Sometimes his proud green waves in order set, The The poem on Dancing is said to have been written in fifteen days. It was published in 1596. Nosce Teipsum, or Poem on the Immortality of the Soul, bears the date (as appears from the dedication to the Queen) of 1602. The fame of these works introduced Sir John Davies to James I., who made him successively solicitor-general and attorney-general for Ireland. He was also a judge of assize, and was knighted by the king in 1607. The first Reports of Law Cases, published in Ireland, were made by this able and accomplished man, and his preface to the volume is considered the best that was ever prefixed to a law-book.' [Reasons for the Soul's Immortality.] Again, how can she but immortal be, When, with the motions of both will and wit, She still aspireth to eternity, And never rests till she attain to it? All moving things to other things do move Of the same kind, which shows their nature such ; Yet nature so her streams doth lead and carry At first her mother earth she holdeth dear, For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth, Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall, [The Dignity of Man.] Oh! what is man, great Maker of mankind! And are astonish'd when they view the same: JOHN DONNE. JOHN DONNE was born in London in 1573, of a Catholic family; through his mother he was related to Sir Thomas More and Heywood the epigrammatist. He was educated partly at Oxford and partly at Cambridge, and was designed for the law, but relinquished the study in his nineteenth year. About this period of his life, having carefully considered the controversies between the Catholics and Protestants, he became convinced that the latter were right, and became a member of the established church. The great abilities and amiable character of Donne were early distinguished. The Earl of Essex, the Lord Chancellor Egerton, and Sir Robert Drury, successively befriended and employed him ; and a saying of the second of these eminent persons respecting him is recorded by his biographers-that he was fitter to serve a king than a subject. He fell, nevertheless, into trouble, in consequence of secretly marrying the daughter of Sir George Moore, lord lieutenant of the Tower. This step kept him for several years in poverty, and by the death of his wife, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth child, he was plunged into the greatest grief. At the age of forty-two, Donne became a clergyman, and soon attaining distinction as a preacher, he was preferred by James I. to the deanery of St Paul's; in which benefice he continued till his death in 1631, when he was buried honourably in Westminster Abbey. The works of Donne consist of satires, elegies, religious poems, complimentary verses, and epigrams: they were first collected into one volume by Tonson in 1719. His reputation as a poet, great in his own day, low during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth centuries, has latterly in some degree revived. In its days of abasement, critics spoke of his harsh and rugged versification, and his leaving nature for conceit: Dryden even hints at the necessity of translating him into numbers and English. It seems to be now acknowledged that, amidst much rubbish, there is much real poetry, and that of a high order, in Donne. He is described by a recent critic as 'imbued to saturation with the learning of his age,' endowed with a most active and piercing intellect -an imagination, if not grasping and comprehensive, most subtle and far-darting-a fancy, rich, 10 vivid, and picturesque a mode of expression terse, simple, and condensed-and a wit admirable, as well for its caustic severity, as for its playful quickness -and as only wanting sufficient sensibility and taste to preserve him from the vices of style which seem Monumental Effigy of Dr Donne. to have beset him. Donne is usually considered as the first of a series of poets of the seventeenth century, who, under the name of the Metaphysical Poets, fill a conspicuous place in English literary history. The directness of thought, the naturalness of description, the rich abundance of genuine poetical feeling and imagery, which distinguish the poets of Elizabeth's reign, now begin to give way to cold and forced conceits, mere vain workings of the intellect, a kind of poetry as unlike the former as punning is unlike genuine wit. To give an idea of these conceits-Donne writes a poem on a familiar popular subject, a broken heart. Here he does not advert to the miseries or distractions which are presumed to be the causes of broken hearts, but starts off into a play of conceit upon the phrase. He entered a room, he says, where his mistress was present, and love, alas! At one first blow did shiver it [his heart] as glass. Then, forcing on his mind to discover by what means the idea of a heart broken to pieces, like glass, can be turned to account in making out something that will gingle on the reader's imagination, he proceeds thus: Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Those pieces still, though they do not unite: A hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, There is here, certainly, analogy, but then it is an analogy which altogether fails to please or move : it is a mere conceit. Perhaps we should not be far from the truth, if we were to represent this style as the natural symptoms of the decline of the brilliant school of Sackville, Spenser, and Shakspeare. All the recognised modes, subjects, and phrases of poetry, introduced by them and their contemporaries, were now in some degree exhausted, and it was necessary to seek for something new. This was found, not in a new vein of equally rich ore, but in a continuation of the workings through adjoining veins of spurious metal. It is at the same time to be borne in mind, that the quality above described did not characterise the whole of the writings of Donne and his followers. These men are often direct, natural, and truly poetical-in spite, as it were, of themselves. Donne, it may be here stated, is usually considered as the first writer of that kind of satire which Pope and Churchill carried to such perfection. But his satires, to use the words of a writer already quoted, are rough and rugged as the unhewn stones that have just been blasted from the quarry. The specimens which follow are designed only to exemplify the merits of Donne, not his defects: Address to Bishop Valentine, on the day of the marriage And all the chirping choristers And other birds are thy parishioners : Thou marryest, every year, The lyric lark and the grave whispering dove; The sparrow that neglects his life for love, Valediction-Forbidding Mourning. As virtuous men pass mildly away, Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; 1 That is, absence. And though it in the centre sit, Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, By making me serve her who had twenty more, before. My constancy I to the planets