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UNIVERSITY EXTENSION MANUALS
EDITED BY PROFESSOR KNIGHT
THE JACOBEAN POETS
GENERAL ELAN OF THE SERIES.
This Series is primarily designed to aid the University Extension
Movement throughout Great Britain and America, and to supply
ihe need so widely felt by students, of Text-books for study and
reference, in connection with the authorized Courses of Lectures.
Volumes dealing with separate sections of Literature, Science,
Philosophy, History, and Art have beeii assigned to representative
literary men, to University Professors, or to Extension Lecturers
connected with Oxford, Cambridge, London, and the Universities of
Scotland and Ireland.
The l\Ianuals are not intended for purposes of Elementary Educa-
tion, but for Students who have made some advance in the subjects
dealt with. Tlie statement of details is meant to illustrate the
working of general laws, and the development of principles ; while
ihe historical evolution of the subject dealt with is kept in view,
along with its philosophical significance.
The remarkable success which has attended University Extension
in Britain has been partly due to the combination of scientific treat-
ment with popularity, and to the union of simplicity with thorough-
ness. This movement, however, can only reach those resident in the
larger centres of population, while all over the country there are
thoughtful persons who desire the same kind of teaching. It is for
them also that this Series is designed. Its aim is to supply the
general reader with the same kind of teaching as is given in the
Lectures, and to reflect the spirit which has characterized the move-
ment, viz. the combination of principles with facts, and of methods
with results.
The Manuals are also intended to be contributions to the Literature
of the Subjects with which they 7-espectively deal, quite apart from
University Extension ; arid some of them will be found to meet a
general rather than a special want.
The
Jacobean Poets
By EDMUND GOSSE
HON. M.A. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1899
LONDON :
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
UBRAUY
^^ . ^^^^f SIT^ OF CAUFORNIA^
V ^ feAiMA iiARBAKA
PREFACE.
In this volume, for the first time, an attempt has been
made to concentrate attention on what was produced in
English poetry during the reign of James I., that is to
say, during twenty-two years of the opening of the
seventeenth century.
It is hoped that a certain freshness may be gained
by approaching the subject from this empirical point
of view, rather than, as hitherto has been the custom, by
including the poets of James, and even of Charles, under
the vague and conventional heading of " Elizabethan."
It would not be wise, doubtless, to make a general habit
of regarding literary history through artificial barriers
of this kind; but for once, and in dealing with a
fragment of such a hackneyed period, it is hoped that
it may be found beneficial. The unparalleled wealth
of English poetry during the reign of James I. will
certainly strike the student, and in many cases he may
be surprised to find that " Elizabethans " of the hand-
vi Preface.
books had not emerged from childhood, or published a
single copy of verses, when Elizabeth resigned the seat
of kings to her cousin of Scotland.
This litUe volume, then, is an attempt to direct critical
attention to all that was notable in English poetry from
1603 to 1625. The scope of the work has made it
possible to introduce the names of many writers Avho are
now for the first time chronicled in a work of this nature.
The author believes the copious use of dates to be indis-
pensable to the rapid and intelligent comprehension of
literary history, and he has forced himself to supply as
many as possible ; the student will, however, not need
to be reminded that in the dramatic chapters these must
in large measure be regarded as conjectural. When we
consider the vagueness of knowledge regarding the detail
of Jacobean drama even a generation ago, it is surprising
that scholarship has attained such a measure of exacti-
tude, yet the discovery of a bundle of papers might at
any moment disturb the ingenious constructions of our
theoretical historians.
In selecting illustrative passages for quotation, the
aim has been to find unfamiliar beauties rather than
to reprint for the thousandth time what is familiar in
every anthology.
E. G.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface ... ... ... ... ... v
I. The Last Elizabethans ... ... ... i
II. Ben Jonson — Chapman ... ... ... 23
III. John Donne ... ... ... ... 47
IV. Beaumont and Fletcher ... ... ... 68
V. Campion — Drayton — Drummond — Sir John
Beaumont ... ... ... ... 89
VI. HEYWOOD — MiDDLETON — ROWLEV ... ... Il6
VII. Giles and Phineas Fletcher — Browne ... 137
VIII. Tourneur — Webster — Day — Daborne ... 159
IX. Wither — Quarles — Lord Brooke ... ... 181
X. Philip Massinger ... ... ... 202
Index ... ... ... ... ... 219
THE JACOBEAN POETS.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAST ELIZABETHANS.
Queen Elizabeth died on the 24th of March, 1603,
and was conducted to the grave by the poets with in-
numerable " mournful ditties to a pleasant new tune," as
one of the frankest of the rhymsters admitted. There were
"elegies" and "lamentations," '■'■liictus" and ^'t/ire?iodia"
at the disappearance from so large a scene of so dread
a sovereign ; and then, with the customary promptitude,
there succeeded " panegyricks," and "congratulations,"
and " welcomes," and " wedding garments " addressed
by humble eager versifiers to *' serenissimum at poten-
tissium Jacobum beatissimse Ehzabethce legitime et
auspicatissime succedentem," Before we consider what
poetry was to be throughout the reign of the Scottisla
monarch so radiantly conducted to the throne of England,
we may glance at what poetry had ceased to be by the
time his predecessor died.
B
2 The Jacobean Poets. [Cn. l.
There is a danger which, of course, must be faced
and admitted, in our recognizing a hard-and-fast line of
demarcation between one epoch and another. Eliza-
bethan faded silently into Jacobean, and no curtain
descended in 1603 which divided the earlier age from
the later. But we may with safety assert that certain
general features marked English poetry under the one
monarch, and did not mark it under the other. To
compare selected passages is notoriously unjust; but
without special unfairness it may be advanced that such a
stanza as the following is characteristically Elizabethan —
Hark ! hark ! with what a pretty throat
Poor robin-redbreast tunes his note ;
Hark ! how the jolly cuckoos sing,
Cuckoo ! to welcome in the spring ;
and this no less characteristically Jacobean —
Who ever smelt the breath of morning flowers,
New-sweeten'd with the dash of twilight showers.
Of pounded amber, or the flowering thyme,
Or purple violets in their proudest prime,
Or swelling clusters from the cypress-tree ?
So sweet's my love, aye, far more sweet is he,
So fair, so sweet, that heaven's bright eye is dim,
And flowers have no scent, compar'd with him.
Of the two writers from whom quotation is here made,
the later possessed the stronger genius, but in straight-
forwardness and simplicity the former has the advantage.
What were lost were the clear morning note, the serenity
the coolness, and sober sweetness of poets who had no
rivals in the immediate past. What were gained were
passion, depth of thought, a certain literary cleverness
(which was in itself a snare), and a closer pertinence to
Cii. I.] The Last Elizabethans, 3
passing events. Bohemia lost its seaports, the reahiis
of the Fairy Queen disappeared, when James I. came to
the throne. His subjects knew more than their fathers
had done, spoke out more boldly, were more boisterous
and demonstrative. Romance ceased to rule their day,
and in its place a certain realism came to the front. In
poetry, that tended to become turbid which had been so
transparent, and that conscious and artificial which had
been so natural and unaffected. Erudition became more
and more a feature of poetry, and the appeal to primitive
observations and emotions less piquant than references
to the extraordinary, the violent, and even the unwhole-
some. In this way, even in work of the magnificent first
decade of James I., we can see the sprouting of those
seeds which were to make a wilderness of poetry thirty
or forty years later. It will be desirable to examine as
closely as we can the aspects of the two schools of verse
at the arbitrary moment which we have chosen for the
opening date of this inquiry.
The mere knife-cut of a political event across the
texture of literature is not often of much use to those
who study literary history. But, as a matter of fact, the
year 1603 forms a more convenient point at which to
pass into a new condition of things than almost any
other neighbouring year would form. It is impossible,
of course, to pretend that a distinct line can be drawn
between EHzabethan and Jacobean poetry; but it is a
fact that while certain influences had by that year almost
ceased to act, other influences began, about that same
year, to make themselves felt. Before entering upon the
discussion of purely Jacobean verse, that is to say, of
4 Tlic Jacobean Poets. [Cii. I.
the verse produced during the reign of James I., it will
be well to glance at what had been characteristic of
Elizabeth's reign, and had ceased to exist before the time
of her death.
In the first place, the primitive poetry which had
flourished at the beginning of her reign was all wasted
and gone. It had scarcely left behind it a trace of its
transitory charm. It had given way to firmer and more
brilliant kinds of writing. Three of its proficients lived
on, in extreme old age, into the reign of James. Of
these one was the venerable Bishop of Bath and Wells,
John Still (1543-1607), who, more than half a century
earlier, had opened the dance of English drama, with his
"right pithy, pleasant, and merry comedy entitled.
Gammer Gurtoiis Needled Another was William Warner
(1558-1609), whose extremely popular Albion's EnglanJ,
a rambling historical poem, first published nearly twenty
years earlier, was still in good repute among the lower
classes, and frequently reprinted. The third was " old
hoarse Palamon" of Spenser's Colin Cloiif, Thomas
Churchyard (i52o?-i6o4), now at the very extremity of
his enormous life, but still pouring forth his doggerel
publications, three of which celebrated events of the new
reign. But all this primitive verse was utterly out of
fashion among educated people.
The first clear running of the pure pastoral sweetness
had also ceased. • The deaths of Sidney and of Spenser,
before the sixteenth century had ended, had brought this
beautiful and genuinely Elizabethan poetry to a close.
In all of that body of verse, the imitation of ancient
work, conducted through a bright romantic medium, by
Ch. I.] The Last Elizabethans. 5
men who had before them the task of moulding the ■
language, as well as enlivening the imaginations of their
readers, had led to the creation of something very lucent,
fresh and delicate. The light of daybreak was over this
unsullied and almost boyish pastoral poetry. It was,
above all, chivalrous and impassioned, full of the pride
and glory of the times, a little artificial, a little strained
and unnatural, but crude and brilliant with the unchecked
iire and colour of adolescence. With the removal of its
two great pioneers, this school of poetry was bound to
decline. But the accidents which led to its entire dis-
appearance before James ascended the throne are curious.
The dramatists whose lyrics are of this class will presently
be referred to. But Lyly must be mentioned here as
the most pastoral, the most affectedly limpid of them all ;
he was still alive, but completely silent, and soon, in
1606, to die. Sir Edward Dyer (i55o?-i6o7) was in
the same plight, and so was the " Ambrosiac Muse " of
Henry Constable (1562-1613). In Watson had long
ago passed away a talent still more trivial, ingenious, and
innocent. All those writers were wholly unlike the
coarser, opaquer and profounder Jacobeans, The only
link between these men and the latter Spenserians, of
whom we shall have much to say in a subsequent
chapter, was the morbid and Italianized Richard Barn-
field (15 7 4-1 6 2 7), who, though he outlived James, wrote
no verse after the death of Elizabeth.
Less easy to define, as an element closed up within
the reign of Elizabeth, was the first plaintive fervour of
religious poetry, Catholic or high-church. The reign of
Elizabeth had not been, as that of her successor was
6 TJie Jacobean Poets. [di. I.
ultimately to be, rich in fine, devotional verse. But it
had produced the martyr Robert Southwell (1562-1595),
whose vivid and emotional canzonets and hymns had
introduced a new element into English literature, an
element not to be taken up again until nearly twenty
years after his death at Tyburn, but from that time
onward to be carried on and up till it culminated in the
raptures of Crashaw.
The first outburst of simple lyrical writing, too, had
come to an end. After the reign of Elizabeth, there was
no longer a bird singing lustily and sweetly in every
pamphlet or broadside bush. Francis Davison's Poetical
Rhapsody, 1602, was the latest of those successive
anthologies which for nearly half a century, from the
pubhcation of Totter s Miscellany in 1557, had formed so
prominent and so charming a feature in English poetical
literature. This series of anthologies had culminated in
England's Helicon, 1600, one of the richest and most
inspired collections of miscellaneous verse ever published
in any country, or at any time. In this divine volume
the peculiar lyric of the Elizabethan age had found its
apotheosis, and after this it very rapidly declined.
Master Slender showed himself characteristically a man
of his time, when he said, " I had rather than forty
shillings I had my book of songs and sonnets here."
The subject of James I., although he bought abundant
reprints of these Elizabethan song-books, produced none
that were new for himself, except as accompanied by, or
written to music. The decline of universal lyrical gift is
marked in the Jacobean period, and the songs which we
come across in this volume will mainly be found to have
been the work of belated Elizabethans.
Ch. I.] TJie Last Elizabethans. 7
Still more complete was the disappearance of the
earliest school of EUzabethan drama, the coherent and
serried body of playwrights, now generally known as the
Precursors of Shakespeare. These men formed a school,
the limits of which are clearly defined. Their leader
and master was that noble genius, Christopher Marlowe ;
the other names best known to us are those of Greene,
Peele, Kyd, and Nash. The biographies of these men
are in most cases vague, but it seems certain that all four
of them died, prematurely, during the last decade of
Elizabeth's reign. Their solitary survivor, Lodge, lived
on until the year of James I.'s death, but published no
new verse or drama during the sixteenth century. Lyly,
the Euphuist, too, was an active dramatist of a still more
primitive class, who survived, but in entire silence. The
first play-harvest was completely garnered before the new
reign began, so completely that Shakespeare, and perhaps
Dekker, are the only really transitional figures which are
more Elizabethan than Jacobean.
Another class of production which had left its mark
strongly on our literary development, and had stopped,
or at least slackened, by 1603, was that of the great
poetical translators. Early in Elizabeth's reign there
had been a flock of semi-barbarous translators of the
classics. If any one of these was still alive, it must
have been Thomas Twyne, who continued the y^neids
of Phaer. Later in the life of the same monarch, a far
more literary and accomplished set of men enriched our
language with versions of the Italian poets. Sir John
Harington (15 61-16 12), aided by his brother Francis,
translating Ariosto in 1591, and Tasso being carefully
8 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. I.
interpreted by Richard Carew (1555-1620) in 1594, and
brilliantly by Edward Fairfax (i57o?-i635) in 1600.
Homer, first attempted in 1581 by Arthur Hall, had
been nobly conquered by Chapman in 1598, and
this last-named poet continued, as we shall see, through
the reign of James, to annex first provinces of Greek
poetry. But he was, by age and in spirit, an Eliza-
bethan, and no true Jacobean was a great translator.
Even Sir Arthur Gorges' Lucan, though not published
until 16 14, was in all probability written twenty years
earlier.
One or two very early precursors of the Jacobeans
were still alive in 1603. Sackville, Lord Buckhurst,
whose gloomy and magnificent Induction is far more
Jacobean in style than any of those compositions of
Spenser's which succeeded it, was made Earl of Dorset
by James I., and survived until 1608. His most famous
poem, repeatedly re-issued after his death, continued to
exercise an influence on the younger writers. Sir Walter
Raleigh was not executed till 1618, but his later work as
a versifier is largely conjectural. Sir John Davies, whose
philosophical poems were among the most original and
beautiful literary productions of the close of Elizabeth's
reign, was suddenly silenced by the admiration James I.
conceived for his judgment in practical affairs, and was
henceforth wholly absorbed in politics. But an examina-
tion of Davies' work, had we space for it here, would
form no ill preparation for the study of several classes
of Jacobean poetry. He was eminently a writer before
his time. His extremely ingenious Orchestra, a poem on
dancing, has much in it that suggests the Fletchers on one
Ch. t,] TJie Last ElizabetJians. 9
side and Donne on the other, while his more celebrated
magnum opus of the Nosce Teipsum is the general pre-
cursor of all the school of metaphysical ingenuity and
argumentative imagination. In Davies there is hardly
a trace of those qualities which we have sought to dis-
tinguish as specially Elizabethan, and we have difficulty
in obliging ourselves to remember that his poems were
given to the public during the course of the sixteenth
century. To the exquisite novelty and sweetness of his
Hymns of Asircza, critical justice has never yet been
done. But we have no excuse for lingering any longer on
the works of a poet so exclusively of the reign of Eliza-
beth. Barnaby Barnes (1559-1609), too, that isolated
Ronsardist among our London poets, published no lyrics
after 1595. His plays, perhaps, were Jacobean, but
we possess only one of them, T/ie Devil's Charter, not
printed till 1607, which seems to belong to the school
of Marlowe. Joseph Hall, the satirist of the Virgide-
miarum, becoming Bishop of Exeter, wrote no more
verse, and died at length in 1656, by far the last survivor
of the Elizabethan choir.
Of all the writers of the age it is the laureate, Samuel
Daniel, whom it is most difficult to assign to either reign.
His literary activity is accurately balanced between the
two, and it seems impossible to decide whether he was
rather Elizabethan or Jacobean. It may therefore be
convenient to come first to a consideration of his poems,
to which, however, from his historical position, the
prominence they discover must not here be awarded.
He was born near Taunton, in Somerset, in or about
1562, was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford,
lo The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. I.
resided at Wilton, and began to publish verses — the
Delia sonnets — in 1592. He went to Italy, where he met
Guarini and other leading men of letters, and deepened
the academic and literary tincture of his taste. On his
return to England, volume after volume, published in
quick succession, and collected as the Poetical Essays
of Sam. Daniel in 1595, testified to the fertility of his
fancy. These were lyrical, gnomic, and dramatic, sonnets,
odes, historical epics, and tragedies.
When the new king and queen were descending on
tlieir capital, Daniel met them in Rutlandshire with a
Panegyric, which, although it was curiously blunt and
unflattering, secured him their cordial favour. He was
made licenser of plays, salaried master of the revels to her
]\Iajesty, and unofficial laureate to the court of James I.,
where he was to the end a peculiarly favoured personage.
He retired at length to his native Somerset, and rented a
farm near Beckington, trying, if Fuller is to be believed,
to practise farming by the rules of Virgil's Georgics.
He died at the close of 16 19, and was buried in
Beckington Church.
"\\^hen the PaJiegyrick at Burleigh Harrington was
published in 1603, there were included with it not
merely a prose Defeiice of Pyme, which is of high in-
terest and merit, and has remained, more or less, the code
of English prosody, but also a series of Certain Epistles
in verse. The Panegyric, which extends over more than
seventy stanzas of ottava rima, is a stately and didactic
piece of reflection on the moral conditions of the
moment, very interesting in its way, especially to an
historian, but somewhat prosaic.
Ch. I.] TJie Last Elizabethans. ii
The pulse of England never more did beat
So strong as now ; nor ever were our hearts
Let out to hopes so spacious and so great
As now they are ; nor ever in all parts
Did we thus feel so comfortable heat
As now the glory of thy worth imparts ;
The whole complexion of the commonwealth,
So weak before, hoped never for more health.
Couldst thou but see from Dover to the Mount,
From Totnes to the Orcades, what joy,
What cheer, what triumphs, and what dear account
Is held of thy renown this blessed day ! —
A day which we and ours must ever count
Our solemn festival, as well we may ;
And though men thus count kings still which are new,
Yet do they more, where they find more is due.
The Epistles, on the other hand — with the exception
of his Elizabethan Musophibis (1599) — form Daniel's
most attractive contribution to poetry. It is his fault to
persist when he has ceased to be exhilarating, and these
Epistles — they are six in number — are all short. They
are essays on set moral themes addressed to persons of
nobility, in curiously novel and elaborate measures, and
their sustained flow of reflection, without imagery, without
ornament, is singularly dignified. The Epistle to the
Countess of Cumberland is probably the best-known of
Daniel's poems ; that to the Countess of Bedford, in
terza rima, is perhaps even more gracefully conducted
to an academic close —
How oft are we forced on a cloudy heart
To set a shining face, and make it clear,
Seeming content to put ourselves apart,
1 2 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cn. I.
To bear a part of others' weaknesses 1
As if we only were composed by Art,
Not Nature, and did all our deeds address
To opinion, not to a conscience, what is right,
As framed by example, not advisedness,
Into those forms that entertain our sight ;
And though books, Madam, cannot make this mind,
Which we must bring apt to be set aright,
Yet do they rectify it in that kind,
And touch it so, as that it turns that way
Where judgment lies ; and though we cannot find
The certain place of truth, yet do they stay
And entertain us near about the same ;
And gives the soul the best delight that may
Encheer it most, and most our spirits inflame
To thoughts of glory, and to worthy ends.
In 1605 Daniel published a short but unusually
sprightly lyric in dialogue, called Ulysses and the Siren.
The plays of Daniel, as Mr. Saintsbury has noted,
occupy the curious position of being the only English
tragedies of the age " distinctly couched in the form
of the Seneca model," which was so abundantly em-
ployed in France. But we can scarcely dwell upon
them here, since Cleopatra was already printed in 1594,
and Philotas, though not published until 1605, was
unquestionably written, in the main, at least three years
before the death of Elizabeth. The four masques or
entertainments of Daniel remain, as distinctly Jacobean
work, to be considered. The Vision of the Ttvclve
Goddesses, 1604, shows a hand unaccustomed to these
trifles, and is not a little dull. Much more skilful and
poetical is The Qiieeiis Arcadia, 1605, which is entirely
in verse, blank and rhymed, inextricably interwoven ;
this is rather a romantic tragi-comedy in five acts, than
Ch. I.] The Last Elizabethans. 13
a masque. Tcthys^s Festival, 16 10, on the other hand,
preserves the conventional forms of that kind of enter-
tainment. It contains this song, very characteristic of
Daniel's delicate manner of moralizing —
Are they shadows that we see ?
And can shadows pleasure give ?
Pleasures only pleasures be
Cast by bodies we conceive,
And are made the things we deem,
In those figures which are seen.
But these pleasures vanish fast,
Which by shadows are exprest ;
Pleasures are not if they last,
In their passing is their best ;
Glory is most bright and gay,
In a Hash, and so away.
Feed apace, then, greedy eyes,
On the wonder you behold ;
Take it sudden as it flies.
Though you take it not to hold ;
When your eyes have done their part.
Thought must length it in the heart.
Hymen's Triitmph, 16 15, like The Queen's Arcadia, is
a species of pastoral tragi-comedy, languid in action, but
very exactly versified. This piece was highly praised
by Coleridge, who was a great admirer of the author.
" Read Daniel," he said, " the admirable Daniel ; " but
in the pleasure he took in his Hmpidity it is possible that
Coleridge underrated the aridity of the laureate. The
almost unrelieved excision of all ornament and colour,
the uniform stateliness, the lack of passion, which render
Daniel admirable and sometimes even charming in a
14 TJic Jacobean Poets. [Cii. I.
short poem, weary us in his long productions, and so
invariably sententious is he that we are tempted to call
him a Polonius among poets.
Another transitional figure is that of Joshua Sylvester,
whom few historians of literature have deigned to mention.
He was, however, an active producer of successful verse
in his own age, and he wielded, moreover, by means of
his famous translation, a prodigious influence. He was
born in 1563, in Kent. As early as 1591 he began that
version of the Divine Weeks and Works of the French
poet, Du Bartas, by which he is principally known. He
had the custom, fortunately very unusual at that time, of
not dating his title-pages, so that his bibliography is par-
ticularly obscure ; but he seems to have gone on publish-
ing, revising, and reprinting until close upon his death
in 1 6 18. For the last six years of his life he lived at
Middelburg, in Holland, as the secretary to the Company
of Merchant Venturers there. The particular fate, there-
fore, which he had most bitterly dreaded and deprecated
fell upon him, for his fear had always been to die in
exile. Into his translation of Du Bartas he had inter-
polated this appeal —
Ah, courteous England, thy kind arms I see,
Wide-stretched out to save and welcome me.
Thou, tender mother, wilt not suffer age,
To snow my locks in foreign pilgrimage,
That fell Brazil my breathless corpse should shroud,
Or golden Peru of my praise be proud,
Or rich Cathay to glory in my verse ;
Thou gav'st me cradle ; thou wilt give my hearse ?
But the prayer was unheard.
Sylvester was ambitious of high distinction, but he was
Ch. I.] The Last Elizabethans. 15
dragged down by poverty and by a natural turbidity of
style. His original sonnets and lyrics are constantly
striking, but never flawless ; his translations, as jooems,
are full of force and colour, but crude. His talent was
genuine, but it never ripened, and seems to be turning
sour when it should be growing mellow. He does not
fear to be tiresome and grotesque for pages at a time,
and in Du Bartas he unhappily found a model who,
in spite of his own remarkable qualities, sanctioned the
worst errors of Sylvester. Milton was, however, at-
tracted to Du Bartas, and approached him, almost un-
questionably, through Sylvester, whose version was
extremely popular until the middle of the century.
Sylvester's vocabulary was very extensive, and he revelled
in the pseudo-scientific phraseology of his French
prototype.
Nicholas Breton was an Elizabethan primitive, who
went on publishing fresh volumes until after the death
of James I., but without having modified the sixteenth-
century character of his style. He was probably born
in 1542, and lived on till 1626. His books are very
numerous, most of them, however, being mere pamphlets.
He wrote indifferently in prose and verse. The most
notable of his little volumes of poetry first published
during the reign of James, are The Passionate Shepherd.,
1604; The Honour of Valour., 1605 ; and / would and
yet I would ?tot, 1614; the larger part of Breton's
Jacobean work being in prose.
Of these short productions The Passionate Shepherd is
by far the best, and ranks very high among Breton's
contributions to poetry. It is a collection of pastoral
1 6 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. I.
lyrics, in a variety of measures, very lightly, liquidly, and
innocently thrown off, with no sense of intellectual effort
and no great attention to style. Breton has a very
pleasant acquaintance with nature, and can bring up
before us such charming pictures as enable us to
See the fishes leap and play,
In a blessed sunny day ;
Or to hear the partridge call,
Till she have her covey all ;
Or to see the subtle fox,
How the villain flies the box,
After feeding on his prey ;
How he closely sneaks away.
Through the hedge and down the furrow,
Till he gets into his burrow ;
Then the bee to gather honey ;
And the little black-haired coney,
On the bank for sunny place,
With her forefeet wash her face.
There is humour and ingenuity in his I would and yet
I wojild not, a long statement of the attractions and
the disadvantage of almost every walk of life, contrasted
in this manner —
I would I were a keeper of a park.
To walk with my bent cross-bow and my hound,
To know my game, and closely in the dark
To lay a barren doe upon the ground.
And by my venison, more than by my fees,
To feed on better meat than bread and cheese.
And yet I would not ; lest, if I be spied,
I might be turned quite out of my walk.
And afterwards more punishment abide.
Than 'longs unto a little angry talk.
And cause more mischief after all come to me,
Than all the good the does did ever do me.
Cii. r.] TJic Last Elizabethans. ly
This is picluresque ; but the see-saw becomes tedious
when extended over more than one hundred and fifty
stanzas. Breton had the root of poetry in him, but he
was no scholar, inartistic, and absolutely devoid of the
gift of self-criticism. A small posy has been selected
by Mr. Bullen from the wilderness of his overgrown
garden.
A similar writer, of perhaps as great general talent,
but not SO' true a poet, was Samuel Rowlands. He was
probably thirty years Breton's junior, and did not begin
to write until within a few years of the death of Elizabeth.
He passes out of our sight in 1630. His works consist of
satirical characters in verse, mainly in the six-line stanza,
describing those fantastical types of the day which so
many of the minor writers delighted in caricaturing.
They are often well-written, clear, pointed, and regular,
never rising to the incisive melody of a great poet, but
never sinking below a fairly admirable level, while for
the student of manners they abound in realistic detail.
Some of the most amusing of these collections come
before our period, but Look to //, or Pll stab you, 1604,
is as good as any of its predecessors. A Terrible Battle
between Fire and Death, 1606, aims, not wholly without
success, at nobler things, but becomes tedious and
grotesque.
As time went on, Rowlands' verse grew less senten-
tious, and more broadly farcical, and The Whole Crew
of Kind Gossips, 1609, is a favourable example of his
" new humour." As we review his successive volumes,
we find but slight further change, except that they grow a
little coarser and heavier. The Melancholy Knight, 16 r5,
c
iS TJie Jacobean Poets, [Cii. I.
is the best of his later productions. In all the verse of
Rowlands we meet with the same qualities, a low and
trivial view of life, an easy satire, a fluency and purity of
language which never reaches elevation of style. A dull
book of sacred prose and poetry, called Heavefi's Glory,
Seek It, 1628, closes the long catalogue of the writings
of Rowlands.
When we turn to the dramatists, we meet at once with
one name which, while it is mainly the glory of Elizabeth,
belongs in part to the reign of her successor. It would
be ridiculous, in this place, to attempt the smallest
critical consideration of Shakespeare's writings, or even of
that fourth part of them which may be thought of as
Jacobean. I shall therefore confine myself to a bare
statement of the latest opinion with regard to what plays
were composed after the accession of James L, and in
what form these were published. Just before the death
of Elizabeth, as is generally admitted, a great change
came over the temper of Shakespeare, and led him to
the composition of his series of lofty tragedies of passion.
To these succeeded, five or six years later, the quartet of
splendid romances with which his dramatic activity seems
to close, since, later than 16 11, we can scarcely with any
certitude detect him actively at work.
Among the plays belonging to our time, Hamlet can
hardly be included, for there can be little doubt that it
was written in its present form, and ready for the press,
in July, 1602, when The Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark, was entered in the Stationers' Registers. It
was not printed, however, until 1603, in an edition ot
which but two copies survive, both imperfect. By that
Cii. I.] The Last ElizabctJiaus. 19
time it had been acted by the King's Players, and " in
the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge." In
this edition of 1603 Polonius is named Corambis, and
there are certain very feeble passages which do not occur
again. It has been supposed that these are remnants of
the pre-Shakespearean Hamlet, with which it is now
considered improbable that the great poet had any con-
nection previous to 1602, when it was doubtless re-
modelled by him for the stage. Five quarto editions
appeared during Shakespeare's lifetime.
The date of King Lear is pretty well ascertained. It
must have been written after the publication of Dr.
Harsnet's book in 1603, and before it was entered in the
Stationers' Registers at Christmas, 1606. An attempt
has been made, founded on the phrase, " I smell the
blood of a British man," and other slight internal
evidence, to tie the date of composition still more
tightly down to the close of 1604 and opening of 1605.
This is a highly probable hypothesis, but one which
cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, be insisted
on. There was printed in 1594 a chronicle-history of
Lear, King of England, but this has disappeared, and
we do not even know whether it was a play. A drama
of that name, however, was issued in 1605, when the
Lear of Shakespeare was probably already written ; it is
of no great merit, and bears little resemblance to the
real tragedy, of which two editions were published early
in 1608.
The early editors of Shakespeare, and Malone during
his lifetime, declared Othello to have been written in
161 1. But Malone, in a posthumous publication.
20 TJic Jacobean Poets. [Cu. T.
positively revised this date, and gave 1604, saying, "we
know it was acted in " that year. What was the source
of RIalone's information is uncertain, but it tallies with
a mysterious entry in the Revels Book, which itself is
forged, but which seems to have been copied from a
genuine document, now lost, once accessible to Malone.
Othdlo was not printed until 1622, a year before the
first folio.
To the dramas we have enumerated some degree
of date-certainty is afforded by the fact that they ap-
peared in quarto-form. Troilus and Crcssida, too,
which may or may not have been in existence in 1603,
was published in 1609. But of the eight magnificent
performances which must now be mentioned no edition
is known to exist earlier than the folio of 1623,
and the dates of their being written are therefore very
difticult to conjecture with assurance. It is, however,
certain that Antony and Cleopatra was entered in the
Stationers' Registers in May, 1608, and it was probably
written during the preceding year. There is absolutely
no evidence regarding Timon of Athens and Coriolanus,
but the years 1607 and 1608 are usually assigned to
them. Cymbelinewd.'s, possibly composed in 1609, or in
1 6 10 at the latest. Dr. Simon Forman saw Macbeth
acted at the Globe on the 20th of April, 16 10, and
The Tempest, apparently, in the course of the same year ;
he saw The Wi liter's Tale on the 15th of May, 161 1,
and these plays were, on these occasions, it is probable,
of recent composition. This chronological arrangement
is borne out by the changes in the structure of Shake-
speare's verse, changes to which a too mechanical im-
Cn, I.] TJie Last Elizabethans. 21
portance has been assigned, but which are none the less
of positive value in the consideration of the succession of
his plays. Pericles was published in quarto-form in 1609,
and was doubtless written during the preceding year, when
George Wilkins, who is believed to have collaborated
on it with Shakespeare, brought out his prose tale in
illustration of the plot of the play. Finally, it may be
noted that the Sonnets, which, apparently, were not
completed until 1605, first saw the light in the quarto
of 1609.
In the course of his elaborate monograph on the
writings of the author of Old Fortunatus, Mr. Swinburne
has confessed that " of all English poets, if not of all
poets on record, Dekker is perhaps the most difficult to
classify." This is in part due to the excessive redun-
dancy with which he flung unacknowledged fragments of
his work hither and thither, a father without a trace of
parental instinct. Thomas Dekker was born, doubtless
of Dutch parentage in London, about 1567, and did not
begin to work until about 1590. Yet, before Elizabeth
died, he was the author of eight plays of his own, and
in nearly thirty he had combined with others. Of
this mass of dramatic production the greater part has
disappeared. During the Jacobean period he continued
to write in the same casual way, ready to throw in his
lot with anybody, but rarely producing a drama entirely
by himself. He gradually turned away more and more
from verse, and became famous as a pamphleteer and
author of sensational tracts. He disappeared about 1632.
The best of his plays is probably one in which he allied
himself with Middleton in 1604, a second part appear-
22 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. I.
ing several years later. In this occurs the famous passage
about patience, wliich lias been universally attributed to
Dekker —
I'atience l^why, 'tis the soul of peace :
Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven ;
It makes men look like gods. The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.
The delicately humorous character of Orlando
Friscobaldo is an example of work excellently done in a
class rarely attempted by Dekker, who is unrivalled in
short pathetic scenes, has a tenderness that is all his
own, combines with a sweet fancy a rare lyrical gift, but
is excessively unequal as a craftsman, and mars some of
his finest efforts by his impatience, his incoherence, and
his carelessness. It is difficult to understand how it can
be possible that the author of the detestable stuff called
If it be not good, the Devil is in it, could have turned
away to contribute to Massinger's Virgin Martyr the
exquisite episode between the heroine and the angel.
This extravagant inequality, ever recurring, creates the
standing difficulty about the literary position of Dekker.
John IMarston is beHeved to have lived on until 163^,
but his dramatic activity was almost entirely confined to
the four last years of the reign of Elizabeth. In the
first year of James I. he seems to have composed his
Parasitaster, and to have resigned The Insatiate Countess
into the hands of Barkstead to arrange and complete.
Some trifling pageants and entertainments close his
work, but Marston is to be considered as essentially
Elizabethan.
CHAPTER IL
BEN JONSON — CHAPMAN.
The death of Elizabeth was a turning-point in the
life of Ben Jonson. When James I. came to the throne
of England, there were few among the poets whom he
welcomed with greater geniality than the rough young
man of thirty, hitherto scarcely known except for a series
of dramatic satires, and for a quarrelsomeness of temper
which had led him into several ugly scrapes. He was
selected for a new trade, that of masque-maker, and
in June, 1603, he gratified the queen and Prince Henry
by presenting The Satyr before them at Althorpe. The
success of this exquisite trifle decided in part Ben
Jonson's vocation. For the rest of James's reign, in spite
of Daniel's and Dekker's jealousy, he was the favourite
arranger of this class of entertainments. Busy as he was,
however, with his duties as court poet, he found time
before the close of 1603 to write Seja7ius his Fall, the
earliest of his Roman tragedies. In this play Shake-
speare acted, and, according to the general belief, added
considerably to the acting version. When Ben Jonson,
however, printed Sejanus, in 1605, he omitted all
Shakespeare's lines, rather " than to defraud so happy a
24 TJte Jacobean Poets. [Cii. ii.
genius of his right by my loathed usurpation." He got
into trouble with Lord Northampton over Sejamis, and
was imprisoned in company with Chapman. In 1605
Chapman and Jonson were once more in " a vile prison "
for writing against the Scotch in Eastward Hoe ! It was
on the occasion of their release that that Roman matron,
the mother of Ben, so distinguished herself " After their
delivery, he banqueted all his friends ; there was Camden,
Selden, and others. At the midst of the feast, his old
mother drank to him, and showed him a paper which
she had (if the sentence had taken execution) to have
mixed in the prison among his drink, which was full of
lusty strong poison ; and, that she was no churl, she told,
she minded first to have drunk of it herself."
Late in 1605 Ben Jonson added a cubit to his literary
stature by producing his noble comedy of Volpouc or the
Fox. All these years he was not merely a frequenter of
the wits' meeting at the Mermaid Tavern in Friday Street,
but the very centre and main attraction of the club. In
1609 his comedy of Epicene, or the Silent Wo7Jia7i, was
brought out, and in 16 10 The Alchymist. This was Ben
Jonson's blossoming-time, and everything he now did
was admirable. A second Roman tragedy, Catiline,
dates from 161 1. Ben Jonson, who had been a Roman
Catholic, presently embraced the Protestant faith, and,
very shortly after, Sir Walter Raleigh selected him as
travelling-companion to his young son Walter, who was
"knavishly inclined." The poet continued for some
time to be bear-leader to this youth, and seems, while in
Paris, to have interpreted the anxious flither's directions
somewhat lazily. There was a break here in the incessant
Ch. II.] Boi Jonsoit. 25
succession of Jonson's masques, and his next play was
Bart/iolomctv Fair, acted late in 16 14. On the ist of
February, 1616, the king appointed Ben Jonson his poet-
laureate, with a salary of a hundred marks a year, and after
bringing out The DeviVs an Ass, the playwright ceased
for a while from his dramatic labours. In 16 16 he
published a folio collection of his works, which contained
not only the plays, which had already appeared succes-
sively in quarto, but five new masques, several entertain-
ments, a sheaf of epigrams, and the lyrical and occasional
pieces known as T/ie Forest.
The life of Jonson for the next few years is rather
obscure. In the summer of 1618 he travelled on foot to
Scotland, and remained away for about six months. In
the first days of 1619, he paid his celebrated visit to
Drummond at Hawthornden. Immediately after his
departure, Drummond took the copious notes of Jonson's
conversation, which are among the most precious relics of
the age that we possess. The greatest nonsense has been
talked about the " malice" and "perfidy " of the Scotch
poet. No charge could be less deserved. An exceed-
ingly interesting guest had been speaking to him with
absolute freedom about that literary life of London, in
which Drummond took an acute and somewhat wistful
interest. Nothing could be more natural, and nothing
for us more fortunate, than that the host, when Jonson
had departed, should jot down what the guest had said.
Drummond has shown great art in his notes j we seem
to hear the very voice of Jonson. The latter returned to
England, and found himself welcome at court, but we
know little of his avocations there. In earlier years he
26 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cii. II.
had worked with the celebrated architect Inigo Jones,
with wliom he had collaborated in the masques of
Blackness in 1605, Hymen in 1606, and Qi/cetis in i6og.
Jones had been abroad in France and Italy, but returned
to be the Royal Surveyor in 16 15. In Ben Jonson and
Inigo Jones, two headstrong wills met in conflict, and
the poet told Prince Charles " that when he wanted
words to express the greatest villain in the world he
would call him an Inigo." At last, after ten years,
the two great inventors became friends again in 1622,
when they combined in the masque of Tiine Vindicated
(January, 1623), and they remained on terms of mutual
toleration till 1631. Meanwhile, in October, 1623, there
occurred the disastrous fire in Jonson's house, which
is described in his poem, Ati ExecratioJi iipon Vulcan ;
in this many of the poet's manuscripts, and perhaps
a play, were destroyed. Just before the death of the
king, Jonson produced another drama. The Staple of
Nejvs, in 1625.
