A History of English Literature by George Saintsbury (e novels for free .txt) π
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- Author: George Saintsbury
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On nitre or on brimstone mine,
To spoil thy taste! This spring of thine,
Let it of nothing taste but earth,
And salt conceived in their birth.
Be ever fresh! Let no man dare
To spoil thy fish, make lock or wear,
But on thy margent still let dwell
Those flowers which have the sweetest smell.
And let the dust upon thy strand
Become like Tagus' golden sand.
Let as much good betide to thee
As thou hast favour shew'd to me.'"
Forsook her bosom, and for more is gone,
Making such speedy flights into the thick
That she admir'd he went and came so quick.
Then, lest his many cherries should distaste,
Some other fruit he brings than he brought last.
Sometime of strawberries a little stem
Oft changing colours as he gather'd them,
Some green, some white, some red, on them infus'd,
These lov'd, these fear'd, they blush'd to be so us'd.
The peascod green, oft with no little toil
He'd seek for in the fattest, fertil'st soil
And rend it from the stalk to bring it to her,
And in her bosom for acceptance woo her.
No berry in the grove or forest grew
That fit for nourishment the kind bird knew,
Nor any powerful herb in open field
To serve her brood the teeming earth did yield,
But with his utmost industry he sought it,
And to the cave for chaste Marina brought it."
The Shepherd's Pipe, besides reproducing Occleve, is in parts reminiscent of Chaucer, in parts of Spenser, but always characterised by the free and unshackled movement which is Browne's great charm; and the same characteristics appear in the few minor poems attributed to him. Browne has been compared to Keats, who read and loved him, and there are certainly not a few points of resemblance. Of Keats's higher or more restrained excellences, such as appear in the finest passages of St. Agnes' Eve, and Hyperion, in the Ode to a Grecian Urn, and such minor pieces as In a Drear-Nighted December, Browne had nothing. But he, like Keats, had that kind of love of Nature which is really the love of a lover; and he had, like Keats, a wonderful gift of expression of his love.[57] Nor is he ever prosaic, a praise which certainly cannot be accorded to some men of far greater repute, and perhaps of occasionally higher gifts both in his own time and others. The rarest notes of Apollo he has not, but he is never driven, as the poet and friend of his, to whom we next come, was often driven, to the words of Mercury. This special gift was not very common at the time; and though that time produced better poets than Browne, it is worth noting in him. He may never reach the highest poetry, but he is always a poet.
[57] Something of the same love, but unluckily much less of the same gift, occurs in the poems of a friend of Browne's once hardly known except by some fair verses on Shakespere ("Renowned Spenser," etc.), but made fully accessible by Mr. R. Warwick Bond in 1893. This was William Basse, a retainer of the Wenman family near Thame, the author, probably or certainly, of a quaint defence of retainership, Sword and Buckler (1602), and of other poemsβPastoral Elegies, Urania, Polyhymnia, etc.βtogether with an exceedingly odd piece, The Metamorphosis of the Walnut-Tree of Boarstall, which is not quite like anything else of the time. Basse, who seems also to have spelt his name "Bas," and perhaps lived and wrote through the first forty or fifty years of the seventeenth century, is but a moderate poet. Still he is not contemptible, and deserves to rank as a member of the Spenserian family on the pastoral side; while the Walnut-Tree, though it may owe something to The Oak and the Brere, has a quaintness which is not in Spenser, and not perhaps exactly anywhere else.
