Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/528

 CRASSET

4f)S

CRAVEN

vailing note of his poetry and by a quaintly significant remark or two of the unknown friend who wrote the original preface to the "Steps to the Temple". That writer calls him "Herbert's second, but equall, who hath retriv'd Poetry of late, and returned it up to its Primitive use; Let it boimd back to heaven gates, whence it came". And he goes on to tell us how the "divine poet" had passed his Ufe "in St. Maries Church neere St. Peter's Colledge; there he lodged under Tertullian's roofe of Angels; there he made his nest more gladly than David's Swallow neere the house of God, where, like a primitive Saint, he offered more prayers in the night than others usually offer in the day; there he penned these Poems, Steps for happy soules to climbe heaven by ' '. Cambridge was at this time the home, not only of "thorough" or Royalist principles in politics, but of Laudian ventures in An- glicanism ; and it was only to be exjjected, that, when the Puritan storm broke at last in the guise of civil war, Crashaw and his friends should be among the first to suffer from its fury. The poet joined the king at Oxford sometime after March, 1643; there he re- mained but a short while. When next we hear from him it is as an impecvinious scholar in great distress in Paris where his friend Cowley unexpectedly discovered him and obtained for him an introduction to Queen Henrietta Maria. Cowley went to Paris as secretary to Lord Jermyn in 1646; but some time before this — the date and immediate circumstances of the event are entirely unknown — Crashaw had become dissatisfied with Anglican Christianity and had made his sub- mission to the Roman See.

Through the intervention of Queen Henrietta he ob- tained an honourable post in the great household of Cardinal Palotta. It is pathetic to have to note that the conscience of the man w-ho had suffered so much to win for himself the grace of a consistent creed was scandalized at the spectacle of inconsistency afforded by the curious lives of some of his new-found Italian fellow-believers. Difficulties multiplied for him, and it was said that his life was threatened. (" Pope Alex- ander the Seventh and the College of Cardinals ' ', ed- ited for the Camden Society, 1867, and quoted by Canon Beeching in Tutin's edition of the "Poems", Introduction, pp. XXX-XXXI). The kindly cardi- nal, however, interested liimself in his behalf and ob- tained for him a more congenial post in the shape of a minor benefice at the shrine of Loretto. He was "inducted" on the 24th of April, 1649, and there Bome four weeks later he died, suddenly it would seem, from heat-apoplexy brought on by his exer- tions during a pilgrimage.

His place in English hterature may be said to be fixed now for all time. If he is not the most impor- tant, he is at any rate not the least distinguished of that remarkable group of Caroline lyrists described so unsympathetically, it might even be said so ineptly, by Dr. Johnson, as belonging to the Metaphysical School. Like Herbert and Donne and Cowley, he is in love with the smaller graces of life and the profoimder truths of religion, while he seems forever preoccupied with the secret architecture of things. He has, in his better moments of inspiration, a rare and singularly felicitous gift of epithet and phrase, as when he ad- dresses St. Teresa in the famous outburst of religious enthusiasm that marks the close of the "Apology": —

O thou undaunted daughter of desires!

By all thy dower of lights and fires;

By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;

By all thy lives and deaths of love;

By thy large draughts of intellectual day,

And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;

By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire,

And by thy la.st morning's draughts of liquid fire;

By the full kingdom of that final kiss

That seized thy parting soul, and seal'd thee His, —

or when he bespeaks for the ideal wife in the justly famed "Wishes to his (supposed) Mistress."

Whate'er deUght,

Can make Day's forehead bright,

Or give down to the wings of Night.

If his predilection is for those wanton arabesques of rhythm in which fancy seems suddenly to become crystallized as wit, on the other hand his lyric gift too often becomes merely elaborate and flags because he is forever in quest of a surprise. In addition to the collections of his verse referred to above, he wrote a group of sacred songs under the title of "Carmen Deo Nostro" which he dedicated to his friend and patron. Lady Denbigh, but which was not published until three years after his death, and another group of occasional pieces which he called " The Delights of the Muses" (1648).

GiLFiLLAN, The Life and Poetry of Richard Crashaw, a bio- graphical essay prefixed to his edition of the poems (Edinburgh, IS.'i?); Fuller, Worthies' Library, ed. Grosart, first printed in 1S72-1S73, and supplemented in 18S7-188S by collation with the British Museum MS. (Addit. MS. 33319); Diet. Nat. Biog. s. v.; Beeching, Introduction, prefixed to the edition of the poems edited by J. R. Tutin (London, The Muses Library: no date): Steps to the Temple, Delights of the Muses and other Poems, ed. W.iLLER (Cambridge, 1904): Wood, fas<iOx(m., ii, 4; Col- eridge, Literary Recollections (1836).

Cornelius Clifford.

Crasset, Je.vn, ascetical writer, b. at Dieppe, France, 3 January, 1618; d. at Paris, 4 January, 1692. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1638, became pro- fessor of humanities and philosophy, was director for twenty-three years of a famous sodality of men con- nected W'ith the professed house of the Jesuits in Paris, and was also a successful preacher. Crasset is the author of many ascetical works, among which are: "M^thode d'oraison"; "Considerations chr^tiennes pour tons les jours de I'ann^e"; " Le chr^tien en soli- tude"; "Dissertation sur les oracles des Sibylles", which was vigorously attacked ; " Entretiens pour la jeunesse". He also published in 1689 a "Histoire de I'^glise du Japon" which has been translated into sev- eral languages but which is considered inferior to that of Charlevoix. Crasset's history was scarcely origi- nal, for it was drawn in great part from the work which Father Solier had issued in 1627; he merely re- touched the style and continued the narrative from 1624 to 1658. The objection is made that the work lacks precision, is heavy, and is crowded with details. The author attributed the origin of the persecution of 1597 to the imprudence of the friars in making their religious ceremonies too public. There is a posthu- mous w'ork of his entitled: "La foy victorieuse de I'infideiite et du libertinage". On 9 September, 1656, the Bishop of Orleans issued an interdict against him for havmg in one of his sermons charged several ecclesiastics w'ith sustaining the propositions con- demned by the Bull of Innocent X, "Cum occasione" (31 May, 153). The interdict was removed in the following February.

Feller, Biotj. vnii>. (Paris, 1837); De Backer, Biblioth^giie de la c. de J. (1st series, Li^ge, 1S53).

T. J. Campbell.

Craven, Mrs. Augustus (Pauline-Marie-Ar- mande-.^glae-Ferron de la Ferronnats), b. 12 April, 1808, in London; d. in Paris, 1 April, 1891. Her parents, Comto Augustc-Marie de la Ferronnays, of old Breton stock, and Marie-Charlotte- .\lbertine da Sourchcs lie Montsorcau, likewise of ancient family, had luidcrgone all the miseries attendant on the emi- gration during the French Revolution, including the lo.ss of estates. Their attachment to the Due de Berri brought about their return to France, followed shortly afterwards by the appointment of M. de la Ferronnays as ambassador to St. Petersburg, where he contiiuu'il for eight years. In 1827 he returned to France as Minister of Foreign Affairs to Charles X«