give; My truth to them who at the court do live; To Jesuits; to Buffoons my pensiveness; Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me My faith I give to Roman Catholics; Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity. I give my reputation to those Which were my friends; mine industry to foes; My sickness to physicians, or excess; To Nature all that I in rhyme have writ! And to my company my wit: Thou, Love, by making me adore Her who begot this love in me before, Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies- Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been See it plain rash awhile, then not at all. The thing hath travell'd, and saith, speaks all tongues; To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood.' To teach by painting drunkards doth not last Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but No more can prince's courts (though there be few restore. To him for whom the passing bell next tolls I give my physic books; my written rolls Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give; My brazen medals, unto them which live In want of bread; to them which pass among All foreigners, my English tongue: Thou, Love, by making me love one For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion. Than a sun-dial in a grave. Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me Better pictures of vice) teach me virtue.' He, like a high-stretch'd lutestring, squeak'd, 'O, Sir, Of all our Harrys and our Edwards talk, He smack'd and cry'd- He's base, mechanic, coarse, To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullenness three. [A Character from Donne's Satires.] A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun He to another key his style doth dress, When the queen frown'd or smil'd, and he knows what He knows who hath sold his land, and now doth beg JOSEPH HALL JOSEPH HALL, born at Bristow Park, in Leicestershire, in 1574, and who rose through various church preferments to be bishop of Norwich, is more distinguished as a prose writer than as a poet: he is, however, allowed to have been the first to write satirical verse with any degree of elegance. His satires, which were published under the title of Virgidemiarum, in 1597-9, refer to general objects, and present some just pictures of the more remarkable anomalies in human character: they are also written in a style of greater polish and volubility than most of the compositions of this age. Bishop Hall, of whom a more particular notice is given elsewhere, died in 1656, at the age of eighty-two. [Selections from Hall's Satires.] A gentle squire would gladly entertain Third, that he never change his trencher twice. Seest thou how gaily my young master goes,* Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host. *This is the portrait of a poor gallant of the days of Elizabeth. In St Paul's Cathedral, then an open public place, there was a tomb erroneously supposed to be that of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which was the resort of gentlemen upon town in that day, who had occasion to look out for a dinner. When unsuccessful in getting an invitation, they were said to dine with Duke Humphrey. An allusion to the church service to be heard near Duke Humphrey's tomb. So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt, BEN JONSON. In 1616, BEN JONSON collected the plays he had then written, and published them in one volume, folio, adding, at the same time, a book of epigrams, and a number of poems, which he entitled The Forest, and The Underwood. The whole were comprised in one folio volume, which Jonson dignified with the title of his Works, a circumstance which exposed him to the ridicule of some of his contemporaries.* It is only with the minor poetry of Jonson that we have to deal at present, as the dramatic productions of this stern old master of the manly school of English comedy will be afterwards described. There is much delicacy of fancy, fine feeling, and sentiment, in some of Jonson's lyrical and descriptive effusions. He grafted a classic grace and musical expression on parts of his masques and interludes, which could hardly have been expected from his massive and ponderous hand. In some of his songs he equals Carew and Herrick in picturesque images, and in portraying the fascinations of love. A taste for nature is strongly displayed in his fine lines on Penshurst, that ancient seat of the Sidneys. It has been justly remarked by one of his critics, that Jonson's dramas do not lead us to value highly enough his admirable taste and feeling in poetry; and when we consider how many other intellectual excellences distinguished him-wit, observation, judgment, memory, learning-we must acknowledge that the inscription on his tomb, “O rare Ben Jonson !" is not more pithy than it is true.' 1 Long, or low. * An epigram addressed to him on the subject is as follows: Pray tell us, Ben, where does the mystery lurk, What others call a play you call a work? On behalf of Jonson an answer was returned, which seems to glance at the labour which Jonson bestowed on all his produc tions The author's friend thus for the author says- To Celia. [From The Forest."] Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I'll not look for wine. The thirst, that from the soul doth rise, But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I sent thee late a rosy wreath, But thou thereon didst only breathe, Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, The Sweet Neglect. [From The Silent Woman."] Still to be neat, still to be drest, Though art's hid causes are not found, They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. Hymn to Diana. [From Cynthia's Revels."] Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, State in wonted manner keep. Earth, let not thy envious shade Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal shining quiver: Give unto the flying hart, Space to breathe, how short soever; Thou that mak'st a day of night, Goddess excellently bright! To Night. [From The Vision of Delight."] Break, Phantasy, from thy cave of cloud, And various shapes of things; It must have blood, and nought of phlegm ; To all the senses here, And fall like sleep upon their eyes, Song. [From The Forest.'] Oh do not wanton with those eyes, Oh be not angry with those fires, For then my hopes will spill me. Nor spread them as distraught with fears; Mine own enough betray me. To Celia. [From the same.] Kiss me, sweet! the wary lover When youths ply their stol'n delights; Her Triumph. See the chariot at hand here of love, And enamour'd do wish, so they might That they still were to run by her side, Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. Do but look on her eyes, they do light Do but look on her, she is bright Do but mark, her forehead's smoother As alone there triumphs to the life Before rude hands have touch'd it? Or have smell'd of the bud o' the brier? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? |