Chapter XX: Part 20

Of two volumes of wit and broad humour, and of the most galling invective, one part flows so much into another, that the volatile spirit would be injured by an analytical process. But Marvell is now only read by the curious lovers of our literature, who find the strong, luxuriant, though not the delicate, wit of the wittiest age, never obsolete: the reader shall not, however, part from Marvell without some slight transplantations from a soil whose rich vegetation breaks out in every part.

Of the pleasantry and sarcasm, these may be considered as specimens. Parker was both author and licenser of his own work on "Ecclesiastical Polity;"[318] and it appears he got the licence for printing Marvell's first _Rehearsal_ recalled. The Church appeared in danger when the doctor discovered he was so furiously attacked. Marvell sarcastically rallies him on his dual capacity:--

"He is such an _At-all_, of so many capacities, that he would excommunicate any man who should have presumed to intermeddle with any one of his provinces. Has he been an author? he is too the licenser. Has he been a father? he will stand too for godfather. Had he acted _Pyramus_, he would have been _Moonshine_ too, and the _Hole in the Wall_. That first author of 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' (such as his) Nero, was of the same temper. He could not be contented with the Roman empire, unless he were too his own precentor; and lamented only the detriment that mankind must sustain at his death, in losing so considerable a fiddler."

The satirist describes Parker's arrogance for those whom Parker calls the vulgar, and whom he defies as "a rout of wolves and tigers, apes and buffoons;" yet his personal fears are oddly contrasted with his self-importance: "If he chance but to sneeze, he prays that the _foundations of the earth_ be not shaken.--Ever since he crept up to be but the _weathercock of a steeple_, he trembles and cracks at every puff of wind that blows about him, as if the _Church of England_ were falling." Parker boasted, in certain philosophical "Tentamina," or essays of his, that he had confuted the atheists: Marvell declares, "If he had reduced any atheist by his book, he can only pretend to have converted them (as in the old Florentine wars) by mere tiring them out, and perfect weariness." A pleasant allusion to those mock fights of the Italian mercenaries, who, after parading all day, rarely unhorsed a single cavalier.

Marvell blends with a ludicrous description of his answerers great fancy:--

"The whole _Posse Archidiaconatus_ was raised to repress me; and great rising there was, and sending post every way to pick out the ablest ecclesiastical droles to prepare an answer. Never was such a hubbub made about a sorry book. One flattered himself with being at least a surrogate; another was so modest as to set up with being but a paritor; while the most generous hoped only to be graciously smiled upon at a good dinner; but the more hungry starvelings generally looked upon it as an immediate call to a benefice; and he that could but write an answer, whatsoever it were, took it for the most dexterous, cheap, and legal way of simony. As is usual on these occasions, there arose no small competition and mutiny among the pretenders."

It seems all the body had not impudence enough, and had too nice consciences, and could not afford an extraordinary expense in wit for the occasion. It was then

"The author of the 'Ecclesiastical Polity' altered his lodgings to a calumny-office, and kept open chamber for all comers, that he might be supplied himself, or supply others, as there was occasion. But the information came in so slenderly, that he was glad to make use of anything rather than sit out; and there was at last nothing so slight, but it grew material; nothing so false, but he resolved it should go for truth; and what wanted in matter, he would make out with invention and artifice. So that he and his remaining comrades seemed to have set up a glass-house, the model of which he had observed from the height of his window in the neighbourhood, and the art he had been initiated into ever since from the manufacture (he will criticise because not orifacture) of _soap-bubbles_, he improved by degrees to the mystery of making _glass-drops_, and thence, in running leaps, mounted by these virtues to be Fellow of the Royal Society, Doctor of Divinity, Parson, Prebend, and Archdeacon. The furnace was so hot of itself, that there needed no coals, much less any one to blow them. One burnt the weed, another calcined the flint, a third melted down that mixture; but he himself fashioned all with his breath, and polished with his style, till, out of a mere jelly of sand and ashes, he had furnished a whole cupboard of things, so brittle and incoherent, that the least touch would break them again in pieces, and so transparent, that every man might see through them."

