Part 4

Be dumb, you beggars of the rhyming trade, Geld your loose wits and let your Muse be spayed. Charge not the parish with the bastard phrase Of balm, elixir, both the Indias, Of shrine, saint, sacrilege, and such as these Expressions common as your mistresses. Hence, you fantastic postillers in song. My text defeats your art, ties Nature's tongue, Scorns all her tinselled metaphors of pelf, Illustrated by nothing but herself. 10 As spiders travel by their bowels spun Into a thread, and, when the race is run, Wind up their journey in a living clew, So is it with my poetry and you. From your own essence must I first untwine, Then twist again each panegyric line. Reach then a soaring quill that I may write, As with a Jacob's staff, to take her height. Suppose an angel, darting through the air, Should there encounter a religious prayer 20 Mounting to Heaven, that Intelligence Should for a Sunday-suit thy breath condense Into a body.--Let me crack a string In venturing higher; were the note I sing Above Heaven's Ela, should I then decline, And with a deep-mouthed gamut sound the line From pole to pole, I could not reach her worth, Nor find an epithet to set it forth. Metals may blazon common beauties; she Makes pearls and planets humble heraldry. 30 As, then, a purer substance is defined But by a heap of negatives combined, Ask what a spirit is, you'll hear them cry It hath no matter, no mortality: So can I not define how sweet, how fair; Only I say she 's not as others are. For what perfections we to others grant, It is her sole perfection to want. All other forms seem in respect of thee The almanac's misshaped anatomy, 40 Where Aries head and face, Bull neck and throat, The Scorpion gives the secrets, knees the Goat; A brief of limbs foul as those beasts, or are Their namesake signs in their strange character. As the philosophers to every sense Marry its object, yet with some dispense, And grant them a polygamy with all, And these their common sensibles they call: So is 't with her who, stinted unto none, Unites all senses in each action. 50 The same beam heats and lights; to see her well Is both to hear and feel, to taste and smell. For, can you want a palate in your eyes, When each of hers contains a double prize, Venus's apple? Can your eyes want nose When from each cheek buds forth a fragrant rose? Or can your sight be deaf to such a quick And well-tuned face, such moving rhetoric? Doth not each look a flash of lightning feel Which spares the body's sheath, and melts the steel? 60 Thy soul must needs confess, or grant thy sense Corrupted with the object's excellence. Sweet magic, which can make five senses lie Conjured within the circle of an eye! In whom, since all the five are intermixed, Oh now that Scaliger would prove his sixt! Thou man of mouth, that canst not name a she Unless all Nature pay a subsidy, Whose language is a tax, whose musk-cat verse Voids nought but flowers, for thy Muse's hearse 70 Fitter than Celia's looks, who in a trice Canst state the long disputed Paradise, And (what Divines hunt with so cold a scent) Canst in her bosom find it resident; Now come aloft, come now, and breathe a vein, And give some vent unto thy daring strain. Say the astrologer who spells the stars, In that fair alphabet reads peace and wars, Mistakes his globe and in her brighter eye Interprets Heaven's physiognomy. 80 Call her the Metaphysics of her sex, And say she tortures wits as quartans vex Physicians; call her the square circle; say She is the very rule of Algebra. What e'er thou understand'st not, say 't of her, For that 's the way to write her character. Say this and more, and when thou hopest to raise Thy fancy so as to inclose her praise-- Alas poor Gotham, with thy cuckoo-hedge! Hyperboles are here but sacrilege. 90 Then roll up, Muse, what thou hast ravelled out, Some comments clear not, but increase the doubt. She that affords poor mortals not a glance Of knowledge, but is known by ignorance; She that commits a rape on every sense, Whose breath can countermand a pestilence; She that can strike the best invention dead Till baffled poetry hangs down the head-- She, she it is that doth contain all bliss, And makes the world but her periphrasis. 100

[_The Hecatomb to his Mistress._] (_1651_.) This poem is perhaps the best text to prove (or endeavour to prove) that Cleveland's object was really burlesque.]

[Line: 1 you] 'ye' _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 2 _1651_, _1653_ read 'the' for 'your', and 'splaid': 'spade' _1677_. 'Spay' or 'splay' to destroy the reproductive powers of a female.]

[Line: 3 the bastard] _1677_ again alters 'the' to 'your', which does not seem good.]