Early in 1626 the poet, who was worn with labours,
rather than years, suffered from a stroke of paralysis,
and another followed in 1628. But in September of the
latter year, having recovered health, he was able to
succeed Thomas Middleton, the dramatist, as City
Chronologer. In 1629 was "negligently played," and
'' squeamishly censured," the comedy of The Nezv Inn,
pubhshed in 1631 ; the epilogue tells us that "the maker
is sick and sad." Ben Jonson arraigned the reception
of this play, by writing an arrogant Ode to Himself, which
created a considerable sensation, and was parodied or
answered, in a tone uniformly flattering and gracious,
Ch. II.] Ben Jonson. 27
by several of the young generation of poets, to whom
Jonson was now an object of veneration. In 163 1, on
occasion of the pubUcation of certain masques, the old
quarrel between Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones broke out
again. Jonson was extremely violent, lost his position
at court, and was superseded by Carew and Aurelian
Townsend. Another comedy, The Magnetic Lady, was
licensed in 1632, but so unsuccessfully acted that it
was not published till 1641. The old unprinted play of
A Tale of a Tub, which Mr. Fleay attributes to 1601,
was revised in 1634, but all these late performances were
complete failures, and Jonson broke down under such
a mountain of misfortunes. He does not seem to have
been in want during his latest years, and the young men
of promise surrounded him and lavished their honours
upon him. But he was sick and dejected, and without
any philosophy to support him. He died on the 6th of
August, 1637, at the age of sixty-four, and was buried
three days later in Westminster Abbey. Rare Ben
Jonson !
By universal consent, the three great comedies of
Jonson's central period are his masterpieces. Coleridge
could never be sure whether it was Volpone or The Alchy-
w«/ which he thought the first of English comedies. Mr.
Swinburne has expressed the general opinion of lovers
of poetry when he says that " no other of even Jonson's
greatest works is at once so admirable and so enjoy-
able " as Volpone, grounding this judgment on the exist-
ence in that play of something imaginative and even
romantic, which is wanting in The Alchymist. The
hero, Volpone, is a Venetian magniftco who feigns
28 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. ti.
sickness and the approach of death, that, like a fox,
he may delude those who gather round him, and may
observe them at his leisure. He is an amateur of
covetousness, and it is his passion to fill his palace,
like a museum, with specimens of the greedy and the
obsequious. But Volpone is much more than a mere
hunter after oddities ; he is himself the most glorious
living example of the vice that he imputes. But he
possesses wealth to excess, and though at the opening
of the play we find him brooding in an ecstasy over piles
of gold, plate and jewels, what now renders him the
keenest pleasure is to see other men and women faw^n-
ing upon him, in hope of soon dividing his possessions.
Three types of legacy-hunters are introduced, Voltore,
Corbaccio, and Corvino, each a shrewd rogue, but all
easily gulled by the superior cunning of the fox. It is
needless to tell the story of the plot, which contains one
agreeable female character, Celia, and in the young
Bonario one man of honour. All critics have united in
praising the solidity of the architecture which has built
up this splendid ediiice of satire, and placed upon it the
tower or spire of its glittering fifth act, in which, lest
the strain of our indignation should be too great, a fitting
retribution is allowed to fall upon fox alike and the
seeming-successful jackal that has waited upon and
betrayed him.
In construction The Alcliymist is perhaps finer still,
and remains, in spite of its proved unfittedness for the
stage, and its antiquated interests, one of the most
splendid compositions written by an English hand.
Lamb, with unerring instinct, hit upon the central jewel
Ch. ti.] Ben Jonson. 29
of tlie whole splendid fabric when he selected for special
praise the long scene in Subtle's house, where Epicure
Mammon boasts what rare things he will do when he
obtains the philosopher's stone. Here Jonson, running
and leaping under the tremendous weight of his own
equipment, perfectly overwhelms the judgment "by the
torrent of images, words, and book-knowledge with which
Mammon confounds and stuns " us. In The AlcJiytnist
the voluptuousness of avarice, rather than its cruelty or
cunning, occupies the poet's pencil. The borderland of
tragedy is not here approached, as it was in the deeper
savagery of Volponc. Neither Subtle, Face, nor Dol is
other than a tame or farcical rogue by the side of the
horrors who succeeded one another by the Fox's mock
deathbed. But the intrigue is much more ingenious and
yet reasonable in the later than in the earlier play, and
indeed in mere strength and originality of elaborate in-
vention no play ever written exceeded The Alchymist.
Here, again, the winding-up of the plot is of the first
order of felicitous art.
The only charge, indeed, which can be brought against
either of these magnificent and stately comedies is
that art rules in them to the dispossession of nature.
An intellectual cause determines the position of every
scene, almost of every line. An emotional irregularity,
proof of a less crystalline perfection of workmanship,
would be welcomed by the reader, and while criticism
can scarcely modify its praise of those two comedies,
the heart is not touched in them, and their study but
proves the curious figures which move so ingeniously in
them to have been invented in the closet, not observed
30 TJic Jacobean Poets. [Ch. n.
in the street. There is infinite wit and inteUigencc
expended, but upon a scene which is never a reflection
of life itself.
Between the comedies came The Silent Woman, which
is commonly named with them. But this is a work of
inferior merit. It is a charming farce, but we cannot, as
Dryden did, "prefer it before all other plays, as I do
its author, in judgment, above all other poets." The
eccentric Morose cannot endure the least noise in his
house, and has never married, because he fears the loud
clack of a woman's tongue. His nephew, Dauphine,
produces a girl, Epicene, who never speaks above a
whisper, nor otherwise than in monosyllables. But on
the wedding-day the bride pours forth a perfect cascade
of conversation, deafening the unhappy bridegroom, and
it is only when he is reduced to the verge of despair,
that his wicked nephew confesses to him that the
marriage was void, and the Silent Woman a boy dressed
up in girl's clothes. The general character of this lively
play oddly resembles the lighter forms of comedy which,
after the example of Moliere, were, sixty years later, to
invade the English stage.
The other plays of Ben Jonson which came within the
Jacobean period are of inferior interest ; but the poet's
attempt to teach Roman history by means of stiff blank-
verse tragedies must not be overlooked. Coleridge wished
that we had more than two of these Roman pieces, but
the wish is one which it is hard to echo. Mr. Swinburne
has excellently remarked, and it is peculiarly true of
Sejanus and Catiline, that Ben Jonson " took so much
interest in the creations that he had none left for the
Cm. II.] Ben Jonson. 31
creatures of his intellect or art." The personages are
drawn with extreme elaboration, and everything which
is recorded of them by Sallust or Tacitus, even to their
most trifling utterances, is woven into the dialogue ; but
the dramatist never lets himself go, and never breathes
the breath of life into the Frankenstein monsters of his
learned fancy. At the same time, the art of Jonson is
very purely displayed in these stiff tragedies. The verse
marches with a certain heavy grandeur ; the language is
as stately as the sentiments and imagery are magnificent.
A studied prosiness, doubtless affected to protest against
the purple patchiness of the school of Marlowe, affects
the entire composition, and makes the continuous reading
of these Roman plays a tedious exercise.
Catiline's Conspiracy has the same faults, to greater
excess. Certain parts of this tragedy — such as the long
soliloquy of the Ghost of Sylla in Catiline's study, and the
death-scene of the hero — are perhaps more striking as
poetry than anything in Sejaniis ; but the later play is
even more bombastic, wooden, and undramatic than the
earlier. Choruses are introduced, in the manner of
Seneca, but not felicitously. One in the second act,
however, applauding the ancient virtue of the citizen, has
a fine ring —
Such were the great Camilli too,
The Fabii, Scipios ; that still thought
No work at price enough was bought,
That for their country they could do.
And to her honour did so knit,
As all their acts were understood,
The sinews of the public good ;
And they themselves one soul with it.
32 TJie Jacobean Poets, [Cii. II,
These men were truly magistrates,
These neither practised force nor forms ;
Nor did they leave the helm in storms j
And such they are make happy states.
Among the works which follow the great comedies the
surprising farce of Bartholomew Fair, crowded with
personages, takes a foremost rank. Here, with an
astounding vitality, Jonson surrounds the conception of
Roast Pig with a riot of contrasted figures, shouting,
struggling, permeating the Fair with their superabundant
animation. There is no dramatic work in English at all
comparable in its own kind with this brilliant and be-
wildering presentment of a comic turmoil, and, by a
curious chance, it is exactly here, where it might be
expected that the dramatist would be peculiarly tempted
to subordinate all attempt at character-painting to the
mere embodiment of humours, that one of Ben Jonson's
few really living and breathing creatures is found in the
person of the Puritan, Rabbi Zeal-of-the-Land. But after
1 615 the dramatic genius of Jonson underwent a sort of
ossification, and few readers are able greatly to enjoy
his later plays. Dryden roundly styled them all his
" dotages," and it is certain that, although special study
may discover beauties in each of them, the merits of
Ben Jonson's style are seen to dwindle, and his faults to
become more patent. There is certainly a want of
interest and coherence in The Devil is an Ass / and
though Mr. Swinburne, whose authority is not lightly to
be put aside, claims special appreciation for the Aristo-
phanic comedy of The Staple of JVezvs, it has not the
charm of Ben Jonson's earlier plays. The romantic
Ch. II.] Ben Jonson. 33
comedies of The New Inn and the Magnetic Lady, and the
confused, boorish farce of The Tale of a Tub, possess the
unmistakable features of Ben Jonson's style, but the life
has evaporated, and has left only the skeleton of his too
elaborate and self-conscious artistic system.
Two examples of the dramatic blank verse of Ben
Jonson may suffice to give a taste of his style. The
first is a speech of Latiaris in the fourth act of Sejamis —
Methinks the genius of the Roman race
Should not be so extinct, but that bright flame
Of liberty might be revived again
(Which no good man but with his life should lose),
And we not sit like spent and patient fools.
Still pufiing in the dark at one poor coal,
Held on by hope till the last spark is out.
The cause is public, and the honour, name,
The immortality of every soul,
That is not bastard or a slave in Rome,
Therein concerned ; whereto, if men would change
The wearied arm, and for the weighty shield
So long sustained, employ the facile sword,
We might have soon assurance of our vows.
This ass's fortitude doth tire us all :
It must be active valour must redeem
Our loss, or none. The rock and our hard steel
Should meet to enforce those glorious fires again.
Whose splendour cheered the world, and heat gave life
No less than doth the sun's.
The other is the magnificent burst of Sir Epicure
Mammon's, with which the second act of the Alchymist
opens —
Come on, sir ! Now you set your foot on shore
In Novo Orbe ; here's the rich Peru ;
And there within, sir, are the golden mines
Great Solomon's Ophir ! He was sailing to it
U
34 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cu. II.
Three years, but we have reached it in ten months.
This is the day on which, to all my friends,
I will pronounce the happy word, Be rich ;
This day you shall be spectatissimi.
You shall no more deal with the hollow die,
Or the frail card. . . . No more
Shall thirst of satin, or the covetous hunger
Of velvet entrails for a rude-spun cloak,
To be displayed at Madam Augusta's, make
The sons of Sword and Hazard fall before
The golden calf, and, on their knees, whole nights,
Commit idolatry with wine and trumpets.
Or go a feasting after drum and ensign ;
No more of this !
A very large section of Ben Jonson's work consists of
his masques and entertainments, to which he gave a
great part of his best ingenuity for twenty years. It was
long held that these pieces were devoid of merit, and
that the poet debased his genius in consenting to write
them. Even Malone spoke of them as " bungling
shows," in which "the wretched taste of those times
found amusement." But the taste of our own day has
reverted in many respects to that of the early seventeenth
century, and now each successive critic speaks with greater
admiration of the masques of Ben Jonson. The masque
was a developed pageant, into which music and poetry
had been imported to give a greater richness and fulness
to the design. It had been conveyed into England from
Italy early in the sixteenth century, but it was not until
Ben Jonson took it in hand that it became noticeable as
a branch of literary art. Serious as was the bent of his
intellect, he did not disdain these elegant and charming
diversions. He beUeved himself capable of rendering
Ch. II.] Ben Jon son. 35
them immortal by his verse, and in the preface to one of
them, the Hyinenaei of 1606, he says as much ; he claims
to have given to the masque that intellectual vitality
without which "the glory of these solemnities had
perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholders'
eyes." He was right; for if we are familiar with the
masques of James and Anne, and have forgotten the
very names of those performed in honour of their pre-
decessors, it is the literary art of Jonson and Daniel and
Campion which has preserved alive for us what the
Ekill of the architect, musician, milliner, and scene-painter
could not contrive to immortalize.
The most valuable part of these once gorgeous masques
is therefore, of course, the lyrical verse fantastically
strewn throughout them. This is of very various
interest, some of it stiff and occasional, rough with
oddities which no longer appeal to us, wanting in
suavity and sweetness ; much of it, on the other hand,
extremely delicate, surprising, and aerial. Sometimes,
with his allusions and the copious learning of his notes,
Ben Jonson turns a masque into a work of positive
weight. The Masque of Queens, for instance, is an
important poem on the subject of witchcraft, treated
with exhaustive picturesqueness.
The song which introduces the dance in Pleasure
Reconciled to Virtue, 16 19, is a happy example of Jonson's
skill in the lyrical part of these entertainments —
Come on, come on ! and, where you go,
So interweave the curious knot,
As even the observer scarce may know
Which lives are Pleasure's, anrl which not.
T,6 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cii. ll.
First figure out the doubtful way.
At which awhile all youth should stay,
Where she and Virtue did contend
Which should have Hercules to friend.
Then as all actions of mankind
Are but a labyrinth or maze,
So let your dances be entwined ;
Yet not perplex men into gaze ;
But measured, and so numerous too,
As men may read each act they do ;
And when they see the graces meet,
Admire the wisdom of your feet.
For dancing is an exercise.
Not only shows the mover's wit,
But maketh the beholder wise,
As he hath power to rise to it.
James I.'s taste for masques gave the poet great scope
for a liberal invention. It is said that the king spent
_;^4ooo in this way during the seven first years of his
reign, for he and the queen each presented a masque at
Christmas and at Shrovetide.
In The Sad Shepherd, a pastoral fragment not published
until 1641, Jonson attempted a higher species of enter-
tainment; so far as we are able to judge, he had formed
a false idea of the shape a bucolic drama should take,
but the truncated scenes of The Sad Shepherd contain
some beautiful writing. The opening lines form the
most delicate example of his skill in blank verse which
has come down to us —
Here was she wont to go ! and here ! and here !
Just where these daisies, pinks, and violets grow ;
The world may find the spring by following her ;
Ch. it.] Ben JonsGu. 37
For other print her airy steps ne'er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk !
But like the soft west wind she shot along,
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root.
The miscellaneous poems of Ben Jonson present
features of peculiar interest, but they are of the most
bewildering inequality of merit. His Epigrams are not
merely exceedingly bad in themselves, but they led to
the formation of numberless imitations, and a baleful
department of seventeenth-century literature. It is not
to be wondered at that Sir Walter Scott should rise from
the perusal of these nasty little pieces with the conviction
that Jonson enjoyed "using the language of scavengers
and nightmen." We turn with relief to The Forest, a
collection of fifteen poems, mainly elegiacal, all of a
high level of merit, all distinguished and vigorous,
although none, perhaps, of superlative beauty. All Ben
Jonson's other miscellanies find themselves jumbled
together under the heading of Underwoods. Among
these are to be found many copies of verses which are
interesting as the work of so great a man, some which,
though always rather stiff, are elegant and pleasing in
themselves, and a majority which not even the vast
prestige of Ben can induce us to read with enjoyment
or even with toleration. The graces of the Jacobean
age were rarely at the beck of Ben Jonson, and when he
does not succeed in his own elaborate way, he ceases
to succeed at all.
The genius of Ben Jonson was long regarded with a
sort of superstitious reverence. Even Dryden, who was
38 TJic Jacobean Poets. [Cii. II.
the first to question his supremacy, admitted that he
thought Ben Jonson "the most learned and judicious
writer which any theatre ever had," and acknowledged
him ''the more correct poet," but Shakespeare "the
greater wit." Although such language would now be
held extravagant, and although Jonson is not any longer
mentioned among English writers of the very first rank,
he retains a firm and important place in our literature.
Incongruous as his works are, and much as his style
lacks fidelity to any particular ideal, the image we form
of the poetry of Jonson is a very definite and a very
striking one. He called those " works " which others
call " plays," as Sir John Suckhng complained, and
everywhere we find him laborious, strenuous, and solid.
His writings give us the impression of a very bold piece
of composite architecture, by no means pure in style,
and constructed after a fashion no longer admired, nor
naturally suitable to the climate, but rich, stately, and
imposing.
The character of the man is clearly reflected in
Jonson's writings, and forms by no means their least
interesting feature. They, like the fierce bricklayer's
son, like the guest of Drummond and the enemy of
Inigo Jones, like the master of "the mountain belly and
the rocky face," are truculent, saturnine, direct, full of
arrogance and sincerity, permeated with a love of litera-
ture, but without human passion or tenderness. In spite of
the fabulous wealth of imagination and eloquence which
lie close below the surface of Ben Jonson's works, few
indeed are those who dig there for treasure. He repels
his admirers, he holds readers at arm's length. He is tlie
Cii. II.] Chcxpnian. 39
least sympathetic of all the great English poets, and to
appreciate him the rarest of literary tastes is required, —
an appetite for dry intellectual beauty, for austerity of
thought, for poetry that is logical, and hard, and lusty.
Yet he did a mighty work for the English language. At
a time when it threatened to sink into mere prettiness or
oddity, and to substitute what was non-essential for what
was definite and durable, Jonson threw his massive
learning and logic into the scale, and forbade Jacobean
poetry to kick the beam. He was rewarded by the
passionate devotion of a tribe of wits and scholars ; he
made a deep mark on our literature for several genera-
tions subsequent to his own, and he enjoys the perennial
respect of all close students of poetry.
A name which it is natural to think of in conjunction
with Jonson's is that of George Chapman, who resembled
him in the austerity of his judgment, in his devotion to
the classics, and in his distinguished attitude to letters.
But while Jonson was a noble dramatist and a very bad
translator, Chapman was one of the best translators that
England has ever produced, and, if I may venture to
state a personal conviction, a dramatist whose merits
were exceedingly scanty. This latter opinion is one
which it may perhaps seem foolhardy to express, for
Lamb, who first drew attention to his plays, has praised
them exuberantly, and Mr. Swinburne has done Chapman
the honour of dedicating to a study of his works a con-
siderable volume, to which all careful readers must be
recommended. That no injustice should be done here
to this poet, I will at once record the fact that Lamb
has said, " Of all the English playwriters, Chapman
40 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cu. ii.
perhaps approaches nearest to Shakespeare in the
descriptive and didactic, in passages which are less
purely dramatic." It is rash to differ from Lamb, but
I am bound in mere sincerity to admit that I find
nothing even remotely Shakespearian in plays that seem
bombastic, loose, and incoherent to the last extreme, and
in \Yhich the errors of the primitive Elizabethans, due
mainly to inexperience, are complacently repeated and
continued through the noblest years of perfected art,
in which Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher held the
stage. Chapman was an admirable and sometimes even
a great poet, but it is hard to admit that he was
ever a tolerable playwright.
George Chapman was born at Hitchin about 1559, and
was therefore past middle life when James I. ascended
the throne of England. He was educated at Oxford,
but we know abs >lutely nothing about his occupations
until he was nearly forty years of age. In the last years
of Elizabeth he came to London, and was engaged in
dramatic work from about 1595 to 1608. We know of
eight or nine plays produced before the death of the
queen, five of which have survived. His Jacobean
dramas are Monsieur d' Olive, published in 1606, but
acted earlier; Bussy (!A?nbois, printed 1607 ; Eastward
Hoe ! of which mention has been already made, in which
Chapman collaborated in 1605, with Jonson and
Marston; The Widows Tears, acted about the same
time, but not published until 161 2; The Revenge of
Bussy dAmbois, printed in 161 3, but acted much earlier;
Byroris Conspiracy and Byron's Tragedy, each of 1608.
As late as 1631, there was published a tragedy of Ccesar
Ch. II.] Chapman. 41
and Pompcy, evidently an old rejected play of Chap-
man's youth. With these exceptions, and those of two
tragic fragments which Shirley found, completed and
published in the next age, all Chapman's dramatic work
may be safely consigned to the age of Elizabeth.
Webster commended Chapman more highly than any
of his contemporaries, or, at least, in enumerating them
mentioned his name first, and expressed his warm
appreciation of "that full and heightened style" in which
he considered Chapman's tragedies to be written. Such
praise, from such a man, may not lightly be passed over ;
yet Chapman's last and most friendly apologist finds
himself forced to admit that "the height indeed is some-
what giddy, and the fulness too often tends or threatens
to dilate into tumidity." Of the four French tragedies,
Bussy d'Atnbois is undoubtedly the most interesting,
being full of soHloquies and declamatory passages that
have a true ring of epic poetry about them, and being at
least as nearly allied to a play as the essentially un-
dramatic mind of Chapman could make it. Of the
comedies two are certainly readable : Monsieur d' Olive,
a whirligig of fashionable humours and base love,
is undoubtedly put together with a good deal of
spirit and some humour, and May Day, a " coil to make
wit and women friends," is a still madder piece of
extravagance.
But even these prose plays, certainly the most
coherent and amusing evidences of Chapman's talent
as a dramatist, are in no sense thoroughly satisfactory.
The estimate of women throughout is base to the last
degree ; no dramatist of the period satirizes the other
42 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. II.
sex \\\\\\ such malignant and persistent sarcasm as
Chapman. It is a point that seriously militates against
any claim he may put forward to greatness, since perhaps
nothing displays the inherent littleness of an imagina-
tive writer more than the petulance or affected indigna-
tion with which he presumes to regard the world of
woman. The whole series of Chapman's comedies and
tragedies contains, so far as I know, not one woman
whose chastity is superior to temptation, whose wit is
adaptable to other purposes than those of greedy or
amatory intrigue, or whose disposition presents any of
those features of sweetness and fidelity which it is the
delight of a high-minded poet to dwell upon and
to extol, and which most of the Elizabethans and
Jacobeans, however base their fancy might take leave to
be, never neglected to value.
At the opening of his dramatic career under Elizabeth,
Chapman had published some strange and obscure
poems which it is not our place to speak of here. But
when he ceased to write plays, he turned his attention
to poetry again. He dedicated to Prince Henry, in
1609, The Tears of Peace, and to the memory of the
same "most dear and heroical patron," his Epkedhim
in 16 1 2. Eugenia, sen elegy on William, Lord Russell,
appeared in 16 14, and Andromeda Liberata, an
epithalamium on the scandalous nuptials of Robert Carr
and Frances, Lady Essex, in the same year. As late as
the summer of 1633 Chapman wrote, but did not con-
clude, an Invocation against Ben Jonson. All these
were composed in the heroic couplet. Of these poems
The Tears of Peace is by far the most valuable, although
Cii. II.] Chapman. 4 3
Eugenia contains some highly wrought description of
natural phenomena.
Here is a rising storm out of the latter poem —
Heaven's drooping face was dress'd
In gloomy thunderstocks ; earth, seas, arrayed
In all presage of storm ; the bitterns played
And met in flocks ; the herons set clamours gone
That rattled up air's triple region ;
The cormorants to dry land did address,
And cried away all fowls that used the seas ;
The wanton swallows jerked the standing springs,
Met in dull lakes, and flew so close, their wings
Shaved the top waters ; frogs croaked ; the swart crow
Measured the sea-sands, with pace passing slow.
And often soused her ominous heat of blood
Quite over head and shoulders in the flood,
Still scolding at the rain's so slow access ;
The trumpet-throated, the Naupliades,
Their clangours threw about, and summoned up
All clouds to crown imperious tempest's cup.
In all, as Mr. Swinburne has said, "the allegory is
clouded and confounded by all manner of perversities
and obscurities, the verse hoarse and stiff, the style
dense and convulsive, inaccurate and violent," with
occasional lucid intervals of exquisite harmony, which
affect the senses strangely in the midst of balderdash
so raucous and uncouth.
It is, however, pre-eminently as a translator that
Chapman takes high rank among the English poets.
In 1598 he had published two small quartos. Seven
Books of the Iliads of Homer and The Shield of Achilles ^
both dedicated to the Earl of Essex. In 1600 he
completed Marlowe's exquisite Hero and Leander,
44 The Jacobean Poets. [Cu. II.
keeping much closer to the text of Musseus. Prince
Henry was among those who read and admired the
Homer fragments, and he commanded Chapman to
complete his translation. Accordingly, in 1609, in folio,
appeared Bomer, Prince of Poets, a version of the first
twelve books of the Iliad. This was identical with the
text of 1598, but with five books added. The entire
///'^^ was not published until 161 1. In 1612, Chapman
issued the Penetential Psalms of Petrarch. He returned,
in spite of Prince Henry's death, to the translation of
Homer, and published the first twelve books of the
Odyssey in 16 14, and the remainder of that epic in the
next year. The Iliad and Odyssey appeared in one
volume in 16 16, and Chapman completed his version of
Homer with the Batrachomyomachia printed, without
a date, probably in 1622. Meanwhile, Chapman had
been busy with Hesiod, and published a version of the
Georgics, now extremely rare^ in 1618; the /us t Reproof
of a Poma?i Smellf east, trans\a.ted from Juvenal, appeared
in 1629. His violent quarrel with Jonson is, un-
fortunately, the latest fact which has been preserved
about him ; he died soon after, and was buried in London,
at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, on the 12th of May, 1634.
The noble and famous sonnet written by Keats in
a copy of Chapman's Homer is a witness to all time of
the merit of that translation. Busy as Chapman was in
many fields of literature, it is by Homer that he lives
and will continue to live. He threw such an incomparable
fire and gusto into the long, wave-like couplets of his
Iliad, that poet after poet has been borne upon them into
a new world of imagination.
Cm. II.] CJtapvian. 45
Here is an example from the fifteenth book —
Then on the ships all Troy,
Like raw-flesh-nourish'd lions rushed, and knew they did employ
Their powers to perfect Jove's high will ; who still their spirits
enflamed,
And quench'd the Grecians' ; one renown'd, the other often sham'd.
For Hector's glory still he stood, and even went about
To make him cast the fleet such fire, as never should go out ;
Heard Thetis foul petition, and wish'd in any wise
The splendour of the burning ships might satiate his eyes.
From him yet the repulse was then to be on Troy conferr'd,
The honour of it given the Greeks ; which thinking on, he stirr'd
With such addition of his spirit, the spirit Hector bore
To burn the fleet, that of itself was hot enough before.
But now he far'd like Mars himself, so brandishing his lance
As, through the deep shades of a wood, a raging fire should glance,
Held up to all eyes by a hill ; about his lips a foam
Stood as when th' ocean is enrag'd, his eyes were overcome
With fervour, and resembled flames, set off" by his dark brows
And from his temples his bright helm abhorred lightnings throws.
Chapman " speaks out loud and bold," and the ancient
world of Homer, with all its romantic purity and
freshness, lies spread at our feet. It has often been
noted with amazement that Chapman, whose original
poems are perverse and cloudy to the last degree,
should have been able so to clarify his style, and so to
appreciate the lucidity of his original, as to write a
translation of Homer which a boy may read with
pleasure. The Odyssey of Chapman, which, like the
Hymns, is in heroic couplet, has never been such a
general favourite as the Iliad, where the rolling four-
teen syllable line carried with it much of the melody and
the movement of the Greek hexameter. His success,
even here, is irregular and uncertain; sometimes he sinks
46 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cii. II.
into platitude or rushes into doggerel ; sometimes he is
outrageously false to his original and careless of the
text. But, on the whole, no later verse-translator of
Homer, — and translators have been myriad — has sur-
passed Chapman, and his Iliad remains one of the
ornaments of our literature, and one of the principal
poetical glories of the Jacobean age.
CHAPTER III.
JOHN DONNE,
Among the non-dramatic poets who flourished under
James I., incomparably the most singular and influential
was the Roman Catholic scholar who became Dean of St.
Paul's. John Donne was thirty years of age when Elizabeth
died, and no small portion of his most characteristic
work must have been written in her reign. But Donne
belongs, essentially, to that of her successor. In him
the Jacobean spirit, as opposed to the Elizabethan, is
paramount. His were the first poems which protested,
in their form alike and their tendency, against the
pastoral sweetness of the Spenserians. Something new
in English literature begins in Donne, something which
proceeded, under his potent influence, to colour poetry
for nearly a hundred years. The exact mode in which
that influence was immediately distributed is unknown
to us, or very dimly perceived. To know more about
it is one of the great desiderata of literary history. The
imitation of Donne's style begins so early, and becomes
so general, that several critics have taken for granted
that there must have been editions of his writings which
have disappeared.
48 The Jacobean Poets. [Cn. ill.
As a matter of fact, with the exception of two ex-
ceedingly sUght appearances, that of ten sonnets con-
tributed to Davison's Poetical Rhapsody in 1602, and
of A71 A7iatomy of the Worhi in 161 1, the poems
of Donne are not known to have been printed until
1633, a year or two after his death. Yet the refer-
ences to them in documents of twenty years earlier
are frequent, and that they were widely distributed is
certain. This was doubtless done by means of more or
less complete transcripts, several of which have come
down to our own day. These transcripts must have
been passed from hand to hand at court, at the univer-
sities, in cultured country houses, and almost every poet
of the Jacobean age must have been more or less familiar
with their tenor. The style of Donne, like a very odd
perfume, was found to cling to every one who touched
it, and we observe the remarkable phenomenon of poems
which had not passed through a printer's hands exercis-
inof the influence of a body of accepted classical work.
In estimating the poetry of the Jacobean age, therefore,
there is no writer who demands more careful study than
this enigmatical and subterranean master, this veiled
Isis whose utterances outweighed the oracles of all
the visible gods.
For the secrecy with which the poems of Donne were
produced no adequate reason is forthcoming. His
conduct in other respects, though somewhat haughty,
was neither cloistered nor mysterious. He was pro-
fuse in the publication of his prose writings, and
denied his verse alone to his admirers. That the
tenor of it clashed with his profession as a Churchman
Ch. III.] John Donne. 49
has been put forward as a reason, but it is not a very
good one. Donne was not squeamish in his sermons,
nor afraid of misconception in his Pseudo-Martyr. If
he had had scruples of conscience about his secular
poems he might have destroyed them, as George
Herbert did his. It is idle to speculate on the cause
of Donne's peculiar conduct. It suffices to record that
having produced a quantity of poetry of extraordinary
value, and intimately welcome to his generation, he
would neither publish nor destroy it, but permitted, and
perhaps preferred, that it should circulate among his
most intelligent contemporaries in such a way as to
excite the maximum of curiosity and mystery.
John Donne was born in the city of London in 1573 ;
his father was a Welshman, his mother descended from
the family of Sir Thomas More. At an early age he
showed precocious talents, and was educated with care at
Oxford first, and then possibly at Cambridge. Before he
was fourteen he had won the title of the Pico della
Mirandola of his age. His father died when he was a
child, and left him in the charge of a mother who was a
Roman Catholic herself, and greatly desired to see her
son converted. For a long time the young man hung
undecided, between the Churches of Rome and England.
While in this uncertain condition of mind, of which
Izaak Walton has preserved a record, Donne wrote, or
began to write, his Satires, which are understood to
belong to the years 1593 and 1594. He threw in his
lot with the Earl of Essex, and, in a brief heat of soldier-
ship, took part in the expedition against Cadiz, and in
the Island Voyage. From the Azores he passed into
E
50 Tlie Jacobean Poets. tCii. III.
Italy, and thence into Spain, making himself fiiniiliar
with contemporary thought in those countries. Return-
ing to England, he became secretary to the Lord
Chancellor, and eventually fell in love with a young
lady of quality who was Lady Elsemore's niece. This
attachment lost for Donne the favour of his patron, but
after romantic difficulties the marriage was performed
in 1600, although the poet was immediately thrown into
prison.
He was soon released, but he found it impossible to
regain his situation. His wife and he, however, were
invited by their kinsman, Francis Wolley, to take up
their abode at his country-seat of Pyrford, which they
did. The next few years were spent in this retirement,
absorbed in intellectual work of all kinds, and were in all
probability those in which the radiating heat of Donne's
genius first began to make itself felt On the death of
Wolley, the Donnes retired to a house in ]\Iitcham in 1606,
while the poet took lodgings in London for his more
frequent communication with those who, from all parts
of Europe, now began to gather to listen to his conversa-
tion. In 1610, James I., who "had formerly both
known and put a value upon his company, and had also
given him some hopes of a state employment, being
always much pleased when ]\Ir. Donne attended him,"
suddenly adjured him to enter the ministry. Donne
declined to do so on the spot, but from that time forth
he gave his special attention to " an incessant study of
textual divinity," and in 161 5, at the age of forty-two,
he took holy orders. He quickly rose to be Dean of
St. Paul's, a post which he held for nearly nine years,
Ch. TIL] John Donne. 51
dying on the 31st of March, 1631, of a consumption. At
the tune of his death he was, beyond question, the most
admired preacher in England. This brief sketch of the
external circumstances of Donne's life may be sufficient
for our purpose, but gives no idea of the mysterious dis-
crepancies which existed in his character, of the singular
constitution of his mind, or of his fiery eccentricity.
With the trifling exceptions which have been mentioned
above, the poems of Donne were not published until
after his death. The first edition, the quarto of 1633,
is very inaccurate and ill-arranged; the octavos of 1635
and 1639 are much fuller and more exact. Donne,
however, still lacks a competent editor. We have no
direct knowledge of the poet's own wish as to the
arrangement of his poems, nor any safe conjecture as to
the date of more than a few pieces. The best lyrics,
however, appear to belong to the first decade of James
I.'s reign, if they are not even of earlier composition.
There seems to be no doubt that the Satires, an imperfect
manuscript of which bears the date 1593, are wholly
Elizabethan, These are seven in number, and belong to
the same general category as tliose of Hall, Lodge, and
Guilpin. Neither in date nor in style do they belong
to the period treated of in this volume, and it is therefore
not necessary to dwell on them at great length here.
They are brilliant and picturesque beyond any of their
particular compeers, even beyond the best of Hall's
satires. But they have the terrible faults which marked
all our Elizabethan satirists, a crabbed violence alike of
manner and matter, a fierce voluble conventionality,
a tortured and often absolutely licentious and erroneous
52 Tlic Jacobean Poets. [Cn. III.
conception of the use of language. The fourth is,
doubtless, the best written, and may be taken as the
best essay in this class of poetry existing in English
literature before the middle-life of Uryden ; its attraction
for Pope is well known.
" The Progress of the Soul," as named by its author
" Poema Satyricon," takes its natural place after the satires,
but is conjectured to have been written not earlier
than 1 6 ID. De Quincey, with unwonted warmth, de-
clared that " massy diamonds compose the very substance
of this poem, thoughts and descriptions which have the
fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or /I^^schylus."
It is written in a variant of the Spenserian stanza, and is
a hyperbolical history of the development of the human
soul, extended to more than five hundred lines, and not
ended, but abruptly closed. It is one of the most diffi-
cult of Donne's writings, and started a kind of psycho-
logical poetry of which, as the century progressed, many
more examples were seen, none, perhaps, of a wholly
felicitous character. t~lt has the poet's characteristics,
however, to the full. The verse marches with a virile
tread, the epithets are daring, the thoughts always
curious and occasionally sublime, the imagination odd
and scholastic, with recurring gleams of passion^
Here is a fragment of this strange production —
Into an embryon fish our soul is thrown,
And in due time thrown out again, and grown
To such vastness, as if, unmanacled
From Greece, Morea were, and that, by some
Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swum,
Or seas from Afric's body had severed
Ch. III.] John Donne. 53
And torn the hopeful promontory's head ;
This fish would seem these, and, when all hopes fail,
A great ship overset, or without sail
Hulling, might (when this was a whelp) be like this whale.
At every stroke his brazen fins do take
More circles in the broken sea they make
Then cannons' voices, when the air they tear ;
His ribs are pillars, and his high-arch'd roof.
Of bark that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof;
Swim in him, svvallow'd dolphins, without fear,
And feel no sides, as if his vast womb were
Some inland sea, and ever as he went
He spouted rivers up, as if he meant
To join our seas with seas above the firmament.
***** t
Now drinks he up seas, and he eats up flocks ;
He jostles islands and he shakes firm rocks ;
Now in a roomful house this soul doth float,
And like a prince she sends her faculties
To all her limbs, distant as provinces.
The Sun hath twenty times both crab and goat
Parched, since first launch'd forth this living boat ;
*Tis greatest now and to destruction
Nearest ; there's no pause at perfection,
Greatness a period hath, but hath no station.
Far less extraordinary are the Epistles, which form a
large section of Donne's poetical works. All through
life he was wont to address letters, chiefly in the heroic
couplet, to the most intimate of his friends. These
epistles are conceived in a lighter vein than his other
writings, and have less of his characteristic vehemence.
The earliest, however, " The Storm," which he addressed
from the Azores, possesses his Ehzabethan mannerism ;
it is crudely picturesque and licentious, essentially un-
poetical. " The Calm," which is the parallel piece, is
54 TIic Jacobean Poets. [Cii. ill.
far better, and partly deserves Ben Jonson's high com-
mendation of it to Drummond. The epistle to Sir Henry
Goodyer is noticeable for the dignified and stately manner
in which the four-line stanza, afterwards adopted by Gray
for his Elegy., is employed ; this poem is exceedingly like
the early pieces written by Dryden some fifty years
later. The school of the Restoration is plainly fore-
shadowed in it.
Many of these epistles are stuffed hard with thoughts,
but poetry is rarely to be found in them ; the style is not
lucid, the construction is desperately parenthetical. It is
not often that the weary reader is rewarded by such a
polished piece of versification as is presented by this
passage about love in the " Letter to the Countess of
Huntingdon."
It is not love that sueth, or doth contend ;
Love either conquers, or but meets a friend.
Man's better part consists of purer fire,
And finds itself allowed, ere it desire.
Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason Su'ay,
And journeys not till it find summer-way.
A weather-beaten lover, but once known,
Is sport for every girl to practise on.
Who strives, through woman's scorns, woman to know,
Is lost, and seeks his shadow to outgo ;
It must be sickness, after one disdain,
Though he be called aloud, to look again ;
Let others sin and grieve ; one cunning slight
Shall freeze my love to crystal in a night.
I can love first, and, if I win, love still,
And cannot be removed, unless she will ;
It is her fault if I unsure remain ;
She only can untie, I bind again ;
The honesties of love with ease I do.
But am no porter for a tedious woe.
Cn. III.] joJin Donne. 55
Most of these epistles are New Year's greetings, and
many are addressed to the noble and devout ladies
with whom he held spiritual converse in advancing years.
The poet superbly aggrandizes the moral qualities of
these women, paying to their souls the court that
younger and flightier cavaliers reserved for the physical
beauty of their daughters.
The Epithalamia of Donne form that section of his
work in which, alone, he seems to follow in due succes-
sion after Spenser. These marriage-songs are elegant and
glowing, though not without the harshness which Donne
could not for any length of time forego. That composed
for the wedding of Frederick Count Palatine and the Lady
Elizabeth, in 16 13, is perhaps the most popular of all
Donne's writings, and opens with a delicious vivacity.
Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day this is 1
All the air is thy diocese.
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,
The household bird with the red stomacher ;
Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon
As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon ;
The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped,
And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine, —
This day, which might enflame thyself, old Valentine.
The ode within the rather stiff setting of the Allo-
phanes and Idios eclogue is scarcely less felicitous.
The miscellaneous secular poems of Donne are
generically classed under the heading of " Elegies." We
56 The Jacobean Poets. [Cu. in.
liave here some of the most extraordinary aberrations
of fancy, some of the wildest contrasts of character
and style, to be observed in literature. They are
mainly Ovidian or Tibullan studies of the progress
of the passion of love, written by one who proclaims
himself an ardent, but no longer an illusioned lover, —
hot, still, but violent and scandalous. The youth of the
author is disclosed in them, but it is not the callous
youth of first inexperience. He is already a past
master in the subtle sophistry of love, and knows by
rote " the mystic language of the eye and hand." Weary
with the beauty of spring and summer, he has learned
to find fascination in an autumnal face. The voluptuous
character of these elegies has scandalized successive
critics. Several of them, to be plain, were indeed too
outspoken for the poet's own, or for any decent age.
