Part 18

How much this confirms _Pythagoras_ the author, and his scholars but disposers of the verses (who, as it appears, forgot these two), is evident enough. The main argument they insist upon, who labour to prove the contrary, is derived from these words,

[_Nature's eternal fountain I attest, Who did the soul with fourfold power invest_]

Where _Marcilius_ expounds [Greek: paradonta tetrakên][2] _illum a quo scientiam_ [Greek: tetraktyos], _acceperant, is autem doctor eorum Pythagoras_, as if it were

_Him who the Tetrad to our souls exprest, (Nature's eternal fountain) I attest;_

And then takes pains to show that his scholars used to swear by him. But [Greek: paradidonai psychê mathêtôn] for [Greek: didaskein] is not without a little violence to [Greek: hametera psycha] (which makes _Iamblic[h]us_ read [Greek: hameteras sophias]) _Marcilius_ in this being the less excusable for confessing immediately, _Animae vero nostrae dixerunt Pythagorei quoniam quaternarius animae numerus est_, an explanation inconsistent with the other, but (as I conceive) truer; _Macrobius_ expressly agreeth with it; _Iuro tibi per eum qui dat animae nostrae quaternarium numerum_; or, as others,

_Per qui nostrae animae numerum dedit ipse quaternum._

_By him who gave us life--God._ In which sense, [Greek: pagan aennaou physeôs] much more easily will follow [Greek: paradonta] than [Greek: tetrakên]. The four powers of the soul are, _mens_, _scientia_, _opinio_, _sensus_, which _Aristotle_ calls _the four instruments of judgement_, _Hierocles_, [Greek: kritikas dynameis]. The _mind_ is compared to a unit, in that of many singulars it makes one. _Science_ to the number _two_ (which amongst the Pythagoreans is _numerus infinitatis_), because it proceeds from things certain and granted to uncertain and infinite. _Opinion_ to _three_, a number of indefinite variety. _Sense_ to _four_, as furnishing the other three. In this exposition I am the more easily persuaded to dissent from _Plutarch_, _Hierocles_, _Iamblichus_, and other interpreters, since they differ no less amongst themselves.

[_Within is a continual hidden fight_]

Betwixt Reason and Appetite.

[_how little trouble_]

As _Marcilius_ reads, [Greek: Ê pollôn], &c.

[_their genius_]

[Greek: Hoiô daimoni], _Hierocles_ expounds [Greek: hoia psychê]. _Genius_ includes both.

[_what t' embrace_]

_Hierocles_ [Greek: panta ta deonta], _all that they ought to do._

[_from the[3] body's stain_]

_Hierocles from the infection of the body._

[_In times[3] of prayer_]

[Greek: En te lysei psychês], _Meditation_. See _Plato in Phaedone_.

[_and cleansing_]

Which extended (saith _Hierocles_) [Greek: heôs sitiôn kai potôn kai tês holês diaitês tou thnêtou hêmôn sômatos] _to meat and drink_, &c.

[_meats denied_]

What they were is expressed by _Laertius_, _Suidas_, _Hierocles_, _Agellius_, &c. _Hierocles_ affirms that in these words [Greek: hôn eipomen], he cites his _sacred Apothegms_: [Greek: ta de epi merous en tois hierois apophthegmasin, en aporrhêtô paredidoito], _Concerning meat is particularly delivered in his holy Apothegms, that which was not lawful to make known to every one._ Which is a great testimony that _Pythagoras_, and not any of his disciples, writ these verses; for if the author had cited him before in the third person (as they argue from [Greek: paradonta tetrakên][4]), he would have cited him now in the first.

[Footnote 1: 'These' and 'those' are originally 'crossed over' in text and note.]

[Footnote 2: [Greek: tetrakên] should, as indeed the context proclaims, be [Greek: tetraktyn].]

[Footnote 3: Slight alteration of text in notes again original.]

[Footnote 4: See above. The mistake is an odd one because the original oath is in hexameters and [Greek: tetraktyn] is absolutely necessary as the last word.]

FINIS.

POEMS APPEARING ONLY IN THE EDITION OF 1656

On this swelling bank, once proud Of its burden, Doris lay: Here she smil'd, and did uncloud Those bright suns eclipse the day; Here we sat, and with kind art She about me twin'd her arms, Clasp'd in hers my hand and heart, Fetter'd in those pleasing charms.