[Line: 5 sacrilege] sacrifice _1677_.]

[Line: 6 your] their _1653_, &c.]

[Line: 7 postillers] The word means glossers or commentators on Scripture, and has acquired in several languages a contemptuous meaning from the frequently commonplace and trivial character of such things. 'ye fantastic' _1653_.]

[Line: 9 _1651_, _1653_ have 'his' for 'her', and in the next line 'his self' for 'herself'. The poem is particularly badly printed in this group, and I think the _1677_ editors, in trying to mend it, have mistaken some places. Thus in ...]

[Line: 22 They print 'Would' for 'Should'. This may look better at first; but I at least can make no real sense of it. With 'Should' I can make some. The poet starts an extravagant comparison in 19-21; continues it in '[suppose] that Intelligence should', &c.; finds it will not do, and breaks it off with the parenthetical 'Let me' &c. To bring this out I have inserted the --.]

[Line: 24 _1677_ 'And venture', with a full-stop at 'higher', not so well; but in ...]

[Line: 25 '_un_decline' _1651_, _1653_, &c. is nonsense; while in the next line 'sound _agen_' either points to a complete breakdown or indicates that, on the most recent Cockney principles, 'again' could be pronounced 'ag_ine_' and rhymes _à la_ Mrs. Browning. The text is _1677_.]

[Line: 28 set] shadow _1677_.]

[Line: 35 define] describe _1677_.]

[Line: 37 perfections _1651_, _1653_: perfection _1677_.]

[Line: 43 brief = 'list'.]

[Line: 44 name-sak'd _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 45 the] your _1677_.]

[Line: 52 _1677_, not nearly so well, 'see and' for 'feel, to'. You want the list of senses completed and summed up by such a palate in 'see', which, repeated, spoils all.]

[Line: 54 _1651_, _1653_ have 'his' for 'hers'; but 'a double prize' is more vivid if less strictly defensible than 'the beauteous' of _1677_. So in 56 _1677_ opens with 'Seeing each' instead of 'When from'--much feebler. But in 57-8 The text, which is _1677_, is better than _1653_:

Or can the sight be deaf _if she but speak_, A well-tuned face, such moving rhetoric?

which indeed is, if not nonsense, most clumsily expressed, even if comma at 'face' be deleted.]

[Line: 60 and melts] yet melts _1677_.]

[Line: 66 'sixt' _1651_, _1653_, _1677_.]

[Lines: 70-1 The punctuation of the old texts--no comma at 'flowers' and one at 'hearse'--makes the passage hard to understand. As I have altered this punctuation, it is clear.]

[Line: 73 what Divines] _1651_, _1653_, &c. 'with Divines'.]

[Line: 75 come now _1677_: come, come _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 83 square] squared _1677_. If all this is not burlesque it is very odd.]

[Line: 85 you undertake not _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 91 roll] rouse _1651_, _1653_. ravelled] revealed _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 98 the] her _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 100 The hundred lines making the _heca_tomb--and the metaphysical matter the subject of sacrifice.]

Upon Sir Thomas Martin,

Who subscribed a Warrant thus: 'We the Knights and Gentlemen of the Committee,' &c. when there was no Knight but himself.

Hang out a flag and gather pence--A piece Which Afric never bred nor swelling Greece With stories' tympany, a beast so rare No lecturer's wrought cap, nor Bartholomew Fair Can match him; nature's whimsey, that outvies Tradescant and his ark of novelties; The Gog and Magog of prodigious sights, With reverence to your eyes, Sir Thomas Knights. But is this bigamy of titles due? Are you Sir Thomas and Sir Martin too? 10 Issachar couchant 'twixt a brace of sirs, Thou knighthood in a pair of panniers; Thou, that look'st, wrapped up in thy warlike leather, Like Valentine and Orson bound together; Spurs' representative! thou, that art able To be a voider to King Arthur's table; Who, in this sacrilegious mass of all, It seems has swallowed Windsor's Hospital; Pair-royal-headed Cerberus's cousin. Hercules' labours were a baker's dozen, 20 Had he but trumped on thee, whose forked neck Might well have answered at the font for Smec. But can a knighthood on a knighthood lie? Metal on metal is ill armory; And yet the known Godfrey of Bouillon's coat Shines in exception to the herald's vote. Great spirits move not by pedantic laws; Their actions, though eccentric, state the cause, And Priscian bleeds with honour. Caesar thus Subscribed two consuls with one Julius. 30 Tom, never oaded squire, scarce yeoman-high, Is Tom twice dipped, knight of a double dye! Fond man, whose fate is in his name betrayed! It is the setting sun doubles his shade. But it 's no matter, for amphibious he May have a knight hanged, yet Sir Tom go free!

