Chapter 2 of 20 · 3714 words · ~19 min read

Part 2

But Cleveland never failed in it: and unfortunately it wants a failure or two at least of this kind to make a poet. To illustrate what I mean, let me refer readers to Benlowes--comparison of Cleveland with whom would not long ago have been impossible except in a large library. Benlowes is as extravagant as Cleveland, whom (I rather think) he sometimes copied.[5] But he cannot help this kind of poetic 'failure' from breaking in. Cleveland can, or rather I should say that he does not try--or has no need to try--to keep it out. In 'Fuscara', eminently; in 'To the State of Love', perhaps most prettily; in the 'Antiplatonic', most vigorously--in all his poems more or less, he sets himself to work to accumulate and elaborate conceits for their own sake. They are not directly suggested by the subject and still less by each other; they are no spray or froth of passion; they never suggest (as all the best examples and many not so good in others do) that indomitable reaching after the infinite which results at least in an infinite unexpectedness. They are merely card-castles of 'wit' in its worst sense; mechanical games of extravagant idea-twisting which simply aim at 'making records'. It is true that people admired them for being this. It is still truer that similar literary exercises may be found, and found popular, at the present day. It is even true, as will be shown later, that it is possible positively to enjoy them still. But these are different questions.

If Cleveland had little or nothing of the poetry of enthusiastic thought and feeling, he had not much more of the poetry of accomplished form, though here also he is exceptionally interesting. His 'Mark Antony'[6] has been indicated as an early example of 'dactylic' metre. It certainly connects interestingly with some songs of Dryden's, and has an historical position of its own, but I am by no means sure (_v. inf._) that it was meant to be dactylic or even anapaestic.

Cleveland, therefore, was not a great poet, nor even a failure of one: but he was but just a failure of a very great satirist. Even here, of course, the Devil's Advocate will find only too much to say against him. Every one of the pieces requires the editing, polishing, and criticizing which (we know pretty well) the author never gave to anything of his. Every one suffers from Cleveland's adoption of the same method which he used in his purely metaphysical poems, that of stringing together and heaping up images and observations, instead of organizing and incorporating them. Every one is a tangled tissue of temporary allusion, needing endless scholiastry to unravel and elucidate it. It has been said, and it is true, that we find not a few reminiscences of Cleveland in Dryden. There is even in the couplet of the older and smaller poet something of the weight, the impetus, the _animosity_ of that of the younger and greater. But of Dryden's _ordonnance_, his generalship, his power of coupling up his couplets into irresistible column, Cleveland has practically nothing. He has something of his own 'Rupertismus': but nothing more.

But, for all that, the Satires give us ample reason for understanding why the Roundheads persecuted Cleveland, and justify their fear of his 'abilities'. He has, though an unequal, an occasional command of the 'slap-in-the-face' couplet which--as has just been said--not impossibly taught something to Dryden, or at least awoke something in him. 'The Rebel Scot', his best thing, does not come so very far short of the opportunity which the Scots had given: and its most famous distich

Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom, Not forced him wander, but confined him home,

was again and again revived till the unpopularity of North with South Britain flamed out last in Bute's time, a hundred years and more after Cleveland's. Of course it is only ignorance which thinks that this form of the couplet was invented by Cleveland, or even in his time. It may be found in Elizabeth's, and in Cleveland's own day was sporadic; nor did he himself ever approach such continuous and triumphant use of it as Dryden achieved only two years after Cleveland's own death. But there is, so to speak, the 'atmosphere' of it, and that atmosphere occasionally condenses into very concrete thunderbolts. Unfortunately he knew no mood but abuse, and such an opportunity as that of the 'Elegy on Laud' is almost entirely lost.

However, such as he is--in measure as full as can with any confidence be imparted; and omitting of course prose work--he is now before the reader, who will thus be able at last to form his own judgement on a writer who, perhaps of all English writers, combines the greatest popularity in his own time with the greatest inaccessibility in modern editions.

