Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Vol III

To Mrs. K. T., &c. (1647). To this title 1677 and its followers add 'Written calente calamo'. The variant on currente is of some interest, and the statement may have been made to excuse the bad opening rhyme.

5 neither] either 1677.

14 'their cold' 1651, 1653: 'that cold' 1647, 1677.

16 silenced] As some Puritans were before Cleveland wrote, and all, or almost all, Churchmen afterwards.

31 1677 'Lest I should cancel all the bliss'.

37 bail] 1653 &c. 'hail', which is doubtless a misprint.

40 'prating' 1677.

47 'handmaid' 1677.

50 1677 'Intends to speak'-an obvious correction of the 'red-hot pen'. But whether Cleveland's or his vindicators' who shall say?

51 So 1647, 1651, 1653. The couplet is meaningless without them.

A Fair Nymph scorning a Black Boy courting her.

Nymph. Stand off, and let me take the air;

Why should the smoke pursue the fair?

Boy. My face is smoke, thence may be guessed

What flames within have scorched my breast.

Nymph. The flame of love I cannot view

For the dark lantern of thy hue.

Boy. And yet this lantern keeps Love's taper

Surer than yours, that's of white paper.

Whatever midnight hath been here,

10The moonshine of your light can clear.

Nymph. My moon of an eclipse is 'fraid,

If thou shouldst interpose thy shade.

Boy. Yet one thing, Sweetheart, I will ask;

Take me for a new-fashioned mask.

Nymph. Yes, but my bargain shall be this,

I'll throw my mask off when I kiss.

Boy. Our curled embraces shall delight

To checker limbs with black and white.

Nymph. Thy ink, my paper, make me guess

20Our nuptial bed will prove a press,

And in our sports, if any came,

They'll read a wanton epigram.

Boy. Why should my black thy love impair?

Let the dark shop commend the ware;

Or, if thy love from black forbears,

I'll strive to wash it off with tears.

Nymph. Spare fruitless tears, since thou must needs

Still wear about thee mourning weeds.

Tears can no more affection win

30Than wash thy Ethiopian skin.

A Fair Nymph, &c. (1647.)

2 An odd fancy included by Browne among the Vulgar Errors.

5 'Thy flaming love' 1677 &c.

10 'face will clear' 1677 &c.

14 1677 'Take me for a new-fashioned mask': 1647, 1651 'Buy me for a new false mask', varied in 1653 'Buy for me'-apparently a misprint, as the boy does not seem to wish to disguise himself.

15 Yes] Done 1677.

20 1647, 1651, 1653, 'make a press', ill repeated from above.

24 'the ware' 1677: 1647, 1651, 1653, not so well, 'thy ware'.

28 1677 changed 'thee' to 'thy'.

30 Some inferior copies 'the Ethiopian'.

A Dialogue between two Zealots upon the &c. in the Oath.

Sir Roger, from a zealous piece of frieze

Raised to a vicar of the children's threes;

Whose yearly audit may by strict account

To twenty nobles and his vails amount;

Fed on the common of the female charity

Until the Scots can bring about their parity;

So shotten that his soul, like to himself,

Walks but in cuerpo; this same clergy-elf,

Encountering with a brother of the cloth,

10Fell presently to cudgels with the Oath.

The quarrel was a strange misshapen monster,

&c., (God bless us) which they conster

The brand upon the buttock of the Beast,

The Dragon's tail tied on a knot, a nest

Of young Apocryphas, the fashion

Of a new mental Reservation.

While Roger thus divides the text, the other

Winks and expounds, saying, 'My pious brother,

Hearken with reverence, for the point is nice.

20I never read on 't, but I fasted twice,

And so by revelation know it better

Than all the learn'd idolaters o'th' letter.'

With that he swelled, and fell upon the theme

Like great Goliah with his weaver's beam.

'I say to thee, &c., thou li'st!

Thou art the curléd lock of Antichrist;

Rubbish of Babel; for who will not say

Tongues were confounded in &c.?

Who swears &c., swears more oaths at once

30Than Cerberus out of his triple sconce.

Who views it well, with the same eye beholds

The old half Serpent in his numerous folds.

Accurst &c. thou, for now I scent

What lately the prodigious oysters meant!

Oh Booker! Booker! How camest thou to lack

This sign in thy prophetic almanac?

It 's the dark vault wherein th' infernal plot

Of powder 'gainst the State was first begot.

Peruse the Oath and you shall soon descry it

40By all the Father Garnets that stand by it;

'Gainst whom the Church, (whereof I am a member,)

Shall keep another Fifth Day of November.

Yet here's not all; I cannot half untruss

&c.-it's so abhominous!

The Trojan nag was not so fully lined;

Unrip &c., and you shall find

Og the great commissary, and (which is worse)

The apparitor upon his skew-bald horse.

Then finally, my babe of grace, forbear,

50&c. will be too far to swear,

For 'tis (to speak in a familiar style)

A Yorkshire wee bit longer than a mile.'

Here Roger was inspired, and by God's diggers

He'll swear in words at large but not in figures.

Now by this drink, which he takes off, as loath

To leave &c. in his liquid oath.

His brother pledged him, and that bloody wine

He swears shall seal the Synod's Catiline.

So they drunk on, not offering to part

60'Till they had quite sworn out th' eleventh quart,

While all that saw and heard them jointly pray

They and their tribe were all &c.

A Dialogue, &c. (1647.) This occurs also in the Rump (1662, reprinted London, n. d.). A MS. copy is found in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 26 of the Bodleian, at fol. 94, with the title 'A Dialogue between 2. Zelots concerning &c. in the new Oath.' 'The Oath' is the famous one formulated in 1640 by Convocation. Fuller, who was proctor for the diocese of Bristol (and who would have been fined heavily for his part, 'moderate' as he was, if the Puritan Ultras of the Commons could have had their way), has left much about it. This oath, to be taken by all the clergy, imported approval of the doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church, and disclaimed, twice over, 'Popish' doctrine and the usurpations of the see of Rome. Unluckily the government of the Church was defined as 'by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c.', which last was, in the absence of any other handle, seized by the Puritan party as possibly implying all sorts of horrors. Cleveland banters them well enough, but hardly with the force and directness which he was to show later. The Royalists were then under the fatal error of underrating the strength of their opponents, and the gullibility of the people of England.

2 'vicar', 1647, 1651, 1653, MS.: 'vicarage' 1677. 'children' 1651, 1653: I have been waiting a long time to know what 'children's threes' means. It occurs elsewhere, but to my thinking as an obvious reminiscence of Cleveland.

7 shotten] 'like a herring that has spawned', 'thin'.

8 in cuerpo] 'in body-clothes', 'cloakless'. 1647, 1651, 1653 'Querpo': MS. 'Quirpo', with 'cuerpo' written above it.

12 1677 extends '&c.' to 'et caetera'. This is a mistake, as the actual ampersand occurred in the oath and gave some slight assistance to the cavillers. Cleveland's expressions-'tail tied on a knot' (l. 14), 'curled lock' (l. 26), 'numerous folds' (l. 32)-lose their point without the ampersand. 1677 also has 'may conster', which though possible enough, seems to me neither necessary nor even much of an improvement.

17 1677, less euphoniously, 'Whilst'.

22 A reading of the Rump version, 'Than all the Idolaters of the letter', though almost certainly a mere mistaken correction, has some interest.

23 fell] sett MS.

24 Goliah] This form occurs in all the texts.

25 In this and other lines that follow much of the quaintness is lost by 'extending' the '&c.' of the older editions.

28 were] are 1677, MS.

32 All editions, I think, before 1677 (which substitutes 'false') have 'half'. 'False' is very feeble; 'half' refers picturesquely to the delineation of the Serpent tempting Eve with a human head, being coiled below like the curves of the &c. 'False' MS.

33 1677, MS. 'Accurst Et Caetera! now, now I scent'.

34 I do not know whether these very Livyish oysters have been traced. 1677 and MS. omit 'lately' and read 'prodigious bloody oysters'.

35 John Booker (1603-1677), Manchester man, haberdasher, writing-master, and astrologer, gained a great deal of credit by interpreting an eclipse after the usual fashion as portending disaster to kings and princes, the great Gustavus Adolphus and the unfortunate Frederick, 'Winter'-King of Bohemia, being complaisant enough to die in accordance.

36 This sign] 1677, MS. 'This fiend'-more energetically.

37 ''Tis the dark vault where the' MS.

40 The sting of 'the Father Garnets that stand by it' lies in the words immediately preceding the obnoxious '&c.'-'archbishops, bishops, &c.'-whom the Puritan divine stigmatizes as Jesuits and traitors to Church and State. As has been stated, the oath distinctly, in set terms and twice over, abjured Rome and all things Roman; but the Puritans of those days, like their descendants, paid no attention to trifles of this kind. For 'stand' MS. reads 'stood'.

43 Yet] Nay MS.

44 1647, 1651 'abominous'; 1653 'abhominous'. The 'h' must be kept in 'abhominous', though not unusual for 'abom-', because it helps to explain, and perhaps to justify, 1677 and MS. in reading 'abdominous'. This, though something suggestive of a famous Oxford story, derives some colour from 'untruss' and may be right, especially as I do not know another example of 'abominous' for 'abominable'.

47 Og] v. sup., p. 31. MS. has marginal note 'Roan'.

48 'Skew-bald' is not = 'piebald', though most horses commonly called piebald are skewbalds. 'Pie[magpie]bald' is black and white; skewbald brown (or some other colour not black) and white. The Church-courts were much more unpopular, in these as in mediaeval times, than the Church, and High Commissioners and commissaries and apparitors were alleged to lurk under the guileful and dreadful '&c.'

49 'babes' 1677.

52 Blount's Glossographia (1656), a useful book, shows the ignorance of Northern English then prevailing by supposing 'wea-bit' (the form found in Cleveland originally) to be 'way-bit'. It is, of course, 'little bit', the Scotch 'mile and a bittock'.

53 Here] Then 1647, 1651, 1653. God's diggers] = nails or fingers. Commoner in the corruption 'Ods niggers'.

54 'in words at large' 1647 ('at length', one issue of 1647): 'at words in large' 1651, 1653: 'in words at length, and not in figures' MS.

58 Edd. 'Cataline', as usual, but 1677 'Catiline'. 'He swears he'll be the Synod's' MS.

59 'Thus they drink on, not offering to depart' MS.

60 1677 omits 'quite'-no doubt for the old syllabic reason. MS. substitutes 'fully'.

62 Perhaps nowhere is the comic surprise of the symbol more wanted than here, and more of a loss when that symbol is extended.

Smectymnuus, or the Club-Divines.

Smectymnuus! The goblin makes me start!

I' th' name of Rabbi Abraham, what art?

Syriac? or Arabic? or Welsh? what skill't?

Ap all the bricklayers that Babel built,

Some conjurer translate and let me know it;

Till then 'tis fit for a West Saxon poet.

But do the brotherhood then play their prizes

Like mummers in religion with disguises,

Out-brave us with a name in rank and file?

10A name, which, if 'twere trained, would spread a mile!

The saints' monopoly, the zealous cluster

Which like a porcupine presents a muster

And shoots his quills at bishops and their sees,

A devout litter of young Maccabees!

Thus Jack-of-all-trades hath devoutly shown

The Twelve Apostles on a cherry-stone;

Thus faction 's à la mode in treason's fashion,

Now we have heresy by complication.

Like to Don Quixote's rosary of slaves

20Strung on a chain; a murnival of knaves

Packed in a trick, like gipsies when they ride,

Or like colleagues which sit all of a side.

So the vain satyrists stand all a row

As hollow teeth upon a lute-string show.

Th' Italian monster pregnant with his brother,

Nature's di?resis, half one another,

He, with his little sides-man Lazarus,

Must both give way unto Smectymnuus.

Next Sturbridge Fair is Smec's; for, lo! his side

30Into a five-fold lazar's multiplied.

Under each arm there 's tucked a double gizzard;

Five faces lurk under one single vizard.

The Whore of Babylon left these brats behind,

Heirs of confusion by gavelkind.

I think Pythagoras' soul is rambled hither

With all the change of raiment on together.

Smec is her general wardrobe; she'll not dare

To think of him as of a thoroughfare.

He stops the gossiping dame; alone he is

40The purlieu of a metempsychosis;

Like a Scotch mark, where the more modest sense

Checks the loud phrase, and shrinks to thirteen pence:

Like to an ignis fatuus whose flame,

Though sometimes tripartite, joins in the same;

Like to nine tailors, who, if rightly spelled,

Into one man are monosyllabled.

Short-handed zeal in one hath cramped many

Like to the Decalogue in a single penny.

See, see how close the curs hunt under sheet

50As if they spent in quire and scanned their feet.

One cure and five incumbents leap a truss;

The title sure must be litigious.

The Sadducees would raise a question

Who must be Smec at th' Resurrection.

Who cooped them up together were to blame.

Had they but wire-drawn and spun out their name,

'Twould make another Prentices' Petition

Against the bishops and their superstition.

Robson and French (that count from five to five,

60As far as nature fingers did contrive-

She saw they would be 'sessors, that 's the cause

She cleft their hoof into so many claws)

May tire their carrot-bunch, yet ne'er agree

To rate Smectymnuus for poll-money.

Caligula-whose pride was mankind's bail,

As who disdained to murder by retail,

Wishing the world had but one general neck,-

His glutton blade might have found game in Smec.

No echo can improve the author more

70Whose lungs pay use on use to half a score.

No felon is more lettered, though the brand

Both superscribes his shoulder and his hand.

Some Welshman was his godfather, for he

Wears in his name his genealogy.

The banns are asked, would but the times give way,

Betwixt Smectymnuus and Et Caetera.

The guests, invited by a friendly summons,

Should be the Convocation and the Commons.

The priest to tie the foxes' tails together

80Mosely, or Sancta Clara, choose you whether.

See what an offspring every one expects,

What strange pluralities of men and sects!

One says he'll get a vestry, but another

Is for a synod; Bet upon the mother.

Faith, cry St. George! Let them go to 't and stickle

Whether a conclave or a conventicle.

Thus might religions caterwaul, and spite

Which uses to divorce, might once unite.

But their cross fortunes interdict their trade;

90The groom is rampant but the bride displayed.

My task is done, all my he goats are milked.

So many cards i' th' stock, and yet be bilked?

I could by letters now untwist the rabble,

Whip Smec from constable to constable;

But there I leave you to another dressing;

Only kneel down and take your father's blessing.

May the Queen Mother justify your fears

And stretch her patent to your leather ears!

Smectymnuus, &c. (1647.) Whether this lively skit on the five 'reverend men whose friend' Milton was (as far as he could be proud of being anything but himself) proud of being was in Milton's own mind when he wrote his Apology for the acrostically named treatise, one cannot say. It is a lively 'mime' enough, and he seems to throw back that word with some special meaning. Cleveland's poem may have appeared in the summer of 1641. Naturally, it is in the Rump poems.

3 All editions 'skilt'. It apparently must be as in text: 'skill't' for 'skill'st' = 'dost thou [or 'does it'] signify?'

4 1677, &c. 'Ape', but 'Ap' in the Welsh sense (Welsh having just been mentioned) does well enough. It would go, not too roughly for Cleveland's syntax, with 'conjurer'. Let some wizard, descended from all these, and therefore knowing all tongues, translate.

6 This is rather interesting. Does it refer to Wessex or Devonshire dialect of the day, or to old West Saxon? Junius did not edit C?dmon till fourteen years later, but there was study of Anglo-Saxon from Parker's time at Cambridge.

7 the brotherhood] 'Brother' and 'sister' being constant sneers at the Puritan.

play their prizes] = 'fight'.

10 Perhaps another sneer at the 'train-bands' of the City.

15 'distinctly' 1677.

16 'in a' 1677.

18 I suppose à la mode, which is in 1677, is right; but the 'all-a-mode' of 1647, 1651, 1653 is tempting.

20 'murnival' or 'mournival'. Four aces, kings, &c., especially at gleek.

22 1677, &c. 'Or like the College'.

24 'hallow' 1653.

25 I knew not this monster, and suspected that he would not be a delicate monster to know. But Mr. Thorn-Drury has found him in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1777, p. 482. Lazarus Collondo, a Genoese, had a small brother growing out of his side, with one leg, two arms, &c., &c.

29 'Smec' will now be an even greater attraction at the Sturbridge fair at Cambridge. All fairs rejoiced in monsters.

36 'The change', as in 1647, 1651, 1653 and its group, including the Rump version, is not so good as 'her', which 1677 reads.

38 i.e. 'to go on to any other body'.

40 'Purlieu' seems to be used in the sense of 'precinct' or 'province'.

41-2 These lines are in all the seventeenth-century editions I have seen, but not in Mr. Berdan's. The Scots pound was of course only twenty English pence, and so the mark (two thirds) 'shrank' accordingly.

49 1647, 1651, 1677 insert 'a' before 'sheet'. The metaphor is probably as old as hunting. 'Spend', as Professor Case reminds me, has had already in The Miser, l. 67, the sense of 'give tongue'. 'Scanned their feet' for 'kept pace' is good enough; but why the five should leap a truss, and why this should be litigious, I again frankly confess myself to have been ignorant. Mr. Simpson, however, quotes R. Fletcher in Ex Otio Negotium, 1656, p. 202, 'The model of the new Religion':

How many Queere-religions? clear your throat,

May a man have a penyworth? four a groat?

Or do the Iuncto leap at truss a fayle?

Three tenents clap while five hang on the tayle?

Cleveland seems to have tried in this piece to equal the mystery of the title of 'Smec' by his own matter, and to have succeeded very fairly.

54 1677, &c. 'shall be'. 'at th'' 1647, 1677: 'at the' 1651, 1653.

55 cooped] cooked 1647, 1651.

56 1677, &c. 'the name'.

57 An absurd, but doubtless in the circumstances dangerous, document of the kind was actually disseminated, in which the prentices bold engaged 'to defend his Sacred Majesty against Popish innovations such as archbishops and bishops appear to be'.

63 carrot-bunch] Cant for 'fingers'.

70 'pay' 1653, 1677: 'pays' 1647, 1651. 1677 'and use'.

75 'Banns' 1677: 'Banes' in earlier texts. 1653 'time'.

78 The Convocation which had been guilty of '&c.', and the Commons who mostly sympathized with 'Smec'.

79 foxes' tails] As at Samson's marriage (Judges xv. 4-7.)

80 Mosel[e]y, Milton's printer; and Sancta Clara, the Jesuit?

82 1677 'plurality'.

83 'Vestry, but' 1677: 'Vestery' 1647, 1651, 1653.

84 1677 'Bets'.

90 The heraldic terms are pretty plain, but 1677 reads 'is spade' i.e. 'spayed', as in The Hecatomb to his Mistress, l. 2.

94 Rhyme here really badly managed.

95 1677 'another's'.

97 The fear and dislike of Henrietta Maria (whom Mr. Berdan supposes to be meant) among the disaffected is only too certain: and the fate of Prynne's ears for his scandal of her is notorious. But why at this time she should be called a Queen Mother (it was her proper title afterwards, and she was one of the very few to whom it was actually given), and what the last line means, I know not. Nor does Professor Firth, unless Marie de Médicis (who was Queen Mother in France and had visited England) had, as he suggests, a share in some leather patent, and is meant here. Smec's ears are 'vellum' in Rupertismus, 169 (v. inf., p. 67).

The Mixed Assembly.

Flea-Bitten synod, an assembly brewed

Of clerks and elders ana, like the rude

Chaos of Presbyt'ry, where laymen guide

With the tame woolpack clergy by their side.

Who asked the banns 'twixt these discoloured mates?

A strange grotesco this; the Church and states,

Most divine tick-tack, in a piebald crew,

To serve as table-men of divers hue!

She, that conceived an Ethiopian heir

10By picture, when the parents both were fair,

At sight of you had born a dappled son,

You checkering her imagination.

Had Jacob's flock but seen you sit, the dams

Had brought forth speckled and ring-streakéd lambs.

Like an impropriator's motley kind

Whose scarlet coat is with a cassock lined;

Like the lay-thief in a canonic weed,

Sure of his clergy ere he did the deed;

Like Royston crows, who are (as I may say)

20Friars of both the Orders, Black and Gray;

So mixed they are, one knows not whether 's thicker,

A layer of burgess, or a layer of vicar.

Have they usurped what Royal Judah had,

And now must Levi too part stakes with Gad?

The sceptre and the crosier are the crutches,

Which, if not trusted in their pious clutches,

Will fail the cripple State. And were 't not pity

But both should serve the yardwand of the City?

That Isaac might stroke his beard and sit

30Judge of ε?? ?ιδον and elegerit?

Oh that they were in chalk and charcoal drawn!

The miscellany-satyr and the faun

And all th' adulteries of twisted nature

But faintly represent this riddling feature;

Whose members being not tallies, they'll not own

Their fellows at the Resurrection.

Strange scarlet doctors these! They'll pass in story

For sinners half refined in Purgatory,

Or parboiled lobsters, where there jointly rules

40The fading sables and the coming gules.

The flea that Falstaff damned thus lewdly shows

Tormented in the flames of Bardolph's nose.

Like him that wore the dialogue of cloaks

This shoulder John-a-Stiles, that John-a-Nokes;

Like Jews and Christians in a ship together

With an old neck-verse to distinguish either;

Like their intended discipline to boot,

Or whatsoe'er hath neither head nor foot;

Such may their stript-stuff-hangings seem to be,

50Sacrilege matched with codpiece simony.

Be sick and dream a little, you may then

Fancy these linsey-woolsey vestry-men.

Forbear, good Pembroke, be not over-daring.

Such company may chance to spoil thy swearing,

And thy drum-major oaths, of bulk unruly,

May dwindle to a feeble 'By my truly'!

He that the noble Percy's blood inherits,

Will he strike up a Hotspur of the spirits?

He'll fright the Obadiahs out of tune

60With his uncircumciséd Algernoon;

A name so stubborn, 'tis not to be scanned

By him in Gath with the six-fingered hand.

See, they obey the magic of my words!

Presto! they're gone, and now the House of Lords

Looks like the withered face of an old hag,

But with three teeth like to a triple gag.

A jig! a jig! and in this antic dance

Fielding and Doxie Marshall first advance.

Twisse blows the Scotch-pipes, and the loving brace

70Puts on the traces and treads cinque-a-pace.

Then Saye and Sele must his old hamstrings supple,

And he and rumpled Palmer make a couple.

Palmer 's a fruitful girl if he'll unfold her;

The midwife may find work about her shoulder.

Kimbolton, that rebellious Boanerges,

Must be content to saddle Dr. Burges.

If Burges get a clap, 'tis ne'er the worse,

But the fifth time of his compurgators.

Noll Bowles is coy; good sadness, cannot dance

80But in obedience to the ordinance.

Here Wharton wheels about till mumping Lidy,

Like the full moon, hath made his lordship giddy.

Pym and the members must their giblets levy

T' encounter Madam Smec, that single bevy.

If they two truck together, 'twill not be

A child-birth, but a gaol-delivery.

Thus every Ghibelline hath got his Guelph

But Selden,-he 's a galliard by himself;

And well may be; there 's more divines in him

90Than in all this, their Jewish Sanhedrim:

Whose canons in the forge shall then bear date

When mules their cousin-germans generate.

Thus Moses' law is violated now;

The ox and ass go yoked in the same plough.

Resign thy coach-box, Twisse; Brooke's preacher he

Would sort the beasts with more conformity.

Water and earth make but one globe; a Roundhead

Is clergy-lay, party-per-pale compounded.

The Mixed Assembly (1647.) This was the famous 'Westminster' Assembly which met in July, 1643-a hodge-podge of half a score peers, a score of commoners, and about four times as many divines as laymen. Tanner MS. 465, of the Bodleian, has a poor copy of this poem; but some transpositions and omissions suggest that it preserves an earlier draft. Lines 63-6 follow 52; 71-8, 81-2, are omitted.

1 Flea-bitten] As of a horse-the laymen appearing like specks on the body of clergy.

2 ana] Usually interpreted in the apothecary's sense, 'in equal quantities', written so in prescriptions and said to be from the Greek-?ν? being thus used.

6, 7 'Church and State's, Most divine' MS.

19 In a fable a Royston crow (the town being on the way to Cambridge had probably a bad reputation for fleecing the guileless undergraduate) advised an innocent of his kind to drop a shellfish from a height on rocks where the Royston bird was waiting and secured the meat.

28 1677 changes 'But' to 'That'.

29 1677 inserts 'go' before 'stroke'. But Cleveland probably scanned 'I-sa-ac'. The reference is to Isaac Pennington: cf. The Rebel Scot, l. 79.

30 The phrase is of course Homeric (sc. δ?μου?) and with its companion combines the idea of an ecclesiastical condemnation ('delivering over to Satan') and a civil execution, a writ of elegit.

32 faun] All old editions, I think, and Mr. Berdan, 'fawn'. But the animal (always now indicated by that spelling) is not of a 'twisted nature', the half-god is.

40 One of those that taught Dryden something.

41 Cleveland, like most Royalists and their master, was evidently sound on Shakespeare. A copy of 1677 in my possession has a manuscript list of references on the fly-leaf.

46 'neck-verse'] = for benefit of clergy.

49 'Stript', 1647, 1651, 1653, is evidently 'striped', and is printed 'strip'd' in 1677.

53 Philip Herbert, fourth Earl of Pembroke, though a patron of literature and the arts, was a man of bad character and a virulent Roundhead.

55 'thy' 1677: 'these' 1647, 1651, 1653.

of bulk unruly] if Vulcan rule you MS.

