in Parliament when the strife between the King and

the Parliament began, and took part in preparing the indictment against

the great Strafford. None the less, when a general attack was made

on the order of Bishops, he came over to the King's party, in 1641;

and in 1646 accompanied the young Prince of Wales in his flights and

wanderings, in March, to the Scilly Isles (where he began his History),

and presently to Jersey. He remained with Charles II after the death of

Charles I, and, if he and Montrose had been heard, the young King would

never have disgraced himself by signing the Covenant; and consequently

his Cause would never have been defeated at Dunbar, nor his very life

imperilled after Worcester fight.

Clarendon, seven years after the Restoration, was banished by the

influence of faction, as Thucydides was exiled at an early period of

the war which he chronicles. It is not conceivable that histories

written in such circumstances should be free from partisanship and

bias: in fact no historians are exempt from prejudice.

Clarendon's history was, in the making, somewhat of a patchwork. What

he wrote far away from books and papers, in 1646-1648, depends much on

his memory: the book improves when he obtains contemporary narratives

and letters. In exile, in 1668-1670 he wrote a Life of himself, which

he later interwove with his "History of the Rebellion". Clarendon's

heirs did not permit the publication of his History till 1704, from

regard to the feelings of the descendants of the King's opponents. The

book, in one respect, resembles the History of the Peloponnesian War

by Thucydides. Much of it was written during the actual course of the

events by one who bore a great part in them.

Whether in favour or in exile, Clarendon was too loyal to say all that

he knew and thought about Charles I and Charles II. But when we look at

his pages "touching the Scottish Canons," which preceded the despotic

introduction of the Liturgy, the cause of "the Bishops' wars" (1639),

we perceive, the fairness of Clarendon. He makes it perfectly clear

that these Canons could only be accepted by a people inclined tamely

to endure the worst excesses of tyranny. But, on Scottish affairs,

Clarendon is not always trustworthy; for example he dislocates the

dates as to the General Assembly of 1638, permitted (though he does

not say so) by the King, and the subscribing of the Covenant, which he

places _after_ the Assembly. Mr. Gardiner, a fair historian, speaks

of Clarendon's "usual habit of blundering". In his remarks on the

Catholics, too, under Charles I, Clarendon can scarcely be acquitted of

unfairness; considering how bitterly, in Scotland at least, they were

persecuted under Charles I, and how loyally they stood by him.

However, a historical examination of Clarendon's great work is not here

in place. The occasional defect of his style is the enormous bulk of

some of his sentences. Two occupy two large pages and each contains

some 400 words. Here are structureless agglutinations of parentheses:

with the promising word "lastly" left stranded far from the conclusion.

But such examples are not very common, and Clarendon describes action

and intrigue with lucidity, and especially excels in his set pieces,

delineations of characters, for example of Cromwell[1] and Argyll. His

"characters" may not be exact, of course, but his knowledge of secret

motives was extensive, and such knowledge, if not always accurate, is

ever entertaining. All histories, as sources of knowledge, are sure to

be superseded by the discoverer of new information. But the History

of Clarendon can never cease to be of the highest interest, moral,

political, and personal. He possessed, in his own words, "the genius,

spirit, and soul of an historian," combined with knowledge of great

affairs, important personages, and intrigues of Court.

Among writers of prose of the age it would be ungrateful not to mention

an author so familiar and readable as the gossiping James Howell

(1594-1666) of the "Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ," a favourite bedside book of

Thackeray. Howell was imprisoned by the Puritans, and wrote essays in

form of letters which are full of curious anecdotes and reminiscences

of travel.

Much later comes the prince of gossips, Mr. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703),

whose Diary in shorthand, written for his personal diversion, can

never cease to divert, and, in a way, as a picture of a strange age

and a strange character, to instruct. Each new dip into Mr. Pepys's

manuscript, by each bolder editor, makes us like him less from the

extended candour of his unparalleled confessions, which is a pity.

John Evelyn (1620-1706) depicts the same period as Pepys, as it was

seen by a gentleman of stainless honour, unblemished virtue, and great

curiosity in the arts, and in the nascent science. His Diary is much

more entertaining than his memoir of the Lady in the "Comus" of the

merry Monarch's Court, the lovely and religious Mistress Margaret

Godolphin (_née_ Blague), to whom Evelyn was virtuously devoted.

Roger North (1653-1733), is admirably readable, and very modern in the

tone of his satire of the godly Whigs, in the "Examen,"--when he drops

into slang it is with the careless grace of Thackeray. His "Lives of

the Norths," himself and his brothers, is most interesting.

[1] To him he attributes a coarse pun which might seem more familiar in

the mouth of James I.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CAROLINE POETS.

It is difficult, or even impossible, to mark out the Caroline from

the Jacobean poets, who, again, overlap with the Elizabethan poets.

The chief schools of the Caroline poets were (1) the writers occupied

mainly with holy things, such as Crashaw, Herbert, and Vaughan.

Next (2) come the crowd of "gentlemen who wrote with ease," now and

then triumphantly well, but often loosely and carelessly, such are

Lovelace, Carew, Suckling, and minor names. Herrick stands by himself

as a consummate lyrist, but his mood is often, though he was a parish

priest, that of the gay cavalier. Marvell had many facets, and Milton,

of course, is apart, a world of poetry in himself.

Crashaw.

Richard Crashaw, the son of a controversial Protestant preacher, was

born in London, early in the second ten years of the seventeenth

century. He went to the Charterhouse School and to Peterhouse in

Cambridge, where he took his Master's degree in 1638. His earlier

verses were Latin exercises. He was expelled from his Fellowship at

Cambridge because he would, not take the Solemn League and Covenant,

in 1644: that odd document was forced on men under "the new liberty".

He had written a hymn to St. Theresa while still a Protestant; when

he retired to France he became a Catholic. In 1646 the poet Cowley,

his friend, found him in great poverty, and induced the almost equally

poor exiled Queen of England to use her influence in his favour. He

obtained a canonry at Loretto, where he died in 1649. His poems, sacred

and secular, "Steps to the Temple," were published in 1646; another

edition, with an interesting preface concerning his saintly life at

Cambridge, is of 1648-1649.

