Part 1
Transcriber's Note
General Footnotes have been moved to the end of their relevant sections.
Most of the poems are followed by explanatory notes and lists of differences between editions (with Line numbers). These Line Notes have been kept with the Poems to which they refer.
The List of Contents for Thomas Stanley's Poems has been moved from the general List of Contents to its logical place after the Introduction to Thomas Stanley.
The rest of the Transcriber's Note is at the end of the book.
MINOR POETS OF THE CAROLINE PERIOD
VOL. III CONTAINING
JOHN CLEVELAND · THOMAS STANLEY HENRY KING · THOMAS FLATMAN NATHANIEL WHITING
EDITED BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A.
OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1921
Oxford University Press
_London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai_
Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY.
PREFATORY NOTE
I am afraid that this third and last volume of _Caroline Poets_ must reverse the famous apology of the second of the monarchs from whom it derives its title. It has been an unconscionable time in being born; though I do not, to speak in character with my authors, know what hostile divinity bribed Lucina. I cannot blame any one else: and--though for the first ten years after the appearance of Vol. II I was certainly very busy, professionally and with other literary work--I do not think I omitted any opportunity of getting on with the book. I think I may say that if the time I have actually spent thereon at spare moments could be put together it would represent a full year's solid labour, if not more. I make neither complaint nor boast of this; for it has always been my opinion that a person who holds such a position as I then held should, if he possibly can, do something, in unremunerative and unpopular ways, to make the treasure of English literature more easily accessible. I have thoroughly enjoyed the work; and I owe the greatest thanks to the authorities of the Clarendon Press for making it possible.
But no efforts of mine, unless I had been able to reside in Oxford or London, would have much hastened the completion of the task: for the materials were hard to select, and, when selected, harder to find in copies that could be used for printing. Some of them we could not get hold of in any reasonable time: and the Delegates of the Press were good enough to have bromide rotographs of the Bodleian copies made for me. I worked on these as long as I could: but I found at last that the white print on black ground, crammed and crowded together as it is in the little books of the time, was not merely troublesome and painful, but was getting really dangerous, to my extremely weak eyesight.
This necessitated, or almost necessitated, some alterations in the scheme. One concerned the modernization of spelling, which accordingly will be found disused in a few later pieces of the volume; another, and more important one, the revision of the text. This latter was most kindly undertaken principally by Mr. Percy Simpson, who has had the benefit of Mr. G. Thorn-Drury's unrivalled knowledge of these minors. I could not think of cramping the hands of scholars so well versed as these were in seventeenth-century work: and they have accordingly bestowed rather more attention than had originally formed part of my own plan on _apparatus criticus_ and comparison of MSS. The reader of course gains considerably in yet other respects. I owe these gentlemen, who may almost be called part-editors of this volume as far as text is concerned, very sincere thanks; and I have endeavoured as far as possible to specify their contributions.
When the war came the fortunes of the book inevitably received another check. The Clarendon Press conducted its operations in many other places besides Walton Street, and with many other instruments besides types and paper. Nor had its Home Department much time for such mere _belles lettres_ as these. Moreover the loss of my own library, and the difficulties of compensating for that loss in towns less rich in books than Edinburgh, put further drags on the wheel. So I and my Carolines had to bide our time still: and even now it has been thought best to jettison a part of the promised cargo of the ship rather than keep it longer on the stocks.
The poets whom I had intended to include, and upon whom I had bestowed more or less labour, but who now suffer exclusion, were Heath, Flecknoe, Hawkins, Beedome, Prestwich, Lawrence, Pick, Jenkyn, and a certain 'Philander'. Of these I chiefly regret Heath--the pretty title of whose _Clarastella_ is not ill-supported by the text, and who would have 'taken out the taste' of Whiting satisfactorily for some people--Hawkins, Lawrence, and Jenkyn. Henry Hawkins in _Partheneia Sacra_ has attained a sort of mystical unction which puts him not so very far below Crashaw, and perhaps entitles him to rank with that poet, Southwell, and Chideock Tichborne earlier as the representative quartette of English Roman Catholic poetry in the major Elizabethan age. Lawrence's _Arnalte and Lucetida_, not a brilliant thing in itself, has real literary interest of the historical-comparative kind as representing a Spanish romance by Diego de San Pedro (best known as the author of the _Carcel de Amor_) and its French translation by Herberay, the translator of _Amadis_. But such things remain to be taken up by some general historian of the 'Heroic' Romance. As for 'Patheryke' [_sic_] Jenkyn he attracted me many years ago by the agreeable heterography of his name (so far preferable to more recent sham-Celticizings thereof) and held me by less fantastic merits. Flecknoe pleaded for a chance against the tyranny of 'glorious John'. But when it was a question between keeping these and the others with further delay and letting them go, there could not be much doubt in which way England expected this man to do his infinitesimal duty.