Parker had accused Marvell with having served Cromwell, and being the friend of Milton, then living, at a moment when such an accusation not only rendered a man odious, but put his life in danger.[319] Marvell, who now perceived that Milton, whom he never looked on but with the eyes of reverential awe, was likely to be drawn into his quarrel, touches on this subject with infinite delicacy and tenderness, but not with diminished energy against his malignant adversary, whom he shows to have been an impertinent intruder in Milton's house, where indeed he had first known him. He cautiously alludes to our English Homer by his initials: at that moment the very name of Milton would have tainted the page!

"J. M. was, and is, a man of great learning and sharpness of wit, as any man. It was his misfortune, living in a tumultuous time, to be tossed on the wrong side; and he writ, _flagrante bello_, certain dangerous treatises. But some of his books, upon which you take him at advantage, were of no other nature than that one writ by your own father; only with this difference, that your father's, which I have by me, was written with the same design, but with much less wit or judgment, for which there was no remedy, unless you will supply his judgment with his high Court of Justice. At his Majesty's happy return, J. M. did partake, even as you yourself did, for all your huffing, of his royal clemency, and has ever since expiated himself in a retired silence. Whether it were my foresight, or my good fortune, I never contracted any friendship or confidence with you; but then it was you frequented J. M. incessantly, and haunted his house day by day. What discourses you there used, he is too generous to remember. But for you to insult over his old age, to traduce him by your scaramouches, and in your own person, as a schoolmaster, who was born and hath lived more ingenuously and liberally than yourself!"

Marvell, when he lays by his playful humour and fertile fancy for more solemn remonstrances, assumes a loftier tone, and a severity of invective, from which, indeed, Parker never recovered.

Accused by Parker of aiming to degrade the clerical character, Marvell declares his veneration for that holy vocation, and that he reflected even on the failings of the men, from whom so much is expected, with indulgent reverence:--

"Their virtues are to be celebrated with all encouragement; and if their vices be not notoriously palpable, let the eye, as it defends its organ, so conceal the object by connivance." But there are cases when even to write satirically against a clergyman may be not only excusable, but necessary:--"The man who gets into the church by the belfry or the window, ought never to be borne in the pulpit; and so the man who illustrates his own corrupt doctrines with as ill a conversation, and adorns the lasciviousness of his life with an equal petulancy of style and language."--In such a concurrence of misdemeanors, what is to be done? The example and the consequence so pernicious! which could not be, "if our great pastors but exercise the wisdom of common shepherds, by parting with one to stop the infection of the whole flock, when his rottenness grows notorious. Or if our clergy would but use the instinct of other creatures, and chastise the blown deer out of their herd, such mischiefs might easily be remedied. In this case it is that I think a clergyman is laid open to the pen of any one that knows how to manage it; and that every person who has either wit, learning, or sobriety, is licensed, if debauched, to curb him; if erroneous, to catechise him; and if foul-mouthed and biting, to muzzle him. Such an one would never have come into the church, but to take sanctuary; rather wheresoever men shall find the footing of so wanton a satyr out of his own bounds, the neighbourhood ought, notwithstanding all his pretended capering divinity, to hunt him through the woods, with hounds and horse, home to his harbour."

And he frames an ingenious apology for the freedom of his humour, in this attack on the morals and person of his adversary:--

"To write against him (says Marvell) is the odiousest task that ever I undertook, and has looked to me all the while like the cruelty of a living dissection; which, however it may tend to public instruction, and though I have picked out the noxious creature to be anatomised, yet doth scarce excuse the offensiveness of the scent and fouling of my fingers: therefore, I will here break off abruptly, leaving many a vein not laid open, and many a passage not searched into. But if I have undergone the drudgery of the most loathsome part already (which is his personal character), I will not defraud myself of what is more truly pleasant, the conflict with, if it may be so called, his reason."