Here my love and joys she crown'd, Whilst the hours stood still before me, 10 With a killing glance did wound, And a melting kiss restore me. On the down of either breast, Whilst with joy my soul retir'd, My reclining head did rest, Till her lips new life inspir'd. Thus, renewing of these sights Doth with grief and pleasure fill me, And the thought of these delights Both at once revive and kill me! 20

Dear, fold me once more in thine arms! And let me know Before I go There is no bliss but in those charms. By thy fair self I swear That here, and only here, I would for ever, ever stay: But cruel Fate calls me away.

How swiftly the light minutes slide! The hours that haste 10 Away thus fast By envious flight my stay do chide. Yet, Dear, since I must go, By this last kiss I vow, By all that sweetness which dwells with thee, Time shall move slow, till next I see thee.

The lazy hours move slow, The minutes stay; Old Time with leaden feet doth go, And his light wings hath cast away. The slow-pac'd spheres above Have sure releas'd Their guardians, and without help move, Whilst that the very angels rest.

The number'd sands that slide Through this small glass, 10 And into minutes Time divide, Too slow each other do displace; The tedious wheels of light No faster chime, Than that dull shade which waits on night: For Expectation outruns Time.

How long, Lord, must I stay? How long dwell here? O free me from this loathèd clay! Let me no more these fetters wear! 20 With far more joy Shall I resign my breath, For, to my griev'd soul, not to die Is every minute a new death.

[The three pieces which appear in _1656_ only have no great character, and were very likely written for Gamble _to_ tunes--seldom a very satisfactory process.]

* * *

* * * * *

POEMS,

ELEGIES,

PARADOXES,

and

SONNETS.

_LONDON_.

Printed by _J. G._ for _Rich: Marriot_ and _Hen: Herringman_, and sold in St. _Dunstans_ Churchyard _Fleet-street_, and at the _New-Exchange_.

1657.

INTRODUCTION TO HENRY KING.

Among the numerous possible extensions of that practice of writing _Dialogues of the Dead_ which has been, at various times, rather unusually justified of its practitioners, not the least tempting would be one which should embody the expectations and the disappointment of the pious Bishop who held the see of Chichester in Fuller's Bad and Better Times--long afterwards, between 1843 and 1888. In the former year, as most students of English poetry know, the late Archdeacon Hannah, then a young Fellow of Lincoln College, published a most admirable edition of part of King's _Poems_; and announced that the rest must be left for a separate volume 'which will be published without delay'. He lived forty-five years longer, and 'the rest' was by no means an extensive one; but, whatever may have been the reason,[1] the second volume never appeared, while, to complete the misfortune, King's one famous thing, the beautiful

Tell me no more how fair she is--

is not in the first. Nor has any one since attempted to supply the deficiency,[2] though that benefactor of the lovers of Caroline poetry, Mr. J. R. Tutin, included a fifteen-page selection of King's poems, with Donne and Walton, in one of his 'Orinda Booklets' (Hull, 1904) some little time after the plan of this collection was announced, and when its first volume was passing through the press.

There must have been many readers who, like the present writer long enough ago, have felt a sensation of mingled amazement and chagrin on buying Dr. Hannah's book and _not_ finding 'Tell me no more' in it. For that poem, though in certain 'strange and high' qualities it is the inferior of the best jets of the Caroline genius, is one of the most faultless and perfect things in this or indeed in any period of English poetry, and may be said to impart the Caroline essence in a form that can be (in the medical sense) 'borne' by all who have any feeling for poetry at all, as hardly anything else does. It enlists, with unerring art, the peculiar virtue of the metre--that of expressing settled but not violent hopelessness--which Cowper afterwards utilized, more terribly but hardly more skilfully, in 'The Castaway'. It has the 'metaphysical' fancifulness of thought and diction, tempered to a reasonable but not an excessive degree 'below proof' and so fit for general consumption. No one who possesses literary 'curiosity'--in the good old sense, not the degenerate modern one--can be indifferent to seeing what else the author of this could do.