59 1647, 1651 'Obadiahs': 1653 and its group 'Obadiah': 1677 'Obadiah's'.

60 Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland-who repented too late of his rebellion and tried to prevent the consequences-seems to have joined the Roundheads out of pique (his pride was notorious) at neglect of his suggestions and interference with his powers as Lord High Admiral). By putting the fleet into the hands of the Parliament he did the King perhaps more hurt than any other single person at the beginning of the war. 'Algernoon' 1647, 1651: later texts spoil the point of the next line by using the conventional form.

68 Fielding] Basil, the degenerate son of the first Earl of Denbigh. He actually served in the Parliamentary Army, but like Northumberland, who did not go that length, repented too late.

Doxie Marshall] The Stephen Marshall of Smectymnuus and the 'Geneva Bull' of The Rebel Scot, l. 21; exactly why 'Doxie' I do not know. Possibly 'prostitute' from his eager Presbyterianism. It is odd that Anne and Rebecca Marshall, two famous actresses of the Restoration to whom the term might be applied with some direct justification, used to be counted his daughters, though this is now denied.

69 Twisse] William (1578-1646), the Prolocutor of the Assembly.

71 Saye and Sele] William Fiennes, first Viscount (1582-1662). Of very bad reputation as a slippery customer.

72 rumpled] Mr. Berdan 'rumbled', on what authority and with what meaning I do not know. 'Rumpled', which is in 1647, 1651, 1653, and 1677, no doubt refers to the untidy bands, &c. of a slovenly priest. Herbert Palmer (1604-1647) was a man of good family but a bitter Puritan. He was first Fellow and then President of Queens' College, Cambridge, where Cleveland doubtless knew him. The odd description reads like that of a sort of deformed dwarf.

75 Kimbolton] Edward, Lord (1602-1671), just about to become the well-known Earl of Manchester of the Rebellion. Like Northumberland and Denbigh, he repented, but only after he had been not too politely shelved for Fairfax and Cromwell.

76 Cleveland would have been delighted had he known the fate of Cornelius Burges (1589?-1665), of whom he evidently had a pretty bad idea. Burges, a Wadham and Lincoln man, was one of the leaders of the Puritans among the London clergy, and a great favourite with the House of Commons in the Long Parliament. He wanted to suppress cathedrals; and, being a practical man and preacher at Wells during the Commonwealth, did his best by buying the deanery and part of the estates. Wherefore he was promptly and properly ruined by the Restoration, and died in well-deserved poverty. He was vice-president of the Westminster Assembly.

79 Oliver Bowles, a Puritan divine. 1653 omits the comma after 'sadness' found in 1651,-a neat punctuation, meaning 'in good sadness, he cannot dance'. Phrases like 'in good truth', 'in good sadnesse' were the utmost licence of speech which the Puritans permitted themselves.

81 Philip, fourth Lord Wharton (1613-1696) took the anti-Royalist side very early, but cut a very poor figure at Edgehill and abandoned active service. He did not figure under the Commonwealth, but was a zealous Whig after the Restoration, and a prominent Williamite in the last years of his long life. Who 'Lidy' (1653) or 'Lidie' (1677) was seems unknown. Professor Firth suggests a misprint for 'Sidie,' i.e. Sidrach Simpson (1600?-1655), a busy London Puritan and member of the Assembly. Another ingenious suggestion made to me is that 'mumping Lid[d]y' may be one of the queer dance-names of the period, or actually a woman, Wharton being no enemy to the sex. But I do not know that there was such a dance, and as all the other pairs are males, being members of the Assembly, it would be odd if there were an exception here. For 'Here' 1647, 1651 read 'Her'.

88 The exceptional position of Selden is well hit off here. His character and his earning were just able to neutralize, though not to overcome, the curse of Laodicea.

95 'Brooke' is Robert Brooke, second Lord Brooke, cousin and successor of Fulke Greville-the 'fanatic Brooke' who had his 'guerdon meet' by being shot in his attack on Lichfield Cathedral. Mercurius Anti-Britannicus, 1645, p. 23, has:

Like my Lord Brooke's Coachman

Preaching out of a tub.

(I owe this citation to Mr. Simpson.)

The King's Disguise.

And why a tenant to this vile disguise

Which who but sees, blasphemes thee with his eyes?

My twins of light within their penthouse shrink,

And hold it their allegiance now to wink.

O, for a state-distinction to arraign

Charles of high treason 'gainst my Sovereign!

What an usurper to his prince is wont,

Cloister and shave him, he himself hath don' 't.

His muffled feature speaks him a recluse-

10His ruins prove him a religious house!

The sun hath mewed his beams from off his lamp

And majesty defaced the royal stamp.

Is 't not enough thy dignity 's in thrall,

But thou'lt transmute it in thy shape and all,

As if thy blacks were of too faint a dye

Without the tincture of tautology?

Flay an Egyptian for his cassock skin,

Spun of his country's darkness, line 't within

With Presbyterian budge, that drowsy trance,

20The Synod's sable, foggy Ignorance;

Nor bodily nor ghostly negro could

Roughcast thy figure in a sadder mould.

This privy-chamber of thy shape would be

But the close mourner of thy Royalty.

Then, break the circle of thy tailor's spell,

A pearl within a rugged oyster's shell.

Heaven, which the minster of thy person owns,

Will fine thee for dilapidations.

Like to a martyred abbey's coarser doom,

30Devoutly altered to a pigeon-room;

Or like a college by the changeling rabble,

Manchester's elves, transformed into a stable;

Or if there be a profanation higher;

Such is the sacrilege of thine attire,

By which thou'rt half deposed.-Thou look'st like one

Whose looks are under sequestration;

Whose renegado form at the first glance

Shows like the Self-denying Ordinance;

Angel of light, and darkness too, (I doubt)

40Inspired within and yet possessed without;

Majestic twilight in the state of grace,

Yet with an excommunicated face.

Charles and his mask are of a different mint;

A psalm of mercy in a miscreant print.

The sun wears midnight, day is beetle-browed,

And lightning is in kelder of a cloud.

O the accursed stenography of fate!

The princely eagle shrunk into a bat!

What charm, what magic vapour can it be

50That checks his rays to this apostasy?

It is no subtile film of tiffany air,

No cobweb vizard such as ladies wear,

When they are veiled on purpose to be seen,

Doubling their lustre by their vanquished screen.

No, the false scabbard of a prince is tough

And three-piled darkness, like the smoky slough

Of an imprisoned flame; 'tis Faux in grain;

Dark lantern to our bright meridian.

Hell belched the damp; the Warwick Castle vote

60Rang Britain's curfew, so our light went out.

[A black offender, should he wear his sin

For penance, could not have a darker skin.]

His visage is not legible; the letters

Like a lord's name writ in fantastic fetters;

Clothes where a Switzer might be buried quick;

Sure they would fit the body politic;

False beard enough to fit a stage's plot

(For that 's the ambush of their wit, God wot),

Nay, all his properties so strange appear,

70Y' are not i' th' presence though the King be there.

A libel is his dress, a garb uncouth,

Such as the Hue and Cry once purged at mouth.

Scribbling assassinate! Thy lines attest

An earmark due, Cub of the Blatant Beast;

Whose breath, before 'tis syllabled for worse,

Is blasphemy unfledged, a callow curse.

The Laplanders, when they would sell a wind

Wafting to hell, bag up thy phrase and bind

It to the bark, which at the voyage end

80Shifts poop and breeds the colic in the Fiend.

But I'll not dub thee with a glorious scar

Nor sink thy sculler with a man-of-war.

The black-mouthed Si quis and this slandering suit

Both do alike in picture execute.

But since w' are all called Papists, why not date

Devotion to the rags thus consecrate?

As temples use to have their porches wrought

With sphinxes, creatures of an antic draught,

And puzzling portraitures to show that there

90Riddles inhabited; the like is here.

But pardon, Sir, since I presume to be

Clerk of this closet to your Majesty.

Methinks in this your dark mysterious dress

I see the Gospel couched in parables.

At my next view my purblind fancy ripes

And shows Religion in its dusky types;

Such a text royal, so obscure a shade

Was Solomon in Proverbs all arrayed.

Come, all the brats of this expounding age

100To whom the spirit is in pupilage,

You that damn more than ever Samson slew,

And with his engine, the same jaw-bone too!

How is 't he 'scapes your inquisition free

Since bound up in the Bible's livery?

Hence, Cabinet-intruders! Pick-locks, hence!

You, that dim jewels with your Bristol sense:

And characters, like witches, so torment

Till they confess a guilt though innocent!

Keys for this coffer you can never get;

110None but St. Peter's opes this cabinet,

This cabinet, whose aspect would benight

Critic spectators with redundant light.

A Prince most seen is least. What Scriptures call

The Revelation, is most mystical.

Mount then, thou Shadow Royal, and with haste

Advance thy morning-star, Charles, overcast.

May thy strange journey contradictions twist

And force fair weather from a Scottish mist.

Heaven's confessors are posed, those star-eyed sages,

120T' interpret an eclipse thus riding stages.

Thus Israel-like he travels with a cloud,

Both as a conduct to him and a shroud.

But oh, he goes to Gibeon and renews

A league with mouldy bread and clouted shoes!

The Kings Disguise.] That assumed on the fatal journey from Oxford to the camp of the Scots. (First printed as a quarto pamphlet of four leaves; Thomason bought his copy on 21 January, 1647; reprinted in the 1647 Poems. Vaughan wrote a poem on the same subject about the same time.)

1 a tenant to] so coffin'd in 1677.

2 Which] That 1677.

4: 1677 omits 'now', rather to one's surprise, as the value 'allegi-ance' is of the first rather than of the second half of the century. It is therefore probably right.

14 transmute] transcribe 1677. The two readings obviously pertain to two different senses of 'blacks'-'clothes' and 'ink'.

17 for] from 1647 (pamphlet).

18 line 't] lin'de 1647 (pamphlet).

19 The 1677 'Vindicators' had forgotten 'budge' in the sense of 'fur' (perhaps they were too loyal to read Milton) and made it 'badge'.

20 1651, 1653 'Synod', with no hyphen but perhaps meant for a compound. The genitive is perhaps better. The comma at 'sable', which Mr. Berdan omits, is important.

21-2 The error of those who say that such a rhyme points to the pronunciation of the l in words like 'could' is sufficiently shown by the fact that 'coud' is frequent. It is, of course, a mere eye-rhyme, like many of Spenser's earlier. 'No bodily' 1647 (pamphlet).

23 shape] garb 1677.

24 of] to 1677.

25 'Twill break' 1647, 1653. tailor's] jailor's 1647, 1651, 1653.

29 1653, but obviously by a mere misprint, 'courser'.

31 1647, 1651, 1653 'the college'. It is said that the definite article usually at this time designates 'the College of Physicians'. But, as Mr. Berdan well observes, 'the case was unfortunately too common to admit of identification'. Cleveland's restless wit was not idle in calling 'Manchester's elves'-the Parliamentary troops-'changelings'. The soldier ought to be a King's man: and indeed pretended to be.

32 1647 (pamphlet) 'reformed'.

40 This and l. 47 are examples of the Drydenian line before Dryden, so frequent in Cleveland.

46 = 'The unborn child of a cloud'.

47 Alliteration, and some plausibility of verse, seduced 1677 into 'of State', but I think 'fate' is better.

50 checks] shrinks 1647, 1651, 1653.

55-6 1647, 1651, 1653 read

Nor the false scabbard of a Prince's tough

Metal and three-piled darkness like the slough.

Some fight might be made for 'Metal', but 'Nor' is indefensible. I am half inclined to transfer it above to l. 52 and take 'No' thence. The text, which is 1677, is I suppose a correction. Both 1647 texts mark 'slough' with an asterisk, and have a marginal note 'A damp in coal-pits usual'.

57 I cannot understand what Mr. Berdan-who prints 'Fawkes'-means by saying it is not authorized by any edition, whereas his own apparatus gives 'Faux' in every one. It is a mere question of spelling. 'Three-piled darkness' equally surrounds to me his further remark that he 'adopted it as the only reading approximating sense; treason in grain'. The metaphor of the dark lantern cloaked is surely clear enough; and this 'in grain' is one of the innumerable passages showing the rashness of invariably interpreting 'in grain' as = 'with the grain of the cochineal insect'. Beyond all doubt it has the simple sense of penitus, 'inward'.

58 bright] high 1647, 1653.

59 the Warwick Castle vote] The Resolution of the Commons on May 6, 1646, that the King, after the Scots sold him, should be lodged in Warwick Castle.

61-2 Not in 1647, 1651, 1653 and its group, but added in 1677.

63 1647, 1651, 1653 'Thy visage'.

67 1677 has the very considerable and not at once acceptable alteration of 'thatch a poet's plot'. But it may have been Cleveland.

72 1647, 1651, again give an asterisked note, 'Britanicus', showing the definite, not general, reference of 'Hue and Cry'. It seems that Mercurius Britannicus did issue a 'Hue and Cry' after the King, for which the editor, Captain Audley, was put in the Gate-house till he apologized.

75 1651 'wreath', corrupted into 'wrath' in 1653.

76 Blount stupidly thought 'callow' to mean 'lewd or wicked', as if 'unfledged' did not ratify the usual sense.

80 breeds] brings 1647, 1651.

83 Si quis] The first words of a formal inquiry as to disqualifications in a candidate for orders, &c. It would apply to the Hue and Cry itself.

85 It being a favourite Puritan trick to identify 'Royalist' with 'Papist'. 'Date' apparently in the sense of 'begin', which it usually has only as neuter.

89 puzzling] 1677 and its followers 'purling', with no sense.

95 1677 'The second view' and 'wipes'.

106 Bristol] as of diamonds.

109 coffer] cipher 1677, &c.

110 opes] ope 1677.

116 'Charles' 1677: 1647, 1651, 1653, by a clear error 'Charles's'.

120 'T' interpret an' 1647 (pamphlet): 'To interpret an' 1647 (Poems) 1653, 1677. 1651 omits 'To' and reads the 'an' which seems bad in metre and meaning alike.

The Rebel Scot.

How, Providence? and yet a Scottish crew?

Then Madam Nature wears black patches too!

What? shall our nation be in bondage thus

Unto a land that truckles under us?

Ring the bells backward! I am all on fire.

Not all the buckets in a country quire

Shall quench my rage. A poet should be feared,

When angry, like a comet's flaming beard.

And where 's the stoic can his wrath appease,

10To see his country sick of Pym's disease?

By Scotch invasion to be made a prey

To such pigwiggin myrmidons as they?

But that there 's charm in verse, I would not quote

The name of Scot without an antidote;

Unless my head were red, that I might brew

Invention there that might be poison too.

Were I a drowsy judge whose dismal note

Disgorgeth halters as a juggler's throat

Doth ribbons; could I in Sir Emp'ric's tone

20Speak pills in phrase and quack destruction;

Or roar like Marshall, that Geneva bull,

Hell and damnation a pulpit full;

Yet to express a Scot, to play that prize,

Not all those mouth-grenadoes can suffice.

Before a Scot can properly be curst,

I must like Hocus swallow daggers first.

Come, keen iambics, with your badger's feet

And badger-like bite till your teeth do meet.

Help, ye tart satirists, to imp my rage

30With all the scorpions that should whip this age.

Scots are like witches; do but whet your pen,

Scratch till the blood come, they'll not hurt you then.

Now, as the martyrs were enforced to take

The shapes of beasts, like hypocrites, at stake,

I'll bait my Scot so, yet not cheat your eyes;

A Scot within a beast is no disguise.

No more let Ireland brag her harmless nation

Fosters no venom since the Scot's plantation:

Nor can ours feigned antiquity maintain;

40Since they came in, England hath wolves again.

The Scot that kept the Tower might have shown,

Within the grate of his own breast alone,

The leopard and the panther, and engrossed

What all those wild collegiates had cost

The honest high-shoes in their termly fees;

First to the salvage lawyer, next to these.

Nature herself doth Scotchmen beasts confess,

Making their country such a wilderness:

A land that brings in question and suspense

50God's omnipresence, but that Charles came thence,

But that Montrose and Crawford's loyal band

Atoned their sins and christ'ned half the land.

Nor is it all the nation hath these spots;

There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots.

As in a picture where the squinting paint

Shows fiend on this side, and on that side saint.

He, that saw Hell in 's melancholy dream

And in the twilight of his fancy's theme,

Scared from his sins, repented in a fright,

60Had he viewed Scotland, had turned proselyte.

A land where one may pray with cursed intent,

'Oh may they never suffer banishment!'

Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;

Not forced him wander but confined him home!

Like Jews they spread and as infection fly,

As if the Devil had ubiquity.

Hence 'tis they live at rovers and defy

This or that place, rags of geography.

They're citizens o' th' world; they're all in all;

70Scotland's a nation epidemical.

And yet they ramble not to learn the mode,

How to be dressed, or how to lisp abroad;

To return knowing in the Spanish shrug,

Or which of the Dutch States a double jug

Resembles most in belly or in beard,

(The card by which the mariners are steered).

No, the Scots-errant fight and fight to eat,

Their Ostrich stomachs make their swords their meat.

Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt

80Who use to hang their teeth upon their belt.

Yet wonder not at this their happy choice,

The serpent 's fatal still to Paradise.

Sure, England hath the hemorrhoids, and these

On the north postern of the patient seize

Like leeches; thus they physically thirst

After our blood, but in the cure shall burst!

Let them not think to make us run o' th' score

To purchase villenage, as once before

When an act passed to stroke them on the head,

90Call them good subjects, buy them gingerbread.

Not gold, nor acts of grace, 'tis steel must tame

The stubborn Scot; a Prince that would reclaim

Rebels by yielding, doth like him, or worse,

Who saddled his own back to shame his horse.

Was it for this you left your leaner soil,

Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's spoil?

They are the Gospel's life-guard; but for them,

The garrison of New Jerusalem,

What would the brethren do? The Cause! The Cause!

100Sack-possets and the fundamental laws!

Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!

How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts!

They wanted food and raiment, so they took

Religion for their seamstress and their cook.

Unmask them well; their honours and estate,

As well as conscience, are sophisticate.

Shrive but their titles and their money poise,

A laird and twenty pence pronounced with noise,

When construed, but for a plain yeoman go,

110And a good sober two-pence; and well so.

Hence then, you proud impostors; get you gone,

You Picts in gentry and devotion;

You scandal to the stock of verse, a race

Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace.

Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce

The ostracism and shamed it out of use.

The Indian, that Heaven did forswear

Because he heard some Spaniards were there,

Had he but known what Scots in Hell had been,

120He would Erasmus-like have hung between.

My Muse hath done. A voider for the nonce!

I wrong the Devil should I pick their bones;

That dish is his; for, when the Scots decease,

Hell, like their nation, feeds on barnacles.

A Scot, when from the gallow-tree got loose,

Drops into Styx and turns a Solan goose.

The Rebel Scot.] This famous piece is said to be the only one of Cleveland's poems which is in every edition. In 1677 it is accompanied by a Latin version (of very little merit, and probably if not certainly by 'another hand') which I do not give. A poor copy is in Tanner MS. 465 of the Bodleian, at fol. 92, with the title 'A curse on the Scots'. The piece is hot enough, and no wonder; but it would no doubt have been hotter if it had been written later, when Cleveland was actually gagged by Leven's dismissal of him. It is not unnoteworthy that the library of the University of Edinburgh contains not a single one of the numerous seventeenth-century editions of Cleveland. Years afterwards, when a Douglas had chequered the disgrace of 'the Dutch in the Medway' by a brave death, Marvell, who probably knew our poet, composed for 'Cleveland's Ghost' a half palinode, half continuation, entitled 'The Loyal Scot'.

10 It would seem that Pym had not yet gone to his account, as he died on December 6, 1643, after getting Parliament to accept the Covenant and the Scots to invade England.

12 The early texts have Drayton's name correctly: 1677 makes it 'Pigwidgin'.

15 It seems hardly necessary to remind the reader of the well-known habit of painting Judas's hair red.

19 could ... tone] or in the Empiric's misty tone MS.

21 Stephen Marshall, the 'Smec.' man and a mighty cushion-thumper (who denounced the 'Curse of Meroz' on all who came not to destroy those in any degree opposed to the Parliament), actually preached Pym's funeral sermon.

22 'Damnati-on'. But MS. reads 'a whole pulpit full'.

28 1653 has the obvious blunder of 'feet' repeated for 'teeth'. The first 'feet' is itself less obvious, but I suppose the strong claw and grip of the badger's are meant. Some, however, refer it to the supposed lop-sidedness or inequality of badgers' feet, answering to the ?- of the iamb. I never knew but one badger, who lived in St. Clement's, Oxford, and belonged (surreptitiously) to Merton College. I did not notice his feet.

32 The more usual reproach was the other way-that 'the Scot would not fight till he saw his own blood'.

38 1677, less well, 'that Scot'.

39 'ours ... maintain' 1647, 1651, 1653: 'our ... obtain' 1677.

41 The Scot] Sir William Balfour, a favoured servant of the King, who deserted to the other side.

44 A difficulty has been made about 'collegiate', but there is surely none. The word (or 'collegian') is old slang, and hardly slang for 'jail-bird'. The double use of the Tower as a prison and a menagerie should of course be remembered.

45 high-shoes] Country folk in boots.

termly] = 'when they came up to business'.

51 Crawford] Ludovic, sixteenth Earl, who fought bravely all through the Rebellion, served after the downfall in France and Spain, and died, it is not accurately known when or where, but about 1652.

52 A fine line. 1677 does not improve it by reading 'their land'.

63-4 The central and most often quoted couplet.

65-6 follow 70 in the MS.

67 at rovers] Common for shooting not at a definite mark, but at large.

70 epidemical] In the proper sense of 'travelling from country to country', not doubtless without the transferred one of a 'travelling plague'.

74 States] not the Provinces; but the representative Hogan Mogans themselves.

78 'Ostrich' in 1677: 1647, 1651, and 1653 the older 'estrich'.

80 hang] string 1677.

81 'But why should we be made your frantic choice?' MS.

82 'England too hath emerods' MS.

83 1651, 1653 have a middle form between 'emerod' and 'hemorrhoid'-'Hemeroids'. 1647 'Hemerods'.

84 1647, 1651, 1653 and its group, oddly, 'posture'.

89 The Parliamentary bribe or Danegelt of 1641.

95 'left' 1653, &c., 1677: 'gave' 1647, 1651. The MS. reads 'But they may justly quit their leaner soil. 'Tis to lard ...'

101 1651, 1653 'goodly', but here, I think, the old is not the better.

107 'money' 1647, 1651, 1653: 'moneys' 1677.

108 1647, 1653, &c. 'pound', wrongly. Twenty Scots pence = not quite two-pence English. Therefore 'well so'.

118 1641, 1651, and 1653 'the Spaniards', but 'some' (1677) is more pointed.

120 Erasmus] Regarded as neither Papist nor Protestant?

Cleveland never wrote anything else of this force and fire: and it, or parts of it, were constantly revived when the occasion presented itself.

The Scots' Apostasy.

Is 't come to this? What? shall the cheeks of Fame,

Stretched with the breath of learned Loudoun's name,

Be flagged again? And that great piece of sense,

As rich in loyalty as eloquence,

Brought to the test, be found a trick of state?

Like chemists' tinctures, proved adulterate?

The Devil sure such language did achieve

To cheat our unforewarned Grandam Eve,

As this impostor found out to besot

10Th' experienced English to believe a Scot!

Who reconciled the Covenant's doubtful sense,

The Commons' argument, or the City's pence?

Or did you doubt persistence in one good

Would spoil the fabric of your brotherhood,

Projected first in such a forge of sin,

Was fit for the grand Devil's hammering?

Or was 't ambition that this damned fact

Should tell the world you know the sins you act?

The infamy this super-treason brings

20Blasts more than murders of your sixty kings;

A crime so black, as being advis'dly done,

Those hold with this no competition.

Kings only suffered then; in this doth lie

Th' assassination of Monarchy.

Beyond this sin no one step can be trod,

If not t' attempt deposing of your God.

Oh, were you so engaged that we might see

Heaven's angry lightning 'bout your ears to flee

Till you were shrivelled to dust, and your cold Land

30Parched to a drought beyond the Lybian sand!

But 'tis reserved! Till Heaven plague you worse,

Be objects of an epidemic curse.

First, may your brethren, to whose viler ends

Your power hath bawded, cease to count you friends,

And, prompted by the dictate of their reason,

Reproach the traitors though they hug the treason:

And may their jealousies increase and breed

Till they confine your steps beyond the Tweed:

In foreign nations may your loath'd name be

40A stigmatizing brand of infamy,

Till forced by general hate you cease to roam

The world, and for a plague go live at home;

Till you resume your poverty and be

Reduced to beg where none can be so free

To grant: and may your scabby Land be all

Translated to a general hospital:

Let not the sun afford one gentle ray

To give you comfort of a summer's day;

But, as a guerdon for your traitorous war,

50Live cherished only by the Northern Star:

No stranger deign to visit your rude coast,

And be to all but banished men as lost:

And such, in heightening of the infliction due,

Let provoked princes send them all to you:

Your State a chaos be where not the Law,

But power, your lives and liberties may awe:

No subject 'mongst you keep a quiet breast,

But each man strive through blood to be the best;

Till, for those miseries on us you've brought,

60By your own sword our just revenge be wrought.

To sum up all-let your religion be,

As your allegiance, masked hypocrisy,

Until, when Charles shall be composed in dust,

Perfumed with epithets of good and just,

HE saved, incenséd Heaven may have forgot

T' afford one act of mercy to a Scot,

Unless that Scot deny himself and do

(What's easier far) renounce his Nation too.

