Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/265

 f 12 S. IV. SEPT., 1918.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

259

on

The Life and Poems of William Cartivright.

Edited by B. Cullis Goffin, Indian Educational

Service. (Cambridge, University Press, Os. 6d.

net.)

IT, is pleasant to watch the seventeenth-century poets being appraised in our day, critically saner than their own, and far more sensitive to their peculiar and once overrated charm than were the ages between them and us. Few of these old literary lights remain to be edited. One likes to see them handled with a sort of passion com- mensurate with their own 'glowing personalities. Lucky has Massinger been in Gifford, Milton in Prof. Masson, Herbert in Prof. Palmer, Strode and Traherne in Mr. Dobell. But both Mr. Chambers and Mr. Martin have handled Vaughan unintimately and coldly ; and even Grierson's ' Donne,' a most valuable book, lacks " that," tp quote Sir Joshua's gesture as only a word.

Nor does Mr. Goffin seem to be quite hot enough in love with Cartwright. The defect springs not from insufficient study of the poet, but from insufficient sympathy with that fascinating age which found Carjfcwright, with his compressed wit, his political bravado, his verve, and his intellectual innuendo, so entirely to its mind. Mr. Goffin does not point out how subtle an influence Cartwright exercised on at least four contemporary poets now better known than himself. Nor is the best aspect of Cartwright's manly genius dwelt upon : an originality of view, shown, for instance, in his Catullus-like tenderness towards very young children in the ' Mr. W. B.' poem, which was possible in that bygone England only to two writers of verse besides himself : Vaughan and Francis Quarles. And Cartwright, always a " phrase-driver," was not seldom a most happy one. How arresting are his conceits about that " vertuous young Gentlewoman " whose name we know not !

Others are dragg'd away, or must be driven : She onely saw her time, and stept to Heaven, Where Seraphimes view all her Glories o're As one Return'd, that had been there before. For while she did this lower world adorne Her body eeem'd rather assum'd than borne, So Rarifi'd, Advanc'd, so Pure and Whole, That Body might have been another's Soule. The last thrilling line found its imitators promptly enough. It came upon this generation as one of the surprises furnished by Francis Thompson (' Manus Animam Pinxit," in the series called ' Love in Dian's Lap '), but who remembered to thank Cartwright for it ?

' Consideration ' is novel also ; and ' To Chloe who wished Herself Young,' and the soldierly commemoration of Sir Bevil Grenville. P. 202 notes in passing that the Cornish hero just mentioned was "at the brilliant little Rcjalist victory of Stratton in the May of 1643." Indeed he was ! He was all of Stratton fight its one figure, its glory, its beginning and~ end. His home was a stone's-throw away; and so is his grave.

Mr. Goffin accepts without qttestion Mr. Bullen 's trouvaille, ' Heark, my Flora ! ' as Cartwright's. Is it not, rather, one of those many poems, Jacobean or Carolian, cast on the world without |

an identification disk, and in that orphan state attached by some enterprising anthologist to any famous writer recently dead ? , It is not in the least " like " Cartwright in its metrical structure. its victorious easy flow, or its theme and treat- ment. On the other hand, it recalls strongly a Muse superior to his own, Thomas Carew's. The writer of this review has seen in more than one old manuscript the signature " Mr. Car:" or " M. Car:" appended equally to known poems by Cartwright and to known poems by Carew. (The volume before us, copying an old pedigree on p. xiv, gives the other contemporary Cartwright abbreviations of " Ca:" and Cartwr.") Is it not possible that this " Song of Dalliance," as John Phillips calls it, fell into his hands as a signed poem when he was collecting for his ' Sportive Wit ' ? Were it attributed to " Mr. Car." what more natural than that Phillips should reprint it as belonging to the Cartwright still famous ? and Milton's jocund nephew had the sort of mind which would glory in saddling on the godly young divine of Christ Church lines wholly unregenerate. In 1656 Carew had been dead for eighteen years ; his poetic memory, so dear to the critics of English lyric in our generation, had been allowed to fade. " Mr. Car." would in 1656 have spelt Cartwright to any editor on the prowl for popular material.

Mr. Goffin has not attempted to bring any sort of order into the seventeenth-century pxmctuation, here so chaotic, often the very best in its kind. He is shy of textual emendations (which is a pardonable tendency), but some misprints are really obvious, such as "shoote " for " shot " on p. 109, 1. 75 ; " little " for " title " on p. 13K, 1. 82 ; " Stand " for " Band " on p. 144, 1. 69. The brief memoir is interesting, and has both restraint and humour. Almost the only source of notes on Cartwright not mentioned is Mr. Madan's valuable ' Oxford Books : II. 1641-1650 ' ; see the Index, p. 564. The flurry about " Platonique " love at Court, guessed at on p. 192, may have been caused by Strafford's attachment to my Lady Carlisle, the Lucy Percy whose moral excellence Cartwright himself has celebrated. Even Strafford's bitterest enemies never accused his " Mistresse " of being more than his loyal friend ; and his own heart, as all the world knows, was in his home.

Mr. Goffin's annotations, extending to twenty- - two pages, are all good : so good as to breed' a hearty hope that this young writer may cling to that fascinating generation, and give us more illuminating work *of this kind. Meanwhile, we bespeak a welcome for the " seraphicall " and hard-witted Mr. William Cartwright, D.D., and his first editor of parts. They take their place by Cleveland and his American sponsor Mr. Berdan, who swam into our ken just before the Great War.

The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. With a Note on Coleridge by Coventry Patmore. " Oxford Edition." (Mil- ford, 2s. Qd. net.)

THE note on Coleridge as a talker by Coventry Patmore with which this edition opens w&s contributed anonymously to The St. James's Gazette in 1886, and this is followed by H. N. Coleridge's eloquent exposition of his objects in recording the great poet's expressions of opinion. The matter of much of the Table Talk will give