It may be frankly and at once admitted that he has nothing exactly to match it. The once even more famous--and still perhaps not much less famous--_Sic Vita_, is not certainly his; and, though a fine thing, is very distinctly open to the metaphysical reproach of _playing with_ its subject too much--of that almost wilfully mechanical and factory-like conceit-mongering which reaches its extreme in Cleveland. If it is King's, 'The Dirge' is a sort of extended handling of it--less epigrammatic but more poetical, and brought down again to that _via media_ of metaphysicality which is King's special path. He is, in fact, a sort of Longfellow of this particular style and school of poetry--from the other side; a sort of Donne _in usum vulgi_. 'The Exequy' and 'The Elegy', 'Silence' and 'Brave Flowers', are all in this middle way; and perhaps his treading of it may be a reason why he has been comparatively neglected--the great vulgar not being grateful for poetry which never can fully please it, and the small wanting something more concentrated and '_above_ proof'. But even if he had not lacked complete presentment so long, such a collection as this would be manifestly incomplete without him. It has not, however, been thought necessary to include his verse translations of the Psalms, which form a separate volume, not much more successful than most of the attempts at that impossible task. With the admirable English of the Authorized or the Prayer-Book Versions at choice, and the admirable Latin of the Vulgate to fall back upon, nobody can want stuff like

Earth is the Lord's with her increase, And all that there have place: He founded it upon the Seas, And made the floods her base.[3]

Henry King's private and public history (for he had more to do with public affairs than can have been at all comfortable to himself) had no very obvious connexion with poetry, except in so far as circumstances fed what was clearly a special taste of his for elegiac writing. He was born in 1592 at Worminghall in Bucks., for some time the abode of a family which, whether its tracing to 'the ancient Kings [by function, not name merely] of Devonshire' was fiction or fact, was, and had been for generations, highly respectable. The Kings had recently addicted themselves very specially to education at Westminster and Christ Church (there are said to have been five of the same family on the books of the House at one time) and to the clerical profession. The poet-bishop was the eldest son of John King, Prebendary of St. Paul's and Chaplain to the Queen, himself a verse-writer, and after having been Dean of Christ Church, Bishop of London from 1611 to 1621. The son--if not without some nepotism yet with results which fully justified it--became himself Prebendary of St. Paul's (as did a brother, who was still younger, in the same year) when he was only four-and-twenty; and successively received the archdeaconry of Colchester (1617); a canonry at Christ Church (1624); and the deanery of Rochester (1639). He had then the good and evil luck to be one of the large batch of Bishops made or translated by Charles on the very eve of the Rebellion. He never sat in the House of Lords before its suppression; and he had taken possession of his see but a short time when he was rabbled out of his palace at Chichester and plundered of his property, contrary to the terms of surrender of the City, by Waller's soldiers. He was also ousted from the rich living of Petworth, usually held _in commendam_ with the (poor) bishopric of Chichester, by that particularly pestilent Puritan, Francis Cheynell. He seems to have passed great part of the Interregnum with the Salters of Richkings, near Langley in Bucks. (a house well famed for hospitality at different times and under different owners and names[4]), and at the Restoration he recovered his preferments, Edmund Calamy _tertius_ having the extraordinary impudence to state that Cheynell was 'put out to make room for King'. And he held them for nearly a decade longer, dying in 1669. He left children and also grandchildren, one of whom, Elizabeth, seems to have married Isaac Houblon, Pepys's 'handsome man'.

Despite King's persecutions by the Puritans he was accused of a leaning to Puritanism, as his father had been before him,[5] but seemingly without much foundation. He appears to have been a sound Churchman, and a very good man in every way, though with a slight tendency (not to be too harshly judged by those who have lived in quieter times) to 'grizzle', as it is familiarly called, over his tribulations. He was also what was termed at the time 'a painful preacher' and a popular one. Pepys, it is true, did not like him when he first heard him, and afterwards thought a sermon of his 'mean'. But between these two he describes a third as 'good and eloquent'; and Samuel's judgements on such matters, always unliterary, were also much conditioned by circumstances, and by the curious remnant of Puritan leaven which always remained in that very far from pure lump.

King's poems must, from various signs, have been much handed about in manuscript; but how they came to be collected and published in 1657 is quite unknown. They were at first attributed by some to his brother Philip; and a reprint, or perhaps merely the remainder with a fresh title-page, in 1700 actually attributed them to Ben Jonson, which was going far even in a period which had seen Kirkman and was to see Curll.[6] One or two pieces besides _Sic Vita_ are doubtful, and one or two more certainly not his; but on the whole the collection seems to be fairly trustworthy, from Dr. Hannah's comparison of it with MS. copies. And it rarely offers _cruces_ of interpretation.