Throughout it is seldom so much what the unbridled
lover says, as his utter intemperance in saying it, that
surprises, especially in one who, by the time the poems
were given to the public, had come to be regarded as
the holiest of men. Even saints, however, were coarse
in the age of James, and the most beautiful of all Donne's
elegies, the exquisite " Refusal to allow his Young Wife
to accompany him abroad as a Page," which belongs to
his mature life and treats of a very creditable passion, is
marred by almost inconceivable offences against good
taste.
Another section of Donne's poems is composed of
funeral elegies or requiems, in which he allowed the
sombre part of his fancy to run riot. In these curious
entombments we read nothing that seems personal or
Ch. III. J JoJiu Donne. 57
pathetic, but much about " the magnetic force " of the
deceased, her spiritual anatomy, and her soul's " meri-
dians and parallels." Amid these pedantries, we light
now and then upon extraordinary bursts of poetic obser-
vation, as when the eminence of the spirit of Mistress
Drury reminds the poet of a vision, seen years before in
sailing past the Canaries, and he cries out —
Doth not a Teneriffe or higher hill,
Rise so high like a rock, that one might think
The floating moon would shipwreck there, and sink,
or as when one of his trances comes upon him, and he
sighs —
when thou know'st this,
Thou know'st how wan a ghost this our world is.
These lovely sudden bursts of pure poetry are more
frequent in the " Funeral Elegies " than in any section of
Donne's poetry which we have mentioned, and approach
those, to be presently noted, in the Lyrics. The spirit of
this strange writer loved to dwell on the majestic and
gorgeous aspects of death, to wave his torch within the
charnel-house and to show that its walls are set with
jewels.
This may be taken as an example of his obscure
mortuary imagination —
As men of China, after an age's stay,
Do take up porcelain where they buried clay,
So at this grave, her limbeck (which refmes
The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and mines
Of which this flesh was), her soul shall inspire
Flesh of such stuff, as God, when his last fire
Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall
Make and name them the elixir of tlii-< All.
58 The Jacobean Poets. rcii. ill.
They say, the sea, when it gains, losetli too,
If carnal Death (the younger brother) do
Usurp the body ; our soul, which subject is
To the elder Death, by sin, is freed by this ;
They perish both, when they attempt the just.
For graves our trophies are, and both death's dust.
The presence of the emblems of mortality rouses
Donne to an unusual intellectual ecstasy. The latest
of these elegies is dated 1625, and shows that the poet
retained his art in this kind of writing to the very
close of his career, adding polish to his style, without any
perceptible falling off in power.
A large number of " Holy Sonnets," which Izaak
Walton thought had perished, were published in 1669,
and several remain still unprinted. They are more
properly quatorzains than sonnets, more correct in form
than the usual English sonnet of the age — for the octett
is properly arranged and rhymed — but closing in the
sestett with a couplet. These sonnets are very interesting
from the light they throw on Donne's prolonged sympathy
with the Roman Church, over which his biographers
have been wont to slur. All these " Holy Sonnets " pro-
bably belong to 161 7, or the period immediately follow-
ing the death of Donne's wife. In the light of certain
examples in the possession of the present writer, which
have not yet appeared in print, they seem to confirm
Walton's remark that though Donne inquired early in
life into the differences between Protestantism and
CathoUcism, yet that he lived until the death of his
wife without religion.
A pathetic sonnet from the Westmoreland manuscript,
Ch. III.] John Donne. 59
here printed for the first time, shows the effect of that
bereavement upon him —
Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To Nature, and to hers and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven vanished. —
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God ; so streams do show their head,
But tho' I have found thee, and thou my tliirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, when as thou
Does woo my soul for hers, off 'ring all thine :
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to Saints and Angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest this World, Flesh, yea Devil put thee out ?
The sonnet on the Blessed Virgin Mary, however,
has probably been attributed to Donne by error; the
more likely name of Constable has been suggested as
that of its author.
In his other divine poems, also, the Roman element is
often very strong, and the theology of a cast which is far
removed from that of Puritanism. In the very curious
piece called " The Cross," he seems to confess to the use
of a material crucifix, and in " A Litany " he distinctly
recommends prayer to the Virgin Mary,
" That she-cherubim which unlocked Paradise."
All these are matters which must be left to the future
biographers of Donne, but which are worthy of their
closest attention in developing the intricate anomalies
of his character.
We have now, by a process of exhaustion, arrived at
6o TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. ill.
what is the most interesting of the sections of Donne's
poetry, his amatory lyrics. These are about seventy in
number, and so far as the scanty evidence can be
depended upon, belong to various periods from his
twentieth to his thirty-fifth year. The series, as we now
hold it, begins with the gross and offensive piece of
extravagance called, "The Flea," but is followed by
"The Good-Morrow," which strikes a very different note.
As a rule, these poems are extremely personal, confidential,
and vivid ; the stamp of life is on them. None the less,
while confessing with extraordinary frankness and clear-
ness the passion of the writer, they are so reserved in
detail, so immersed and engulphed in secrecy, that no
definite conjecture can be hazarded as to the person, or
persons, or the class of persons, to whom they were
addressed. One or two were evidently inspired by
Donne's wife, others most emphatically were not, and
in their lawless, though not gross, sensuality, remind us
of the still more outspoken " Elegies." In spite of the
alembicated verbiage, the tortuousness and artificiality of
the thought, sincerity burns in every stanza, and the
most exquisite images lie side by side with monstrous
conceits and ugly pedantries.
A peculiarity of the lyrics is that scarcely two of the
seventy are written in the same verse-form. Donne
evidently laid himself out to invent elaborate and far-
fetched metres. He was imitated in this down to the
Restoration, when all metrical effects tended to merge
in the heroic couplet. But of the innumerable form-
inventions of Donne and of his disciples scarcely one
has been adopted into the language, although more
Ch. III.] John Donne. 6i
than one, by their elegance and melody, deserve to
be resumed.
This exemplifies one of the prettiest of his stanza-
forms —
If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee ;
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know ;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet do not, — I would not go
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter.
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, with two or three.
'It now remains to examine this body of poetry in
general terms, and, first of all, it is necessary to make
some remarks with regard to Donne's whole system of
prosody. The terms " irregular," " unintelligible," and
" viciously rugged," are commonly used in describing it,
and it seems even to be supposed by some critics that
Donne did not know how to scan. This last supposi-
tion may be rejected at once ; what there was to know
about poetry was known to Donne. But it seems certain
that he intentionally introduced a revolution into English
versification. It was doubtless as a rebellion against
62 Tlie Jacobean Poets. [Cii. III.
the smooth and somewhat nerveless iambic flow of
Spenser and the earliest contemporaries of Shakespeare,
that Donne invented his violent mode of breaking up
the line into quick and slow beats. The best critic of
his own generation, Ben Jonson, hated the innovation,
and told Drummond " that Donne, for not keeping of
accent, deserved hanging." It is difficult to stem a
current of censure which has set without intermission
since the very days of Donne itself, but I may be per-
mitted to point out what I imagine was the poet's own
view of the matter.
He found, as I have said, the verse of his youth, say
of 1590, exceedingly mellifluous, sinuous, and inclining
to flaccidity. A five-syllabled iambic line of Spenser
or of Daniel trots along with the gentlest amble of
inevitable shorts and longs. It seems to have vexed
the ear of Donne by its tendency to feebleness, and it
doubtless appeared to him that the very gifted writers
who immediately preceded him had carried the softness
of it as far as it would go. He desired new and more
varied effects. To see what he aimed at doing, we have,
I believe, to turn to what has been attempted in our
own time, by Mr. Robert Bridges, in some of his early
experiments, and by the Symbolists in France. The
iambic rhymed line of Donne has audacities such as
are permitted to his blank verse by Milton, and although
the felicities are rare in the older poet, instead of
being almost incessant, as in the later, Donne at his
best is not less melodious than Milton. When he
writes —
Blasted with sighs and surrounded with tears,
Ch. III.] John Donne. 63
we must not dismiss this as not being iambic verse at
all, nor, — much less, — attempt to read it —
Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
but recognize in it the poet's attempt to identify the
beat of his verse with his bewildered and dejected con-
dition, reading it somewhat in this notation : —
Blasted | with sighs 1| and surrounded | with tears.
The violence of Donne's transposition of accent is
most curiously to be observed in his earliest satires, and
in some of his later poems is almost entirely absent.
Doubtless his theory became modified with advancing
years. No poet is more difficult to read aloud. Such
a passage as the following may excusably defy a
novice : —
No token of worth but Queen's man and fine
Living barrels of beef and flagons of wine.
I shook like a spied spy. Preachers which are
Seas of wit and arts, you can then dare
Drown the sins of this place, for, for me.
Which am but a scant brook, it enough shall be
To wash the stains away.
But treat the five-foot verse not as a fixed and unalter-
able sequence of cadences, but as a norm around which
a musician weaves his variations, and the riddle is soon
read —
No token | of worth | but Queen's | man | and fine
Living I barrels of | beef and ( flagons of | wine.
I shook I like a spied | spy. | Preachers | which arc
Seas I of wit | and arts, | you can then | dare
Drown | the sins | of this place, | for, | for me,
Which am | but a scant | brook, | it enough | shall be
To wash I the stains | away.
64 TJie Jacobean Poets. \Q\\. ill.
The poetry of Donne possesses in no small degree
that "unusual and indefinable witchery" which Dr.
Jessopp has noted as characteristic of the man himself.
But our enjoyment of it is marred by the violence of
the writer, by his want of what seems to us to be good
taste, and by a quality which has been overlooked by
those w'ho have written about him, but which seems to
provide the key to the mystery of his position. Donne
was, I would venture to suggest, by far the most modern
and contemporaneous of the writers of his time. He
rejected all the classical tags and imagery of the Eliza-
bethans, he borrowed nothing from French or Italian
tradition. He arrived at an excess of actuality in style,
and it was because he struck them as so novel and so
completely in touch with his own age that his immediate
coevals were so much fascinated with him. His poems
are full of images taken from the life and habits of the
time. Where earlier poets had summoned the myths of
Greece to adorn their verse, Donne weaves in, instead,
the false zoology, the crude physics and philosophy, of
his own fermenting epoch. The poem called " Love's
Exchange," is worthy of careful examination in this
respect. Each stanza is crowded with conceits, each
one of which is taken from the practical or professional
life of the moment in which the poet wrote. This
extreme modernness, however, is one potent source of
our lack of sympathy with the poetry so inspired. In
the long run, it is the broader suggestion, the wider if
more conventional range of classic imagery, which may
hope to hold without fatigue the interest of successive
generations.
Cii. III.] JoJm Donne. 65
For us the charm of Donne continues to rest in his
occasional fehcities, his bursts of melodious passion.
If his song were not so tantalizingly fragmentary, we
should call him the unquestioned nightingale of the
Jacobean choir. No other poet of that time, few poets
of any time, have equalled the concentrated passion,
the delicate, long-drawn musical effects, the bold and
ecstatic rapture of Donne at his best. In such a poem
as " The Dream," he realizes the very paroxysm of
amatory song. In his own generation, no one approached
the purity of his cascades of ringing monosyllables, his
For God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love,
or,
I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the God of Love was born.
or. Oh more than moon,
Draw not thy seas to drown me in thy sphere,
or,
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.
In these and similar passages, of which a not very
slender florilegium might be gathered from his voluminous
productions, Donne reminds us that Ben Jonson esteemed
him "the first poet in the world in some things." But
this quality of passionate music is not the only one
discernible, nor often to be discerned. The more
obvious characteristic was summed up by Coleridge in
a droll quatrain —
With Donne, whose Muse on dromedary trots.
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love-knots ;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, Fancy's maze and clue.
Wit's forge and fire-blast, Meaning's press and screw.
^
66 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. III.
In the use of these ingenuities, which it was once
< the fashion to call " metaphysical," Donne shows an
amazing pertinacity. He is never daunted by the feeling
that his wit is exercised " on subjects where we have no
right to expect it," and where it is impossible for us to
relish it. He pushes on with relentless logic, — some-
times, indeed, past chains of images that are lovely and
appropriate ; but, oftener, through briars and lianas that
rend his garments and trip up his feet. He is not
affected by the ruggedness of his road, nor by our
unwillingness to follow him. He stumbles doggedly on
until he has reached his singular goal. In all this
intellectual obstinacy he has a certain kinship to
Browning, but his obscurity is more dense. It is to be
hoped that the contemporary maligned him who reported
Donne to have written one of his elegies in an intentional
obscureness,l»but that he delighted in putting his readers
out of their depth can scarcely be doubted-^' It is
against this lurid background, which in itself and un-
relieved would possess a very slight attraction to modern
readers, that the electrical flashes of Donne's lyrical
intuition make their appearance, almost blinding us by
their brilliancy, and fading into the dark tissue of
conceits before we have time to appreciate them.
The prominence here given to Donne will be
challenged by no one who considers what his influence
was on the poetical taste of the time. It is true that
among his immediate contemporaries the following of
Spenser did not absolutely cease at once. But if a
study on the poets of Charles I. were to succeed the
present volume, the name of Donne would have to be
Ch. III.] John Donne. 67
constantly prominent. On almost everything non-
dramatic published in the succeeding generation, from
Crashaw to Davenant, from Carew to Cowley, the stamp
of Donne is set. Dryden owed not a little to him,
although, as time went on, he purged himself more and
more fully of the taint of metaphysical conceit. So late
as 1692, in the preface to Eleanora, Dryden still held up
Donne as "the greatest wit, though not the best poet
of our nation." His poems were among the few non-
dramatic works of the Jacobean period which continued
to be read and reprinted in the age of Anne, and Pope
both borrowed from and imitated Donne.
So far as we trace this far-sweeping influence exercised
on the poets of a hundred years, we have difficulty in
applauding its effects. The empassioned sincerity, the
intuitions, the clarion note of Donne were individual to
himself and could not be transmitted. It v/as far other-
wise with the jargon of " metaphysical" wit, the trick of
strained and inappropriate imagery. These could be
adopted by almost any clever person, and were, in fact,
employed with fluent effect by people in whom the
poetical quality was of the slightest. Writers like
Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmoreland, or like Owen
Feltham (in his verse), show what it was that Donne's
seed produced when it fell upon stony ground.
CHAPTER IV.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
There is no body of poetical work which displays so
characteristically — we may not add, perhaps, so favourably
— the qualities of the Jacobean age as the mass of plays
united under the names of Beaumont and Fletcher.
These celebrated friends, who supply the most illustrious
example of the art of literary partnership now extant,
would probably be as little known to us as several of
their scarcely less-gifted contemporaries, if they had not
so exactly gratified the taste of their time, and of the
generation which succeeded theirs, as to induce the
players to preserve and revise their writings. Only ten
of their plays were printed during their lives, but the
folio of 1647 saved forty-two others from a destruction
which may have been imminent.
As the century proceeded, the writings of these friends
advanced in popularity far beyond that of Shakespeare's
or even of Ben Jenson's, and when the Restoration thought
of the classic English drama, it thought principally of
Beaumont and Fletcher. Dryden expressed the common
opinion when he said that they reproduced the easy con-
versation of gentlefolks more ably than Shakespeare, and
Ch. IV.] Beaumont and Fletcher. 6g
acquiesced in the common taste when he recorded that
in his day " two of theirs were acted through the year,
for one of Shakespeare's or Jonson's." Beaumont and
Fletcher preserved their vogue until the classic reaction
was completed, and then their romantic plots and easy
verse went suddenly out of fashion. Towards the end
of the eighteenth century their fame revived, but it has
never again risen to its first commanding height. Yet the
richness and abundance of these dramatists, their very
high level of merit, and their perfect sympathy with the
age in which they flourished, will always save them from
critical neglect. To praise them unreservedly is no
longer possible ; but no one who loves poetry can fail to
read them with delight.
Of the famous Heavenly Twins of Parnassus, John
Fletcher was the elder. He was born in December, 1579,
at Rye, of which parish his father, Richard Fletcher,
was then incumbent. Dr. Fletcher became successively
Bishop of Bristol, of Worcester, and of London, dying
when his son was seventeen, and an inmate of Bene't
College, Cambridge. Fletcher's career is entirely
obscure to us, until he began to be a dramatist, in his
thirtieth year ; but it is probable that, though not rich, he
never found himself so pinched by poverty as the
majority of his dramatic colleagues were. Francis
Beaumont was even more certainly in easy circumstances.
Fie was born, the third son of the squire of Grace-Dieu
in Leicestershire, towards the close of 1584. He was
admitted to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1597, and
proceeded to the Inner Temple three years later. He
was probably the author of Sal/Jiacis and HctDiaplirodiic,
70 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. iv.
1602, a luscious paia[)hrase of a story of Ovid told in
heroic verse, a juvenile performance, but one of high
poetic promise. Early in the century Beaumont became
a prominent figure among the wits, and was little more
than of age when Ben Jonson addressed him —
How do I love thee, Beaumont, and thy Muse,
in answer to the complimentary " religion " of a neatly
turned copy of verses on Volpone. Fletcher wrote on
the same occasion, and their names are thus for the
first time connected. The famous meetings at the
Mermaid may have begun soon after 1606, when
Beaumont composed his Letter to Ben Jonson, 'Smtten
before he and Master Fletcher came to London," He
says in the course of this admirable epistle : —
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid ; heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came.
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Ofhis dull life.
From this same poem, in which he speaks of "scenes"
which are not yet perfect, we see that he was already a
dramatist. The first appearance he is known to have
made was in the comedy of The Woman-Hater, written
and anonymously printed in 1607. There is little doubt
that this was the unaided work of Beaumont. It bears
manifest signs of a young hand, and is a crude miscellany
of prose patched with soft passages of romantic blank
verse. The Woman-Hater is interesting as manifestly
composed under the influence of Shakespeare. The
Ch. IV.] Beaumont and Flctclicr. yi
central figure is a hungry courtier, Lazarillo, who studies
greediness as a fine art, and indulges in exquisite
rhapsodies of longing for the head of an "umbrano,"
which fishy delicacy evades him to the last. The fair
adventuress Orianais a species of Beatrice, and Gondarino
an unseemly and extravagant Benedick. The scene is
laid at Milan; the verse is primitive, and the knowledge
of stage-craft as yet rudimentary. None the less, the
germ of the whole Beaumont-and-Fletcher drama is to
be traced in this lax and luxurious mixture of poetry and
farce.
In 1608 Fletcher is believed to have made his first
essay in authorship with the pastoral tragi-comedy of
The Faithful Shepherdess, which is admitted to be, from
the purely poetical point of view, one of the best, if not
the very best thing of its kind in English. There is no
reason to suppose that at this point he had begun to
combine with Beaumont, and this poem has all the
air of being Fletcher's unaided composition, in spite of
a phrase of Jonson's to Drummond. The Faithful
ShepherdiSs was an attempt to introduce into English
literature the art of Tasso and Guarini. It is an artificial
and exotic piece, of little dramatic propriety, and even
when it was originally produced, it made the audience
angry by its substitution of renaissance fancies for
" Whitsun-ales, cream, wassail and morris-dances." It
is an excursion into the very fairyland of imagination ;
but, unfortunately, Fletcher carries with him the grossness
and the moral perversity which were his most unfortunate
characteristics, and his wanton shepherdesses are scan-
dalously indifferent to decorum. On the other hand, no
72 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cn. IV.
work of the period abounds with finer lyrical beauties,
truer touches of sympathy with nature, or more artfully
artless turns of exquisite language.
Here are two fragments of the Satyr's speeches —
See, the day begins to break.
And the light shoots like a streak
Of subtle fire ; the wind blows cold,
As the morning doth unfold ;
Now the birds begin to rouse,
And the squirrel from the boughs
Leaps to get him nuts and fruit ;
The early lark, that erst was mute,
Carols to the rising day
Many a note and many a lay.
Thou divinest, fairest, brightest,
Thou most powerful Maid, and whitest,
Thou most virtuous and most blessed,
Eyes of stars, and golden-tressed
Like Apollo, tell me. Sweetest,
What new service now is meetest
For the Satyr ? Shall I stray
In the middle air, and stay
The sailing rack, or nimbly take
Hold by the moon, and gently make
Suit to the pale queen of night
For a beam to give them light ?
Shall I dive into the sea,
And bring the coral, making way
Through the rising waves that fall
In snowy fleeces? Dearest, shall
I catch the wanton fawns, or flies
Whose woven wings the summer dyes
Of many colours ? Get thee fruit ?
Or steal from heaven old Orpheus' lute ?
All these I'll venture for, and more,
To do her service all these woods adore.
Ch. IV.] Beaitrnont and Fletcher. 73
The famous partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher
began about 1608, and lasted until 1611. During this
brief period they wrote ten or eleven of the plays which
still exist, and without doubt not a few of their pro-
ductions are lost. In 1608* they brought out on the
stage Four Flays in One, Lovers Cure, and probably A
King and No King. In 1609 The Scornful Lady ; in 1610
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Coxcomb, Cnpid's
Revenge 2.xiA Philaster ; in 161 1 The Tivo Noble Kinsmen,
in which Shakespeare may have collaborated, The Maid's
Tragedy, and perhaps Love's Pilgrimage. In 161 1
Beaumont, who seems to have always shrunk from the
rough publicity of the stage, made up his mind to retire
from play-writing ; he had never allowed his name to
appear on a title-page. He probably married Ursula
Isley at this time, and withdrew to the country. Perhaps
his health began to fail ; at all events, on the 6th of
March, 1616, at the early age of thirty-one, he died, and
was buried, three days later, in Westminster Abbey.
It is in the plays which have just been mentioned that
the peculiar qualities of the two playwrights are seen to
the best advantage. In later years, whether alone, or in
collaboration with others, Fletcher produced many very
fine works, but they scarcely have the charm of those
which he wrote with Beaumont. When the posthumous
editor of 1647 came to arrange the dramas, he placed
The Maid's Tragedy at the head, Philaster next to it,
and A King or No King third. In these three plays,
and in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, too, the hand
* The conjectural arrangement so ingeniously worked out by
Mr. Fleay is here in ihe main adopted.
74 The Jacobean Poets. [Cn. iv.
of Beaumont appears to be paramount. There is, at
least, very marked, a certain element which does not
reappear after the retirement of Beaumont, and which
may safely be attributed to that writer.
The seventeenth century admired The Maid's Tragedy
to excess, and it is true that it is full of poetry which it
would be hardly possible to overpraise, a poetry which
is more delicate, more spontaneous than the declama-
tory genius of Fletcher could produce unaided.
Here is part of a speech by Aspatia in the second act —
Then, my good giils, be more than women, wise, —
At least, be more than I was, and be sure
You credit anything the light gives light to,
Before a man ; rather believe the sea
Weeps for the ruin'd merchant when he roars ;
Rather the wind courts but the pregnant sails
When the strong cordage cracks ; rather the sun
Comes but to kiss the fruit in wealthy autumn,
V>'hen all falls blasted ; if you needs must love,
Forc'd by ill fate, take to your maiden bosoms
Two dead-cold aspics, and of them make lovers ;
They cannot flatter, nor forswear ; one kiss
Makes a long peace for all ; — but Man,
Oh ! that beast, Man ! Come ! let's be sad, my girls !
The plot of The Maids Tragedy^ the only play of Beau-
mont and Fletcher's which has been revived on the
modern stage, is gross, painful, and improbable. Yet
there is tragic interest in the distressing relation of
Evadne and Amintor; while in the fifth act, where
Evadne kills the king, a certain moral altitude of horror,
unusual with these poets, is distinctly reached. In
almost every way, for good and ill, The Maids Tragedy
is a characteristic specimen of their theatre.
Ch. IV,] Beatmiont and Fletcher. 75
Modern taste prefers P/iilaster, in many ways an
enchanting performance. The beauty of the imagery
and the melody of the language here become something
veritably astonishing. Nothing in Jacobean poetry
outside Shakespeare is more charming than the sweet
companionship, in the second act, of Philaster and the
boy-maiden, Bellario-Eufrasia.
It is thus that Philaster describes Bellario —
I have a boy
Sent by the gods, I hope to this intent,
Not yet seen in the court ; hunting the buck,
I found him sitting by a fountain-side.
Of which he borrowed some to quench his thirst.
And paid the nymph again as much in tears ;
A garland lay him by, made by himself
Of many several flowers, bred in the bay.
Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness
Delighted me ; but ever when he turned
His tender eyes upon 'em, he would weejj,
As if he meant to make 'em grow again.
.Seeing such pretty helpless innocence
Dwell in his face, I asked him all his story :
He told me that his parents gentle died,
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields.
Which gave him roots ; and of the crystal springs,
Which did not stop their courses ; and the sun.
Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light ;
Then he took up his garland and did show
What every flower, as country people hold.
Did signify ; and how all, order'd thus,
E.xpress'd his grief ; and to my thoughts did read
The prettiest lecture of his country art
That could be wished ; so that methought I could
Have studied it. I gladly entertained him.
Who was more glad to follow, and have got
The trustiest, lovingest, and the gentlest boy
That ever master kept.
^6 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. IV.
Bellario's final speech to the king sums up the
essence of the play, and explains the prettiest of those
rather awkward disguises of boys as girls and girls as
boys, in which Sidney and Shakespeare had indulged,
but which Beaumont and Fletcher observed in a posi-
tive extravagance. Stronger than either of these graceful
romances, is the tragi-comedy of A King and No Ki/ig,
which sacrifices force less to sweetness than is usual with
its authors, and proceeds with great spirit, Arbaces, a
finely designed character, moves the accomplished type
of a vaunting egotist, the man who is unshaken in the
belief in himself. Magnanimous as well as braggart,
there is a life-like variety in Arbaces more attractive
than the too-Jonsonian figure of Bessus, whose almost
professional cowardice is so incessant as to grow tiresome.
Other plays of this first and greatest period which
demand a special word are The Knight of the Burning
Pestle^ with its extremely early proof of the popularity of
Cervantes; Foia- Plays in One, two by Beaumont and
two by Fletcher, which seems to represent their first
efforts at combined authorship ; Love's Cure, a rattling,
vigorous comedy of Seville manners, in which Lucio, a
lad brought up as a girl, is contrasted with Clara, the
martial maid, who dreams herself a man — Love curing
them both, and bringing both back to nature ; the
sparkling English comedy of The Scornful Lady, with
its domestic scenes ; and The Two Noble Kinsmen, a
stirring but ill-constructed dramatization of Chaucer, to
which the shadow of the name of Shakespeare, and a
certain indisputable strength in the first act, have
directed a somewhat exaggerated amount of attention.
Ch. IV.] Bcmimont and Fletcher. 77
The song with which it opens can scarcely but be by
Shakespeare himself.
Roses, their sharp spines being gone,
Not royal in their smells alone,
But in their hue.
Maiden pinks, of odour faint,
Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint,
And sweet thyme true ;
Primrose, first-born child of Ver,
Many springtime's harbinger,
With her bells dim ;
Oxlips in their cradles growing ;
Marigolds on death-beds blowing ;
Lark-heels trim ;
All dear Nature's children sweet,
Lie 'fore Bride and Bridegroom's feet,
Blessing their sense ;
Not an angel of the air,
Bird melodious or bird fair.
Is absent hence.
The crow, the slanderous cuckoo, nor
The boding raven, nor chough lioar.
Nor chatting pie.
May on our bride-house perch or sing.
Or with them any discord bring.
But from it fly.
Whether Beaumont withdrew entirely in 16 11, or
lingered on until 1613, his influence seems to be very
slight in the second period of the collaborated plays.
Fletcher may have used hints supplied by his friend, but
in the main the plays of the last years of Beaumont's life
seem to be exclusively Fletcher's. In 161 2 he probably
brought out The Captain. In 16 13 The Honest Man's
78 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. IV.
Fortune and The Nice Valour. In 1614 The Night-
Walker, Wit tvithout Money, The Woman's Prize, and
The Faithful Friend. In 161 5 The Chances. In 16 16
Bonduca, Valcntinian, and The Bloody Brother. In
1 61 7 The Knight of Malta and TJie Queen of Corinth.
In 161 8 The Mad Lover, The Loyal Subject, and The
Humourous Lieutenant. Of these sixteen plays there is
not one which can be said to be so important, either
poetically or dramatically, as several of the preceding
series, nor did Fletcher fail, at a subsequent time, to rise
to greater heights. The decline is so abrupt at first as
to mark almost beyond question the sudden weakness
i)roduced by the withdrawal of Beaumont ; Fletcher
learned gradually, but not without difficulty, to stand
alone. Here are one or two good tragedies — Bonduca,
The Bloody Brother — but not a single comedy, unless it
be The Chajices, which can be ranked among the best of
Fletcher's. Aubrey's phrase, repeated from Earle, that
Beaumont's " main business was to correct the over-
flowings of Mr. Fletcher's wit," has often been quoted ;
but, in the presence of the phenomenon before us, it can-
not be credited. Something very much more positive
than a mere critical exercise of judgment was removed
when Beaumont ceased to write, and the versification
alone is enough to assure us of the abundance of his
actual contributions. The prose-scenes in the plays of
the earliest period were undoubtedly Beaumont's, and
they testify to a vein of fancy very difi"erent from
Fletcher's. It is noticeable, however, that this group
of imperfect plays contains almost all Fletcher's most
exquisite and imperishable songs.
Ch. IV.] Beaumont and Fletcher. 79
In Bonduca, a romance of Roman Britain, Fletcher
composed a tragedy which only just missed greatness, in
the manner of Shakespeare. The patriot queen is well
contrasted with the soldierly graces of Caratach. T/ie
Bloody Brother was greatly admired throughout the
seventeenth century ; Dryden described it as the only
English tragedy " whose plot has that uniformity and
unity of design in it which I have commended in the
French," but to a modern taste it seems crude and
harsh. Valaitinian, another early favourite, told the
story of Nero under the guise of new names and intrigues.
This class of tragedies revealed the existence of masculine
qualities of writing in Fletcher, and were composed with
spirit and fervour. He was, however, to attain greater
sureness of execution, and the plots of these melodramas
display the results of haste and want of judgment. The
individual speeches, and some scenes, possess great
beauty; the general texture is improbable and dis-
agreeable. The comedies of this group are marked
by a sort of frenzied gaiety which is almost delirious,
and which too frequently degenerates into horseplay.
They seem all farce and whimsies, decked out, to be
sure, in laces and ribands of very pretty poetry, but
essentially volatile.
At the very moment when we become certain that the
judgment of Beaumont was completely withdrawn from
censuring the productions of his friend, we are aware
that another talent is summoned to Fletcher's assistance.
About 1619 Philip Massinger, an Oxford man of mature
years, adopted the profession of dramatist, and began to
work in conjunction with Fletcher. The circumstances
So The Jacobean Poets. [Cti. IV.
of his life will be dealt with in a later chapter, when we
come to treat his independent work. It is certain that
at first he aimed at nothing more ambitious than the
alteration and the completion of the plays of others. His
collaboration seems not merely to have been welcome to
Fletcher, but extremely stimulating, and for two years he
and Massinger wrote with great assiduity a group of plays
which appear in the so-called Beaumont-and-Fletcher
collection. The main plays of this conjectural third
group (1619-20) are Sir John van Olden Bartioveldt,
The Lazvs of Candy, The Custom of the Country, The
Double Marriage, The Little French Lawyer, The False
Ofie, Woniai Pleased, and A Very Woman. Of these
there is little to be said for the five first, in which
Fletcher strikes us as careless and Massinger still timid.
The three last deserve separate attention.
In The False 0?ie, which deals with the familiar story
of Antony and Cleopatra, the oratorical poetry of
Fletcher rises to its sublimest altitude. The action
of the piece is slow, and we are constantly tempted
to regret Shakespeare's magnificent evolution. But of
the grasp of character, the elevated conception of the
principal figures, and the charm of broad and melodious
poetry thrown like antique raiment about them, there
can be no two opinions. Women Pleased, though the
scene is laid in Florence, is a comedy of contemporary
English life, full of agreeable humours. Bomby, the
Puritan, who dances to " the pipe of persecution," and
tries to stop the morris-dances, is a delightful creation,
and is not too mechanically insisted on. The whole of
the fourth act is very poetically conceived. A Very
Cii. IV.] Beaumont and Fletcher. 8i
IVoman is now more commonly treated as mainly the
work of Massinger.
According to*Mr. Fleay's computation, the arrangement
between Fletcher and Massinger was abruptly suspended
from September, 1620, till March, 1622. If this be so,
we may with a certain plausibility name a series of plays
as having been written in those months by Fletcher
unaided. These are Monsieur Thoi/ias, Thierry and
Theodoret, The Island Princess, The Pilgrim, and The
Wild Goose Chase. It appears, at all events, that no
hand but Fletcher's was at work on these five plays, and
they are of so high an excellence as to make us regret
that his haste or his idleness led him so often to lean
upon others, instead of trusting to his own admirable re-
sources. Thierry and Theodoret is commonly admitted to
be the best of Fletcher's tragedies. The childless King of
France, who is warned to slay the first woman whom he
meets proceeding at sunrise from the temple of Diana,
is confronted with the veiled figure of his own beloved
wife, Ordella. This Lamb considered to be the finest
scene in Fletcher, and Ordella his " most perfect idea of
tlae female heroic character." The Wild Goose Chase, in
like manner, is one of the brightest and most coherent
of Fletcher's comedies, a play which it is impossible to
read and not be in a good humour. The central in-
cident of Monsieur Thomas, a middle-class Don Juan
brought to summary justice, is too gross for modern
readers ; but the play is admirably worked out as a
comical conception, and adorned with a bevy of pleasing
and indignant girls.
The final group of the plays which are commonly bound
G
82 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. IV.
up together as the works of Beaumont and Fletcher is
the most difficult to arrange and appreciate. Massinger
may have returned to Fletcher in 1622, and may have
been concerned that year in The Prophetess, The Sea
Voyage, The Spaiiish Curate, and The Beggar's Bush.
Of these the last alone is important; it is a very odd
play, full of curious and fantastic stuff, and has had
warm admirers. Coleridge said of The Beggai's Bush,
"I could read it from morning to night; how sylvan and
sunshiny it is ! " It is a Flemisli comedy, in which the
ragged regiment are introduced using their cant phrases
and discovering their cozening tricks. In 1623 Fletcher
seems to have joined with some one who was not
Massinger, but whom it would be hazardous to name
with certainty, in writing Wit at Several Weapons and
The Maid of the Mill, the first an English, and the
second a Spanish comedy, trembling on the borderland
of farce.
At this point the career of Fletcher becomes in-
distinct to us, but it is very interesting to observe
that his genius seems to have deepened and brightened
to the last, for his very latest plays, probably produced
in 1624, are second to nothing of the same kind
written through the long course of his career. These
are the comedies of A Wife for a Month, and Puie
a Wife and Have a Wife. These are much less
farcical than the comic pieces which had preceded them,
and rest on a solid basis of invention. When the poet
composed Pule a Wife and Have a Wife, he must have
been worn with a career of persistent and laborious in-
vention, yet nowhere in the mass of his voluminous
Ch. IV.] Beaumont and Fletcher. 83
writings is the wit more fresh, the language more ex-
quisite, elastic, and unexpected, or the evolution of
character more delicate.
We may be permitted to hope that his anxieties were
relaxed for some months before his death. But all we
know is what Aubrey has retailed, that Fletcher died of
the plague on the 19th. of August, 1625, and that,
" staying for a suit of clothes before he retired into the
country, Death stopped his journey and laid him low."
He was buried in the Church of St. Saviour's, Southwark,
in a grave which was opened fourteen years later to
receive Philip Massinger. The epitaph of Sir Aston
Cockayne relates that —
Plays they did write togetlier, were great friends,
And now one grave includes them in their ends ;
Two whom on earth nothing could part, beneath
Here in their fame they live, in spite of death.
Aubrey relates of Beaumont and Fletcher that " they
lived together on the Bankside, not far from the play-
house, both bachelors, had the same clothes, cloak, etc.,
between them." Fuller tells a story of their joint com-
position, probably in some tavern, and the ejaculation,
'' I'll kill the king," being overheard and mistaken for
high treason against James I.
The aims which actuated Beaumont and Fletcher
were so lofty, and their actual performance so huge in
extent, and uniformly ambitious in effort, that we are
bound to judge them by no standard less exacting than
the highest. Their resolute intention was to conquer a
place in the very forefront of English literature, and for
a time they seemed unquestionably to have succeeded in
84 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. IV,
so doing. For a generation after the death of Fletcher,
it iniglit reasonably be mooted whether any British
writer of poetry had excelled them. After the
Restoration, although their popularity continued, their
reputation with the critics began to decline, and no one
will again name them with poets of the first class. They
take, and will retain, an honourable position in the second
rank, but in the first they can never again be placed.
The conditions of their time seriously affected them. The
highest point of poetic elevation had been reached, and
the age, brilliant as it was, was one of decadence. It
would have been possible to Beaumont and Fletcher —
as still later on, when the incline was still more rapid, it
yet was to Milton — to resist the elements of decay, to be
pertinaciously distinguished, austere, and noble. But
they had not enough strength of purpose for this ; they
gave way to the stream, and were carried down it, con-
tenting themselves with flinging on it, from full hands,
profuse showers of lyrical blossoms. They had to deal
with a public which had cultivated a taste for the drama,
and liked it coarse, bustling, and crude. They made it
their business to please this public, not to teach or lead
it, and the consequence w-as that they sacrificed to the
whimsies of the pit all the proprieties, intellectual, moral,
and theatrical.
It is a testimony to the talents of Beaumont and
Fletcher that we do not compare them with any one
but Shakespeare. Yet this is a test which they endure
with difficulty. There are many scenes in which the
superficial resemblance is so striking that we cannot
hesitate to suppose that they were writing in conscious
Ch. IV.] Beawnont and Fletcher. 85
rivalry with their greatest contemporary. But it would
be hard to point to a single instance in which he had not
a complete advantage over them. They move too
suddenly or too slowly, they are too fantastic for nature,
or too flat for art, they are " making up," while he seems
simply painting straight from the heart. It may perhaps
be said, without injustice to Beaumont and Fletcher, that
they differ from Shakespeare in this, that he is true
throughout, and in relation to all the parts of the piece,
while they are satisfied if they are true in isolated
instances. Their single studies of a passion are often
just and valuable in themselves, but they are almost
always false to the combination in which the poets place
them. What could be fairer or more genuine than the
virtuous enthusiasm of Leucippus, what more unnatural
and ridiculous in relation to the other personages which
animate the tragedy of Ctipid's Revenge ?
The great twin-brethren of Jacobean poetry have
many tricks which sink into conventions, and soon
cease to please us. The incessant masquerade of
girls as men, and boys as maidens, is one of them;
we are fortunate when the girl disguised as a man
(and, of course, acted, in those days, by a boy), does
not assume a still further disguise as a woman. Beau-
mont and Fletcher's violent statement of moral
problems which they have not the imagination nor the
knowledge of the heart needful to unravel is a constant
source of weakness; the looseness of their desultory
plots, their hasty scheme in which, as Hazlitt has said,
" everything seems in a state of fermentation and
effervescence," their brazen recommendation of purely
86 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. iv,
sensuous forces, their terrible facility and carelessness
— all these are qualities which hold them back when
they attempt the highest things, and it is sadly true that
these eminent poets and all-accomplished playwrights
have not left a single play which can be called first-rate.
