Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/403

] in verse, "England's Heroical Epistles," but above all the "Polyolbion," a Topography, in Alexandrine verse, in thirty books, and thirty thousand lines. Next came Giles and Phineas Fletcher, who employed their strength in composing allegoric poems. Phineas, under the delusive appellation of "The Purple Island," wrote an anatomical description of the human body, with all its veins, arteries, sinews, and so forth. This was extended to twelve books, on which an abundance of very excellent language was wasted. Besides this, he composed "Piscatory Eclogues," and other poems; and Giles, choosing a worthier subject, wrote "Christ's Victory" in the Italian ottava rimé, or eight-lined stanzas. To such perversion of the name of poetry had men arrived in the age of Shakespeare.

There were sundry poets who were also translators. Of these Edward Fairfax, of the same family as lord Fairfax, was the most distinguished. He translated with singular vigour and poetic feeling Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," which, though since translated by Hoole, and far more admirably by Wiffen, has lost none of its racy strength by time. It is still referred to with intense pleasure by the lovers of our old poetry. Joshua Sylvester, who wrote like king James against tobacco, but in verse, "Tobacco Battered," &c., translated amongst other things, "The Divine Weeks and Works" of the French poet Du Bartas. Sir Richard Fanshawe translated the "Lusiad," by the Portuguese poet Camoens, since also translated by Mickle, and again by lord Strangford. Fanshawe, moreover, translated the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, from the Italian, the "Odes" of Horace, the fourth book of the "Æneid," and the "Love for Love's Sake," of the Spaniard Mendoza. Fanshawe seemed to have a peculiar taste for the European languages derived from the Latin as for the Latin itself; thus he translated from Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian poets, and from all with much taste and elegance.

Sir John Denham was a popular poet of the time, and his "Cooper's Hill" is still retained in our collections, and finds readers amongst admirers of descriptive poetry. "Writers of much more sterling poetry were Sir John Davis, Drummond of Hawthorne, bishop Hall, and Donne. Sir John Davis was long attorney-general, and chief justice of the King's Bench at the time of his death. He is author of a poem on dancing called the "Orchestra," but his great work is his "Nosce Teipsum," or "Know Thyself," a work which treats on human knowledge and the immortality of the soul. It is written in quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, and is unquestionably one of the finest philosophical poems in our language, as it was one of the first. There are a life and feeling in the poem which make it always fresh, like the waters of a pure and deep fountain. Speaking of the soul, he says:—

Drummond of Hawthornden, a Scotch gentleman who wrote in English, besides considerable prose, wrote some exquisite poems and sonnets formed on the Italian model; and bishop Hall, in his satires, presents some of the most graphic sketches of English life, manners, and scenery. Dr. Donne, who was dean of St. Paul's, and the most fashionable preacher of his day, was also the most fashionable poet—we do not except Shakespeare. He was the rage, in fact, of all admirers of poetry, and was the head of a school of which Cowley was the most extravagant disciple, and of which Crashaw, Withers, Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles, had more or less of the characteristics. In all these poets there was a deep feeling of spirituality, religion, and wit, and in some of them of nature, dashed and marred by a fantastic style, full of quaintnesses and conceits. In some of them these were so tempered as to give them an original and piquant air, as in Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles; in others, as Donne and Cowley, they degenerated into disfigurement and absurdity. Donne, at the same time, had great and shining qualities, keen, bold satire, profound and intellectual thoughts, and a most sparkling fancy, embedding rich touches of passion and pathos, yet so disfigured by uncouth and strange conceits, that one scarcely knows how to estimate these compositions. In a word, they are the exact antipodes of the natural style, and this fashion was carried to its utmost extravagance by Cowley. A stanza or two from a parting address of a lover to his mistress, may show something of Donne's quality and manner:—

George Withers has much less of what a contemporary happily styled the "Occult School." He says himself that he took "little pleasure in rhymes, fictions, or conceited compositions for their own sakes," but preferred "such as flowed forth without study; "and indeed, he has far more nature. He was confined for years in the Marshalsea prison, for publishing a biting satire called "Abuses Stripped and Whipped," and there he wrote a long allegorical poem, called "The Shepherd's Hunting," in which his description of poetry is a perfect gem of fancy and natural feeling. He says:—

Two songs of Withers', quoted in Percy's Reliques, "Tho Steadfast Shepherd," and the one beginning—

Shall I, wasting in despair. Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are?