As to the origin and general character of the pieces there is nothing surprising about it either. King belonged to a time when, fortunately, churchmanship, scholarship, and literature were almost inseparably connected; and by accident or preference he seems, all his life, to have been thrown or drawn into the society of men of letters. He was a friend if not a 'son' of Ben Jonson; he was an intimate of Donne's, and one of the recipients of the famous blood-stone seals; he was for more than forty years (as he has himself recorded in a letter to Walton) a friend of 'honest Isaac' [_sic_]. And if his middle days were politically unhappy, they, and still more his earlier, were poetically fortunate. How, and in what degree, he caught the wind as it blew has been partly indicated above: the text should show the rest.[7]

[Footnote 1: I have suggested below that some slight scruples of pudibundity may have had their influence; but if they had been serious the Archdeacon would hardly have promised this rest.]

[Footnote 2: Until quite recently, and after this present edition had been long printed, one appeared in America (Yale University Press, 1914) by Lawrence Mason, Ph.D.]

[Footnote 3: I think this will justify the critic (whoever he was) whose sentence--'quaint mediocrity and inappropriate metre'--offended Hannah's editorial chivalry as 'very unjust'. Indeed, I should make it stronger and say 'irritating inadequacy alike in metre and phrase'.]

[Footnote 4: Especially that of Percy Lodge in the eighteenth century, when it was the Dowager Duchess of Somerset's: see Shenstone, Lady Luxborough, and Southey's _Doctor_, chaps. 107 and 108. Between the times it had belonged to Bathurst, and was then also a home of men of letters.]

[Footnote 5: With the complementary and not unusual libel that he died a Romanist.]

[Footnote 6: Between the two dates there had been a fresh _issue_ in 1664, with four new elegies. But it has been doubted whether even this was a new _edition_.]

[Footnote 7: The text of the following poems will be found, as far as Hannah's edition goes, to differ not greatly from his; but it has been collated with the originals in print and MS. by myself and, more carefully still, by Mr. Percy Simpson. The remaining poems (including the fourth or 'King Charles' Elegy added in 1664, which Hannah did not give) are adapted in the same way from direct photographic copies of the originals--collated where necessary. The variants of _Sic Vita_ which the Archdeacon collected are of such interest and so characteristic of seventeenth-century poetry that it seemed desirable to reproduce them.

It may perhaps be added that the 1657 text is very carefully and well printed, requiring so little modernization as practically to justify the standard adopted in this collection. To modernize Chaucer or Chatterton has always seemed to me, though from slightly different points of view, a grievous error or worse. But to show how close, when scholarly writing met careful printing, the result even before the Restoration was to what it would have been to-day, I have printed the opening poem exactly as it originally stood, and have drawn attention in a note to the fewness of the differences. Because other typographers, not deacons in their craft, and confronted perhaps with copy as bad as, say, mine, _plus_ the eccentric _ethelorthography_ of the period, lavished italics and capitals and superfluous _e_'s, and strappadoed the spelling, I cannot see why the eyes of a present-day reader should be unnecessarily vexed.--Hannah's edition, as far as it goes, can hardly be too well spoken of by any one who does not think that, in order to magnify himself, it is necessary to belittle his predecessors. One cannot but regret that he did not (as he might most easily have done, even in the single volume) complete his work. As it is, I am deeply indebted to him. I have, however, restored the order of the original, which he altered partly to get chronological sequence in the Elegies, &c., and partly to make subject-heads for his groups--a proceeding which to me is rarely satisfactory. But I have borrowed his useful datings of the individual pieces under their titles.]

Table of Contents.