Pope, at the age of 22, criticized Crashaw with much superiority; "he

writ like a gentleman" (that is, like an amateur), not "to establish

a reputation". What Pope did in his anxiety to establish a reputation

was not done "like a gentleman". "Nothing regular or just can be

expected from him," "no man can be a poet who writes for diversion only".

Crashaw's pious outpourings were scarcely "writ for diversion," but

things "just and regular" are not his chief care. A fiery vehemence, an

overloaded ornament are his quality and his defect. For example in "The

Weeper" (St. Mary Magdalen) he writes:--

Not in the Evening's eyes

When they red with weeping are

For the Sun that dies,

Sits Sorrow with a face so fair,

Nowhere but here did ever meet

Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.

Here he has his style in hand. But when he calls the Magdalen's tears

Ye simpering sons of those fair eyes

he has certainly found the most inappropriate epithet.

Many of his sacred poems are a kind of brief religious epigrams in

four lines. His "Hymn of the Nativity" is a "_fade_" thing, compared

with Milton's. In longer poems he uses rhymed decasyllabic couplets

with some skill: "On a Prayer Book Sent to Mrs. M." is a good ode in

the irregular verse and conceited manner of the time, but to speak of

what Carew does speak of as Mrs. M.'s "heavenly armful" is to remind

us of a letter of Robert Burns on a purely secular subject. Save for

the Hymn to St. Theresa, with "That not Impossible She," "The Flaming

Heart," and some pretty translations, Crashaw, like all the Cavalier

poets except Carew, is usually on a low poetic level. But in the pieces

mentioned, and above all towards the close of "The Flaming Heart,"

Singing still he soars and soaring ever singeth.

Herbert.

George Herbert, author of "The Temple," was born on 13 April, 1593; was

of noble descent, and a younger brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

From his fifth to his twelfth year George probably lived at Oxford

with his mother. He then went to Westminster School; thence to Trinity

College, Cambridge (1609), where he obtained a Fellowship (1616) and

early in 1619 was chosen Public Orator. In this capacity he wrote

the letters of the University to kings, princes, and the great in

general who visited it. He became a friend of Bacon and of Bishop

Andrewes, Ludovick, Duke of Lennox, and James, Marquis of Hamilton. As

a schoolboy he had written Latin epigrams against the Hildebrand of

Scottish Presbyterianism, the learned and truculent Andrew Melville,

for whose tyranny in Scotland James VI and I took an unconstitutional

revenge when safe on the throne of England. In a war of Latin verse

Andrew was very capable of holding his own.

Herbert, while at Cambridge, was a somewhat assiduous courtier of

"gentle King Jamie," though we do not know that he gratified the

monarch by adopting the Scottish and continental pronunciation of Latin

and Greek. The death of James probably disappointed any hopes he may

have had of State employment.

In 1627 he resigned his oratorship, and according to Izaak Walton

retired to a country place in Kent where he meditated on the choice of

a secular or saintly life. He preferred the saintly, took holy orders,

lost his beloved mother in 1627, married Jane Danvers in 1629, and was

presented to the living of Bemerton, between Wilton and Salisbury, in

the next year. He died in 1633, and Walton must be consulted for "an

almost incredible story of the great sanctity of the short remainder of

his holy life". On the Sunday before his death he rose, took a musical

instrument, and "sang to it such hymns as the angels and he and Mr.

Ferrar" (of Little Gidding) "now sing in heaven".

His poems, "The Temple," were published in 1633, and their great

popularity is a proof that piety had not wholly deserted the Anglican

Church for the Sects. "The Temple" opens with "The Porch," a series

of moral and religious counsels, in verses of six stanzas. The poem

"Affliction" is autobiographical: at first, in his career, "There was

no month but May". Then came maladies and the deaths of friends

Whereas my birth and spirit rather took

The way that takes the Town,

Thou didst betray me to a lingering book

And wrap me in a gown...

Ah, my dear God, though I am quite forgot,

Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.

Sacred poetry is of all kinds the most difficult. Herbert's is full

of conceits, though he has not the extravagances that mar the work

of Donne and Crashaw. Verses in the shape of altars and of wings are

examples of extreme decadence, but these are rare. Herbert's simplest

poem is his best, the famous

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky,

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,

For thou must die.

"The Pearl" is also of great beauty and autobiographic interest. He

knows the ways of Learning, Honour, and Pleasure, and he has chosen the

better way. The British Church is commended as the Midway between "Her

on the hills" (the Seven Hills) and Her that

in the valley is so shy

Of dressing, that her hair doth lie

About her ears;

While she avoids her neighbour's pride,

She wholly goes on th' other side,

And nothing wears;

better than wearing "rags of Aaron's old wardrobe" said Milton. "The

Quip" hath a certain holy gaiety, as of a ballad. Herbert was not a

great poet, he never storms the cloudcapt towers, and "flaming walls of

the world," like Crashaw. But he has been dear to many holy and humble

men of heart.

Vaughan.

Henry Vaughan and his twin brother Thomas were born in 1622, at

Newton St. Bridget, on the Usk, in South Wales, hence he chose to

style himself "Silurist" from the name of the ancient tribe of that

region. There is some confusion between him and his brother Thomas,

who certainly went (1638) to Jesus College, Oxford, while Henry's name

is not on the books. Henry is said to have studied law in London.

In the Civil War he may have taken up arms, at least he saw, if he

did not fight in the battle of Rowton Heath (24 Sept., 1645) and he

commemorates in a poem the courage of a friend, Mr. R. W., who fell on

the Cavalier side. In some humorous verses about a huge cloak borrowed

from another friend he speaks of wearing it during the Royalist retreat

from the Dee, and about the Puritan soldiery that seized him. In a

Latin poem, "Ad Posteros," he says that he merely lamented the war;

in any case he won no laurels and probably shed no blood. "The Bard

does not fight," says a Gaelic proverb. He studied medicine, and lived

retired at Brecknock. His first verses (1641) congratulate Charles I

on his return from Scotland. In 1646 appeared his "Poems," including a

rather tame translation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal on "The Vanity

of Human Wishes," with some pretty love lyrics to Amoret. Unlike

Suckling and Carew, these volatile hearts,

I not for an hour did love,

Or for a day desire,

But with my soul had from above

This endless holy fire.

