COWLEY, BUTLER, AND WALTON.
Cowley and Milton. Cowley's Life and Works. His Fame. Butler's Career.
Hudibras. His Poverty and Death. Izaak Walton. The Angler; and Lives.
Other Writers.
COWLEY AND MILTON.
In contrast with Milton, in his own age, both in political tenets and in
the character of his poetry, stood Cowley, the poetical champion of the
party of king and cavaliers during the civil war. Historically he belongs
to two periods--antecedent and consequent--that of the rebellion itself,
and that of the Restoration: the latter was a reaction from the former, in
which the masses changed their opinions, in which the Puritan leaders were
silenced, and in which the constant and consistent Cavaliers had their day
of triumph. Both parties, however, modified their views somewhat after the
whirlwind of excitement had swept by, and both deprecated the extreme
violence of their former actions. This is cleverly set forth in a charming
paper of Lord Macaulay, entitled _Cowley and Milton_. It purports to be
the report of a pleasant colloquy between the two in the spring of 1665,
"set down by a gentleman of the Middle Temple." Their principles are
courteously expressed, in a retrospective view of the great rebellion.
COWLEY'S LIFE AND WORKS.--Abraham Cowley, the posthumous son of a grocer,
was born in London, in the year 1618. He is said to have been so
precocious that he read Spenser with pleasure when he was twelve years
old; and he published a volume of poems, entitled "Poetical Blossoms,"
before he was fifteen. After a preliminary education at Westminster
school, he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1636, and while
there he published, in 1638, two comedies, one in English, entitled
_Love's Riddle_, and one in Latin, _Naufragium Joculare, or, The Merry
Shipwreck_.
When the troubles which culminated in the civil war began to convulse
England, Cowley, who was a strong adherent of the king, was compelled to
leave Cambridge; and we find him, when the war had fairly opened, at
Oxford, where he was well received by the Royal party, in 1643. He
vindicated the justice of this reception by publishing in that year a
satire called _Puritan and Papist_. Upon the retirement of the queen to
Paris, he was one of her suite, and as secretary to Viscount St. Albans he
conducted the correspondence in cipher between the queen and her
unfortunate husband.
He remained abroad during the civil war and the protectorate, returning
with Charles II. in 1660. "The Blessed Restoration" he celebrated in an
ode with that title, and would seem to have thus established a claim to
the king's gratitude and bounty. But he was mistaken. Perhaps this led him
to write a comedy, entitled _The Cutter of Coleman Street_, in which he
severely censured the license and debaucheries of the court: this made the
arch-debauchee, the king himself, cold toward the poet, who at once issued
_A Complaint_; but neither satire nor complaint helped him to the desired
preferment. He quitted London a disappointed man, and retired to the
country, where he died on the 28th of July, 1667.
His poems bear the impress of the age in a remarkable degree. His
_Mistress, or, Love Verses_, and his other Anacreontics or paraphrases of
Anacreon's odes, were eminently to the taste of the luxurious and immoral
court of Charles II. His _Davideis_ is an heroic poem on the troubles of
King David.
His _Poem on the Late Civil War_, which was not published until 1679,
twelve years after his death, is written in the interests of the monarchy.
His varied learning gave a wide range to his pen. In 1661 appeared his
_Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy_, which was
followed in the next year by _Two Books of Plants_, which he increased to
six books afterward--devoting two to herbs, two to flowers, and two to
trees. If he does not appear in them to be profound in botanical
researches, it was justly said by Dr. Johnson that in his mind "botany
turned into poetry."
His prose pen was as ready, versatile, and charming as his poetic pencil.
He produced discourses or essays on commonplace topics of general
interest, such as _myself; the shortness of life; the uncertainty of
riches; the danger of procrastination_, etc. These are well written, in
easy-flowing language, evincing his poetic nature, and many of them are
more truly poetic than his metrical pieces.