Page 1. Sonnet. The Double Rock 169 2. The Vow-Breaker 169 3. Upon a Table-Book presented to a Lady 170 4. To the same Lady upon Mr. Burton's _Melancholy_ 170 5. The Farewell 170 6. A Blackmoor Maid wooing a fair Boy: sent to the Author by Mr. Hen. Rainolds 171 7. The Boy's Answer to the Blackmoor 171 8. To a Friend upon Overbury's Wife given to her 172 9. Upon the same 172 10. To A. R. upon the same 172 11. An Epitaph on Niobe turned to Stone 172 12. Upon a Braid of Hair in a Heart sent by Mrs. E. H. 173 13. Sonnet. 'Tell me no more how fair she is' 173 14. Sonnet. 'Were thy heart soft as thou art fair' 174 15. Sonnet. 'Go, thou that vainly' 174 16. Sonnet. To Patience 174 17. Silence. A Sonnet 175 18. Love's Harvest 175 19. The Forlorn Hope 176 20. The Retreat 176 21. Sonnet. 'Tell me, you stars' 177 22. Sonnet. 'I prithee turn that face away' 177 23. Sonnet. 'Dry those fair', &c. 177 24. Sonnet. 'When I entreat', &c. 178 25. To a Lady who sent me a copy of verses at my going to bed 178 26. [The Pink. Omitted: not King's.] 27. To his Friends of Christ Church, &c. 179 28. The Surrender 180 29. The Legacy 181 30. The Short Wooing 182 31. St. Valentine's Day 183 32. To his unconstant Friend 184 33. Madam Gabrina, Or the Ill-favour'd Choice 185 34. The Defence 187 35. To One demanding why Wine sparkles 188 36. By occasion of the Young Prince his happy Birth 188 37. Upon the King's happy return from Scotland 190 38. To the Queen at Oxford 192 39. A Salutation of His Majesty's ship the _Sovereign_ 193 40. An Epitaph on his most honoured friend, Richard, Earl of Dorset 194 41. The Exequy 195 42. The Anniverse. An Elegy 198 43. On Two Children, &c. 198 44. A Letter 199 45. An Acknowledgement 201 46. The Acquittance 202 47. The Forfeiture 202 48. The Departure. An Elegy 203 49. Paradox. That it is best for a young Maid to marry an Old Man 204 50. Paradox. That Fruition destroys Love 206 51. The Change 209 52. To my sister Anne King, &c. 210 53. An Elegy upon the immature loss of the most virtuous Lady Anne Rich 210 54. An Elegy upon Mrs. Kirk, unfortunately drowned in Thames 212 55. An Elegy upon the death of Mr. Edward Holt 213 56. To my dead friend Ben Jonson 214 57. An Elegy upon Prince Henry's death 216 58. An Elegy upon S. W. R. 217 59. An Elegy upon the Lord Bishop of London, John King 217 60. Upon the death of my ever desired friend, Doctor Donne, Dean of Paul's 218 61. An Elegy upon the most victorious King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus 220 62. To my noble and judicious friend Sir Henry Blount upon his Voyage 223 63. To my honoured friend Mr. George Sandys 226 64. The Woes of Esay 230 65. An Essay on Death and a Prison 232 66. The Labyrinth 234 67. Being waked out of my sleep 235 68. Sic Vita 236 69. My Midnight Meditation 238 70. A Penitential Hymn 238 71. An Elegy occasioned by Sickness 239 72. The Dirge 241 73. An Elegy occasioned by the loss of the most incomparable Lady Stanhope, &c. 242

POEMS NOT INCLUDED IN THE EDITION OF 1657 BUT IN THAT OF 1664:

74. An Elegy upon my best friend, L. K. C. 244 75. On the Earl of Essex 245 76. An Elegy on Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle 246 77. An Elegy upon the most incomparable King Charles the First 255

POEMS IN MANUSCRIPT:

78. A Second Elegy on the Countess of Leinster 267 79. Epigram. From Petronius Arbiter, c. 14 267 80. Epigram. From Martial, i. 14 268 81. Epigram. From Petronius Arbiter, c. 83 268 82. Epigram. From Petronius Arbiter 268 83. Epigram. _Pro captu_, &c. 268 84. Upon the Untimely Death of J. K., first born of H. K. 269 85. The Complaint 269 86. On his Shadow 270 87. Wishes to my Son, John 272 88. A Contemplation upon Flowers 273

The Publishers to the Author.

SIR,

It is the common fashion to make some address to the Readers, but we are bold to direct ours to you, who will look on this publication with anger, which others must welcome into the world with joy.

The Lord Verulam comparing ingenious authors to those who had orchards ill neighboured, advised them to publish their own labours, lest others might steal the fruit: Had you followed his example, or liked the advice, we had not thus trespassed against your consent, or been forced to an apology, which cannot but imply a fault committed. The best we can say for ourselves is, that if we have injured you, it is merely in your own defence, preventing the present attempts of others, who to their theft would (by their false copies of these Poems) have added violence, and some way have wounded your reputation.