The Scots' Apostasy was first printed as a broadside in 1646, and assigned at the time to Cleveland by Thomas Old. It was included in 1651, but not admitted by the 'Vindicators' in 1677. But it is in all the central group of editions except Cleaveland Revived, where absence is usually a strong proof of genuineness; and it is extremely like him. Mr. Berdan has admitted it, and so do I. Professor Case has noted a catalogue entry of The Scot's Constancy, an answer to J. C's. [al. Or an Answer to Cleveland's] Scots' Apostasy (G. R. Bastick) [al. Robin Bostock], London April 1647. The 'J. C's' is of course pertinent.

2 John Campbell (1598-1633), from 1620 Baron Loudoun in his wife's right, was, after taking a violent part on the Covenant side in the earlier Scotch-English war, instrumental in concluding peace; and was made in 1641 Chancellor of Scotland and Earl of Loudoun.

4 as] 'and' 1653.

9 'imposture' 1651, 1653.

20 The celebrated and grisly collection of Scottish monarchs in Holyrood was not yet in existence; for its imaginative creator only painted it in 1684, and there are 106, not sixty. But the remoteness of Scottish pedigrees was popularly known: and if it be not true that all Scottish kings were murdered, not a few had been.

24 'Assassination' is valued at six syllables.

28 'to' 1651, &c.: 'into' 1646.

31 Till] and tell 1646, 1651.

34 'count you' 1646, 1651, 1653, &c.: 'be your' 1687. This prayer, at any rate, was heard pretty soon.

38 'steps' 1651, &c.: 'ships' 1646.

42 'go', misprinted 'to' in 1653, &c.

67-8 Not in 1646.

Rupertismus.

O that I could but vote myself a poet,

Or had the legislative knack to do it!

Or, like the doctors militant, could get

Dubbed at adventure Verser Banneret!

Or had I Cacus' trick to make my rhymes

Their own antipodes, and track the times!

'Faces about,' says the remonstrant spirit,

'Allegiance is malignant, treason merit.'

Huntingdon colt, that posed the sage recorder,

10Might be a sturgeon now and pass by order.

Had I but Elsing's gift (that splay-mouthed brother

That declares one way and yet means another),

Could I thus write asquint, then, Sir, long since

You had been sung a great and glorious Prince!

I had observed the language of these days,

Blasphemed you, and then periwigged the phrase

With humble service and such other fustian,

Bells which ring backward in this great combustion.

I had reviled you, and without offence;

20The literal and equitable sense

Would make it good. When all fails, that will do 't;

Sure that distinction cleft the Devil's foot!

This were my dialect, would your Highness please

To read me but with Hebrew spectacles;

Interpret counter what is cross rehearsed;

Libels are commendations when reversed.

Just as an optic glass contracts the sight

At one end, but when turned doth multiply 't.

But you're enchanted, Sir, you're doubly free

30From the great guns and squibbing poetry,

Whom neither bilbo nor invention pierces,

Proof even 'gainst th' artillery of verses.

Strange that the Muses cannot wound your mail!

If not their art, yet let their sex prevail.

At that known leaguer, where the bonny Besses

Supplied the bow-strings with their twisted tresses,

Your spells could ne'er have fenced you, every arrow

Had lanced your noble breast and drunk the marrow.

For beauty, like white powder, makes no noise

40And yet the silent hypocrite destroys.

Then use the Nuns of Helicon with pity

Lest Wharton tell his gossips of the City

That you kill women too, nay maids, and such

Their general wants militia to touch.

Impotent Essex! Is it not a shame

Our Commonwealth, like to a Turkish dame,

Should have an eunuch guardian? May she be

Ravished by Charles, rather than saved by thee!

But why, my Muse, like a green-sickness girl,

50Feed'st thou on coals and dirt? A gelding earl

Gives no more relish to thy female palate

Than to that ass did once the thistle sallet.

Then quit the barren theme and all at once,

Thou and thy sisters like bright Amazons,

Give Rupert an alarum. Rupert! one

Whose name is wit's superfetation,

Makes fancy, like eternity's round womb,

Unite all valour, present, past, to come!

He who the old philosophy controls

60That voted down plurality of souls!

He breathes a Grand Committee; all that were

The wonders of their age constellate here.

And as the elder sisters, Growth and Sense,

Souls paramount themselves, in man commence

But faculties of reasons queen; no more

Are they to him (who was complete before),

Ingredients of his virtue. Thread the beads

Of Caesar's acts, great Pompey's and the Swede's,

And 'tis a bracelet fit for Rupert's hand,

70By which that vast triumvirate is spanned.

Here, here is palmistry; here you may read

How long the world shall live and when 't shall bleed.

What every man winds up, that Rupert hath,

For Nature raised him of the Public Faith;

Pandora's brother, to make up whose store

The gods were fain to run upon the score.

Such was the painter's brief for Venus' face;

Item, an eye from Jane; a lip from Grace.

Let Isaac and his cits flay off the plate

80That tips their antlers, for the calf of state;

Let the zeal-twanging nose, that wants a ridge,

Snuffling devoutly, drop his silver bridge;

Yes, and the gossip spoon augment the sum

Although poor Caleb lose his christendom;

Rupert outweighs that in his sterling self

Which their self-want pays in commuting pelf.

Pardon, great Sir, for that ignoble crew

Gains when made bankrupt in the scales with you.

As he, who in his character of Light

90Styled it God's shadow, made it far more bright

By an eclipse so glorious (light is dim

And a black nothing when compared to Him),

So 'tis illustrious to be Rupert's foil

And a just trophy to be made his spoil.

I'll pin my faith on the Diurnal's sleeve

Hereafter, and the Guildhall creed believe;

The conquests which the Common Council hears

With their wide listening mouth from the great Peers

That ran away in triumph. Such a foe

100Can make them victors in their overthrow;

Where providence and valour meet in one,

Courage so poised with circumspection

That he revives the quarrel once again

Of the soul's throne; whether in heart, or brain,

And leaves it a drawn match; whose fervour can

Hatch him whom Nature poached but half a man;

His trumpet, like the angel's at the last,

Makes the soul rise by a miraculous blast.

Was the Mount Athos carved in shape of man

110As 'twas designed by th' Macedonian

(Whose right hand should a populous land contain,

The left should be a channel to the main),

His spirit would inform th' amphibious figure

And, strait-laced, sweat for a dominion bigger.

The terror of whose name can out of seven,

Like Falstaff's buckram men, make fly eleven.

Thus some grow rich by breaking. Vipers thus,

By being slain, are made more numerous.

No wonder they'll confess no loss of men,

120For Rupert knocks 'em till they gig again.

They fear the giblets of his train, they fear

Even his dog, that four-legged cavalier;

He that devours the scraps that Lunsford makes;

Whose picture feeds upon a child in steaks;

Who, name but Charles, he comes aloft for him,

But holds up his malignant leg at Pym.

'Gainst whom they have these articles in souse:

First, that he barks against the sense o' th' House;

Resolved delinquent, to the Tower straight,

130Either to th' Lions' or the Bishop's Grate:

Next, for his ceremonious wag o' th' tail.

(But there the sisterhood will be his bail,

At least the Countess will, Lust's Amsterdam,

That lets in all religions of the game.)

Thirdly, he smells intelligence; that 's better

And cheaper too than Pym's from his own letter,

Who 's doubly paid (Fortune or we the blinder!)

For making plots and then for fox the finder:

Lastly, he is a devil without doubt,

140For, when he would lie down, he wheels about,

Makes circles, and is couchant in a ring;

And therefore score up one for conjuring.

'What canst thou say, thou wretch!' 'O quarter, quarter!

I'm but an instrument, a mere Sir Arthur.

If I must hang, O let not our fates vary,

Whose office 'tis alike to fetch and carry!'

No hopes of a reprieve; the mutinous stir

That strung the Jesuit will dispatch a cur.

'Were I a devil as the rabble fears,

150I see the House would try me by my peers!'

There, Jowler, there! Ah, Jowler! 'st, 'tis nought!

Whate'er the accusers cry, they're at a fault:

And Glyn and Maynard have no more to say

Than when the glorious Strafford stood at bay.

Thus libels but annexed to him, we see,

Enjoy a copyhold of victory.

Saint Peter's shadow healed; Rupert's is such

'Twould find Saint Peter's work and wound as much.

He gags their guns, defeats their dire intent;

160The cannons do but lisp and compliment.

Sure, Jove descended in a leaden shower

To get this Perseus; hence the fatal power

Of shot is strangled. Bullets thus allied

Fear to commit an act of parricide.

Go on, brave Prince, and make the world confess

Thou art the greater world and that the less.

Scatter th' accumulative king; untruss

That five-fold fiend, the State's Smectymnuus,

Who place religion in their vellum ears

170As in their phylacters the Jews did theirs.

England's a paradise (and a modest word)

Since guarded by a cherub's flaming sword.

Your name can scare an atheist to his prayers,

And cure the chincough better than the bears.

Old Sibyl charms the toothache with you; Nurse

Makes you still children; and the ponderous curse

The clowns salute with is derived from you,

'Now, Rupert take thee, rogue, how dost thou do?'

In fine the name of Rupert thunders so,

180Kimbolton's but a rumbling wheelbarrow.

Rupertismus] 'To P. Rupert' in the 1647 texts (Bodley and Case copies). The odd title Rupertismus was first given in 1651. This poem expresses the earlier and more sanguine Cavalier temper, when things on the whole went well. Rupert's admirable quality as an officer naturally made him a sort of Cavalier cynosure and (with his being half a foreigner) a bugbear to the Roundheads; while neither party had yet found out his fatal defects as a general. Hence 'Rupertismus' not ill described the humour of both sides. The dog who figures so largely was a real dog (said of course to be a familiar spirit), and Professor Firth tells me that he has a pamphlet (1642) entitled Observations upon P. R.'s white dog called Boy, carefully taken by T. B., with a picture of the animal. It was replied to by The Parliament's Unspotted Bitch next year.

1, 2 The 'legislative knack' to vote oneself everything good and perfect has always been a gift of Houses of Commons. It was rather shrewd of Cleveland to formulate it so early and so well.

4 Bannerets being properly dubbed on the field of battle. 'Adventure' 1677: 'Adventures' 1647, 1651, 1687: 'adventurers' 1653 and its group.

5 Cacus' trick] of dragging his cattle by the tails.

7 spirit] A word their abuse of which was constantly thrown in the face of the Puritans till Swift's thrice rectified vitriol almost destroyed the abuse itself.

8 malignant] in the technical Roundhead sense.

9 The gibe at Huntingdon, clear enough from the passage, is one of many old local insults. I can remember when it was a little unsafe, in one of the Channel islands, to speak of a donkey. This particular jest recurs in Pepys (May 22, 1677), who was in a way a Huntingdon man.

11 Elsing] Clerk to the House of Commons.

13 'thus' 1677: 'but' 1647 and the earlier texts. write] 1653, 'right'-evidently one of the numerous mistakes due to dictating copy.

14 'The Prince' was a title which Rupert monopolized early and kept till his death.

15 'these' 1677: 'the' 1647, 1651, 1653, 1687.

20 1677 'th' equitable'.

24 The rhyme of '-cles' to an ee syllable occurs in Dryden.

31 'Who' 1653 and its group.

35 Carthage. Rupert's devotion to ladies was lifelong.

39 'White' or noiseless powder was a constant object of research.

45 Essex was twice divorced on the ground mentioned, and his efficiency in the field was not to be much greater than that in the chamber.

53 1677, &c., 'his barren theme'.

65 1654 'faculty'. 1677 'Reason Queen'. I am not sure which is right.

66-7 So punctuated in 1677. Earlier texts and 1687 'who were to him complete before. Ingredients of his virtue thread' ... 1677 reads 'virtues'.

68 'the Swede': of course Gustavus Adolphus.

73 1647, 1651, 1653 'Whatever'.

74 1677, apparently alone, 'on the'].

78 1653, evidently by slip, 'for Jane'.

79 1647, 1651, 1653 'Cit'z' (not quite bad for 'citizens) and 'flea of the place'. 'Flea' for 'flay' is not uncommon: the rest is absurd. 'Isaac' was Isaac Pennington, father of that Judith whose obliging disposition Mr. Pepys has commemorated.

80 'Antlets', which occurs in all, is not impossible for 'antlers' (the everlastingly ridiculed citizen 'horns'). But 1647, 1651, 1653 forgot the Golden Calf altogether in their endeavour to provide a rhyme for their own misprint (l. 79) by reading 'Stace'.

83 'Gossip's' (1651, 1677) is not wanted and hisses unnecessarily.

86 'self-wants' 1647, 1651, 1653, 1687. 1677, most improbably, 'committee'. The whole passage refers to the subscriptions of plate and money in lieu of personal service which Pennington, as Lord Mayor, promised 'on the Public Faith'. Rupert's self outweighs all this vicarious performance.

89 'whom' 1653, 1654.

92 to] with 1677.

95 Diurnal] Which Cleveland satirized in his first published (prose) work.

98 As Wharton at Edgehill. 'Mouths' 1647, 1687.

100 them] men 1677.

109 Was the] 'Twas the 1647, 1651, 1653: Was that 1677. 'Was' = 'if it were'.

110 designed] 1647, 1651, 1653 'defin'd', with a clear f, not long s.

113 would] 1647, 1651, 1653 might.

114 The text is 1677, which, however, reads (with the usual want of strait-lacedness) 'straight'. 1651, 1653, have 'Yet' for 'And', which is corrected in some of their own group, and 'sweats'.

117 some] Like Mr. Badman a little later.

120 gig] = 'spin like a top'. Dryden uses the word in the same sense and almost in the same phrase in the Prologue to Amphitryon, l. 21: v. sup., p. 17.

121 giblets] Apparently in the sense of 'offal', 'refuse'.

123 Lunsford] Sir Thomas, 1610?-1653. The absurd legends about this Cavalier's 'child-eating' are referred to in, originally, Hudibras and in Lacy's Old Troop, and at second-hand (probably from the text also, though it is not quoted) in the notes to Scott's Woodstock. 1651 and 1653 have 'which' for second 'that'.

124 steaks] All old editions 'stakes'-a very common spelling, which Mr. Berdan keeps. As he modernizes the rest, his readers may be under the impression that the ogre impaled the infants before devouring them, which was not, I think, alleged by the most savoury professor on the Roundhead side.

127 souse] = 'pickle'. 'they have these' 1677: 'they've several' 1647, 1651: 'they have several' 1653.

130 Bishop's] 1677, 1687 editions have the apostrophe. Laud is probably referred to in 'Bishop's'. The force of all this, and its application to other times, are admirable.

133 The Countess-pretty clearly Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle (1599-1660)-beauty, wit, harlot, and traitress (though, too late, she repented). Amsterdam] The religious indifference of the Dutch being a common reproach. 1677 and its followers read 'with' for 'will', which would alter the sense completely.

134 1647, 1651, 1653 have 'religious' in the well-known noun sense, and it is possibly better.

144 Sir Arthur Haselrig (died 1661)-a very busy person throughout the troubles, but not considered as exactly a prime mover.

148 1677 'the cur'.

149 'rabble' is 1677 and seems good, though the earlier 'rebel' might do.

152 a fault] 1677 default-not so technical.

153 Serjeants John Glyn[ne] (1607-66) and John Maynard (1602-90) were well-known legal bandogs on the Roundhead side in the earlier stages; but both trimmed cleverly during the later, and sold themselves promptly to the Crown at the Restoration. Glynne died soon. Maynard lived to prosecute the victims of the Popish Plot, and to turn his coat once more, at nearly ninety, for William of Orange.

155 1647, 1651, 1653 'labels': 1677 'Thus libels but amount to him we see T' enjoy'.

158 1677 'St. Peter', which looks plausible, though I am not sure that it is better than the genitive. 1647, 1651, 1653 have 'yet' for 'and' as in other cases.

167 the accumulative king] Pym? who was nicknamed 'king' Pym, and if not exactly 'accumulative' (for his debts were paid by Parliament) must have been expensive and was probably rapacious. Others think it means 'the Committee', 'accumulative' being = 'cumulative' (or rather 'plural'). They quote, not without force, our poet's prose Character of a Country Committee man, 'a Committee man is a name of multitude', the phrase 'accumulative treason' occurring in the context.

175 1677 transfers 'the' to before 'Nurse'-a great loss, the unarticled and familiar 'Nurse' being far better-and reads 'Sibils charm'.

176 'and' 1653, 1677: 'nay and' 1647, 1651, 1687.

177 1677 'Clown salutes'.

Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford.

Here lies wise and valiant dust

Huddled up 'twixt fit and just;

Strafford, who was hurried hence

'Twixt treason and convenience.

He spent his time here in a mist;

A Papist, yet a Calvinist;

His Prince's nearest joy and grief

He had, yet wanted all relief;

The prop and ruin of the State;

10The People's violent love and hate;

One in extremes loved and abhorred.

Riddles lie here, or in a word,

Here lies blood; and let it lie

Speechless still and never cry.

Epitaph, &c. In the Bodleian copy of 1647 and in Professor Case's (3rd issue) and in all others except Cleaveland Revived (1659) and 1677; but in some of the earliest classed with the work of 'Uncertain Authors'. Winstanley (no very strong authority, it is true) calls it Cleveland's and 'excellent'. It is perhaps too much to say with Mr. Berdan, that it is 'unlike his manner'. There is certainly in it a manner which he does not often display, but the pity and the terror of that great tragedy might account for part of this, and the difficulty (for any Royalist) of speaking freely of it for more. It is rather fine, I think.

4 The pitiful truth could hardly be better put.

6 Obscure, but not un-Clevelandish.

7-8 Punctuation altered to get what seems the necessary sense. A comma which 1653 has at 'grief' (not to mention a full stop in the 1647 texts) obscures this, and a comma at 'wanted', which Mr. Berdan puts, does so even more. The phrase is once more fatally just and true. He enjoyed all his master's affection and received all his grief, but 'wanted' his support and relief. Professor Case, however, would cling to the stop, at least the comma, at 'grief'.

12 or] Other editions 'and'. For 'Riddles' cf. The King's Disguise, ll. 89-90.

13-14 For the third time 'he says it', and there is no more to say.-In 1653 there follows a Latin Epitaph on Strafford which has nothing to do with this. It is in some phrases enigmatic enough to be Cleveland's, but it is not certainly his, and as it is neither English nor verse we need hardly give it.

An Elegy upon the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I need no Muse to give my passion vent,

He brews his tears that studies to lament.

Verse chemically weeps; that pious rain

Distilled with art is but the sweat o' th' brain

Whoever sobbed in numbers? Can a groan

Be quavered out by soft division?

'Tis true for common formal elegies

Not Bushel's Wells can match a poet's eyes

In wanton water-works; he'll tune his tears

10From a Geneva jig up to the spheres.

But then he mourns at distance, weeps aloof.

Now that the conduit head is our own roof,

Now that the fate is public, we may call

It Britain's vespers, England's funeral.

Who hath a pencil to express the Saint

But he hath eyes too, washing off the paint?

There is no learning but what tears surround,

Like to Seth's pillars in the Deluge drowned.

There is no Church; Religion is grown

20So much of late that she 's increased to none,

Like an hydropic body, full of rheums,

First swells into a bubble, then consumes.

The Law is dead or cast into a trance,-

And by a law dough-baked, an Ordinance!

The Liturgy, whose doom was voted next,

Died as a comment upon him the text.

There's nothing lives; life is, since he is gone,

But a nocturnal lucubration.

Thus you have seen death's inventory read

30In the sum total,-Canterbury's dead;

A sight would make a Pagan to baptize

Himself a convert in his bleeding eyes;

Would thaw the rabble, that fierce beast of ours,

(That which hyena-like weeps and devours)

Tears that flow brackish from their souls within,

Not to repent, but pickle up their sin.

Meantime no squalid grief his look defiles.

He gilds his sadder fate with nobler smiles.

Thus the world's eye, with reconciléd streams,

40Shines in his showers as if he wept his beams.

How could success such villanies applaud?

The State in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud;

The twins of public rage, adjudged to die

For treasons they should act, by prophecy;

The facts were done before the laws were made;

The trump turned up after the game was played.

Be dull, great spirits, and forbear to climb,

For worth is sin and eminence a crime.

No churchman can be innocent and high.

50'Tis height makes Grantham steeple stand awry.

An Elegy, &c. (1647.) If the Strafford epitaph seemed too serious, as well as too concentrated and passionate, for Cleveland, this on Strafford's fellow worker and fellow victim may seem almost a caricature of our author's more wayward and more fantastic manner. Yet there are fine lines in it, and perhaps nowhere else do we see the Dryden fashion of verse (though not of thought) more clearly foreshadowed. It appears to come under 'Uncertain Authors' in some 1647 texts, but 1677 gives it. Title in 1647, 1651, 1653 'On the Archbishop of Canterbury' only.

4 1677 'by art'.

6 1677 'in soft'.

8 Thomas Bushel[l] or Bushnell (1594-1674) was a page of Bacon's and afterwards a great 'projector' in mining and mechanical matters generally. He dabbled largely in fancy fountains and waterworks-a queer taste of the seventeenth century in which even the sober Evelyn records his own participation.

9-10 Cf. the opening of the elegy on King, 'I like not tears in tune'.

11 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. 'when he mourns', which is hardly so good.

18 Seth's pillars] A tradition, preserved in Josephus, that the race of Seth engraved antediluvian wisdom on two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone, the latter of which outlasted the Deluge.

20 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. 'From much'.

34 1647, 1651 misprint 'Agena-like.

35 1653 misprints 'blackish'.

38 1647, 1651, 1653 'noble'.

44 1677, omitting the comma at 'act', makes something like nonsense; 'by prophecy' goes, I think, with 'adjudged to die'.

50 One would expect 'Chesterfield', for Grantham nowadays does not look very crooked-at least from the railway. But Fuller in the Worthies quotes this as a proverb. Some take it as referring to the height and slenderness of the steeple and an optical illusion. They might quote 'The high masts flickered as they lay afloat'. But few travellers had the excuse of Iphigenia.

*On I. W. A. B. of York.

Say, my young sophister, what think'st of this?

Chimera's real, Ergo falleris.

The lamb and tiger, fox and goose agree

And here concorp'rate in one prodigy.

Call an Haruspex quickly: let him get

Sulphur and torches, and a laurel wet,

To purify the place: for sure the harms

This monster will produce transcend his charms.-

'Tis Nature's masterpiece of Error, this,

10And redeems whatever she did amiss

Before, from wonder and reproach, this last

Legitimateth all her by-blows past.

Lo! here a general Metropolitan,

And arch-prelatic Presbyterian!

Behold his pious garbs, canonic face,

A zealous Episcopo-mastix Grace-

A fair blue-apron'd priest, a Lawn-sleeved brother,

One leg a pulpit holds, a tub the other.

Let 's give him a fit name now if we can,

20And make th' Apostate once more Christian.

'Proteus' we cannot call him: he put on

His change of shapes by a succession,

Nor 'the Welsh weather-cock', for that we find

At once doth only wait upon the wind.

These speak him not: but if you'll name him right,

Call him Religion's Hermaphrodite.

His head i' the sanctified mould is cast,

Yet sticks th'abominable mitre fast.

He still retains the 'Lordship' and the 'Grace',

30And yet hath got a reverend elder's place.

Such acts must needs be his, who did devise

By crying altars down to sacrifice

To private malice; where you might have seen

His conscience holocausted to his spleen.

Unhappy Church! the viper that did share

Thy greatest honours, helps to make thee bare,

And void of all thy dignities and store.

Alas! thine own son proves the forest boar,

And, like the dam-destroying cuckoo, he,

40When the thick shell of his Welsh pedigree

By thy warm fostering bounty did divide

And open-straight thence sprung forth parricide:

As if 'twas just revenge should be dispatched

In thee, by th' monster which thyself hadst hatched.

Despair not though, in Wales there may be got,

As well as Lincolnshire, an antidote

'Gainst the foul'st venom he can spit, though 's head

Were changed from subtle grey to pois'nous red.

Heaven with propitious eyes will look upon

50Our party, now the curséd thing is gone;

And chastise Rebels who nought else did miss

To fill the measure of their sins, but his-

Whose foul imparalleled apostasy,

Like to his sacred character, shall be

Indelible. When ages, then of late

More happy grown, with most impartial fate

A period to his days and time shall give,

He by such Epitaphs as this shall live.

Here York's great Metropolitan is laid,

60Who God's Anointed, and His Church, betrayed.

On I. W. A. B. of York. (1647.) This vigorous onslaught on the trimmer John Williams, Archbishop of York, who began public life as a tool of Buckingham's and ended it as a kind of tolerated half-deserter to the Parliament, was turned out by the 'Vindicators' in 1677. There may, however, have been reasons for this, other than certain spuriousness. Williams, though driven to doubtful conduct by his enmity with Laud, never called himself anything but a Royalist, was imprisoned as such, and is said to have died of grief (perhaps of compunction) at the King's execution. Also both Lake and Drake were Yorkshire men. The piece is vigorous, if not quite Clevelandish in the presence of some enjambment, and the absence of extravagant conceit.

2 falleris] In advancing the general observation that 'twy-natured is no nature'.

10 whatever] Perhaps we should read 'whatsoe'er'.

15 'garb' 1653.

16 A parody of course on Prynne's Histrio-mastix.

21 'he' = Proteus. Williams went right over.

23 Williams was very popular with his fellow provincials. He took refuge in Wales when the war broke out, and was made a sort of mediator by the Welsh after Naseby.

