Part 21
Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the gray hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years came short, he might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have been Solomon's old man. And surely if we deduct all those days of our life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those we now live, if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long; the son in this sense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age is happily old without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live unto gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety is to be preferred before sinning immortality.
Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker constitutions. _Cautelous_ chastity and _crafty_ sobriety were far from him; those jewels were _paragon_, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in him: which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes and few mementos unto you.
SOME RELATIONS WHOSE TRUTH WE FEAR
From 'Pseudoxia Epidemica'
Many other accounts like these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only, but whose relations, honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these singularities of villainy; for as they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the former; for the vicious examples of ages past poison the curiosity of these present, affording a hint of sin unto seducible spirits, and soliciting those unto the imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely principled as to invent them. In this kind we commend the wisdom and goodness of Galen, who would not leave unto the world too subtle a theory of poisons; unarming thereby the malice of venomous spirits, whose ignorance must be contented with sublimate and arsenic. For surely there are subtler venerations, such as will invisibly destroy, and like the basilisks of heaven. In things of this nature silence commendeth history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never rise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.
WILLIAM BROWNE
(1591-1643)
Among the English poets fatuous for their imaginative interpretation of nature, high rank must be given to William Browne, who belongs in the list headed by Spenser, and including Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton, Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and Phineas Fletcher. Although he shows skill and charm of style in various kinds of verse, his name rests chiefly upon his largest work, 'Britannia's Pastorals.' This is much wider in scope than the title suggests, if one follows the definition given by Pope in his 'Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.' He says:--"A Pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd or one considered under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or narrated, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and passion.... If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea along with us: that Pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden Age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been when the best of men followed the employment.... We must therefore use some illusion to render a Pastoral delightful, and this consists in exposing the best side only of a shepherd's life, and in concealing its miseries."
In his 'Shepherd's Pipe,' a series of 'Eclogues' Browne follows this plan; but 'Britannia's Pastorals' contains rambling stories of Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real, yet stand in exquisite woodland landscapes. When the story passes to the yellow sands and "froth-girt rocks," washed by the crisped and curling waves from "Neptune's silver, ever-shaking breast," or when it touches the mysteries of the ocean world, over which "Thetis drives her silver throne," the poet's fancy is as delicate as when he revels in the earthy smell of the woods, where the leaves, golden and green, hide from sight the feathered choir; where glow the hips of scarlet berries; where is heard the dropping of nuts; and where the active bright-eyed squirrels leap from tree to tree.
The loves, hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida, Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry; anglers are seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the May-pole, and shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy caves appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled by Drayton and Herrick.
Several lyric songs of high order are scattered through the 'Pastorals,' and the famous 'Palinode on Man' is imbedded in the Third Book as follows:--
"I truly know How men are born and whither they shall go; I know that like to silkworms of one year, Or like a kind and wronged lover's tear, Or on the pathless waves a rudder's dint, Or like the little sparkles of a flint, Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum'd, Or fireworks only made to be consum'd: I know that such is man, and all that trust In that weak piece of animated dust. The silkworm droops, the lover's tears soon shed, The ship's way quickly lost, the sparkle dead; The cake burns out in haste, the firework's done, And man as soon as these as quickly gone."
Little is known of Browne's life. He was a native of Tavistock, Devonshire; born, it is thought, in 1591, the son of Thomas Browne, who is supposed by Prince in his 'Worthies of Devon' to have belonged to a knightly family. According to Wood, who says "he had a great mind in a little body," he was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, "about the beginning of the reign of James I." Leaving Oxford without a degree, he was admitted in 1612 to the Inner Temple, London, and a little later he is discovered at Oxford, engaged as private tutor to Robert Dormer, afterward Earl of Carnarvon. In 1624 he received his degree of Master of Arts from Oxford. He appears to have settled in Dorking, and after 1640 nothing more is heard of him. Wood thinks he died in 1645, but there is an entry in the Tavistock register, dated March 27th, 1643, and reading "William Browne was buried" on that day. That he was devoted to the streams, dales, and downs of his native Devonshire is shown in the Pastorals, where he sings:--
"Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessèd plot Whose equal all the world affordeth not! Show me who can, so many crystal rills, Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills; Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines; Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines."
And in another place he says:--
"And Tavy in my rhymes Challenge a due; let it thy glory be That famous Drake and I were born by thee."