He "courted the mind," not the body.

His volume, "Olor Iscanus" (the swan of Usk) appeared in 1651,

opening with a eulogy of his beautiful native river, in smooth rhymed

octosyllabic verse, mixed with decasyllabic couplets. There are also

epistles to friends, one deplores the antiquated dullness of Brecknock,

another celebrates the matchless Orinda, Mrs. Phillips, and there are

translations from Latin verse.

Vaughan lives, not by these poems, nor by "Thalia Rediviva," but by his

"Silex Scintillans," the sparkling flint, sacred poems of 1650-1655. He

professedly follows George Herbert, being "the least of his many pious

converts". Direct imitations of Herbert are not infrequent in these

hymns, which, like Herbert, sigh for the far-away days when angels sat

at Abraham's board,

O, how familiar then was heaven!

There is a party who prefer Herbert to Vaughan, another that prefer

Vaughan to Herbert. The Silurist perhaps strikes the higher and the

deeper note, when he does strike it, for all the Cavalier poets,

sacred or secular, blossomed but rarely into perfect and memorable

song: they would excel in an opening verse, in a phrase, but their

full inspiration was occasional. A line like the second in "Vanity of

Spirit" is rare:--

Quite spent with thoughts, I left my cell and lay

Where a shrill spring tuned to the early day.

"The Retreat":--

Happy those early days, when I

Shone in my angel infancy

is perfect, and has a forenote of Wordsworth's "Intimations of

Immortality".

Like Wordsworth, Vaughan finds the divine near him everywhere:--

There's not a wind can stir,

Or beam pass by,

But straight I think, though far

Thy hand is nigh.

"Silence and Stealth of Days" is excellent, but never quite recaptures

the charm of the opening phrase. "The Burial of an Infant" has the

purity of a snowdrop: and "They are all gone into the World of Light"

haunts the memory; while "The Timber" is a set of variants on a brief

melancholy note of Homer. There are lovely lines, not unlike Herrick's,

on "St. Mary Magdalen," and her locks,

Which with skill'd negligence are shed

About thy curious, wild, young head.

Vaughan lived to see another Revolution, and died in 1695.

Herrick.

Robert Herrick, son of a prosperous goldsmith of a Leicestershire

family, was born in London, in 1591, and for twelve years was an

"Elizabethan," though his poems are "Caroline". In 1607 Herrick was

apprenticed to his uncle; in 1613 entered as a Fellow Commoner at St.

John's, Cambridge, he migrated to Trinity Hall, and took his Master's

degree in 1620. He had friends and patrons at Court, was one of the

sons of Ben Jonson, and lived on his wits and on his patrons, in a

poetical, musical, pleasant idleness. He took holy orders, not in the

spirit of George Herbert, and in 1629 received the living of Dean

Prior, in Devonshire. He did not desert, and probably did not neglect,

his parish, from which he was thrust by the Puritans in 1647; in the

next year his "Noble Numbers," and "Hesperides" was printed in "a rich

disorder"--the lines are on various levels in this most desirable

volume. The frontispiece shows a fleshly, muscular rather Roman-looking

poet to whose lips the bees bring honey. At the Restoration, Herrick

was restored to Dean Prior, where he died in October, 1674.

"Dull Devonshire" he calls the county, in his verses; he did not live

long to resent its rural torpor. His delightful poems are all full of

the country life, they smell April and May. His book is like a large

laughing meadow in early June, all diapered with flowers, and sweet

with the songs of birds, some a mere note or two of merry music, some

as prolonged and varied, though never so passionate, as the complaint

of the nightingale.

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,

Of April, May, of June and July flowers;

I sing of Maypoles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,

Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.

Everything is sweet, spontaneous, glad and musical. Some pieces are

far from straitlaced of course, but, even setting these apart, "The

Hesperides" hold the greatest and richest bouquet of English songs.

Favourites are "Delight in Disorder," "Gather Ye Rose buds while Ye

May," "Corinna's Going a Maying,"

To Anthea (Bid me to live and I will live

Thy Protestant to be.)

To Meadows (Ye have been fresh and green,

Ye have been filled with flowers.)

To Daffodils (Fair daffodils, we weep to see.)

To Blossoms (Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?)

and so on; every reader culls and chooses for himself, and cannot go

wrong. Herrick speaks in his "Noble Numbers" of

my unbaptized rhymes

Writ in my wild unhallowed times,

but his "Noble Numbers," or poems on sacred themes, show an almost

unregenerate happiness.

The Child of his "Ode on the Birth of our Saviour" is, first of all, a

human child to Herrick, and he was in love with children as with roses.

His "Litany to the Holy Spirit" is extremely human in its foresight of

death,

When the artless doctor sees

No one hope but of his fees.

His "Grace for a Child" is a miniature of the pathos of a child's

devotion.

Of Herrick's epigrams, as of Ben Jonson's, there is no good to be said:

we can only marvel how the poets stooped to imitate the worst faults of

Martial, their Latin model.

Carew.

Thomas Carew was one of the famous Carews or Careys of the West: his

family was settled in Gloucestershire. He was probably born about 1598:

Clarendon says that he died about the age of 50; and his death was

in 1638 or 1639. His life "was spent with less severity or exactness

than it ought to have been," but he made a good end. He seems to have

been at Corpus, Oxford, where he took no degree; he was Sewer (a Court

office of value), to Charles I, and was among those of "the tribe of

Ben Jonson". His poems were published (1640-1642) after his decease.

Suckling, in his Sessions of the Poets declares that Carew's poems,

were "seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain," in fact he _did_

take trouble, and it is a pity that most of his contemporaries took

none. His "Persuasions to Love" is a most musical version of that old

lesson of the brief-lived rose which is taught by the Greek lyrists

of the Anthology and by Ronsard and Herrick so sweetly, and so often.

