Part 3 (1/2)
Thou sweet beguiler of my lonely hours, Which thus glide unperceiv'd, with silent course: Thou gentle spell, which undisturb'd dost keep My breast, and charm intruding care asleep: They say thou'rt poor, and un-endow'd, what tho'?
For thee, I this vain, worthless world forego: Let wealth and honour be for fortune's slaves, The alms of fools, and prize of crafty knaves: To me thou art, whate'er th'ambitious crave, And all that greedy misers want or have.
In youth or age, in travel or at home; Here, or in town, at London, or at Rome; Rich, or a beggar, free, or in the Fleet, What'er my fate is, 'tis my fate to write.”'
Oldham's talent, depending upon masculine sense and vigour of expression rather than upon the more ethereal graces of poetry, was of the kind to expand and mellow by age and practice. Had he lived longer he would undoubtedly have left a name conspicuous in English literature. As it is, he can only be regarded as a bright satellite revolving at a respectful distance around the all-illumining orb of Dryden. Before pa.s.sing to Marvell and Butler, the only two really original poets after Dryden besides the veterans Cowley and Waller, who belong to the preceding period, it will be convenient to despatch a group of minor bards, whose inclusion in the standard collections of poetry, involving memoirs by a master of biography, has given them more celebrity than they in most instances deserve.
[Sidenote: Lord Rochester (1647-1680).]
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), is princ.i.p.ally known to posterity by his vices and his repentance. The latter has helped to preserve the memory of the former, which have also left abiding traces in a number of poems not included in his works, and some of which, it may be hoped, are wrongly attributed to him. For a number of years Rochester obtained notoriety as, after Buckingham, the most dissolute character of a dissolute age; but at the same time a critic and a wit, potent to make or mar the fortunes of men of letters. 'Sure,' says Mr.
Saintsbury, 'to play some monkey trick or other on those who were unfortunate enough to be his intimates.' Many a literary cabal was instigated by him, many a libel and lampoon flowed from his pen, among others, _The Session of the Poets_, correctly characterized by Johnson as 'merciless insolence.' Worn out by a life of excess, he died at thirty-three, and his penitence, largely due to the arguments and exhortations of Burnet, afforded the latter material for a narrative which Johnson, entirely opposed as he was to the author's political and ecclesiastical principles, declares that 'the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.'
Rochester's acknowledged poems fall into two divisions of unequal merit.
The lyrical and amatory are in general very insipid. The more serious pieces, especially when expressing the discomfort of a sated votary of pleasure, frequently want neither force nor weight. Four particularly fine lines, quoted without indication of authors.h.i.+p in Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, have frequently occasioned speculation as to their origin. They come from Rochester's _Satyr against Mankind_, and read:
'Then Old Age and Experience, hand in hand, Lead him to Death, and make him understand, After a search so painful and so long, That all his life he has been in the wrong.'
Goldsmith's 'best-natured man, with the worst-natured muse,' is purloined from Rochester, who is also the propounder of the paradox, 'All men would be cowards if they durst.' Some of his songs are not devoid of merit. After all, however, nothing of his is so well known as the antic.i.p.atory epitaph on Charles II., ascribed sometimes to him, sometimes to Buckingham, and very likely due to neither:
'Here lies our mutton-eating king, Whose word no man relies on; Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.'
Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1633?-1684), was a very different character, both as a man and as a poet. He is accused of no fault but a love of gaming, and the purity of his Muse merited the well-known eulogium:
'In all Charles's days Roscommon only boasts unsullied bays.'
But he has nothing of the salt and savour of Rochester's more serious poetry, and is at best an elegant versifier, who, in his only considerable original poem, the _Essay on Translated Verse_, thinks justly, reasons clearly, and expresses himself with considerable spirit when the subject requires. The most original feature of his literary character is his preference in a rhyming age for blank verse, which he enforces in theory, but is far from recommending by his practice. In his rhymed pieces he is a better versifier than poet, and in his blank verse the contrary. Milton's eyes were just closed; Shakespeare and Fletcher were still acted; but the secret of beautiful versification, apart from rhyme, seems to have been entirely lost.
[Sidenote: John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghams.h.i.+re (1649-1721).]
Poetry afforded a subject for verse to another n.o.ble writer, John Sheffield, successively Earl of Mulgrave, Marquis of Normanby, and Duke of Buckinghams.h.i.+re (1649-1721), who achieved real if moderate distinction as soldier, statesman, and scholar. As a poet his reputation rests entirely upon his _Essay on Poetry_, which contains many just thoughts expressed in pleasing numbers, although the author's deference to the conventional dicta of criticism leads him into idolatry, not only of Homer and Virgil, but of Bossu. To have fostered the genius of Pope by judicious praise is the highest distinction of 'Granville the polite and knowing Walsh.' Congreve, to be treated more fully as a dramatist, stands somewhat higher than these as an inditer of heroic couplets; but a severer criticism must be pa.s.sed, if any criticism is needed, upon Pomfret, Duke, Stepney, and the other versifiers of the day who have burrowed their way into the stock collections of poetry.
[Sidenote: Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).]