If, however, Beaumont and Fletcher are severely
judged at the strictest literary tribunal, they are none
the less poets of an admirable excellence. Coleridge
wished that they had written none but non-dramatic
poetry, an expression, no doubt, of his sense of the beauty
and propriety of their serious verse as compared with
the meretricious rattle of what they designed to tickle
the groundlings. It is not merely that their lyrics — their
songs and masques and dirges — are so peculiarly exquisite,
but that their soliloquies, for pure poetry, are unsurpassed
in English dramatic literature. The poetry does not
always seem in place, nor does it aid the evolution of the
scenes, but in itself, in its relaxed and palpitating beauty,
its sweetness of the hothouse, it is a delicious thing.
The germs of the ruin of English prosody, of the
degeneracy of English fancy, are in it, and they soon
begin to fructify, but in the meantime the perfumed
exotic is charming. Few dramatists can be quoted from
with so much effect as Beaumont and Fletcher, or in
that form are more enticing, or excite curiosity more
acutely. The air they breathe is warm and musky, their
star is " Venus, laughing with appeased desire," to young
readers they appear divinely satisfying and romantically
perfect. But deeper study does not further endear them,
and the adult reader turns from them, with regret, to
cultivate sterner and purer students of the heart. They
Ch. IV.] Field. 87
are not quiet enough ; we weary of their incessant
" tibia orichalco vincta," and turn to simpler and serener
masters. Yet even in their noisiness and their turbidity
they were children of their age, and, when all is said,
they were of the brood of the giants.
It may be convenient to deal at this point with a
dramatist who was brought into intimate and constant
relations with Beaumont and Fletcher, as an interpreter
of their plays and as an occasional collaborator. Of
Nathaniel Field we form a more definite notion than of
any of the other minor playwrights of his time. We
possess at Dulwich a striking portrait of him, and the
incidents of his career are well defined. He was born in
London in October, 1587, his father dying six months
later. In 1597 the child was apprenticed to a stationer,
being meanwhile educated at Merchant Taylors' School ;
but at twelve years of age we find that he was taken
away to be an actor. In this capacity he came under
the notice of Ben Jonson, who deigned to make the boy
his scholar, and to read Horace and Martial with him.
Field grew up with the instincts of a man of letters, and
was proud of having acquired Latin. For the next ten
years he played women's parts incessantly in the dramas
of his great contemporaries, occasionally writing verses
of his own. At length, in 161 2, he published an inde-
pendent play, A Woman is a Weathercock, which had
probably been acted two years before. This must have
been immediately followed by Amends for Ladies, which,
however, was not published until 1618. Field wrote a
third play. The Fatal Dowry, which Massinger completed
and published in 1632.
88 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. IV.
Field was admitted to the Stationers' Company in
1611, and seems to have intended then to become a
publisher. He carried out this design some years later,
but remained upon the stage until about 1619. Chapman
was his poetic " father," and Field seems to have won
the affection of his associates. Of the close of his life
nothing is known except that he was buried on the 20th
of February, 1633. Field's two comedies are productions
of very considerable excellence, composed with solid art,
and combining some of the classic strength of Ben
Jonson with the sparkle and bustle of Fletcher. Field
is careful to preserve the unity of time. His A ]Vo?>ian
is a Weathercock is a satire on the volatility of the sex ;
in Amends for Ladies, as the title indicates, the author
shows how firm a woman can on occasion remain. The
second play, which is the better of the two, was en-
livened by topical allusions to Moll Cutpurse, " the
Roaring Girl," who was doing penance at Paul's Cross
when the play was brought out. She was a favourite
character with the Jacobean dramatists. In The Fatal
Dowry Field attempted tragedy, and wrote the lugubrious
story of the unburied Charalois with dignity and pathos.
CHAPTER V.
CAMPION — DRAYTON — DRUMMOND — SIR JOHN BEAUMONT.
In this chapter we deal with certain poets, of very
varied excellence, in whom the tradition of Elizabeth
survived, although not in the Spenserian form. It may
be convenient to begin with one who has been till lately
almost unknown, but who, since 1889, and under the
auspices of Mr. A. H. BuUen, has come to take his place
at the forefront of the lyrical poets of the beginning of
the seventeenth century. Of the exquisite genius of
Thomas Campion there must in future be allowed no
question. He was born about 1567, belonged in early
youth to the society of Gray's Inn, practised as a
physician, and ended as a professional musician. He
published a volume of Latin epigrams in 1595. But it
was not until 1601 that his first Book of Airs appeared,
the forerunner of successive volumes of lyric verse set
to music. He wrote a masque for Sir James Hay's
wedding in 1607, and three more of these entertainments
in 1 61 3. Two Books of Airs appeared in 16 10, and
two more in 161 2. It is from these uublications., and
from the song-books of his contemporaries, that Mr.
90 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. v.
BuUen has collected the rich harvest of Campion's
poetical works.
One of Campion's acute friends observed of his
" happy lyrics " that they were " strained out of art by
nature so with ease." These words very well express
the adroit and graceful distinction which marks his
verse. His taste was at once classical and romantic.
So classical was it, that for a while he was beguiled away
from rhyme altogether, and gave the sanction of his
delicate accomplishment to those who, like the earlier
Areopagites, desired to do away with the ornament of
rhyme, and to write pure English sapphics and alcaics.
Fortunately, this erroneous judgment did not prevail,
and Campion returned to those numbers in which he
had so eminent a skill.
His knowledge of music and the exigencies of the airs
to which he wrote, gave great variety and yet precision
to his stanzaic forms and his rhyme-arrangements. In
certain respects, he reminds us of Fletcher at his best,
and as Fletcher was the younger man, it is probable that
he wrote some of his lyrics under Campion's influence.
But no other writer of the time arrived at anything
approaching to Campion's throbbing melody in such
pieces as that beginning —
Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet,
Haste your sad notes, fall at her flying feet,
or his quaint, extravagant grace, as in —
I care not for these ladies.
That must be wooed and prayed :
Give me kind Amaryllis,
The wanion country maid.
Ch. v.] Campion. 91
Nature art disdaineth,
Her beauty is her own ;
Her when we court and kiss,
She cries " Forsooth, let go ! "
But when we come where comfort is,
She never will say " No ! "
or his unexpected turns of metre, as in —
All you that will hold watch with love,
The fairy queen Proserpina
Will make you fairer than Dione's dove ;
Roses red, lilies white.
And the clear damask hue
Shall on your cheeks alight ;
Love will adorn you.
The songs of Campion are commonly of an airy,
amatory kind, plaintive, fanciful, and sensuous. But
not infrequently he strikes another key, and comes
closer to the impassioned sincerity of Donne. The
following song, from the first Book of Airs, is of a very
high quality —
When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admired guest.
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White lope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love,
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move ;
Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,
Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of knights.
And all those triumphs for thy beauty's sake ;
When thou hast told these honours done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.
92 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. v.
This may naturally be put by the side of " The
Apparition " of Donne.
The four existing masques of Campion are skilful and
gorgeous ; they would be the best in English, if we could
exclude the rich repertory of Ben Jonson. They give
us an opportunity of judging that Campion would, had
he chosen to do so, have excelled in the more elaborate
kinds of poetry. His heroic verse, especially in the
Lords' Masque, is full and stately, and deformed by none
of those crabbed distortions of accentuation which many
of his contemporaries affected. Campion's Observations
in the Art of English Poetry, published in 1602, is a
learned treatise on prosody, which has been unduly
neglected. None of the experiments which it contains,
however, — neither its "iambic dimetre," nor its "ana-
creontic licentiate — " are fit to compare with the author's
more conventional rhymed verse. If an exception is to
be found, it is perhaps in the following lyric, doubtless
the most successful copy of unrhymed measure which
that age produced —
Rose-cheeked Laura, come ;
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing.
Lovely forms do flow
From concert divinely framed ;
Heav'n is music, and thy beauty's
Birth is heavenly.
These dull notes we sing,
Discords need for helps to grace them,
Only beauty purely loving,
Knows no discord ;
Ch, v.] Campion — Drayton. 93
But still moves delight,
Like clear springs renewed by flowing,
Ever perfect, ever in them-
selves eternal.
Campion died early in 1620, and was buried in the
Church of St. Dunstan's in the West, in London.
If Campion has hitherto been neglected, the poet of
whom we have next to treat has enjoyed for two
hundred years past a popularity, or, at least, a nominal
prominence, which is somewhat in excess of his merits.
During the eighteenth century, at least, no non-dramatic
poet of our period was so much read or so often re-
printed as Drayton. Joseph Hunter expressed no
opinion shocking to his generation when he claimed for
Drayton a place in the first class of English poets. His
ease, correctness, and lucidity were attractive to our
elder critics, and outweighed the lack of the more
exquisite qualities of style. If Drayton can no longer be
awarded such superlative honours as were formerly paid to
him, he is nevertheless a poet of considerable originality
and merit, whose greatest enemy has been his want of
measure. His works form far too huge a bulk, and
would be more gladly read if the imagination in them
were more concentrated and the style more concise.
Drayton attempted almost every variety of poetic art,
and his aim was possibly a little too encyclopedic for
his gifts.
It is impossible to yield to Drayton the position in
this volume which his pretensions demand, since a very
important portion of his work lies entirely outside our
scope. His career is divided into two distinct halves,
94 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. V.
and the former of these, as purely Elizabethan, calls for
no detailed consideration here. Michael Drayton was
born near Atherstone, in Warwickshire, in 1563. He
came up to town while still a young man, and in the
last decade of Elizabeth produced divine poems, sonnets
in the fashion of the hour, pastorals, and, above all, certain
epical studies in historical poetry, which were akin in
nature to those produced during so long a period, and
in such diverse manners, by the versifiers of the Mirror
for Magistrates. He was forty years of age when
James I. came to the throne, and was already one of the
most prominent poets of the age.
Drayton's earliest act in the new reign was an un-
fortunate one. He hastened to be the first welcomer
in the field, and hurried out A Gratulatory Poem to
King James. His zeal, however, went beyond his
discretion ; he was told that he should have waited
until the mourning for the queen was over, and the new
king refused to patronize him. Henceforth, a petulant
note is discernible in Drayton's writings, the note of dis-
appointment and disillusion. He was exceedingly active,
however, and brought out, in quick succession, fresh
and greatly revised editions of his old historical poems.
The Baron's Wars, and England's Heroical Epistles. A
new didactic and religious piece, Moses in a Map of his
Miracles, 1604, added little to his reputation ; but the
Owl, of the same year, is a lengthy and important com-
position in the heroic couplet. The writer feigns, in
the mediaeval manner, that he fell asleep under a tree
on a May morning, and heard all the birds talk-
ing in human speech. The opening of the poem is
Ch. v.] Drayton. 95
of a Chaucerian prettiness. Among those birds who
speak —
The little Redbreast teacheth charity,
but the Linnet and the Titmouse presently twit the Owl
on his silence, and the fiercer birds fall upon him with
beak and claw. They would kill him, did not the
Falcon protect him, and the Eagle come swooping down
to see what is the matter. Then the Owl speaks. He
has looked through the windows of the Eagle's court, and
seen all the evil that is done there. At last the Eagle,
having listened to the Owl's long satire, flies away, and
the Owl is applauded and comforted. This curious
satirical fable has passages of great merit ; among them
is this pathetic episode of the Crane : —
Lo, in a valley peopled thick with trees,
Where the soft day continual evening sees,
Where, in the moist and melancholy shade,
The grass grows rank, but yields a bitter blade,
I found a poor Crane sitting all alone.
That from his breast sent many a throbbing groan ;
Grov'Uing he lay, that sometime stood upright ;
Maimed of his joints in many a doubtful fight ;
His ashy coat that bore a gloss so fair.
So often kiss'd of the enamour'd air.
Worn all to rags, and fretted so with rust.
That with his feet he trod it in the dust ;
And wanting strength to bear him to the springs.
The spiders wove their webs e'en in his wings.
Probably in 1606, Drayton issued one of the most
charming of his books, Foetus Lyric and Pastoral,
consisting of odes, eclogues, and a curious romance
called The Man in the Moon. The Odes doubtless belong
to his youth ; they are particularly happy in their varied
96 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. V,
\ersification, of which two brief specimens may suffice.
This stanza exempUfies tiie " Ode on the New Year" —
Give hei- the Eoan brightness,
AYing'd with that subtle lightness,
That doth transpierce the air;
The roses of the morning^
The rising heaven adorning,
To mesh with flames of hair.
and this the " Ode to his Valentine " —
Muse, bid the morn awake.
Sad winter now declines,
Each bird doth choose a make.
This day's Saint Valentine's.
For that good bishop's sake,
Get up and let us see,
What beauty it shall be.
That fortune us assigns.
These are fresh and lively, without any strong grip
on thought. By far the best of the odes, however, is
the noble Battle of Agi/uoiiri, which is Drayton's greatest
claim to the recognition of posterity, and the most
spirited of all his lyrics.
In a bold preface to his " Eclogues," Drayton promises
soijiething new ; but these pastorals are not to be distin-
guished from Elizabethan work of the same kind, except
by the fine lyrics which are introduced in the course of
them. Of these the best is the very remarkable birthday
ode to Beta in the third eclogue —
Stay, Thames, to hear my song, thou great and famous flood,
Beta alone the phoenix is of all thy watery brood,
The queen of virgins only she.
The king of floods allotting thee
Ch. v.] Drayton. 97
Of all the rest, be joyful thou to see this happy day,
Thy Beta now alone shall be the subject of thy lay.
With dainty and delightsome strains of dapper virelays,
Come, lovely shepherds, sit by me, to tell our Beta's praise ;
And let us sing so high a verse
Her sovereign virtues to rehearse.
That little birds shall silent sit to hear us shepherds sing,
Whilst rivers backwards bend their course, and flow up to their spring.
Range all thy swans, fair Thames, together on a rank.
And place them each in their degree upon thy winding lank.
And let them set together all,
Time keeping with the waters' fall.
And crave the tuneful nightingale to help them with her lay,
The ouzel and the throstle-cock, chief music of our May.
* » * » *
Sound loud your trumpets then from London's loftiest towers
To beat the stormy tempests back, and calm the raging showers,
Set the cornet with the flute.
The orpharion to the lute.
Tuning the tabor and the pipe to the sweet violins,
And mock the thunder in the air with our loud clarions.
For the rest, these pieces present a vague but pretty im-
pression of nymphs singing and dancing in the flowery
meadows around a middle-aged swain who deplores to
them his want of material success and courtly recognition.
Passing, for the moment, the Poly-Olbion, we come in
1627 to a miscellaneous volume, consisting of seven
independent poetical works not before given to the
public. Of these two, The Battle of Agiiicourt (not to be
confounded with the ode) and The Miseries of Queen
Margaret^ are fragments of that epic in ottava rima which
Drayton was always projecting and never completed.
JSfimphidia, or the Court of Fairy ^ is a fantastic little
H
98 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. V.
romance, perhaps closer to being a masterpiece than any
other which Drayton composed, deahng with the loves
of Pigwiggin and Queen Mab in a style of the most
airy fancy. The Moon-Calf is as clumsy as its pre-
decessor is elegant and exquisite ; this is a kind of coarse
satirical fable in the heroic couplet. The Quest of
Cinthia is a long ballad, so smooth, and it must be
confessed, so conventional, that it might almost have
been written a century and a half later. The Shepherd's
Sirena is a lyric pastoral of much lightness and charm,
and the volume closes with some Elegies of various
merit.
At least as early as 1598, as we learn from Francis
Meres, Drayton had designed a heroic and patriotic
poem of great extent. It was to celebrate the kingdom
of Great Britain with the exactitude of Camden, but with
the addition of every species of imaginative ornament.
At length, in 1613, a folio appeared, entitled Poly-Olbion,
" a chorographical description of tracts, rivers, mountains,
forests, and other parts of this renowned isle." This
original instalment contained eighteen " Songs " or cantos,
and was enriched by copious notes from the pen of John
Selden, and a map to each " song." Foly-Olbion was re-
issued in 1622, with twelve new cantos, but Selden con-
tributed no more notes.
As the poet says, the composition of Poly-Olbion was
" a Herculean toil," and it was one which scarcely re-
warded the author. He had a great difficulty in finding a
publisher for the complete work, and he told the sym-
pathetic Drummond — "my dear sweet Drummond " —
that the booksellers were " a company of base knaves."
Ch. v.] Drayton. 99
The work is written in a couplet of twelve-syllable
iambic lines, in imitation of the French Alexandrine, but
with an unfailing coesura after the third foot, which
becomes very tiresome to the ear.
As an example of the method of the poem, may be
selected the passage in which Drayton describes the
habits of the aboriginal beaver of South Wales —
More famous long agone than for the salmons' leap,
For beavers Tivy was, in her strong banks that bred,
Which else no other brook in Britain nourished ;
Where Nature, in the shape of this now-perish'd beast.
His property did seem to have wondrously expressed ;
Being bodied like a boat, with such a mighty tail
As serv'd him for a bridge, a helm, or for a sail.
When kind did him command the architect to play.
That his strong castle built of branched twigs and clay ;
Which, set upon the deep, but yet not fixed there.
He easily could remove as it he pleas'd to steer
To this side or to that ; the workmanship so rare,
His stuff wherewith to build, first being to prepare,
A foraging he goes, to groves or bushes nigh.
And with his teeth cuts down his timber ; which laid by,
He turns him on his back, — his belly laid abroad, —
When with what he hath got, the others do him load.
Till lastly, by the weight, his burden he hath found ;
Then with his mighty tail his carriage having bound
As carters do with ropes, in his sharp teeth he gript
Some stronger stick, from which the lesser branches stript.
He takes it in the midst ; at both the ends, the rest
Hard holding with their fangs, unto the labour prest,
Going backward, tow'rds their home their laded carriage led.
From whom those first here born were taught the useful sled.
At the same time, it must be confessed that the entire
originality of the poem, its sustained vivacity, variety and
accuracy, and its unlikeness to any other work of the
100 The Jacobean Poets. [Cii. V.
age, give an indubitable interest to Foly-Olbion, which
will always be referred to with pleasure, though seldom
followed from " the utmost end of Cornwall's furrowing
beak," to the fall of Esk and Eden into the Western
Sands.
The confidence of Drayton in his own divine mission
is sublime and pathetic. However unlucky he may be,
he invariably takes the attitude of a poet of unquestioned
eminence. In his Man in the Moon, the shepherds give
Rowland (Drayton's accepted pseudonym) the office of
their spokesman, because he was —
By general voice, in times that then was grown,
So excellent, that scarce there had been known.
Him that excell'd in piping or in song.
His popularity might account for, yet scarcely excuse
this attitude ; but, in spite of this egotism, Drayton is
a writer who commands our respect. He is manly
and direct, and his virile style has the charm of what is
well-performed in an easy and straightforward manner.
He had studied the earlier poets to good effect. His
critical knowledge of literature was considerable, and his
acquaintance with natural objects exceptionally wide.
His vocabulary is rich and uncommon ; he has a
pleasing preference for technical and rustic words.
His variety, his ambition, his excellent versification
claim our respect and admiration ; but Drayton's weak
point is that he fails to interest his reader. All is good,
but little is superlatively entertaining. His most perfect
poem was introduced by him, without any special
attention being drawn to it, in what is supposed to be
Ch. v.] Drayton. loi
the sixth edition of his Poems, the folio of 1619. It is
the following touching and passionate sonnet : —
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part, —
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me ;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows.
And when we meet at any time again.
Be it not seen in either of our brows.
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies.
When, faith is kneeling by his bed of death.
And innocence is closing up his eyes, —
— Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover !
Drayton continued to write and to publish verses after
the death of James I., and did not until the 23rd of
December, 1631, as his monument in Poet's Corner has
it, " exchange his laurel for a crown of glory." Ben
Jonson, who had not appreciated Drayton in his lifetime,
is said to have composed the epitaph graven in letters of
gold beneath his bust in Westminster Abbey.
Poetry had greatly declined in Scotland when James
VI. became James I. of England. The monarch him-
self, although in his own esteem more than a prentice
in the divine art, abandoned the practice of poetry on
coming south. There remained, among his northern
subjects, but one poet of really commanding excellence,
William Drummond of Hawthornden, a youth at that
time still unknown to fame. Drummond belonged to
T.tBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
I02 The Jacobean Poets. fCn. V.
the class of artistic or cultivated poets, to that which is
made by literature rather than born of spontaneous
creation. In the earliest of his sonnets, Drummond
admits as much : — " I first began to read, then loved to
write." But among poets of this studious and literary
kind, he ranks very liigh indeed. He possesses style,
distinction, a practised and regulated skill, in a degree
denied to many of his more spontaneously gifted fellows.
It would be a grave error, in any estimate of Jacobean
poetry, to underrate this admirable poetic artist.
William Drummond was born of ancient Scottish
lineage on the 13th of December, 1585. Upon his
taking his degree in Edinburgh in 1605, he was sent to
the Continent, and after a twelvemonth spent in learning
law at Bourges, he seems to have resided three years
in Paris. This residence has left its imprint on his
writings. In Paris, at that time, Ronsard, who had died
the year Drummond was born, was still regarded as an
almost unquestioned master ; Pontus de Tyard, last
survivor of the Pleiade, was only just dead. It is strange
if the young Scotchman did not meet with the vigorous
Agrippa d'Aubign^, a Protestant and Ronsardist like
himself, for Drummond fell immediately into the manner
of the Ple'iade. No one in English, except the feebler
Barnaby Barnes, was so Gallic as Drummond, whose
best pieces might have been translated into French of
the beginning of the seventeenth century without raising
any suspicion of a foreign influence.
In 1609 the young man returned to Edinburgh, and
in 1 6 10 withdrew to his romantic and now classic estate
of Hawthornden. In 16 13 the death of Prince Henry
Ch. v.] Drmnniond. 103
drew from him an elegy, his earliest published work, the
Tears on the Death of Aloetiades, an artificial and ex-
tremely Ronsardist poem in couplets of considerable
mellifluousness, closing thus —
For ever rest ! Thy praise fame may enroll
In golden annals, whilst about the pole
The slow Bootes turns, or sun doth rise,
With scarlet scarf to cheer the mourning skies ;
The virgins to thy tomb may garlands bear
Of flowers, and on each flower let fall a tear.
Moeliades sweet courtly nymphs deplore,
From Thule to Hydaspes' pearly shore.
Three years later Drummond issued a slender volume
of Poems, consisting of sonnets, odes, sextains, and
madrigals. His notion of the madrigal was a small
irregular lyric, opening with a six-syllable iambic line.
This is a characteristic specimen —
This life, which seems so fair.
Is like a bubble blown up in the air
By sporting children's breath.
Who chase it everywhere,
And strive who can most motion it bequeath :
And though it sometime seem of its own might,
Like to an eye of gold, to be fix'd there.
And firm to hover in that empty height,
That only is because it is so light.
But in that pomp it doth not long appear ;
For even when most admir'd, it, in a thought.
As swell'd from nothing, doth dissolve in naught.
His sonnets, a form in which he is peculiarly successful,
approach more nearly to perfection of rhyme-structure
than any of those of his contemporaries, except perhaps
Donne's; but he is rarely able to resist the tempting
104 '^^'■c Jacobean Poets. [Ch. v.
error of the final couplet. One or two long and glowing
odes of great merit he styles " songs." This first col-
lection of his poems contains many lyrics that are ad-
mirable, and few that are without dignity and skill. He
uses flowers and pure colours like a Tuscan painter, and
strikes us as most fantastic when he essays to write in
dispraise of beauty, since no poet of his time is so
resolute a worshipper of physical loveliness as he is. In
Drummond's voluptuous and gorgeous verse there is no
trace of the Elizabethan naivete or dramatic passion.
It is the deliberate poetry of an accomplished scholar-
artist.
As he grew older, Drummond became pious, but without
changing his style. His Flowers of Smi of 1623 are
gnomic or moral, and not by any means exclusively
religious. The famous sonnet to the Nightingale forms
a part of this volume : —
Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours,
Of winter's past or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are.
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator's goodness doth declare.
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,
Attir'd in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites and wrongs.
And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven ?
Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels' lays.
What are most remarkable, from the point of view
of style, among these divine poems, are certain can-
Ch. v.] Dnimuwnd. 105
zonets in which there is found such a sensuous ardour
and fiery perfume as were not to be met with again
in English rehgious verse until the days of Crashaw.
In *' A Hymn to the Passion " we have one of the earliest,
if not the very earliest, lengthy exercise in terza rima in
our language, a tour de force carried out with surprising
ease. More spirited is the ode on the " Resurrection,"
and it might be difficult to overpraise, in its own elaborate
and glittering manner, the ode called " An Hymn of the
Ascension." It opens thus —
Bright portals of the sky,
Emboss'd with sparkling stars,
Doors of eternity,
With diamantine bars.
Your arras rich uphold,
Loose all your bolts and springs,
Ope wide your leaves of gold.
That in your roofs may come the King of kings!
Scarfd in a rosy cloud.
He doth ascend the air ;
Straight doth the moon him shroud
With her resplendent hair ;
The next encrystall'd light
Submits to him its beams.
And he doth trace the height
Of that fair lamp whence flame of beauty streams.
He towers those golden bounds
He did to sun bequeath ;
The higher wandering rounds
Are found his feet beneath ;
The Milky Way comes near,
Heaven's axle seems to bend
Above each turning sphere
That, rob'd in glory, heaven's King may ascend.
io6 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. V.
Wliat Drummond says is never so important as the
way in which he says it, and it would be as absurd to
look for any spiritual fervour or record of deep expe-
rience in these Flowers of Sion as it would be to suppose
them in any way disingenuous. The spangled style was
the cassock which best suited the sincere but sensuous
piety of this poetical preacher. To the Floivers of Sion
was appended The Cypress Grove, a prose treatise to
edification, containing some iQ.\v sonnets, not the author's
best.
In 1619 Ben Jonson came up to Hawthornden, and
talked about his contemporaries. Of these conversations
Drummond has preserved an invaluable report, bearing
the fullest impress of veracity. The Scotch poet con-
tinued to write after the death of James I., and survived
until 1649.
Of other Northern writers, Sir William Alexander, Earl
of Stirling, will be treated in another place. Alexander
Craig, of Rose-Craig (1567 ?-i627), was a sonneteer who
possessed some measure of pedantic skill. His friend,
Sir Robert Aytoun (1570-1638), was, like himself, a
student of St. Leonard's College in St. Andrews. Aytoun
long preserved a considerable reputation for the grace
and delicacy of his verse ; but, unhappily, a doubt hangs
over his most admired compositions, and it is not certain
that we possess, as his, the verses which Dryden pro-
nounced " some of the best of that age." Robert Ker,
Earl of Ancrum (1578-1654), was a sonneteer; and,
finally, the Scotch include among their poets Alexander
Garden (1587 ?-i 645), who wrote A Theatre of Scotlish
Worthies^ and other respectable volumes.
Ch. v.] Sir John Beaumont. 107
An English poet to whose merit justice has scarcely
been done is Sir John Beaumont, the brother of Francis,
the dramatist. He was writing verses during the whole
of James I.'s reign, but he did not publish them, and
some of his most important work has perished. He was
born, the second son of Sir Thomas Beaumont, of Grace-
dieu, in 1583, and was educated at Oxford. In the last
year of Elizabeth an anonymous poem was printed in
London, entitled The Meiavwrphosis of Tobacco ; this is
attributed to Sir John, and beg.rs all the impress of his
rather peculiar versification. He was made a baronet
in 1626, and, dying in April, 1627, was buried in West-
minster Abbey. His son, Sir John, a noted athlete,
afterwards killed at the siege of Gloucester — himself an
accomplished versifier — edited his father's posthumous
works in 1629, as Boszvotih Field : with a Taste of the
Variety of other Poems ; but Sir John Beaumont's pre-
sumed masterpiece, his long religious poem of The
Croitm of Thorns, has disappeared, and may be regarded
as a serious loss, for it was much admired by his con-
temporaries.
The versification of Beaumont is remarkably polished.
No one, indeed, was in 1602 writing the heroic couplet
so "correctly" as the author of The Metamorplwsis.
This mock-heroic piece, which has been underestimated,
is full of most charming fancies, and promises more than
Sir John Beaumont ever quite carried out. Bosivorth
Field is a carefully, and again a very smoothly, written
historical poem, but a little arid and cold, the theme
being one beyond the author's powers, which tended to
lose themselves in the desultory and the unessential.
io8 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. V.
This is a pathetic example of Bos7oortli Field —
If, ill the midst of such a bloody fight,
'J"he name of friendship be not thought loo Hglit,
Recount, my Muse, how Byron's faithful luvc
To dying Clifton did itself approve :
For Clifton, fighting bravely in the troop,
Receives a wound, and now begins to droop ;
Wiiicli Byron seeing, — though in arms his foe,
In heart his friend, and hoping that the blow
Had not been mortal — guards him with his shield
From second hurts, and cries, "Dear Clifton, yield !
Thou hither cam'st, led by sinister fate,
^Vgainst my first advice, yet now, though late,
Take this my counsel ! " Clifton thus replied : —
" It is too late, for I must now provide
To seek another life ; live thou, sweet friend ! "
Beaumont's sacred and his courtly poems are lucid and
graceful, without much force, the neatness of the tripping
couplets being more remarkable than the freshness of the
imagery.
The death of his son Gervase wrung from Sir John
Beaumont this touching elegy —
Can I, who have for others oft compiled
The songs of death, forget my sweetest child.
Which like a flower crushed, with a blast is dead.
And ere full time hangs down his smiling head,
Expecting with dear hope to live anew,
Among the angels, fed with heavenly dew?
We have this sign of joy, that, many days.
While on the earth his struggling spirit stays,
The name of Jesus in his mouth contains
His only food, his sleep, his ease from pains.
O may that sound be rooted in my mind.
Of which in him such strong effect I find.
Dear Lord, receive my son, whose winning love
To me was like a friendship, far above
Ch. v.] Sir John Beawnont — Brathwait. 109
The course of nature, or his tender age, —
Whose looks could all my bitter grief assuage ;
Let his pure soul ordain'd seven years to be
In that frail body, which was part of me.
Remain my pledge in heaven, as sent to slaow
How to this port at every step I go.
So far as we can judge, he was curiously devoid of the
lyrical tendency, and wrote little which was not in the
couplet which he manipulated so cleverly.
Richard Brathwait was born, as it is believed, near
Kendal, in 1588. He died at Catterick on May 4,
1673, being therefore in existence from the prime of
Spenser's life until after the birth of Addison. He
became a commoner of Oriel College^ Oxford, in 1604,
and, if we may believe his own words, about that time
began the work that he was all his life polishing up, the
Barnabae Itinerariuvi. Removing afterwards to Cam-
bridge, he became a pupil of Lancelot Andrews, but
distinguished himself more as an inveterate lover of dis-
solute company than as a student or a thinker. He
married in 16 17, became the captain of a foot-company
of trained-bands, deputy-lieutenant of the county of
Westmoreland, and a justice of the peace. The only
other noticeable fact of his life was that he became the
father of the gallant and unfortunate Sir Strafford Brath-
wait, who died fighting the Algerines. His works range
from The Golden i^/.?<f<:^, published in 161 1, to a sort of
commentary on Chaucer, which appeared in 1665, and
thus his literary life embraced more than half a century.
His serious poems, elegies, odes, madrigals, and the like,
are unredeemed dulness, the very flattest ditch-water
imitations of such rare poets as Breton and Daniel ; but
1 10 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. v.
he had a genuine vein of boisterous humour, and this
gives some doubtful value to a few vivacious pieces.
The Barnabae Iti?ierariiii/i, however, is worthy of rather
more definite praise than this, if only on the score of
its novelty and oddity. It was printed in Latin and
English, in a six-line rhymed stanza, the Latin on one
side, the English on the other. As a feat of versifica-
tion, the English version is distinctly remarkable, being
written throughout in double rhymes. The meaning is
usually more obvious and expressed more naturally in
the Latin, and one may therefore surmise that this is
the original text. The poem is divided into four books,
each describing a distinct journey, and each probably
composed at a different part of the author's life. All are
ribald, but the first and most juvenile is peculiarly profli-
gate and reckless. Inasmuch as we may take the recital
as being autobiographical, it gives us the undisguised
portrait of the poet as a drunken young ruffian. Praise
of liquor is the great inspiring theme, and he worships
Bacchus with the fervour of a devotee. " Jamais homme
noble ne hayst le bon vin : c'est ung apophthegme
monachal," says somebody in Garga/iiiia, and Brathwait
might have taken this axiom as his text.
This way, that way, each way shrunk I.
Little eat I, deeply drunk I,
he says, and his Itinerary is distinctly unedifying. Un-
amusing it is not. On the threshold we meet with a
famous morsel of burlesque —
In my progress travelling northward,
Taking my farewell o' the southward,
Ch. v.] Brathivatt. 1 1 1
To Banbury came I, O profane one,
Where I saw a Puritane one
Hanging of his cat on Monday,
For killmg of a mouse on Sunday.
At Nottingham he finds highway riders still imitating
the great deeds of Robin Hood and Little John ; at
Wakefield he is disappointed not to meet with the
veritable Pinner, George-a-Green —
Veni Wakefeeld peramoenum,
Ubi quaerens Georgium Grenuni,
Non inveni.
At Ingleton, some women threw half a brick at him, in
quite the modern manner. At Hodsdon he is prevailed
on to play cards with some coney-catchers, who fleece
him of everything ; he has them up before a justice, but
he is only jeered at for his pains. At Wansforth Briggs
he has an odd adventure, which he thus recounts in
his terse fashion —
On a haycock sleeping soundly,
Th' river rose and took me roundly
Down the current ; people cried ;
Sleeping, down the stream I hied ;
"Where away," quoth they, " from Greenland ? "
" No ! from Wansforth Briggs in England ! "
His constant complaints of the accommodation he meets
with are pathetic —
Inns are nasty, dusty, fusty.
Both with smoke and rubbish musty.
These quotations do not give an unfair idea of the best
humour of a poem that never drags or becomes dull,
but which is generally indecorous and always doggerel.
It scarcely belongs to literature at all, but it deserves
112 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cii. V.
a place in every library that admits what is dedicated to
whimsical humours.
Scarcely more poetical and not so amusing were the
voluminous tractates of John Davies (1565 — 161S?),
the writing-master of Hereford. ]\Ir, Saintsbury has
generously discovered in him "a certain salt of wit which
puts him above the mere pamphleteers." But it requires
a very strenuous effort to find savour in Davies, who is
not to be confounded with the admirable Elizabethan
poet of the Nosce Teipsiwi. He began with a philo-
sophical Mirum in Alodum in 1602, and closed his series
of fifteen or sixteen publications with a Wifs Bedlam in
1 61 7. Davies of Hereford deserves recognition of the
same sort as may be awarded to Samuel Rowlands, whom
in some respects he followed, if he did not imitate. His
works are mines for the literary antiquarian, but defy the
mere poetical reader.
The early metrical romances of Shakespeare found
a not unskilful imitator in the actor William Barkstead,
who published a Mirrha in 1607 and a Hiren in 161 1.
An anonymous writer selected the first of these themes
for a poem called The Scourge of Venus, 16 13, so closely
similar in style to Barkstead's acknowledged work that
it is a temptation, in spite of the repetition of subject,
to suppose the writers identical. Barkstead's tribute to
his great predecessor may be given as an example of his
manner ; Mirrha closes thus —
But stay, my Muse, in thine own confines keep.
And make not war with so dear-loved a neighbour •
But, having sung thy day-song, rest and sleep.
Preserve thy small fame and his greater favour ;
Ch. v.] Bark Stead. 1 13
His song was worthy merit ; Slialcespeare, he
Sung the fair blossom, thou the withered tree ;
Laurel is due to him, his art and wit
Hath purchased it ; cypress thy brow will fit.
Barkstead, whose name is traditionally connected with
those of Peele and Marston, may have helped those
playwrights in their dramatic work. He was not without
a reflection of the Elizabethan glow and voluptuousness
of style.
Certain still lesser figures may be rapidly marshalled
at the close of this chapter. The actor and pamphleteer,
Robert Arnim, published in 1609 a lively doggerel poem,
called The Italian Tailor and his Boy. Peter Wood-
house, of whom nothing is recorded, produced a strange
moral fable, or disguised satire. The Elephant and the
Flea, 1605. Richard Niccols, born in 1584, was known
not merely as the final editor of The Alirror for AJagis-
trates in 1610, to which edition he contributed "The
Fall of Princes," and " A Winter Night's Vision "—but
as the author of eight or nine independent volumes of
smooth and fluent verse, always readable enough, though
tame and uninspired. Niccols' best work is his journal-
istic poem, called Sir Thomas Overburfs Vision, 16 16,
a sort of rhymed " special edition " to be distributed
under the scaffold of the murderers. Richard Middleton,
of York, published Epigrams in 1608, and Henry Parrot
several volumes of short satirical pieces, from The
Mouse-Trap of 1606 to VIII. Cures for the Itch in
1626. Thomas Freeman, an Oxford graduate, came to
London, as Wood says, "to set up for a poet," and
published in 16 14 Rub and a Great Cast, a volume of
I
114 T^^^ Jacobean Poets, ICh, V.
epigrams, among which are some on Shakespeare and
other leading poets of the age. Sir William Leighton,
an unlucky knight who died in want, and perhaps in
prison, about 1614, was both a versifier and a musician.
So was John Daniel, the brother of the poet-laureate,
who published Songs for the Lute, Viol, a fid Voice,
in 1606.
This is one of Daniel's madrigals —
Thou pretty bird, how do I see
Thy silly state and mine agree !
For thou a prisoner art ;
So is my heart.
Thou sing'st to her, and so do I address
My music to her ear that's merciless ;
But herein doth the difference lie, —
That thou art grac'd, so am not I ;
Thou singing liv'st, and I must singing die.
If it could be proved that Robert Jones was himself the
author of the exquisite madrigals and seed-pearl of song
which are found scattered through his numerous publica-
tions for the lute and the bass-viol, he would claim a place
among the lyrical poets of the age only just below that
assigned to Campion.
This is from Jones' The Aluses' Garden 0/ Delights,
16 fO —
The sea hath many thousand sands,
The sun hath motes as many ;
The sky is full of stars, and love
As full of woes as any ;
Believe me, that do know the elf,
And make no trial by thyself.
Ch. v.] Overhury. 115
It is in truth a pretty toy
For babes to play withal ;
But O the honies of our youth
Are oft our age's gall !
Self-proof in time will make thee know
He was a prophet told thee so.
A prophet that, Cassandra-like,
Tells truth without belief;
For headstrong Youth will run his race,
Although his goal be brief ;
Love's martyr, when his heart is fast,
Proves Care's confessor at the last.
The social prominence and mysterious murder of Sir
Tliomas Overbury gave an exaggerated interest to his
brief posthumous exercise in verse, A Wife, 16 14, and
to his version of Ovid's Remedy of Love, 1620. Over-
bury, who was an agreeable prose essayist, was born at
Compton Scorfen in 1581, and was poisoned with blue
vitriol at the instance of the infamous Countess of
Somerset in September, 16 13. His poem, with the essays
attached to it, went through some twenty editions. One
stanza may be quoted here, as an example of its
manner —
Books are a part of man's prerogative,
In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold.
That we to them our sohtude may give,
And make time-present travel that of old ;
Our life Fame pierceth longer at the end,
And books it further backward do extend.
CHAPTER VI.
HEYWOOD — MIDDLETON — ROWLEY.
There is no greater inconvenience for a writer of second-
rate talent than to come before the public in the midst
of a short and brilliant epoch, and to wear out the
evening of his days when all his greatest contemporaries
are gone. His colleagues surpass him when he is young,
his juniors easily outstrip the labours of his middle-age,
and he finds himself at last stranded on an unfriendly
generation that has forgotten his first works and despises
his last as effete. Something of this sad fatality seems
to have attended the life of Heywood ; he was elbowed
by Shakespeare and Jonson at the outset of his career, and
without having succeeded in fully arresting the attention
of any one of the swiftly passing generations that he found
place in, he died when Milton and Marvell were intro-
ducing a system of poetry in which he, and such as he,
found no place whatever. He passed away unnoticed ;
no contemporary devoted a printed line to the death of
a dramatist who remained completely unknown till
Charles Lamb breathed fresh life into the Elizabethan
valley of dry bones.
