LECTURE VI

ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, F. BEAUMONT, P. FLETCHER, DRAYTON, DANIEL, &C. SIR P. SIDNEY'S ARCADIA,

AND OTHER WORKS.

I SHALL, in the present Lecture, attempt to give some idea of the lighter productions of the Muse in the period before us, in order to shew that grace and elegance are not confined entirely to later times, and shall conclude with some remarks on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.

I have already made mention of the lyrical pieces of Beaumont and Fletcher. It appears from his poems, that many of these were composed by Francis Beaumont, particularly the very beautiful ones in the tragedy of the False One, the Praise of Love in that of Valentinian, and another in the Nice Valour or Passionate Madman, an Address to Melancholy, which is the perfection of this kind of writing.

'Hence, all you vain delights;
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly:
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see 't,
But only melancholy,

Oh, sweetest melancholy.

Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes,
A sight that piercing mortifies;
A look that's fasten'd to the ground,
A tongue chain'd up without a sound;
Fountain heads, and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves:
Moon-light walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly hous'd, save bats and owls;
A midnight bell, a passing groan,

These are the sounds we feed upon:

Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley;

Nothing so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.

It has been supposed (and not without every appearance of good reason) that this pensive strain, most musical, most melancholy,' gave the first suggestion of the spirited introduction to Milton's

Il Penseroso.

But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail, divinest melancholy,

Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight, &c.'

The same writer thus moralises on the life of man, in a set of similes, as apposite as they are light and elegant.

'Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood :
Even such is man, whose borrow'd light
Is straight call'd in and paid to night:-
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring intomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew 's dried up, the star is shot,
The flight is past, and man forgot.'

'The silver foam which the wind severs from the parted wave' is not more light or sparkling than this: the dove's downy pinion is not softer and smoother than the verse. We are too ready to conceive of the poetry of that day, as altogether old-fashioned, meagre, squalid, deformed, withered and wild in its attire, or as a sort of uncouth monster, like grim-visaged comfortless despair,' mounted on a lumbering, unmanageable Pegasus, dragon-winged, and leaden-hoofed ; but it as often wore a sylph-like form with Attic vest, with faery feet, and the butterfly's gaudy wings. The bees were said to have come, and built their hive in the mouth of Plato when a child; and the fable might be transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont and Fletcher! Beaumont died at the age of five and twenty. One of these writers makes Bellario the Page say to Philaster, who threatens to take his life

'Tis not a life;

'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.'

But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut off like a flower in its summer-pride, or like the lily on its stalk green,' which makes us repine at fortune and almost at nature, that seem to set so little store by their greatest favourites. The life of poets is or ought to be (judging of it from the light it lends to ours) a golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, lapt in Elysium; and it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid vision, by which they are attended in their path of glory, fade like

a vapour, and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand of common mortals has run out. Fletcher too was prematurely cut off by the plague. Raphael died at four and thirty, and Correggio at forty. Who can help wishing that they had lived to the age of Michael Angelo and Titian? Shakespear might have lived another half-century, enjoying fame and repose, now that his task was smoothly done,' listening to the music of his name, and better still, of his own thoughts, without minding Rymer's abuse of the tragedies of the last age.' His native stream of Avon would then have flowed with softer murmurs to the ear, and his pleasant birthplace, Stratford, would in that case have worn even a more gladsome smile than it does, to the eye of fancy!-Poets however have a sort of privileged after-life, which does not fall to the common lot: the rich and mighty are nothing but while they are living their power ceases with them; but the sons of memory, the great heirs of fame' leave the best part of what was theirs, their thoughts, their verse, what they most delighted and prided themselves in, behind them— imperishable, incorruptible, immortal!-Sir John Beaumont (the brother of our dramatist) whose loyal and religious effusions are not worth much, very feelingly laments his brother's untimely death in an epitaph upon him.

'Thou should'st have followed me, but death to blame
Miscounted years, and measured age by fame:
So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines,
Their praise grew swiftly; so thy life declines.
Thy Muse, the hearer's Queen, the reader's Love,

All ears, all hearts (but Death's) could please and move.'

Beaumont's 's verses addressed to Ben Jonson at the Mermaid, are a pleasing record of their friendship, and of the way in which they 'fleeted the time carelessly' as well as studiously 'in the golden age' of our poetry.

[Lines sent from the Country with two unfinished Comedies, which
deferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid.]

'The sun which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent is,
(Here our best hay-maker, forgive me this,
It is our country style) in this warm shine
I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine :
Oh, we have water mixt with claret lees,
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies
Than here, good only for the sonnet's strain,
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain :-

Think with one draught a man's invention fades,
Two cups had quite spoil'd Homer's Iliads.
Tis liquor that will find out Sutclift's wit,

Like where he will, and make him write worse yet:
Fill'd with such moisture, in most grievous qualms1
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms:
And so must I do this: and yet I think

It is a potion sent us down to drink

By special providence, keep us from fights,
Make us not laugh when we make legs to knights;
'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,
A medicine to obey our magistrates.

Methinks the little wit I had is lost

Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest

Held up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best gamesters.

What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! Hard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,

As if that every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown

Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past, wit that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly,

Till that were cancell'd; and when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty, though but downright fools more wise."

I shall not, in this place repeat Marlowe's celebrated song, 'Come live with me and be my love,' nor Sir Walter Raleigh's no less celebrated answer to it (they may both be found in Walton's Complete Angler, accompanied with scenery and remarks worthy of them); but I may quote as a specimen of the high and romantic tone in which the poets of this age thought and spoke of each other the Vision upon the conceipt of the Fairy Queen,' understood to be by Sir Walter Raleigh.

Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple, where the vestal fame
Was wont to burn, and passing by that way
To see that buried dust of living fame,

1 So in Rochester's Epigram.

Sternhold and Hopkins had great quals,
When they translated David's Psalms"

Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept.
All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen :

At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;
And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen,
For they this queen attended, in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,

And groans of buried ghosts the Heav'ns did pierce,
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And curst th' access of that celestial thief."

A higher strain of compliment cannot well be conceived than this, which raises your idea even of that which it disparages in the comparison, and makes you feel that nothing could have torn the writer from his idolatrous enthusiasm for Petrarch and his Laura's tomb, but Spenser's magic verses and diviner Faery Queen-the one lifted above mortality, the other brought from the skies!

The name of Drummond of Hawthornden is in a manner entwined in cypher with that of Ben Jonson. He has not done himself or Jonson any credit by his account of their conversation; but his Sonnets are in the highest degree elegant, harmonious, and striking. It appears to me that they are more in the manner of Petrarch than any others that we have, with a certain intenseness in the sentiment, an occasional glitter of thought, and uniform terseness of expression. The reader may judge for himself from a few examples.

'I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is wrought
In time's great periods shall return to nought;
That fairest states have fatal nights and days.
I know that all the Muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of spright which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought;
That there is nothing lighter than vain praise.
I know frail beauty's like the purple flow'r,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords :
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will bring under reason's pow'r.
Know what I list, this all cannot me move,
But that, alas! I both must write and love.'

Another

'Fair moon, who with thy cold and silver shine
Mak'st sweet the horror of the dreadful night,
Delighting the weak eye with smiles divine,
Which Phoebus dazzles with his too much light;