HIS FAME.--Cowley had all his good things in his lifetime; he was the most
popular poet in England, and is the best illustration of the literary
taste of his age. His poetry is like water rippling in the sunlight,
brilliant but dazzling and painful: it bewilders with far-fetched and
witty conceits: varied but full of art, there is little of nature or real
passion to be found even in his amatory verses. He suited the taste of a
court which preferred an epigram to a proverb, and a repartee to an
apothegm; and, as a consequence, with the growth of a better culture and a
better taste, he has steadily declined in favor, so that at the present
day he is scarcely read at all. Two authoritative opinions mark the
history of this decline: Milton, in his own day, placed him with Spenser
and Shakspeare as one of the three greatest English poets; while Pope, not
much more than half a century later, asks:
Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit.
Still later, Dr. Johnson gives him the credit of having been the first to
master the Pindaric ode in English; while Cowper expresses, in his Task,
regret that his "splendid wit" should have been
Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.
But if he is neglected in the present day as a household poet, he stands
prominently forth to the literary student as an historic personage of no
mean rank, a type and representative of his age, country, and social
conditions.
SAMUEL BUTLER.
BUTLER'S CAREER.--The author of Hudibras, a satirical poem which may as
justly be called a comic history of England as any of those written in
prose in more modern times, was born in Worcestershire, on the 8th of
February, 1612. The son of poor parents, he received his education at a
grammar school. Some, who have desired to magnify his learning, have said
that he was for a time a student at Cambridge; but the chronicler Aubrey,
who knew him well, denies this. He was learned, but this was due to the
ardor with which he pursued his studies, when he was clerk to Mr.
Jeffreys, an eminent justice of the peace, and as an inmate of the mansion
of the Countess of Kent, in whose fine library he was associated with the
accomplished Selden.
We next find him domiciled with Sir Samuel Luke, a Presbyterian and a
parliamentary soldier, in whose household he saw and noted those
characteristics of the Puritans which he afterward ridiculed so severely
in his great poem, a poem which he was quietly engaged in writing during
the protectorate of Cromwell, in hope of the coming of a day when it could
be issued to the world.
This hope was fulfilled by the Restoration. In the new order he was
appointed secretary to the Earl of Carbery, and steward of Ludlow Castle;
and he also increased his frugal fortunes by marrying a widow, Mrs.
Herbert, whose means, however, were soon lost by bad investments.
HUDIBRAS.--The only work of merit which Butler produced was _Hudibras_.
This was published in three parts: the first appeared in 1663, the second
in 1664, and the third not until 1678. Even then it was left unfinished;
but as the interest in the third part seems to flag, it is probable that
the author did not intend to complete it. His death, two years later,
however, settled the question.
The general idea of the poem is taken from Don Quixote. As in that
immortal work, there are two heroes. Sir Hudibras, corresponding to the
Don, is a Presbyterian justice of the peace, whose features are said to
have been copied from those of the poet's former employer, Sir Samuel
Luke. For this, Butler has been accused of ingratitude, but the nature of
their connection does not seem to have been such as to warrant the charge.
Ralph the squire, the humble Sancho of the poem, is a cross-grained
dogmatic Independent.
These two the poet sends forth, as a knight-errant with a squire, to
correct existing abuses of all kinds--political, religious, and
scientific. The plot is rambling and disconnected, but the author
contrives to go over the whole ground of English history in his inimitable
burlesque. Unlike Cervantes, who makes his reader always sympathize with
his foolish heroes, Butler brings his knight and squire into supreme
contempt; he lashes the two hundred religious sects of the day, and
attacks with matchless ridicule all the Puritan positions. The poem is
directly historical in its statement of events, tenets, and factions, and
in its protracted religious discussions: it is indirectly historical in
that it shows how this ridicule of the Puritans, only four years after the
death of Cromwell, delighted the merry monarch and his vicious court, and
was greatly acceptable to the large majority of the English people. This
fact marks the suddenness of the historic change from the influence of
Puritanism to that of the restored Stuarts.
Hudibras is written in octosyllabic verse, frequently not rising above
doggerel: it is full of verbal "quips and cranks and wanton wiles:" in
parts it is eminently epigrammatic, and many of its happiest couplets seem
to have been dashed off without effort. Walpole calls Butler "the Hogarth
of poetry;" and we know that Hogarth illustrated Hudibras. The comparison
is not inapt, but the pictorial element in Hudibras is not its best claim
to our praise. This is found in its string of proverbs and maxims
elucidating human nature, and set forth in such terse language that we are
inclined to use them thus in preference to any other form of expression.