Ch. VI.] Heyivood. 117
Since his resuscitation he has suffered from a fresh
injustice, the cause of which it is not easy to discover.
Those who have complained of his flatness, rudeness,
want of poetic art, have themselves increased these
qualities in tacitly considering him as one of the
latest of the great dramatic group. He is usually
placed in chronological arrangement after Massinger,
after Ford, with only Shirley and Jasper Mayne behind
him. It is true that he lived till all but these were
gone, but not on that account ought he to be con-
sidered as one of the latest of the group. The proper
position of Heywood is in the centre, at the climax
of the drama. That miraculous decade (1590-1600)
in which the green undergrowth of English literature,
as if in a single tropical night, burst into wave after
wave of sudden blossom, produced so much and
developed so rapidly that the closest study is needed to
detect the stages of poetic progress.
Heywood began to write for the stage about 1594,
and took his place at once in distinct defiance to the
school of Marlowe, seeing sooner than Shakespeare
did, because dowered with an imagination infinitely less
fervid, the dangers of that melodramatic style that
fascinated to the last the more poetic members of the
cycle. To the romanticism of Beaumont and Fletcher,
men of a slightly later date than his, he did not become
attracted until long afterwards, and with the tragic poets
he never held any communion whatever. He remained
to the last simple, old-fashioned and unsophisticated, and
tried to palm off dramas full of the pre-Shakespearian
naivete and directness upon audiences accustomed to the
Ii8 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vi.
morbid subtleties of Ford. At last, one knows not when,
but probably not before 1650, this brave and contented
spirit passed silently away.
Thomas Heywood, gentleman, was born in all pro-
bability about 1570, in Lincolnshire. He went to Cam-
bridge and became fellow of Peterhouse ; while at the
University he saw " tragedies, comedies, histories,
pastorals, and shows publicly acted." About the year
1594 he was an actor in the Lord Admiral's Company;
and his connection with the stage lasted until about
1635. According to his own famous phrase, so often
reprinted from The English Traveller, in 1633 the plays
were in number " two hundred and twenty, in which I
have had either an entire hand, or at least a main finger."
It is exceedingly difficult to know in what " a main
finger " consists. If it merely means that Heywood was
in the habit of putting gag into all the plays in which he
acted, the explanation is easy, but this is hardly possible.
There still exist about forty dramatic pieces with which
Heywood is identified. Some of his earHest works seem
to have been dramas of considerable size dealing with
the myths of classical antiquity, and these are so totally
unlike Heywood's subsequent plays that it is difficult to
realize their identity of authorship. Their value, how-
ever, as works of poetic art, is about the same. They are
somewhat tamely and evenly unimaginative, reaching their
highest elevation in crises of a certain picturesqueness.
These, however, and the miscellaneous and doubtful plays
which follow them, belong to the reign of Elizabeth.
Under James I., Heywood produced, about 1603, his
famous domestic tragedy, A Woman Killed 7vith Kifidness.
Ch. VI.] Heyivood. 119
Probably to the same period may be assigned The
Rape of Lucrece. The tragi-comedy of Fortime by
Land and Sea, in which Rowley had a hand, although
not published until 1655, belongs to this earlier period.
It is supposed that Hey wood wrote about six plays
a year, and it is exceedingly hazardous even to con-
jecture the succession of those which have survived.
The Fair Maid of the West, The English Traveller,
and Love's Mistress are probably among the very latest.
When we have mentioned The Royal King and the
Loyal Subject, The Lancashire Witches, and A Challenge
for Beauty, we have named all the important plays of
Heywood which can possibly be considered Jacobean.
The remarks of Charles Lamb on Heywood are well
known. " Heywood," says Elia, " is a sort of prose
Shakespeare. • His scenes are to the full as natural and
affecting. But we miss the Poet, that which in Shake-
speare always appears out and above the surface of the
nature!' Given thus in its amplification, the criticism,
if still a little too enthusiastic, is sound and intelligible.
But to speak casually of Heywood as a " prose Shake-
speare" is to offer a stumbling-block to the feet of
inexperienced readers. It needs the imagination of a
Lamb to divine the one aspect in which it is possible
to read Shakespeare into Heywood. He is curiously
lacking in that distinction of temper which was so
frequent in his age. In studying most of the great men
of that time, we are forced in some measure to lift
ourselves into their altitudes in order to enjoy their
qualities. The humours of Ben Jonson, the funereal
silences of Webster, the frenzies of Middleton, the
120 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cn. vi.
romantic intoxication of Fletcher — these are conditions
of the imagination with which our modern life is little in
sympathy, and to throw ourselves cordially into them we
must resolutely forget the habits of thought which chequer
our modern daily life. It is not so with what is most
characteristic in Heywood. No effort is needed to
make the spirit in sympathy with him. This mild and
genial nature knew nothing of the subtle mysteries of
human experience, and satisfied himself with presenting
before us such simple and realistic pictures as shall move
us to quiet laughter and passing tears. As a history of
domestic sorrow, nobly borne by the wronged, and
bitterly atoned by the wrong-doer, without heroic circum-
stances and without high-flown phrases, A Woman
Killed ivith Kindness remains unexcelled, perhaps un-
equalled, in our poetical literature. It is the most highly
finished of the dramas of Heywood, and the only one
which has been put on the stage within recent times. It
was first published in 1607.
When Heywood came to write The Eyiglish Traveller
he was more under the influence of Ben Jonson than of
Shakespeare. His language has here lost its simple and
straightforward character ; it is full of quips and catches,
and the dialogue is studded with conceited oaths. The
plot of this play is founded on that of the Mostellaria of
Plautus, and the really affecting scenes of it deal with the
unselfish love of an old gentleman, recently wedded tc
a young wife, for one of the fine young men that become
so familiar to readers of Heywood. He trusts the youth
with his house, wealth, and wife, secure in his known
honour; but sorrow is brought on all the characters by
Ch. VI.] Heyivood. I2i
the heartless intrigues of a friend whom the young man
introduces into his old host's house. This play is full of
clever and picturesque passages, and there is in particular
one describing a riotous party of drinking men, which is
perhaps the most spirited page of Heywood's writing. The
Shakespearian qualities of sweetness and gentleness which
Charles Lamb has claimed for this author are pleasantly
exemplified in The Challenge fo)- Beauty, a Spanish story
of the love of Petrocella for a noble English captive,
Montferrers, and in the romantic tragedy of Fortune by
Land and Sea.
Hey wood was also a fertile producer of non-dramatic
works. His poems include Troia Britannica, 1609, an
epic in nineteen cantos ; The Life and Death of Hector,
1 6 14; various elegies and epithalamia ; and The Hier-
archy of Angels, not printed until 1635, in a handsome
folio with engraved plates. None of these have taken
any place in literature, but Heywood occasionally wrote
lyrics of great charm.
This is from the " true Roman tragedy " of llie Rape
of Lncrece, published in 1609 —
Now, what is love I will thee tell,
It is the fountain and the well
Where pleasure and repentance dwell,
It is, perhaps, the sancing bell
That rings all in to heaven or hell ;
And this is love, and this is love, as I hear tell.
Now what is love I will you show, —
A thing that creeps and cannot go ;
A prize that passeth to and fro ;
A thing for me, a thing for moe ;
And he that proves shall find it so.
And this is love, and this is love, sweet friend, I trow.
122 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. VI.
Heywood was not one of those poets on whom the
gaze of ail critics turns, as to a star whose beams lend
themselves to infinite analysis ; it is easy enough to
divide the clear rays in his one pencil of light. He is a
poet who will never, in future, want his friends, but who
will scarcely claim one lover. It is not possible to be
enthusiastic over the memory of a gossip so cheerful,
garrulous, and superficial as this haunter of the Strand
and the Exchange. He has a thousand entertaining
things to tell us about the shops and the shop-girls ;
about the handsome young gallants, and the shocking
way in which they waste their money ; about the affecta-
tions of citizen fathers, and the tempers of citizen mothers.
He is the most confirmed button-holer of our poetical
acquaintance ; and if he were only a little more
monotonous, he would be universally voted a bore.
Somehow or other, he has a little group of listeners
always round him ; it is not easy to drag one's self away
till his stories are finished. His voice trembles as he
tells us the strangest, saddest tale of how this or that
poor girl came to shame and sorrow— of how such a
noble gentleman, whom we must have often seen in
the streets, lost all his estate, and died in want ; and
though there is nothing new in what he tells us, and
though he hurries with characteristic timidity over
every embarrassing or painful detail, we cannot help
paying his loquacity the tribute of our laughter and our
tears.
As an example of the blank verse of Heywood, a
speech of Young Lionel in The English Traveller may
be quoted —
Ch. vr.] Heywood — Middleton. 123
To what may young men best compare themselves?
Better to what, than to a house new-built ?
The fabric strong, the chambers well contriv'd,
Polish'd within, without M'ell beautified ;
When all that gaze upon the edifice
Do not alone commend the workman's craft,
But either make it their fair precedent
By which to build another, or, at least,
Wish there to inhabit. Being set to sale,
In comes a slothful tenant, with a family
As lazy and debauch'd ; rough tempests rise,
Until the roof, which, by their idleness
Left unrepaired, the stormy showers beat in,
Rot the main posts and rafters, spoil the rooms,
Deface the ceilings, and in little space
Bring it to utter ruin, yet the fault
Not in the architector that first reared it.
But him that should repair it. So it fares
With us young men. We are those houses made,
Our parents raise these structures, the foundation
Laid in our infancy.
One of the latest to attract attention of all the Jacobean
dramatists was Thomas Middleton, to whom, however,
recent criticism assigns an ever-increasing prominence.
Neither Hazlitt nor Charles Lamb, although the latter
did Middleton the signal service of copious quotations,
was nearly so much struck by his powers as our latest
critics have been. The reason, probably, was to be
found in Middleton's extreme inequality, or rather, per-
haps,' in the persistence with which he combined with
men of talent far inferior to his own. He seems to have
had no ambition, and his best plays were all posthumously
published. He attracted very little notice in his own
hfetime ; to Ben Jonson he was nothing but " a base
fellow." His style was irregular and careless ; but no one
124 '^^^^ Jacobean Poets. [Ch. VI.
even in that age had a more indubitable gift of saying
those " brave sublunary things " which stir the pulse. A
very odd tradition of criticism was, that Middleton's
genius was essentially unromantic. This came possibly
from the exclusive study of his somewhat boisterous
comedies, but more probably arose from his direct and
penetrating diction, which was singularly remote from
the pompous and bombastic tradition of Elizabethan
tragedy.
Thomas Middleton was born in London about 1570.
It is not probable that he began to write before 1600, for
there is little doubt that the volume entitled Microcynico/i,
Six Snarling Satyrs, which has generally been attributed
to him, was written by T. Muffet. In Middleton's very
first play, we find him collaborating with the author with
w hom he was to be so closely associated throughout his
career ; but as not Rowley only, but ]\Iassinger also, was
a boy in 1600, the original texture of The Old Lata was
probably entirely Middleton's. The early career of this
dramatist is peculiarly obscure. It is probable that two,
or perhaps three, of his existing plays were written before
the accession of James the First. The two comedies of
The Fhcsnix, and Michaelmas Term, were probably acted
very early in the reign, although they were not published
until 1607. In the following year were printed A Trick
to Catch the Old One, and The Family of Love ; the pro-
logue of the second play modestly acknowledges the
obscurity of the author, and the small favour that he
has yet gained with the public. If Mr. Fleay is correct,
all Middleton's plays up to this date had been written
only for companies of boys. A Match at Midnight, and
Ch. VI.] Middleton. 125
A Mad World, my Masters^ evidently belong to this
early period.
As early as 1604, Middleton had been employed to
help Dekker ; but in 16 13 we find him beginning to write
these compositions on his own account, and presenting
such figures as Envy " eating of a human heart, mounted
on a Rhinoceros, attired in red silk, suitable to the
bloodiness of her manners." Three plays, written by
Middleton alone, are conjectured to belong to this
period ; they are A Chaste Maid in Cheapstde, No Wit
Like a Woman's, and the tragedy in which he first
showed the full force of his genius, Women beware
]]'omen. About 16 16 the regular partnership of Mid-
dleton and Rowley seems to have commenced, and the
first product of it was the spirited and original play,
called A Fair Quarrel. At this point it becomes ex-
ceedingly difficult to form any plausible conjecture as to
the relative dates of Middleton's and Rowley's plays, or
to assign to either his proper share in their composition.
In 1620 Middleton was admitted to the office of City
Chronologer, a post which he held until his death. It
was apparently his duty to produce a sort of newspaper,
which, however, was not to be printed. The manuscript
of this chronicle was still in existence in the middle of
the eighteenth century, but has since disappeared. The
dramatic genius of Middleton had by this time advanced
to its highest perfection, and we proceed to the enumera-
tion of some very admirable works. In the group ot
romantic tragedies and tragi-comedies which he now
began to produce, it is probable that The Witch, a tragedy
not published until 1770, was the earliest in point of time,
126 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. VI.
though certainly not the first in order of merit. The
interesting relation of this drama to Macbeth has given a
peculiar interest to The Witch ; it is hardly necessary to
say that Middleton's weird sisters are much later, not
only than Shakespeare's, but than Ben Jonson's. There
is, however, a curious doubt whether some of the songs
now printed in Macbeth may not have been the com-
position of Aliddleton. Far superior in merit to The
Witch are the magnificent plays of The Changeling and
The Spa?iish Gipsy, the underplot of each of which may
be attributed to Rowley.
In 1623 Middleton returned to his comedies, with
More Dissemblers besides Women and A Game at Chess.
When the latter play was acted in August, 1624, Gonde-
mar, the Spanish ambassador, who had been satirized in
it as the Black Knight, made a formal protest; the
comedy was suppressed, and Middleton was thrown into
prison. The list of Middleton's plays closes with the
two comedies of The Widow and Anything for a Quiet
Life, the dates of which, however, are quite uncertain.
Middleton died in 1627, being buried on the 4th of July
in the parish churchyard of Newington Butts.
The strength of Middleton lies, not in his rather gross
and careless comedies, but in his romantic dramas, his
singularly imaginative tragedies and tragi-comedies.
Lamb, although he seems scarcely to have appreciated
Middleton, speaks with extreme felicity of his " exquisite-
ness of moral sensibiUty, making one to gush out tears of
delight." There is, unfortunately, too much of Middleton
in existence ; a single volume might be selected which
would give readers an exceedingly high impression of
Ch. VI.] Middleton. 127
his genius. He had no lyrical gift, and his verse, although
it is enlivened by a singularly brilliant and unexpected
diction, is not in itself of any great beauty. There is no
better example of Middleton's work, to which a student
can be recommended, than the serious part of The
Changeling. Mr. Bullen has spoken of the great scene
between De Flores and Beatrice as " unequalled outside
Shakespeare's greatest tragedies," and the praise can
hardly be held excessive. The plot of The Changeling,
which turns on the stratagem of a girl who, being in love
with one man, and afhanced to a second, turns to a third
to extricate her from her difficulty, is in the highest
degree curious and novel. But when De Flores has
been persuaded to murder Alonzo, Beatrice is no nearer
to Alsemero ; for De Flores and his insolent conditions
stand in her way. At length she has to confess Alonzo's
murder to her lover, and the play ends, crudely, in a
cluster of deaths. But nothing in Jacobean drama is
finer than the desperate flutterings of Beatrice, or the
monstrous determination of De Flores.
Another great play of Middleton's is The Spanish
Gipsy, but this is of a far less gloomy type, although it
opens with menacing gravity. The air lightens as the
plot develops, and we assist at length at the denoument
of a graceful and peaceful comedy, drawn on the com-
bined lines of two stories from Cervantes. Some writers
have considered that the finest of Middleton's plays is the
tragedy of Wotnen beware Women, but to admit this
would be to excuse too much what we may call the
ethical tasteless ness of the age. The story of Women
beware Women is so excessively disagreeable, and the
128 TJte jfacobcan Poets. [Cii. VI.
play closes in a manner so odious, that the reader's
sympathy is hopelessly alienated. This radical fault may
perhaps disturb, but can scarcely destroy our apprecia-
tion of the beauty and invention of the style. The scene
between Livia and the widow may be by Middleton or
by Rowley ; the polish and elasticity of the verse may
probably induce us to conjecture the former. We have
yet to mention, in analyzing Middleton's masterpieces,
the passages which he contributed to A Fair Quarrel.
The duel scene in which Captain Agar fights with his
friend the colonel to avenge his mother's honour is the
best-known existing page of Middleton, for Charles
Lamb drew especial attention to it in his Specimens.
That it is Middleton's can scarcely be questioned \ all
competent critics will agree with Mr. Bullen when he
says, " to such a height of moral dignity and artistic
excellence Rowley never attained."
The early comedies of Middleton are curiously
incoherent in form ; scarcely one but contains passages
of high romantic beauty. Later on, his comic talent
became more assured and less fitful, but the plays lose
the Elizabethan flavour of romance \ passages of pure
poetry become rarer and rarer in them. It is very
difficult to obtain any satisfaction out of such incongruous
\\'ork as, for instance, More Dissemblers besides Women.
On the other hand, A Game of Chess, which gained for
IMiddleton more money and notoriety than all of his
other works put together, is a patriotic comedy of real
delicacy and distinction, and of all Middleton's non-
tragic plays is probably the one which may be studied
with most satisfaction by the modern reader. Popular
Ch, VI.] Middleton — Rowley. 129
as political scandal made this play, it is yet almost
incredible that the receipts at its performance amounted
to fifteen hundred pounds, but if half of this is true, it
must have thrown a flush of real success over the close
of Middleton's laborious life.
The following speech of Isabella, in the tragedy
Woman hezvare Women, may serve as an example of the
style of Middleton —
Marry a fool !
Can there be greater misery to a woman
That means to keep her days true to her husband,
And know no other man? so virtue wills it.
Why, how can I obey and honour him,
But I must needs commit idolatry ?
A fool is but the image of a man,
And that but ill made neither. O the heart-breakings
Of miserable maids where love's enforc'd !
The lost condition is but bad enough ;
When women have their choices, commonly
They do but buy their thraldoms, bring great portions
To man to keep 'em in subjection ;
As if a fearful prisoner should bribe
The keeper to be good to him, yet lies in still.
And glad of a good usage, a good look sometimes.
By'r lady, no misery surmounts a woman's ;
Men buy their slaves, but women buy their masters j
Yet honesty and love makes all this happy,
And next to angels', the most blest estate.
That Providence, that has made every poison
Good for some use, and sets four warring elements
At peace in man, can make a harmony
In things that are most strange to human reason.
O but this marriage !
It is exceedingly difficult to disengage Middleton from
his obscurer coadjutor William Rowley, who was probably
K
1 30 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. VI.
about fifteen years Middleton's junior. Rowley was
wTiting for the stage as early as 1607, and continued to do
so for twenty years. In 1637 he was married, in London,
and we know absolutely nothing more about him. It is
very doubtful at what moment the two friends began to
collaborate, and we can first be certain of identifying
their common work, when they join to produce A Fair
Qjmrrel in 16 17. Rowley had a small part in a great
many subsequent dramas ; but, for Middleton only, he
seemed to have worked with regularity. In The Birth
of Merlin^ we have an unimportant tragi-comedy of
Rowley's with which the name of Shakespeare was in
some indefinable way associated. The well-known
comedy of The Maid of the Mill -^di?, probably written by
Rowley and Fletcher. But the first play, which we are
able to trace, entirely written by Rowley, was All's lost by
Lust, acted about 1622, and A Aew Wonder, a Woman
never vexed, w^as also attributed to him alone. Each of
Rowley's principal plays attracted the attention of
Charles Lamb, who quotes largely from them. It is by
these two works that Rowley must be judged, and in
neither is his style seen to be of the first order. His
tragedy is rough and coarse, founded upon the imitation
of Middleton, but even more irregular in workmanship,
and less brilliant in the critical passages. Yet I know
not where we can be certain of observing the tragic style
of Rowley, except in the crude and fierce pages of AlPs
lost by Lust.
His gift in comedy can be more easily observed,
and in particular A New Wonder is a typical instance
of it. Even here, however, we feel that to be dogmatic
Ch. VI.] William Rozuley. 131
would be to be rash, and that Rowley holds, in existing
drama, such a subaltern position that it is very difficult
to form an opinion with regard to his talent. He is a
kitchen-maid rather than a cook, and it is impossible to
be certain what share he has had in the preparation of
any comic feast that is set before us. So far, however,
as we are able to form an opinion, we are apt to consider
that the influence of Rowley upon Middleton was an un-
wholesome one. Middleton was strangely compacted
of gold and clay, of the highest gifts and of the lowest
subterfuges of the playwright. In Rowley, all that was
not clay was iron, and it is difficult to believe that he
sympathized with or encouraged his friend's ethereal
eccentricities. That Rowley had a hand in the under-
plot of several of Middleton's noblest productions does
not alter our conviction that his own sentiments were
rather brutal and squalid, and that he cared for little but
to pander to the sensational instincts of the ground-
lings. The mutual attitude of these friends has been
compared to that of Beaumont and Fletcher, but it is
hard to think of Middleton in any other light than as
a poet unequally yoked with one whose temper was
essentially prosaic.
A very large number of plays were issued during the
first ten years of the century which were either written
by men who achieved no wide celebrity as dramatists,
or else cannot in the present condition of knowledge be
identified with any writer whatever. When we consider
that before the end of the reign of James I., something
like seven hundred plays had been published in England,
the fecundity of our early drama may seem positively
132 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vi.
astonishing. It would be going too far to pretend that
all of these plays displayed meritorious qualities ; but it
is a very remarkable fact that almost every play of the
period seems to possess some touch of vigorous vitality.
The remainder of this chapter may be occupied with the
enumeration of some of the most notable single plays of
the early part of the reign. A very popular play was
Grectie's Tu Qitoqi/e, written by a man who lives in
literature on the strength of a beautiful couplet of Mr.
Swinburne's —
Cooke, wliose light boat of song one soft breath saves,
Sighed from an amorous maiden's mouth of verse.
John (not Joseph) Cooke died in 16 12, but his play
was first printed in 16 14.
It was the distinction of George Wilkins to have been
associated with Shakespeare in the composition of
Pericles, but Wilkins was also the author of an exceed-
ingly popular drama, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage,
first printed in 1607. Lodowick Barry was an Irish
gentleman who produced in 161 1 a boisterous comedy
called Ram Alky, which long preserved its vogue.
Edward Sharpham wrote The Flcare and Citpids
Whirligig, each in 1607. Samuel Rowley, of whom
scarcely anything is known, may or may not have been
an elder brother of Middleton's coadjutor. He seems
to have been an actor as well as a playwright, and to
have been regularly engaged in the latter capacity from
1599 until the end of James I.'s reign. None of his
existing works call for separate mention. Gervaise
Markham printed in 1608 The Dtimb Knight, a romantic
comedy founded upon a novel of Bandello. Markham
Ch. VI.] Anonymous Plays. 133
was a very voluminous author of prose volumes. During
the first year of James I.'s reign, it is supposed that
Anthony Brewer produced his comedy of The Country
Girl, and his tragedy of The Love-sick King, although
these were not printed until half a century later. John
Mason printed in 16 10 a spirited, though roughly versified,
tragedy of The Turk. Finally, to bring this tedious list
to a close, two Smiths, Wentworth and William, who
have been confounded with one another and with Shake-
speare, were actively engaged in writing plays, most of
which have disappeared. Of these the only one at all
accessible is The Hector of Germany, by William Smith.
It now remains to describe three or four remarkable
dramas which have hitherto eluded every species of
investigation, and remain absolutely anonymous. In
1606 was printed the exceedingly lively and interesting
comedy in verse, called Nobody and Somebody, to which
attention was first directed by the German critic, Tieck.
It presents us with such an entertaining picture of con-
temporary manners, that it is unfortunate that we cannot
even conjecture by what apparently practised hand it was
written ; it was early translated into German. A great
deal of conjectural criticism has been expended over the
very fine play called The Second Maiden's Tragedy, but
without resulting in any absolute certainty. Mr. Swin-
burne has strongly argued in favour of the claim of
Chapman, and Mr. Fleay no less vigorously on behalf
of Cyril Tourneur. The play, which was not printed
until 1824, was composed in 1611, and was attributed to
the actor Robert Gough, who is not known to have
written anything. It is a very gloomy and violent piece
[34 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. VI.
of work, executed, however, with more than usual care,
and very finely versified. The long-winded prose comedy
of Sir Giles Goosecap, which was printed in 1606, has
had its admirers ; but a much more interesting dramatic
work is Swetnam^ the Woman-hater. Arraigned by Womet},
which was printed in 1620, and probably written a few
years earlier. Joseph Swetnam was the author of a very
savage prose attack on women, and the anonymous play
formed an incident in the polemic that his book aroused.
The plot was taken from a chivalrous Spanish novel of
the time, and Sivetnam the Woman-hater is remarkable
for the unusually high moral tone it adopts with regard
to women.
A very striking anonymous play is the comedy of
The Fair Maid of the Exchange, YiMh\\^\\ed in 1607. It
is a simple and straightforward sketch of London life
at the opening of the 17th century, and is a favour-
able specimen of the class of cleanly comedy that
promised to produce so much good work, and which was,
unfortunately, soon spoiled by the passion for licentious
intrigue to which Beaumont and Fletcher pandered so
readily. Nothing can be brighter than the mise en scene
of this play ; we see the Royal Exchange (the Burling-
ton Arcade of that day), full of smart shops, gay with
passers and loungers, a little sunny centre of the business
life of the City. Here the Cripple of Fenchurch Street
has his stall, a tradesman, but wealthy, and heroic in
mind and body; here Miss Phillis Flower, the unconscious
cynosure of neighbouring eyes, lays out her lawns and
satins before a loitering public of worshipping young
gallants ; here the fashionable young men come to strut
Cii. VI.] The Fair Maid of the Exchange. 135
and lounge, and take liberties with the tradespeople
whose wealth they envy and whose purse-strings they are
glad to pull. The opening scene of the play, where
Phillis and Ursula are attacked at night by two ruffians
at Mile End, and are rescued by the clutch of the stout-
hearted cripple, and where the dastardly pair, returning
in the dark, knock the Cripple down, who in turn is
rescued by Frank Golding, is most happily devised, and
has the additional merit of introducing us at once to all
the principal characters. The Cripple is a delightful
creation ; but our interest in the plot falls off somewhat
when we discover that he refuses or dares not accept the
love that Phillis proffers him, and the notion of making
the tall and handsome Frank personate the Cripple so
perfectly as to deceive the girl who loves the latter, and
win away her heart, is incredible and unnatural. This
play is, however, noticeable for its very high tone of
feeling and complete originality of design.
A song which Frank Golding sings in The Fair Maid
cf the Exchange may close the present chapter —
Ye little birds that sit and sing
Amidst the shady valleys,
And see how Phillis sweetly walks
Within her garden-alleys ;
Go, pretty birds, about her bower !
Sing, pretty birds, she may not lower !
Ah me, methinks I see her frown !
Ye pretty wantons warble.
Go tell her through your chirping bills,
As you by me are bidden,
To her is only known my love,
Which from the world is hidden ;
136 TJic Jacobean Poets. ICii. VI,
Go, pretty birds, and tell her so ;
See that your notes strain not too low,
For still methinks I see her frown, —
Ye pretty wantons warble.
Go tune your voices' harmony,
And sing I am her Lover ;
Strain loud and sweet, that every note.
With sweet content may move her ;
And she that hath the sweetest voice.
Tell her I will not change my choice,
Yet still methinks I see her frown, —
Ye pretty wantons warble.
O fly, make haste, see, see, she falls
Into a pretty slumber ;
Sing round about her rosy bed
That waking she may wonder ;
Say to her, 'tis her lover true.
That sendeth love to you, to you ;
And when you hear her kind reply, —
Return with pleasant warblings.
CHAPTER VII.
GILES AND PHINEAS FLETCHER — BROWNE.
It is now time to discuss those non-dramatic writers
who remained throughout the Jacobean period entirely
devoted to the Spenserian tradition. Among these Giles
Fletcher the younger was the most original and brilliant.
He was a scion of that great house of poets to whom our
early literature owed so much. His father, Giles the
elder, was the Russian traveller and the author oi Licia ;
his elder brother, Phineas, wrote The Purple Island ; his
cousin was John Fletcher, the dramatist. The exact
date of his birth is unknown, but circumstances point to
1585 as the probable year. The death of Queen Eliza-
beth gave him his first opportunity of appearing before
the public, in a Cmito upon the Death of Eliza, which
was printed at Cambridge in 1603. In many respects it
is a remarkable little poem, especially as showing the
lad to have been already intellectually and artistically
adult. The form of stanza chosen is exactly what Giles
selected afterwards for his epic; and what has never
been used (with a doubtful exception to be presently
mentioned) before or since by any one but himself.
T3S T lie Jacobean Poets. [Cu. vil.
The relation to Spenser, too, whose followers in style the
whole family of the Fletchers distinctly were, is just as
determined and scarcely more excessive than in his
Christ's Victory. All that can be said is that the Canto
displays none of those sudden intense beauties that
are a wonder and a delight in its author's finished style.
Seven quiet years of clerical study at Cambridge
preceded the publication of Giles Fletcher's second and
only other book, which we shall proceed to examine.
Its success was very small ; the modest author put aside
without a sigh the lyre that " malicious tongues " told
him was out of tune ; he became popular at Cambridge
as a preacher for a little while, took then a living in a
seaside hamlet of Suffolk, where the rough people mis-
read his gentleness, and falling by degrees into melan-
choly, he died soon, in 1623, being at the most not
forty years of age. As a poet his career closed at
twenty-five, earlier than Shelley's or Beaumont's. In
spite of those " malicious tongues," the piety of his
brother Phineas made his fame live just long enough at
Cambridge to fire with imperishable fancies the young
and ardent spirit of Milton.
Of all the works written in direct discipleship of
Spenser, Christ's Victory is undoubtedly the most coherent
and the best. Such prodigies as Pysche can only be
reverenced far off; such masses of poetic concrete as
The Purple Island were made to dip into and to quote
from. Christ's Victory has the great advantage of being
easy to read all through. In its style, again, we
note a distinction between its author and the other
learned and more or less admirable Spenserians ; while
Ch. vil] Giles Fletcher. 139
their highest success was found in gaining for a little time
that serene magnificence, without distinct elevation,
which bore their model on upon so soft and so steady a
wing, Giles Fletcher aimed at higher majesties of melody
and imagination than Spenser attempted, and not un-
frequently he reached a splendour of phrase for a parallel
to which we search the Faery Queen in vain. At the
same time, it must not, in all candour, be forgotten that
he lived in an age of rapid poetic decadence, and that
his beautiful fancies are sometimes obscured by an un-
couth phraseology and a studied use of bizarre and taste-
less imagery. These improprieties and extravagancies of
form have, it cannot be denied, a certain whimsical
charm of their own, like the romanesque ornaments of
debased periods in Art, nor would it be necessary to
dwell on them as a positive blemish, if their adoption in
poetry had not so often been proved to be the inevitable
precursor of decay. But these, after all is said, and
their magnitude pressed to its full, are slight stains
on a writer otherwise so royally robed in pure poetic
purple.
Christ's Victory and Triutnph is the first important
religious poem in seventeenth-century English. The full
title is Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven a?id Earth,
Over and After Death, and it is divided into four books,
characterized by these four divisions of the epical theme.
The stanza in which it is written is the nine-lined one of
Spenser, compressed into an octett by the omission of the
seventh line, and so deprived of that fourth rhyme which
is one of its greatest technical difficulties. When it is
added that each book contains from sixty to eighty of
140 The jfacobean Poets. [Ch. vii.
these stanzas, it will be perceived on how moderate and
reserved a scale the whole has been composed ; and the
treatment is sensibly rendered more impressive by this
very reserve. " Christ's Victory in Heaven " begins with
a long array of theological paradoxes in the favourite
manner of the time, but expressed with exceptional
dignity ; we soon find ourselves taken up to heaven and
made present at that precise moment of the past ages in
which Mercy —
Lift up the music of her voice, to bar
Eternal Fate, lest it should quite erase
That from the world which was the first world's grace.
Justice, however, rises to oppose her, and on this im-
personation Fletcher has poured out the richest treasures
of his imagination. In a strain that recalls the ripest
manner of Keats, the manner that is of Hyperion and
the last sonnets, he cries —
She was a Virgin of austere regard ;
Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind ;
But as the eagle that hath oft compared
Her eye with Heaven's, so, and more brightly shined
Her lamping sight.
A little later on and we might persuade ourselves
that it was Shelley speaking, and in Adondis —
The winged lightning is her Mercury,
And round about her mighty thunders sound ;
Impatient of himself lies pining by
Pale Sickness with his kercher'd head upwound.
The argument of Justice being that mankind has
sinned so grossly against its Maker that it is now beyond
Ch. VII.] Giles Fletcher. 141
the pale of hope, Mercy rises to defend the fallen against
so sweeping a denunciation. The description of her
personality might have served Coleridge with a text for
his favourite sermon on the difference between imagina-
tion and fancy. Great is the falling off from the simple
grandeur of the picture of Justice \ the charm here is
more superficial, the language more affected. Mercy is
robed in garments by herself embroidered with trees and
towers, beasts, and all the wonders of the world. Above
her head she wears a headdress of azure crape, held up
by silver wire, in which golden stars are burning against
a flood of milk-white linen ; a diamond canopy hangs
over her, supported by little dancing angels and by King
David. After she has pleaded. Repentance rises, dis-
consolate and ill-favoured, with her hair full of ashes,
whom Mercy pauses to comfort —
Such when as Mercy her beheld from high,
In a dark valley, drowned with her own tears,
One of her Graces she sent hastily,
Smiling Irene, that a garland wears
Of gilded olive on her fairer hairs,
To crown the fainting soul's true sacrifice ;
Whom when as sad Repentance coming sj^ies,
The holy desperado wiped her swollen eyes.
Mercy at once comforting Repentance and assuaging
Justice, charges the worst of Man's fault upon the Devil,
and celebrates Christ from his nativity. The book closes
so, with a peroration that is sometimes strangely Miltonic,
as in these lines —
The angels carolled loud their song of praise,
The cursed oracles were stricken dumb.
142 The Jacobean Poets. [Cn. vii.
which IMilton simply transferred to his Ode on the
Morning of Christ s Nativity.
The second part, " Christ's Victory on Earth," is in-
ferior in purity of style to the preceding. It is much
more overloaded with figurative language of a rococo
kind, with a choice of imagery which sacrifices propriety to
magnificence, and with that paradoxical kind of ornament
which is called conceit. Mercy, in her coach, attended
by a thousand loves, finds Christ in the wilderness, and
sinks, unperceived, into His breast. He is then minutely
described in pretty and even luxurious language, which
resembles nothing so much as the jewelled pictures of
Fra Lippo Lippi and Benozzo Gozzoli, full of flowers and
tall plants, gems and rare raiment, and angels with
brilliant wings, where all is sumptuous, but the face of
the Madonna meaningless and vapid. So the description
here of Christ, with his curly jet hair and his strawberry-
cream complexion, is too pretty to be in keeping with the
solemnity of the subject. Soon we come to the most
famous stanza in the whole poem —
At length an aged sire far off he saw,
Came slowly footing ; every step he guessed.
One of his feet he from the grave did draw ;
Three legs he had — the wooden was the best ;
And all the way he went, he ever blest
With benedicites and prayers' store ;
But the bad ground was blessed n'er the more ;
And all his head with snow of age was waxen hoar.
A good old hermit he might seem to be,
That for devotion had the world forsaken,
And now was travelling some saint to see,
Since to his beads he had himself betaken,
Where all his former sins he might awaken,
Ch.vii.] Giles FlctcJier, 143
And then might rush away with dropping brine,
And alms, and fasts, and church's discipline.
And, dead, might rest his bones under the holy shrine.
This, it will be remembered, Milton made good use of in
Paradise Regained, which should be read all through in
connection with Giles Fletcher's poem. Fletcher, in his
turn, is here specially under obligation to Spenser, from
whom we find him presently borrowing two whole lines.
The most significant passage in the rest of this canto is the
description of the garden and the court of Vain-Glory, in
which Fletcher attempts the peculiar style of which
Spenser is most admirably a master, and approaches with
extraordinary success to the sumptuous and splendid rich-
ness of his original.
The two remaining cantos are not so easy to describe,
though none the less beautiful. " Christ's Triumph over
Death "is a philosophical disquisition on the various
modes in which the universe was affected by the Triumph ;
there is now no action and little description. We read
here of the crucifixion, with the shame of earth and the
anger of heaven, where —
The mazed angels shook their fiery wings,
Ready to lighten vengeance from God's Throne,
and of Christ's earlier passion in the garden. The
fourth canto, " Christ's Triumph after Death," is, in fact
an ecstatic hymn of the Resurrection, and the beatific
vision of God in Paradise. The gorgeous and luminous
style of Giles Fletcher here reaches its highest pitch
and we find ourselves reminded, though without imitation
of Dante's Faradiso. The joys of heaven and earth in
144 'The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vil.
redemption are celebrated with a splendour of language
hardly to be met with elsewhere in the whole of Protestant
religious literature.
It is no flaming lustre, made of light ;
No sweet concent or well-tim'd harmony ;
Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite,
Or flowery odour mix'd with spicery ;
No soft embrace, or pleasure bodily ;
And yet it is a kind of inward feast,
A harmony, that sends within the breast
An odour, light, embrace, in which the soul doth rest.
A heavenly feast, no hunger can consume ;
A light unseen, yet shines in every place ;
A sound, no time can steal ; a sweet perfume,
No winds can scatter ; an entire embrace,
That no satiety can e'er unlace ;
Ingrac'd into so high a favour, there
The saints with their beau-peres whole worlds outwear,
And things unseen do see, and things unheard do hear.
Ye blessed souls, grown richer by your spoil,
Whose loss, though great, is cause of greater gains,
Here may your weary spirits rest from toil,
Spending your endless evening, that remains.
Among those white flocks and celestial trains.
That feed upon their Shepherd's eyes, and frame
That heavenly music of so wondrous fame,
Psalming aloud the holy honours of his name.
Between Giles Fletcher and his elder brother Phineas
there existed the closest fraternal affection and in-
tellectual sympathy, and we find repeated in the works
of each identical fragments of expression. The difterence
between them simply consisted in that indefinable
distinction between genius and talent. But while Giles
Ch. VII.] Phineas Fletcher. 145
is for ever startling us with such incomparably poetic
phrases as " a globe of winged angels," " the laughing
blooms of sallow," " wide-flaming primroses," or " the
moon's burning horns," Phineas, who was not less
accomplished, and who lived to be far more voluminous,
never reaches this white heat of imagination. He is
none the less a poet of remarkable force and variety,
curiously individual, and worthy of close examination.
Phineas Fletcher was born at Cranbrook early in 1582,
the eldest son of Giles Fletcher the elder. He pro-
ceeded to Eton and to King's College, Cambridge,
residing at the University from 1600 to 16 16. During
these years his poetry was mainly, if not entirely, written,
although most of it first saw the light far later; in 161 1
he took priest's orders. In 1621 Phineas was presented
to the living of Hilgay in Norfolk, where he seems to
have stayed till the Civil War. In 1670 we are told that
he died " several years since ; " many of his descendants
are said to exist still in the parish of Hilgay.