One instance, not of subtraction but of addition to the original contents, seems to require slight notice. The eye-weakness just mentioned having always prevented me from making any regular study of palaeography, I had originally proposed only to include work already printed. I was tempted to break my rule in the case of Godolphin: and made rather a mess of it. An errata list in the present volume (p. 552) will, I believe, repair the blunder. The single censurer of this (I further believe) single serious lapse of mine was, I remember, troubled about it as a discredit to the University of Oxford. I sincerely trust that he was mistaken. None of us can possibly do credit to our University; we can only derive it from her. To throw any discredit on her is equally impossible: though of course any member may achieve such discredit for himself. Let me hope that the balance against me for indiscreet dealing with perhaps one per cent. of my fifteen hundred or two thousand pages is not too heavy.
Little need be said of the actual constituents of the volume, which has however perhaps lost something of its intended 'composition', in the artistic sense, by losing its tail. A good English edition of Cleveland has long been wanted: and I think--the thought being stripped of presumption by the number and valiancy of my helpers--that we have at last given one. Stanley and King--truer poets than Cleveland, if less interesting to the general public--also called for fresh presentation. If anybody demurs to Flatman and still more to Whiting he must be left to his own opinion. I shall only note here that on Cleveland I was guilty of injustice to the Library of the University of Edinburgh (to which I owe much) by saying that it contained no edition of this reviler of Caledonia. None was discoverable in my time, the process of overhauling and re-cataloguing being then incomplete. But my friend and successor, Professor Grierson, tells me that one has since been found. As to King, I have recently seen doubts cast on his authorship of 'Tell me no more'. But I have seen no valid reasons alleged for them, and I do not know of any one else who has the slightest claim to it.
Of the whole three volumes it is still less necessary to say much. I have owed special thanks in succession to Mr. Doble, Mr. Milford, and Mr. Chapman (now Secretary) of the Clarendon Press; to Professors Firth and Case (indeed, but for the former's generous imparting of his treasures the whole thing could hardly have been done) for loan of books as well as answering of questions; and to not a few others, among whom I may specially mention my friend of many years, the Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. I wish the work had done greater credit to all this assistance and to the generous expenditure of the University and its Press. But such as it is I can say (speaking no doubt as a fool) that I should myself have been exceedingly grateful if somebody had done it fifty years ago: and that I shall be satisfied if only a few people are grateful for it between now and fifty or five hundred years hence. For there is stuff in it, though not mine, which will keep as long as the longest of these periods and longer.[1]
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
1 _Royal Crescent, Bath. Oak-Apple Day, 1921_.
[Footnote 1: The tolerably gentle reader will easily understand that, in a book written, and even printed, at considerable intervals of time, Time itself will sometimes have affected statements. There may be a few such cases here. But it seems unnecessary to burden the thing with possible Corrigenda, as to the post-war price of the Cross-bath (p. 360), &c.]
CONTENTS
PAGE JOHN CLEVELAND 1 Introduction 4 Contents 14 To the Discerning Reader, &c. 15
POEMS 19
THOMAS STANLEY 95 Introduction 97 Contents 101
POEMS NOT PRINTED AFTER 1647 101 POEMS PRINTED IN 1647 AND REPRINTED IN 1656 BUT NOT IN 1651 102 1651 POEMS 109 POEMS APPEARING ONLY IN THE EDITION OF 1656 159
HENRY KING 161 Introduction 163 Table of Contents 167 The Publishers to the Author 168
POEMS, ELEGIES, PARADOXES, AND SONNETS 169
THOMAS FLATMAN 275 Introduction 277 Dedication 283 To the Reader 284 Commendatory Poems 285 The Contents 294
POEMS AND SONGS 296
NATHANIEL WHITING 423
Introduction 424 Commendatory Poems 428
THE PLEASING HISTORY OF ALBINO AND BELLAMA 439 To those worthy Heroes of our Age, whose noble Breasts are wet and water'd with the dew of Helicon 539 Il Insonio Insonnadado 540
POEMS
_BY_
J. C.
With Additions, never before Printed.
[Illustration]
Printed in the Yeare 1653.
_J. Cleaveland_ Revived:
=POEMS,=
ORATIONS,
EPISTLES,
And other of his Genuine Incomparable Pieces, never before publisht.
WITH
Some other Exquisite Remains of the most eminent Wits of both the Universities that were his Contemporaries.
_Non norunt hæc monumenta mori._
_LONDON_, Printed for _Nathaniel Brook_, at the Angel in Corn-hill. 1659.
_Clievelandi Vindiciæ_;
OR,
CLIEVELAND'S
Genuine POEMS,
Orations, Epistles, _&c._
Purged from the many
False & Spurious Ones
Which had usurped his Name, and from innumerable Errours and Corruptions in the True.