Hudibras is the very prince of _burlesques_; it stands alone of its kind,
and still retains its popularity. Although there is much that belongs to
the age, and much that is of only local interest, it is still read to find
apt quotations, of which not a few have become hackneyed by constant use.
With these, pages might be filled; all readers will recognize the
following:
He speaks of the knight thus:
On either side he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute:
* * * * *
For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth but out there flew a trope.
Again: he refers, in speaking of religious characters, to
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun,
And prove their doctrine orthodox,
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Compound for sins they are inclined to
By damning those they have no mind to.
Few persons of the present generation have patience to read Hudibras
through. Allibone says "it is a work to be studied once and gleaned
occasionally." Most are content to glean frequently, and not to study at
all.
HIS POVERTY AND DEATH.--Butler lived in great poverty, being neglected by
a monarch and a court for whose amusement he had done so much. They
laughed at the jester, and let him starve. Indeed, he seems to have had
few friends; and this is accounted for quaintly by Aubrey, who says:
"Satirical wits disoblige whom they converse with, and consequently make
to themselves many enemies, and few friends; and this was his manner and
case."
The best known of his works, after Hudibras, is the _Elephant in the
Moon_, a satire on the Royal Society.
It is significant of the popularity of Hudibras, that numerous imitations
of it have been written from his day to ours.
Butler died on the 25th of September, 1680. Sixty years after, the hand of
private friendship erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. The
friend was John Barber, Lord Mayor of London, whose object is thus stated:
"That he who was destitute of all things when alive, might not want a
monument when he was dead." Upon the occasion of erecting this, Samuel
Wesley wrote:
While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,
No generous patron would a dinner give;
See him, when starved to death and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust.
The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,
He asked for bread, and he received a stone.
To his own age he was the prince of jesters; to English literature he has
given its best illustration of the burlesque in rhetoric. To the reader of
the present day he presents rare historical pictures of his day, of far
greater value than his wit or his burlesque.
IZAAK WALTON.
If men are to be measured by their permanent popularity, Walton deserves
an enthusiastic mention in literary annals, not for the greatness of his
achievements, but for his having touched a chord in the human heart which
still vibrates without hint of cessation wherever English is spoken.
Izaak Walton was born at Stafford, on the 9th of August, 1593. In his
earlier life he was a linen-draper, but he had made enough for his frugal
wants by his shop to enable him to retire from business in 1643, and then
he quietly assumed a position as _pontifex piscatorum_. His fishing-rod
was a sceptre which he swayed unrivalled for forty years. He gathered
about him in his house and on the borders of fishing streams an admiring
and congenial circle, principally of the clergy, who felt it a privilege
to honor the retired linen-draper. There must have been a peculiar charm,
a personal magnetism about him, which has also imbued his works. His first
wife was Rachel Floud, a descendant of the ill-fated Cranmer; and his
second was Anne Ken, the half-sister of the saintly Bishop Ken. Whatever
may have been his deficiencies of early education, he was so constant and
varied a reader that he made amends for these.
THE COMPLETE ANGLER.--His first and most popular work was _The Complete
Angler, or, The Contemplative Man's Recreation_. It has been the delight
of all sorts of people since, and has gone through more than forty
respectable editions in England, besides many in America. Many of these
editions are splendidly illustrated and sumptuous. The dialogues are
pleasant and natural, and his enthusiasm for the art of angling is quite
contagious.
HIS LIVES.--Nor is Walton less esteemed by a smaller but more appreciative
circle for his beautiful and finished biographies or _Lives_ of Dr.
Donne, Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Bishop Robert
Sanderson.
Here Walton has bestowed and received fame: the simple but exquisite
portraitures of these holy and worthy men have made them familiar to
posterity; and they, in turn, by the virtues which Walton's pen has made
manifest, have given distinction to the hand which portrayed them.