None of Phineas Fletcher's books were published
until after the reign of James I. But what was probably
the latest of them, the Locus fes, appeared in 1627, the
"piscatory" play of Sicelides (written in 1614) in 1631,
and the volume containing The Purple Island, or the
Isle of Man, together with Piscatory Eclogues and other
Poetical Miscellanies, in 1633. The volume called the
Locustes contains the satire so named, which is in Latin
verse, and a paraphrase or poem of like theme in
English, composed in a nine-line stanza which closely
resembles the Spenserian. This is called The Apollyonists,
and it is a noble epic fragment on the Fall of the Rebel
L
146 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. Vll.
Angels, with the figure of Satan as that of the hero ;
a bitter attack on the Jesuits is introduced. Milton was
not only well acquainted with the writings of Phineas
Fletcher, but he paid to the ApoUyo/iists the compliment
of borrowing more from it than from any other work
when he came to write his own Paradise Lost. Sice/ides
is a choral drama, principally in rhyme, with comic
prose passages ; the romantic story, laid in Sicily,
mainly pieced together with reminiscences from Ovid's
Metamorphoses. The Piscatory Eclogues and the mis-
cellaneous poems are so obviously variants in the manner
of Phineas Fletcher's longest and most famous work that
we may pass on without further delay to a description of
the latter.
Successive generations of poetic readers have been
disappointed to find that The Purple Island is not some
purpureal province of fairyland washed by " perilous
seas forlorn," but the ruddy body of man, laced with
veins of purple blood. The poem, in fact, is an allegory
descriptive of the corporeal and moral qualities of a
human being, carried out with extreme persistence, even
where the imagery is most grotesque and inconvenient.
From internal indications, we may gather that The Purple
Island was written early in Fletcher's Cambridge career,
perhaps about 1605, while his brother was still at his
side, and other ardent young spirits were stirring
Phineas to literary emulation. When we recover from the
first shock of the plan, we have to confess The Purple
Island to be extremely ingenious, cleverly sustained, and
adorned as tastefully as such an unseemly theme can be
by the embroideries of imaginative writing. In mere
Ch. VII.] Phineas Fletcher. 147
cleverness, few English poems of the same length have
excelled it, and its vivacity is sustained to tlie last
stanza of the last canto.
The poet supposes himself seated in summer under
the orchard walls of Cambridge, by the slow waters of
" learned Chamus," in company with two pleasant friends.
With them he discusses poetry, history, fate, and his own
biography, till the first canto closes with the announce-
ment that he proposes to sing the story of " the little
Isle of Man, or Purple Island." At the opening of the
second canto, Thirsil, for so he calls himself, is discovered
at sunset on a gentle eminence with "a lovely crew of
nymphs and shepherd boys " clustered around him, and
to this audience he pipes his strange anatomical ditty,
each successive canto, however grisly its theme, being
presented to us in a recurrence of this delicate pastoral
setting.
In canto two, we read of the foundation of the Purple
Island, its rescue from decay, the marble congelation
of its bones, the azure river-system of its veins and
arteries, the rose-white wall of its skin, and all the quaint
devices by which the poet idealizes its digestive system.
The third canto, after so exquisite an opening as this —
The morning fresh, dappHng her horse with roses,
Vexed at the lingering shades, that long had left her
In Tithon's freezing arms, the light discloses.
And, chasing night, of rule and heaven bereft her,
The sun with gentle beams his rage disguises,
And, like aspiring tyrants, temporises,
Never to be endured, but when he falls or rises,
takes an immediate plunge into the liver and that
148 The Jacobean Poets. [Cu. VIT.
'porphyry house" in which "the Isle's great Steward,"
the heart, dwells. With all the humours and exudations
of the body Phineas Fletcher laboriously sports, with
a plentiful show of such physiology as was then attainable.
In canto four the heart again and the lungs are treated ;
in canto five the head, the face, and the organs which
occur in it. After describing the tongue, the story of
Eurydice is told, and the anatomical portion of the
allegory is concluded.
It is a pity that the physiology presses in so early in
the poem, for the most beautiful part is yet to come.
With canto six, the intellectual and moral qualities pass
under consideration, and in particular we are introduced
to the will, as fair Voletta, and to that " royal damsel and
faithful counsellor " Synteresis, the conscience. In cantos
seven and eight, the vices are personified at great length
and with remarkable vigour; in cantos nine and ten,
the virtues are similarly introduced. Cantos eleven and
twelve describe a sort of holy war in IMan's members,
and the battle between virtue and vice which revolution-
izes the Purple Island. Such is the rough outline of
a work which resembles none other in our language, and
which is so curious and interesting in its workmanship as
to forbid us to lament the extraordinary nature of the
author's original plan. Having chosen a theme of un-
usual ugliness and aridity, Phineas Fletcher has contrived
so to treat it as to produce a work of positive, though of
course Alexandrine and fantastic beauty.
A passage describing the shepherd's life maybe quoted
as an example of the more poetic texture of The Purple
Island —
Ch. VII.] PJiineas Fletcher — Britain's Ida. 149
His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content ;
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noon-tide's rage is spent ;
His life is neither tossed in boisterous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease ;
Pleased and full blessed he lives, when he his God can please.
His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleep.
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place ;
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively picture of his father's face ;
Never his humble house or state torment him ;
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him,
And when he dies, green turf with grassy tomb content him.
The relation of Phineas Fletcher to Spenser is very
close, but the former possesses a distinct individuality.
He is enamoured to excess of the art of personification,
and the allegorical figures he creates in so great abundance
are distinct and coherent, with, as a rule, more of Sack-
ville than of Spenser in the evolution of their types. In
his eclogues he imitates Sannazaro, but not without a
reminiscence of The Shepherd's Calendar. Nevertheless,
Spenser is the very head and fount of his being, and the
source of some of his worst mistakes, for so bound is
Phineas to the Spenserian tradition that he clings to it
even where it is manifestly unfitted to the subject he has
in hand.
In 1628 there was published a small poem called
Britaiiis Ida, attributed by the publisher to " that
renowned poet Edmund Spenser." It is obvious that
Spenser did not write this elaborate and highly Jacobean
piece of voluptuousness, which l)ears the stamp of circa
ISO The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vii.
1 608. There is absolutely no rumour identifying" Britain's
Ida, which shows the influence of Shakespeare almost as
strongly as that of Spenser, with any name. But it is
composed in the very peculiar stanza invented by Giles
Fletcher, and it is full of phrases and locutions after-
wards published in the writings of Phineas, who admits
that before he indited the Purple Island, he had learned —
in private shades to feign,
Soft sighs of love unto a looser strain.
The use of double rhymes, what Mr. Saintsbury (in
another connection) describes as " the adjustment of the
harmony of the individual stanza as a verse paragraph,"
and the luscious picturesqueness of the imagery, irresist-
ably suggest the Fletchers, neither of whom, in his youth,
need have been ashamed of the workmanship of Britain's
Ida, though to each of them its sensuality must in
advanced years have seemed reprehensible. It is to be
noted that Giles was dead, and Phineas still living, when
this work was published, which gives some probability to
the authorship of the former. Britain's Ida, an octavo
pamphlet of nineteen leaves, is a narrative of the class of
Venus and Adonis, in six brief cantos.
The song which the Boy hears proceeding from the
bower in the Garden of Delight may be taken as a
specimen of this melodious and sensuous poem : —
Fond man, whose wretched care the life soon ending,
By striving to increase your joy, do end it ;
And spending joy, yet find no joy in spending ;
You hurt your life by striving to amend it ;
Then, while fit time affords thee time and leisure.
Enjoy while yet thou may'st thy life's sweet pleasure ;
Too foolish is the man that starves to feed his treasure.
Ch. VII.] Joseph Fletcher — Broivne. 151
Love is life's end ; an end, but never ending ;
All joys, all sweets, all happiness, awarding ;
Love is life's wealth ; ne'er spent, but ever spending ;
More rich by giving, taking by discarding ;
Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding ;
Then from thy wretched heart fond care remove ;
Ah ! should'st thou live but once love's sweet to prove.
Thou wilt not love to live, unless thou live to love.
Yet another poetical Fletcher, and he also a clergy-
man, was the rector of Wilby in Suffolk. It is, however,
believed that Joseph Fletcher was not of the many-
laurelled family. He was born about 1577, and from
1609 till his death in 1637 held the benefice above
named. He seems to have written love-poems in his
early career, "sweet baits to poison youth," (can it be
he who wrote Britaiih Ida .?) but these are lost. His
existing works are two long High-Church devotional
poems, Christ's Bloody Siveat, 1613, in six-line stanza,
The Perfect- Cursed- Blessed Man, 1629, in heroic
couplet. The latter is a ragged performance ; the former
has a good deal of limpid Spenserian grace. A single
stanza may give an idea of Joseph Fletcher's manner — -
He died, indeed, not as an actor dies,
To die to-day and live again to-morrow,
In show to please the audience, or disguise
The idle habit of enforced sorrow ;
The cross his stage was, and he played the part
Of one that for his friend did pawn his heart.
William Browne, of Tavistock, was born in 158S. He
went to Exeter College, Oxford, about 1605, and thence
to London, where he was admitted of the Inner Temple
early in 16 13. His first book oi Britanu'uls Pastorals is
addressed from that society a few months later, and,
152 TJic Jacobean Poets. [Cn. vii,
although the foHo is undated, was probably issued at the
close of 1 613. An Elegy on Prince Henry was published
in 1613, and The Shepherd's Pipe in 1614. Book II. oi
Britannieis Pastorals appeared in 1616 ; Book III., which
was preserved in manuscript in the Cathedral Library,
Salisbury, not until 1851. The Pincr Temple Masque was
first printed, from the manuscript in Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, in 1772, and his miscellaneous poems in
18 15, so that all that was not posthumous of Browne's
appeared before he was thirty. He went back to
residence in Oxford in 1624, and is supposed to be the
William Browne who was buried at Tavistock on the
27th of March, 1643. He was early the friend of Ben
Jonson, Selden, and Drayton, but as life advanced grew
melancholy and unsocial. Prince says that he had " a
great mind in a little body."
The very high praise awarded by some critics to the
poetry of Browne is somewhat unaccountable. To
compare him with Keats, as has been done, is quite
preposterous. In his work we have a return to the pure
Elizabethan manner, loose and fluid versification, and
ingenuous pursuit of simple beauty. But the early fresh-
ness of the pastoral poets is gone, and the archaic words,
introduced in imitation of Spenser, have lost their illusion.
Browne is happiest in single lines, such as —
An uncouth place fit for an uncouth mind,
or,
Shrill as a thrush upon a morn of May,
but these beauties are infrequent. His genuine love of
natural scenery and phenomena gives charm to his
Ch. VII.] Broivne. 153
occasional episodes, and his poems have a species of
local propriety ; they suggest his early haunts, the Tavy
brawling down from Dartmoor between its rocks and
wooded glens, the ancient borough of Tavistock, the
" sandy Plim," and, farther away, the Channel with its
"sea-binding chains." Vaguely, and at intervals, this
Devonshire scenery is revealed to us for a moment by a
turn in Browne's conventional poetry.
A sort of story runs through the long, unfinished poem
in heroic couplet called Briia/mia's Pastorals, but it is
exceedingly difficult to seize. The first book was
published in 1613, the same year that saw the issue of
Xhe. Foly-Oibion, but Browne sings of "dear Britannia"
in a mode diametrically opposed to that of his friend
Drayton. There is neither geography, nor antiquity,
nor, in spite of a flourish about
The snow-white cliffs of fertile Albion,
even patriotism. It is simply a very vague and mawkish
tale of semi-supernatural love-making in south-western
Devonshire. There is one Marina, who, loving Celandine,
but doubtful of the direction of his passion, determines
on suicide in the Tavy. She flings herself in, and a
young shepherd takes her out again. The story moves
at a snail's pace, amid unrestrained long-winded dialogue.
Marina, still despairing, flings herself into a well or pool,
and the first canto closes. The God of the pool saves
her, and he and a nymph, his sister, converse, at extreme
length, in octosyllabics. Marina casually drinks of a
magic spring, and has the good fortune to forget
Celandine. But a wicked shephertl carries her off in
1 54 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vir.
a boat. It is hardly necessary to follow the thread of
narrative further, for Browne was absolutely devoid of
all epic or dramatic talent. His maids and shepherds
have none of the sweet plausibility which enlivens the
long recitals of Spenser. They outrage all canons of
common sense. When a distracted mother wants to
know if a man has seen her lost child, she makes the
inquiry in nineteen lines of deliberate poetry. An air
of silliness broods over the whole conception. Marina
meets a lovely shepherd, whose snowy buskins display a
still silkier leg, and she asks of him her way to the
marish; he misunderstands her to say •" marriage," and
tells her that the way is through love ; she misunder-
stands him to refer to some village so entitled, and the
languid comedy of errors winds on through pages.
The best of the poem consists in its close and pretty
pictures of country scenes. At his best, Browne is a
sort of Bewick, and provides us with vignettes of the
squirrel at play, a group of wrens, truant schoolboys, or
a country girl.
When she upon her breast, love's sweet repose,
Doth bring the Queen of Flowers, the English Rose.
But these happy " bits " are set in a terrible waste of
what is not prose, but poetry and water, foolish babbling
about altars and anagrams, long lists of blooms and trees
and birds, scarcely characterized at all, soft rhyming
verse meandering about in a vaguely pretty fashion to
no obvious purpose. On the first book of Britan7iid!s
Pastorals the stamp of extreme youth is visible clearly
enough ; but the second book, which belongs to Browne's
manhood, and the two cantos of the third, which probably
Ch. VII.] Brozune. 155
date from his advanced age, show Httle more skill in the
evolution of a story, or power in making the parts of
a poem mutually cohere.
The seven eclogues of the Shepherd's Pipe which are
Browne's (for this was a composite work in which
Brooke, Wither, and Davies of Hereford joined) are
designed closely in the manner of Spenser, in lyrical
measures of great variety and not a little sweetness.
The fourth, on the death of Philarete, is the finest,
and is supposed to have influenced Milton in the com-
position of Lycidas ; for this is an elegy, rather than an
eclogue, and a very melodious specimen of its class. It
may be interesting to note, as showing the especial
attraction felt by Milton to all the poets of this Spenserian
school, that in Mr. Huth's library there exists a copy of
Browne copiously annotated in the hand of his great
successor. The Inner Temple Masque, which was pre-
pared for performance about 161 7, opens with this Song
of the Sirens, the most perfect of Browne's poems — •
Steer hither, steer your winged pines,
All beaten mariners !
Here lie love's undiscovered mines,
A prey to passengers, —
Perfumes far sweeter than the best
Which make the Phoenix' urn and nest ;
Fear not your ships,
Nor any to oppose you save our lips ;
But come on shore,
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
For swelling waves, our panting breasts.
Where never storms arise,
Exchange ; and be awhile our guests,
For stars gaze in our eyes ;
1 56 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vii.
The compass Love shall hourly sing,
And as he goes about the ring,
We will not miss
To tell each point he nameth with a kiss ;
Then come on shore.
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
The masque, a slight and picturesque affair, deals
with the story of Circe and Ulysses. Among the mis-
cellaneous poems of Browne, now appears the celebrated
epitaph on the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, long
attributed to Ben Jonson —
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ;
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Fair and learn'd and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee,
but the manner does not recall that of Browne, and
the authorship of this pathetic trifle must still be held
dubious.
A writer of the same class and group as Browne, but
of inferior talent, has been revealed to us this year, and
for the first time, by the piety of Mr. Warwick Bond.
William Basse was born about 1583 and died about 1660.
He published one or two pamphlets in the last years of
Elizabeth, but after 1602 was scarcely heard of, although
he wrote ambitiously and abundantly. Basse was the
author of an elegy on Shakespeare, which was the only
fragment of his writings familiar to any one until Mr.
Bond edited his manuscript works. We may now study
his Pastorals, his Urania, his MetamorpJwsis of the
Walmit-Tree, and portions of his lost Polyhymnia. But
Ch. VII.] Basse — Brooke. 157
Basse, though an elaborate is a very tame and tedious
rhymer, whose vein of Spenserian richness soon wore
out, and left nothing but an awkward and voluble affecta-
tion behind it. He held a dependent position in the
neighbourhood of Thame Park, and describes himself
as one
that ne'er gazed on Cheapside's glistening row,
Nor went to bed by the deep sound of Bow,
But lent my days to silver-colour'd sheep.
And from strawn cotes borrowed my golden sleep.
Christopher Brooke retains a minute niche in literary
history as the intimate friend of Donne and Browne, and
as a singul-arly sympathetic companion of poets. Much
was expected of him; in 16 16 Browne declared of
Brooke that his
polished lines
Are fittest to accomplish high designs,
but, beyond an occasional elegy or eclogue, he did
nothing. Brooke was the "Cuttie" of tlie coterie who
published The Shepherd's Pipe, to which he contributed
a poem of small importance. He was the chamber-
fellow to Donne, and shared the penalties of that
passionate youth's clandestine marriage. Christopher
Brooke is, among the Jacobean poets, the figure which
every literary "set" supplies, the man in whom con-
temporary eyes detect endless promise of genius, and
in whom posterity can see scarcely anything to arrest
attention.
The age of James I. was not, like that of Elizabeth,
rich in great poetical translators. Almost the only
version which calls for notice is that of Lucan's Fhar-
158 TJic Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vii.
salia, by Sir Arthur Gorges, who died in 1625. Gorges,
the kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the friend and
associate of Spenser, was rather an Elizabethan than
a member of our i)eriod. But he exchanged arms for
poetry late in life, and did not produce his Lucan until
1614.
CHAPTER VIII.
TOURNEUR — WEBSTER — DAY — DABORNE.
A MAJESTIC but shadowy figure is rather conjectured
than seen to cross the stage in the person of the author
of The Reveuger''s Tragedy. Of no poet do we know
less, and of none would it be more hazardous to conceive
the way in which he moved and lived among his fellow-
creatures. He may have been harmless and industrious,
but if he can be supposed to be painted in his writings,
he must have been the most caustic, insolent, and sinister
of men. It is difficult to justify the fascination which the
tragedies of Cyril Tourneur exercise over us. Works more
faulty in construction, more inadequate in execution, more
strained or hysterical in emotion can scarcely be found
in the range of recognized dramatic literature. Those of
us who have shaken with inward laughter over Voltaire's
grave analysis of Hatnlct and le tendre Otivay cannot but
feel how exquisitely funny, how preposterously monstrous.
The Atheisfs Tragedy would have seemed to the strong
intelligence of the apostle of common sense. Indeed, to
subject the writings of Tourneur to parody or burlesque
would be a sheer waste of ingenuity. No transpontine
melodrama could possibly, in its wildest flights of frenzy,
approach the last act of The Revenger ; no parodist in
i6o The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. Vlil.
any happy moment of genius could hope to surpass the
brilUant idea that induces Charhiiont and Castabella,
in the midst of an interesting churchyard conversation,
suddenly to lie down in a grave, " with either of them a
death's head for a pillow."
But in breathing the intense and magnetic air of
Jacobean tragedy the purely modern notion of the
ridiculous must be avoided as an explosive substance
dangerous to the entire fabric of the imagination, and
to laugh is to stir the thunder which may bring the
whole house about our ears. Yet even when we
approach Cyril Tourneur with chastened senses, and
judge him by the standard of his contemporaries, we do
not at once perceive the unique quality of his writing.
It is hardly possible to compare the plays of Webster
with those under consideration without perceiving that
the author of The Duchess of Malfy was the superior in
everything that appeals to the heart and the fancy, in
tragic tenderness, in grasp of human character, in that
flowery lyricism that robs death of half its horrors.
Comparing Tourneur, again, with Ford, we must at
once concede supremacy in passion and feeling to the
later poet ; and at last, by indulging thus in mere paral-
lelisms, we may easily satisfy ourselves that Tourneur
was a very indifferent poet indeed. And yet we read his
two tragedies again and again ; we are powerless to resist
the spell of his barbaric harmonies, and we are forced to
admit that he knew, in spite of all his crude affectations,
the right mode to purge the soul with pity and terror.
Perhaps the best way to understand wherein the
unique poetic element in Tourneur's work really consists
Ch. VIII.] Tonrneur. i6i
is to read his greatest poem, The Revenger's Tragedy,
once more carefully through. The opening impresses
the imagination, but with some confusion. It is not
wholly plain at first that Vindici stands on a balcony,
with the skull of his mistress in his hand, and aj^ostro-
phizes the wild throng of revellers who pass along the
stage below by torchlight. This is weird and splendid
in conception ; but we pass on. Vindici has a brother
Hippolito — a little tamer than himself — a mother, and a
fair sister, Castiza. The poet desires to give the im-
pression of a like unbending temper in each of the
three children ; he scarcely avoids making all three
repulsive. We are presently introduced to a duke and
duchess, and to their various children, five in number,
whose figures pass in and out, engaged in more or less
terrible vices, but almost undistinguishable to us who
have no clue of face or dress to guide us.
The first act is concluded, and the peculiar power of the
poet has not been revealed ; but the second opens with a
scene that rivets our attention. Vindici, in disguise, acts
as pander between one of the Duke's sons and his own
sister, Castiza, all the while earnestly trusting that she will
resist his subtle arguments. His mother he seduces to
connivance, or more; but Castiza has the stubborn virtue
of her race. With much that is fantastic, it must be
admitted that this situation is highly dramatic ; but we
are not deeply moved by it until the perverted mother
attempts to over-persuade her daughter, and then we
are lifted on a wave of excitement which breaks in some-
thing like agony as Castiza cries —
" Mother, come from that poisonous woman there."
M
1 62 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. vill.
This line, the finest in all Tourneur's writings, is the
key-note to the charm he exercises over us in spite of
our reason. This fiery indignation ; this fierce severance
of the sinner from the sin \ in short, the intense moral
and intellectual sincerity underlying the jargon of an
affected and imperfect style, and burning its way through
into faultless expression at moments of the highest
excitement — this is what fascinates and overpowers us
in Cyril Tourneur. He is as foul as Marston, but he
loathes the filth he touches ; there is no amorous
dandling of a beloved error as in Ford. So patent is
the sincerity of this man that we might even without
paradox say that we value him more for what we feel he
could have written than for anything he actually did
write. That his point of view is unhealthy; that his
knowledge of the heart was limited ; and that his lurid
imagination dwelt only on the diseases of society, must
not blind us to this sterling quality.
Our knowledge of Cyril Tourneur's life is entirely
confined to the titles and dates of his works. In 1600
he published a crude and aff"ected poem in rime royal,
called The Transformed Metamorphosis, which is as
nearly worthless as possible. The Revenger's Tragedy,
which has been described above, was printed in 1607.
In 1 61 1 appeared The Atheisfs Tragedy, which it has
been usual to take for granted must have been written
at a date precedent to 1607, because of its marked
inferiority to the Revenger ; but this is a very unsafe
argument, as the indubitably dated works of such writers
as Dekker may suggest. In 1612 Cyril Tourneur
entered on the Stationer's Registers a tragi-comedy of
Ch, Vlll.l Tourneiir. 163
The Nobleman, which, to the great regret of his admirers,
has disappeared. The same fate has overtaken The
Arraignement of Lotidon, which was written in 16 13 by
Tourneur in combination with Daborne. When we have
mentioned two short copies of verses, we have chronicled
all that is known of Cyril Tourneur.
A very raw production, it must be confessed, is The
Atheist's Tragedy, but it contains some magnificent
passages of poetry. Among them the following is, or
should be, known to every educated reader —
Walking next clay upon the fatal shore,
Among the slaughtered bodies of their men,
Which the fuU-stomach'd sea had cast upon
The sands, it was my unhappy chance to light
Upon a face, whose favour when it liv'd,
My astonish'd mind inform'd me I had seen.
He lay in his armour, as if that had been
His coffin ; and the weeping sea, like one
Whose milder temper doth lament the death
Of him whom in his rage he slew, runs up
The shoi-e, embraces him, kisses his cheek,
Goes back again, and forces up the sands
To bury him, and every time it parts
Sheds tears upon him, till at last (as if
It could no longer endure to see the man
Whom it had slain, yet loath to leave him) with
A kind of unresolv'd unwilling face,
Winding her waves one in another, like
A man that folds his arms or wrings his hands
For grief, ebbed from the body, and descends
As if it would sink down into the earth.
And hide itself for shame of such a deed.
But Tourneur is quite unable to remain at this altitude
of style. No themes appeal to him except those involved
in gloom and horror, and this strict limitation of interests
1 64 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. Vlll.
makes him fail, beyond the wont of his violent compeers,
in dramatic propriety. Mr. Swinburne has happily said
of The Atheisfs Tragedy that "there never was such a
thunderstorm of a play," so violent and black is the cloud
that hangs over it, so fitful and lurid the occasional
gleams of light. D'Amville, the bad hero of the play, is
a murderous villain of the most incredible kind, whose
only pleasure is to conspire against virtuous victims in a
manner as crazy as it is atrocious. His generous son,
Sebastian, scarcely relieves the blackness of the study.
There is a vague charm about the lovers, Charlamont
and Castabella, The versification, which one critic
finds " rich, soft, and buoyant," to readers of ordinary
senses will probably seem as harsh and inelastic, though
certainly not as poor, as any they will meet with in the
repertory of any indubitable poet. Certain passages
always excepted. The Atheisfs Tragedy would scarcely
be read, were it not written by the author of The
Revenger's Tragedy, which, wiih all its palpable short-
comings, is one of the noblest productions of its class
and time.
Among all the purely Jacobean dramatists there is not
one who has drawn to himself so keen an interest from
the poets and critics of the present century as John
Webster, to whose work the transition from The Revenger s
Tragedy is unusually easy. It is unfortunate that so
singular and sympathetic a figure should be to us a name
and hardly anything more. He was probably born about
1580, and he tells us that he was "one born free of the
Merchant-Tailors' Company." According to Gildon —
who wrote, it is true, nearly a century later — he was
Ch. VIII.] Webster. 165
clerk of St. Andrew's Parish in Holborn. He made his
will, and probably died, in 1625. He began to write for
the stage about 1602, and was originally one of those
collaborators who were so numerous at that period, and
are now so perplexing to critics. We need not, perhaps,
regret that Ccesar's Fall and Ttvo Harpies, which he
produced in company with Drayton and others in 1602,
are lost, suggestive as is the second title. In 1607 was
published The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatl,
which is considered to be Webster's and Dekker's portion
of a composite play written by them and three others in
the year 1602. The conditions under which this chronicle
was printed are very unfavourable to our impression of it,
but the opening scenes have not a little of Webster's
historical manner.
Webster is conjectured to have written the fine "In-
duction" to the Malcontent of Marston, which was
published in 1604, and in 1607 were printed two
comedies, in which he had collaborated with Dekker.
Of these Westward Hoe I was written, perhaps, in 1603,
and Northward Hoe I in 1605. The hand of Webster is
unmistakably prominent in both, Dekker probably
supplying but a few farcical scenes. These two plays
are brisk and well-constructed, and may rank among the
best average comedies of the period. They should be
read in conjunction with the Easttvard Hoe / of Jonson,
Chapman, and Marston, printed in 1605 ; each is
in prose. We may continue the list of Webster's works.
The White Devil, or the Life and Death of Vittoria
Corombona, though not published until 16 12, was acted
about 1608; Appius a?id Virginia, printed first in 1654,
1 66 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. viii.
must have been written in 1609, and The DevWs Law
Case in 1610, though it did not appear until 1623. The
Duchess of Malfy, printed in 1623, was attributed by
Malone, and probably with truth, to 161 2. There is no
direct evidence that Webster Avas connected, after the
last-mentioned year, with the regular stage, although we
find him engaged on a city pageant in 1624, when a
member of his own company was mayor. He was pro-
bably the cloth-worker who died in the autumn of 1625.
Webster's masterpiece is The Duchess of Malfy, of
which it may confidently be alleged that it is the finest
tragedy in the English language outside the works of
Shakespeare, The poet found his story in that store-
house of plots, the Novelle of Bandello, but it had been
told in English by others before him. . It was one pre-
eminently suited to inflame the sombre and enthusiastic
imagination of Webster, and to inspire this great,
irregular and sublime poem. Dramatic, in the accepted
sense, it may scarcely be called. In the nice conduct of
a reasonable and interesting plot to a satisfactory con-
clusion, Webster is not the equal of Fletcher or of
Massinger ; some still smaller writers may be considered
to surpass him on this particular ground. But he aimed
at something more, or at least, something other, than
the mere entertainment of the groundlings. With un-
usual solemnity he dedicates his tragedy to his patron as a
" poem," and his contemporaries perceived that this was
a stronger and more elaborate piece of dramatic archi-
tecture than the eye was accustomed to see built for half
a dozen nights, and then disappear. Ford, when he read
The Duchess of Malfy, exclaimed —
Cii. VIII.] Webster. iby
Crown him a poet, whom nor Rome nor Greece
Transcend in all theirs for a masterpiece,
and Middleton described it as Webster's own monument,
fashioned by himself in marble. He had the reputation
of being a slow and punctilious writer, among a set of
poets, with whom a ready pen was more commonly in
fashion. We look to Webster for work designed at
leisure, and executed with critical and scrupulous
attention. This carefulness, however, was unfavourable
to a well-balanced composition, the movement of the
whole being sacrificed to an extraordinary brilliancy in
detailed passages, and though The Duchess of Malfy has
again and again been attempted on the modern stage,
each experiment has but emphasized the fact that it is
pre-eminently a tragic poem to be enjoyed in the study.
It is curious that in a writer so distinguished by care in
the working out of detail, we should find so lax a metrical
system as marks The Duchess of Malfy. Here, again,
Webster seems to be content to leave the general surface
dull, while burnishing his own favourite passages to a
high lustre. He has lavished the beauties both of his
imagination and of his verse on what Mr. Swinburne
eloquently calls '• the overwhelming terrors and the
overpowering beauties of that unique and marvellous
fourth act, in which the genius of the poet spreads its
fullest and darkest wing for the longest and the strongest
of its flights."
This is what Bosola ejaculates when the Duchess dies—
O, she's gone again ! There the cords of life broke.
O sacred innocence, that sweetly sleeps
On turtle's feathers, whilst a guilty conscience
Is a Ijlack register wherein is writ
1 68 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. VIII.
All our good deeds and bad, a perspective
That shows lis hell ! that we can not be suffer'd
To do good when we have a mind to it !
This is manly sorrow ;
These tears, I am very certain, never grew
In my mother's milk : my estate is sunk
Below the degree of fear : where were
These penitent fountains while she was living?
O, they were frozen up ! Here is a sight
As direful to my soul as is the sword
Unto a wretch hath slain his father. Come,
I'll bear thee hence,
And execute thy last will ; that's deliver
Thy body to the reverent dispose
Of some good women ; that the cruel tyrant
Shall not deny me. Then I'll post to Milan,
Where somewhat I will speedily enact
Worth my dejection.
The characterization of the Duchess, with her inde-
pendence, her integrity,and her noble and yet sprightly
dignity, gradually gaining refinement as the joy of life is
crushed out of her, is one calculated to inspire pity to
a degree very rare indeed in any tragical poetry. The
figure of Antonio, the subject whom she secretly raises
to a morganatic alliance with her, is simply and whole-
somely drawn. All is original, all touching and moving,
while the spirit of beauty, that rare and intangible
element, throws its charm like a tinge of rose-colour over
all that might otherwise seem to a modern reader harsh
or crude.
On one point, however, with great diffidence, the
present wTiter must confess that he cannot agree with
those great authorities, Lamb and Mr. Swinburne, who
have asserted, in their admiration for Webster, that he
Ch. VIII.] Webster. 169
was always skilful in the introduction of horror. In his
own mind, as a poet, Webster doubtless was aware of the
procession of a majestic and solemn spectacle, but when
he endeavours to present that conception on the boards
of the theatre, his "terrors want dignity, his affright-
ments want decorum." The horrible dumb shows of
The Duchess of Malfy — the strangled children, the
chorus of maniacs, the murder of Cariola, as she bites
and scratches, the scuffling and stabbing in the fifth act,
are, it appears to me — with all deference to the eminent
critics, who have applauded them — blots on what is not-
withstanding a truly noble poem, and what, with more
reserve in this respect, would have been one of the first
tragedies of the world.
Similar characteristics present themselves to us in The
White Devil, but in a much rougher form. The
sketchiness of this play, which is not divided into acts
and scenes, and progresses with unaccountable gaps in
the story, and perfunctory makeshifts of dumb show,
has been the wonder of critics. But Webster was
particularly interested in his own work as a romantic
rather than a theatrical poet, and it must be remembered
that after a long apprenticeship in collaboration. The
White Devil was his first independent play. It reads as
though the writer had put in only what interested him,
and had left the rest for a coadjutor, who did not happen
to present himself, to fill up. The central figure of
Vittoria, the subtle, masterful, and exquisite she-devil, is
filled up very minutely and vividly in the otherwise
hastily painted canvas ; and in the trial-scene, which is
perhaps the most perfectly sustained which Webster has
I/O The Jacob am Poets. [Cii. viii.
left us, we are so much captivated by the beauty and
ingenuity of the murderess that, as Lamb says in a
famous passage, we are ready to expect that "all the
court will rise and make proffer to defend her in spite of
the utmost conviction of her guilt." The fascination of
Vittoria, like an exquisite poisonous perfume, pervades
the play, and Brachiano strikes a note, which is the
central one of the romance, when he says to her —
Thou hast led me like a heathen sacrifice,
With music and with fatal yokes of flowers,
To my eternal ruin.
The White Devil is not less full than the Duchess of
Malfy of short lines and phrases full of a surprising
melody. In the fabrication of these jewels, Webster is
surpassed only by Shakespeare.
If, as is now supposed, the composition of Appius and
Virginia followed closely upon that of The White Devil,
it is plain that the reception of the latter play must have
drawn Webster's attention to the necessity of paying
more attention to theatrical requirements. While the
romantic and literary glow of language is severely
restrained, there is here a very noticeable advance in
every species of dramatic propriety, and Appius and
Virginia is by far the best constructed of Webster's plays.
The Jacobean dramatists were constantly attempting to
compose Roman tragedies, in which they vaguely saw
the possibility of reaching the classic perfection of form
at which they aimed in their less agitated moments.
Ben Jonson's plays of this class have been already men-
tioned, and these, to his own contemporaries, seemed to
be by far the most coherent and satisfactor}-. Posterity,
Ch. VIII.] Webster. 171
however, has placed Julius CcBsar high above Sejafius and
Catiline, and without seeking to put Webster by the
side of Shakespeare, his Roman tragedy must be admitted
to be more graceful, pathetic, and vigorous than Jonson's.
A speech of Virginius in the fourth act will give an
idea of the high Roman tone of the play —
Have I, in all this populous assembly
Of soldiers that have proved Virginius' valour,
One friend ? Let him come thrill his partizan
Against this breast, that thro' a large wide wound
My mighty soul might rush out of this prison,
To fly more freely to yon crystal palace.
Where honour sits enthronized. What, no friend ?
Can this great multitude, then, yield an enemy
That hates my life ? Here let him seize it freely.
What, no man strike ? am I so well belov'd ? —
Minertius, then to thee ; if in this camp
There lives one man so just to punish sin,
So charitable to redeem from torments
A ready soldier, at his worthy hand
I beg a death.
The scenes are largely set, the characters, especially
those of Virginius and of Appius, justly designed and
well contrasted, while the stiffness of Roman manners,
as seen through a Jacobean medium, is not in this case
sufficient to destroy the suppleness of the movement nor
the pathos of the situation, Appius and Virginia, as a
poem, will never possess the attractiveness of the two
great Italian romances, but it is the best-executed of
Webster's dramas.
If the playwright took a step forwards in his Roman
play, he took several backwards in his incoherent tragi-
comedy of The Devil's Latv-Case. Here no charm
173 The Jacobean Pods. [Cii. viil,
attaches to the characters ; the plot moves around no
central interest ; the structure of the piece, from a stage
point of view, is utterly at fault. None the less, this
strange play will always have its readers, for Webster's
literary faculty is nowhere exhibited to greater perfection,
and the poetry of the text abounds in verbal felicities.
Unfortunately, the special attention of the poet seems
to have been concentrated on the unravelling of a most
fantastic skein of legal intrigues. In listening to the
quibbles and the serpentining subtleties of Ariosto and
Crispiano the reader loses not merely his interest, but
his intelligence ; he is not amused, but merely bewildered.
Leonora, who, to avenge the wrongs of her lover, charges
her own son with illegitimacy, is a being outside the pale
of sympathy.
The abrupt withdrawal of Webster from writing for
the stage — a step which he seems to have taken when
he was little over thirty years of age — points to a sense
of want of harmony between his genius and the theatre.
In fact, none of the leading dramatists of our great
period seems to have so little native instinct for
stage-craft as Webster, and it is natural to suppose that
in another age, and in other conditions, he would have
directed his noble gifts of romantic poetry to other
provinces of the art. If it were not absolutely certain
that he flourished between 1602 and 161 2, we should
be inclined to place the period of his activity at least
ten years earlier. Although in fact an exact contemporary
of Beaumont and Fletcher, and evidently much Shake-
speare's junior, a place between Marlowe and those
dramatists seems appropriate to him, so primitive is his
Ch. VIII.] Webster— Day. 173
theatrical art, so ingenuous and inexperienced his notion
of the stage. That he preferred the more stilted and
buskined utterances of drama to grace and suppleness may
be gathered from Webster's own critical distinctions ; he
has no words of admiration too high for Chapman and
Jonson ; Shakespeare he commends, with a touch of
patronage, on a level with Dekker and Heywood, for his
" right happy and copious industry," placing the romantic
Beaumont and Fletcher above him. This points to a
somewhat academic temper of mind, and to a tendency
to look rather at the splendid raiment of drama than at
the proficiency and variety of those who wear it. Webster
is an impressive rather than a dexterous playwright ; but
as a romantic poet of passion he takes a position in the
very first rank of his contemporaries.
Of John Day's dramatic works but a small frag-
ment has survived, and it is probable that he appears
to us in a very different light from that in which his
contemporaries regarded him. He is now quoted as the
type and expositor of a playful and delicate side of
Jacobean drama, hardly existing elsewhere, a survival or
revival of the school of florid conceit and affected
pastoral wit. Arcadian and at the same time mundane.
But this view of him is largely founded upon the best
known of all his productions, the masque entitled The
Parliament of Bees, and, although so convenient for
practical critical purposes as to be not worth disturbing,
is probably a quite accidental and non-essential one.
Scarcely anything is known of Day's life, except that he
was a student of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge,
and that as early as 1598 he was writing plays for
174 ^/-^^ Jacobean Poets. [Cii. Vlll.
Henslowe. Unless his Spanish Moors Tragedy of 1600
survives as Ltisfs Dominion, of Day's first twenty recorded
plays all are lost, except The Blind Beggar of Bethnal
Green, not published till 1659, but written with Chettle
in 1600. This is not an interesting performance, and
suggests that we need not deeply regret the destruction
of the prentice works of Day.
In 1605 was acted, and in the next year published,
The Isle of Gulls, a sort of Arcadian satire mainly in
prose, " a little spring or rivulet drawn from the full
stream " of Sir Philip Sidney's romance. It is curiously
Euphuistic, recalling the taste of the end of Elizabeth's
reign, very lively in the mechanism of its plot, and the
various tricks contrived upon its personages. Mr. Fleay
has ingeniously argued that The Isle of Gulls was an
attack on James L, the duke and duchess being meant
for the king and queen. Latu Tricks, a comedy printed
in 1608, was probably some two years earlier acted. Its
fault is a certain insipidity ; its merit sweetness of ver-
sification and delicacy of fancy. The Travels of the
Three English Brothers, in which Rowley and Wilkins
collaborated with Day, belongs to 1607, Humour out
of Breath, 1608, is mainly, if not entirely. Day's work.