To which are added many never Printed before.
Published according to the Author's own Copies.
_LONDON_, Printed for _Nath. Brooke_, at the _Angel_ in _Corne-Hill_ near the _Royal Exchange_, 1677.
INTRODUCTION TO JOHN CLEVELAND.
Almost everybody--an everybody not including many bodies--who has dealt with Cleveland since the revival of interest in seventeenth-century writers has of necessity dwelt more or less on the moral that he points, and the tale that he illustrates, if he does not exactly adorn it. Moral and tale have been also generally summarized by referring to the undoubted fact that Cleveland had twenty editions while Milton's _Minor Poems_ had two. I do not propose myself to dwell long on this part of the matter. The moral diatribe is not my trade: and while almost any one who wants such a thing can deduce it from the facts which will be given, those who are unable to effect the deduction may as well go without it. What I wish to provide is what it is not easy for any one to provide, and impossible for any one to provide 'out of his own head'--that is to say an edition, sufficient for reading and for all literary purposes, of the most probably authentic of the heterogeneous poems which have clustered round Cleveland's name. Such an edition did not exist when this collection of Caroline poets was planned, nor when it was announced: nor has it been supplied since in this country. One did appear very shortly afterwards in America,[1] and it has been of use to me: but it certainly does not make Cleveland's appearance here superfluous. Had not Professor Case of Liverpool, who had long made Cleveland a special study, insisted on my giving him in this collection, and most kindly provided me with stores of his own material, I should not have attempted the task: and I still hope that Mr. Case will execute a more extensive edition with the prose, with the doubtful or even certainly spurious poems duly annotated, and with apparatus which would be out of place here. It cannot, however, be out of place to include--in what is almost a corpus of 'metaphysical' poetry of the less easily accessible class--one who has been regarded from different, but not very distant, points of view as at once the metaphysical 'furthest' and as the metaphysical _reductio ad absurdum_.
Cleveland (the name was also very commonly spelt in his own day 'Cleiveland'[2] and 'Cleaveland', as well as otherwise still) was born at Loughborough, and christened on June 20, 1613. His father, Thomas, was curate of the parish and assistant master at the Grammar School. Eight years later the father was made vicar of Hinckley, also provided with a grammar school, at which John appears to have been educated till in 1627 he went to Christ's College, Cambridge--where, of course, the everlasting comparison with his elder contemporary Milton comes in again for those who like it. He remained at Christ's for seven years as usual, performing divers college exercises on public occasions, occasionally of some importance; took his bachelor's degree (also as usual) in 1631; and in 1634 was elected to a fellowship at St. John's, proceeding to his M.A. next year. At the end of his probationary period he did not take orders, but was admitted as _legista_--perhaps also, though the statement is uncorroborated officially, to the third learned faculty of Physic. There is also doubt about his incorporation at Oxford. He served as Tutor and as Rhetoric Praelector: nor are we destitute of Orations and Epistles of an official character from his pen. Like the majority of university men at the time--and indeed like the majority of men of letters and education--he was a strong Royalist: and was unlikely to stay in Cambridge when the Roundhead mob of the town was assisted by a Parliamentary garrison in rabbling the University. It was natural that he should 'retire to Oxon.', and it is probable that Oxford was his head-quarters from 1642 to 1645. But he does not seem to have been actually deprived of his fellowship at St. John's till the last-named year, when the Earl of Manchester, whom (especially as Lord Kimbolton) Cleveland had bitterly satirized, had his opportunity of revenge and took it.
For Cleveland had already been active with his pen in the Royalist cause, and was now appointed to a post of some importance as 'Judge Advocate' of Newark. The Governor was Sir Richard Willis, for whom Cleveland replied to Leven's summons to surrender. They held the town for the King from November to May, when it was given up on Charles's own order. Then comes the anecdote--more than a hundred years after date--of Leven's dismissing him with contemptuous lenity. 'Let the poor fellow go about his business and sell his ballads.' This, though accepted by Carlyle, and a smart enough invention, has no contemporary authority, and is made extremely suspicious by its own addition that Cleveland was so vexed that he took to strong liquors which hastened his death. Now Newark fell in 1646 and Cleveland lived till 1658. It would make an interesting examination question, 'How much must a man drink in a day in order to hasten his death thereby twelve years afterwards?' And it must be admitted, if true, to be a strong argument on the side of the good fellow who pleaded that alcohol was a very _slow_ poison.