Nor should any reader be deterred from making the examination by the strictures which have been given above on Cleveland's purely poetical methods and merits. These strictures were made as cautions, and as a kind of antidote to the writer's own undisguised partiality for the 'metaphysical' style. It is true that Cleveland, like Benlowes, has something of a helot of that style about him: and that his want of purely lyrical power deprives his readers of much of the solace of his (if not of their) sin. But those natures must be very morose, very prosaic, or at best steeled against everything else by abhorrence of 'False Wit' who can withstand a certain tickling of amused enjoyment at the enormous yet sometimes pretty quaintnesses of 'Fuscara' itself; and still more at those of the 'To the State of Love', which is his happiest non-satirical thing. From the preliminary wish to be a 'Shaker' to the final description of Chanticleer as

That Baron Tell-Clock of the night,

the thing is a kind of a carnival of conceit, a fairy-tale of the fantastic. 'To Julia to expedite her Promise' is somewhat more laboured and so less happy: and the loss of the lyric form in 'The Hecatomb to his Mistress' is considerable. The heroic couplet squares ill with this sort of thing: but the octasyllabic admits it fairly, and so 'The Antiplatonic' with its greater part, and 'Upon Phillis walking' with the whole in this metre, are preferable. Yet it must be acknowledged that one heroic couplet in the former--

Like an ambassador that beds a queen With the nice caution of a sword between,

is worthy of Dryden. Most of the other _seria_ are but _nugae_: and the chief interest of the 'Edward King' epicede, besides its contrast with _Lycidas_, is its pretty certain position as model to Dryden's 'Lord Hastings'. But the two 'Mark Antony' pieces and 'Square-Cap' demand, both from the point of view of tone and from that of metre, more attention than was given to them above.

If any one not previously acquainted with the piece or the discussions about it will turn to the text of 'Mark Antony' and read it either aloud or to himself, I should say that, in the common phrase, it is a toss-up what scansion his voice will adopt supposing that he 'commences with the commencement'. The first stanza can run quite agreeably to the usual metrical arrangements of the time, thus:

or, in technical language, a decasyllabic quatrain, like _Annus Mirabilis_ or Gray's _Elegy_, but with hypercatalexis or redundance in the first and third lines and occasional trochees for iambics; followed by a batch, rhymed _a a a b c c b_, of seven three-foot lines also iambic. This, which as far as the first quatrain is concerned is very nearly the exact metre of Emily Brontë's _Remembrance_ and of Myers's _St. Paul_, suits the second and third stanzas as well as the first.

When the reader comes to the fourth stanza, or if, like some irregular spirits, he takes the last first and begins with it, the most obvious scansion, though the lines are syllabically the same, will be different.

(Trisyllabic rhythm either dactylic[7] or anapaestic[8] as may be on general principles preferred.) And this may have occurred to him even with the first as thus:

When ¦ as the | night¦ingale | chan¦ted her | ves¦pers.

Now which of these is to be preferred? and which did the author mean? (two questions which are not so identical as they may seem). My own answer, which I have already given elsewhere,[9] is that both are uncertain, and that he probably had each of the rhythms in his head, but confusedly.[10]

'Square Cap' is much less doubtful, or not doubtful at all, and it may be thought to prove the anapaestic-dactylic scansion, especially the anapaestic of 'Mark Antony'. For it will be observed that, even from the first two verses, you can get no iambic run, except of the most tumbling character, on the line _here_.

The problem is scarcely one for dogmatic decision, but it is one of some interest, and of itself entitles Cleveland to attention of the prosodic kind. For these pieces are quite early--before 1645--and a third, 'How the Commencement grows new' (q.v.), is undeniably trisyllabic and meant for some such a tune as the 'Sellenger's Round' which it mentions.

With such a combination of interests, political, historical, poetical (as regards school and period), and prosodic, it will hardly be denied that Cleveland deserves his place here. But I must repeat that I am here endeavouring to deal with him strictly on the general principles of this Collection, and am in no way trying to occupy the ground so as to keep out a more elaborate edition. I have had help from my friends Professors Firth and Case in information and correction of contemporary facts; but full comment on Cleveland, from the historical side, would nearly fill this volume: and the problems of the work attributed to him would suffice for a very substantial bibliographical monograph. Neither of these, nor any exhaustive apparatus, even of the textual kind, do I pretend to supply. I simply endeavour--and have spent not a little time and trouble in endeavouring--to provide the student and lover of English literature with an accessible copy, sufficient in amount and fairly trustworthy in substance, of a curious and memorable figure in English verse.[11]

[Footnote 1: _Poems of John Cleveland_, by John M. Berdan, New York, 1903.]

[Footnote 2: It has been said that we ought to adopt this spelling because of its connexion with a district of Yorkshire, which, before it was ransacked for iron ore, was both wild and beautiful. But as everybody now spells _this_ 'Cleveland', and as the title derived from it has always been so spelt, the argument seems an odd one.]

[Footnote 3: I am not certain that I have seen a copy of this, and its existence has been denied: but I have certainly seen it catalogued somewhere. It should perhaps be added that _1699_ is only _1687_ with a fresh title.]