"Give me more love or more disdain," "When thou, poor excommunicate,"

"He that loves a rosy cheek," the poems "In Absence," "Mark how the

bashful morn in vain," the "Elegy on Maria Wentworth," "Ask me no more

where Jove bestows," and many other pieces by the lover of Celia, are

admirable in versification, and in their own philosophy, which is not

remarkable for "severity and exactness". Carew never approaches the

elevation of Lovelace at his best, but he perhaps never falls to the

pitch of Lovelace when uninspired. There are graceful turns and songs

in his Masque "Coelum Britannicum" (1634). Carew's verse is a moment in

the development from careless speed towards the less varied and more

"correct" style that passed from Waller to Dry den and onwards.

Lovelace.

Richard Lovelace is when at his best the greatest of the Cavalier

poets, and is personally one of the most sympathetic of men. The eldest

son of Sir William Lovelace of "Woolidge" (Woolwich), he was born in

1618, educated at Charterhouse School, and at Gloucester Hall, in

Oxford. He is styled "Adonis" in some pleasant verses by a friend, and,

like that more glorious cavalier, Wogan, as described by Clarendon, was

"accounted the most amiable and beautiful person that eye ever beheld,"

according to the Oxford antiquary, Wood. Under Goring, to whom he wrote

a ringing song of camp revelry, he served in the inglorious expedition

of Charles I to Scotland, in 1639; and wrote a lost play, "The

Soldier". For presenting a Royalist petition from the county of Kent to

Parliament (April, 1642) he was imprisoned for some weeks, and then let

out on bail of £40,000 (?) not to leave the Parliamentary lines.

He and his brothers were devoted to each other, as appears from poems

which passed between them. He provided Francis and William, slain at

Carmarthen, with money and men for the Royal service, and Dudley with

the expenses of a military education. In 1646 he raised a regiment for

the French service, was wounded at Dunkirk, and was reported dead. His

Lucasta, Lucy Sacheverell, then married another man, and, in 1648,

Richard returned to England, and, with Dudley, was taken and imprisoned.

In 1649 be published his "Lucasta," with engravings after Lely (who

signs himself "P. Lilly"), it is a strangely ill-printed little volume.

After the death of Charles I, Lovelace was reduced to great poverty,

and died "in Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane," in 1658. His friend,

Charles Cotton, the pupil and friend of Walton, is said to have helped

to support him. A second part of "Lucasta," containing little of merit,

was published by Dudley Lovelace in 1659.

Like so many of the poets of his day, Lovelace was inspired but seldom,

and, when uninspired fell into sterile conceits and below mediocrity.

His unrivalled poems of true love, "To Lucasta, Going beyond Seas,"

"To Althæa, from Prison," "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars" (strangely

attributed by Scott to Montrose), are beyond praise or rivalry. "Honour

is my Life," wrote Montrose in his Bible; love and honour inspire

Lovelace with faultless and immortal verse. "To Amarantha, that she

would dishevel her hair,"

But shake your head and scatter day,

is also a charming song; and Suckling could not exceed the cheerful

impudence of

Why shouldst thou swear I am forsworn,

Since thine I vowed to be,

Lady, it is already Morn,

And 'twas last night I swore to thee

That fond impossibility.

We can but wish for Lovelace that he had ridden with Wogan from Dover

to the North, and died with the last of the loyal on the hills.

Suckling.

Sir John Suckling, the son of a wealthy man, who held various offices

at Court, was born at Whitton in 1609 (?). Not much is known of his

education, but in town he was one of the tribe of Ben Jonson, wits and

courtiers, such as Davenant, Carew, and Endymion Porter. His "Session

of the Poets" is inelegant banter of his friends. His plays "Aglaura,"

"The Goblins," "Brennoralt," are very decadent in style, and a man

must have a strong passion for the drama who can read them "for human

pleasure".

In Charles's expedition against the Scottish Covenanters, in 1639,

each army occupied itself in observation, Charles at Berwick, Leslie

at Duns Law. The commanders on both sides were dispirited, and if a

troop of horse, equipped by Suckling at great expense, ran away, it

was probably from Kelso, where a small Royalist command was driven in.

We know nothing with certainty, but derisive ballads were made against

the poet's courage, though there never was a braver man than Colonel

Gardiner, whose dragoons on every occasion used their spurs, in 1745.

Suckling died in Paris in 1642; various tales are told of the cause of

his decease.

Suckling is the typical jolly, audacious, amorous, now constant, now

amusingly volatile Cavalier poet. His verses are well made but seldom

so well as Carew's; and though he is not always on pleasure bent he

never approaches the heights of Lovelace. The first edition of his

poems, "Fragmenta Aurea," is of 1646, and the frontispiece exactly

meets our natural theory of Suckling's personal aspect. He looks very

pleasant in his armour. Among his successes in verse are

'Tis now since I sate down before

That foolish fort, a heart

and "A Ballad of a Wedding" (the most charming thing of its

kind in English poetry):

Out upon it, I have loved

Three whole days together,

When, dearest, I but think of thee,

and

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

It was with very slight trouble that the gay Suckling stormed the gates

of poetic immortality.

Habington.

William Habington (1605-1654) was of a Catholic family; his father

(of Hindlip in Worcestershire), had suffered on the occasions of

Babington's and of the Gunpowder plots. The poet was educated abroad

(St. Omer's and Paris). He married Lucy, daughter of Lord Powys; his

Muse was the domestic, and he ceaselessly celebrated his wife under

the name of "Castara". His play, "The Queen of Arragon," had some

success. Many of the lyrics to Castara are quite pretty, whether they

be prenuptial or written in wedlock, whether Castara is "sick," or "in

a trance," or beginning to recover, or weeping, or setting forth on a

journey. In lines to the celebrated first and only Marquess of Argyll,

Habington applauds those feats of military daring which History does

not recognize in the vanquished of Inverlochy and Kilsyth. A Catholic

who thought the cause of the Covenant "just," must have had a very

open mind. Wood says, in fact, that Habington "did run with the times,

and was not unknown to Oliver Cromwell". Habington's relations with

Argyll are rather puzzling. In addition to his many poems on his wife,

Habington composed eight elegies on the death of George Talbot, Esquire.

Cartwright.

William Cartwright (1611-1643) must have been a most amiable man,

agreeable University wit, and "florid and seraphical preacher". He

passed much of his life at Oxford, being a student of Christ Church;

he was an active military organizer when King Charles and the Court

were at Oxford, he was Junior Proctor, lectured on the Metaphysics, was

lamented by the King and University on his death, and was admired in

his life by Dr. Fell.