Walton's good life was lengthened out to fourscore and ten. He died at the
residence of his son-in-law, the Reverend William Hawkins, prebendary of
Winchester Cathedral, in 1683. Bishop Jebb has judiciously said of his
_Lives_: "They not only do ample justice to individual piety and learning,
but throw a mild and cheerful light upon the manners of an interesting
age, as well as upon the venerable features of our mother Church." Less,
however, than any of his contemporaries can Walton be appreciated by a
sketch of the man: his works must be read, and their spirit imbibed, in
order to know his worth.
OTHER WRITERS OF THE AGE.
George Wither, born in Hampshire, June 11, 1588, died May 2, 1667: he was
a voluminous and versatile writer. His chief work is _The Shepherd's
Hunting_, which, with beautiful descriptions of rural life, abounds in
those strained efforts at wit and curious conceits, which were acceptable
to the age, but which have lost their charm in a more sensible and
philosophic age. Wither was a Parliament man, and was imprisoned and
ill-treated after the Restoration. He, and most of those who follow, were
classed by Dr. Johnson as _metaphysical poets_.
Francis Quarles, 1592-1644: he was a Royalist, but belongs to the literary
school of Withers. He is best known by his collection of moral and
religious poems, called _Divine Emblems_, which were accompanied with
quaint engraved illustrations. These allegories are full of unnatural
conceits, and are many of them borrowed from an older source. He was
immensely popular as a poet in his own day, and there was truth in the
statement of Horace Walpole, that "Milton was forced to wait till the
world had done admiring Quarles."
George Herbert, 1593-1632: a man of birth and station, Herbert entered the
Church, and as the incumbent of the living at Bemerton, he illustrated in
his own piety and devotion "the beauty of holiness." Conscientious and
self-denying in his parish work, he found time to give forth those devout
breathings which in harmony of expression, fervor of piety, and simplicity
of thought, have been a goodly heritage to the Church ever since, while
they still retain some of those "poetical surprises" which mark the
literary taste of the age. His principal work is _The Temple, or, Sacred
Poems and Private Ejaculations_. The short lyrics which form the stones of
this temple are upon the rites and ceremonies of the Church and other
sacred subjects: many of them are still in great favor, and will always
be. In his portraiture of the _Good Parson_, he paints himself. He
magnifies the office, and he fulfilled all the requirements he has laid
down.
Robert Herrick, 1591-1674: like Herbert, Herrick was a clergyman, but,
unlike Herbert, he was not a holy man. He wrote Anacreontic poems, full of
wine and love, and appears to us like a reveller masking in a surplice.
Being a cavalier in sentiment, he was ejected from his vicarage in 1648,
and went to London, where he assumed the lay habit. In 1647 he published
_Hesperides_, a collection of small poems of great lyric beauty,
Anacreontic, pastoral, and amatory, but containing much that is coarse and
indelicate. In 1648 he in part atoned for these by publishing his _Noble
Numbers_, a collection of pious pieces, in the beginning of which he asks
God's forgiveness for his "unbaptized rhymes," "writ in my wild,
unhallowed times." The best comment upon his works may be found in the
words of a reviewer: "Herrick trifled in this way solely in compliment to
the age; whenever he wrote to please himself, he wrote from the heart to
the heart." His _Litanie_ is a noble and beautiful penitential petition.
Sir John Suckling, 1609-1641: a writer of love songs. That by which he is
most favorably known is his exquisite _Ballad upon a Wedding_. He was a
man of versatile talents; an officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, and
a captain of horse in the army of Charles I. He wrote several plays, of
which the best are _Aglaura_ and _The Discontented Colonel_. While
evidently tinctured by the spirit of the age, he exceeded his
contemporaries in the purity of his style and manliness of his expression.
His wit is not so forced as theirs.
Edmund Waller, 1605-1687: he was a cousin of John Hampden. By great care
and adroitness he seems to have trimmed between the two parties in the
civil war, but was suspected by both. His poetry was like himself,
artificial and designed to please, but has little depth of sentiment. Like
other poets, he praised Cromwell in 1654 in _A Panegyric_, and welcomed
Charles II. in 1660, upon _His Majesty's Happy Return_. His greatest
benefaction to English poetry was in refining its language and harmonizing
its versification. He has all the conceits and strained wit of the
metaphysical school.