He escaped somehow, however: and we hear nothing of his life for another decade. Then he is again in trouble, being informed against, to the Council of State, by some Norwich Roundheads who have, however, nothing to urge against him but his antecedents, his forgathering with 'papists and delinquents', his 'genteel garb' with 'small and scant means', and (which is important) his 'great abilitie whence he is able to do the greater disservice', this last a handsome testimonial to Cleveland, and a remarkable premium upon imbecility. He was imprisoned at Yarmouth and wrote a very creditable letter to Cromwell, maintaining his principles, but asking for release, which seems to have been granted. Cromwell--to do him justice and to alter a line of his greatest panegyrist save one in verse on another person--
Never _persecuted_ but for gain,
and he probably did not agree with the officious persons at Norwich that there was much to be gained by incarcerating a poor Royalist poet. But Cleveland had been at least three months in prison, and it is alleged, with something more like _vera causa_ in the allegation, that he there contracted 'such a weakness and disorder as soon after brought him to the grave'. A seventeenth-century prison was much more likely to kill a man in two years than 'strong waters' which had already been vigorously applied and successfully resisted for ten. He died in Gray's Inn, of an intermittent fever, on April 29, 1658.
Something will be said presently of the almost hopeless tangle of the so-called editions of Cleveland's _Poems_. It seems at least probable that no single one of the twenty--or whatever the number is--can be justly called authoritative. That he was an extremely popular poet or rather journalist in verse as well as prose, is absolutely beyond dispute--the very tangle just referred to proves it--and, though it may be excessive to call him the most popular poet of his time, he may fairly be bracketed with Cowley as joint holder of that position. Nor did his popularity cease as quickly as Cowley's did--the Restoration indeed was likely to increase rather than diminish it; and the editions went on till close upon the Revolution itself, while there were at least two after it, one just on the eve of the eighteenth century in 1699 and one near its middle in 1742.[3] Considerably before this, however, the critics had turned against him. 'Grave men', to quote Edward Phillips and the _Theatrum Poetarum_, 'affirmed him the best of English poets', but not for long. Fuller, who actually admired him, admitted that 'Clevelandizing' was dangerous; and Dryden, who must have admired him at one time, and shows constant traces of his influence, talks in the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ of a 'Catachresis or Clevelandism'. In the eighteenth century he passed almost out of sight till Johnson brought him up for 'awful exampling' in the famous Life of Cowley: and he has had few advocates since. Let us, without borrowing from these advocates or attempting tediously to confute his enemies, deal with the facts, so far as they are known, of his life, and with the characteristics of the carefully sifted, but in no sense 'selected', poetry which will follow.
As for his character as a man, the evidence is entirely in his favour. He was an honest and consistent politician on his own side, and if some people think it the wrong side, others are equally positive that it was the right. If (rather unfairly) we dismiss the encomia on his character as partisan, there remains the important fact that no one on the other side says anything definite against it. If he was abusive, it certainly does not lie with anybody who admires Milton to reproach him with that. But the fact is, once more, that except in so far as there is a vague idea that a cavalier, and especially a cavalier poet, must have been a 'deboshed' person, there is absolutely no evidence against Cleveland and much in his favour. Also, this is not our business, which is with him as a poet.
As such he has been subjected to very little really critical examination.[4] The result of such as I myself have been able to give him was arrived at somewhat slowly: or rather it flashed upon me, after reading the poems several times over in different arrangements, that which gives the serious and satiric pieces higgledy-piggledy as in the older editions, and that which separates them, as in 1677 and in Mr. Berdan's American reprint. This result is that I entertain a very serious doubt whether Cleveland _ever_ wrote 'serious' poetry, in one sense--he was of course serious enough in his satires--at all. That, on the other hand, he deliberately set himself to burlesque the 'metaphysical' manner I do not think: or at least (for rather minute definition is necessary here) I do not think that he executed this burlesque with any reforming intention or any particular contempt for the style. Like Butler, whom he in so many ways resembles--who pretty certainly owed him not a little, and of whom he was, as has often been pointed out, a sort of rough copy or spoiled draft--he was what he satirized in the literary way, and he caricatured himself. Of course if anybody thinks, as the _Retrospective_ Reviewer thought, that 'Fuscara' and 'To the State of Love' are actually and intrinsically 'beautiful specimens of poetic conception', he will scout my notion. But I do not think that any one who has done me the honour even to look into these volumes will think me an 'antimetaphysical', and I must confess that I can see only occasional poetry here--only a caricature of such methods as may be suggested by Donne's 'Bracelet' piece, and the best things in Crashaw. It is, for instance, a very tell-tale thing that there is not, in Cleveland's work, a single one of the lovely lyrics that enshrine and ennoble the conceits in almost every one else of the school, from Donne himself to Sherburne. An American critic, defending Cleveland with the delightful indiscreetness of most defenders, maintains that these lyrics were failures--that they were _not_ characteristic of the time. Well, let us be thankful that almost everybody down to Kynaston and John Hall 'failed' in this way not seldom.