This is, as Mr. BuUen has noted, his most characteristic
play. It is a short comedy, in prose, and verse, that is
often rhymed ; the spirit and tone of it are plainly copied
from those of Shakespeare's romantic comedies. With
this play Day's connection with the theatre seems to
have ceased. In 1619 Jonson talked about him to
Drummond, and said in his haste that Day vras " a
rogue" and "a base fellow." It is probable that his
Ch. VIII.] Day. 175
death occurred in 1640, and we are left to speculate
in vain regarding the incidents of a life of perhaps
seventy years, with its one decade of feverish professional
activity.
In 1641, however, there was posthumously issued the
work on which the immortality of Day is supported, his
satirical masque of The Parliavient of Bees. Mr. Fleay
has proved that it was touched up for the press by Day
himself just before he died ; but to think of this as a
work of the extreme old age of Day is impossible. A
vague tradition points to 1607 as the year of its composi-
tion, and no date could seem more probable for a poem
instinct with juvenile elasticity and buoyancy. It is a
drama in rhymed ten-syllable and eight-syllable verse,
all the characters in which are bees, and converse, as
Lamb says, "in words which bees would talk with, could
they talk ; the very air seems replete with humming and
buzzing melodies, while we read them."
This passage will give an idea of the movement of the
dialogue —
Prorex. And whither must these flies be sent?
Oberon, To everlasting banishment.
Underneath two hanging rocks,
Where babbling Echo sits and mocks
Poor travellers, there lies a grove
With whom the sun's so out of love
He never smiles on't, — pale Despair
Calls it his monarchal chair.
Fruit, half-ripe, hangs rivell'd and shrunk
On broken arms torn from the trunk :
The moorish pools stand empty, left
By water, stolen by cunning theft.
To hollow banks, driven out by snakes,
Adders and newts, that man these lakes;
176 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. viii.
The mossy weeds half swelter'd, serv'd
As beds for vermin, hunger-starv'd :
The woods are yew-trees, rent and broke
By whirlwinds ; here and there an oak
Half cleft with thunder ; — to this grove
We banish them. All. Some mercy, Jove !
Oberon. You should have cried so in your youth,
When Chronos and his daughter Truth
Sojourn'd amongst you, when you spent
Whole years in riotous merriment,
Thrusting poor bees out of their hives,
Seizing both honey, wax and lives.
This apian pastoral is one of the most curious and
original productions of the age.
Robert Daborne was a playwright of little intrinsic
merit, if we may judge by his surviving plays. But he
possesses a curious interest for us, as the author of a
correspondence with Henslowe which gives '"a unique
narration of the life of a third-rate dramatist in the pay
of an extortionate stage-manager of the time of James I."
These letters are nearly thirty in number, and are dated
from April 17, 16 13, to August i, 1614. In the course
of them we read of Cyril Tourneur, Field, and INIassinger
as companions in Daborne's misfortunes, and chained to
the same theatrical oar. Daborne left the stage in 16 14,
took holy orders, and proceeded to Waterford, whence he
issued a sermon in 1618. His tragedy called A Christia?i
turned Turk, 16 12, is a wild and inchoate piece of melo-
drama, founded on a recent case of Levantine piracy ; it
contains some vigorous passages. He is thought to have
helped Fletcher with The Honest Maris Fortune.
Charles Lamb drew attention to a long and very spirited
scene in a romantic comedy, called Tlie Hog hath Lost
Cu. VIII.] Tomkis. 177
his Pearl, published in 16 14. This was written by
Robert Tailor, of whom absolutely nothing else has been
preserved. Tailor's versification is so easy and even,
and the success of his play is so clearly recorded, as to
create surprise at his having, so far as we know, written
for the stage on no other occasion. The central incident
of this remarkably fine piece of work was the crime and
the remorse of a certain Albert, who robs his friend
Carracus of his bride Maria, the pearl which Carracus
has stolen from her father, the old Lord Wealthy.
Nothing whatever is known about Tailor, who wrote his
play to be acted "by certain London prentices." It is
particularly rich in curious theatrical allusions.
John Tomkis, or Tomkins, was a University playwright,
a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Two plays of
his, neither of which is a work of genius, have attracted
a great deal of discussion, and were famous when some
of the masterpieces of Jacobean drama were still unknown.
One of these is Lingua, long attributed to Anthony Brewer.
The scene is laid in Microcosmus, in a grove, and the plot
didactically sets forth the combat of the tongue and the
five senses for superiority. Interest was lent to Lingua
by the tradition that Oliver Cromwell played in it in the
part of Tactus, and had his political ambition first en-
flamed by it. This play was probably written soon after
the accession of James I., though not published till 1607.
It was very frequently reprinted in the course of the cen-
tury. Tomkis' other drama, oddly enough, has also been
the centre of a tissue of tradition. Albumazar, which was
acted by the gentlemen of Trinity before the king in
1615, and published the same year, attracted the notice
178 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. viii.
of Dryden, who caused it to be revived, and wrote a
prologue for it in 1668. In his enthusiasm for his dis-
covery, Dryden charged Ben Jonson with having chosen
Albiimazar as the model of his own great comedy of The
Alchymist This mistake was constantly repeated, in spite
of the fact that Jonson's play preceded that of Tomkis
by five years.
Certain academic plays of the close of the reign,
poems in dramatic form, which were never intended for
the public boards, may here be mentioned. Among
them the beautiful anonymous tragedy of Nav, published
as "newly written" in 1624, takes easily the foremost
place. No one has been able to form a reasonable con-
jecture as to the name of the writer, and it is probable
that he was young, and never attempted to repeat his
experiment. A^ero is, indeed, what a contemporary critic
called it, an "indifferent" acting-play, but is written in
unusually good verse, and contains scattered passages
which deserve no less enthusiastic epithet than "ex-
quisite."
Thus, in the third act, does Nero give expression to
the fatuous vanity of the flattered amateur —
They tell of Orpheus, when he took his lute
And moved the noble ivory with his touch,
Hebrus stood still, Pangceus bovvcd his head,
Ossa then first shook off his snow, and came
To listen to the movings of his song ;
The gentle poplar took the bay along,
And call'd the pine down from the mountain-seat ;
The virgin-bay, altho' the arts she hates
Of the Delphic god, was with his voice o'ercome ;
He his twice-lost Eurydice bewails
And Proserpine's vain gifts, and makes the shores
Ch. VIII.] " Nero "—Goffe. 1 79
And hollow caves of forests now untree'd,
Bear his griefs company, and all things teacheth
His lost love's name ; then water, air, and ground
" Eurydice, Eurydice ! " resound.
These are bold tales of which the Greeks have store ;
But if he could from Hell once more return,
And would compare his hand and voice with mine,
Aye, tho' himself were judge, he then would see
How much the Latin stains the Thracian lyre.
I oft have walked by Tiber's flow'ry banks
And heard the swan sing her own epitaph ;
When she heard me, she held her peace and died.
Thomas Goffe, who was born about 1592, and
educated at Christchurch, Oxford, was a clergyman
during the last four years of his life, and died in July,
1627, hen-pecked to death by a wife "who was as great
a plague to him as it was well possible for a shrew to be."
This gentle cleric wrote, before he left Oxford in 1623,
four plays — three tragedies and a tragi-comedy of The
Careless Shepherdess — all of which were posthumously
published. The tragedies, which enjoyed a certain
popularity, were absurdly bombastic and sanguinary,
and recalled the earliest works of such primitives as
Marlowe and Kyd. The learned Dr. Barton Holiday,
just before he went away to Spain with Gondomar in
1 6 18, produced a play called Technogamia ; or, The
Marriage of the Arts, which was acted by the students
in Christchurch Hall on the 13th of February, and four
years later at Woodstock before the king, who was
exceedingly fatigued by it. Thomas May, who was
born in 1595, and who became a very distinguished prose-
writer and translator in the next reign and during the
Commonwealth, wrote a popular academic comedy. The
i8o The Jacobean Poets. [Cn. viii.
Heir, and three tragedies, before the close of James I.'s
hfe. He was an active member of the Parliamentarian
party, and died in bed, from having fastened his night-
cap too tightly under his chin, in 1650. He was one of
those whose bodies, after having been buried in West-
minster Abbey, were taken up at the Restoration and
flung into a pit in the churchyard of St. Margaret's ; his
monument being, at the same time, taken down from
the wall of Poets' Corner.
CHAPTER IX.
WITHER — QUARLES — LORD BROOKE.
A VERY prominent figure among the Jacobean poets, yet
one with which it is very difficult to deal, is that of George
Wither, The time has passed when this voluminous
writer can be treated by any competent critic with the
contempt of the age of Anne. The scorn of Pope still
clings, however, to the "wretched Withers," whose name
he misspelt, and of whose works he had probably seen
nothing but the satires. Nor would it be safe, on the
score of exquisite beauties discoverable in the early lyrics
of Wither, to overlook the radical faults of his style. One
or two generous appreciators of Jacobean verse have
done this, and have claimed for Wither a very high place
in English poetry. But proportion, judgment, taste
must count for something, and in these qualities this
lyrist was deplorably deficient. The careful student, not
of excerpts made by loving and partial hands, but of the
bulk of his published writings, will be inclined to hesitate
before he admits that Wither was a great poet. He will
rather call him a very curious and perhaps unique instance
of a tiresome and verbose scribbler, to whom in his youth
1 82 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. ix.
there came unconsidered flashes of most genuine and
exquisite poetry.
George Wither was born at Brantworth, in Hampshire,
on the nth of June, 1588. His parents were in inde-
pendent and even affluent circumstances ; his earliest
education was found in the neighbouring village school
of Colemore, and he was still but a boy when he was
sent to Magdalen College, Oxford. His college career
was abruptly terminated after two years, when he returned
to " the beechy shadows of Brantworth," and, according
to his own possibly hyperbolic statement, " to the plough."
The general supposition has been, caused perhaps by
some laxity in Anthony h Wood's information, that he
went up to London of his own accord in 1605, to seek
his fortune there, and entered himself of Lincoln's Inn.
The date is probably mucJi too early, for he was then
only seventeen years of age, and we know that he spent a
weary time in Hampshire. At all events, it is not until
1 6 1 2 that we hear of him as a poet, and this was probably
about the date of his appearance in London. In that
year he published, on the theme which excited universal
emotion at the moment, a little volume of Prince Hcmy^s
Obsequies, a series of nearly fifty sonnets, smoothly and
volubly indited, and containing occasional phrases of
some beauty.
It is understood that this little volume, and a still smaller
quarto of Epithalamia which immediately followed it,
introduced Wither to the company of young poets who
at this time began to collect in the courts of law. In
particular, it is certain that he gained the friendship of
Browne and of Christopher Brooke. In 161 3, however,
Cm. IX.] Wither. 183
Wither suddenly became prominent by the pubHcation
of a volume of satires entitled Abuses Stripf a7id Whipt,
of which four editions were rapidly^exhausted. The
scandal caused by this book was so great that the poet
was thrown into the Marshalsea prison, where, as he tells
us, he " was shut up from the society of mankind, and,
as one unworthy the compassion vouchsafed to thieves
and murderers, was neither permitted the use of my pen,
the access or sight of acquaintance, the allowances
usually afforded other close prisoners, nor means to send
for necessaries. ... I was for many days compelled to
feed on nothing but the coarsest bread, and sometimes
locked up four and twenty hours together without so
much as a drop of water to cool my tongue." This
severity must have been presently relaxed, for Wither
wrote much in prison ; but he was not suffered to leave
the Marshalsea until many months had passed.
It is very difficult, with the text of Abuses Siript and
Whipt before us, to understand why it should have caused
such vehement official resentment. The book is really a
collection of essays on ethical subjects, running to about
ten thousand verses, all in the heroic couplet. The so-
called *' satires " deal with such themes as " Love,"
" Presumption," " Weakness," and " Vanity." There are
more odd instances of suppression, of course, than this,
that of Drayton's Harmony of tJie CJmrch, being the
most unaccountable of all. Wither's satire, however, is
so anodyne and so impersonal, so devoid of anything
which could, apparently, be taken as a home-thrust by
any individual, that the scandal caused by Abuses Stript
and Wliipt is an enigma of literary history. Here are
1 84 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. IX.
none of those direct portraits which passed ahiiost un-
challenged in the satires of Marston and Donne. There
is, notwithstanding, a passage in the ninth satire of the
first book which attacks the prelates of the English
Church very sharply, and the imprudence of this out-
burst seems to have struck the poet himself, for he
proceeds to a direct flattery of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. In the absence of any other light, we may
perhaps conjecture that the chapter on " Ambition "
earned our young poet his cell in the Marshalsea.
These Satires are readable, and have none of the
Persius-like obscurity and roughness of earlier English
satire. The author, after some obliging traits of auto-
biography, essays to deal with the whole subject of the
decay of Man's moral nature. We find lucid con-
structions and smooth verse throughout, and wherever
a picture of manners is introduced, it is given with a
Dutch precision and picturesqueness. Already, in this
lively production of his twenty-fifth year, we are conscious
of Wither's radical faults, his moral garrulity, his tedious
length. It seems certain that the fine lyrical vein in his
genius very soon dried up. In the opening of the
Abuses Stript and Whipi, he speaks of having already
indited "Aretophil's compliment, with many doleful
sonnets." This collection, then, may be consigned to
his very early youth, although, so far as we know, it did
not make its public appearance until it was printed, as
Fair Virtue, The Mistress of Philante, in 1622. It may
be safely dated ten years earlier.
Leaving this collection for awhile, we come to the
books which Wither wrote in prison. It is not needful
Ch. IX.] Wither. 185
to dwell on his contributions, in 16 14, to The Shepherd^ s
Pipe of Browne, Christopher Brooke and Davies of
Hereford; but in 16 15 appeared two exquisite volumes,
Fidelia and The Shepherd^ s Hunting. The former was
privately printed, and of this edition but one copy is
known to survive ; the latter is not a common book.
Fidelia is an " elegiacal epistle," in heroic couplet,
addressed by a woman to her inconstant friend; it is
a fragment of some huge poem probably carried no
further. It possesses a great delicacy of passion, and
a versification curiously and irresistibly suggestive of
that of Dryden ; Fidelia is by far the most attractive of
the non-lyrical works of Wither.
In The Shepherd's Hunting all is lyrical in spirit, if not
in form. It is divided into eclogues, in which the poet
somewhat dimly recounts his woes and their alleviations,
in exquisite verse of varied measures. He is not even
gloomy long, and hastens to assure us that —
though that all the world's delight forsake me,
I have a Muse, and she shall music make me ;
Whose very notes, in spite of closest cages,
Shall give content to me and after ages.
The fourth eclogue is the sweetest of all. Here, as has
been said, "the caged bird begins to sing like a lark at
Heaven's gate," and bids its free companions to be of
good cheer.
As the sun doth oft exhale
Vapours from each rotten vale,
Poesy so sometimes drains
Gross conceits from muddy brains, —
Mists of envy, fogs of spite,
'Twixt man's judgments and her light ;
i86 The Jacobean Poets. [Cn. IX.
But so much her power may do,
That she can dissolve them too.
If thy verse do bravely tower,
As she makes wing, she gets power ;
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more ;
Till she to the highest hath past,
Then she rests with Fame at last.
Let nought therefore thee affright,
But make forward in thy flight ;
For if I could match thy rhyme,
To the very stars I'd climb,
There begin anew, and fly
Till I reached eternity.
In all the days of James I., no more unaffected
melodies, no brighter or more aerial notes, were poured
forth by any poet than are contained in this delicious
little volume of The Shepherd's Hunting.
We may now come to the Mistress of Philarete. This
as it was finally published, is a much more bulky affair.
The form is decidedly unfortunate'; the poem consists of
lyrics, many of them of a somewhat miscellaneous
character, set in a framework of recitative heroic couplets.
The opening of The Mistress of Philarete^ with its
glowing description of the poet's Hampshire home, and
in particular of Alresford Pool, has been greatly praised,
but can scarcely be praised too highly. Where the
contents of this volume are successful, it is in their use
of the dancing measure, the true singing note. No-
where is the octosyllabic used with more rapturous
felicity than occasionally here. Often the poet rings out
a pure sonorous cadence ; still more often he is rapid,
lucid, easy, and modern. If in Fidelia we were re-
minded of Dryden, the double rhymes and reckless
Ch. IX.] Wither. 187
phrases in Philarete makes us think of Elizabeth
Browning,
Say, you purchase, with your pelf,
Some respect, where you importune !
Those may love me, for myself,
That regard you for your fortune.
Rich, or born of high degree,
Fools, as well as you, may be !
But that peace in which I live.
No descent nor wealth can give.
If you boast that you may gain
The respect of high-born beauties,
Know, I never wooed in vain,
Nor preferred scornM duties ;
She I love hath all delight,
Rosy red with lily white ;
And, whoe'er your mistress be,
Flesh and blood as good as she.
Wither's diction is curiously transitional here, and
while with one hand he stretches up to Greene and
Lodge, with the other he feels downwards towards the
lyrists of the Restoration.
But it would be utterly uncritical to say this and this
only. The purple passages are interwoven with the
commonest sacking. Even in his own day, and thus
early, it had been perceived that he possessed no powers
of self-criticism. He is very indignant with those who
censure the dififuseness, the length, the didactic dulness
of his poems ; he calls them " fools," and cries —
Let them know . . .
I make to please myself, and not for them !
It is a misfortune that he judged himself so ill, for the
" fools " were perfectly right, and all these faults were
1 88 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. ix.
patent in his poetry already. They were soon to become
paramount, and the darnel was to kill the poetic wheat
long before the harvest. The later career of Wither is
deplorable. His political and religious tergiversations
give the impression, not of hypocrisy in conscious error,
but of hopeless blundering, of the wrong-headedness of
a radically tactless man. He wrote hymns, which have
been over-praised, and he published a multitude of
pamphlets in prose and verse, which no one has dared
to flatter, and few have tried to read. He outlived
James I. by nearly forty years, reaped the reward of his
malignant invectives by being lodged in Newgate and in
the Tower, and died at last, dishonoured and obscure, on
July 27, 1663, as melancholy an instance as we find in
literary history of genius outlived, and a beautiful youth
belied by a wretched and protracted old age.
At the close of the reign of James I., a verse-writer
appeared who almost immediately achieved a popular
success phenomenal in its extent. Francis Quarles is a
curious figure, and one difficult to define without unfair-
ness. He had but few great qualities of an imagina-
tive kind, and he had many of the faults of the worst
authors. He was without distinction and without charm ;
he "faggotted his fancies as they fell, and if they rhymed
and rattled, all was well." The work was hurriedly,
unconscientiously and inartistically done, and he appealed
directly to a commonplace audience. Yet he was far
from being a writer without merit. His wit — in the
seventeenth-century sense — was genuine and sometimes
brilliant, and though he has not left behind him one
poem which can be read all through with pleasure, he
Ch. IX. J Quarks. 189
had a large share of the poetic temper, and intervals of
rare felicity. He marks the decline in style, and displays
broadly enough faults which were characteristic of his
generation, and which, it must in fairness be said, he did
not a little to foster and extend.
Although the general impression of Quarles is that he
was a Puritan, a Nonconformist, and a Radical, the exact
opposites were the case. He was a gentleman of good
family, a strong Church-and-State man throughout life, a
loyal and even impassioned supporter of the king. Such
were his private convictions ; but the tendency of his
multitudinous verses is wholly in the other direction, and
if he had been born a little later, it is not easy to believe
that he could have failed to be a roundhead. Francis,
die third son of James and Joan Quarles, was born at the
manor-house of Stewards, in Essex, in May, 1592. His
father died when he was seven, and his mother when he
was fourteen years of age. From 1605 to 1608 he was
at Christ's College, Cambridge, and thence proceeded to
Lincoln's Inn. We know not exactly at what period of
his youth it was that he served the Queen of Bohemia
(as she afterwards became), in the office of cup-bearer,
and accompanied her to Germany, but it must have
been after her marriage in 1613. He returned to
England, and married Ursula Woodgate, in 1618. Soon
after this his literary activity began.
In 1620 he seems to have began the rapid series of
his verse-publications with A Feast for Worms, which is
a paraphrase of the book of JoJiah into heroic couplets,
each passage of narrative being succeeded by a " medi-
tatio" of about equal length. The success of this work
190 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. IX.
led Quarles during the same year to follow it by Hadassa,
a paraphrase of the book of Esther, cast in precisely the
same form. In 1624 he published ybiJ Militant, which
treated the book of Job in identical fashion ; and a
volume of Sion's Elegies, in which he paraphrased the
prophecy of Jeremiah in a slightly different manner, the
book being divided into four " threnodies," each con-
sisting of subdivided sections, of twelve lines each, called
"elegies," but all composed, as before, in heroics. He
proceeded to treat the Canticles in the same way, in his
Sion's Sonnets of 1625, the sections here being of eight
lines, and called "sonnets." Finally, in a work of his
late life, posthumously published as Solomon's Recanta-
tion, he performed the same labour of adaptation on the
book of Ecclesiastes, and might, indeed, had his years
been prolonged, have translated the noble prose of the
entire Bible into his jigging and jingling couplets, of
which a citation from A Feast for Worms will give a
rather favourable idea —
To Nineveh he flieth like a roe,
Each step the other strives to over-go ;
And as an arrow to the mark does fly,
So bent to flight flies he to Nineveh.
Now Nineveh a mighty city v/as,
Which all the cities of the world did pass ;
A city which o'er all the rest aspires,
Like midnight Phcebe o'er the lesser fires ;
A city, which, altho' to men was given,
Better beseemed the majesty of heaven ;
A city great to God, whose angle wall
Who undertakes to mete with paces shall
Bring Phoebus thrice abed ere it be done,
Altho' with dawning Lucifer begun.
Ch. IX.] Qiiarles. 191
When Jonah had approached the city gate,
He made no stay to rest nor yet to bait,
No supple oil his fainting head anoints,
Stays not to bathe his weather-beaten joints,
Nor smooth'd his countenance, nor slick't his skin,
Nor craved he the hostage of an inn.
These scriptural paraphrases form the prhicipal con-
tributions of Quarles to purely Jacobean literature. It
is said, to be sure, that his secular narrative poem,
Argaliis and Farthenia, was in print as early as 1622,
but no one living has seen any edition earlier than the
undated one of 1629. It is believed that for nearly
twenty years he resided in Ireland, being for part at
least of that period secretary to Archbishop Ussher.
Soon after^his return to England, in 1639, he was made
Chronologer to the City of London, a post which he
held until his death. Among the best- known of his later
writings are his Samson, 163 1 ; his Divine Fancies, 1632,
four books of miscellaneous religious pieces ; his famous
Emblems, 1634-5 ; and two prose volumes, the Fnchy-
ridion of 1641, and The Loyal Convert of 1643. Quarles
died in London on the 8th of September, 1644, and
during the succeeding year his widow published a
pleasant, but curiously inaccurate and vague memoir
of him. The excessive popularity of his most character-
istic writings continued long after his death, and fifty
years later his hysterical religious lyrics, slightly adapted
to baser uses, continued to make their appearance in
erotic collections, side by side with the effusions of
Rochester and Dorset. In the eighteenth century they
revived again, in their legitimate form, and it can scarcely
192 Tlic Jacobean Poets. [Cu. IX.
be said that there has been a generation in which Quarles
has not still been popular with some portion of the
community. Wood was premature in calling him " the
sometime darling of the plebeian judgment," for he has
never ceased to hold that position.
Quarles' Biblical paraphrases were strange food to be
so greedily devoured by men whose fathers had listened
to Spenser and Sidney. The dignity and the lucidity of
the original narrative disappear entirely, and there is
added, to take their place, a moral volubility, a copy-
book system of ethics. Prose run mad in couplets is
hardly too strong an expression to describe the greater
part of these Hadassas and Samsons, and the ridicule
which successive critics have poured on Quarles is not
wholly undeserved. He is a slovenly and tasteless
writer. But it is undeserved, if it be not toned down,
and even mingled with praise. Quarles passes from his
rattling loom an immense amount of wretched poetical
shoddy, cheap and ugly, but he runs real gold thread
through it here and there, and rises on his worst self to
occasional good things. His fervour, though it takes
such a wearisome form, is genuine, and if he had made
the Bible his model, instead of trying to improve upon
and popularize the text itself, he might often have
succeeded. As Fuller says, Quarles "had a mind
biassed to devotion."
It was where he trusted to his own invention that he
showed his best side. His elegies on the deaths of
private persons, of which he published seven or eight,
are steeped in Biblical phraseology, and here, where he
is no longer trying to versify the dignified prose of the
Ch. IX.] Quarks. 193
Scriptures, he is occasionally very felicitous. But he is
also inspired here^ and to his advantage, by the elegiac
writings of Donne, with which he must have met in
manuscript. This passage, for instance, from An
Alphabet of Elegies upon Dr. Ayhner, is directly derived
from the mode of that potent master —
Go, glorious saint ! I knew 'twas not a shrine
Of flesli could lodge so pure a soul as thine ;
I saw it labour, in a holy scorn
Of living dust and ashes, to be sworn
A heavenly chorister ; it sighed and groaned
To be dissolved from mortal, and enthroned
Among his fellow-angels, there to sing
Perpetual anthems to his heavenly king.
But where Quarles is entirely himself is in a kind of
vigorous, homely wit, a bending of common language to
suit exalted ideas. The Elegy on Sir Edmund Wheeler,
for instance, contains this reflection, which would have
occurred to none but Quarles —
So vain, so frail, so poor a thing is Man !
A weathercock that's turn'd with every lolast ;
His griefs are armfuls, and his mirth a span ;
His joys soon crost or passed ;
His best delights are sauced with doubts and fears ;
If bad, we plunge in care, if lost, in tears ;
Let go or held, they bite ; we hold a wolf by th' ears.
The least imperfect passage of serious poetry to be
found in the works of Quarles, occurs, perhaps, in the
Mlldreiados, an elegy on the death of Mildred, Lady
Lucky n —
194 The Jacobean Poets [Cii. IX.
Oh ! but this light is out ! what wakeful eyes
E'er marked the progress of the queen of light,
Robed with full glory in her austrian skies,
Until at length in her young noon of night,
A swart tempestuous cloud doth rise, and rise,
And hides her lustre from our darken'd sight ;
Even so, too early death, that has no ears
Open to saints, in her scarce noon of years,
Dashed out our light, and left the tempest in our tears.
After quoting this, it is perhaps not unfair to show the
other side of the medal, and exemplify Quarles at a
less happy moment. This is how, in the secular poem of
Argalus and Parthenia , an intemperate lady succumbs to
excess of feeling —
Her blistered tongue grows hot, her liver glows.
Her veins do boil, her colour comes and goes,
She staggers, falls, and on the ground she lies,
Swells like a bladder, roars, and bursts, and dies.
This scarcely sounds so passionate as the poet hoped
it would.
An isolated figure in the literature of the age is Fulke
Greville, Lord Brooke, who was born earlier than any
other writer included in the scope of this volume, but
who composed the poetry of his which we possess,
mainly, in all probability, in the reign of James I.
Lord Brooke's verse is unsympathetic and unattrac-
tive, yet far too original and well-sustained to be over-
looked. He is like one of those lakes, which exist here
and there on the world's surface, which are connected
with no other system of waters, and by no river contri-
bute to the sea. Lord Brooke's abstruse and acrid
poetry proceeded from nowhere and influenced no one.
Ch. IX.] Lord Brooke. 195
It is a solitary phenomenon in our literature, and the
author a kind of marsupial in our poetical zoology. In
the breadth of his sympathy for everything written
between 1580 and 1630, Charles Lamb embraced Lord
Brooke's strange poems and plays. It is not possible to
improve on the verdict of this admirable critic ; Lamb
says of Lord Brooke : — " He is nine parts Machiavel and
Tacitus, for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this
writer's estimation of the faculties of his own mind,
the understanding must have held a most tyrannical
pre-eminence. Whether we look into his plays, or his
most passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and
made rigid with intellect." It is quite incredible that
Lord Brooke's poetry should ever become popular, but it
deserves as much attention as can be given to work
essentially so unexhilarating.
Fulke Greville was born at Beauchamp Court, in
Warwickshire, in 1554. In November, 1564, he pro-
ceeded to Shrewsbury School, where was entered, on the
some day, a boy named Philip Sidney, whose intimate
friend and biographer he was destined to become. They
were, however, separated after their school-life was over,
for while Sidney went to Oxford, Greville became a
fellow-commoner at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 15 68.
Later on, in the court of Elizabeth, he renewed his com-
panionship with Sir Philip Sidney, and became intimate
with Sir Edward Dyer. Sidney celebrates their en-
thusiastic affection in several well-known poems —
Welcome my two to me,
The number best beloved ;
Within my heart you be
In friendship unremoved ;
196 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. IX.
Join hands and hearts, so Icl it be,
Make but one mind in bodies three.
While Dyer and Sidney, however, appHed themselves
early to poetry, and took part in the prosodical revolu-
tions of the Areopagus, Greville seems to have refrained
from verse, or else, what he wrote has not come down to
us. At all events, his existing works appear to belong,
in the main, to the post-Elizabethan period ; the cycle of
Ctclica, which seems to date from the close of the six-
teenth century, being excepted. He was a very scanty
contributor to the Elizabethan miscellanies. His in-
terests, in fact, seem to have been mainly political, and
after the death of Sidney, Greville rose to high honours
in the state. As early as 1576 he began to receive
offices in Wales, and before he was thirty, he had been
made secretary for the whole principality. In 1597 he
was knighted. It has been supposed that his fortunes
sustained some check at the accession of James L, but
this must have been very temporary, for we find him con-
firmed for life in his Welsh office, and in 1614 raised to
the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was
made a peer in 1620, but was never married. The young
William Davenant was brought up in his service ; and
Lord Brooke was, indeed, throughout his career, though
accused of extreme parsimony, the patron of poets and
scholars. In September, 1628, in circumstances which
have remained very obscure, Lord Brooke was murdered
in his London house in Holborn, by a serving-man of
the name of Haywood, who stabbed him in the back
in his bed-chamber, and then committed suicide before
he could be brought to justice.
Ch. IX.] Lord Brooke. 197
Lord Brooke published nothing during his own hfe-
time, for the edition of his tragedy of Mustapha, which
appeared in 1609, was almost certainly issued against his
will. Five years after his death was printed, in a small
folio, Certain Learned and Elegant Works .^ ^^ZZ^^ ^ collec-
tion which comprised the treatises Of LLnman Learnmg,
Upon Fame afid Honour, and Of Wars, the tragedies of
Alakani and Mustapha, the lyrical cycle of a hundred and
nine poems called Ccelica, and some prose miscellanies.
So late as 1670 appeared The Remains of Fulk Greville,
Lord Brooke, being the Treatises of Monarchy and Religion.
These two volumes contain, with very trifling exceptions,
the entire poetical works of Lord Brooke, his famous
prose life of Sir Philip Sidney being also posthumous.
It is a vexed question when these works were written.
The publisher of 1633 averred that " when he grew old
he revised the poems and treatises he had wrote long
before," but this is very vague. The collection called
Ccelica has something of an Elizabethan character ; the
rest seem undoubtedly, both by external and internal
evidence, to belong to the seventeenth century. The
Treatise of Monarchy, for instance, could not have been
written till some years after the accession of James.
A great monotony of style marks the poetry of Lord
Brooke. It is harsh and unsympathetic ; the verse,
which depends for life on its stateliness alone, sinks,
between the purple passages, to a leaden dulness. The
" treatises " are exceedingly difficult to read through.
They all begin — and this is a very curious point — with
an eloquent stanza or two, only to sink immediately into
a jog-trot of prose in lengths. One or two critics have
198 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Cn, ix.
chosen to praise Lord Brooke with something Hke
extravagance. It is true that he is full of ripe and
solemn thought; it is not less true that he is always
endeavouring to present to us noble views of character
and conduct. As Phillips said, in his Theatrum
Poetarum of 1675, Lord Brooke has "a close, mysterious,
and sententious way of writing." But, except here and
there in the course of Cczlica, he entirely forgets that the
poet has to be an artist ; he thinks of him purely as a
teacher, and as a prophet. He does not shrink from
such lines as —
Knowledge's next organ is imagination,
or from rhyming "heart" with "arts," and alternating
"pain" and "gain" by "fame" and "frame." His
dignity, his earnestness, his religious and moral senten-
tiousness are unilluminated by colour, imagery, or melody.
Two sects there be in this earth, opposite ;
The one makes Mahomet a deity, —
A tyrant Tartar raised by war and sleight,
Ambitious ways of infidelity ;
The world their heaven is, the world is great,
And racketh those hearts when it has receipt.
The other sect of cloister'd people is,
Less with the world, with which they seem to war.
And so in less things drawn to do amiss,
As all lusts less than lust of conquest are ;
Now if of God both these have but the name
What mortal idol then can equal Fame ?
In his bold political speculations and his reflections
on the effects of tyranny taken from ancient history and
Cm. IX.] Lord Brooke. 199
modern experience, he sometimes reminds us of Sir John
Davies, but at a great distance.
His plays are what Lamb described them to be, frozen.
He tells us that he wrote others, to which he intended
his elaborate didactic "treatises" to serve as choruses;
and in particular he burned with his own hand an Antony
and Cleopatra which it would have been amusing to
compare with Shakespeare's. The two we possess are,
however, all that we can desire, and few have had the
patience to read them. They are, in some measure,
composed upon the Seneca model. Alaham opens with
a long rhymed prologue of sonorous irregular stanza,
spoken by the ghost of a murdered King of Ormuz,
descriptive of hell.
This is how it begins : —
Thou monster horrible, under whose ugly doom,
Down in Eternity's perpetual night,
Man's temporal sins bear torments infinite,
For change of desolation, must I come
To tempt the earth and to profane the light,
From mournful silence whose pain dares not roar,
With liberty to multiply it more ?
Nor from the loathsome puddle Acheron
Made foul with common sins, whose filthy damps
Feed Lethe's sink, forgetting all but moan,
Nor from that foul infernal shadowed lamp
Which liglUeth Sisyphus to roll his stone,—
These be but bodies' plagues, the skirts of hell ;
I come from whence Death's seat doth Death excell.
A place there is upon no centre plac'd,
Deep under depths as far as is the sky
Above the earth, dark, infinitely spac'd ;
Pluto, the King, the kingdom, Misery:
The crystal may God's glorious seat resemble,
Horror itself these horrors but dissemble.
200 TJic Jacobean Poets. [Cn. ix.
Some of these choruses, in a long broken metre, must,
even then, have seemed exceedingly old-fashioned.
Alustapha is an easier play to follow, and Mrs. Humphrey
Ward has drawn attention to the almost Miltonic
magnificence of the Chorus of Tartars at the end of
the fifth act.
Vast superstition ! glorious style of weakness !
Sprung from the deep disquiet of man's passion,
To desolation and dispair of nature !
The texts bring princes' titles into question ;
Thy prophets set on work the sword of tyrants ;
They manacle sweet Truth with their distinctions ;
Let Virtue blood ; teach cruelty for God's sake ;
Fashioning one God, yet him of many fashions ;
Like many-headed Error in their passions.
Mustapha has less rhyme introduced into it than
Aiaham, and has a somewhat more modern air. Human
interest and the play of the emotions are entirely neglected
in these curious wooden dramas.
Equally abstruse, and, I fear it must be acknowledged,
equally difificult to enjoy, are the tragedies of William
Alexander, of Menstrie, afterwards Earl of Stirling. He
was born about 1580, and early became a friend and
fellow-student of James I. He has been called " the
second-rate Scotch sycophant of an inglorious despotism,"
but this is needlessly severe. Like so many of his
contemporaries, he celebrated the real or imaginary
loves of his youth in a thin volume of songs and sonnets
called Atirora, printed in 1604. Before this, in 1603,
he had published in Edinburgh his tragedy of Darius.
To this followed Crcesus in 1604, and The Alexandrcean
in 1605. He reprinted these, and added Oi/uliiis Ccssar,
Ch. IX.] William Alexander. 20 1
in 1607, calling the collection FoJtr Monarchic Tragedies.
He issued an Elegy on Prince Henry in 16 12, and a
religious poem called Doomsday in 1614. His writings,
strange to say, were popular, and were frequently re-
printed during his lifetime. In 1621 Alexander was
knighted; in 1626 he was appointed Secretary for Scot-
land ; in 1630 he was created Viscount Canada, in recog-
nition of his colonial services; and in 1633 was made
Earl of Sterling. He died in 1640. Stiff and pedantic
as he is, and without the intellectual weight of Lord
Brooke, Alexander by no means deserves the contempt
which has been thrown upon him. The Aurora contains
several sonnets and madrigals which are little inferior
to the best of Drummond's, and even the mail-clad
versification of the " monarchic tragedies " is often
melodious and stately.
CHAPTER X.
PHILIP MASSINGER.
Nothing exemplifies more curiously the rapidity of
development in poetical literature at the opening of the
seventeenth century than the fact that the same brief
reign which saw the last perfection placed on the edifice
of Elizabethan drama saw also the products of the pen
of jNIassinger. For, however much we may respect the
activity of this remarkable man, however warmly we may
acknowledge the power of his invention, the skill and
energy with which he composed, and however agreeable
his plays may appear to us if we compare them with what
succeeded them in a single generation, there can be no
question that the decline in the essential parts of poetry
from Webster or Tourneur, to go no further back, to Mas-
singer is very abrupt. Mr. Leslie Stephen has noted in this
playwright " a certain hectic flush, symptomatic of ap-
proaching decay," and we may even go further and discover
in him a leaden pallor, the sign of decreasing vitality.
The " hectic flush " seems to me to belong more properly
to his immediate successors, who do not come within
the scope of this volume, to Ford, with his morbid
Ch, X.] Philip Massinger. 203
sensibility, and to Shirley, with his mechanical ornament,
than to Massinger, where the decline chiefly shows itself
in the negation of qualities, the absence of what is
brilliant, eccentric, and passionate. The sentimental
and rhetorical drama of Massinger has its excellent
points, but it is dominated by the feeling that the burn-
ing summer of poetry is over, and that a russet season
is letting us down gently towards the dull uniformity of
winter. Interesting and specious as Massinger is, we
cannot avoid the impression that he is preparing us for
that dramatic destitution which was to accompany the
Commonwealth.
So much of Massinger's work appeared in the reign of
Charles I., that he may perhaps be considered as scarcely
Jacobean. But when we bear in mind the long ap-
prenticeship he served with Fletcher and others, and if
we regard, not the published dates of his principal plays,
but the years in which they must reasonably be supposed
to have been acted, we come to think of Massinger as
not merely unalienably Jacobean, but as the leading poet
of the close of James's reign. He was born at Salisbury,
and was baptized at St. James's on the 24th of November,
1583, being thus nineteen years younger than Shakespeare
and ten years than Ben Jonson. His father, whose name
was Arthur, "happily spent many years, and died a servant "
to the family of the Herberts, but he was ^^ ge?ierosns" and
much respected by the heads of the clan which he thus
"served" in delicate matters of business. It has been
supposed that Sir Philip Sidney was the god-father of the
poet, and that the boy became page to the Countess of
Pembroke, but these are matters of mere conjecture.
204 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch, X.
That he was brought up in or near Wilton, and was
famiHar with the stately occupants of that great house,
may, at all events, be taken for certain.
On the 14th of May, 1602, Philip Massinger was
entered as a commoner of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford.
Wood gives us the impression that the Earl of Pembroke
was disappointed in the lad, who " gave his mind more
to poetry and romances for about four years and more,
than to logic and philosophy, which he ought to have
done, as he was patronized to that end." Langbaine,
a poorer witness, denies this, saying that he was
industrious, and that his father alone supported his
charges. But he took no degree when he left Oxford
in 1606, abruptly, owing either to his father's death or
to the withdrawal of the Herbert patronage. Gifford
supposed that Massinger had lost favour by becoming a
Roman Catholic ; the fact is in itself not certain, but it
is made highly probable by the tone of several of his
compositions. Wood says that on reaching London,
Massinger, "being sufficiently famed for several speci-
mens of wit, betook himself to writing plays." The
" specimens of wit " have not come down to us, and we
are unable to trace, for many years, the plays he wrote.