Sir William Davenant, 1605-1668: he was the son of a vintner, but
sometimes claimed to be the natural son of Shakspeare, who was intimate
with his father and mother. An ardent Loyalist, he was imprisoned at the
beginning of the civil war, but escaped to France. He is best known by his
heroic poem _Gondibert_, founded upon the reign of King Aribert of
Lombardy, in the seventh century. The French taste which he brought back
from his exile, is shown in his own dramas, and in his efforts to restore
the theatre at the Restoration. His best plays are the _Cruel Brother_ and
_The Law against Lovers_. He was knighted by Charles I., and succeeded Ben
Jonson as poet laureate. On his monument in Westminster Abbey are these
words: "O rare Sir William Davenant."
Charles Cotton, 1630-1687: he was a wit and a poet, and is best known as
the friend of Izaak Walton. He made an addition to _Walton's Complete
Angler_, which is found in all the later editions. The companion of Walton
in his fishing excursions on the river Dove, Cotton addressed many of his
poems to his "Adopted Father." He made travesties upon Virgil and Lucian,
which are characterized by great licentiousness; and wrote a gossiping and
humorous _Voyage to Ireland_.
Henry Vaughan, 1614-1695: he was called the _Silurist_, from his residence
in Wales, the country of the Silures. He is favorably known by the _Silex
Scintillans, or, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations_. With a rigid
religious tone, he has all the attempt at rhetorical effect which mark the
metaphysical school, but his language is harsher and more rugged. He has
more heart than most of his colleagues, and extracts of great terseness
and beauty are still made from his poems. He reproves the corruptions of
the age, and while acknowledging an indebtedness, he gives us a clue to
his inspiration: "The first, that with any effectual success attempted a
diversion of this foul and overflowing stream, was that blessed man, Mr.
George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of
whom I am the least."
The Earl of Clarendon, 1608-1674: Edward Hyde, afterward the Earl of
Clarendon, played a conspicuous part in the history of England during his
life, and also wrote a history of that period, which, although in the
interests of the king's party, is an invaluable key to a knowledge of
English life during the rebellion and just after the Restoration. A
member of parliament in 1640, he rose rapidly in favor with the king, and
was knighted in 1643. He left England in charge of the Prince of Wales in
1646, and at once began his History of the Great Rebellion, which was to
occupy him for many years before its completion. After the death of
Charles I., he was the companion of his son's exile, and often without
means for himself and his royal master, he was chancellor of the
exchequer. At the Restoration in 1660, Sir Edward Hyde was created Earl of
Clarendon, and entered upon the real duties of his office. He retained his
place for seven years, but became disagreeable to Charles as a troublesome
monitor, and at the same time incurred the hatred of the people. In 1667
he was accused of high treason, and made his escape to France. Neglected
by his master, ignored by the French monarch, he wandered about in France,
from time to time petitioning his king to permit him to return and die in
England, but without success. Seven years of exile, which he reminded the
king "was a time prescribed and limited by God himself for the expiation
of some of his greatest judgments," passed by, and the ex-chancellor died
at Rouen. He had begun his history in exile as the faithful servant of a
dethroned prince; he ended it in exile, as the cast-off servant of an
ungrateful monarch. As a writer of contemporary history, Clarendon has
given us the form and color of the time. The book is in title and handling
a Royalist history. Its faults are manifest: first those of partisanship;
and secondly, those which spring from his absence, so that much of the
work was written without an observant knowledge. His delineation of
character is wonderful: the men of the times are more pictorially
displayed than in the portraits of Van Dyk. The style is somewhat too
pompous, being more that of the orator than of the historian, and
containing long and parenthetic periods. Sir Walter Scott says: "His
characters may match those of the ancient historians, and one thinks he
would know the very men if he were to meet them in society." Macaulay
concedes to him a strong sense of moral and religious obligation, a
sincere reverence for the laws of his country, and a conscientious regard
for the honor and interests of the crown; but adds that "his temper was
sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition." No one can rightly
understand the great rebellion without reading Clarendon's history of it.