The First Book of 'Britannia's Pastorals' was written before its author was twenty, and was published in 1631. The Second Book appeared in 1616, and both were reprinted in 1625. The Third Book was not published during Browne's life. The 'Shepherd's Pipe' was published in 1614, and 'The Inner Temple Masque,' written on the story of Ulysses and Circe, for representation in 1614, was first published in Thomas Davies's edition of Browne's works (3 vols., 1772). Two critical editions of value have been brought out in recent years: one by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1868-69); and the other by Gordon Goodwin and A.H. Bullen (1894).
"In the third song of the Second Book," says Mr. Bullen in his preface,--
"There is a description of a delightful grove, perfumed with 'odoriferous buds and herbs of price,' where fruits hang in gallant clusters from the trees, and birds tune their notes to the music of running water; so fair a pleasaunce
'that you are fain Where you last walked to turn and walk again.'
A generous reader might apply that description to Browne's poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals and junketings? of angling, hunting the squirrel, nut-gathering? Of such subjects William Browne treats, singing like the shepherd in the 'Arcadia,' as though he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his good fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings whose gracious influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills and dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous conceits."
Browne is a poet's poet. Drayton, Wither, Herbert, and John Davies of Hereford, wrote his praises. Mrs. Browning includes him in her 'Vision of Poets,' where she says:--
"Drayton and Browne,--with smiles they drew From outward Nature, still kept new From their own inward nature true."
Milton studied him carefully, and just as his influence is perceived in the work of Keats, so is it found in 'Comus' and in 'Lycidas.' Browne acknowledges Spenser and Sidney as his masters, and his work shows that he loved Chaucer and Shakespeare.
CIRCE'S CHARM
Song from the 'Inner Temple Masque'
Son of Erebus and night, Hie away; and aim thy flight Where consort none other fowl Than the bat and sullen owl; Where upon thy limber grass, Poppy and mandragoras, With like simples not a few, Hang forever drops of dew; Where flows Lethe without coil Softly like a stream of oil. Hie thee hither, gentle sleep: With this Greek no longer keep. Thrice I charge thee by my wand, Thrice with moly from my hand Do I touch Ulysses's eyes, And with the jaspis: then arise, Sagest Greek!
_CIRCE_.
Photogravure from a Painting by E Burne-Jones.
[Illustration]
THE HUNTED SQUIRREL
From 'Britannia's Pastorals'
Then as a nimble squirrel from the wood Ranging the hedges for his filbert food Sits pertly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking, And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking; Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys To share with him come with so great a noise That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke, And for his life leap to a neighbor oak, Thence to a beach, thence to a row of ashes; Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes The boys run dabbling through thick and thin; One tears his hose, another breaks his shin; This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe; This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste; Another cries behind for being last: With sticks and stones and many a sounding holloa The little fool with no small sport they follow, Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray Gets to the woods and hides him in his dray.
AS CAREFUL MERCHANTS DO EXPECTING STAND
From 'Britannia's Pastorals'
As careful merchants do expecting stand, After long time and merry gales of wind, Upon the place where their brave ships must land, So wait I for the vessel of my mind.
Upon a great adventure is it bound, Whose safe return will valued be at more Than all the wealthy prizes which have crowned The golden wishes of an age before.
Out of the East jewels of worth she brings; The unvalued diamond of her sparkling eye Wants in the treasures of all Europe's kings; And were it mine, they nor their crowns should buy.
The sapphires ringèd on her panting breast Run as rich veins of ore about the mold, And are in sickness with a pale possessed; So true for them I should disvalue gold.
The melting rubies on her cherry lip Are of such power to hold, that as one day Cupid flew thirsty by, he stooped to sip: And, fastened there, could never get away.
The sweets of Candy are no sweets to me Where hers I taste: nor the perfumes of price, Robbed from the happy shrubs of Araby, As her sweet breath so powerful to entice.
O hasten then! and if thou be not gone Unto that wicked traffic through the main, My powerful sigh shall quickly drive thee on, And then begin to draw thee back again.
If, in the mean, rude waves have it opprest, It shall suffice, I ventured at the best.