26 'Religion's' 1647; 'Religious' 1651, 1653.

27 1651, 1653, 'I' th'': but here, as often, the apostrophation ruins the verse.

30 'hath' 1653: 'has' 1647, 1651.

32 Williams had been chairman of the Committee 'to consider innovations' in 1641. His private malice was to Laud.

46 I am not certain of the meaning. But Lincolnshire (at least Lindsey) was strongly Royalist early in the war till Cromwell's successes at Grantham, Lea Moor, and Winceby in 1643.

53 1647, 1651 'unparalleled'.

Mark Antony.

When as the nightingale chanted her vespers,

And the wild forester couched on the ground,

Venus invited me in th' evening whispers

Unto a fragrant field with roses crowned,

Where she before had sent

My wishes' compliment;

Unto my heart's content

Played with me on the green.

Never Mark Antony

10Dallied more wantonly

With the fair Egyptian Queen.

First on her cherry cheeks I mine eyes feasted,

Thence fear of surfeiting made me retire;

Next on her warmer lips, which, when I tasted,

My duller spirits made active as fire.

Then we began to dart,

Each at another's heart,

Arrows that knew no smart,

Sweet lips and smiles between.

20Never Mark, &c.

Wanting a glass to plait her amber tresses

Which like a bracelet rich deckéd mine arm,

Gaudier than Juno wears when as she graces

Jove with embraces more stately than warm,

Then did she peep in mine

Eyes' humour crystalline;

I in her eyes was seen

As if we one had been.

Never Mark, &c.

30Mystical grammar of amorous glances;

Feeling of pulses, the physic of love;

Rhetorical courtings and musical dances;

Numbering of kisses arithmetic prove;

Eyes like astronomy;

Straight-limbed geometry;

In her art's ingeny

Our wits were sharp and keen.

Never Mark Antony

Dallied more wantonly

With the fair Egyptian Queen.

Mark Antony. The unusual prosodic interest of this piece, and its companion, has been explained in the Introduction. The pair appeared first in 1647 (3rd), where they follow The Character of a London Diurnal and precede the Poems.

14 'warmer' some copies of 1653: 1647, 1651 'warm'. Cf. 'bluer' in the 'Mock Song', l. 14 (below).

15 1677, &c. 'made me active'-a bad blunder.

35 'Straight limb' 1647.

36 'art's' is 1677 for 'heart's' in 1647, 1651, 1653. I rather prefer it, but with some doubts.

37 1677, &c. emends by substituting 'were' for 1647, 1651, 1653 'are'.

The Author's Mock Song to Mark Antony.

When as the night-raven sung Pluto's matins

And Cerberus cried three amens at a howl,

When night-wandering witches put on their pattens,

Midnight as dark as their faces are foul;

Then did the furies doom

That the nightmare was come.

Such a misshapen groom

Puts down Su. Pomfret clean.

Never did incubus

10Touch such a filthy sus

As this foul gypsy quean.

First on her gooseberry cheeks I mine eyes blasted,

Thence fear of vomiting made me retire

Unto her bluer lips, which when I tasted,

My spirits were duller than Dun in the mire.

But then her breath took place

Which went an usher's pace

And made way for her face!

You may guess what I mean.

20Never did, &c.

Like snakes engendering were platted her tresses,

Or like the slimy streaks of ropy ale;

Uglier than Envy wears, when she confesses

Her head is periwigged with adder's tail.

But as soon as she spake

I heard a harsh mandrake.

Laugh not at my mistake,

Her head is epicene.

Never did, &c.

30Mystical magic of conjuring wrinkles;

Feeling of pulses, the palmistry of hags;

Scolding out belches for rhetoric twinkles;

With three teeth in her head like to three gags;

Rainbows about her eyes

And her nose, weather-wise;

From them the almanac lies,

Frost, Pond, and Rivers clean.

Never did incubus

Touch such a filthy sus

40As this foul gypsy quean.

The Author's Mock Song. In 1647 this runs on as a continuation of 'Mark Anthony'.

1 1677 putidissime 'nightingale', as in the preceding poem. 'Night-raven' 1647, 1651, 1653 is certainly right. Mr. Berdan's copy seems to have 'But as', which I rather like; but mine has 'When'.

2 howl] hole 1647.

16 1677 'when', not impossibly.

21 platted] placed 1647.

22 1647, 1651 'the': omitted in 1653: 'to' inserted in 1677.

37 Cf. A Young Man, &c., l. 13.

How the Commencement grows new.

It is no coranto-news I undertake;

New teacher of the town I mean not to make;

No New England voyage my Muse does intend;

No new fleet, no bold fleet, nor bonny fleet send.

But, if you'll be pleased to hear out this ditty,

I'll tell you some news as true and as witty,

And how the Commencement grows new.

See how the simony doctors abound,

All crowding to throw away forty pound.

10They'll now in their wives' stammel petticoats vapour

Without any need of an argument draper.

Beholding to none, he neither beseeches

This friend for venison nor t'other for speeches,

And so the Commencement grows new.

Every twice a day teaching gaffer

Brings up his Easter-book to chaffer;

Nay, some take degrees who never had steeple,-

Whose means, like degrees, comes from placets of people.

They come to the fair and, at the first pluck,

20The toll-man Barnaby strikes 'um good luck,

And so the Commencement grows new.

The country parsons come not up

On Tuesday night in their old College to sup;

Their bellies and table-books equally full,

The next lecture-dinner their notes forth to pull;

How bravely the Margaret Professor disputed,

The homilies urged, and the school-men confuted;

And so the Commencement grows new.

The inceptor brings not his father the clown

30To look with his mouth at his grogoram gown;

With like admiration to eat roasted beef,

Which invention posed his beyond-Trent belief;

Who should he but hear our organs once sound,

Could scarce keep his hoof from Sellenger's round,

And so the Commencement grows new.

The gentleman comes not to show us his satin,

To look with some judgment at him that speaks Latin,

To be angry with him that marks not his clothes,

To answer 'O Lord, Sir' and talk play-book oaths,

40And at the next bear-baiting (full of his sack)

To tell his comrades our discipline's slack;

And so the Commencement grows new.

We have no prevaricator's wit.

Ay, marry sir, when have you had any yet?

Besides no serious Oxford man comes

To cry down the use of jesting and hums.

Our ballad (believe 't) is no stranger than true;

Mum Salter is sober, and Jack Martin too,

And so the Commencement grows new.

How the Commencement, &c., belongs to the same group as the Mark Antony poems and Square-Cap, and there is the same ambiguity between four anapaests and five iambs. You would certainly take line 1 as it stands in 1677 with ''Tis' for 'It is', and probably as it stands here, for a heroic if line 2 did not come to undeceive you. And this line 2 is bad as either.

First printed in 1653. MS. copies are found in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 147, pp. 48-9, and Tanner MS. 465, fol. 83, of the Bodleian. Neither copy is good, but each helps to restore the text (see ll. 18 and 38). The Tanner MS. also has on fol. 44 an indignant poem 'Upon Mr. Cl. who made a Song against the DDrs', beginning

Leave off, vain Satirist, and do not think,

To stain our reverend purple with thy ink.

It adds the interesting evidence that the poem became a popular song at Cambridge:

Must gitterns now and fiddles be made fit,

Be tuned and keyed to sweake [?squeak] a Johnian wit?

Must now thy poems be made fidlers' notes,

Puffed with Tobacco through their sooty throats?

. . . . . . . . . .

Are thy strong lines and mighty cart-rope things

Now spun so small, they'll twist on fiddle strings?

Canst thou prove Ballad-poet of the times?

Can thy proud fancy stoop to penny rimes?

(This latter information, as to MSS., is Mr. Simpson's.)

5 out] but 1653.

9 forty pound] Still the regular doctorate fee, though relatively three or four times heavier then than now.

10 stammel] Properly a stuff; but, as generally or often red in colour, the colour itself.

11 I am not certain of the meaning of this line though I could conjecture.

13 nor t'other for speeches] MS. 'that for his breeches'.

15 1677 inserts 'the' before 'teaching', but the absence of the article is much more characteristic.

18 The 'Vindicators', in the new bondage of grammar, 'come'.

Placets] both MSS.: places 1653: placers 1677. 'Placets', evidently right, would baffle a non-university printer; probably the editors of 1677 attempted to correct it, but were again baffled by the printer.

22 1677 'they do not come up'-a natural but unnecessary patching of the line.

23 old] 1677 own-less well, I think.

Both MSS. read in ll. 22-3:

The country parson cometh not up,

Till Tuesday night in his old College to sup.

26 'Margeret' 1653: Marg'ret' 1677.

29 inceptor] = 'M.A. to be'.

30 'o' of 'grog[o]ram' usually omitted, but both 1653 and 1677 have it here.

32 The North usually salting and boiling its beef?

38 Tanner MS. has the metrical punctuation 'To be'angry' found occasionally in texts of the time: 'marks' Tanner MS., all the texts have 'makes'.

40 at the next bear-baiting] in his next company MSS.

44 1653 'we' for 'you', less pointedly, I think.

45 Cleveland lived to think better of Oxford-at least to take refuge and be warmly welcomed there. There has probably been no time at which either University was not convinced that the other, whatever its merits, could not see a joke.

48 1665 (not a very good edition) and the MSS. read 'Mun', which was of course the usual short for Edmund. But 'Mum' in the context is appropriate enough and generally read.

The intense Cambridge flavour of this seems to require special comment by a Cambridge man. For the duties of the 'Prevaricator' refer to Peacock's Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge, 1841 (information kindly furnished by Mr. A. J. Bartholomew).

The Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbyter.

With hair in characters and lugs in text;

With a splay mouth and a nose circumflexed;

With a set ruff of musket-bore that wears

Like cartridges or linen bandoleers

Exhausted of their sulphurous contents

In pulpit fire-works, which that bomball vents;

The Negative and Covenanting Oath,

Like two mustachoes issuing from his mouth;

The bush upon his chin like a carved story,

10In a box-knot cut by the Directory:

Madam's confession hanging at his ear,

Wire-drawn through all the questions, how and where;

Each circumstance so in the hearing felt

That when his ears are cropped he'll count them gelt;

The weeping cassock scared into a jump,

A sign the presbyter's worn to the stump,-

The presbyter, though charmed against mischance

With the divine right of an Ordinance!

If you meet any that do thus attire 'em,

20Stop them, they are the tribe of Adoniram.

What zealous frenzy did the Senate seize,

That tare the Rochet to such rags as these?

Episcopacy minced, reforming Tweed

Hath sent us runts even of her Church's breed,

Lay-interlining clergy, a device

That 's nickname to the stuff called lops and lice.

The beast at wrong end branded, you may trace

The Devil's footsteps in his cloven face;

A face of several parishes and sorts,

30Like to a sergeant shaved at Inns of Courts.

What mean the elders else, those Kirk dragoons,

Made up of ears and ruffs like ducatoons;

That hierarchy of handicrafts begun;

Those New Exchange men of religion?

Sure, they're the antick heads, which placed without

The church, do gape and disembogue a spout.

Like them above the Commons' House, have been

So long without; now both are gotten in.

Then what imperious in the bishop sounds,

40The same the Scotch executor rebounds;

This stating prelacy the classic rout

That spake it often, ere it spake it out.

(So by an abbey's skeleton of late

I heard an echo supererogate

Through imperfection, and the voice restore,

As if she had the hiccough o'er and o'er.)

'Since they our mixed diocesans combine

Thus to ride double in their discipline,

That Paul's shall to the Consistory call

50A Dean and Chapter out of Weavers' Hall,

Each at the ordinance for to assist

With the five thumbs of his groat-changing fist.

Down, Dagon-synod, with thy motley ware,

Whilst we do swagger for the Common Prayer

(That dove-like embassy that wings our sense

To Heaven's gate in shape of innocence)

Pray for the mitred authors, and defy

These demicastors of divinity!

For, when Sir John with Jack-of-all-trades joins,

60His finger 's thicker than the prelates' loins.'

The Hue and Cry. (1653.) 1 'in characters' = in shorthand: 1677 has 'character', wrongly. 'lugs' = ears. 'in text' = in capitals.

Cf. Clievelandi Vindiciae, 1677, p. 122 (Cleveland's letter on a Puritan who had deserted to the Royalists. His officer complained that he had absconded with official money): 'I doubt not, but you will pardon your Man. He hath but transcribed Rebellion, and copied out that Disloyalty in Shorthand, which you have committed in Text.'

6 bomball] A compound of 'bomb' and 'ball'.

20 Adoniram] Byfield, a clerk of the Westminster Assembly whose minutes have been published in modern times. A great ejector of the clergy, who unfortunately did not live long enough to be ejected himself.

26 This stuff does not by any means sound nice.

32 ducatoons] One would take it that the ducatoon had a back view of some one's head; but a passage of Hudibras, and Grey's note on it, have complicated the matter with a story about the Archduke Albert of Austria, which seems to have little if any relevance here.

35 antick heads] = 'gargoyles'.

41 classic] As in Milton. Nor is this the only point in which the two old Christ's men, now on such opposite sides, agree in the 'New Forcers of Conscience' and this piece.

52 1653 great-changing-a mere misprint.

54 do swagger for] 1677 most suspiciously improves to 'are champions for'.

From l. 43 onwards 1653 has the whole in italics, and it is pretty clear that after the first four lines the Echo speaks to the end. The 'Vindicators' do not seem to have seen this, though the absence of the quotes above would not prove it. Professor Case, however, thinks that 'So' refers to what precedes, and that in l. 47 and onwards the author and Echo speaks. It is possible.

The Antiplatonic.

For shame, thou everlasting wooer,

Still saying grace and never falling to her!

Love that 's in contemplation placed

Is Venus drawn but to the waist.

Unless your flame confess its gender,

And your parley cause surrender,

Y' are salamanders of a cold desire

That live untouched amidst the hottest fire.

What though she be a dame of stone,

10The widow of Pygmalion,

As hard and unrelenting she

As the new-crusted Niobe,

Or (what doth more of statue carry)

A nun of the Platonic quarry?

Love melts the rigour which the rocks have bred-

A flint will break upon a feather-bed.

For shame, you pretty female elves,

Cease for to candy up your selves;

No more, you sectaries of the game,

20No more of your calcining flame!

Women commence by Cupid's dart

As a king hunting dubs a hart.

Love's votaries enthral each other's soul,

Till both of them live but upon parole.

Virtue's no more in womankind

But the green-sickness of the mind;

Philosophy (their new delight)

A kind of charcoal appetite.

There 's no sophistry prevails

30Where all-convincing love assails,

But the disputing petticoat will warp,

As skilful gamesters are to seek at sharp.

The soldier, that man of iron,

Whom ribs of horror all environ,

That's strung with wire instead of veins,

In whose embraces you're in chains,

Let a magnetic girl appear,

Straight he turns Cupid's cuirassier.

Love storms his lips, and takes the fortress in,

40For all the bristled turnpikes of his chin.

Since love's artillery then checks

The breastworks of the firmest sex,

Come, let us in affections riot;

Th' are sickly pleasures keep a diet.

Give me a lover bold and free,

Not eunuched with formality,

Like an ambassador that beds a queen

With the nice caution of a sword between.

The Antiplatonic. (1653.) This is a sort of half-way house between Cleveland's burlesques and his serious or semi-serious poems like Fuscara. It is also nearer to Suckling and the graceful-graceless school than most of his things. It is good.

2 The alteration of 1677 'and ne'er fall to her' may be only an example of the tendency to 'regularize' (in this case by the omission of an extra foot). But I confess it seems to me better: for the slight irregularity of the construction replaces that of the line to advantage.

10 I don't know whether the conceit of 'Pygmalion's widow' returning to marble (or ivory) when her husband-lover's embraces ceased is original with Cleveland. If it is, I make him my compliment. There is at any rate no hint of it in Ovid.

18 1677 changed the good old 'for' to 'thus'.

19 sectaries of] = 'heretics in'.

20 This is good: 'calcining flame' is good.

22 'dubs' is said to mean 'stabs', as it certainly means 'strikes'; but this seems to have little or no appropriateness here and to ignore the quaint conceit of 'commence' in its academic meaning. 'Women take their degrees by Cupid's dart: as the fact of being hunted by a king ennobles a hart.' Cupid = the King of Love.

24 'parole' too has a very delectable double meaning. This poem is really full of most excellent differences.

25-9 The lesson of the unregenerate Donne and the never-regenerate Carew.

32 gamesters] = 'fencers'. to seek at sharp] = 'not good at sword-play'.

33 'The sol-di-er'. By the way, did Butler borrow this 'iron' and 'environ' rhyme from Cleveland?

43 The apostrophating mania made 1653 contract to 'let's' and spoil the verse.

44 Th'] here of course = 'they'.

Fuscara, or the Bee Errant.

Nature's confectioner, the bee

(Whose suckets are moist alchemy,

The still of his refining mould

Minting the garden into gold),

Having rifled all the fields

Of what dainties Flora yields,

Ambitious now to take excise

Of a more fragrant paradise,

At my Fuscara's sleeve arrived

10Where all delicious sweets are hived.

The airy freebooter distrains

First on the violets of her veins,

Whose tincture, could it be more pure,

His ravenous kiss had made it bluer.

Here did he sit and essence quaff

Till her coy pulse had beat him off;

That pulse which he that feels may know

Whether the world 's long-lived or no.

The next he preys on is her palm,

20That alm'ner of transpiring balm;

So soft, 'tis air but once removed;

Tender as 'twere a jelly gloved.

Here, while his canting drone-pipe scanned

The mystic figures of her hand,

He tipples palmistry and dines

On all her fortune-telling lines.

He bathes in bliss and finds no odds

Betwixt her nectar and the gods',

He perches now upon her wrist,

30A proper hawk for such a fist,

Making that flesh his bill of fare

Which hungry cannibals would spare;

Where lilies in a lovely brown

Inoculate carnation.

He argent skin with or so streamed

As if the milky way were creamed.

From hence he to the woodbine bends

That quivers at her fingers' ends,

That runs division on the tree

40Like a thick-branching pedigree.

So 'tis not her the bee devours,

It is a pretty maze of flowers;

It is the rose that bleeds, when he

Nibbles his nice phlebotomy.

About her finger he doth cling

I' th' fashion of a wedding-ring,

And bids his comrades of the swarm

Crawl as a bracelet 'bout her arm.

Thus when the hovering publican

50Had sucked the toll of all her span,

Tuning his draughts with drowsy hums

As Danes carouse by kettle-drums,

It was decreed, that posie gleaned,

The small familiar should be weaned.

At this the errant's courage quails;

Yet aided by his native sails

The bold Columbus still designs

To find her undiscovered mines.

To th' Indies of her arm he flies,

60Fraught both with east and western prize;

Which when he had in vain essayed,

Armed like a dapper lancepresade

With Spanish pike, he broached a pore

And so both made and healed the sore:

For as in gummy trees there 's found

A salve to issue at the wound,

Of this her breach the like was true:

Hence trickled out a balsam, too.

But oh, what wasp was 't that could prove

70Ravaillac to my Queen of Love!

The King of Bees now 's jealous grown

Lest her beams should melt his throne,

And finding that his tribute slacks,

His burgesses and state of wax

Turned to a hospital, the combs

Built rank-and-file like beadsmen's rooms,

And what they bleed but tart and sour

Matched with my Danae's golden shower,

Live-honey all,-the envious elf

80Stung her, 'cause sweeter than himself.

Sweetness and she are so allied

The bee committed parricide.

Fuscara. (1651.) Cleveland's most famous poem of the amatory, as The Rebel Scot is of the political, kind. In 1677 and since it has been set in the forefront of his Poems, and Johnson draws specially on it for his famous diatribe against the metaphysicals in the 'Life of Cowley'. It seems to me inferior both to The Muses' Festival and to The Antiplatonic, and, as was said in the Introduction, it betrays, to me, something of an intention to fool the lovers of a fashionable style to the top of their bent. But it has extremely pretty things in it; and Mr. Addison, who denounced and scorned 'false wit', never 'fair-sexed it' in half so poetical a manner.

2 'Suckets' or 'succades' should need interpretation to no reader of Robinson Crusoe: and no one who has not read Robinson Crusoe deserves to be taken into consideration.

13 tincture] Said to be used here in an alchemical sense for 'gold'. But the plain meaning is much better.

18 Although the sense is not quite the same as, it is much akin to, that of Browning's question-

'Who knows but the world may end to night?'

20 Cleveland of course uses the correct and not the modern and blundering sense of 'transpire'.

22 This 'jelly gloved' is not like 'mobled queen' or 'calcining flame'.

25-6 1653 and its group have a queer misprint (carried out so as to rhyme, but hardly possible as a true reading) of 'dives' and 'lives'. If they had had 'In' instead of 'On' it would have been on the (metaphysical) cards, especially with 'bathes' following.

28 1653, less well, 'the nectar'.

30 Neat, i' faith!

33 'a lovely brown' as being Fuscara.

35 Here Cleveland dares his 'ill armoury again'; v. sup., p. 25. 'He' 1651, 1653: 'Her' 1677.

48 as] 1677, unnecessarily, 'like'. Some (baddish) editions 'on a bracelet'.

52 Hardly necessary to notice as another of Cleveland's Shakespearian touches.

62 The correcter form is 'lancepesade'.

70 'Ratillias' 1651: 'Ratilias' 1653: corrected in 1677.

71 1677, dropping the verb from 'now's', improves the sense very much.

*An Elegy upon Doctor Chad[d]erton, the first Master

of Emanuel College in Cambridge, being above

an hundred years old when he died.

(Occasioned by his long-deferred funeral.)

Pardon, dear Saint, that we so late

With lazy sighs bemoan thy fate,

And with an after-shower of verse

And tears, we thus bedew thy hearse.

Till now, alas! we did not weep,

Because we thought thou didst but sleep.

Thou liv'dst so long we did not know

Whether thou couldst now die or no.

We looked still when thou shouldst arise

10And ope the casements of thine eyes.

Thy feet, which have been used so long

To walk, we thought, must still go on.

Thine ears, after a hundred year,

Might now plead custom for to hear.

Upon thy head that reverend snow

Did dwell some fifty years ago:

And then thy cheeks did seem to have

The sad resemblance of a grave.

Wert thou e'er young? For truth I hold

20And do believe thou wert born old.

There 's none alive, I'm sure, can say

They knew thee young, but always grey.

And dost thou now, venerable oak,

Decline at Death's unhappy stroke?

Tell me, dear son, why didst thou die

And leave 's to write an elegy?

We're young, alas! and know thee not.

Send up old Abram and grave Lot.

Let them write thy Epitaph and tell

30The world thy worth; they kenned thee well.

When they were boys, they heard thee preach

And thought an angel did them teach.

Awake them then: and let them come

And score thy virtues on thy tomb,

That we at those may wonder more

Than at thy many years before.

An Elegy, &c. This and the following piece are among the disputed poems, but as they occur in 1653 I give them, with warning and asterisked. The D.N.B. allows (with a ?) 104 years (1536?-1640) to Chadderton. As the first Master of the House of pure Emmanuel he might be supposed unlikely to extract a tear from Cleveland. But he had resigned his Mastership nearly twenty years before his death, and that death occurred before the troubles became insanabile vulnus. There is nothing to require special annotation in it, or indeed in either, though in Doctor Chadderton, l. 23, one may safely guess that either 'thou' or 'now' is an intrusion; in l. 25 of the same that 'son' should be 'sir', 'sire', 'saint', &c.; and in l. 29 that 'th' Epitaph' is likelier.

*Mary's Spikenard.

Shall I presume,

Without perfume,

My Christ to meet

That is all sweet?

No! I'll make most pleasant posies,

Catch the breath of new-blown roses,

Top the pretty merry flowers,

Which laugh in the fairest bowers,

Whose sweetness Heaven likes so well,

10It stoops each morn to take a smell.

Then I'll fetch from the Ph?nix' nest

The richest spices and the best,

Precious ointments I will make;

Holy Myrrh and aloes take,

Yea, costly Spikenard in whose smell

The sweetness of all odours dwell.

I'll get a box to keep it in,

Pure as his alabaster skin:

And then to him I'll nimbly fly

20Before one sickly minute die.

This box I'll break, and on his head

This precious ointment will I spread,

Till ev'ry lock and ev'ry hair

For sweetness with his breath compare:

But sure the odour of his skin

Smells sweeter than the spice I bring.

Then with bended knee I'll greet

His holy and belovéd feet;

I'll wash them with a weeping eye,

30And then my lips shall kiss them dry;

Or for a towel he shall have

My hair-such flax as nature gave.

But if my wanton locks be bold,

And on Thy sacred feet take hold,

And curl themselves about, as though

They were loath to let thee go,

O chide them not, and bid away,

For then for grief they will grow grey.

Mary's Spikenard (1652) of course suggests Crashaw; and yet when one reads it the thought must surely occur, 'How differently Crashaw would have done it!' I do not think either is Cleveland's, though the odd string of unrelated conceits in the Chadderton piece is not unlike him. In the other there is nothing like his usual style; but it is very pretty, and I will not say he could not have done it as an exception. But in that case it is a pity he did not make it a rule.

To Julia to expedite her Promise.

Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve,

Why this reprieve?

Why doth my she-advowson fly

Incumbency?

Panting expectance makes us prove

The antics of benighted love,

And withered mates when wedlock joins,

They're Hymen's monkeys, which he ties by th' loins

To play, alas! but at rebated foins.

10To sell thyself dost thou intend

By candle end,

And hold the contract thus in doubt,

Life's taper out?

Think but how soon the market fails;

Your sex lives faster than the males;

As if, to measure age's span,

The sober Julian were th' account of man,

Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.