His poems are mainly birthday odes, and complimentary addresses to

ladies. In the person of Lady Carlisle he celebrated,

Masses of ivory blushing here and there,

and he wrote disdainfully of what is called "Platonic" Love. He also

wrote a song called "The Ordinary".

Davenant.

Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) was more interesting as a man, and in

his relations with greater men of letters, than as a poet. His vast

"epic" "Gondibert," concerned with the heroic age of Lombardy, and

written in quatrains of alternately rhyming decasyllabic lines, is a

monument of misplaced ambition. Davenant's father was landlord of the

Crown Inn, at Oxford, and Davenant did not discourage the legend that

Shakespeare was his mother's admirer. At a very early age, Davenant

wrote the briefest of elegiac odes on Shakespeare's death. His best

lyric is

The lark now leaves his watery nest,

And climbing, shakes his dewy wings,

He takes this window for the east,

And to implore your light, he sings:

"Awake, awake, the Morn will never rise

Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes".

Davenant was of Lincoln College, Oxford; was one of the London wits,

and is bantered by Suckling in "The Session of the Poets" for a sad

misfortune. To Lombardy, Davenant turned, in 1629, for the topic of

his tragedy of Albovine, a theme with which poets have rarely been

successful. In 1638 Davenant was made Poet Laureate; he managed a

theatre; in 1641 was accused of being engaged in a Cavalier enterprise,

escaped to France, returned, was knighted (1643) for his services at

the siege of Gloucester; failed, in 1646, to make Charles accept the

terms of the Covenanters, and, after various loyal adventures, was

placed in the Tower (1650). Milton is said to have pleaded for him, and

he, later, for Milton. On the Restoration he was rewarded by the patent

of a theatre, where he produced plays by no means Shakespearean.

He forms a link between the Shakespeare of his childish years, Milton,

and the young Dryden. Waller and Cowley wrote the only recommendatory

verses for his "Gondibert," which is dedicated, with Davenant's ideas

on the Art of Poetry, to Thomas Hobbes. Davenant modestly compared

himself to Homer. He trusts that his verses in "Gondibert" will be

"sung at village feasts," "like the works of Homer ere they were joined

together and made a volume by the Athenian king". A stranger combination

of vanity with erroneous pedantry has seldom been printed.

Cowley.

The name of Abraham Cowley is likely to live as long as histories of

English literature are written, and yet some students who are not

passionately fond of Lydgate would much liefer read Lydgate than

Cowley. To Charles Lamb, on the other hand, Cowley's was "one of the

sweetest names, which carry a perfume in the mention". He was born in

London in 1618, and Dr. Johnson suspected that his father was not only

a Puritan but a grocer.

A copy of "The Faery Queen" which lay on the window-seat of his

mother's chamber is said to have wakened Cowley's ambition. He "lisped

in numbers," and published his verses at Westminster School, whence

he went on to Cambridge. There he is said to have written much of his

Biblical epic, the "Davideis". The poem is in the heroic couplet, thus

Rais'd with the news he from high heaven receives,

Straight to his diligent God just thanks he gives

To divine Nob directs he then his flight,

A small town, great in fame, by Levi's right.

The poem breaks off at the passage where Jonathan, after fighting all

day, tastes some honey of the wild bees.

To compare with Milton's Satan the Satan of Cowley,

Thrice did he knock his iron teeth, thrice howl

And into frowns his wrathful forehead roll

is to perceive that the Cavalier was no match for the Puritan poet in

sacred epic.

Cowley had done much secretary's work for Charles I during the war, he

was employed by the Queen in Paris, and returned in 1656 to England,

where he was arrested, but presently released. He returned to France

just as the star of Molière was rising, came home at the Restoration,

was dissatisfied with such reward as his loyalty obtained, and left

town for a very pleasant house at Chertsey, where he died in 1667.

His set of amatory verses, "The Mistress," holds a high place in

collections. He revelled in what Dr. Johnson called "metaphysical"

conceits. Odes he wrote in great numbers, in imitation of Pindar; one

of them is addressed to the Royal Society and hails the new birth of

divine Science.

Pindaric Odes became a fashion that lasted long, and, in its day,

produced little of merit till Dryden came. Not much of Cowley in verse

is now read for pleasure except the lively and graceful "Chronicle" of

the names of his mistresses. If we could suppose that without Cowley

the great Odes in the language would not have been written, Cowley

might be regarded as an important influence. But when we turn to his

"Praise of Pindar,"

Pindar is imitable by none;

The Phœnix Pindar is a vast species alone,

Cowley does not seem very inspiring! But Dr. Johnson held that Cowley

"was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the

greater ode, and the gaiety of the less," while "he left such specimens

of excellence" in versification "as enabled succeeding poets to improve

it".

Denham.

The poems of Sir John Denham (1615-1669) might, had they perished,

have been reckoned in "the veniable part of things lost". He was of

the Royalist party, and his occasional political rhymes are humourless

libels. In 1642 he published "The Sophy," and surprised the wits, for

he had been best known as a dicer and gambler. In 1642 his "Cooper's

Hill," an early example of local poetry, appeared, and in this was

little of what Dr. Johnson called "the old manner of continuing

the sense ungracefully from verse to verse," which disfigured his

translation of the Second Book of the "Æneid". For restricting the

sense to the couplet, Denham was reckoned with Waller among the

reformers of English poetry.

Four lines of "Cooper's Hill," admired by Dryden, are all that men

remember; he wrote not ungracefully on Cowley, and he succeeded in

getting £10,000 for the Royal cause from the Scottish traders in

Poland. He is no longer, as by Dr. Johnson, deservedly considered as

one of the fathers of our English poetry, "who improved our taste and

advanced our language".

Sherburne, Stanley, Browne, Cotton.