SONG OF THE SIRENS
From 'The Inner Temple Masque'
Steer hither, steer your wingèd pines, All beaten mariners! Here lie love's undiscovered mines, A prey to passengers: Perfumes far sweeter than the best Which make the Phoenix's urn and nest. Fear not your ships, Nor any to oppose you save our lips, But come on shore, Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
For swelling waves our panting breasts, Where never storms arise, Exchange, and be awhile our guests: For stars, gaze on our eyes. The compass love shall hourly sing, And as he goes about the ring, We will not miss To tell each point he nameth with a kiss. Then come on shore, Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
AN EPISTLE ON PARTING
From 'Epistles'
Dear soul, the time is come, and we must part; Yet, ere I go, in these lines read my heart: A heart so just, so loving, and so true, So full of sorrow and so full of you, That all I speak or write or pray or mean,-- And, which is all I can, all that I dream,-- Is not without a sigh, a thought of you, And as your beauties are, so are they true. Seven summers now are fully spent and gone, Since first I loved, loved you, and you alone; And should mine eyes as many hundreds see, Yet none but you should claim a right in me; A right so placed that time shall never hear Of one so vowed, or any loved so dear. When I am gone, if ever prayers moved you, Relate to none that I so well have loved you: For all that know your beauty and desert, Would swear he never loved that knew to part. Why part we then? That spring, which but this day Met some sweet river, in his bed can play, And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss, Who never know what separation is. The amorous vine with wanton interlaces Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces: Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves, And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves: Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit, Yet dare not ask a hand to lessen it.
SONNETS TO CÆLIA
Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry, You took my hand to try if you could guess, By lines therein, if any wight there be Ordained to make me know some happiness: I wished that those charácters could explain, Whom I will never wrong with hope to win; Or that by them a copy might be ta'en, By you alone what thoughts I have within. But since the hand of nature did not set (As providently loath to have it known) The means to find that hidden alphabet, Mine eyes shall be the interpreters alone: By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair, If now you see her that doth love me, there.
Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest, And take a long leave of sweet poesy; Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west, Should hear no more my oaten melody. Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile Unperfect lie, and make no further known The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle, Till I have left some record of mine own. You are the subject now, and, writing you, I well may versify, not poetize: Here needs no fiction; for the graces true And virtues clip not with base flatteries. Here should I write what you deserve of praise; Others might wear, but I should win, the bays.
Fairest, when I am gone, as now the glass Of Time is marked how long I have to stay, Let me entreat you, ere from hence I pass, Perhaps from you for ever more away,-- Think that no common love hath fired my breast, No base desire, but virtue truly known, Which I may love, and wish to have possessed, Were you the highest as fairest of any one. 'Tis not your lovely eye enforcing flames, Nor beauteous red beneath a snowy skin, That so much binds me yours, or makes your fame's, As the pure light and beauty shrined within: Yet outward parts I must affect of duty, As for the smell we like the rose's beauty.
HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL
(1820-1872)
This poet, prominent among those who gained their chief inspiration from the stirring events of the Civil War, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, February 6th, 1820, and died in East Hartford, Connecticut, October 31st, 1872. He was graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, studied law, and was admitted to the bar; but instead of the legal profession adopted that of a teacher, and made his home in Hartford, which was the residence of his uncle, the Bishop of Connecticut. Although Mr. Brownell soon became known as a writer of verse, both grave and humorous, it was not till the coming on of the Civil War that his muse found truest and noblest expression. With a poet's sensitiveness he foresaw the coming storm, and predicted it in verse that has the ring of an ancient prophet; and when the crash came he sang of the great deeds of warriors in the old heroic strain. Many of these poems, like 'Annus Memorabilis' and 'Coming,' were born of the great passion of patriotism which took possession of him, and were regarded only as the visions of a heated imagination. But when the storm burst it was seen that he had the true vision. As the dreadful drama unrolled, Brownell rose to greater issues, and became the war-poet _par excellence_, the vigorous chronicler of great actions.
He was fond of the sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity to witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was gratified in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a very felicitous versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the fight at the mouth of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's attention, and he took steps to learn the name of the author. When it was given, Commodore Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered Mr. Brownell the position of master's-mate on board the Hartford, and attached the poet to him in the character of a private secretary. Thus he was present at the fight of Mobile Bay. After the war he accompanied the Admiral in his cruise in European waters.
Although Brownell was best known to the country by his descriptive poems, 'The River Fight' and 'The Bay Fight,' which appear in his volume of collected works, 'War Lyrics,' his title to be considered a true poet does not rest upon these only. He was unequal in his performance and occasionally was betrayed by a grotesque humor into disregard of dignity and finish; but he had both the vision and the lyric grace of the builder of lasting verse.
ANNUS MEMORABILIS
(CONGRESS, 1860-61)