[_Upon Sir Thomas Martin._] (_1651_.) We here turn to the other side of Cleveland's work, where jest and earnest are combined in a very different fashion. Martin was a member of the Committee of Sequestration appointed under the Act of April 1, 1643, which, in a more fearless and thoroughgoing fashion than that of some later legislation, confiscated in a lump the property of certain bishops and of political opponents generally. The sequestrators for Cambridge were this man and two other knights--Sir Dudley North and Sir John Cutts; with two esquires--a Captain Symonds and Dudley Pope.]

[Line: 1 'pence apiece' _1651_, which makes doubtful sense. _1653_, _1677_, and all others before me, have 'pence a piece', which I believe to be careless printing for the text above. The 'piece' is the same as the 'beast', and the brackets which follow in the originals are a printer's error. 'Piece', in this sense of 'rare object', is not uncommon. Cf. Prospero's 'Thy mother was a _piece_ of _virtue_.' 'Pence apiece' (about the same as the Scotch fishwife's 'pennies each'), if not, as Mr. Berdan says, 'proverbial', is certainly a perfectly common expression, still I think existing, but it is difficult to see how what follows can thus suit it. 'Which' must have an antecedent.]

[Line: 4 'Bartlemew' _1651_, _1653_: 'Bartholmew' _1654_. The word was, of course, pronounced 'Bartlemy,' and almost dissyllabically.]

[Line: 5 that outvies] _1651_, _1653_ 'one that outvies', perhaps rightly.]

[Line: 6 Tredeskin _1651_, _1653_: Tredescant _1677_.]

[Line: 11 The reference to the animal between two burdens to whom Issachar is biblically compared (Gen. xlix. 14) is perhaps meant to be additionally pointed by 'Sir _Martin_', the latter being one of the story-names of the much-enduring beast.]

[Line: 16 voider] The servant who clears the table; also, but here less probably, the tray or basket used for the purpose.]

[Line: 18 The 'Poor Knights of Windsor' having fallen, like other institutions, into the maw of plebeian and Puritan plunder.]

[Line: 19 The hyphen at 'Pair-royal', which Mr. Berdan has dropped, is important, the term being technical in certain card-games and meaning _three_ cards of the same value--kings, &c.]

[Line: 21 trumped on thee = turned thee up like a trump.]

[Line: 22 'Smec'--of course--'tymnuus', and used both for the sake of contempt and as denoting a plurality of person.]

[Line: 24 The principle of this line is of course part of the A B C of the more modern and dogmatic heraldry: the application will lie either on sword or spur, the two characteristic insignia of knighthood and both metallic. _1677_ changed 'ill armory' to 'false heraldry', and Scott was probably thinking of this line when he made Prince John and Wamba between them use the phrase in _Ivanhoe_.]

[Line: 25 Godfrey's arms as King of Jerusalem--five golden crosses on a silver shield--were commonly quoted, as Cleveland quotes them, in special exception to the rule. But my friend Mr. F. P. Barnard, Professor of Mediaeval Archaeology in the University of Liverpool, to whom I owe the materials of this note, tells me that he has collected many other cases, English and foreign. The objection, however, was originally a practical one, metal on metal and colour on colour being difficult to distinguish _in the field_. It passed into a technical rule later.]

[Line: 29 Priscian's head may not have bled here before it was broken by Butler; but the dates of the _writing_ of _Hudibras_ are quite uncertain.]

[Line: 31 oaded] This singular word is in all the editions I have seen. _1699_ makes it 'loaded', with no sense that I can see in this passage. Can it be 'oathèd'--be sworn either to the commission of the peace or something else that gave the title 'Esquire'? 'Oad', however, = woad; cf. Minsheu, _Guide into Tongues_, 1617 'Oade, _an hearbe_. Vide _Woade_'. This would certainly suit the next line.]

On the memory of Mr. Edward King, drowned in the Irish Seas.