Now since you bear a date so short,

20Live double for 't.

How can thy fortress ever stand

If 't be not manned?

The siege so gains upon the place

Thou'lt find the trenches in thy face.

Pity thyself then if not me,

And hold not out, lest like Ostend thou be

Nothing but rubbish at delivery.

The candidates of Peter's chair

Must plead grey hair,

30And use the simony of a cough

To help them off.

But when I woo, thus old and spent,

I'll wed by will and testament.

No, let us love while crisped and curled;

The greatest honours, on the agéd hurled,

Are but gay furloughs for another world.

To-morrow what thou tenderest me

Is legacy.

Not one of all those ravenous hours

40But thee devours.

And though thou still recruited be,

Like Pelops, with soft ivory,

Though thou consume but to renew,

Yet Love as lord doth claim a heriot due;

That 's the best quick thing I can find of you.

I feel thou art consenting ripe

By that soft gripe,

And those regealing crystal spheres.

I hold thy tears

50Pledges of more distilling sweets,

The bath that ushers in the sheets.

Else pious Julia, angel-wise,

Moves the Bethesda of her trickling eyes

To cure the spital world of maladies.

To Julia, &c. Johnson singled out the opening verse of this as a special example of 'bringing remote ideas together'.

1 'Shrieve' of course = 'Sheriff'.

3-4 'advowson' (again of course, but these things get curiously mistaken nowadays) = 'right of presenting to or enjoying a benefice'. 'Incumbency' = 'the actual occupation or enjoyment'. Cf. Square-Cap, ll. 37-8.

9 rebated] The opposite of 'unbated' in Hamlet-with the button on.

11 Mr. Pepys on November 6, 1660, watched this process (which was specially used in ship-selling) for the first time and with interest. 'candle' 1653: 'candle's' 1677.

17-18 Not a very happy 'conceiting' of the fact that in a millennium and a half the Julian reckoning had got ten days behindhand.

27 The siege of Ostend (1601-4) lasted three years and seventy-seven days.

34 Did a far greater Cambridge poet think of this in writing

'When the locks are crisp and curl'd?'

(The Vision of Sin.)

48 regealing] Cleveland seems to use this unusual word in the sense of 'unfreezing'.

51 1677 spoils sense and verse alike by beginning the line with 'Than'. The 'tears' are the 'bath'.

Poems in 1677 but not in 1653.

Upon Princess Elizabeth, born the night before New Year's Day.

Astrologers say Venus, the self-same star,

Is both our Hesperus and Lucifer;

The antitype, this Venus, makes it true;

She shuts the old year and begins the new.

Her brother with a star at noon was born;

She, like a star both of the eve and morn.

Count o'er the stars, fair Queen, in babes, and vie

With every year a new Epiphany.

Upon Princess Elizabeth. Not before 1677. This slight thing is inaccurately entitled, for the Princess was born on December 26, 1638.

1 The rhyme of 'star' and 'Lucifer', which occurs (with 'traveller') in Dryden, is-like all Cleveland's rhymes, I think without exception-perfectly sound on the general principle then observed, and observed partly at all times, that a vowel may, for rhyming purposes, take the sound that it has in a similar connexion but in another word.

5 brother] Charles II.

The General Eclipse.

Ladies that gild the glittering noon,

And by reflection mend his ray,

Whose beauty makes the sprightly sun

To dance as upon Easter-day,

What are you now the Queen 's away?

Courageous Eagles, who have whet

Your eyes upon majestic light,

And thence derived such martial heat

That still your looks maintain the fight,

10What are you since the King's good-night?

Cavalier-buds, whom Nature teems

As a reserve for England's throne,

Spirits whose double edge redeems

The last Age and adorns your own,

What are you now the Prince is gone?

As an obstructed fountain's head

Cuts the entail off from the streams,

And brooks are disinherited,

Honour and Beauty are mere dreams

20Since Charles and Mary lost their beams!

Criminal Valours, who commit

Your gallantry, whose paean brings

A psalm of mercy after it,

In this sad solstice of the King's,

Your victory hath mewed her wings!

See, how your soldier wears his cage

Of iron like the captive Turk,

And as the guerdon of his rage!

See, how your glimmering Peers do lurk,

30Or at the best, work journey-work!

Thus 'tis a general eclipse,

And the whole world is al-a-mort;

Only the House of Commons trips

The stage in a triumphant sort.

Now e'en John Lilburn take 'em for't!

The General Eclipse. The poem is of course a sort of variation or scherzo on 'You meaner beauties of the night'.

20 We are so accustomed to the double name 'Henrietta Maria' that the simple 'Queen Mary' may seem strange. But it was the Cavalier word at Naseby.

32 al-a-mort] Formerly quite naturalized, especially in the form all-amort. See N.E.D., s.v. 'Alamort'.

Upon the King's Return from Scotland.

Returned, I'll ne'er believe 't; first prove him hence;

Kings travel by their beams and influence.

Who says the soul gives out her gests, or goes

A flitting progress 'twixt the head and toes?

She rules by omnipresence, and shall we

Deny a prince the same ubiquity?

Or grant he went, and, 'cause the knot was slack,

Girt both the nations with his zodiac,

Yet as the tree at once both upward shoots,

10And just as much grows downward to the roots,

So at the same time that he posted thither

By counter-stages he rebounded hither.

Hither and hence at once; thus every sphere

Doth by a double motion interfere;

And when his native form inclines him east,

By the first mover he is ravished west.

Have you not seen how the divided dam

Runs to the summons of her hungry lamb;

But when the twin cries halves, she quits the first?

20Nature's commendam must be likewise nursed.

So were his journeys like the spider spun

Out of his bowels of compassion.

Two realms, like Cacus, so his steps transpose,

His feet still contradict him as he goes.

England 's returned that was a banished soil.

The bullet flying makes the gun recoil.

Death 's but a separation, though endorsed

With spade and javelin; we were thus divorced.

Our soul hath taken wing while we express

30The corpse, returning to our principles.

But the Crab-tropic must not now prevail;

Islands go back but when you're under sail.

So his retreat hath rectified that wrong;

Backward is forward in the Hebrew tongue.

Now the Church Militant in plenty rests,

Nor fears, like th' Amazon, to lose her breasts.

Her means are safe; not squeezed until the blood

Mix with the milk and choke the tender brood.

She, that hath been the floating ark, is that

40She that 's now seated on Mount Ararat.

Quits Charles; our souls did guard him northward thus

Now he the counterpart comes south to us.

Upon the King's Return, &c. In 1641-an ill-omened and unsuccessful journey, which lasted from August to November. The piece is one of the very few of those in Cleaveland Revived acknowledged and admitted by Clievelandi Vindiciae.

3 1659 'ghests'; 1662, 1668 'guests'; 1677 'gests'. See N.E.D., s.v. 'gest' sb.4. which defines it as 'the various stages of a journey, especially of a royal progress; the route followed or planned'.

20 commendam] (misprinted '-dum' from 1659 to 1677). A benefice held with another; something additional.

21: 'spider' 1677; 'spider's' 1659, 1662, 1668.

25 'banished' 1677: 'barren' 1659, 1662, 1668.

30 In this very obscure and ultra-Clevelandian line 1677 reads 'their'. I think 'our'-the reading of Cleaveland Revived, followed by 1662 and 1668-is better. But the whole poem (one of Cleveland's earliest political attempts) is weak and pithless.

33 'that' 1687: 'the' 1659, 1662, 1668.

42 'counterpart' 1677: 'counterpane' 1659, 1662, 1668.

Poems certainly or almost certainly Cleveland's but not included in 1653 or 1677.

Poems, &c. I have been exceedingly chary of admission under this head, for there seems to me to be no reasonable via media between such severity and the complete reprinting of 1687-with perhaps the known larcenies in that and its originals left out. Thus, of eleven poems given-but as 'not in 1677'-by Mr. Berdan I have kept but three, besides one or two which, though not in 1677, are in 1653, and so appear above. Of these the Jonson Elegy from Jonsonus Virbius is signed, and as well authenticated as anything can be; News from Newcastle is quoted by Johnson and therefore of importance to students of the Lives. The Elegy upon Charles I is in 1654 among the poems which that collection adds to 1653, is very like him, and relieves Cleveland partly, if not wholly, from the charge of being wanting to the greatest occasion of his life and calling.

Poems certainly or almost certainly Cleveland's

but not included in 1653 or 1677.

An Elegy on Ben Jonson.

Who first reformed our stage with justest laws,

And was the first best judge in his own cause;

Who, when his actors trembled for applause,

Could (with a noble confidence) prefer

His own, by right, to a whole theatre;

From principles which he knew could not err:

Who to his fable did his persons fit,

With all the properties of art and wit,

And above all that could be acted, writ:

10Who public follies did to covert drive,

Which he again could cunningly retrive,

Leaving them no ground to rest on and thrive:

Here JONSON lies, whom, had I named before,

In that one word alone I had paid more

Than can be now, when plenty makes me poor.

J. Cl.

An Elegy, &c. Although this appears neither in 1653 nor in 1677, it is included, with some corruptions not worth noting, in some editions both before and after the latter. Gifford ascribed to Cleveland another unsigned Elegy in Jonsonus Virbius and one of the Odes to Ben Jonson on his own Ode to himself, 'Come, quit the loathèd stage'. There is no authority for the ascription in either case, and the styles of both pieces are as unlike as possible to Cleveland's.

2 Orig., by a slip, 'your own cause'. Cleveland may have meant to address the poet throughout, or till the last verse; but, if so, he evidently changed his mind.

News from Newcastle:

Upon the Coal-pits about Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

England 's a perfect world, has Indies too;

Correct your maps, Newcastle is Peru!

Let th' haughty Spaniard triumph till 'tis told

Our sooty min'rals purify his gold.

This will sublime and hatch the abortive ore,

When the sun tires and stars can do no more.

No! mines are current, unrefined, and gross;

Coals make the sterling, Nature but the dross.

For metals, Bacchus-like, two births approve;

10Heaven's heat 's the Semele, and ours the Jove.

Thus Art doth polish Nature; 'tis her trade:

So every madam has her chambermaid.

Who'd dote on gold? A thing so strange and odd,

'Tis most contemptible when made a god!

All sins and mischiefs thence have rise and swell;

One Indies more would make another Hell.

Our mines are innocent, nor will the North

Tempt poor mortality with too much worth.

Th' are not so precious; rich enough to fire

20A lover, yet make none idolater.

The moderate value of our guiltless ore

Makes no man atheist, nor no woman whore.

Yet why should hallowed Vesta's glowing shrine

Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?

These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,

Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire

No sun, but warm 's devotion at our fire.

He'd leave the trotting Whipster, and prefer

30This profound Vulcan 'bove that Wagoner.

For wants he heat, or light? would he have store

Of both? 'Tis here. And what can suns give more?

Nay, what 's that sun but, in a different name,

A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame?

Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The sun 's Heaven's coalery, and coals our sun;

A sun that scorches not, locked up i' th' deep;

The bandog 's chained, the lion is asleep.

That tyrant fire, which uncontrolled doth rage,

40Here 's calm and hushed, like Bajazet i' th' cage.

For in each coal-pit there doth couchant dwell

A muzzled Etna, or an innocent Hell.

Kindle the cloud, you'll lightning then descry;

Then will a day break from the gloomy sky;

Then you'll unbutton though December blow,

And sweat i' th' midst of icicles and snow;

The dog-days then at Christmas. Thus is all

The year made June and equinoctial.

If heat offend, our pits afford us shade,

50Thus summer 's winter, winter 's summer made.

What need we baths, what need we bower or grove?

A coal-pit's both a ventiduct and stove.

Such pits and caves were palaces of old;

Poor inns, God wot, yet in an age of gold;

And what would now be thought a strange design,

To build a house was then to undermine.

People lived under ground, and happy dwellers

Whose jovial habitations were all cellars!

These primitive times were innocent, for then

60Man, who turned after fox, but made his den.

But see a fleet of rivals trim and fine,

To court the rich infanta of our mine;

Hundreds of grim Leanders dare confront,

For this loved Hero, the loud Hellespont.

'Tis an armado royal doth engage

For some new Helen with this equipage;

Prepared too, should we their addresses bar,

To force their mistress with a ten years' war,

But that our mine 's a common good, a joy

70Made not to ruin but enrich our Troy.

Thus went those gallant heroes of old Greece,

The Argonauts, in quest o' th' Golden Fleece.

But oh! these bring it with 'em and conspire

To pawn that idol for our smoke and fire.

Silver 's but ballast; this they bring ashore

That they may treasure up our better ore.

For this they venter rocks and storms, defy

All the extremities of sea and sky.

For the glad purchase of this precious mould,

80Cowards dare pirates, misers part with gold.

Hence 'tis that when the doubtful ship sets forth

The knowing needle still directs it north,

And Nature's secret wonder, to attest

Our Indies' worth, discards both east and west.

For 'tis not only fire commends this spring,

A coal-pit is a mine of everything.

We sink a jack-of-all-trades shop, and sound

An inversed Burse, an Exchange under ground.

This Proteus earth converts to what you'd ha' 't:

90Now you may weave 't to silk, then coin 't to plate,

And, what 's a metamorphosis more dear,

Dissolve it and 'twill melt to London beer.

For whatsoe'er that gaudy city boasts,

Each month derives to these attractive coasts.

We shall exhaust their chamber and devour

Their treasures of Guildhall, the Mint, the Tower.

Our staiths their mortgaged streets will soon divide,

Blathon owe Cornhill, Stella share Cheapside.

Thus will our coal-pits' charity and pity

100At distance undermine and fire the City.

Should we exact, they'd pawn their wives and treat

To swap those coolers for our sovereign heat.

'Bove kisses and embraces fire controls;

No Venus heightens like a peck of coals.

Medea was the drudge of some old sire

And Aeson's bath a lusty sea-coal fire.

Chimneys are old men's mistresses, their inns,

A modern dalliance with their measled shins.

To all defects the coal-heap brings a cure,

110Gives life to age and raiment to the poor.

Pride first wore clothes; Nature disdains attire;

She made us naked 'cause she gave us fire.

Full wharfs are wardrobes, and the tailor's charm

Belongs to th' collier; he must keep us warm.

The quilted alderman with all 's array

Finds but cold comfort on a frosty day;

Girt, wrapped, and muffled, yet with all that stir

Scarce warm when smoth'red in his drowsy fur;

Not proof against keen Winter's batteries

120Should he himself wear all 's own liveries,

But chilblains under silver spurs bewails

And in embroid'red buckskins blows his nails.

Rich meadows and full crops are elsewhere found:

We can reap harvest from our barren ground.

The bald parched hills that circumscribe our Tyne

Are no less fruitful in their hungry mine.

Their unfledged tops so well content our palates,

We envy none their nosegays and their sallets.

A gay rank soil like a young gallant grows

130And spends itself that it may wear fine clothes,

Whilst all its worth is to its back confined.

Our wear 's plain outside, but is richly lined;

Winter 's above, 'tis summer underneath,

A trusty morglay in a rusty sheath.

As precious sables sometimes interlace

A wretched serge or grogram cassock case.

Rocks own no spring, are pregnant with no showers,

Crystals and gems grow there instead of flowers;

Instead of roses, beds of rubies sweat

140And emeralds recompense the violet.

Dame Nature not, like other madams, wears,

Where she is bare, pearls on her breasts or ears.

What though our fields present a naked sight?

A paradise should be an adamite.

The northern lad his bonny lass throws down

And gives her a black bag for a green gown.

News from Newcastle, if not Cleveland's, is infinitely more of a Clevelandism than any other attributed piece, either in the untrustworthy (or rather upside-down-trustworthy) Cleaveland Revived or elsewhere. It first appeared as a quarto pamphlet, 'London. Printed in the year 1651. By William Ellis', and with a headline to the poem 'Upon the Coalpits about Newcastle-upon-Tyne'. This quarto furnishes the only sound text. It was reprinted very corruptly in Cleaveland Revived, 1660, and thence in the editions of 1662, 1668, 1687, and later. A collation of 1660 is given. Title in 1660 'News from Newcastle, Or, Newcastle Coal-pits'. MS. Rawlinson Poet, 65 of the Bodleian has a version agreeing in the main with 1660.

1 has] hath 1660, MS.

5 'obortive' 1668.

7 1651, later texts, and MS. 'No mines', which has no meaning without a stop or interjection.

8 'nature's' MS.

10 'Heaven heats' 1660. The mine is the womb of Semele warmed by the sun: the furnace the thigh of Jove heated by coal.

11 her] the 1660: its MS.

12 has] hath 1660, MS.

15 'sin and mischief hence' 1660: 'sin and mischief thence' MS.

16 Indies] India 1660.

17 mines] times MS.

19 1660 'so': 1651 'too', unconsciously repeating the 'too much' of l. 18.

20 none] no MS.

22 Simply an adaptation of the earlier conclusion-

'Should make men atheists and not women whores'.

23 Vesta's glowing] Vestals' sacred 1660. shrine] shine MS.

29 trotting Whipster] Phoebus, of course.

30 This] Our 1660, MS.

31 light? would he] light, or would 1660. store] Misprinted 'more' in 1651.

32 suns] Sun MS.

33 that] the 1660.

34 on flame] or flame 1660.

36 coalery] Original and pleasing. 'Collier' is used below.

37 scorches] scorcheth 1660, MS.

38 bandog's] lion's 1660. lion] bandog 1660.

42 or] and MS.

43 the] this MS.

45 'Unbottom,' by evident error, in 1668.

47 Thus] Then MS.

49 'offends' 1660. 'affords' 1660.

60 but made] made but 1660, MS.

61 rivals] vitals 1660.

63 dare] do 1660.

68 their] this 1660, MS.

71-2 Omitted in 1660 and all later texts. 1651 misprints 'Argeuauts'.

73 'em] them 1660, MS.

75 ashore] on shore 1660, MS.

76 better] richer MS.

78 extremities] extremity 1660.

81 'tis that] is it 1660, MS.

82 knowing] naving 1660: knavish MS.

83 wonder] wonders 1660.

84 both] with MS.

85 For 'tis not] For Tyne. Not 1660 (without the period at l. 84), MS.

86 of] for 1660.

87 1651 mispunctuates with a comma at 'sink'; 1660 adds comma at 'jack-of-all-trades' and 'sound': MS. punctuates correctly.

88 inversed] inverse 1660.

89 you'd] you'l 1660.

90 weave 't] wear't 1660. then] now 1660. coin 't] com't 1660.

91 And] Or MS.

92 melt] turn 1660, MS.

93 boasts] boast 1660.

94 derives] doth drive 1660, MS. these] our 1660, MS. coasts] coast 1660.

96 treasures] treasure 1660, MS. the Mint, the] and mint o' th' 1660, MS.

97 staiths] Wooden erections projecting into the river, which were used to store the coal and fitted with spouts for shooting it into the ships. divide] deride 1660.

98 'Blathon their Cornhill, Stella' MS: 'Blazon their Cornhill-stella,' 1660.] Blathon, now Blaydon, the mining district. 'owe' = own. 'Stella' Hall, near Blaydon, was a nunnery before the Dissolution, when it passed into the hands of the Tempests. (Mr. Nichol Smith kindly supplied this information.)

102 swap] swop 1660.

105 drudge] drugge 1660, MS.

109 the] a 1659. brings] gives 1660, MS.

110 life] youth 1660.

113 tailor's] sailor's MS.

115 with] in 1660.

116 on] in 1660, MS.

117 that] this 1660.

119 Not] Nor'st MS. 'proof enough' 1651: 'enough' is omitted in 1660, and deleted by a seventeenth-century corrector in the Bodleian copy of 1651.

121 chilblains] chilblain 1660.

126 fruitful] pregnant 1660.

128 and] or MS.

134 Cleveland has used 'morglay', Bevis's sword, as a common noun elsewhere; but of course an imitator might seize on this.

138 grow] are 1660.

139 sweat] sweet 1668, 1687, MS.

142 on] in 1660. or] and 1660. 'breasts, not ears' MS.

145-6 Or as a modern Newcastle song, more decently but less picturesquely, puts it in the lass's own mouth-

'He sits in his hole,

As black as a coal,

And brings the white money to me-O!'

An Elegy upon King Charles the First,

murdered publicly by his Subjects.

Were not my faith buoyed up by sacred blood,

It might be drowned in this prodigious flood;

Which reason's highest ground doth so exceed,

It leaves my soul no anch'rage but my creed;

Where my faith, resting on th' original,

Supports itself in this, the copy's fall.

So while my faith floats on that bloody wood,

My reason 's cast away in this red flood

Which near o'erflows us all. Those showers past

10Made but land-floods, which did some valleys waste.

This stroke hath cut the only neck of land

Which between us and this red sea did stand,

That covers now our world which curséd lies

At once with two of Egypt's prodigies

(O'ercast with darkness and with blood o'errun),

And justly since our hearts have theirs outdone.

Th' enchanter led them to a less known ill

To act his sin, than 'twas their king to kill;

Which crime hath widowed our whole nation,

20Voided all forms, left but privation

In Church and State; inverting every right;

Brought in Hell's state of fire without light.

No wonder then if all good eyes look red,

Washing their loyal hearts from blood so shed;

The which deserves each pore should turn an eye

To weep out even a bloody agony.

Let nought then pass for music but sad cries,

For beauty bloodless cheeks and blood-shot eyes.

All colours soil but black; all odours have

30Ill scent but myrrh, incens'd upon this grave.

It notes a Jew not to believe us much

The cleaner made by a religious touch

Of this dead body, whom to judge to die

Seems the Judaical impiety.

To kill the King, the Spirit Legion paints

His rage with law, the Temple and the saints.

But the truth is, he feared and did repine

To be cast out and back into the swine.

And the case holds, in that the Spirit bends

40His malice in this act against his ends;

For it is like the sooner he'll be sent

Out of that body he would still torment.

Let Christians then use otherwise this blood;

Detest the act, yet turn it to their good;

Thinking how like a King of Death he dies

We easily may the world and death despise.

Death had no sting for him and its sharp arm,

Only of all the troop, meant him no harm.

And so he looked upon the axe as one

50Weapon yet left to guard him to his throne.

In his great name then may his subjects cry,

'Death, thou art swallowed up in victory.'

If this, our loss, a comfort can admit,

'Tis that his narrowed crown is grown unfit

For his enlargéd head, since his distress

Had greatened this, as it made that the less.

His crown was fallen unto too low a thing

For him who was become so great a king.

So the same hands enthroned him in that crown

60They had exalted from him, not pulled down.

And thus God's truth by them hath rendered more

Than e'er man's falsehood promised to restore;

Which, since by death alone he could attain,

Was yet exempt from weakness and from pain.

Death was enjoined by God to touch a part,

Might make his passage quick, ne'er move his heart,

Which even expiring was so far from death

It seemed but to command away his breath.

And thus his soul, of this her triumph proud,

70Broke like a flash of lightning through the cloud

Of flesh and blood; and from the highest line

Of human virtue, passed to be divine.

Nor is 't much less his virtues to relate

Than the high glories of his present state.

Since both, then, pass all acts but of belief,

Silence may praise the one, the other grief.

And since upon the diamond no less

Than diamonds will serve us to impress,

I'll only wish that for his elegy

80This our Josias had a Jeremy.

An Elegy, &c. See above. First printed in Monumentum Regale, 1649, p. 49; then in the 1654 edition of Cleveland.

3 1654, 1657, 1669 'doth'. Other (it is true inferior) texts, such as 1659, 1665, and the successors of 1677, 'do': which any one who has ever read his Pepys must know to be possible in the singular.

33 'this' 1649: 'their' 1653 and later editions.

35: paints = 'tries to disguise'.

Since these sheets were last revised, and when they were ready for press, Mr. Simpson discovered and communicated to me some variants (from Bodley MSS.) of Cleveland's pieces on Chadderton (v. sup. p. 81) and Williams (p. 69). His note is as follows:

"There is a version of the Elegy upon Doctor Chadderton (page 81) in Ashmole MS. 36-7, fol. 263. After l. 14 four lines are inserted:

We thought, for so we would it have,

Thou hadst outlived death and the grave,

Hadst been past dying, and by thine own

Brave virtue been immortal grown.

Not very brilliant, but no one would have any motive for interpolating such lines. Further, ll. 17-18 are omitted.

25 'dear Snt.' i.e. as conjectured in the note, 'Saint.'

30 'Kend' written in a larger hand, with a view to emphasis. Query, a favourite word of Chadderton?

In the same MS. is a version of the poem on Archbishop Williams (p. 69). Most readings are bad, but the following are noteworthy:

4 concorporate one.

11 And vindicate whate'er.

55 when happier ages (which of late

The viper cherish'd) with unpartial fate."

***

POEMS

AND

TRANSLATIONS.

BY

THOMAS STANLEY

Esquire.

Qu? mea culpa tamen, nisi si lusisse vocari

Culpa potest: nisi culpa potest & amasse, vocari?

Tout vient a poinct qui peut attendre.

Printed for the Author,

and his Friends, 1647.

Cover

POEMS,

BY

THOMAS STANLEY

Esquire.

Qu? mea culpa tamen, nisi si lusisse vocari

Culpa potest: nisi culpa potest & amasse, vocari?

