Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/42

 cunning implication, the choiceness and subtlety of Crashaw,’ and these phrases adequately describe his poetic temper. Diffuseness and intricate conceit, which at times become grotesque, are the defects of Crashaw's poetry. His metrical effects, often magnificent, are very unequal. He has little of the simple tenderness of Herbert, whom he admired, and to whom he acknowledged his indebtedness. Marino, the Italian poet, encouraged his love of quaint conceit, although the gorgeous language of Crashaw in his rendering of Marino's ‘Sospetto d'Herode’ leaves his original far behind. Selden's remarks in his ‘Table Talk’ that he converted ‘Mr. Crashaw’ from writing against plays seems barely applicable to the poet who admired Ford's tragedies and was free from all puritanic traits. The remark probably refers to the poet's father (cf., Athenæ Cantab.)

The fertility of Crashaw's imagination has made him popular with succeeding poets. Milton's indebtedness to Crashaw's rendering of Marino in the ‘Hymn to the Nativity’ and many passages of ‘Paradise Lost’ is well known. Pope, who worked up many lines in the ‘Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard’ and elsewhere from expressions suggested by his predecessor, read Crashaw carefully, and showed some insight into criticism when he insisted on his inequalities in a letter to H. Cromwell (17 Dec. 1710), although little can be said for his comment: ‘I take this poet to have writ like a gentleman, that is, at leisure hours, and more to keep out of idleness than to establish a reputation, so that nothing regular or just can be expected from him’ (, Works, ed. Courthope and Elwin, vi. 109, 116–18). Coleridge says that the poem on St. Teresa inspired the second part of ‘Christabel.’ Some interesting coincidences between Crashaw and Shelley are pointed out by Mr. D. F. M'Carthy in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 2nd ser. v. 449, 516, vi. 94.

[Cole's Athenæ Cantab. f. 18; Crashaw's poems, collected by Dr. A. B. Grosart, 1872, and the other editions mentioned above; art. by William Hayley in Biog. Brit. (Kippis); Corser's Collectanea Anglo-Poetica; Winstanley's Poets, 1687; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ii. 4; Dodd's Church History; Coleridge's Literary Recollections (1836); Lloyd's Memoirs; Todd's Milton; Retrospective Review, i. 225; Willmott's Lives of the English Sacred Poets; Gosse's Seventeenth-Century Studies, where Crashaw is compared with a German contemporary, Spe.]  CRASHAW, WILLIAM (1572–1626), puritan divine and poet, son of Richard Crashaw of Handsworth, near Sheffield, Yorkshire, by his wife, Helen, daughter of John Routh of Waleswood, was born at Handsworth, and baptised there on 26 Oct. 1572 (Works of Richard Crashaw, ed. Grosart, ii. p. xxii). He was educated at Cambridge, in St. John's College, which he called his ‘deere nurse and spirituall mother,’ and admitted a sizar of the college on 1 May 1591. Two years afterwards the bishop of Ely's fellowship at St. John's became vacant by the death of Humphrey Hammond; and as the see was then unoccupied, the right of nomination became vested in the queen, who in a letter to the fellows, dated from Windsor on 15 Jan. 1593–4, states that she had been ‘crediblie informed of the povertie and yet otherwise good qualities and sufficiencie’ of William Crashaw, B.A., and requires them to admit him, ‘vnless you shall knowe some notable and sufficient cause to the contrarie.’ He was accordingly admitted on the 19th of that month (, Hist. of St. John's, ed. Mayor, i. 187, 291, 438). The date of his B.A. degree is not recorded; but he doubtless took it in 1591–2. After being ordained he became ‘preacher of God's Word,’ first at Bridlington and then at Beverley in Yorkshire. He commenced M.A. in 1595, and proceeded to the degree of B.D. in 1603. In 1604 he was collated to the second prebend in the church of Ripon, and he held it till his death (Hist. of Ripon, ed. 1806, p. 103). He was appointed preacher at the Inner Temple, London, and next was presented by Archbishop Grindal to the rectory of Burton Agnes, in the diocese of York, on the death of Robert Paly (Addit. MS. 24487, f. 35). Adrian Stokes, however, denied the title of the archbishop to the advowson, and presented William Grene, clerk, who was admitted and instituted to the rectory. Sir Edward Coke, the attorney-general, intervened in the dispute on behalf of the queen, the result being that Crashaw was removed from the living in Trinity term, 43 Eliz. (, Booke of Entries, pp. 494–6).

On 4 July 1609 he was ‘convented’ before the convocation of the province of Canterbury for publishing an erroneous book, which appears to have been his translation of the ‘Life of the Marchese Caraccioli.’ He confessed, and was ready to retract. The archbishop accepted his submission, ordered him to retract, and dismissed him (, Synodalia, ii. 591 n, 595). Writing to Sir Robert Cotton from the Temple, on the 19th of the same month, he says: ‘The grief and anger that I should be so malitiously traduced by my lords the byshops (whom I honour) hath made me farr out of temper, and put me into an ague, which in these canicular dayes is dangerouse’ (Cotton MS. Julius C. iii. 126). Among the ‘State Papers’ for 