I like not tears in tune, nor do I prize His artificial grief who scans his eyes. Mine weep down pious beads, but why should I Confine them to the Muse's rosary? I am no poet here; my pen 's the spout Where the rain-water of mine eyes run out In pity of that name, whose fate we see Thus copied out in grief's hydrography. The Muses are not mermaids, though upon His death the ocean might turn Helicon. 10 The sea's too rough for verse; who rhymes upon 't With Xerxes strives to fetter th' Hellespont. My tears will keep no channel, know no laws To guide their streams, but (like the waves, their cause) Run with disturbance, till they swallow me As a description of his misery. But can his spacious virtue find a grave Within th' imposthumed bubble of a wave? Whose learning if we sound, we must confess The sea but shallow, and him bottomless. 20 Could not the winds to countermand thy death With their whole card of lungs redeem thy breath? Or some new island in thy rescue peep To heave thy resurrection from the deep, That so the world might see thy safety wrought With no less wonder than thyself was thought? The famous Stagirite (who in his life Had Nature as familiar as his wife) Bequeathed his widow to survive with thee, Queen Dowager of all philosophy. 30 An ominous legacy, that did portend Thy fate and predecessor's second end. Some have affirmed that what on earth we find, The sea can parallel in shape and kind. Books, arts, and tongues were wanting, but in thee Neptune hath got an university. We'll dive no more for pearls; the hope to see Thy sacred reliques of mortality Shall welcome storms, and make the seamen prize His shipwreck now more than his merchandise. 40 He shall embrace the waves, and to thy tomb As to a Royaller Exchange shall come. What can we now expect? Water and fire, Both elements our ruin do conspire. And that dissolves us which doth us compound: One Vatican was burnt, another drowned. We of the gown our libraries must toss To understand the greatness of our loss; Be pupils to our grief, and so much grow In learning, as our sorrows overflow. 50 When we have filled the rundlets of our eyes We'll issue 't forth and vent such elegies As that our tears shall seem the Irish Seas, We floating islands, living Hebrides.

[_On the Memory of Mr. Edward King._] First printed in the memorial volume of Cambridge verse to King, _1638_; included in the _Poems_ of _1651_. It is of course easy (and it may be feared that it has too often been done) to contrast this disadvantageously with _Lycidas_. A specific or generic comparison, bringing out the difference of ephemeral and eternal style in verse, will not be found unprofitable and is almost as easy to make. No reader of Milton--and any one who has not read Milton is very unlikely to read this--can need information on King or on the circumstances of his death. _1651_ and _1653_ add a spurious duplicate, the last fourteen lines of W. More's elegy which followed Cleveland's in the Cambridge volume.

* _On the Same._

Tell me no more of Stoics: canst thou tell Who 'twas that when the waves began to swell, The ship to sink, sad passengers to call 'Master, we perish'--slept secure of all? Remember this, and him that waking kept A mind as constant as he did that slept. Canst thou give credit to his zeal and love That went to Heaven, and to those flames above, Wrapt in a fiery chariot? Since I heard Who 'twas, that on his knees the vessel steered With hands bolt up to Heaven, since I see As yet no signs of his mortality,-- Pardon me, Reader, if I say he's gone The self-same journey in a wat'ry one. ]

[Line: 1 do] will _1638_.]

[Line: 2 who] that _1638_.]

[Line: 6 _1651_ 'runs': all other editions (including _1638_) 'run'. The attraction to 'eyes' is one of the commonest of things.]

[Line: 10 The everlasting confusion of 'mount' and 'fount' occurs in 'Helicon.']

[Line: 26 wonder] miracle _1638_.]

[Line: 34 _1638_, _1677_, and later editions read, harmlessly but needlessly, '_for_ shape'.]

[Line: 46 'Vatican' used (as Mr. Berdan justly notes) as = 'library'.

Cleveland's warmest defenders must admit that this epicede is a triumph of 'frigidity'. And the personal note which _Lycidas_ itself has been unfairly accused of wanting is here non-existent to my eyes, though some have discovered it.]

Upon an Hermaphrodite.