Andrew Marvell was a virtuous man whose good qualities contrast so forcibly with the characteristic failings of his age, that he appears by contrast even more virtuous than he actually was. His integrity made him the hero of legend, for, although the Court would no doubt have been glad to gain him, it is hardly credible that the prime minister should by the king's order have personally waited upon him 'up two pair of stairs in a little court in the Strand.' But the apocryphal anecdote attests the real veneration inspired by his independence in a venal age.
Born in the neighbourhood of Hull on March 31st, 1621, he studied at Cambridge, travelled for some years on the Continent, and settled down about 1650 as tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax. At this period he wrote his exquisite poem, _The Garden_, and other pieces of a similar character. He also wrote in 1650 the poem on Cromwell's return from Ireland, which may have gained for him in 1653 the appointment of tutor to Cromwell's ward, William Dutton. Other pieces of a like description followed, and in 1657 Marvell became joint Latin secretary with Milton, an office for which Milton had recommended him four years previously.
His poem on the Protector's death in the following year is justly declared by Mr. Firth to be 'the only one distinguished by an accent of sincerity and personal affection.' He was elected for Hull to Richard Cromwell's Parliament, and continued to sit for the remainder of his life. He was the last Member of Parliament who received a salary from his const.i.tuents, to whose interests he in return attended so diligently that upwards of three hundred letters from him upon their concerns and general politics are extant in the Hull archives.
Marvell could scarcely be called a republican. He had been devoted to the Protectorate, and would probably have been easily reconciled to the Restoration if the government had been ably and honestly conducted. In wrath at the general maladministration he betook himself to satires, which circulated in ma.n.u.script. At first he attacked Clarendon, but eventually concluded that the only remedy would be the final expulsion of the house of Stuart. In 1672 and 1673 he appeared in print as a prose controversialist with _The Rehearsal Transprosed_, a witty attack on a work by Parker, Bishop of Oxford, wherein, in the author's own words, 'the mischiefs and inconveniences of toleration were represented, and all pretences pleaded in behalf of liberty of conscience fully answered.' He silenced his opponent, and escaped being himself silenced through the interposition of Charles II., whose native good sense and easiness of temper inclined him to toleration, and who promoted the freedom of Nonconformists as a means of obtaining liberty for the Church of Rome. Marvell, however, was not to be reconciled, and in 1677 put forth an anonymous pamphlet to prove, what was but too true, that a design had long been on foot to establish absolute monarchy and subvert the Protestant religion. His sudden death on August 18th, 1678, was attributed to poison, but, according to a physician who wrote some years afterwards, was occasioned by that prejudice of the faculty against Peruvian bark which is recorded by Temple and Evelyn.
As a writer of prose, Marvell is both powerful and humorous, but is not a Junius or a Pascal to impart permanent interest to transitory themes, and make the topics of the day topics for all time. As a poet he ranks with those who have been said to be stars alike of evening and of morning. His earliest and most truly poetical compositions belong in spirit to the period of Charles I., when the strains of the Elizabethan lyric were yet lingering. After pa.s.sing through a transition stage of manly verse still breathing a truly poetical spirit, but mainly concerned with public affairs, he settles down as a satirist endowed with all the vigour, but, at the same time, with all the prosaic hardness of the Restoration. His most inspired poem, _Thoughts in a Garden_, written under the Commonwealth, and originally composed in Latin, nevertheless rings like a voice from beyond the Civil Wars. Here are the three loveliest of nine lovely stanzas:
'What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious cl.u.s.ters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pa.s.s, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on gra.s.s.
'Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.
'Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside My soul into the boughs does glide: There, like a bird, it sits and sings, There whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.'
'These wonderful verses,' says Mr. Palgrave of the entire poem, 'may be regarded as a test of any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of poetry.'
As a satirist it is Marvell's error to confound satire with lampoon. He has the _saeva indignatio_ which makes the avenger, but spends too much of it upon individuals. Occasionally some fine personification gives promise of better things, but the poet soon relapses into mere personalities. This may be attributed in great measure to the circ.u.mstances under which these compositions appeared. They could only be circulated clandestinely, and the writer may be excused if he did not labour to exalt what he himself regarded as mere fugitive poetry. The most celebrated of these pieces are the series of _Advices to a Painter_, in which the persons and events of the day are described to an imaginary artist for delineation in fitting, and therefore by no means flattering, colours. It is to Marvell's honour that he succeeds best with a fine subject. When, in his poems on the events of the Commonwealth, he escapes from mere sarcasm and negation, and speaks n.o.bly upon really n.o.ble themes, he soars far above the Marvell of the Restoration, though even here his verse is marred by lapses into the commonplace, and by his besetting infirmity of an inability to finish with effect, leaving off like a speaker who sits down rather from the failure of his voice than the exhaustion of his theme. The panegyric on Cromwell's anniversary, and the poem on his death, abound nevertheless with fine, though faulty pa.s.sages, of which the following may serve as an example:
'O human glory vain! O Death! O wings!
O worthless world! O transitory things!
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed, That still, though dead, greater than death he laid, And in his altered face you something feign That threatens Death he yet will live again.