It is customary to mention among English poets of the seventeenth

century Sir Edward Sherburne, Thomas Stanley his kinsman, Alexander

Browne, and Charles Cotton, whose birth and death dates range from 1618

to 1702--Sherburne's life occupied the whole space. All but Cotton, the

latest born (1630), were of the Royalist party. Sherburne dealt most

in translations and sacred verses; Browne in ditties of love, wine,

and politics, with epistles and elegies; Stanley was a scholar--his

amorous verses often approach excellence; Cotton celebrated Chloris

with little inspiration, wrote angling songs, and was the friend of

Izaak Walton, a fact that preserves his name in lavender. He wrote the

part on fly-fishing (in which Walton was no expert) for a late edition

of "The Compleat Angler," and (1681) celebrated in verse "The Wonders

of the Peak," as he had sung the praises of his well-loved river, the

Dove. His "Scarronides or Virgil Travestie," in the manner of Scarron

gave offence to reverent admirers of the "Æneid".

Waller.

Edmund Waller, certainly the greatest wit of his time (for it would

be sacrilege to speak of Milton as "a wit"), was born at Coleshill

in Bucks, on 3 March, 1606. He was early left a rich orphan, was

educated at Eton, and King's, Cambridge, entered Parliament at 18,

and was familiar with the Court of James I. His first-known poem, on

"The Escape of the Prince at Saint Andero," is in the same correct

and elegant heroic verse as that of his later measures: Waller had at

18 command of the instrument to which Dryden fell heir. Possibly the

poem, with some of his other loyal pieces of almost the same period,

may have been improved by Waller in later days, but his ear was already

as excellent as that of Davies in his "Nosce te Ipsum" or of Fairfax

in his translation of Tasso. Waller had no taste for the venture-some

irregular lines of his contemporaries, and seldom, like so many of

them, drew amorous conceits from the depths of the fanciful science of

the age.

Adulation of people in power from Charles I and his Queen to Charles II

and his Queen, or to Cromwell in "The Panegyric," was the common theme

of Waller. As he is always tuneful and always vivacious he may be read

with interest, whether he congratulates Prince Charles on his escape

from shipwreck, or the King on his fortitude when he heard of the

murder of Buckingham, or Cromwell on his victories, or Mary of Modena

on a tea-party or Monmouth on the defeat of the Covenanters at Bothwell

Bridge. His love verses to Sacharissa (Lady Dorothea Sidney) or to

Amoret (Lady Sophia Murray?) are seldom tedious, and his "On a Girdle,"

and "Go, lovely Rose," and "Tell me, lovely loving pair" are among the

imperishable flowers of the English anthology.

While he lived, and he lived to be 81, Waller always wrote well, nor

was he less distinguished as an orator in Parliament, and a delightful

companion. In the Short and Long Parliaments he appeared as a moderate

member of the Parliamentary party, and opposed the abolition of

Episcopacy. Revolution, not reform, was the winning card; and Waller

slid into what was called Waller's Plot. He organized what may be

called a scheme of constitutional resistance to the King's enemies, but

with this coexisted, as usually happens, a more strenuous and violent

conspiracy under Sir Nicholas Crispe.

The affair was detected on 31 May, 1643, Waller and his brother-in-law,

Tompkyns, were arrested: Waller lost head and heart, confessed all

that he knew, and more that he conjectured; lost honour, and kept his

life at the ransom of a heavy fine, and exile (at Rouen). He made his

peace with Cromwell, who had nothing to fear and something to gain from

him, the famous panegyric of 1654. When Charles returned, Waller's

congratulations were deemed by the King less good than his compliments

to Cromwell. "Poets, Sir," answered Waller, "succeed better in fiction

than in truth." The treacherous politician was forgiven on every side,

the witty poet was welcome in Parliament and everywhere.

Waller's first wife was rich, his second was fertile. When at last

his doctor pronounced his sentence of death, he quoted some lines of

Virgil, and went home to die. John Evelyn had been "his worthy Friend":

to no man were men more charitable than to Waller.

His "Battle of the Summer Islands" is mildly mock-heroic: the

compliments which he lavished on other poets, as to Evelyn on his

translation of Lucretius, outlive their works which he praised. Dryden

esteemed him generously, and all the more because he was judiciously

applauded by Sir George Mackenzie, the "bluidy Mackenzie" of the

Covenanters.

With his songs Waller has one foot in the paradise of Lovelace and

Suckling and Carew; as represented by his heroic couplets he almost

enters the Augustan age. Waller well understood the transitoriness of

poetic popularity, shifting with every change of manners, language and

taste

Poets that lasting marble seek

Must carve in Latin or in Greek;

We write in sand, our language grows,

And, like the tide, our work o'er flows.

Chaucer his sense can only boast

The glory of his numbers lost.

Happily the glory of Chaucer's "numbers" has been recovered; nor is

that of Waller's lost: his "sense" sometimes can only be appreciated by

aid of some knowledge of history.

Marvell.

In a sense and as regards the better part of his poetry, Andrew Marvell

may be reckoned among Cavalier poets. He had not, in full measure, the

occasional but unique inspiration of Lovelace, but he is comparatively

free from wanton conceits, and never falls into the abyss. He has,

in addition to the charm of the Cavaliers at their best, a certain

delicacy and reserve, and a sense of natural beauty and a rural

felicity in which they do not abound. He has none of the stains of the

tavern.

Marvell was born on 31 March, 1621, at Winestead, near Hull, being son

of the parson of Winestead. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge,

at an early age, did not wait to take his Master's degree, and in

1641-1646, travelled widely on the Continent. In 1649 he wrote

commendatory verses to Lovelace's "Lucasta," and in these he speaks as

a sympathetic Cavalier, though, like other quiet people who loved a

settled government, he later addressed Cromwell as "an angel," which

may have made Noll smile grimly. In 1650 Marvell became tutor to the

daughter of Lord Fairfax, the Parliamentary General, but no regicide.

At Appleton House, near Bilborow Hill, Marvell wrote his most charming

poems of country life and innocent loves. He compared the hill to the

delicately pencilled curve of an eyebrow, and assures "mountains more

unjust," such at the Alps, that they "The Earth deform, and Heaven

fright". For more than a century any peaked mountain or rocky eminence

was reckoned "horrid".