It was not only in these "pen-combats" that this Literary Quarrel proceeded; it seems also to have broken out in the streets; for a tale has been preserved of a rencontre, which shows at once the brutal manners of Parker, and the exquisite wit of Marvell. Parker meeting Marvell in the streets, the bully attempted to shove him from the wall: but, even there, Marvell's agility contrived to lay him sprawling in the kennel; and looking on him pleasantly, told him to "lie there for a son of a whore!" Parker complained to the Bishop of Rochester, who immediately sent for Marvell, to reprimand him; but he maintained that the doctor had so called himself, in one of his recent publications; and pointing to the preface, where Parker declares "he is 'a true son of his mother, the Church of England:' and if you read further on, my lord, you find he says: 'The Church of England has spawned two bastards, the Presbyterians and the Congregationists;' ergo, my lord, he expressly declares that he is the _son of a whore_!"

Although Parker retreated from any further attack, after the second part of "The Rehearsal Transprosed," he in truth only suppressed passions to which he was giving vent in secrecy and silence. That, indeed, was not discovered till a posthumous work of his appeared, in which one of the most striking parts is a most disgusting caricature of his old antagonist. Marvell was, indeed, a republican, the pupil of Milton, and adored his master: but his morals and his manners were Roman--he lived on the turnip of Curtius, and he would have bled at Philippi. We do not sympathise with the fierce republican spirit of those unhappy times that scalped the head feebly protected by a mitre or a crown. But the private virtues and the rich genius of such a man are pure from the taint of party. We are now to see how far private hatred can distort, in its hideous vengeance, the resemblance it affects to give after nature. Who could imagine that Parker is describing Marvell in these words?--

"Among these insolent revilers of great fame for ribaldry was one Marvell. From his youth he lived in all manner of wickedness; and thus, with a singular petulancy from nature, he performed the office of a satirist for the faction, not so much from the quickness of his wit, as from the sourness of his temper. A vagabond, ragged, hungry poetaster, beaten at every tavern, where he daily received the rewards of his impudence in kicks and blows.[320] By the interest of Milton, to whom he was somewhat agreeable for his malignant wit, he became the under-secretary to Cromwell's secretary."

And elsewhere he calls him "a drunken buffoon," and asserts that "he made his conscience more cheap than he had formerly made his reputation;" but the familiar anecdote of Marvell's political honesty, when, wanting a dinner, he declined the gold sent to him by the king, sufficiently replies to the calumniator. Parker, then in his retreat, seems not to have been taught anything like modesty by his silence, as Burnet conjectured; who says, "That a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his was." It was even then that the recreant, in silence, was composing the libel, which his cowardice dared not publish, but which his invincible malice has sent down to posterity.

FOOTNOTES:

[307] Randolph's _Muses' Looking-glass_. Act 1, Scene 4.

[308] Swift certainly admired, if he did not imitate Marvell: for in
his "Tale of a Tub" he says, "We still read Marvell's answer
to Parker with pleasure, though the book it answers be sunk
long ago."

[309] This is a curious remark of Wood's: How came raillery and satire
to be considered as "a newly-refined art?" Has it not, at all
periods, been prevalent among every literary people? The
remark is, however, more founded on truth than it appears, and
arose from Wood's own feelings. Wit and Raillery had been so
strange to us during the gloomy period of the fanatic
Commonwealth, that honest Anthony, whose prejudices did not
run in favour of Marvell, not only considers him as the
"restorer of this newly-refined art," but as one "hugely
versed in it," and acknowledges all its efficacy in the
complete discomfiture of his haughty rival. Besides this, _a
small book_ of controversy, such as Marvell's usually are, was
another novelty--the "aureoli libelli," as one fondly calls
his precious books, were in the wretched taste of the times,
rhapsodies in folio. The reader has doubtless heard of
Caryll's endless "Commentary on Job," consisting of 2400 folio
pages! in small type. Of that monument of human perseverance,
which commenting on Job's patience, inspired what few works do
to whoever read them, the exercise of the virtue it
inculcated, the publisher, in his advertisement in Clavel's
Catalogue of Books, 1681, announces the two folios in 600
sheets each! these were a republication of the first edition,
in twelve volumes quarto! he apologises "that it hath been _so
long a doing_, to the great vexation and loss of the
proposer." He adds, "indeed, _some few lines_, no more than
what may be contained _in a quarto page_, are expunged, _they
not relating to the Exposition_, which nevertheless some, by
malicious prejudice, have so unjustly aggravated, as if the
whole work had been disordered." He apologises for curtailing
_a few lines_ from 2400 folio pages! and he considered that
these few lines were the only ones that did not relate to the
Exposition! At such a time, the little books of Marvell must
have been considered as relishing morsels after such
indigestible surfeits.