Printed in the Year,

Cover

INTRODUCTION TO THOMAS STANLEY

Thomas Stanley, poet, scholar, translator, and historian of philosophy, occupies a position in literary history, and in the general knowledge of fairly instructed people, which is less unenviable than that of Cleveland, almost equally curious, but more distinctly accidental. In a way-in more ways than one-he cannot be said to be exactly unknown. Everybody who has received the once usual 'liberal education', if not directly acquainted with his work on classical literature, has seen his History of Philosophy referred to in later histories; and his notes on Aeschylus quoted, and sometimes fought over, in later editions. His translations have attained a place in that private-adventure Valhalla of English translations-Bohn's Library. A few at least of his poems are in all or most of the anthologies. Not many writers have such an anchor with four flukes, lodged in the general memory, as this. And yet there are probably few people who have any very distinct knowledge or idea of his work as a whole; his Poems (until a time subsequent to the original promise of them in this Collection) had never been issued since his own day save in one of the few-copied reprints of the indefatigable Sir Egerton Brydges; and he makes small figure in most literary histories.

The reasons of this, however, are not very far to seek. For a very considerable time during the later seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century, if not later, Stanley was a recognized authority on history and scholarship: but during this time a philosopher and a scholar would have been usually thought to derogate, strangely and not quite pardonably, by writing and translating love poetry in a style of 'false wit' the most contrary to the precepts of Mr. Addison. We cannot even be sure that Stanley himself would not have been short-sighted enough to feel a certain shame at his harmless fredaines in verse, for he certainly never published or fully collected them at all after he was six and twenty, though he lived to double that age. He seems, moreover, though most forward to help other men of letters, to have been in all other ways a decidedly retiring person-a man of books rather than of affairs. Though an unquestioned Royalist, and not accused of any dishonourable compliance, he seems to have been quite undisturbed during the Civil War, no doubt because of his observation of the precept λ?θε βι?σα?. In short, he took no trouble to keep himself before any public except the public of letters, and the public of letters chose to keep him only in his capacity as scholar.

If, however, he put himself not forward it was not for want of means and opportunity to do so. After some mistakes about his genealogy, it has been made certain that he was descended, though with the bend sinister, from the great house that bears the same name, and through a branch which enriched itself by commerce and settled in Hertfordshire and Essex. His mother was a Hammond of the family which has been referred to in dealing with his uncle the poet (vol. ii), and he was also connected with Sandys, Lovelace, and Sherburne, all of whom were his intimate friends, as were John Hall and Shirley the dramatist. He seems always to have been a man of means: and used them liberally, though less thoughtlessly than Benlowes, in assisting brother men of letters. He is not said to have been at any of the great schools, but his private tutor William Fairfax (son of Edward of Tasso fame) appears to have grounded him thoroughly in scholarship. At thirteen he went to Pembroke College (then Hall), Cambridge, entering in June 1639 and matriculating in December. He is said to have entered at Oxford next year. He was co-opted at Cambridge in 1642 as (apparently) a gentleman pensioner or commoner. He married early, his wife's name being Dorothy Enyon, and they had several children, of whom four survived him when he died, in 1678, at Suffolk Street, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

There is a tendency-which is perhaps rather slightly unfair than positively unjust-to suspect a poet who is specially given to translation: and not exactly to discard the suspicion in the ratio of his excellence as a translator. The reason behind this is sufficient, as has been said, to free it from the charge of positive injustice as a general rule, for it may be plausibly contended that a true poet, with nature and his own soul to draw upon, will not experience any great necessity to go to some one else for matter. But these general rules are always dangerous in particular application, and therefore it has been said that the notion is not quite fair. In fact, if it is examined as it does apply to individuals, it becomes clear that it will not do as a general rule at all-that like some other general rules it is practically useless. That Chaucer was grant translateur may be said to be neither here nor there in the circumstances. But Spenser did not disdain translation; Dryden evidently did it for love as well as for money, though the latter may have been its chief attraction for Pope; and a poet such as Shelley, who was very nearly the poet, by no means despised it.

When, however, we come to examine Stanley's work we may perhaps discover something in the very excellence of his translations which connects itself usefully with his original poems. These translations are excellent because he has almost unerringly selected writers who are suitable to the poetical style of his own day, and has transposed them into English verse of that style. But in his original poems there is perhaps a little too much suggestion of something not wholly dissimilar. They are (pretty as they almost always are, and beautiful as they sometimes are) a little devoid of the spontaneity and élan which distinguish the best things of the time from Carew and Crashaw down to Kynaston and John Hall. There is a very little of the exercise about them. Moreover, not quite as a necessary consequence of this, there is a want of decided character. Stanley is much more a typical minor Caroline poet than he is Stanley, and so much must needs be said critically in these volumes on the type that it seems unnecessary to repeat it on an individual who gives that type with little idiosyncrasy, even while giving it in some abundance and with real charm. Only let it be added that we could not have a better foil to Cleveland, who, though unpolished, is always 'Manly, Sir, manly!' than this scholarly and graceful but somewhat epicene poet.

There are, however, some peculiarities about his work which made me slow to make up my mind about the fashion of presenting it. His translations are numerous: but this collection was not originally intended to include translations unless they were inextricably connected with issues of original work, or where, as in Godolphin's case, there was a special reason. Further, the translations, which are from a large number of authors, ancient and modern, sometimes include prose as well as verse. Thirdly, even the original poems were cross-issued in widely different arrangements. In short, the thing was rather a muddle, and though no one has occupied me in my various visits to the British Museum and the Bodleian during the past ten or twelve years oftener than Stanley, I postponed him from volume to volume. At last, and very recently a feasible plan suggested itself-to give the edition of 1651 as Brydges had done, this being after all the only one which at once represents revision and definite literary purpose, and to let the translations in this represent-as the poet seems himself to have selected them to do-his translating habits and studies. Before these I have printed the original poems of the first or 1647 edition, and after them the few which he seems to have allowed to be added to the set versions in Gamble's Airs and Dialogues ten years later. I think this will put Stanley on a fair level with the rest of our flock. Those who want his classical translations from Anacreon, Ausonius, the Idylls, and the Pervigilium, as well as from Johannes Secundus, will not have much difficulty in finding them; and I did not see my way to load this volume with Preti's Oronta, Montalvan's Aurora, &c. The bibliography of these things is rather complicated, and I do not pretend to have followed it out exhaustively. In fact this is certainly the case as far as my own collations of 1647, made at the British Museum, and those furnished me from the Bodleian copy are concerned.1 But the differences are rarely of importance. 1647, a private issue, was reprinted in 1650 and 1651: while Gamble's Airs and Dialogues appeared in 1656 and was reissued with a fresh title-page in 1657. In the latter year Stanley furnished another composer-John Wilson, Professor of Music at Oxford-with the letterpress of Psalterium Carolinum, the King's devotions from the Eikon versified. His History of Philosophy appeared in 1655: his Aeschylus in 1663.

Some years ago (London, 1893) a beautiful illustrated edition of his Anacreon appeared, and more recently-but, as I have noted, after the announcement of this collection-a carefully arranged and collated edition of the original Lyrics with a few selected translations (Tutin, Hull, 1907), edited by Miss L. Imogen Guiney. I have not found Miss Guiney's work useless, and if I have occasionally had to question her emendations that is only a matter of course.

1 I am informed by three subsequent collators more experienced in such work than myself-Mr. Percy Simpson, Mr. Thorn-Drury, and a Clarendon Press reader-that they have not found some differences which my own comparison-notes of some years ago seemed to show between the British Museum and the Bodleian copies of 1647. No doubt they are right. Some of the dates given above have also been corrected by them.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THOMAS STANLEY 95

Introduction 97

Poems not printed after 1647 101

Despair 101

The Picture 101

Opinion 101

Poems printed in 1647 and reprinted in 1656 but not in 1651 102

The Dream 102

To Chariessa, beholding herself in a Glass 102

The Blush 103

The Cold Kiss 103

The Idolater 104

The Magnet 104

On a Violet in her Breast 105

Song: 'Foolish lover, go and seek' 105

The Parting 106

Counsel 106

Expostulation with Love in Despair 107

Song: 'Faith, 'tis not worth thy pains and care' 108

Expectation 108

1651 Poems 109

The Dedication: To Love 109

The Glow-worm 110

The Breath 111

Desiring her to burn his Verses 111

The Night 112

Excuse for wishing her less Fair 113

Chang'd, yet Constant 113

The Self-deceiver (Montalvan) 115

The Cure 115

Celia Singing 117

A la Mesme 117

The Return 118

Song: 'When I lie burning in thine eye' 119

The Sick Lover (Guarini) 119

Song: 'Celinda, by what potent art' 120

Song: 'Fool, take up thy shaft again' 120

Delay 121

Commanded by his Mistress to woo for her (Marina) 121

The Repulse 122

The Tomb 123

The Enjoyment (St.-Amant) 124

To Celia Pleading Want of Merit 126

The Bracelet (Tristan) 127

The Kiss 128

Apollo and Daphne (Garcilasso Marino) 128

Speaking and Kissing 129

The Snow-ball 129

The Deposition 130

To his Mistress in Absence (Tasso) 130

Love's Heretic 130

La Belle Confidente 132

La Belle Ennemie 132

The Dream (Lope de Vega) 133

To the Lady D. 133

Love Deposed 134

The Divorce 134

Time Recovered (Casone) 135

The Bracelet 135

The Farewell 136

Claim to Love (Guarini) 137

To his Mistress, who dreamed he was wounded (Guarini) 137

The Exchange 138

Unaltered by Sickness 138

On his Mistress's Death (Petrarch) 139

The Exequies 139

The Silkworm 140

A Lady Weeping (Montalvan) 140

Ambition 141

Song: 'When, dearest beauty, thou shall pay' 141

The Revenge 142

Song: 'I will not trust thy tempting graces' 142

Song: 'No, I will sooner trust the wind' 143

To a Blind Man in Love (Marino) 143

Answer 143

Song: 'I prithee let my heart alone' 144

The Loss 144

The Self-Cruel 145

Song (by M. W. M.): 'Wert thou yet fairer than thou art' 145

Answer 146

The Relapse 146

To the Countess of S. with the Holy Court 147

Song (De Voiture): 'I languish in a silent flame' 147

Drawn for Valentine by the L. D. S. 148

The Modest Wish (Barclay) 148

E Catalectis Veterum Poetarum 149

On the Edition of Mr. Fletcher's Works 149

To Mr. W. Hammond 150

On Mr. Shirley's Poems 151

On Mr. Sherburn's Translation of Seneca's Medea, and Vindication of the Author 152

On Mr. Hall's Essays 153

On Sir John Suckling his Picture and Poems 154

The Union (by Mr. William Fairfax) 154

The Answer 154

Pythagoras his Moral Rules 155

Poems appearing only in the Edition of 1656 159

'On this swelling bank, once proud' 159

'Dear, fold me once more in thine arms!' 160

'The lazy hours move slow' 160

POEMS NOT PRINTED AFTER 1647

Despair.

No, no, poor blasted Hope!

Since I (with thee) have lost the scope

Of all my joys, I will no more

Vainly implore

The unrelenting Destinies:

He that can equally sustain

The strong assaults of joy or pain,

May safely laugh at their decrees.

Despair, to thee I bow,

10Whose constancy disdains t' allow

Those childish passions that destroy

Our fickle joy;

How cruel Fates so e'er appear,

Their harmless anger I despise,

And fix'd, can neither fall nor rise,

Thrown below hope, but rais'd 'bove fear.

Despair.] Note here the skill and success of the use of the short-almost 'bob'-lines, and the In Memoriam arrangement of rhyme in the last half of each stanza.

The Picture.

Thou that both feel'st and dost admire

The flames shot from a painted fire,

Know Celia's image thou dost see:

Not to herself more like is she.

He that should both together view

Would judge both pictures, or both true.

But thus they differ: the best part

Of Nature this is; that of Art.

The Picture.] The conceit wraps up the point of the epigram.

Opinion.

Whence took the diamond worth? the borrow'd rays

That crystal wears, whence had they first their praise?

Why should rude feet contemn the snow's chaste white,

Which from the sun receives a sparkling light,

Brighter than diamonds far, and by its birth

Decks the green garment of the richer earth?

Rivers than crystal clearer, when to ice

Congeal'd, why do weak judgements so despise?

Which, melting, show that to impartial sight

10Weeping than smiling crystal is more bright.

But Fancy those first priz'd, and these did scorn,

Taking their praise the other to adorn.

Thus blind is human sight: opinion gave

To their esteem a birth, to theirs a grave;

Nor can our judgements with these clouds dispense,

Since reason sees but with the eyes of sense.

Opinion.] As in The Dream, distinctly nervous stopped couplet.

POEMS PRINTED IN 1647 AND REPRINTED

IN 1656 BUT NOT IN 1651

The Dream.

That I might ever dream thus! that some power

To my eternal sleep would join this hour!

So, willingly deceiv'd, I might possess

In seeming joys a real happiness.

Haste not away: oh do not dissipate

A pleasure thou so lately didst create!

Stay, welcome Sleep; be ever here confin'd;

Or if thou wilt away, leave her behind.

The Dream.] Closed couplets, already of considerable accomplishment. Reprinted in 1656 in an enlarged form; after ll. 1-4 the poem continued:-

Death, I would gladly bow beneath thy charms,

If thou couldst bring my Doris to my arms,

That thus at last made happy I might prove

In life the hell, in death the heaven of love.

Haste not away so soon, mock not my joy,

With the delusive sight or empty noise

Of happiness; oh do not dissipate

A pleasure thou so lately didst create!

Shadows of life or death do such bliss give,

That 'tis an equal curse to wake or live.

Stay then, kind Sleep; be ever here confin'd;

Or if thou wilt away, leave her behind.

To Chariessa, beholding herself in a Glass.

Cast, Chariessa, cast that glass away,

Nor in its crystal face thine own survey.

What can be free from Love's imperious laws

When painted shadows real flames can cause?

The fires may burn thee from this mirror rise

By the reflected beams of thine own eyes;

And thus at last, fallen with thyself in love,

Thou wilt my rival, thine own martyr prove.

But if thou dost desire thy form to view,

10Look in my heart where Love thy picture drew;

And then, if pleased with thine own shape thou be,

Learn how to love thyself in loving me.

To Chariessa &c.] 12 1656 'by loving'.

The Blush.

So fair Aurora doth herself discover

(Asham'd o' th' aged bed of her cold lover)

In modest blushes, whilst the treacherous light

Betrays her early shame to the world's sight.

Such a bright colour doth the morning rose

Diffuse, when she her soft self doth disclose

Half drown'd in dew, whilst on each leaf a tear

Of night doth like a dissolv'd pearl appear;

Yet 'twere in vain a colour out to seek

10To parallel my Chariessa's cheek;

Less are conferr'd with greater, and these seem

To blush like her, not she to blush like them.

But whence, fair soul, this passion? what pretence

Had guilt to stain thy spotless innocence?

Those only this feel who have guilty been,

Not any blushes know, but who know sin.

Then blush no more; but let thy chaster flame,

That knows no cause, know no effects of shame.

The Blush.] Interesting to compare prosodically with The Dream and Opinion. A much older fashion of couplet, here and there overlapped and breathless, but pointing towards the newer. In l. 11 Miss Guiney has unfortunately altered 'conferr'd' (confero = 'to set side by side') to 'compar'd'. In l. 15, 1647 has the common 'bin' and l. 16 'knows' for the second 'know'.

The Cold Kiss.

Such icy kisses, anchorites that live

Secluded from the world, to dead skulls give;

And those cold maids on whom Love never spent

His flame, nor know what by desire is meant,

To their expiring fathers such bequeath,

Snatching their fleeting spirits in that breath:

The timorous priest doth with such fear and nice

Devotion touch the Holy Sacrifice.

Fie, Chariessa! whence so chang'd of late,

10As to become in love a reprobate?

Quit, quit this dullness, Fairest, and make known

A flame unto me equal with mine own.

Shake off this frost, for shame, that dwells upon

Thy lips; or if it will not so be gone,

Let 's once more join our lips, and thou shalt see

That by the flame of mine 'twill melted be.

The Cold Kiss.] There are some very trifling alterations, all for the worse, in 1656 (Gamble).

The Idolater.

Think not, pale lover, he who dies,

Burnt in the flames of Celia's eyes,

Is unto Love a sacrifice;

Or, by the merit of this pain,

Thou shalt the crown of martyrs gain!

Those hopes are, as thy passion, vain.

For when, by death, from these flames free,

To greater thou condemn'd shalt be,

And punish'd for idolatry,

10Since thou (Love's votary before

Whilst He was kind) dost him no more,

But, in his shrine, Disdain adore.

Nor will this fire (the gods prepare

To punish scorn) that cruel Fair,

(Though now from flames exempted) spare;

But as together both shall die,

Both burnt alike in flames shall lie,

She in thy breast, thou in her eye.

The Idolater.] 11 'He' altered in 1656 to 'she', which Miss Guiney adopts. But of course 'He' is Love.

18 breast 1647: later, much worse, 'heart'.

The Magnet.

Ask the empress of the night

How the Hand which guides her sphere,

Constant in unconstant light,

Taught the waves her yoke to bear,

And did thus by loving force

Curb or tame the rude sea's course.

Ask the female palm how she

First did woo her husband's love;

And the magnet, ask how he

10Doth th' obsequious iron move;

Waters, plants, and stones know this:

That they love; not what Love is.

Be not then less kind than these,

Or from Love exempt alone!

Let us twine like amorous trees,

And like rivers melt in one.

Or, if thou more cruel prove,

Learn of steel and stones to love.

The Magnet.] 9 'he' 1647, altered to 'she' in 1656. One would expect 'he' to avoid identical rhyme, but Stanley was a scholar and the Greek is ? Μαγν?τι? λ?θο?, and the other things to be 'asked' are feminine.

In l. 13 'then' became 'thou', neither for better nor for worse.

On a Violet in her Breast.

See how this violet, which before

Hung sullenly her drooping head,

As angry at the ground that bore

The purple treasure which she spread,

Doth smilingly erected grow,

Transplanted to those hills of snow.

And whilst the pillows of thy breast

Do her reclining head sustain,

She swells with pride to be so blest,

10And doth all other flowers disdain;

Yet weeps that dew which kissed her last,

To see her odours so surpass'd.

Poor flower! how far deceiv'd thou wert,

To think the riches of the morn,

Or all the sweets she can impart,

Could these or sweeten or adorn,

Since thou from them dost borrow scent,

And they to thee lend ornament!

On a Violet in her Breast.] 6 'hills of snow' is probably as old as the Garden of Eden (if there was snow there). But Stanley must have known the exquisite second verse of 'Take, oh take those lips away' in The Bloody Brother. I would ask any one who despises this as a mere commonplace love-poem to note-if he can-the splendid swell of the verse to the fourth line, and then the 'turn' of the final couplet. With Stanley and his generation that swell and turn passed-never to reappear till William Blake revived it nearly a century and a half afterwards.

Song.

Foolish Lover, go and seek

For the damask of the rose,

And the lilies white dispose

To adorn thy mistress' cheek;

Steal some star out of the sky,

Rob the phoenix, and the east

Of her wealthy sweets divest,

To enrich her breath or eye!

We thy borrow'd pride despise:

10For this wine, to which we are

Votaries, is richer far

Than her cheek, or breath, or eyes.

And should that coy fair one view

These diviner beauties, she

In this flame would rival thee,

And be taught to love thee too.

Come, then, break thy wanton chain,

That when this brisk wine hath spread

On thy paler cheek a red,

30Thou, like us, mayst Love disdain.

Love, thy power must yield to wine!

And whilst thus ourselves we arm,

Boldly we defy thy charm:

For these flames extinguish thine.

Song.] A Donne-inspired one, doubtless, but not ill justified. 'Distinguish' in the last line is one of the numerous misprints of 1656.

The Parting.

I go, dear Saint, away,

Snatch'd from thy arms

By far less pleasing charms,

Than those I did obey;

But when hereafter thou shall know

That grief hath slain me, come,

And on my tomb

Drop, drop a tear or two;

Break with thy sighs the silence of my sleep,

10And I shall smile in death to see thee weep.

Thy tears may have the power

To reinspire

My ashes with new fire,

Or change me to some flower,

Which, planted 'twixt thy breasts, shall grow:

Veil'd in this shape, I will

Dwell with thee still,

Court, kiss, enjoy thee too:

Securely we'll contemn all envious force,

20And thus united be by death's divorce.

The Parting.] 19 contemn 1647: contain 1656.

Counsel.

When deceitful lovers lay

At thy feet their suppliant hearts,

And their snares spread to betray

Thy best treasure with their arts,

Credit not their flatt'ring vows:

Love such perjury allows.

When they with the choicest wealth

Nature boasts of, have possess'd thee;

When with flowers (their verses' stealth),

10Stars, or jewels they invest thee,

Trust not to their borrow'd store:

'Tis but lent to make thee poor.

When with poems they invade thee,

Sing thy praises or disdain;

When they weep, and would persuade thee

That their flames beget that rain;

Let thy breast no baits let in:

Mercy 's only here a sin!

Let no tears or offerings move thee,

20All those cunning charms avoid;

For that wealth for which they love thee,

They would slight if once enjoy'd.

Who would keep another's heart

With her own must never part.

Counsel.] 7 'the' altered in 1656 to 'their', which is clearly wrong. But the untrustworthiness of Gamble's text is still better illustrated by l. 10, which he twists into-

Stars to jewels they divest thee.

The copy was probably dictated to a very careless, ignorant, or stupid workman.

Guard thy unrelenting mind;

None are cruel but the kind.

Expostulation with Love in Despair.

Love, with what strange tyrannic laws must they

Comply, which are subjected to thy sway!

How far all justice thy commands decline,

Which though they hope forbid, yet love enjoin!

Must all are to thy hell condemn'd sustain

A double torture of despair and pain?

Is 't not enough vainly to hope and woo,

That thou shouldst thus deny that vain hope too?

It were some joy, Ixion-like, to fold

10The empty air, or feed on hopes as cold;

But if thou to my passion this deny,

Thou mayst be starv'd to death as well as I;

For how can thy pale sickly flame burn clear

When death and cold despair inhabit near?

Rule in my breast alone, or thence retire;

Dissolve this frost, or let that quench thy fire.

Or let me not desire, or else possess!

Neither, or both, are equal happiness.

Expostulation, &c.] The texts of 1647 and 1656 differ considerably here, and Miss Guiney has attempted a 'composite text'-a thing for which I have small fancy. That given above is from 1647: 1656 runs as follows in the first quatrain:

Love, what tyrannic laws must they obey

Who bow beneath thy uncontrolled sway;

Or how unjust will that harsh empire prove

Forbids to hope, and yet commands to love.

and reads in l. 9 'hope' for 'joy'; l. 10 'thought that's cold'; l. 14 'old' and 'here' for 'cold' and 'near'; l. 15 (entirely different)

Then let thy dim heat warm, or else expire.

l. 16 'the' for 'thy'; and in the closing distich 'Thus let me not' and 'Either or both'. The interest of this piece is almost wholly centred on the penultimate line, which, being an evident and intended contradiction to

Amare liceat si potiri non licet,

gives us at once the connexion, in Stanley's mind, with that strange, Mrs. Grundy-shocking, but 'insolent and passionate' piece which is attributed, credibly enough, to Apuleius, but rather less credibly as a latinizing of Menander's ?νεχ?μενο?. The contrast of the sensuous fire of this with Stanley's rather vapid and languid metaphysicalities is a notable one.

Song.

Faith, 'tis not worth thy pains and care

To seek t' ensnare

A heart so poor as mine:

Some fools there be

Hate liberty,

Whom with more ease thou mayst confine.

Alas! when with much charge thou hast

Brought it at last

Beneath thy power to bow,

10It will adore

Some twenty more,

And that, perhaps, you'll not allow.

No, Chloris, I no more will prove

The curse of love,

And now can boast a heart

Hath learn'd of thee

Inconstancy,

And cozen'd women of their art.

Song.] 2, 3. The quality and value of 1656 are again well illustrated by its readings of 'inspire' for 'ensnare' and 'pure' for 'poor'.

Expectation.

Chide, chide no more away

The fleeting daughters of the day,

Nor with impatient thoughts outrun

The lazy sun,

Or think the hours do move too slow;

Delay is kind,

And we too soon shall find

That which we seek, yet fear to know.

The mystic dark decrees

10Unfold not of the Destinies,

Nor boldly seek to antedate

The laws of Fate;

Thy anxious search awhile forbear,

Suppress thy haste,

And know that Time at last

Will crown thy hope or fix thy fear.

Expectation.] There is a suggestion here of John Hall's beautiful Call ('Romira, stay'), and the two pieces appeared so close together that it is difficult to say which may have been the first. Perhaps the resemblance was what made Stanley omit it in 1651. In l. 5 1656 reads 'Nor'.

1651 POEMS

THE DEDICATION

To Love.

Thou, whose sole name all passions doth comprise,

Youngest and oldest of the Deities;

Born without parents, whose unbounded reign

Moves the firm earth, fixeth the floating main,

Inverts the course of heaven; and from the deep

Awakes those souls that in dark Lethe sleep,

By thy mysterious chains seeking t' unite,

Once more, the long-since torn Hermaphrodite.

He, who thy willing pris'ner long was vow'd,

10And uncompell'd beneath thy sceptre bow'd,

Returns at last in thy soft fetters bound,

With victory, though not with freedom crown'd:

And, of his dangers pass'd a grateful sign,

Suspends this tablet at thy numerous shrine.

The Dedication. In 1647 printed at p. 49 with the title 'Conclusion, to Love', and obviously intended to end that collection, but a number of unpaged leaves were subsequently added containing the complimentary verses addressed to Fletcher and others. The following variants occur: 11 'by thy kind power unbound'. 12 'At least with freedom, though not conquest crown'd'. 14 'Suspends these papers'. Stanley also appended a list of Greek quotations justifying the cento. There is an intrinsic interest attaching to them in that they may have suggested a similar process to Gray. A further comparison-contrast may also interest some as to the lines themselves-that of the famous and magnificent opening of Mr. Swinburne's Tristram of Lyonesse.