Marvell made at this time the acquaintance of Milton, who recommended

him as acquainted with foreign languages and classical literature for

the post of Assistant Secretary: which he obtained in 1657. In the

circle of Government, Marvell learned to appreciate and was induced

to applaud Cromwell on his return from his visit of conquest and

massacre to Ireland. This poem contains the familiar and beautiful

lines appreciative of the behaviour of Charles I on the scaffold. In

1659-1660 Marvell entered Parliament as Member for Hull: in 1663-1665

he went abroad on various embassies, and, after playing the part of

a fierce satirist of the sinners of the Restoration, he died on 18

August, 1678.

His prose satires "The Rehearsal Transprosed" and others (1672-1678)

were inspired by that terror of a restoration of Catholicism, which

flamed up in the cowardly ferocities of Titus Oates's "Popish Plot".

Though a Catholic in sympathy, Charles II knew well that if he

announced his change of religion he would be "sent off on his travels"

again; and to travel he was not inclined. The satires of Marvell

in verse "we still read," says Swift, who speaks of the author's

"genius". It had none of the majesty of Dryden's nor of Pope's polish,

and Marvell is best known for what is best in his poetry: "The Nymph

complaining for her Fawn"; "The Garden," which has much of the

merit of Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso"; "The Mower to the

Glowworms," "Bermudas," "To His Coy Mistress," with its charming

humour; and "The Definition of Love," which scarcely maintains the

level of its first noble stanza. Such poems on divine subjects as "The

Coronet" are reminiscent of Herbert, but less conceited, retaining

Marvell's grace of flowers and gardens.

Milton.

John Milton, son of a "money-scrivener," was born in Bread Street,

London, on 9 December, 1608. His father, though a Puritan, was in

sympathy with literature, and his wealth permitted his son to devote

himself, as long as he pleased, to studies of many kinds, and to

train himself sedulously for the great poetic task which he deemed

himself "born to do". Milton was thus one of the first of our strictly

professional non-dramatic poets,--like Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, and

Wordsworth[1]--who were able to devote themselves deliberately to the

cultivation of their genius. Milton never wrote for his livelihood,

and, except when he gave himself up to political and theological

controversy, he was always preparing himself for the great poem which

he was determined to make. He entered at St. Paul's School in 1620,

and thence went to Christ's College, Cambridge, where his beauty and

refined morals won for him the name of the Lady of Christ's. He put

on his Master's gown in 1632, and then for six years resided at his

father's place, Horton, in Buckinghamshire, the county of John Hampden.

A man's best poems are usually written before he is 30. Milton was 21

when (1629) he produced the ode "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity".

In this splendid and immortal piece he invokes, as always, "the

heavenly Muse," and, in addition to the beautiful measure of the Hymn,

in harmony rivalling Spenser's, he already strikes his own sonorous

note, as in "The trumpet spoke not to the armed throng," a glorious

combination and harmony of sounds. Here advance

The helmed cherubim

And sworded seraphim,

who are, in "Paradise Lost," to make the floor of heaven

Ring to the roar of an angel onset.

The stanzas on the flight of the ancient classic deities, even the

genius of "haunted spring and dale," and the nymphs, are of a high and

melancholy imagination. But Milton "found the subject to be above the

years he had when he wrote it," and "was nothing satisfied with what he

had done". After deliberately selecting and weighing many themes, for

example that of Arthur, he returned when old, blind, and fallen on what

he deemed "evil days," to the topic of wars in heaven, and man's Fall

and Redemption.

"L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" are impeccable early poems. Milton is

not yet so Puritan as to denounce Merry England, "the jocund rebecks,"

the dancing youths and maids, the tales of fairy Mab and the Brownie,

and the stage: if Jonson and sweetest Shakespeare be the playwrights.

Milton was deeply learned in the classics, but there is none of the

pedantry of his age in his allusions to Prince Memnon, or "that

starr'd Aethiop Queen," though now many readers must turn to notes

for information about them. Octosyllabic lines had never before been

written with such variety of grave and gay as by Milton, who in verse

is a supreme master and "inventor of harmonies". Spenser had not his

variety: in Milton's poems, as in his lines "On a Solemn Music"

The bright Seraphim, in burning row

Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow.

Yet Milton's party in the State set its face like a flint against the

"solemn music" of the churches as against the "joyous rebecks" of the

lads and lasses.

In 1634 Milton produced a masque, the one great and enduring masque

of the many that were played in the halls of princes and peers.

"Comus" was presented at Ludlow Castle, the house of Lord Bridgewater,

President of Wales, and the actors were his family. The Muse is

heavenly, the theme is divine Chastity; there is no such awful

contrast to the purity of the Lady as that which Fletcher, in "The

Faithful Shepherdess," presents in the person of the deplorable Cloe.

As in the plays of Euripides, an explanatory prologue is spoken by a

Spirit, who later appears as the shepherd Thyrsis. We learn that Comus

(Revelry) the son of Dionysus the Wine God and Circe the enchantress of

the "Odyssey," has settled in "this ominous wood" in Britain; tempts

travellers with the crystal cup of his sorceries, and changes them into

beast-headed adventurers. Then Comus enters with his torch-bearing

company, swine, bulls, goats, bears, and in beautiful lines, recommends

his unholy ethics.

Come, let us our rites begin,

'Tis only daylight that makes sin.

But something warns him that a chaste being draws near; he dismisses

his troop; the Lady enters, she has lost her way in the dark wood, her

brothers have strayed apart, she hopes to meet merry peasants who will

guide her; she calls them by a song, and Comus appears, summoned by the

notes

How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night

At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness, till it smiled.

Thinking Comus an honest shepherd, the Lady follows him: her brothers

enter in search of her, the Spirit warns them of her danger, and gives

them such virtuous herbs as Hermes gives to Odysseus in Circe's isle.

Armed with these they scatter the satyrs of Comus, but only Sabrina,

nymph of the Severn, called and replying in lyrics of ineffable beauty

can release the Lady from the enchanted chair of Comus. The majesty,

delicacy, and beauty of the ideas are matched by the exquisite music

of the blank verse and lyric passages, for at the age of 26 and in his

poetic prime of youth, Milton was already a master of every technical

resource of poetry; of everything, except humour and the power of

creating human characters. He might compose poetry more august and

sustained than "Comus," but he never could be a better poet man he was

in 1634. Sanity, order, form, absence of vain conceit and ingenious

antithesis were as natural to Milton as they were unknown to Donne and

the Fletchers.

