Part 4 (1/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Sc Elizabeth's
WILLIAM BROWNE
April 21, 1894 William Browne of Tavistock
It has been objected to the author of _Britannia's Pastorals_ that their perusal sends you to sleep It had been subtler criticisain and, starting anew at the precise point where you dropped off, continue the perusal with as much pleasure as ever, neither asha it as a fault to the poet For Williaure in our literature He lived easily, he wrote easily, and no doubt he died easily He nothan he tried to write all the story of Marina at a sitting He took up his pen and composed: when he felt tired he went off to bed, like a sensiblehe expects you to be sensible and do the same
A placid life
He was born at Tavistock, in Devon, about the year 1590; and after the manner of mild and sensible men cherished a particular love for his birth-place to the end of his days Froe, Oxford--the old west-country college--and thence to Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple His first wife died when he enty-three or twenty-four He took his second courtshi+p quietly and leisurely,of thirteen years ”He seerapher, ”to have acquired in some way a modest competence, which secured hihed so heavily on ht hie he had returned to Exeter College, as tutor to the young Robert Dormer, who in due tiht By his fellow-collegians--as by everybody hohly beloved and esteeister of the University is styled, ”vir onitione instructus” He gained the especial favor of Williareatest Maecenas to learned men of any peer of his tireat lover of his country, and of the religion and justice, which he believed could only support it; and his friendshi+ps were only with men of those principles,”--another tribute to the poet's character He was familiarly received at Wilton, the hoe heand there settled He died in or before the year 1645 In the letters of adranted to his(Nove, in the county of Surrey, Esquire” But there is no entry of his death in the registers at Dorking or Horsham: so perhaps he went back to lay his bones in his beloved Devon
A William Broas buried at Tavistock on March 27th, 1643 This may or ,” says Mr
Bullen,--”Surely few poets have had a more tranquil journey to the Elysian Fields”
An amiable poet
As with his life, so with his poetry--he went about it quietly, contentedly He learned his art, as he confesses, from Spenser and Sidney; and he took it over ready-made, with all the conventions and pastoral stock-in-trade--swains languishi+ng for hard-hearted ny for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented for the perpetualtheperils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-God or earthquake; episodes innu off from the main ste in endless ra unwelcoing si her tribulation Why indeed should she hurry? It is all a polite and pleasant make-believe; and when Marina and Doridon are tired, they stand aside and watch the side couples, Fida and Reure As for the finish of the tale, there is no finish The narrator will stop when he is tired; just then and no sooner What became of Marina after Triton rolled away the stone and released her from the Cave of Famine? I am sure I don't know I have followed her adventures up to that point (though I should be very sorry to attees of verse Does this reatly interested in her? Not in the least I am quite content to hear no more about her Let us have the lae” isan expression The author is quite able to invent ether If he does not choose to, well and good
Was the composition of _Britannia's Pastorals_ then, a useless or inconsiderable feat? Not at all: since to read them is to taste a mild but continuous pleasure In the first place, it is always pleasant to see a good hly ”relisht versing”--to use George Herbert's pretty phrase--would be patent enough, even had he not left us an express assurance:--
”What now I sing is but to pass away A tedious hour, as soriefs bemoan--”
--rather affected, that, one suspects:
”Or to be least alone whensweet content by my retired Muse, And in a study find as reatest palaces
Eachto his power, On what he loves bestows an idle hour
Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills Talk in a hundred voices to the rills, I like the pleasing cadence of a line Struck by the consort of the sacred Nine
In lieu of hawks ”
--and so on Indeed, unless it be Wither, there is no poet of the tih Wither's satisfaction had a deeper note, as when he says of his Muse--
”Her true beauty leaves behind Apprehensions in the mind, Of hts too deep to be express'd, And too strong to be suppressed”
Yet Charles Lamb's nice observation--
”Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from their art It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession as well as a rich reversion, and that the muse had promise of both lives--of this, and of that which was to co his lines quoted above, to include William Browne He, at least, had no doubt of the Muse as an earthly companion
As for posthumous fame, Browne confides to us his aspirations in that matter also:--