[310] The severity of his satire on Charles's court may be well
understood by the following lines:--

"A colony of French possess the court,
Pimps, priests, buffoons, in privy-chamber sport;
Such slimy monsters ne'er approached a throne
Since Pharaoh's days, nor so defil'd a crown;
In sacred ear tyrannick arts they croak,
Pervert his mind, and good intentions choak."

"The Historical Poem," given in the poems on State affairs, is
so personal in its attacks on the vices of Charles, that it is
marvellous how its author escaped punishment. "Hodge's Vision
from the Monument" is equally strong, while the "Dialogue
between two Horses" (that of the statue of Charles I. at
Charing-cross, and Charles II., then in the city), has these
two strong lines of regret:--

"----to see _Deo Gratias_ writ on the throne,
And the king's wicked life say God there is none."

The satire ends with the question:--

"But canst thou devise when things will be mended?"

Which is thus answered:--

"When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended!".--ED.

[311] So Burnet tells us.

[312] See "The Rehearsal Transprosed, the second part," p. 76.

[313] One of the canting terms used by the saints of those days, and
not obsolete in the dialect of those who still give themselves
out to be saints in the present.

[314] Marvell admirably describes Parker's journey to London at the
Restoration, where "he spent a considerable time in creeping
into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down
concerning the duration of the government." This term, so
expressive of his political doubts, is from "Judicial
Astrology," then a prevalent study. "Not considering anything
as best, but as most lasting and most profitable; and after
having many times cast a figure, he at last satisfied himself
that the episcopal government would endure as long as this
king lived, and from thenceforwards cast about to find the
highway to preferment. To do this, he daily enlarged not only
his conversation but his conscience, and was made free of some
of the town vices; imagining, like Muleasses, King of Tunis
(for I take witness that on all occasions I treat him rather
above his quality than otherwise), that by hiding himself
among the onions he should escape being traced by his
perfumes." The narrative proceeds with a curious detail of all
his sycophantic attempts at seducing useful patrons, among
whom was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then began "those
pernicious books," says Marvell, "in which he first makes all
that he will to be law, and then whatsoever is law, to be
divinity." Parker, in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," came at
length to promulgate such violent principles as these, "He
openly declares his submission to the government of a Nero and
a Caligula, rather than suffer a dissolution of it." He says,
"it is absolutely necessary to set up a more severe government
over men's consciences and religious persuasions than over
their vices and immoralities;" and that "men's vices and
debaucheries may lie more safely indulged than their
consciences." Is it not difficult to imagine that this man had
once been an Independent, the advocate for every congregation
being independent of a bishop or a synod?

[315] Parker's father was a lawyer, and one of Oliver's most
submissive sub-committee men, who so long pillaged the nation
and spilled its blood, "not in the hot and military way (which
diminishes always the offence), but in the cooler blood and
sedentary execution of an high court of justice." He wrote a
very remarkable book (after he had been petitioned against for
a misdemeanour) in defence of that usurped irregular state
called "The Government of the People of England." It had "a
most hieroglyphical title" of several emblems: two hands
joined, and beneath a sheaf of arrows, stuffed about with
half-a-dozen mottoes, "enough," says Marvell, "to have
supplied the mantlings and achievement of this (godly)
family." An anecdote in this secret history of Parker is
probably true. "He shortly afterwards did inveigh against his
father's memory, and in his mother's presence, before
witnesses, for a couple of whining fanatics."--_Rehearsal
Transprosed_, second part, p. 75.