The notes annotate the following phrases:-1 '(a) all passions', 2 '(b) Youngest and (c) oldest', 3 '(d) Born', 4 '(e) Moves', 7 '(f) By thy mysterious ...' The Greek has been slightly corrected in spelling and accents.

(a) Alexis apud Athenaeum:

συνενηνεγμ?νο?

Πανταχ?θεν ?ν ?ν? τ?π? π?λλ' ε?δη φ?ρων,

? τ?λμα μ?ν γ?ρ ?νδρ??, ? δ? δειλ?α

Γυναικ??, &c.

Sophocles:

Κ?πρι? ο? Κ?πρι? μ?νον,

?λλ' ?στι π?ντων ?νομ?των ?π?νυμο?.

(b) Plato, Sympos.: Φημ? νε?τατον α?τ?ν ε?ναι θε?ν, κα? ?ε? ν?ον.

(c. d) Plato: Τ? γ?ρ ?ν το?? πρεσβυτ?τοι? ε?ναι τ?ν θε?ν τ?μιον. Τεκμ?ριον δ? το?του?

γονε?? γ?ρ ?ρωτο? ο?τ' ε?σ?ν, ο?τε λ?γονται ?π' ο?δεν?? ο?τε ?δι?του ο?τε ποιητο?.

(e) Oppian. Cyneg. 2:

Γα?α π?λει σταθερ?, βελ?εσσι δ? σο?σι δονε?ται?

?στατο? ?πλετο π?ντο?, ?τ?ρ σ? γε κα? τ?ν ?πηξα??

?λυθε? ε?? α?θ?ρ', ο?δεν δ? σε μακρ?? ?λυμπο?.

Δειμα?νει δ? σε π?ντα, κα? ο?ραν?? ε?ρ?? ?περθε

Γα?η? ?σσα τ' ?νερθε κα? ?θνεα λυγρ? καμ?ντων

Ο? λ?θη? μ?ν ?φυσσαν ?π? στ?μα νηπαθ?? ?δωρ.

(f) Plato: Πρ?τον μ?ν γ?ρ τρ?α ?ν τ? γ?νη τ? τ?ν ?νθρ?πων (sc. ?ρρεν, θ?λυ, κα? ?νδρ?γυνον). Mox addit, ?στι δ? ο?ν ?κ τ?σου ? ?ρω? ?μφυτο? ?λλ?λων το?? ?νθρ?ποι? κα? τ?? ?ρχα?α? φ?σεω? συναγωγε?? κα? ?πιχειρ?ν ποι?σαι ?ν ?κ δυο?ν, ?κα?? ??σασθαι τ?ν φ?σιν τ?ν ?νθρωπ?νην. Phil. Jud. περ? τ?? κοσμοποι?α?. ?πε? δ? ?πλ?σθη ? γυν? θεασ?μενο? ?δελφ?ν ε?δο? κα? συγγεν? μορφ?ν ?σμ?νισε τ? θ?? ?ρω? δ? ?πιγιν?μενο? καθ?περ ?ν?? ζ?ον διττ? τμ?ματα διεστηκ?τα συναγωγ?ν ε?? τα?τ?ν ?ρμ?ττεται.

POEMS

The Glow-worm.

Stay, fairest Chariessa, stay and mark

This animated gem, whose fainter spark

Of fading light its birth had from the dark.

A Star thought by the erring passenger,

Which falling from its native orb dropt here,

And makes the earth (its centre) now its sphere.

Should many of these sparks together be,

He that the unknown light far off should see,

Would think it a terrestrial Galaxy.

10Take 't up, fair Saint; see how it mocks thy fright!

The paler flame doth not yield heat, though light,

Which thus deceives thy reason, through thy sight.

But see how quickly it (ta'en up) doth fade,

To shine in darkness only being made,

By th' brightness of thy light turn'd to a shade;

And burnt to ashes by thy flaming eyes,

On the chaste altar of thy hand it dies,

As to thy greater light a sacrifice.

The Glow-worm.] Sir Egerton Brydges thought that 'A stile of poetry so full of quaint and far-fetched conceits cannot be commended as the most chaste and classical'; but that, 'among trifles of this kind, The Glow-worm is singularly elegant and happy'. Perhaps a later judgement, while waiving the indispensableness, or even pre-eminence, of chastity and classicality in verse, may doubt whether The Glow-worm itself is not rather too 'elegant' to be as 'happy' as some other things even of its author's. The last verse redeems it, though, to some extent.

2 1647 'This living star of earth'. I suppose Stanley did not like the recurrence of 'star', or he may have thought that the same sound (-ar) recurred still more excessively in the rhymes. In itself the earlier reading is certainly the better.

4 erring] deceiv'd 1647.

12 'Which doth deceive' 1647.

15 thy] the 1647.

The Breath.

Favonius the milder breath o' th' Spring,

When proudly bearing on his softer wing

Rich odours, which from the Panchean groves

He steals, as by the Phoenix' pyre he moves,

Profusely doth his sweeter theft dispense

To the next rose's blushing innocence,

But from the grateful flower, a richer scent

He back receives than he unto it lent.

Then laden with his odours' richest store,

10He to thy breath hastes; to which these are poor!

Which whilst the amorous wind to steal essays,

He like a wanton Lover 'bout thee plays,

And sometimes cooling thy soft cheek doth lie,

And sometimes burning at thy flaming eye:

Drawn in at last by that breath we implore,

He now returns far sweeter than before,

And rich by being robb'd, in thee he finds

The burning sweets of Pyres, the cool of Winds.

The Breath.] This appears in all three editions, 1656 following 1647 in the following variants: l. 8 'He doth receive'; l. 11 'while he sportively'; l. 16 'back' for 'now'.

Desiring her to burn his Verses.

These papers, Chariessa, let thy breath

Condemn; thy hand unto the flames bequeath;

'Tis fit, who gave them life, should give them death.

And whilst in curled flames to Heaven they rise,

Each trembling sheet shall as it upwards flies,

Present itself to thee a sacrifice.

Then when about its native orb it came,

And reach'd the lesser lights o' th' sky, this flame

Contracted to a star should wear thy name.

10Or falling down on earth from its bright sphere,

Shall in a diamond's shape its lustre bear,

And trouble (as it did before) thine ear.

But thou wilt cruel even in mercy be,

Unequal in thy justice, who dost free

Things without sense from flames, and yet not Me.

Desiring her to burn his Verses.] Title, 1647 'To Chariessa, desiring', &c.

4 whilst] as 1647.

7 about] above 1647.

14 who] that 1647.

The Night.

A DIALOGUE.

Chariessa.

What if Night

Should betray us, and reveal

To the light

All the pleasures that we steal?

Philocharis.

Fairest, we

Safely may this fear despise;

How can She

See our actions who wants eyes?

Chariessa.

Each dim star

10And the clearer lights, we know,

Night's eyes are;

They were blind that thought her so!

Philocharis.

Those pale fires

Only burn to yield a light

T' our desires,

And though blind, to give us sight.

Chariessa.

By this shade

That surrounds us might our flame

Be betray'd,

20And the day disclose its name.

Philocharis.

Dearest Fair,

These dark witnesses we find

Silent are;

Night is dumb as well as blind.

Chorus.

Then whilst these black shades conceal us,

We will scorn

Th' envious Morn,

And the Sun that would reveal us.

Our flames shall thus their mutual light betray,

30And night, with these joys crown'd, outshine the day.

The Night.] Entitled in 1647 'Amori Notturni. A Dialogue between Philocharis and Chariessa'.

2 and] or 1647.

8 who] that 1647.

18 surrounds] conceals 1647.

The metrical arrangement here is very delightful, and the Chorus-adjustment particularly happy.

Excuse for wishing her less Fair.

Why thy passion should it move

That I wish'd thy beauty less?

Fools desire what is above

Power of nature to express;

And to wish it had been more.

Had been to outwish her store!

If the flames within thine eye

Did not too great heat inspire,

Men might languish yet not die,

10At thy less ungentle fire;

And might on thy weaker light

Gaze, and yet not lose their sight.

Nor wouldst thou less fair appear,

For detraction adds to thee;

If some parts less beauteous were,

Others would much fairer be:

Nor can any part we know

Best be styl'd, when all are so.

Thus this great excess of light,

20Which now dazzles our weak eyes,

Would, eclips'd, appear more bright;

And the only way to rise,

Or to be more fair, for thee,

Celia, is less fair to be.

Excuse for wishing her less Fair.] 1647 prefixes 'To Celia'.

7 the] thy 1647.

9 yet] and 1647.

10 less ungentle] then less scorching 1647.

23 for] 1656 'than', which, like much else in this edition, is pure nonsense.

Brydges thought that 'one cannot avoid admiring the ingenuity exercised in this continual play upon words'. But surely

In things like this the play of words became

A play of thought, and therefore shames all shame.

Chang'd, yet Constant.

Wrong me no more

In thy complaint,

Blam'd for inconstancy;

I vow'd t' adore

The fairest Saint,

Nor chang'd whilst thou wert she:

But if another thee outshine,

Th' inconstancy is only thine.

To be by such

10Blind fools admir'd,

Gives thee but small esteem,

By whom as much

Thou'dst be desir'd,

Didst thou less beauteous seem:

Sure why they love they know not well,

Who why they should not cannot tell.

Women are by

Themselves betray'd,

And to their short joys cruel,

20Who foolishly

Themselves persuade

Flames can outlast their fuel;

None (though Platonic their pretence)

With reason love unless by sense.

And He, by whose

Command to thee

I did my heart resign,

Now bids me choose

A Deity

30Diviner far than thine;

No power can Love from Beauty sever;

I'm still Love's subject, thine was never.

The fairest She

Whom none surpass

To love hath only right,

And such to me

Thy beauty was

Till one I found more bright;

But 'twere as impious to adore

40Thee now, as not t' have done 't before.

Nor is it just

By rules of Love

Thou shouldst deny to quit

A heart that must

Another's prove,

Ev'n in thy right to it;

Must not thy subjects captives be

To her who triumphs over Thee?

Cease then in vain

50To blot my name

With forg'd Apostasy,

Thine is that stain

Who dar'st to claim

What others ask of Thee.

Of Lovers they are only true

Who pay their hearts where they are due.

Chang'd, yet Constant.] Here, perhaps for the first time, we get the fire of the period communicating to the verse its own glow and flicker. It is a pity he allowed himself double rhymes in stanza 3, which break the note (those at the end of st. 4 do not). There are no variants; the poem is not in 1647. But Miss Guiney has proposed to substitute 'hearts' for 'they' in the last line.

The Self-deceiver.

MONTALVAN.

Deceiv'd and undeceiv'd to be

At once I seek with equal care,

Wretched in the discovery,

Happy if cozen'd still I were:

Yet certain ill of ill hath less

Than the mistrust of happiness.

But if when I have reach'd my aim

(That which I seek less worthy prove),

Yet still my love remains the same,

10The subject not deserving love;

I can no longer be excus'd,

Now more in fault as less abus'd.

Then let me flatter my desires,

And doubt what I might know too sure,

He that to cheat himself conspires,

From falsehood doth his faith secure;

In love uncertain to believe

I am deceiv'd, doth undeceive.

For if my life on doubt depend,

20And in distrust inconstant steer,

If I essay the strife to end

(When Ignorance were Wisdom here),

All thy attempts how can I blame

To work my death? I seek the same.

The Self-deceiver.] (On Stanley's translations see Introduction.) Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638) belonged to the best age of Spanish literature, and was, in proportion, almost as prolific in plays and autos as his master Lope. He was accused of 'Gongorism', and this piece is one somewhat of 'conviction'.

The Cure.

Nymph.

What busy cares too timely born

(Young Swain!) disturb thy sleep?

Thy early sighs awake the Morn,

Thy tears teach her to weep.

Shepherd.

Sorrows, fair Nymph, are full alone;

Nor counsel can endure.

Nymph.

Yet thine disclose, for until known

Sickness admits no cure.

Shepherd.

My griefs are such as but to hear

10Would poison all thy joys,

The pity which thou seem'st to bear

My health, thine own destroys.

Nymph.

How can diseaséd minds infect?

Say what thy grief doth move!

Shepherd.

Call up thy virtue to protect

Thy heart, and know 'twas love.

Nymph.

Fond Swain!

Shepherd.

By which I have been long

Destin'd to meet with hate.

Nymph.

Fy, Shepherd, fy: thou dost love wrong,

20To call thy crime thy fate.

Shepherd.

Alas what cunning could decline

What force can love repel?

Nymph.

Yet, there 's a way to unconfine

Thy heart.

Shepherd.

For pity tell.

Nymph.

Choose one whose love may be allur'd

By thine: who ever knew

Inveterate diseases cur'd

But by receiving new?

Shepherd.

All will like her my soul perplex.

Nymph.

Yet try.

Shepherd.

30 Oh could there be,

But any softness in that sex,

I'd wish it were in thee.

Nymph.

Thy prayer is heard: learn now t' esteem

The kindness she hath shown,

Who thy lost freedom to redeem

Hath forfeited her own.

The Cure. As this appears only in 1651 there are no variants. The 'common measure' has little of the magic common at the time, and is sometimes banal to eighteenth-century level. But we rise in the next.

Celia Singing.

Roses in breathing forth their scent,

Or stars their borrowed ornament;

Nymphs in the wat'ry sphere that move,

Or Angels in their orbs above;

The wingéd chariot of the light,

Or the slow silent wheels of night;

The shade, which from the swifter sun

Doth in a circular motion run;

Or souls that their eternal rest do keep,

10Make far more noise than Celia's breath in sleep.

But if the Angel, which inspires

This subtile flame with active fires,

Should mould this breath to words, and those

Into a harmony dispose,

The music of this heavenly sphere

Would steal each soul out at the ear,

And into plants and stones infuse

A life that Cherubins would choose;

And with new powers invert the laws of Fate,

20Kill those that live, and dead things animate.

Celia Singing.] 1647 'Celia sleeping or singing', and printed without stanza-break.

10 more] Some imp of the press altered 'more' to 'less' in the later 'edition'. 1647 has 'more', which has been restored in text.

12 1647 'frame'-tempting, but perhaps not certain.

13 1647 'his'-again nescio an recte.

19 1647 'power'.

A la Mesme.

Belle voix, dont les charmes desrobent mon ame,

Et au lieu d'un esprit m'animent d'une flamme,

Dont je sens la subtile et la douce chaleur

Entrer par mon oreille et glisser dans mon c?ur;

Me faisant esprever par cette aimable vie,

Nos ames ne consistent que d'une harmonie;

Que la vie m'est douce, la mort m'est sans peine,

Puisqu'on les trouve toutes deux dans ton haleine:

Ne m'espargne donc pas; satisfais tes rigueurs;

10Car si tu me souffres de vivre, je me meurs.

A la Mesme] 1647 'A une Dame qui chantoit'. Stanley does not, like some more modern English writers of French verse, neglect his final e's, but he takes remarkable liberties with the caesura. 'Esprever' (l. 5) is not wrong necessarily.

The Return.

Beauty, whose soft magnetic chains

Beauty, thy harsh imperious chains

Nor time nor absence can untie,

As a scorned weight I here untie,

Thy power the narrow bounds disdains

Since thy proud empire those disdains

Of Nature or philosophy,

Of reason or philosophy,

That canst by unconfinéd laws

That wouldst within tyrannic laws

A motion, though at distance, cause.

Confine the power of each free cause.

Drawn by the sacred influence

Forced by the potent influence

Of thy bright eyes, I back return;

Of thy disdain I back return,

And since I nowhere can dispense

Thus with those flames I do dispense,

10With flames that do in absence burn,

Which, though they would not light, did burn;

I rather choose 'midst them t' expire

And rather will through cold expire

Than languish by a hidden fire.

Than languish at a frozen fire.

But if thou the insulting pride

But whilst I the insulting pride

Of vulgar Beauties dost despise,

Of thy vain beauty do despise,

Who by vain triumphs deified,

Who gladly wouldst be deified,

Their votaries do sacrifice,

By making me thy sacrifice;

Then let those flames, whose magic charm

May love thy heart, which to his charm

At distance scorch'd, approach'd but warm.

Approached seemed cold, at distance warm.

The Return-(Palinode.)] The 1647 edition contains two poems, The Return and Palinode, which stand to each other in a curious relation. In 1651 Palinode has disappeared. I have thought it best to print them together. The lines in roman type are those of The Return, those in italic belong to Palinode. The latter reappeared in 1657, with slight alterations as below. In Pal. 5 Miss Guiney reads 'would' for 'wouldst', evidently not quite understanding the sense or the grammar of the time. The second person connects itself with the vocative in 'Beauty' and the 'thou' twice implied in 'thy'.

In Palinode, l. 7, 1657 reads 'powerful' for 'potent'; l. 12 'in' for 'at'.

In The Return, l. 2, 1651 'unite'-an obvious misprint; l. 3, 1647 'bound'; l. 5, 1647 'That', 1651 'Thou'; l. 10, 1657 'which' for 'that'; l. 11, 'twixt'-not so well; l. 13, 'the' is dropped by mere accident in 1651-'the', not 'th',' is required.

Song.

When I lie burning in thine eye.

Or freezing in thy breast,

What Martyrs, in wish'd flames that die,

Are half so pleas'd or blest?

When thy soft accents through mine ear

Into my soul do fly,

What Angel would not quit his sphere,

To hear such harmony?

Or when the kiss thou gav'st me last

10My soul stole in its breath,

What life would sooner be embrac'd

Than so desir'd a death?

[When I commanded am by thee,

Or by thine eye or hand,

What monarch would not prouder be

To serve than to command?]

Then think no freedom I desire,

Or would my fetters leave,

Since Phoenix-like I from this fire

20Both life and youth receive.

Song.] Sir Egerton thought this (which, by the way, Lovelace may have seen, or vice versa) 'a very elegant little song, with all the harmony of modern rhythm'. One might perhaps substitute 'with more of the harmony of contemporary rhythm than Stanley always attains'. It is certainly much better than The Cure. The bracketed stanza was dropped in 1651, but it seemed better to restore it thus in text than to degrade it hither. One or two extremely unimportant misprints occur in one or other version, but are not worth noting.

The Sick Lover.

GUARINI.

My sickly breath

Wastes in a double flame;

Whilst Love and Death

To my poor life lay claim;

The fever, in whose heat I melt,

By her that causeth it not felt.

Thou who alone

Canst, yet wilt grant no ease,

Why slight'st thou one

10To feed a new disease?

Unequal fair! the heart is thine;

Ah, why then should the pain be mine?

The Sick Lover.] Not a great thing. In l. 6, Miss Guiney thinks 'it', which is in all texts, should be 'is'. But 'it' is wanted and 'is' is not. 'The fever not [being] felt' is no excessively 'absolute' construction.

Song.

Celinda, by what potent art

Or unresisted charm,

Dost thou thine ear and frozen heart

Against my passion arm?

Or by what hidden influence

Of powers in one combin'd,

Dost thou rob Love of either sense,

Made deaf as well as blind?

Sure thou, as friends, united hast

10Two distant Deities;

And scorn within thy heart hast plac'd,

And love within thine eyes.

Or those soft fetters of thy hair,

A bondage that disdains

All liberty, do guard thine ear

Free from all other chains.

Then my complaint how canst thou hear,

Or I this passion fly,

Since thou imprison'd hast thine ear,

20And not confin'd thine eye?

Song-Celinda, &c.] Again, mere commonplace common measure. 'Those soft fetters of thy hair' (l. 13) is at least as good as 'mobled queen', but otherwise the phrase rather sinks to the measure. 'friends' (l. 9) is misprinted 'friend' in 1647, and Sir Egerton has mispunctuated 'friends united'.

Song.

Fool, take up thy shaft again;

If thy store

Thou profusely spend in vain,

Who can furnish thee with more?

Throw not then away thy darts

On impenetrable hearts.

Think not thy pale flame can warm

Into tears,

Or dissolve the snowy charm

10Which her frozen bosom wears,

That expos'd, unmelted lies

To the bright suns of her eyes.

But since thou thy power hast lost,

Nor canst fire

Kindle in that breast, whose frost

Doth these flames in mine inspire,

Not to thee but her I'll sue,

That disdains both me and you.

Song-Fool, &c.] An extremely pretty measure, not ill-parted with phrase and imagery. The 'Take, oh! take' motive reappears.

Delay.

Delay! Alas, there cannot be

To Love a greater tyranny:

Those cruel beauties that have slain

Their votaries by their disdain,

Or studied torments, sharp and witty,

Will be recorded for their pity,

And after-ages be misled

To think them kind, when this is spread.

Of deaths the speediest is despair,

10Delays the slowest tortures are;

Thy cruelty at once destroys,

But Expectation starves my joys.

Time and Delay may bring me past

The power of Love to cure, at last;

And shouldst thou wish to ease my pain,

Thy pity might be lent in vain;

Or if thou hast decreed, that I

Must fall beneath thy cruelty,

O kill me soon! Thou wilt express

20More mercy, ev'n in showing less.

Commanded by his Mistress to woo for her.

MARINO.

Strange kind of love! that knows no president,

A faith so firm as passeth Faith's extent,

By a tyrannic beauty long subdu'd,

I now must sue for her to whom I su'd,

Unhappy Orator! who, though I move

For pity, pity cannot hope to prove:

Employing thus against myself my breath,

And in another's life begging my death.

But if such moving powers my accents have,

10Why first my own redress do I not crave?

What hopes that I to pity should incline

Another's breast, who can move none in thine?

Or how can the griev'd patient look for ease,

When the physician suffers the disease?

If thy sharp wounds from me expect their cure,

'Tis fit those first be heal'd that I endure.

Ungentle fair one! why dost thou dispense

Unequally thy sacred influence?

Why pining me, offer'st the precious food

20To one by whom nor priz'd, nor understood;

So some clear brook to the full main, to pay

Her needless crystal tribute hastes away,

Profusely foolish; whilst her niggard tide

Starves the poor flowers that grow along her side.

Thou who my glories art design'd to own,

Come then, and reap the joys that I have sown:

Yet in thy pride acknowledge, though thou bear

The happy prize away, the palm I wear.

Nor the obedience of my flame accuse,

30That what I sought, myself conspir'd to lose:

The hapless state where I am fix'd is such,

To love I seem not, 'cause I love too much.

Commanded by his Mistress, &c.] Marino[i]'s name is so frequent in books on literature, and his work so little known to the ordinary reader, that this example may be welcome. The rather snip-snap antithesis, and the somewhat obvious conceit, show the famous Italian really at his worst. 'President' (l. 1), though not impossible, is probably for 'precedent'. The whole piece has a special interest as showing how this 'conceit' and 'false wit' actually encouraged the growth of the stopped antithetic couplet which was to be turned against both.

The Repulse.

Not that by this disdain

I am releas'd,

And freed from thy tyrannic chain,

Do I myself think bless'd;

Nor that thy flame shall burn

No more; for know

That I shall into ashes turn,

Before this fire doth so.

Nor yet that unconfin'd

10I now may rove,

And with new beauties please my mind,

But that thou ne'er didst love:

For since thou hast no part

Felt of this flame,

I only from thy tyrant heart

Repuls'd, not banish'd am.

To lose what once was mine

Would grieve me more

Than those inconstant sweets of thine

20Had pleas'd my soul before.

Now I have not lost the bliss

I ne'er possest;

And spite of fate am blest in this,

That I was never blest.

The Repulse.] In the third line of this rather fine poem 1656 reads 'romantic' for 'tyrannic', and Miss Guiney adopts it. To me it seems quite inappropriate, and one of the errors of dictation so common in that 'edition'.

21 1647 reads 'that bliss'.

The Tomb.

When, cruel fair one, I am slain

By thy disdain,

And, as a trophy of thy scorn,

To some old tomb am borne,

Thy fetters must their power bequeath

To those of Death;

Nor can thy flame immortal burn,

Like monumental fires within an urn;

Thus freed from thy proud empire, I shall prove

10There is more liberty in Death than Love.

And when forsaken Lovers come,

To see my tomb,

Take heed thou mix not with the crowd

And (as a Victor) proud

To view the spoils thy beauty made

Press near my shade,

Lest thy too cruel breath or name

Should fan my ashes back into a flame,

And thou, devour'd by this revengeful fire,

20His sacrifice, who died as thine, expire.

[Or should my dust thy pity move

That could not love,

Thy sighs might wake me, and thy tears

Renew my life and years.

Or should thy proud insulting scorn

Laugh at my urn,

Kindly deceived by thy disdain,

I might be smil'd into new life again.

Then come not near, since both thy love and hate

30Have equal power to love or animate.]

But if cold earth, or marble, must

Conceal my dust,

Whilst hid in some dark ruins, I

Dumb and forgotten lie,

The pride of all thy victory

Will sleep with me;

And they who should attest thy glory,

Will, or forget, or not believe this story.

Then to increase thy triumph, let me rest,

40Since by thine eye slain, buried in thy breast.

The Tomb.] Brydges, though thinking the end of this poem 'a feeble conceit', admits that 'there are passages in it that are more than pretty'. It is certainly one of Stanley's best, and he seems to have taken some trouble with it. In 1651 he dropped the bracketed stanza 3 and substituted the text for the last couplet of stanza 2, which reads in 1647:

And (thou in this fire sacrificed to me)

We might each other's mutual martyr be.