The comparative impotence of even the best criticism to force writers on public attention has never been better illustrated than in the case of George Wither himself. The greater part of a century has passed since Charles Lamb's glowing eulogy of him was written, and the terms of that eulogy have never been contested by competent authority. Yet there is no complete collection of his work in existence, and there is no complete collection even of the poems, saving a privately printed one which is inaccessible except in large libraries, and to a few subscribers. His sacred poems, which are not his best, were indeed reprinted in the Library of Old Authors; and one song of his, the famous "Shall I Wasting in Despair," is universally known. But the long and exquisite poem of Philarete was not generally known (if it is generally known now, which may be doubted) till Mr. Arber reprinted it in the fourth volume of his English Garner. Nor can Fidelia and The Shepherd's Hunting, things scarcely inferior, be said to be familiar to the general reader. For this neglect there is but one excuse, and that an insufficient one, considering the immense quantity of very indifferent contemporary work which has had the honour of modern publication. What the excuse is we shall say presently. Wither was born at Brentworth, in the Alresford district of Hampshire (a district afterwards delightfully described by him), on 11th June 1588. His family was respectable; and though not the eldest son, he had at one time some landed property. He was for two years at Magdalen College, Oxford, of which he speaks with much affection, but was removed before taking his degree. After a distasteful experience of farm work, owing to reverses of fortune in his family he came to London, entered at Lincoln's Inn, and for some years haunted the town and the court. In 1613 he published his Abuses Stript and Whipt, one of the general and rather artificial satires not unfashionable at the time. For this, although the book has no direct personal reference that can be discovered, he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea; and there wrote the charming poem of The Shepherd's Hunting, 1615, and probably also Fidelia, an address from a faithful nymph to an inconstant swain, which, though inferior to The Shepherd's Hunting and to Philarete in the highest poetical worth, is a signal example of Wither's copious and brightly-coloured style. Three years later came the curious personal poem of the Motto, and in 1622 Philarete itself, which was followed in the very next year by the Hymns and Songs of the Church. Although Wither lived until 2d May 1667, and was constantly active with his pen, his Hallelujah, 1641, another book of sacred verse, is the only production of his that has received or that deserves much praise. The last thirty years of his long life were eventful and unfortunate. After being a somewhat fervent Royalist, he suddenly changed his creed at the outbreak of the great rebellion, sold his estate to raise men for the Parliament, and was active in its cause with pen as well as with sword. Naturally he got into trouble at the Restoration (as he had previously done with Cromwell), and was imprisoned again, though after a time he was released. At an earlier period he had been in difficulties with the Stationers' Company on the subject of a royal patent which he had received from James, and which was afterwards (though still fruitlessly) confirmed by Charles, for his Hymns. Indeed, Wither, though a man of very high character, seems to have had all his life what men of high character not unfrequently have, a certain facility for getting into what is vulgarly called hot-water.
The defect in his work, which has been referred to above, and which is somewhat passed over in the criticisms of Lamb and others, is its amazing inequality. This is the more remarkable in that evidence exists of not infrequent retouching on his part with the rather unusual result of improvementβa fact which would seem to show that he possessed some critical faculty. Such possession, however, seems on the other hand to be quite incompatible with the production of the hopeless doggerel which he not infrequently signs. The felicity of language and the command of rhythmical effect which he constantly displays, are extraordinary, as for instance in the grand opening of his first Canticle:β
For better are thy loves than wine;
And as the pourèd ointments be
Such is the savour of thy name,
And for the sweetness of the same
The virgins are in love with thee."
Compare the following almost unbelievable rubbishβ
Uncleanness from our flesh,
And sometimes often in a day
Ourselves are fain to wash."
Even in his earlier and purely secular work there is something, though less of this inequality, and its cause is not at all dubious. No poet, certainly no poet of merit, seems to have written with such absolute spontaneity and want of premeditation as Wither. The metre which was his favourite, and which he used with most successβthe trochaic dimeter catalectic of seven syllablesβlends itself almost as readily as the octosyllable to this frequently fatal fluency; but in Wither's hands, at least in his youth and early manhood, it is wonderfully successful, as here:β
All men burn not with desire.
Nay, I muse her servants are not
Pleading love: but O they dare not:
And I, therefore, wonder why
They do not grow sick and die.
Sure they would do so, but that,
By the ordinance of Fate,
There is some concealed thing
So each gazer limiting,
He can see no more of merit
Than beseems his worth and spirit.
For, in her, a grace there shines
That o'erdaring thoughts confines,
Making worthless men despair
To be loved of one so fair.
Yea the Destinies agree
Some good judgments blind should be:
And not gain the power of knowing
Those rare beauties, in her growing.
Reason doth as much imply,
For, if every judging eye
Which beholdeth her should there
Find what excellences are;
All, o'ercome by those perfections
Would be captive to affections.
So (in happiness unblest)
She for lovers should not rest."
Nor had he at times a less original and happy command of the rhymed decasyllabic couplet, which he sometimes handles after a fashion which makes one almost think of Dryden, and sometimes after a fashion (as in the lovely description of Alresford Pool at the opening of Philarete) which makes one think of more modern poets still. Besides this metrical proficiency and gift, Wither at this time (he thought fit to apologise for it later) had a very happy knack of blending the warm amatory enthusiasm of his time with sentiments of virtue and decency. There is in him absolutely nothing loose or obscene, and yet he is entirely free from the milk-and-water propriety which sometimes irritates the reader in such books as Habington's Castara. Wither is never mawkish, though he is never loose, and the swing of his verse at its best is only equalled by the rush of
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