[316] This preface was prefixed to Bishop Bramball's "Vindication of
the Bishops from the Presbyterian Charge of Popery."

[317] As a specimen of what old Anthony calls "a jerking flirting way
of writing," I transcribe the titles of these answers which
Marvell received. As Marvell had nicknamed Parker, Bayes,
the quaint humour of one entitled his reply, "Rosemary and
Bayes;" another, "The Transproser Rehearsed, or the Fifth
Act of Mr. Bayes's Play;" another, "Gregory Father Greybeard,
with his Vizard off;" another formed "a Commonplace Book out
of the Rehearsal, digested under heads;" and lastly, "Stoo him
Bayes, or some Animadversions on the Humour of writing
Rehearsals."--_Biog. Brit._ p. 3055.

This was the very Bartlemy-fair of wit!

[318] The title will convey some notion of its intolerant principles:
"A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity, wherein the authority
of the Civil Magistrate _over the Consciences of Subjects_, in
matters of external Religion, is asserted."

[319] Milton had become acquainted with Marvell when travelling in
Italy, where he had gone to perfect his studies. He returned
to England in 1653, and was connected with the Cromwellian
party, through the introduction of Milton, in 1657. The great
poet was at that time secretary to Cromwell, and he became his
assistant-secretary. He afterwards represented his native town
of Hull in Parliament.--ED.

[320] Vanus, pannosus, et famelicus poetaster oenopolis quovis
vapulans, fuste et calce indies petulantiae poenas tulit--are
the words in Parker's "_De Rebus sui Temporis Commentariorum_,"
p. 275.

D'AVENANT

AND A CLUB OF WITS.

CALAMITIES of Epic Poets--Character and Anecdotes of
D'AVENANT--attempts a new vein of invention--the Critics
marshalled against each other on the "Gondibert"--D'AVENANT'S
sublime feelings of Literary Fame--attacked by a Club of Wits in
two books of Verses--the strange misconception hitherto given
respecting the Second Part--various specimens of the Satires on
Gondibert, the Poet, and his Panegyrist HOBBES--the Poet's
silence; and his neglect of the unfinished Epic, while the
Philosopher keenly retorts on the Club, and will not allow of any
authority in WIT.

The memoirs of epic poets, in as far as they relate to the history of their own epics, would be the most calamitous of all the suitors of the Muses, whether their works have reached us, or scarcely the names of the poets. An epic, which has sometimes been the labour of a life, is the game of the wits and the critics. One ridicules what is written; the other censures for what has not been written:--and it has happened, in some eminent instances, that the rudest assailants of him who "builds the lofty rhyme," have been his ungenerous contemporaries. Men, whose names are now endeared to us, and who have left their ~KTEMA ES AEI~, which HOBBES so energetically translates "a possession for everlasting," have bequeathed an inheritance to posterity, of which they have never been in the receipt of the revenue. "The first fruits" of genius have been too often gathered to place upon its tomb. Can we believe that MILTON did not endure mortification from the neglect of "evil days," as certainly as Tasso was goaded to madness by the systematic frigidity of his critics? He who is now before us had a mind not less exalted than Milton or Tasso; but was so effectually ridiculed, that he has only sent us down the fragment of a great work.

One of the curiosities in the history of our poetry, is the GONDIBERT of D'AVENANT; and the fortunes and the fate of this epic are as extraordinary as the poem itself. Never has an author deserved more copious memoirs than the fertility of this man's genius claims. His life would have exhibited a moving picture of genius in action and in contemplation. With all the infirmities of lively passions, he had all the redeeming virtues of magnanimity and generous affections; but with the dignity and the powers of a great genius, falling among an age of wits, he was covered by ridicule. D'Avenant was a man who had viewed human life in all its shapes, and had himself taken them. A poet and a wit, the creator of the English stage with the music of Italy and the scenery of France; a soldier, an emigrant, a courtier, and a politician:--he was, too, a state-prisoner, awaiting death with his immortal poem in his hand;[321] and at all times a philosopher!