Sir, or Madam, choose you whether! Nature twists you both together And makes thy soul two garbs confess, Both petticoat and breeches dress. Thus we chastise the God of Wine With water that is feminine, Until the cooler nymph abate His wrath, and so concorporate. Adam, till his rib was lost, Had both sexes thus engrossed. 10 When Providence our Sire did cleave, And out of Adam carved Eve, Then did man 'bout wedlock treat, To make his body up complete. Thus matrimony speaks but thee In a grave solemnity. For man and wife make but one right Canonical hermaphrodite. Ravel thy body, and I find In every limb a double kind. 20 Who would not think that head a pair That breeds such factions in the hair? One half so churlish in the touch That, rather than endure so much I would my tender limbs apparel In Regulus's nailèd barrel: But the other half so small, And so amorous withal, That Cupid thinks each hair doth grow A string for his invis'ble bow. 30 When I look babies in thine eyes Here Venus, there Adonis, lies. And though thy beauty be high noon Thy orb contains both sun and moon. How many melting kisses skip 'Twixt thy male and female lip-- Twixt thy upper brush of hair And thy nether beard's despair? When thou speak'st (I would not wrong Thy sweetness with a double tongue) 40 But in every single sound A perfect dialogue is found. Thy breasts distinguish one another, This the sister, that the brother. When thou join'st hands my ear still fancies The nuptial sound, 'I, John, take Frances.' Feel but the difference soft and rough; This is a gauntlet, that a muff. Had sly Ulysses, at the sack Of Troy, brought thee his pedlar's pack, 50 And weapons too, to know Achilles From King Lycomedes' Phillis, His plot had failed; this hand would feel The needle, that the warlike steel. When music doth thy pace advance, Thy right leg takes the left to dance. Nor is 't a galliard danced by one, But a mixed dance, though alone. Thus every heteroclite part Changes gender but thy heart. 60 Nay those, which modesty can mean But dare not speak, are epicene. That gamester needs must overcome That can play both Tib and Tom. Thus did Nature's mintage vary, Coining thee a Philip and Mary.

[_Upon an Hermaphrodite._] (_1647_.) This poem appeared in the 1640 and all subsequent editions of Randolph's poems and in the 1653 edition of Beaumont's. Beaumont had preceded Cleveland as a 'dumping-ground' for odds and ends of all kinds. But see the following poem.]

[Line: 1 _1647_ and _1651_ 'Madam_e_', which is not English, and which spoils the run of the verse.]

[Line: 2 twists] _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, and others 'twist'd', which is very like the time.]

[Line: 10 both sexes] _1677_ and later '_the_ sexes'.]

[Line: 13 I do not know whether it is worth while to point out that catalectic or seven-syllabled lines with trochaic effect (cf. 9. this, 16, and others), as well as complete trochaic dimeters (1, 2, &c.), occur more frequently here than in _The Senses' Festival_, _Fuscara_, &c. This, though of course Milton has it, was rather more frequent in Randolph's generation than in Cleveland's.]

[Line: 22 _1647_, _1651_, _1677_, and later 'faction', but 'factions' _1653_.]

[Line: 25 _1651_, _1653_ &c. '_It_ would', which can hardly be right. On the other hand _1677_ and its follower have '_With_ Regulus his' (l. 26).]

[Line: 31 It can hardly be necessary to interpret this famous and charming phrase.]

[Line: 48 Line shortened to the trochaic run in _1677_, &c. by dropping 'is'.]

[Line: 52 'Lycomedes' puzzled the earlier printers, who in _1647_ and _1651_ make it 'Nicomedes' (corrupted by _1653_ to 'Nichomedes')--a curiously awkward blunder, as it happens.]

[Line: 56 the left _1647_, _1653_: thy left _1651_.]

[Line: 58 The late edition of _1687_, when 'regularity' was becoming a fetish, inserted 'all' before 'alone', though _1677_--its standard for the genuine poems--has not got it, and it is not wanted.]

[Line: 59 heteroclite part] _1677_ and its followers, puzzled by this, the original, reading, read 'apart' (apostrophating 'Het'roclite'), the sense of which is not clear; while Mr. Berdan would emend to 'heteroclitic', which is unnecessary. Cleveland may well have scanned 'heter[=o]clite', which is by no means an extravagant licence, and has been paralleled by Longfellow in 'Eur[=o]clydon'. Indeed, since I wrote this note Mr. Simpson has furnished me with a parallel of 'heter[=o]clite' itself from Harl. MS. 4126, f. 102.]

[Line: 60 but thy heart _1649_: not the heart _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 62 'But' _1677_: 'And' in earlier texts.]

The Author's Hermaphrodite.

(Made after Mr. Randolph's death, yet inserted into his Poems.)