But there is reason to believe that he lived in extreme
poverty, and that his literary labours were for a long
time restricted to partnership with luckier playwrights
and to the re-modelling of old, discarded dramas of the
Elizabethan age.
There exist signs that in 16 13 Massinger was employed
in writing plays with Fletcher and Field, and a little
later with Daborne also. The earliest work in which
Ch. X.] Philip Massing er. 205
his hand can certainly be traced is T/ie Fatal Dowry,
which he wrote in conjunction with Field about 161 9.
The Very Woman was performed at Court in 1621. But
we possess the names of seven plays, all of which came
into Warburton's hands, and were burned by his
egregious cook — three tragedies, three comedies, and one
tragi-comedy. All these, it seems probable, were written
by Massinger without help from any author, before
1620. In thirteen or fourteen of Fletcher's plays, too,
he had a hand or at least a main finger. Of all this
large section of his work it is obvious that no criticism
can be attempted, for all must be conjecture. Of his re-
modelling of plays, TAe Virgin Martyr is the one clearly
defined example, and in this instance it cannot be said
that Massinger shines as a poet by comparison with
Dekker. All this time, he was probably very poor.
When he was forty years of age, we find him piteously
begging to be relieved by a loan of five pounds.
The earliest play which is known to survive in which
Massinger was not assisted by any other poet is The
Duke of Milan, which was published, with a dedication
to Lady Catherine Stanhope, in 1623, but probably
acted about three years earlier. This marked the
starting-point of a period during which Massinger broke
away, we cannot guess for what reason, from the
bondage of working under Fletcher, and determined,
already rather late in life, to show that he could carry
through a play unaided. Perhaps his next experiment
was The Maid of Honour, although that was not pub-
lished until 1632. A New Way to Pay Old Debts
(printed 1632) could not have preceded, and yet must
2o6 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. X.
soon have followed the scandal about Sir Giles Mompes-
son in 1620. To the same period has been ascribed
The Unnatural Combat. There may then have been a
pause in Massinger's activity, or he returned to his work
of collaboration with Fletcher ; but four important dramas
seem to belong to the closing years of the hfe of James I.
These are The Bondman, published in 1624, The Rene-
gade, The Paiiiamcnt of Love, and The Great Duke of
Florence. If those are correct who believe all these
plays to have been produced on the boards before 1625,
the question of the propriety of considering Massinger
as a Jacobean poet is settled. He thought that he con-
tinued to improve, and that The Roman Actor was " the
most perfect birth of my Minerva," But the truth is that
we should be admirably acquainted with all his qualities
and his defects if his career had closed with that of
James I. As a matter of fact, he continued to live on until
the 17th of March, 1638, when he was found dead in the
morning in his house on the Bankside. His body was
buried next day in St. Saviour's, Southwark, in the grave
already occupied by the dust of John Fletcher. His later
plays included The Picture, The City Madam, Belize as
you List, The Emperor of the East, and The Bashful
Lover.
The comparison has been made between Massinger and
such earlier poets as Webster. This is a parallel which,
from our present standpoint, militates strongly against the
first-named writer. For, if the truth be told, Massinger
is scarcely a poet, except in the sense in which that word
may be used of any man who writes seriously in dramatic
form. What we delight in in the earlier Elizabethans, the
Ch. X.] Philip Massinger. 207
splendid bursts of imaginative insight, the wild freaks of
diction, the sudden sheet-lightning of poetry illuminating
for an instant dark places of the soul, all this is absent
in Massinger. He is uniform and humdrum ; he has no
lyrical passages ; his very versification, as various critics
have observed, is scarcely to be distinguished from prose,
and often would not seem metrical if it were printed
along the page. Intensity is not within his reach, and
even in the aims of composition we distinguish between
the joyous instinctive lyricism of the Elizabethans, which
attained to beauty without much design, and this
deliberate and unimpassioned work, so plain and easy
and workmanlike. It is very natural, especially for a
young reader, to fling Massinger to the other end of the
room, and to refuse him all attention.
This is unphilosophical and ungenerous. If we shift
our standpoint a little, there is much in the author of
The Renegado which demands our respect and insures
our enjoyment. If he be less brilliant than these fiery
poets, if his pictures of life do not penetrate us as theirs
do, he has merits of construction which were unknown
to them. The long practice which he had in prentice
work was none of it thrown away upon him. It made
him, when once he gained confidence to write alone, an
admirable artificer of plays. He is the Scribe of the
seventeenth century. He knows all the tricks by which
curiosity is awakened, sustained, and gratified. He com-
poses, as few indeed of his collaborators seem to have done,
not for the study so much as for the stage. He perceived,
we cannot doubt, certain faults in that noble dramatic
literature of Fletcher's with which he was so long identi-
2o8 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. X.
fied. He perceived Fletcher's careless exaggeration and
his light ideal. It was Massingcr who recalled English
drama to sobriety and gravity.
The absence of bloody violence in his plays must
strike every reader, and at the same time the tendency
to introduce religious and moral reflections. The intel-
lectual force of Massinger was extolled by Hazlitt, and
not unjustly, but it was largely exercised in smoothing
out and regulating his conceptions. The consequence
is that Massinger tends to the sentimental and the
rhetorical, and that description takes the place of passion.
His characters too often say, in their own persons,
what it should have been left for others to say of them.
Variety of interest is secured, but sometimes at the
sacrifice of evolution, and the personages act, not as
human creatures must, but as theatrical puppets should.
His humour possesses the same fault as his seriousness,
that it is not intense. Without agreeing with Hartley
Coleridge, who said that Massinger would be the worst of
all dull jokers, if Ford had not contrived to be still duller, it
must be admitted that the humour of INIassinger is seldom
successful unless when it is lambent and suffused, when,
that is to say, it tinctures a scene rather than illuminates
a phrase. In short, INIassinger depends upon his broad
effects, whether in comedy or tragedy, and must not be
looked to for jewels ten words long. His songs have been
the scoff of criticism ; they really are among the worst
ever written. He was, in short, as cannot be too often
repeated, essentially unlyrical, yet his plays have great
merits. They can always be read with ease, for they
seem written with decorum ; as Charles Lamb said, they
Ch. X.] Philip Massinger. 209
are characterized by " that equabiHty of all the passions,
which made his English style the purest and most free
from violent metaphors and harsh constructions, of any
of the dramatists who were his contemporaries."
Further insight into the qualities of Massinger's work
may perhaps be gained by a more detailed examination
of one or two of his dramas. By general consent, the
best written and the most characteristic of his tragedies
is The Duke of Milan, the most sohd and brilliant of his
comedies A Nezv Way to Pay Old Debts. In the former
of these plays, Sforza, the Duke, is newly married to
Marcelia, whom he loves with a frantic and almost
maniacal uxoriousness. His delight in the Duchess is
felt to be ridiculous and odious in its excess by his
mother Isabella and his sister Mariana, who are, how-
ever, kept at bay by Francisco, a nobleman married to
INIariana, and the Duke's especial favourite. Forced by
the approach of the Emperor Charles to go forth to meet
and avert his conquering army, Sforza tears himself from
Marcelia, but not until he has wrung from Francisco, whom
he leaves as regent, an oath that if his death should be
reported, Francisco shall instantly kill Marcelia, whom
Sforza cannot bear to think of as surviving him. During
the Duke's absence, Francisco dishonourably makes love
to the Duchess, and, to prejudice her against her husband,
divulges this monstrous plan. Sforza comes back safe
and sound, but observes at once the natural coldness of
Marcelia, who does not appreciate having thus been
doomed to execution. The play closes in violent and
ferocious confusion ; but that was the taste of the time.
It is clearly constructed, the plot is lucidity itself, and
2IO The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. X.
the first act, as is usual with Massinger, is admirably
devised to put the spectator in possession of all the
necessary facts.
When, however, we come to reflect upon the conduct
of this plausible drama, we find much which calls for
unfavourable comment. There has been a great deal
of bustle and show, and an interesting spectacle, but no
play of genuine character. If, as has been conjectured,
it was Massinger's intention deliberately to emulate
Shakespeare in Othello, his failure is almost ludicrous.
The figures are strongly contrasted, and they play at
cross-purposes ; did they not do so, the tragedy would
come to a stand-still ; their inconsistencies are the springs
of the movement. Hazlitt and others have found great
fault with the conception of Sforza, as being irrelevant
and violent. It is not needful, however, to go so far as
this in censure. It may surely be admitted that Sforza
is a credible type of the neuropathic Italian despot.
His agitation in the first act is true and vivid ; his moods
are those of a man on the verge of madness, but they
do not cross that verge.
He reaches the highest pitch of hysterical agitation
in the fine scene in the fifth act, where the dead body
of Marcelia is brought across the stage —
Carefully, I beseech you :
The gentlest touch ; and then think
What I shall suffer. O you earthly gods,
You second natures, that from your great master,
Who join'd the limbs of torn Hippolytus
And drew upon himself the Thunderer's envy,
Are taught those hidden secrets that restore
To life death-wounded men ! You have a patient
Ch. X.] Philip Massinger. 21 1
On whom to express the excellence of art
Will bind even Heaven your debtor, tho' it pleases
To make your hands the organs of the work
The saints will smile to look on, and good angels
Clap their celestial wings to give it plaudits.
How pale and worn she looks ! O, pardon me,
That I presume (dyed o'er with bloody guilt,
Which makes me, I confess, far, far unworthy),
To touch this snow-white hand. How cold it is !
This once was Cupid's firebrand, and still
'Tis so to me. How slow her pulses beat too !
Yet in this temper she is all perfection,
And mistress of a heat so full of sweetness,
The blood of virgins in their pride of youth
Are balls of snow or ice compar'd unto hei.
The real fault of The Duke of Milan is not the
unnaturalness of Sforza, but the fact that the dramatist
has limited his attention to him. The remoteness of
the Duke's passions, his nervous eccentricities, should
have forced Massinger to keep all the characters at
a low and quiet pitch, so to contrast the neurosis of
Sforza with their normal condition. But all the other
characters are no less frenzied than he is, without his
excuses. The abrupt wooing of Francisco, who is a
mere shadow of lago, in the second act, is utterly untrue ;
his equally abrupt repentance, in the third act, is not less
extraordinary, and is introduced for no other reason than
that Marcelia should know Sforza's plan for her being
killed in case he does not return alive. If we turn to
the female characters, they are not more natural ; the
mother and sister of the Duke are vulgar scolds, Marcelia
herself utterly ugly and absurd. Everything is extreme
and yet weak ; the characters are made of india-rubber,
212 The Jacobean Poets. [Ch. X.
and the dramatist presses them down or pulls them out
as he sees fit. His study of Sforza is carefully executed,
and has passages of great suavity and charm — such as
his meeting with the Emperor Charles — but to the
evolution of this single character the entire play is
sacrificed.
This speech of Sforza, when introduced to the
Emperor Charles, is one of the best things in the play —
If example
Of my fidelity to the French, whose honours,
Titles, and glories, are now mixed with yours,
As brooks, devoured by rivers, lose their names.
Has power to invite you to make him a friend.
That hath given evident proof he knows to love.
And to be thankful : this my crown, now yours,
You may restore me, and in me instruct
These brave commanders, should your fortune change,
^^^lich now I wish not, what they may expect
From noble enemies for being faithful.
The charges of the war I will defray,
And what you may, not without hazard, force.
Bring freely to you ; I'll prevent the cries
Of murder'd infants and of ravish'd maids.
Which in a city sack'd, call on Heaven's justice.
And stop the course of glorious victories :
And when I know the captains and the soldiers.
That have in the lost battle done best service.
And are to be rewarded, I myself.
According to their quality and merits.
Will see them largely recompens'd. — I have said.
And now expect the sentence.
When we turn from this tragedy to the comedy of A
Netv Way to Fay Old Debts, we are struck by similar
characteristics, modified, however, by the fact that this is
Ch. X.] Philip Massinger. 213
a much stronger and more vivid play than T/te Duke of
Milan. At the outset we are interested to find ourselves
on a scene so frankly English and modern. Massinger
had much of the spirit of the journalist, and it has been
pointed out by Mr. Gardiner and others that he was
constantly engaged in referring to events of passing
politics. Here he was inspired by a sensational case
which had but recently engaged the notice of the courts
of law, and the comedy palpitates with topical allusions.
The plot of the play is clear and interesting. Sir Giles
Overreach, a self-made man, by alternately wheedling and
bullying the lax gentry of the country-side, has ruined
them all, and rules the whole neighbourhood. In
particular, he has so cleverly played on the illusions and
the vices of young Wellborn, the squire, that he has
stripped him of everything, and the generous Wellborn
has to appear among his late tenants in rags. Overreach
has no son, but one daughter, and his design is to marry
her to Lord Lovell, the local grandee, and so finally
secure his own position in the county. He is over-
tricked, however, by a rich and eccentric widow, Lady
AUworth, who patronizes Wellborn, the prodigal, and
marries Lord Lovell herself. The intrigue of the last
act, in which Wellborn constrains Overreach to give him
the money with which he pays his old debts, gives name
to the play, but is somewhat obscurely managed. Not-
withstanding this, however, A New Way to Pay Old
Debts is the example of the entire Elizabethan and
Jacobean drama outside Shakespeare which has longest
held its place on the modern stage.
As is customary with Massinger, the first act is singu-
214 T^^^c Jcicohean Poets. [Ch. X.
larly skilful. The story told in sarcasm to Wellborn by
Tapwell, the rascally innkeeper, is exactly what we need
to put us in possession of the facts. Wellborn's condition,
character, and prospects are placed before us in absolute
clearness, our sympathies are engaged, and the little
mystery of his whisper to the lady, at the close of the act,
is left dark so as to freshen and carry on our curiosity.
In the second act, we begin to appreciate the force and
cunning of Sir Giles Overreach, in whose wickedness
there is something colossal that impresses the imagina-
tion. The third act sustains this impression and even
increases it, but after this the threads become, not
exactly entangled, but twisted, and the illusion of nature
is gradually lost. In A New Way to Pay Old Debts
that unhappy forcible-feebleness of Massinger's is not so
strikingly prominent as elsewhere, yet we see something
of it in Marall's crude and abrupt temptation of Wellborn
to commit some crime and so put an end to his miseries.
A certain Justice Greedy pervades the piece, a magistrate
who is always raging for his food. Some critics have
thought his gluttonies very diverting, but Massinger
borrowed them directly from Beaumont and Fletcher, and
they are too incessant not to become fatiguing. The
charm of this play, after all, consists in its realistic
picture of English country life in 1620, and in its curious
portrait of the great savage parvenu, eater of widows and
orphans, a huge machine for unscrupulous avarice and
tyranny. In Sir Giles Overreach, Massinger approaches
more nearly than anywhere else to a dramatic creation
of the first order.
Little would be gained by examinins; with the like
Ch. X.] PJiilip Massingev. 215
minuteness the rest of Massinger's dramas. For so brief
a sketch as we must here confine ourselves to^ it is
enough to say that in the main they present the same
characteristics. This playwright commonly shows a
capacity for depicting courtly and gentle persons, engaged
in pleasant converse amongst themselves. For suavity
and refinement of this kind, Tlie Grand Duke of Florence
is remarkable. Lamb has praised The Picture for " good
sense, rational fondness, and chastened feeling;" this
is true of its execution, but hardly of its repulsive central
idea. On the whole, Massinger may be commended for
the prominence and the dignity which he readily assigns
to women ; but in attempting to show them independent,
he not unfrequently paints them exceedingly coarse and
hard. His political bias was towards a kind of oligarchic
liberalism ; Coleridge describes him as "a decided
Whig." Sometimes he indulged this tendency in politics
by satirizing the ladies of a less aristocratic walk of life
than he usually aftected, and The City Madam is a lively
example of his gifts in this direction. The diction of
the dramatist is particularly rich in the last-named play,
and Massinger has not written better verse than this
from Luke's soliloquy in the third act —
Thou dumb magician [taking out a key] that without a charm
Didst make my entrance easy, to possess
What wise men wish and toil for ! Hermes' Moly,
Sibylla's golden bough, the great elixir
Imagin'd only by the alchymist,
Compar'd with thee are shadows, — thou the substance,
And guardian of felicity ! No marvel
My brother made thy place of rest his bosom,
Thou being the keeper of his heart, a mistress
2i6 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. X.
To be hugg'd ever ! In bye-coriicrs of
This sacred room, silver in bags, heap'd up
Like billets saw'd and ready for the fire,
Unworthy to hold fellowship with bright gold
That flow'd about the room, conceal'd itself.
There needs no artificial light ; the splendour
Makes a perpetual day there, night and darkness
By that still-burning lamp for ever banished !
But when, guided by that, my eyes had made
Discovery of the caskets, and they opened.
Each sparkling diamond from itself shot forth
A pyramid of flames, and in the roof
Fix'd it a glorious star, and made the place
Heaven's abstract or epitome ! Rubies, sapphires,
And ropes of orient pearl, these seen, I could not
But look on with contempt.
When the directly Gallic fashion of the Restoration had
gone out, and dramatists had turned once more to their
Jacobean predecessors, Massinger came back into favour.
His example had much to do in forming the style of such
sentimental tragic writers as Rowe and Lillo, and again,
a century later, his influence was paramount on Talfourd
and Sheridan Knowles. He has always been easy to
imitate, and it may be said that until Lamb began to
show quite clearly what the old English drama really
was, most readers vaguely took their impression of it
from the pages of Massinger. He was succeeded, it is
true, by several younger playwrights, particularly by
Ford, Shirley, and Brome ; but each of these — all poets
whose works lie outside the scope of the present volume
— returned closer than he did to the tradition of their
fathers. Massinger is, really, though not technically and
literally, the last of the great men. In him we have all
the characteristics of the school in their final decay,
Ch. X.] Philip Massiiiger. 217
before they dissolved and were dispersed. At the same
time, it must never be forgotten that we do not know
what he may have been capable of in his youth, and that
he was nearly forty, and therefore possibly beyond his
poetic prime, before he wrote the earliest play which has
come down to us. If Warburton's miserable cook had
not burned Mi?icn\i's Sacrifice a.nd The Italian A'ighipiece,
we might, possibly, put Massinger on a higher level ; but
criticism can make no conjectures, and we must place
the worthy and industrious playwright where we find
him.
INDEX.
Abuses Stript and IV/iipt,
Wither, 183, 184
Agincourt, Ballad of, 96
, Battle off)"]
Alahavi, Lord Brooke, 199, 200
Albiiinazar, Tomkis, 177, 17S
AkhytJiist, The, Ben Jonson,
24, 27-30, 33, 178
Alexander, Sir William, of
Menstrie, 106, 200, 201
Alps Lost by Lust, Rowley, 130
Amends for Ladies, Field, 87,
88
Anatomy of the World, An,
J. Donne, 48
Ancrum, Robert Ker, Earl of,
106
Anthologies, Elizabethan, 6
Antony and Cleopatra, Shake-
speare, 20
, Lord Brooke, 199
Appiiis and Virginia, Webster,
'165, 170, 171
Argalus and Parthenia, Quarles,
191, 194
Arnim, Robert, 113
Atheisfs Tragedy, The, Tour-
neur, 159, 162-164
Aubrey, John, 83
Aurora, Alexander, 200, 201
Aytoun, Sir Robert, 106
B
Bandello's Novelle, 132, 166
Barkstead, William, 22, 112,
113
Barnabae Itinerarium, R. Brath-
vvait, 109-112
Barnes, Barnaby, 9, I02
Barnfield, Richard, 5
Baron's Wars, The, Drayton,
94
Barry, Lodovvick, 132
Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson,
2S» 32
Basse, William, 156, 157
Battle of Agincourt, 77ie, 97
Beaumont, Francis, 68-87, io7
and Fletcher, 68-87, "3
, Sir John, 107, 108
, Sir John (the younger),
107
220
Index.
Bedford, S. Daniel's Epistle to
the Countess of, 1 1
Beggar's Busk, The, Fletcher
and Massinger, 82
Bloody Brother, The, Fletcher,
78, 79
Bond, Mr. Warwick, 156
Bondman, The, 206
Bondiica, Fletcher, 78, 79
Bosworth Field, Sir J. Beau-
mont, 107, 108
Brathwait, Richard, 109-112
, Sir Strafford, 109
Breton, Nicholas, 15-17
Brewer, Anthony, 133-137
Bridges, Mr. Robert, 62
Britain^s Ida, 149-151
Britannia's Pastorals, W,
Browne, 151-155
Brooke, Lord. See Greville
, Christopher, 157, 182, 185
Browne, William, 151-157, 1S2,
Bullen, Mr. A. H., 17, 89, 90,
127, 128, 174
Biissy d'Aitibois, G. Chapman,
40, 41
Camden, William, 24
Campion, Thomas, 35, 89-93
Carew, Richard, 8
, Thomas, 27
Catiline s Conspiracy, Jonson,
24, 30-32
Cervantes, proof of early popu-
larity, 76
Challenge for Beauty, Ileywood,
119, 127
Changeli7ig,The, Middleton, 126
Chapman, George, 8, 24, 39-46,
133. 165, 173
Chess, A Game at, Middleton,
126, 128
Chettle, Henry, 174
Chrisfs Victory and Triumph,
G. Fletcher, 13S-144
Christian turned Turk, A,
Daborne, 176
Chronologer, City — his duty, 26,
125, 191
Churchyard, Thomas, 4
City Madam, Massinger, 216
Cockayne, Sir Aston, 83
Ccelica, Lord Brooke, 197, 198
Coleridge, S. T., 13, 27, 65, 86,
216
, Hartley, 208
Constable, Henry, 5
Cooke, John, 132
Coriolanus, 20
Craig, Alexander, 106
Cromwell, Oliver, 177
Cwnberland, S. Daniel's Epistle
to the Countess of, \i
Cupid's Revenge, Beaumont and
Fletcher, 85
Cymbeline, 20
Cypress Grove, The, Drummond,
io6
D
Daborne, Robert, 163, 176, 204
Daniel, John, 114
, Samuel, 9-14, 23, 35, 62
Davenant, WiUiam, 196
Davies, Sir John, 8, 9
Davis, John, of Hereford, 112,
185
Day, John, 173-176
Defence of Rymc, Daniel, 10
Dekker, Thomas, 7, 21-23, 125,
165, 173, 205
DeviPs an Ass, The, Jonson,
25. 32
Charter, The, Barnes, 9
Law Case, The, Webster,
166, 171
Index.
221
Divine Weeks and Works, Syl-
vester's translation of Du
Bartas, 14
Donne, Dr, John, 47-67, 92,
103, 157, 184, 193 ; birth and
education, 49 ; marriage and
advancement, 50; his effect
on versification, 48, 61-64,
67 ; religion, 58, 59 ; style,
65
Drayton, Michael, 93-101, 152,
153, 183 ; place in literature,
93, 94 ; birth, 94 ; ill results
from Gratidatory Poem to
King James, 94; Odes, etc.,
95~97 j characteristics, 100 ;
death, his epitaph, loi
Drummond of Hawthornden,
William, 25, 54, 62, 71, 98,
101-106, 174 ; birth and edu-
cation, 102 ; French influence,
ib. ; his verse, 104 ; sonnet to
the Nightingale, ib. ; Ode of
the Ascension, 105 ; and Jon-
son, 106
Dryden, John, 30, 32, 37, 54,
67, 79, 106, 178, 185
Du Bartas, 14, 15
Duchess of Malfy, The, Web-
ster, 160, 166-170
Duke of Milan, The, Massinger,
205, 209-213
Dyer, Sir Edward, 5, 195, 196
E
Eastward Hoe! 24, 40, 165
Elegies of Donne, 55-58
Eliza, Canto on the Death of,
G. Fletcher, 137
Elizabethan Poetry, 2, 4, 22
Emblems, Quarks, 191
England's Helicon, 6
Etiglish Traveller, The, Hey-
wood, 11S-120, 122
Epicene, or the Silent JFoma/r,
B. Jonson, 24, 30
Epistles, Daniel, 10-12
-, Donne, 53-55
Epithalamia ot Donne, 55
Eugenia, Chapman, 42, 43
Faery Queeti, The, 139
Fair Maid of the Exchange,
The, 134-136
Fair Maid of the West, The,
Heywood, 119
Fair Quarrel, A, Rowley and
Middleton, 130
Fairfax, Edward, 8
Faithful Shepherdess, The, J.
Fletcher, 71, 72
False One, The, Fletcher and
Massinger, 80
Fatal Dowry, The, Field, 87,
88, 205
Feast for Worms, A, Quarles,
189, 190
Fidelia, G. Witlier, 1S5, 186
Field, Nathaniel, 87, 88, 176,
204
Fleay, Mr., 27, 73, 81, 124,
^3?,, 174, 175
Fletcher family, 137, 13S
, Giles, the younger, 137-
144, 150; birth, 137; career,
138 ; his religious poems, 137-
144
, John, 68-87, 130, 137,
204, 208 ; birth and educa-
tion, 69 ; first associated with
Beaumont, 69 ; collaboration
with Beaumont, 73 ; later
work, 73, 77, 78 ; associated
with Massinger, 79, 81, 82 ;
unaided plays, 81 ; death and
burial, 83 ; and Daborne, 176
, Joseph, 151
222
Index.
Fletcher, Phineas, 137, 144-150;
relation of his style to Spenser,
149
Florence, The Great Duke of,
206, 215, 216
Flowers of Sion, Drummond,
104-106
Ford, John, 160, 162, 166, 202
Forest, The, Jonson, 25, 37
Freeman, Thomas, 113
Fuller, Thomas, 83, 192
Funeral Elegies, Donne, 56, 57
Garden, Alexander, 106
Gardiner, Mr. S. R., 213
Gildon, Charles, 164
Gipsy, The Spanish, Middleton,
126, 127
Goffe, Thomas, 179
Gorges, Sir Arthur, 8, 157, 158
Gough, Robert, 133
Greette's Tu Quoqzie, 132
Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke,
194-200 ; birth and education,
195 ; success at Court, 196 ;
tragic death, ib, ; publication
of his works, 197 ; style, 197-
200
H
Hadassa, Quarles, 190, 192
Hall, Arthur, 8
, Bishop Joseph, 9
Hamlet, 18, 19
Harington, Francis, 7
, Sir John, 7
Harmony of the Church, Dray-
ton, 183
Hazlitt, William, 85, 123
Hector of Germany, The, Wm.
Smith, 133
Heir, The, May, 180
Herbert, George, 49
Heywood, Thomas, I16-123;
place in literature, 117 ; birth
and education, 118 ; dramatic
works, I18-121 ; poems, 121-
123
Hireft, Barkstead, 112
Hog hath Lost his Pearl, R.
Tailor, 176, 177
Holiday, Dr. Barton, 179
Holy Sonnets, J. Donne, 58, 59
Homer, Chapman's translation,
43-46
Honest Man s Fortune, 1 76
Htimour out of Breath, Day, 174
Hunter, Joseph, 93
Hufitingdon, Donne's Letter to
the Cou7itess of, 54
Hymenaei, B. Jonson, 35
HymeiUs Triumph, Daniel, 13
Hymns of Astnca, Sir J. Davies,
9
/ 7vould and yet L would not, N.
Breton, 15, 16
Lliads of Homer, G. Chapman,
43-46
Inner Teinple Masque, \V.
Browne, 152, 155
Isle of Culls, Day, 174
Jessopp, Augustus, Dr., 64
Jones, Inigo, 26, 27
Jones, Robert, 114
Jonson, Ben, 23-39, 40, 44, 54,
62, 65, 70, 71, 87, 92, lOI,
106, 124, 125, 152, 156, 165,
170, 171, 173, 174. .1785 im-
prisoned, 24 J religion, 24 ;
Index.
22'
travels for Sir W. Raleigh,
24 ; Poet-laureate, 25 ; visit
to Drummond, 25, 26 ; City
Chronologer, 26 ; superseded
at Court, 27 ; his death, ib.
masterpieces, 27-30 ; Roman
tragedies, 30-32 ; examples
of blank verse, 33-36 ; cha-
racter of his writings, 38,
39
Julius Civsar, Shakespeare, 171
, Alexander, 200
K
Keats, John, on Chapman's
Homer, 44
Ker, Robert, Earl of Ancrum,
106
King and No King, A, Beau-
mont and Fletcher, 73, 76
King Lear, 19
Knight of the Burning Pestle,
The, Beaumont and Fletcher,
73> 76
Lamb, Charles, 29, 39, 116, 119,
121, 123, 126, 12S, 130, 16S,
170, I75» 176, i95> 199, 20S,
216
La7v Tricks, Day, 174
Leighton, Sir William, 114
Lingua, Tomkis, 117
and Oliver Cromwell, ib,
Locustes, P. Fletcher, 145
Lodge, Thomas, 7, 51
Love's Exchange, Donne, 64
Lucan, Gorges' translation,
158
Lucrece, 7 he E ape of. Hey wooii,
121
Lyly, John, 5, 7
M
Macbeth, 20
Magnetic Lady, The, Jonson,
27, 33
Maid of Honour, The, Mas-
singer, 205
Maid of the Mill, The, Fletcher,
130
Maid's Tragedy, The, Beaumont
and Fletcher, 73, 74
Malcontent, The, Marston, 165
Mail in the Moon, Drayton, 95
Markham, Gervaise, 132
Marlowe, Christopher, 43
Marriage, Miseries of Etiforced,
The, Wilkins, 132
Marston, John, 22,40, 113, 162,
184
Mason, John, 113
Masque of Queens, The, Jonson,
35
Masques, The Jacobean, 13, 23,
26, 34-36, 89, 92, 152, 155,
173
Alassinger, Philip, 22, 79, 80,
81, 82, 83, 87, 124, 176, 202-
217; birth, patronage, 203;
education, 204 ; burnt plays,
205, 217 ; publications, 205,
206 ; death and burial, 20S ;
his characteristics, 207, 208 ;
effect on later writers, 216
May Day, Chapman, 41
May, Thomas, 179, iSo
Meres, Francis, 98
Mermaid Tavern, 24, 70
Metamorphosis oj Tobacco, The,
107
Middleton, Richard, 113
Middleton, 1 homas, 21, 26,
123-131, 167 ; birth, early
work, 124; city chronologer,
125 ; imprisonment for satire,
126 ; death, ib., character of
his writings, 126
224
Index.
Mildreiados, Quarles, 193
Milton, John, 15, 62, 13S, 142,
143, 145, 155
Mirrha, Barkstcad, 112
J\/irror for Magistrates, 94, 1 1 3
Monsieur cT Olive, Chapman, 40,
41
Monsieur Thomas, Fletcher, 81
Moses in a Map of Ins Miracles,
Drayton, 94
Muffet, T., 124
Musaeus, 44
Muses^ Garden of Delights, The,
Jones', 114
Mustapha, Lord Brooke, 197,
200
N
Nero, 178, 179
New hm. The, Ben Jonson,
26, 33
Neiv Way to pay Old Debts, A,
Massinger, 205, 209, 213-215
Niccols, Richard, 113
Nimphidia, or the Court of
Fairy, 97
Nobody and Somebody, 133
Nosce Teipsitm, Davies, 9, 112
O
Odyssey, Chapman, 44, 45
Old Fortunatus, Dekker, 21
Orchestra, Sir J. Davies, 8
Othello, 19, 20
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 1 15
Owl, The, Drayton, 94, 95
Parliafnent of Love, The, Mas-
singer, 206
Peele, George, 113
Pembroke, Epitaph on Countess
of, 156
Pericles, Shakespeare, 21, 132
Philarete, Fair Virtue, The
Mistress c/, Webster, 184, 186
Philaster, Beaumont and Flet-
cher, 73, 75, 76
Phillips, 19S
Phwnix, 1 he, Middleton, 124
Piscatory Eclogues, P. Fletcher,
145
Poems, Drummond, 103
Poetry, Campion's Observations
in the Art of English, 92
Poetical Essays of S. Daniel, 10
Poly-Olbion, M. Drayton, 97,
98-100, 153
Pope, Alexander, 52, 67, 181
Progress of the Soul, The, Donne,
52
Pseudo- Martyr, Donne, 49
Purple Island, The, P. Fletcher,
138) 145. 146-149
Quar]e=, Francis, 188-194; as a
verse-writer, 188, 1S9 ; birth,
convictions, marriage, 189
Biblical paraphrases, 190,192
employments, death, 191
elegies, 192-194
Qucen^s Arcadia, The, S. Daniel,
12, 13
Panegyric, S. Daniel, 10, 11
Parliatnent of Bees, The, Day,
173' ^11^ 1/6
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 8, 24, 15S
Ram Alley, Barry, 132
Renegado, The, Massinger, 206,
207
Index.
225
Revenger's Tragedy, The, C.
Tourneur, 159, 161, 162, 164
Roman Actor, The, ^lassinger,
206
Ronsard, Pierre de, 102
Rowlands, Samuel, 17, 18, 112
Rowley, Samuel, 132
Rowley, William, 119, 124, 125,
126, 12S, 129-131, 174
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,
Fletcher, 82
Ryme, Defence of, S. Daniel, 10
Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, 8
Saintsbury, Mr. George, 12,
112, 150
Sannazaro, 149
Satires of J. Donne, 49, 51, 52
Satyr, The, B. Jonson, 23
Scott, Sir Walter, on Jonson, 37
Scottish poetry, loi
Scourge of Venus, The, 1 12
Second Maiden's Tragedy, The,
Sejanus, his Fall, B. Jonson, 23,
24, 31, 33> 171
Selden, John, 24, 98, 152
Shakespeare, 18-21, 23, 38, 73,
84, 85, 113, 114, 117, 125,
130, 132, 133, 156, 171, 173
Sharpham, Edward, 132
Shepherd, N. Breton's, The
Passionate, l^, 16
Shepherd's Hun. ling, The,
Wither, 185, 186
Shepherd, Jonson's, The Sad, 36
Shepherifs Pipe, The,\^. Browne,
152, 155. 157
Shirley, James, 41, 203
Sicclides, P. Fletcher, 145
Sidney, Sir Philip, 195J' 196,
203
Sir Giles Goosecap, 134
Smith, Wentworth, 133
, William, 133
Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 21
Southwell, Robert, 6
Spenser, Edmund, 139, 149,
152, 154, 158
Staple of News, The, Jonson, 26,
32
Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 202
Still, John, 4
Stirling, Earl of. See Alexander.
Suckling, Sir John, 38
Swetnam, Joseph, 134
Siuetnam the Woman-hater, 134
Swinburne, Mr. A. C, 21, 27, 30,
32, 39. 43. 132, 133. 167, 168
Sylvester, Joshua, 14, 15
Tailor, Robert, 177
Tale of a Tub, Ben Jonson, 27,
33
Tears on the Death of Moeliades,
Drummond, 103
Tears of Peace, The, Chapman,
42
Technogainia ; or, The Marriage
of the Arts, Holiday, 179
Tempest, The, Shakespeare, 20
Tethys's Festival, S. Daniel, 13
Thierry and Theodoret, Fletcher,
81
Tieck, 133
Timon of Alliens, 20
Tomkins. See Tomkis.
Tomkis, John, 177, 178
Tourneur, Cyril, 133, 159-164,
176 ; characteristics, 159-160 ;
lost works, 162-163
Townsend, Aurelian, 27
Transformed Metamorphosis,
The, Tourneur, 162
Translations of Chapman, 39,
43-46
226
Index.
Travels of Three English
Brothers, Day, 174
Troibis and Cressida, Shake-
peare, 20
Turk, The, Mason, 133
T'MO Noble Kinsmen, The, Beau-
mont and Fletcher, 73, 76
Twyne, Thomas, 7
U
Ulysses and the Siren, Daniel,
12
Underwoods, Ben Jonson, 37
Unnatiiral Combat, The, Mas-
singer, 206
Valentinian, Fletcher, 78, 79
Valotir,'^. Breton's, The Honour
of, 15
Venus and Adotiis, 1 50
Virgin Martyr, Massinger, 22,
205
Vision of the Twelve Goddesses,
S. Daniel, 12
Volpone or the Fox, Ben Jonson,
24, 27-29, 70
W
Walton, Izaak, 49, 58
Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, 200
Warner, William, 4
Watson, Thomas, 5
Webster, John, 41, 160, 164-
173, 206; birth, 194; col-
laboration with Dekker, 165 ;
works, 165-166 ; death, 166 ;
his style, 166-172 ; period of
activity, 172-173
IVesttvard Hoe ! Webster and
Dekker, 165
Wheeler, Elegy on Sir Edmund,
193
White Dojil, The, Webster, 165,
169, 170
Wife, A, Sir T. Overbury, 115
Wild Goose Chase, The, Flet-
cher, 81
Wilkins, George, 21, 132, 174
Winter'' s Tale, The, Shakespeare,
20
JVi/ch, The, Middleton, 125, 126
Wither, George, 181-1S8 ; place
in poetry, 181 ; birth and edu-
cation, 182 ; imprisoned for
Abuses Stript aiid IVhipt, 183,
184 ; lack of self-criticism, 187,
188
Woman, A Very, Massinger, 81
Woman is a Weathercock, Field,
87, 88
Woman-hater, The, Beaumont,
Woman Killed with Kindness,
Hey wood, 118, 120
Women Beware JVomen, Mid-
dleton, 125, 127-129
Women Pleased, Fletcher and
Massinger, 80
Wood, Anthony a, 113, 182,
204
Woodhouse, Peter, 113
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, Webster
and Dekker, 165
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given us, if worth be the measure, a great book — great, that is, in potentialities
of instruction and enlargement of view." — Literary World.
University Extension Manuals.
GREECE IN THE AGE OF PERICLES.
By A. J. Grant, Kinq's College, Cambridge, and Staff
Lecturer in History to the University of Cambridge. With
Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 3f. 6a?.
" We cordially commend the book to all classes of readers." — Speaker.
LATIN LITERATURE. By J. W. Mackail,
Balliol College, Oxford. Crown 8vo, 3^-. 6d.
"To write upon a very large subject, a book at once extremely short and
extremely good, is a rare achievement. It is more especially difficult to do so
when the subject to be treated is one about which a great many people know a
good deal, and to which almost all educated men have given no small amount of
attention. This, however, is the feat which has been performed by the author
of this admirable little manual." — Spectator.
'■ It seems at first sight extravagant and paradoxical to describe a ' University
Extension Manual ' as a work of genius ; but Mr. J. W. Mackail's ' Latin
Literature' possesses such excellences as render it not unworthy of the title." —
Pall Mall Gazette.
" Without a doubt the best and most complete work of its kind in English." —
Daily Xcws.
ELEMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY and ELE-
MENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY. By G. Croom Robert-
son, Late Grote Professor, University College, London.
Edited from Notes of Lectures delivered at the College 1870-
1892. By C. A, Foley Rhys Davids, M.A. Two vols.
Crown 8vo, 3^'. (id. each.
"The late Professor Croom Robertson was a very lucid exponent of the
history of Philosophic thought, and it is therefore a matter for congratulation
that the editor of this volume has been able to give us, through the aid of MS.
notes left by Robertson himself, and through the loan of note-books by former
students, some of the most important lectures that he delivered. . . . Robertson's
writings are singularly clear, and the work of editing these volumes has been
executed with skill and judgment." — Daily Chronicle.
SHAKSPERE AND HIS PREDECESSORS
IN THE ENGLISH DRAMA. By F. S. Boas, Balliol
College, Oxford. Crown Svo, 6s. Library Edition, on larger
paper, "js. 6d.
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tion to the author on the vigour of his style, the originality of some of his views
and theories, and the painstaking appreciation he has brought to bear on his
subject." — Morning- Post.
A HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY. By Arthur
Berry, King's College, Cambridge, Crown 8vo.
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON.
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