[Footnote 4: The most important treatments besides Johnson's, treatments usefully separated in date, are contained in the _Retrospective Review_ (vol. xii), Mr. Gosse's remarks in _From Shakespeare to Pope_, and Mr. Berdan's in the edition above mentioned.]

[Footnote 5: They were both St. John's men; and Benlowes must have been a benefactor of the College (see Evelyn's _Diary_) while Cleveland was Fellow. Also Cleveland's Poems had been published, and again and again republished, years before _Theophila_ appeared.]

[Footnote 6: The _Retrospective_ eulogist was deeply hurt by Cleveland's parodying this, and of course drags in Milton once more. 'Could one fancy Milton parodying _Lycidas_?' Now there is considerable difference between 'Mark Antony' and _Lycidas_: nor did Cleveland, so far as we know, dream of parodying his own poem on King. If Milton had had the humour to parody some of his own work, it would have been much the better for him and for us. No doubt Cleveland's actual parody is rather coarse and not extraordinarily witty: but there is no more objection to it in principle than to Thackeray's two forms of the 'Willow Song' in _Ottilia_.]

[Footnote 7: Marked by straight bars.]

[Footnote 8: Marked by dotted bars.]

[Footnote 9: _History of English Prosody_ (London, 1906-10), vol. iii, app. iii.]

[Footnote 10: _Very_ confusedly on the trisyllabic side or ear: for 'In th' [)e]ven[)i]ng' is a very awkward dactyl, and 'th' [)e]ven[=i]ng wh[=i]sp' not a much cleverer anapaest, while the same remark applies to 'fr[=a]gr[)a]nt f[)i]eld' and 'w[=i]th r[=o]s[)e]s' and their anapaestic counterparts.]

[Footnote 11: The extraordinary complexity of the editions of Cleveland has been glanced at above. The following summary will at least give the reader some idea of the facts, and the two original Prefaces will extra-illustrate these facts with some views of causes. It need only be added here that the principle of the collection now given is, of course, to exclude everything that is certainly _not_ Cleveland's: and, in giving what certainly and probably is his, to arrange the items as far as possible in the order of their publication in the author's lifetime, though the impossibility of working with an actually complete collection of all the issues before one may have occasioned some error here. In the following abstract only the _Poems_ are referred to, as they alone concern us.

The original collection is contained in _The Character of a London Diurnal_ [prose] with several select _Poems_, London, 1647. This was reprinted in the same year and the next so often that some admit _thirteen_ different issues (of course, as was usual at the time, sometimes only 'stop-press' batches with slight changes made in what is practically the same edition), while no one I think has allowed less than _five_. There are substantive additions in several of these, but the singular characteristic of the whole, and indeed of Cleveland's published _Poems_ generally, is that part of the matter, even in the very earliest issue, is certainly not his: and that in very early forms these pieces were coolly headed 'Uncertain Authors'. The extent to which this jumbling and misattributing went on in the seventeenth century is generally if not very precisely known from the famous cases of _Sic Vita_ (_v. inf._, on Bishop King, &c.), and of the epitaph sometimes assigned to Browne, more usually to Jonson. Another almost equally strange, though perhaps not so commonly known, is the assignment of some of the poems of a writer of position like the dramatist James Shirley to Carew. But Cleveland must have been rather exceptionally careless of his work during his life, and he was treated with exceptional impudence (see Williamson's _Preface_) after his death. The process went on in 1651, to which two issues are assigned, with three or four pretty certainly spurious additions, while 1653 and 1654 each saw two more, the last being printed again in 1656 and 1657. This last was also the last printed in Cleveland's lifetime.

But he was hardly dead when in 1659 two different issues, each of them many times reprinted, took the most astounding liberties with his name. The first foisted in more than thirty pieces by Robert Fletcher, the translator of Martial. The other, calling itself _Cleveland Revived_, contains the remarkable and perfectly frank explanation, given below, of the principles on which the work of Mr. Williamson was conducted, and the critical notions which directed his 'virtuous endeavours'.

From the disaster of this singular fashion of building a poet's monument out of the fragments of other people's work, Cleveland may be said to have never been entirely relieved. For though twenty years later, in 1677 _Clievelandi Vindiciae_ (Preface and full title again subjoined) undertook the task and provided a sort of standard (which may, however, be over-valued), ten years later still, in 1687, the purged collection was reissued with all the spurious matter from previous ones heaped again on it, and this, with a fresh reissue (new title-paged and with a pasted-on finis[A]) in 1699, appear to be the commonest copies that occur.