That hardiness of enterprise which had conducted him through life, brought the same novelty, and conferred on him the same vigour in literature.

D'Avenant attempted to open a new vein of invention in narrative poetry; which not to call _epic_, he termed _heroic_; and which we who have more completely emancipated ourselves from the arbitrary mandates of Aristotle and Bossu, have since styled romantic. Scott, Southey, and Byron have taught us this freer scope of invention, but characterised by a depth of passion which is not found in D'Avenant. In his age, the title which he selected to describe the class of his poetical narrative, was a miserable source of petty criticism. It was decreed that every poem should resemble another poem, on the plan of the ancient epic. This was the golden age of "the poet-apes," till they found that it was easier to produce epic writers than epic readers.

But our poet, whose manly genius had rejected one great absurdity, had the folly to adopt another. The first reformers are always more heated with zeal than enlightened by sagacity. The four-and-twenty chapters of an epic, he perceived, were but fantastical divisions, and probably, originally, but accidental; yet he proposed another form as chimerical; he imagined that by having only five he was constructing his poem on the dramatic plan of five acts. He might with equal propriety have copied the Spanish comedy which I once read, in twenty-five acts, and in no slender folio. "Sea-marks (says D'Avenant, alluding to the works of antiquity) are chiefly useful to _coasters_, and serve not those who have the ambition of _discoverers_, that love to sail in untried seas;" and yet he was attempting to turn an epic poem into a monstrous drama, from the servile habits he had contracted from his intercourse with the theatre! This error of the poet has, however, no material influence on the "Gondibert," as it has come down to us; for, discouraged and ridiculed, our adventurer never finished his voyage of discovery. He who had so nobly vindicated the freedom of the British Muse from the meanness of imitation, and clearly defined what such a narrative as he intended should be, "a perfect glass of nature, which gives us a familiar and easy view of ourselves," did not yet perceive that there is no reason why a poetical narrative should be cast into any particular form, or be longer or shorter than the interest it excites will allow.

More than a century and a half have elapsed since the first publication of "Gondibert," and its merits are still a subject of controversy; and indubitable proof of some inherent excellence not willingly forgotten. The critics are marshalled on each side, one against the other, while between these formidable lines stands the poet, with a few scattered readers;[322] but what is more surprising in the history of the "Gondibert," the poet is a great poet, the work imperishable!

The "Gondibert" has poetical defects fatal for its popularity; the theme was not happily chosen; the quatrain has been discovered by capricious ears to be unpleasing, though its solemnity was felt by Dryden.[323] The style is sometimes harsh and abrupt, though often exquisite; and the fable is deficient in that rapid interest which the story-loving readers of all times seem most to regard. All these are diseases which would have long since proved mortal in a poem less vital; but our poet was a commanding genius, who redeemed his bold errors by his energetic originality. The luxuriancy of his fancy, the novelty of his imagery, the grandeur of his views of human life; his delight in the new sciences of his age;--these are some of his poetical virtues. But, above all, we dwell on the impressive solemnity of his philosophical reflections, and his condensed epigrammatic thoughts. The work is often more ethical than poetical; yet, while we feel ourselves becoming wiser at every page, in the fulness of our minds we still perceive that our emotions have been seldom stirred by passion. The poem falls from our hands! yet is there none of which we wish to retain so many single verses. D'Avenant is a poetical Rochefoucault; the sententious force of his maxims on all human affairs could only have been composed by one who had lived in a constant intercourse with mankind.[324]