In the last line of the omitted stanza 'love' is certainly wrong, and Miss Guiney's suggestion of 'kill' is almost certissima. But she seems to have had a different copy of 1647 before her from that which I collated, for she does not notice a variant, or set of variants, in ll. 37-9:

And they that should this triumph know

Will or forget or not believe it so,

Then to increase thy glories, &c.

In l. 5 1647 reads 'thy power'.

The Enjoyment.

ST.-AMANT.

Far from the court's ambitious noise

Retir'd, to those more harmless joys

Which the sweet country, pleasant fields,

And my own court, a cottage, yields;

I liv'd from all disturbance free,

Though prisoner (Sylvia) unto thee;

Secur'd from fears, which others prove,

Of the inconstancy of Love;

A life, in my esteem, more blest,

10Than e'er yet stoop'd to Death's arrest.

My senses and desires agreed,

With joint delight each other feed:

A bliss, I reach'd, as far above

Words, as her beauty, or my love;

Such as compar'd with which, the joys

Of the most happy seem but toys:

Affection I receive and pay,

My pleasures knew not Grief's allay:

The more I tasted I desir'd,

20The more I quench'd my thirst was fir'd.

Now, in some place where Nature shows

Her naked beauty, we repose;

Where she allures the wand'ring eye

With colours, which faint art outvie;

Pearls scatter'd by the weeping morn,

Each where the glitt'ring flowers adorn;

The mistress of the youthful year

(To whom kind Zephyrus doth bear

His amorous vows and frequent prayer)

30Decks with these gems her neck and hair.

Hither, to quicken Time with sport,

The little sprightly Loves resort,

And dancing o'er the enamel'd mead,

Their mistresses the Graces lead;

Then to refresh themselves, repair

To the soft bosom of my fair;

Where from the kisses they bestow

Upon each other, such sweets flow

As carry in their mixéd breath

40A mutual power of life and death.

Next in an elm's dilated shade

We see a rugged Satyr laid,

Teaching his reed, in a soft strain,

Of his sweet anguish to complain;

Then to a lonely grove retreat,

Where day can no admittance get,

To visit peaceful solitude;

Whom seeing by repose pursu'd,

All busy cares, for fear to spoil

50Their calmer courtship, we exile.

There underneath a myrtle, thought

By Fairies sacred, where was wrought

By Venus' hand Love's mysteries,

And all the trophies of her eyes,

Our solemn prayers to Heaven we send,

That our firm love might know no end;

Nor time its vigour e'er impair:

Then to the wingéd God we sware,

And grav'd the oath in its smooth rind,

60Which in our hearts we deeper find.

Then to my dear (as if afraid

To try her doubted faith) I said,

'Would in thy soul my form as clear,

As in thy eyes I see it, were.'

She kindly angry saith, 'Thou art

Drawn more at large within my heart;

These figures in my eye appear

But small, because they are not near,

Thou through these glasses seest thy face,

70As pictures through their crystal case.'

Now with delight transported, I

My wreathéd arms about her tie;

The flattering Ivy never holds

Her husband Elm in stricter folds:

To cool my fervent thirst, I sip

Delicious nectar from her lip.

She pledges, and so often past

This amorous health, till Love at last

Our souls did with these pleasures sate,

80And equally inebriate.

Awhile, our senses stol'n away,

Lost in this ecstasy we lay,

Till both together rais'd to life,

We re-engage in this kind strife.

Cythaera with her Syrian boy

Could never reach our meanest joy.

The childish God of Love ne'er tried

So much of love with his cold bride,

As we in one embrace include,

90Contesting each to be subdu'd.

The Enjoyment.] La Jouissance, one of Saint-Amant's early lyric pieces, which is here translated, was not so famous as his Solitude, which will be found (Englished by the matchless Orinda a little after Stanley's time) in vol. i, p. 601, of this collection; but it was popular and much imitated. Stanley has cut it down considerably, for the original has nineteen stanzas-some of them, I suppose, too 'warm' for the translator's modest muse.

59 Brydges misprints 'kind'

To Celia Pleading Want of Merit.

Dear, urge no more that killing cause

Of our divorce;

Love is not fetter'd by such laws,

Nor bows to any force:

Though thou deniest I should be thine,

Yet say not thou deserv'st not to be mine.

Oh rather frown away my breath

With thy disdain,

Or flatter me with smiles to death;

10By joy or sorrow slain,

'Tis less crime to be kill'd by thee,

Than I thus cause of mine own death should be.

Thyself of beauty to divest,

And me of love,

Or from the worth of thine own breast

Thus to detract, would prove

In us a blindness, and in thee

At best a sacrilegious modesty.

But, Celia, if thou wilt despise

20What all admire,

Nor rate thyself at the just price

Of beauty or desire,

Yet meet my flames, and thou shalt see

That equal love knows no disparity.

To Celia Pleading, &c.] 1647 has in title 'To One that Pleaded her own', and 'Dearest' for 'Celia' in l. 19.

Love's Innocence.

See how this Ivy strives to twine

Her wanton arms about the Vine,

And her coy lover thus restrains,

Entangled in her amorous chains;

See how these neighb'ring Palms do bend

Their heads, and mutual murmurs send,

As whispering with a jealous fear

Their loves, into each other's ear.

Then blush not such a flame to own,

10As like thyself no crime hath known;

Led by these harmless guides, we may

Embrace and kiss as well as they.

And like those blesséd souls above,

Whose life is harmony and love,

Let us our mutual thoughts betray,

And in our wills our minds display;

This silent speech is swifter far

Than the ears' lazy species are;

And the expression it affords,

As our desires, 'bove reach of words.

20Thus we, my dear, of these may learn

A passion others not discern;

Nor can it shame or blushes move,

Like plants to live, like Angels love:

Since all excuse with equal innocence,

What above reason is, or beneath sense.

Love's Innocence.] In 1647 the following differences occur: Title, 'The Innocence of Love'; l. 1, '(Dear) doth twine' for 'strives to twine'; l. 7, 'To one another whispering there'; ll. 9-10, 'Then blush not, Fair, that flame to show, Which like thyself no crime can know'; ll. 11-12, 'Thus led by those chaste guides, we may Embrace and kiss as free as they'; l. 20, 'As are our flames'; l. 21, 'Thus, Doris, we'.

The Bracelet.

TRISTAN.

Now Love be prais'd! that cruel fair,

Who my poor heart restrains

Under so many chains,

Hath weav'd a new one for it of her hair.

These threads of amber us'd to play

With every courtly wind;

And never were confin'd;

But in a thousand curls allow'd to stray.

Cruel each part of her is grown;

10Nor less unkind than she

These fetters are to me,

Which to restrain my freedom, lose their own.

The Bracelet.] Little survives, even in literary memories, of Fran?ois Tristan l'Hermite (1601-1655), except the success of his Marianne (Mariamne), 1636, one of the most famous French tragedies of the period outside Corneille. M. Ed. Fournier gave him a niche in Crépet's Poètes Fran?ais (Paris, 1861), ii. 539-52, but did not include the original of this piece. The In Memoriam rhyme-order, though the line lengths are different, is interesting. Stanley had perhaps borrowed, before translating it, the 'soft fetters of her hair', noted above, though the fancy is of course primaeval and perennial.

The Kiss.

When on thy lip my soul I breathe,

Which there meets thine,

Freed from their fetters by this death

Our subtle forms combine;

Thus without bonds of sense they move,

And like two Cherubins converse by love.

Spirits, to chains of earth confin'd,

Discourse by sense;

But ours, that are by flames refin'd,

10With those weak ties dispense.

Let such in words their minds display;

We in a kiss our mutual thoughts convey.

But since my soul from me doth fly,

To thee retir'd,

Thou canst not both retain: for I

Must be with one inspir'd.

Then, dearest, either justly mine

Restore, or in exchange let me have thine.

Yet, if thou dost return mine own,

20Oh tak't again!

For 'tis this pleasing death alone

Gives ease unto my pain.

Kill me once more, or I shall find

Thy pity, than thy cruelty, less kind.

The Kiss.] Title in 1647 'The killing Kiss', and several other variants. An answer to this poem appears in Jordan's Claraphi and Clarinda.

4 1647 'They both unite and join'. But Miss Guiney's suspicion that 'forms' may be a misprint obviously shows forgetfulness of the philosophical sense of the word = 'ideas', 'immortal parts'. Cf. Spenser, 'For soul is form'.

6 by] 1647 'and'-perhaps better.

12 1647 'Our lips, not tongues, each other's thoughts betray'. (Miss Guiney's copy seems to have 'our tongues', which cannot be right.)

15 for I] and I 1647.

17 dearest] 1647 'Doris'. This is the second time (v. sup., p. 126) that poor Doris has been disestablished.

Apollo and Daphne.

GARCILASSO MARINO.

When Phoebus saw a rugged bark beguile

His love, and his embraces intercept,

The leaves, instructed by his grief to smile,

Taking fresh growth and verdure as he wept:

'How can', saith he, 'my woes expect release,

When tears the subject of my tears increase!'

His chang'd, yet scorn-retaining Fair he kiss'd,

From the lov'd trunk plucking a little bough;

And though the conquest which he sought he miss'd,

10With that triumphant spoil adorns his brow.

Thus this disdainful maid his aim deceives:

Where he expected fruit he gathers leaves.

Apollo and Daphne.] Why Garcilasso I do not know. Marini's name was Giambattista.

6 The first 'tears' certainly looks odd, and Miss Guiney conjectures 'leaves'. But the ways of Marinism are not thus. Apollo's tears watered the laurel and so made it grow. His tears increased their subject, the vapid vegetable substitute for Daphne's flesh and blood.

Speaking and Kissing.

The air, which thy smooth voice doth break,

Into my soul like lightning flies;

My life retires whilst thou dost speak,

And thy soft breath its room supplies.

Lost in this pleasing ecstasy,

I join my trembling lips to thine;

And back receive that life from thee,

Which I so gladly did resign.

Forbear, Platonic fools, t' inquire

What numbers do the soul compose!

No harmony can life inspire,

But that which from these accents flows.

Speaking and Kissing.] This is smarter than Stanley's usual style.

The Snow-ball.

Doris, I that could repel

All those darts about thee dwell,

And had wisely learn'd to fear,

'Cause I saw a foe so near;

I that my deaf ear did arm

'Gainst thy voice's powerful charm,

And the lightning of thine eye

Durst (by closing mine) defy,

Cannot this cold snow withstand

10From the whiter of thy hand.

Thy deceit hath thus done more

Than thy open force before:

For who could suspect or fear

Treason in a face so clear;

Or the hidden fires descry

Wrapt in this cold outside lie?

Flames might thus involv'd in ice

The deceiv'd world sacrifice;

Nature, ignorant of this

20Strange antiperistasis,

Would her falling frame admire,

That by snow were set on fire.

The Snow-ball.] Doris maintains here the place she lost above. The tripping seventeenth-century 'sevens' are well spent on her. In l. 10 Miss Guiney thinks that 'whiter', the sole reading, must be 'winter'. ?κιστα: that Stanley meant 'the whiter snow' is, to me, certain.

20 'Antiperistasis' = 'reaction' or 'topsyturvyfication' (Thackeray).

The Deposition.

Though when I lov'd thee thou wert fair,

Thou art no longer so;

Those glories all the pride they wear

Unto opinion owe;

Beauties, like stars, in borrow'd lustre shine;

And 'twas my love that gave thee thine.

The flames that dwelt within thine eye

Do now, with mine, expire;

Thy brightest graces fade and die

10At once with my desire;

Love's fires thus mutual influence return;

Thine cease to shine, when mine to burn.

Then, proud Celinda, hope no more

To be implor'd or woo'd,

Since by thy scorn thou dost restore

The wealth my love bestow'd;

And thy despis'd disdain too late shall find

That none are fair but who are kind.

The Deposition.] In 1647 'A Deposition from Beauty'. Also l. 3, 'do' for 'all'; l. 9, 'glories' for 'graces'; l. 16, 'That' for 'The' and 'which' for 'my'.

To his Mistress in Absence.

TASSO.

Far from thy dearest self, the scope

Of all my aims,

I waste in secret flames;

And only live because I hope.

Oh, when will Fate restore

The joys, in whose bright fire

My expectation shall expire,

That I may live because I hope no more!

Love's Heretic.

He whose active thoughts disdain

To be captive to one foe,

And would break his single chain,

Or else more would undergo;

Let him learn the art of me,

By new bondage to be free!

What tyrannic mistress dare

To one beauty love confine,

Who, unbounded as the air,

10All may court but none decline?

Why should we the heart deny

As many objects as the eye?

Wheresoe'er I turn or move,

A new passion doth detain me:

Those kind beauties that do love,

Or those proud ones that disdain me;

This frown melts, and that smile burns me;

This to tears, that ashes turns me.

Soft fresh Virgins, not full blown,

20With their youthful sweetness take me;

Sober Matrons, that have known

Long since what these prove, awake me;

Here staid coldness I admire;

There the lively active fire.

She that doth by skill dispense

Every favour she bestows,

Or the harmless innocence,

Which nor court nor city knows,

Both alike my soul enflame,

30That wild Beauty, and this tame.

She that wisely can adorn

Nature with the wealth of Art,

Or whose rural sweets do scorn

Borrow'd helps to take a heart,

The vain care of that's my pleasure,

Poverty of this my treasure.

Both the wanton and the coy,

Me with equal pleasures move;

She whom I by force enjoy,

40Or who forceth me to love:

This, because she'll not confess,

That not hide, her happiness.

She whose loosely flowing hair,

Scatter'd like the beams o' th' morn,

Playing with the sportive air,

Hides the sweets it doth adorn,

Captive in that net restrains me,

In those golden fetters chains me.

Nor doth she with power less bright

50My divided heart invade,

Whose soft tresses spread like night

O'er her shoulders a black shade;

For the starlight of her eyes

Brighter shines through those dark skies.

Black, or fair, or tall, or low,

I alike with all can sport;

The bold sprightly Thais woo,

Or the frozen Vestal court;

Every Beauty takes my mind,

60Tied to all, to none confin'd.

Love's Heretic.] This, for Stanley, longish piece has few vv. ll. But 1647 reads in l. 34 'that' instead of 'to', and the singular 'pleasure' in l. 38. The piece is rather in the Suckling vein; but Stanley did not play the light-o'-love quite successfully.

La Belle Confidente.

You earthly souls that court a wanton flame,

Whose pale weak influence

Can rise no higher than the humble name,

And narrow laws of sense,

Learn by our friendship to create

An immaterial fire,

Whose brightness Angels may admire,

But cannot emulate.

Sickness may fright the roses from her cheek,

10Or make the lilies fade;

But all the subtile ways that Death doth seek,

Cannot my love invade.

Flames that are kindled by the eye,

Through time and age expire;

But ours, that boast a reach far higher,

Can nor decay nor die.

For when we must resign our vital breath,

Our loves by Fate benighted,

We by this friendship shall survive in death,

20Even in divorce united.

Weak Love, through fortune or distrust,

In time forgets to burn,

But this pursues us to the urn,

And marries either's dust.

La Belle Confidente.] On this Sir Egerton: 'However far-fetched these ideas may be, there is uncommon elegance and ingenuity in the expression, and polish in the versification.' There is also something more than polish-a concerted effect which 'elegance and ingenuity' do not often reach. In l. 16, 'Cannot' appears in 1647 for 'Can nor'; 'And' for 'For' in l. 17; and ll. 18, 20 are changed over and run:

Even in divorce delighted,

. . . . . .

Still in the grave united.

La Belle Ennemie.

I yield, dear enemy, nor know

How to resist so fair a foe!

Who would not thy soft yoke sustain,

And bow beneath thy easy chain,

That with a bondage bless'd might be,

Which far transcends all liberty?

But since I freely have resign'd

At first assault my willing mind,

Insult not o'er my captiv'd heart

10With too much tyranny and art,

Lest by thy scorn thou lose the prize

Gain'd by the power of thy bright eyes,

And thou this conquest thus shalt prove,

Though got by Beauty, kept by Love!

The Dream.

LOPE DE VEGA.

To set my jealous soul at strife,

All things maliciously agree,

Though sleep of Death the image be,

Dreams are the portraiture of life.

I saw, when last I clos'd my eyes,

Celinda stoop t' another's will;

If specious Apprehension kill,

What would the truth without disguise?

The joys which I should call mine own,

10Methought this rival did possess:

Like dreams is all my happiness;

Yet dreams themselves allow me none.

The Dream.] The actual and full In Memoriam arrangement is the point of interest here. Stanley, however, is even less successful than the few other seventeenth-century practitioners in getting the full rhythmical sweep of the form into operation. He breaks the circle and so loses the charm.

To the Lady D.

Madam,

The blushes I betray,

When at your feet I humbly lay

These papers, beg you would excuse

Th' obedience of a bashful Muse,

Who, bowing to your strict command,

Trusts her own errors to your hand,

Hasty abortives, which, laid by,

She meant, ere they were born should die:

But since the soft power of your breath

10Hath call'd them back again from Death,

To your sharp judgement now made known,

She dares for hers no longer own;

The worst she must not, these resign'd

She hath to th' fire, and where you find

Those your kind Charity admir'd,

She writ but what your eyes inspir'd.

To the Lady D.] This in 1647 is the Dedication 'To my most honour'd Aunt the Lady Dormer'. She was a daughter of Sir William Hammond and wife of Sir Robert Dormer, Knight, of Chearsley, Bucks. In 1647 Stanley added to the poem 'Madam, Your Ladyships Greatest admirer and most humble Servant, Tho. Stanley'.

Love Deposed.

You that unto your mistress' eyes

Your hearts do sacrifice,

And offer sighs or tears at Love's rich shrine,

Renounce with me

Th' idolatry,

Nor this infernal Power esteem divine.

The brand, the quiver, and the bow,

Which we did first bestow,

And he as tribute wears from every lover,

10I back again

From him have ta'en,

And the impostor, now unveil'd, discover.

I can the feeble child disarm,

Untie his mystic charm,

Divest him of his wings, and break his arrow;

We will obey

No more his sway,

Nor live confin'd to laws or bounds so narrow.

20And you, bright Beauties, that inspire

The Boy's pale torch with fire,

We safely now your subtle power despise,

And unscorch'd may

Like atoms play,

And wanton in the sunshine of your eyes.

Nor think hereafter by new arts

You can bewitch our hearts,

Or raise this devil by your pleasing charm;

We will no more

His power implore,

30Unless, like Indians, that he do no harm.

The Divorce.

Dear, back my wounded heart restore,

And turn away thy powerful eyes;

Flatter my willing soul no more!

Love must not hope what Fate denies.

Take, take away thy smiles and kisses!

Thy love wounds deeper than disdain;

For he that sees the heaven he misses,

Sustains two hells, of loss and pain.

Shouldst thou some other's suit prefer,

10I might return thy scorn to thee,

And learn apostasy of her,

Who taught me first idolatry.

Or in thy unrelenting breast

Should I disdain or coyness move,

He by thy hate might be releas'd,

Who now is prisoner to thy love.

Since then unkind Fate will divorce

Those whom Affection long united,

Be thou as cruel as this force,

20And I in death shall be delighted.

Thus while so many suppliants woo.

And beg they may thy pity prove,

I only for thy scorn do sue:

'Tis charity here not to love.

The Divorce.] A rise from one or two preceding pieces.

12 Who] That 1647.

14 I] cold 1647.

15 He] I 1647.

16 is] am 1647.

21 while] whilst 1647. woo] do 1647.

22 'Implore thy pity they may prove' 1647.

Time Recovered.

CASONE.

Come, my dear, whilst youth conspires

With the warmth of our desires;

Envious Time about thee watches,

And some grace each minute snatches;

Now a spirit, now a ray,

From thy eye he steals away;

Now he blasts some blooming rose,

Which upon thy fresh cheek grows;

Gold now plunders in a hair;

10Now the rubies doth impair

Of thy lips; and with sure haste

All thy wealth will take at last;

Only that of which thou mak'st

Use in time, from time thou tak'st.

Time Recovered.] This 'very light and good' version is from Guido Casoni (so more usually), a poet of the Trevisan March (1587-1640), and founder of the Academy of the Incogniti at Venice, to the Transactions of which he contributed most of his work.

The Bracelet.

Rebellious fools that scorn to bow

Beneath Love's easy sway,

Whose stubborn wills no laws allow,

Disdaining to obey,

Mark but this wreath of hair, and you shall see,

None that might wear such fetters would be free!

I once could boast a soul like you,

As unconfin'd as air;

But mine, which force could not subdue,

10Was caught within this snare;

And, by myself betray'd, I, for this gold,

A heart that many storms withstood, have sold.

No longer now wise Art inquire,

With this vain search delighted,

How souls, that human breasts inspire,

Are to their frames united;

Material chains such spirits well may bind,

When this soft braid can tie both arm and mind

Now, Beauties, I defy your charm,

20Rul'd by more powerful art:

This mystic wreath which crowns my arm,

Defends my vanquish'd heart;

And I, subdu'd by one more fair, shall be

Secur'd from Conquest by Captivity.

The Bracelet.] Almost certainly suggested by Donne. If so the suggestion was very rashly taken, but the result might have been worse.

7 soul] heart 1647. l. 12 is an alteration-as Miss Guiney very rightly says to its detriment-of 1647, which reads-

Have to mine enemy my freedom sold.

15 1647 'that do our life inspire'.

22 1647 'Guards and defends my heart'.

The Farewell.

Since Fate commands me hence, and I

Must leave my soul with thee, and die,

Dear, spare one sigh, or else let fall

A tear to crown my funeral,

That I may tell my grievéd heart,

Thou art unwilling we should part,

And Martyrs, that embrace the fire,

Shall with less joy than I expire.

With this last kiss I will bequeath

10My soul transfus'd into thy breath,

Whose active heat shall gently slide

Into thy breast, and there reside,

And be in spite of Fate, thus bless'd

By this sad death, of Heaven possess'd.

Then prove but kind, and thou shalt see

Love hath more power than Destiny.

The Farewell.] In lines 13 and 14 of this all editions vary slightly. 1647 has 'may' for 'be', which latter word opens the next line, turning out 'sad'. The text is 1651, 1656, keeping l. 13 of 1647, has for l. 14 the text of 1651.

Claim to Love.

GUARINI.

Alas! alas! thou turn'st in vain

Thy beauteous face away,

Which, like young sorcerers, rais'd a pain

Above its power to lay.

Love moves not, as thou turn'st thy look,

But here doth firmly rest;

He long ago thy eyes forsook,

To revel in my breast.

Thy power on him why hop'st thou more

10Than his on me should be?

The claim thou lay'st to him is poor,

To that he owns from me.

His substance in my heart excels

His shadow in thy sight;

Fire, where it burns, more truly dwells,

Than where it scatters light.

To his Mistress, who dreamed he was wounded.

GUARINI.

Thine eyes, bright Saint, disclose,

And thou shalt find

Dreams have not with illusive shows

Deceiv'd thy mind:

What sleep presented to thy view,

Awake, and thou shalt find is true.

Those mortal wounds I bear,

From thee begin,

Which though they outward not appear,

10Yet bleed within.

Love's flame like active lightning flies,

Wounding the heart, but not the eyes.

But now I yield to die

Thy sacrifice,

Nor more in vain will hope to fly

From thy bright eyes:

Their killing power cannot be shunn'd,

Open or closed alike they wound.

To his Mistress, &c.] 1647 'To Doris dreaming he was wounded'. Guarini is not there mentioned.

The Exchange.

DIALOGUE.

Phil.

That kiss, which last thou gav'st me, stole

My fainting life away,

Yet, though to thy breast fled, my soul

Still in mine own doth stay;

Char.

And with the same warm breath did mine

Into thy bosom slide;

There dwell contracted unto thine,

Yet still with me reside.

Chor.

Both souls thus in desire are one,

10And each is two in skill;

Doubled in intellect alone,

United in the will.

Weak Nature no such power doth know:

Love only can these wonders show.

The Exchange.] 1647 'Exchange of Souls'. In editions other than 1651 there is a refrain after each stanza-speech:

Weak Nature no such power doth know,

Love only can these wonders show.

Unaltered by Sickness.

Sickness, in vain thou dost invade

A Beauty that can never fade!

Could all thy malice but impair

One of the sweets which crown this fair,

Or steal the spirits from her eye,

Or kiss into a paler dye

The blushing roses of her cheek,

Our drooping hopes might justly seek

Redress from thee, and thou might'st save

10Thousands of lovers from the grave:

But such assaults are vain, for she

Is too divine to stoop to thee;

Blest with a form as much too high

For any change, as Destiny,

Which no attempt can violate;

For what's her Beauty, is our Fate.

Unaltered by Sickness.] Lines 1 and 2 are expanded in 1656 to:

Pale, envious Sickness, hence! no more

Possess our breast, too cold before.

In vain, alas! thou dost invade

Those beauties which can never fade.

4 'On those sweets which crown the fair' 1656.

7 blushing] blooming 1657.

8 drooping] dropping 1647: suffering 1656.

14 For any] 1656 But any-nonsensically.

On his Mistress's Death.

PETRARCH.

Love the ripe harvest of my toils

Began to cherish with his smiles,

Preparing me to be indued

With all the joys I long pursued,

When my fresh hopes, fair and full blown,

Death blasts, ere I could call my own.

Malicious Death! why with rude force

Dost thou my Fair from me divorce?

False Life! why in this loathéd chain

10Me from my Fair dost thou detain?

In whom assistance shall I find?

Alike are Life and Death unkind.

Pardon me, Love; thy power outshines,

And laughs at their infirm designs.

She is not wedded to a tomb,

Nor I to sorrow in her room.

They, what thou join'st, can ne'er divide