In such a tangle it is not easy to know how to proceed, and I had made and discarded several plans before I fixed upon that actually adopted. I have taken the edition of 1653, which, with its reprints almost unaltered to 1657, represents the latest text current during the author's life and during a full lustrum of that. The contents of this I have printed, putting its few _spuria_ in italic, in the order in which they there appear. Next, I have given a few additions from 1677 (the only one of the later accessible editions which even pretends to give Cleveland, the whole Cleveland, and nothing but Cleveland) and other sources. As was notified above, complete _apparatus criticus_ is not attempted in a text with such a history, for this would only suit a complete edition of Cleveland's whole works: but variants of apparent importance are supplied. I should add that while I myself have for many years possessed the _textus quasi-receptus_ of 1677, the exceeding kindness of Mr. Case left on my shelves--for a time disgracefully long as far as I am concerned--copies of 1653 itself, 1654, 1659, 1662 (with the 'exquisite remains' of Dick, Tom, and Harry), 1665, 1668, 1669 (with the letters added), and the _omnium gatherums_ of 1687 and 1699. The Bodleian copies of the _Poems_ of 1647, 1651, 1653, 1654, 1657, 1659, 1662, 1668, 1669, 1677, 1687 have also been used to check the collations; and the stitched quartos of _The King's Disguise_ (undated, but known to be 1647) and the _News from Newcastle_, 1651. The British Museum broadside of _The Scots' Apostasy_ has also been collated. Mr. Berdan's edition I have already mentioned. I have treated the text, as far as modernization of spelling goes, on the same principles as in preceding volumes.[B] ]

[Footnote A: This is apparently peculiar to some, perhaps to one, copy. The British Museum, Bodleian, &c. copies have it not.]

[Footnote B: Since the above Introduction was first written an additional revision of the texts has been made by Mr. Percy Simpson with assistance from Mr. Thorn-Drury, as referred to in the General Preface of this volume. There can be no doubt that their labours, superadded to those of Professor Case, have enabled me to put forth in this edition a text infinitely superior to any previous one, though my part of the credit is the least. Yet, after all, I dare say Cleveland remains, as he has been impartially described, 'a terrible tangle'.]

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface of _Cleaveland Revived_ 15

Preface of _Clievelandi Vindiciae_ 17

POEMS FROM THE 1653 EDITION: To the State of Love 19 The Hecatomb to his Mistress 21 Upon Sir Thomas Martin 24 On the Memory of Mr. Edward King 26 Upon an Hermaphrodite 28 The Author's Hermaphrodite 30 * _To the Hectors upon the unfortunate death of H. Compton_ 32 Square-Cap 33 Upon Phillis walking in a morning before sun-rising 35 Upon a Miser that made a great feast, and the next day died for grief 36 A Young Man to an Old Woman courting him 39 To Mrs. K. T. 41 A Fair Nymph scorning a Black Boy courting her 42 A Dialogue between two Zealots upon the &c. in the Oath 43 Smectymnuus, or the Club-Divines 45 The Mixed Assembly 49 The King's Disguise 52 The Rebel Scot 56 The Scots' Apostasy 60 Rupertismus 62 Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford 67 An Elegy upon the Archbishop of Canterbury 68 * _On I. W. A .B. of York_ 69 Mark Antony 71 The Author's Mock Song to Mark Antony 72 How the Commencement grows new 73 The Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbyter 75 The Antiplatonic 77 Fuscara, or the Bee Errant 79 * _An Elegy upon Doctor Chad[d]erton, the first Master of Emanuel College in Cambridge_ 81 * _Mary's Spikenard_ 82 To Julia to expedite her Promise 83

POEMS IN 1677 BUT NOT IN 1653: Upon Princess Elizabeth, born the night before New Year's Day 85 The General Eclipse 85 Upon the King's Return from Scotland 86

POEMS CERTAINLY OR PROBABLY GENUINE, NOT IN 1653 OR 1677: An Elegy on Ben Jonson 87 News from Newcastle 88 An Elegy upon King Charles the First 92

As stated above, it has been thought better to follow the miscellaneous arrangement of _1653_ than the classified but not strictly chronological one of _1677_. For those, however, who may desire it, the chronological order of the _political_ poems is here added: 1637-8, _Princess Elizabeth's Birth_; 1640, _A Dialogue_; 1641, _Epitaph on Strafford_, _Smectymnuus_, _The King's Return_; 1642, _Rupertismus_; 1643, _Upon Sir Thomas Martin_, _The Mixed Assembly_; 1643-4, _The Rebel Scot_, _The Scots' Apostasy_; 1645, _The Hue and Cry_, _Elegy on Laud_, _The General Eclipse_, _The King's Disguise_; 1649, _Elegy on Charles I_.

_Preface of Cleaveland Revived_

To the Discerning Reader.