Milton's next great poem, "Lycidas," was composed shortly before he

left Horton, early in 1638, on a visit to Italy. The occasion, which

other Cambridge poets celebrated, was the death of a friend, Edward

King, drowned in crossing the Irish Channel. We do not know from

external evidence that Milton was more attached to King, personally,

than Shelley was to Keats. "Lycidas" is not a cry from an almost broken

heart, as are parts of the "In Memoriam" of Tennyson. It has been

said that admiration of "Lycidas" is a test of a man's capacity for

appreciating poetry,--a hard saying for Dr. Johnson. That Milton had a

true affection for King the classic allusions and the pastoral guise of

his ode may cause some to doubt. But there is deep natural feeling in

the plangent words,

But oh! the heavy change now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone and never must return!

The story disguised as a friendship between Theocritean shepherds is

really that of a college friendship between two boyish poets, and no

later friendships can be so tender, close, dear; the lost voice ever

echoing in the memory. The verse is a solemn music: the mingling of

the figures of classical mythology with St. Peter, and with Camus,

"reverend sire," vexed Dr. Johnson, but he would have been equally

vexed by the only Oxford pendant to this Cambridge lament, the

"Thyrsis" of Matthew Arnold.

Indeed what really annoyed the good Doctor was the certainly

regrettable introduction of an attack on his beloved Church of England,

and the ominous mention of "that two-handed engine at the door," which

did not strike once, but often, nor only at the neck of an Archbishop,

but slew Strafford, Hamilton, and the King.

"The dread voice" comes across the shepherd's dirge; the Sicilian

Muse, the Muse of Theocritus, is bidden to return, but to Milton she

will not come again. We think of him, at this time, as "young but

intolerably severe," like Apollo in Matthew Arnold's "Empedocles on

Etna". Like Wordsworth and Shelley he was devoid of humour,--and thus

fails--as Shelley did not fail, thanks to his geniality, and kindness

and charms--to win universal sympathy. Think of Shakespeare,--who does

not love the man, and who does dare to love Milton! He was not vain

with the childlike vanity of some poets, but he was as proud as his

own Satan. He not only had genius next to the highest, but he knew

it, tended it, cared for it, and could scarcely find a task that was

great enough for his powers. We respect his self-knowledge, applaud his

resolution, and are much happier with Shakespeare and Scott, who never

gave a thought to their genius.

On returning from Italy to his country, the country of "the Bishops'

Wars," Milton, in Aldersgate Street, devoted himself to the education

of his nephews, to sonnets, and then to prose works, as already

mentioned, all written in the cause of sacred Liberty. He, like the

old Scots Earl, did not love "the new liberty" as offered by the

Presbyterian, whose name was "old priest writ large". His marriage,

in 1643, to a lady of a loyal family, Mary Powell, was unhappy: she

went back, in a short time, to her own people In 1645 she returned,

had three daughters, and died in 1652. His private unhappiness made

Milton plead vainly for freedom of divorce, a remedy which has its own

unsatisfactory aspect. In 1652 Milton lost his eyesight, like his

Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,

And Teiresias and Phineus, prophets old.

His sonnets are his only poems of this period; when he argued for

divorce, and for liberty of printing, defended the slaying of his King,

wrangled with political opponents in English and Latin, and was Latin

Secretary to the Commonwealth. An accomplished sonneteer in Italian,

Milton in English observed, usually, the strict Petrarchian rules; and

had the wisdom and self-restraint to write not too many sonnets, most

of them choicely good. Even that in which he commemorates the noble

Aboyne, and the son of Col of the left hand, and Gilespie Grumach is

a good sonnet. He mourned for the late Massacre in Piedmont, but not

for those of Drogheda and Dundee. His nobility of soul never declares

itself more gloriously than in the sonnets on his blindness, of these

eyes.

Overplied,

In Liberty's defence, my glorious task.

But there was no liberty left for Anglicans, Catholics, or

Presbyterians in Scotland, who were turned out of their court of

General Assembly.

After rejecting many topics which had occurred to him as possible

subjects for his life-long purpose to write a great Epic, Milton

returned to the inspiration of the Heavenly Muse, and settled

(1655-1667) on "Paradise Lost". He did wisely, for a human epic like

the others, the "Iliad," the "Odyssey," and all the Greek, Roman,

Italian, and French imitations of these, demands a pell-mell of human

characters, noble, treacherous, and humorous. In creating human

characters Milton had little skill, and, in "Paradise Lost" there are

but two, Adam and Eve. In Genesis they are extremely human, but Milton

had to make them at first perfect, and place them in a situation where

no other human beings ever were. For the rest, he had the magnificent

Satan, fallen through a pride and independence of character with which

the poet was in sympathy; while Belial and Abdiel are also, each in

his own way, heroic. The heavenly angels are less clearly marked and

discriminated.

In Athens, Milton would have rivalled Æschylus; with Euripides he does

not pair. He has the greatest of stages, the universe, chaos, heaven

and hell. His theme is the mystery of human fortunes; man, what he

might be, what he is. He uses a non-Biblical poetic legend, the war in

heaven, which had been treated, we saw, by an Anglo-Saxon poet, and has

a parallel in the mythology of the Kaitish, a savage tribe of Central

Australia. There too the great self-created Atnatu of the highest

heaven hurls his disobedient children down to earth. It was inevitable

that Satan, not Adam, should become the Hero, as Mephistopheles, not

Faust, is the hero of Goethe's play--is the interesting character.

Milton in his Puritan way describes himself as "Not sedulous by nature

to indite wars," hitherto "alone heroic deemed," while modest domestic

patience and heroic martyrdom are unsung, or as in the case of Jeanne

d'Arc, have proved too lofty a theme for any poet. But Milton being a

poet is subject to inevitable poetic limitations. The patience which

Eve displayed in everyday domestic life, after her expulsion from

Paradise, would not be a theme for the epic; and Milton "never stoops

his wing" when he sings of the Raising of the Banner of Satan, and "the

banner cry of Hell".

In the true spirit of epics, his poem ends with no clash of arms, no

blare of trumpets, but with "a dying fall";

They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way;

in such manner, too, ceases the "Iliad,"

Thus held they funeral for knightly Hector.