A delightful invention in this poem is "the House of Astragon," a philosophical residence. Every great poet is affected by the revolutions of his age. The new experimental philosophy had revived the project of Lord Bacon's learned retirement, in his philosophical romance of the _Atalantis_; and subsequently in a time of civil repose after civil war, Milton, Cowley, and Evelyn attempted to devote an abode to science itself. These tumults of the imagination subsided in the establishment of the Royal Society. D'Avenant anticipated this institution. On an estate consecrated to philosophy stands a retired building on which is inscribed, "Great Nature's Office," inhabited by sages, who are styled "Nature's Registers," busily recording whatever is brought to them by "a throng of Intelligencers," who make "patient observations" in the field, the garden, the river, on every plant, and "every fish, and fowl, and beast." Near at hand is "Nature's Nursery," a botanical garden. We have also "a Cabinet of Death," "the Monument of Bodies," an anatomical collection, which leads to "the Monument of vanished Minds," as the poet finely describes the library. Is it not striking to find, says Dr. Aikin, so exact a model of _the school of Linnaeus_?

This was a poem to delight a philosopher; and Hobbes, in a curious epistle prefixed to the work, has strongly marked its distinct beauties. "Gondibert" not only came forth with the elaborate panegyric of Hobbes, but was also accompanied by the high commendatory poems of Waller and Cowley; a cause which will sufficiently account for the provocations it inflamed among the poetical crew; and besides these accompaniments, there is a preface of great length, stamped with all the force and originality of the poet's own mind; and a postscript, as sublime from the feelings which dictated it as from the time and place of its composition.

In these, this great genius pours himself out with all that "glory of which his large soul appears to have been full," as Hurd has nobly expressed it.[325] Such a conscious dignity of character struck the petulant wits with a provoking sense of their own littleness.

A club of wits caballed and produced a collection of short poems sarcastically entitled "Certain Verses written by several of the Author's Friends, to be reprinted in the Second Edition of 'Gondibert,'" 1653. Two years after appeared a brother volume, entitled "The Incomparable Poem of Gondibert vindicated from the Wit-Combats of Four Esquires; Clinias, Dametas, Sancho and Jack Pudding;"[326] with these mottoes:

~Koteei kai aoidos aoido~.
Vatum quoque gratia, rara est.
Anglice,
One wit-brother
Envies another.

Of these rare tracts, we are told by Anthony Wood and all subsequent literary historians, too often mere transcribers of title-pages, that the second was written by our author himself. Would not one imagine that it was a real vindication, or at least a retort-courteous on these obliging friends. The irony of the whole volume has escaped their discovery. The second tract is a continuation of the satire: a mock defence, where the sarcasm and the pretended remonstrance are sometimes keener than the open attack. If, indeed, D'Avenant were the author of a continuation of a satire on himself, it is an act of _felo de se_ no poet ever committed; a self-flagellation by an iron whip, where blood is drawn at every stroke, the most penitent bard never inflicted on himself. Would D'Avenant have bantered his proud labour, by calling it "incomparable?" And were it true, that he felt the strokes of their witty malignity so lightly, would he not have secured his triumph by finishing that "Gondibert," "the monument of his mind?" It is too evident that this committee of wits hurt the quiet of a great mind.

As for this series of literary satires, it might have been expected, that since the wits clubbed, this committee ought to have been more effective in their operations. Many of their papers were, no doubt, more blotted with their wine than their ink. Their variety of attack is playful, sarcastic, and malicious. They were then such exuberant wits, that they could make even ribaldry and grossness witty. My business with these wicked trifles is only as they concerned the feelings of the great poet, whom they too evidently hurt, as well as the great philosopher who condescended to notice these wits, with wit more dignified than their own.

Unfortunately for our "jeered Will," as in their usual court-style they call him, he had met with "a foolish mischance," well known among the collectors of our British portraits. There was a feature in his face, or rather no feature at all, that served as a perpetual provocative: there was no precedent of such a thing, says Suckling, in "The Sessions of the Poets"--

In all their records, in verse or in prose,
There was none of a Laureat who wanted a nose.

Besides, he was now doomed--

Nor could old Hobbes
Defend him from dry bobbs.

The preface of "Gondibert," the critical epistle of Hobbes, and the poems of the two greatest poets in England, were first to be got rid of. The attack is brisk and airy.

UPON THE PREFACE.

Room for the best of poets heroic,
If you'll believe two wits and a Stoic.
Down go the _Iliads_, down go the _AEneidos_:
All must give place to the _Gondiberteidos_.
For to _Homer_ and _Virgil_ he has a just pique,
Because one's writ in Latin, the other in Greek;
Besides an old grudge (our critics they say so)
With _Ovid_, because his sirname was _Naso_.
If fiction the fame of a poet thus raises,
What poets are you that have writ his praises?
But we justly quarrel at this our defeat;
You give us a stomach, he gives us no meat.
A preface to no book, a porch to no house;
Here is the mountain, but where is the mouse?

This stroke, in the mock defence, is thus warded off, with a slight confession of the existence of "the mouse."

Why do you bite, you men of fangs
(That is, of teeth that forward hangs),
And charge my dear Ephestion
With want of meat? you want digestion.
We poets use not so to do,
To find men meat and stomach too.
You have the book, you have the house,
And mum, good Jack, and catch the mouse.

Among the personal foibles of D'Avenant appears a desire to disguise his humble origin; and to give it an air of lineal descent, he probably did not write his name as his father had done. It is said he affected, at the cost of his mother's honour, to insinuate that he was the son of Shakspeare, who used to bait at his father's inn.[327] These humorists first reduce D'Avenant to "Old Daph."

Denham, come help me to laugh,
At old Daph,
Whose fancies are higher than chaff.

Daph swells afterwards into "Daphne;" a change of sex inflicted on the poet for making one of his heroines a man; and this new alliance to Apollo becomes a source of perpetual allusion to the bays--

Cheer up, small wits, now _you_ shall crowned be,--
Daphne himself is turn'd into a tree.

One of the club inquires about the situation of _Avenant_--

----where now it lies,
Whether in Lombard,[328] or the skies.

Because, as seven cities disputed for the birth of Homer, so after ages will not want towns claiming to be _Avenant_--

Some say by _Avenant_ no place is meant,
And that our Lombard is without descent;
And as, by _Bilk_, men mean there's nothing there,
So come from _Avenant_, means from _no where_.
Thus _Will_, intending _D'Avenant_ to grace,
Has made a notch in's name like that in's face.

D'Avenant had been knighted for his good conduct at the siege of Gloucester, and was to be tried by the Parliament, but procured his release without trial. This produces the following sarcastic epigram:--

UPON FIGHTING WILL.

The King knights Will for fighting on his side;
Yet when Will comes for fighting to be tried,
There is not one in all the armies can
Say they e'er felt, or saw, this fighting man.
Strange, that the Knight should not be known i' th' field;
A face well charged, though nothing in his shield.
Sure fighting Will like _basilisk_ did ride
Among the troops, and all that _saw_ Will died;
Else how could Will, for fighting, be a Knight,
And none alive that ever saw Will fight?

Of the malignancy of their wit, we must preserve one specimen. They probably harassed our poet with anonymous despatches from the Club: for there appears another poem on D'Avenant's anger on such an occasion:--

A LETTER SENT TO THE GOOD KNIGHT.

Thou hadst not been thus long neglected,
But we, thy four best friends, expected,
Ere this time, thou hadst stood corrected.
But since that planet governs still,
That rules thy tedious fustain quill
'Gainst nature and the Muses' will;
When, by thy friends' advice and care,
'Twas hoped, in time, thou wouldst despair
To give ten pounds to write it fair;
Lest thou to all the world would show it,
We thought it fit to let thee know it:
Thou art a damn'd insipid poet!

These literary satires contain a number of other "pasquils," burlesquing the characters, the incidents, and the stanza, of the GONDIBERT: some not the least witty are the most gross, and must not be quoted; thus the wits of that day were poetical suicides, who have shortened their lives by their folly.

D'Avenant, like more than one epic poet, did not tune to his ear the _names_ of his personages. They have added, to show that his writings are adapted to an easy musical singer, the names of his heroes and heroines, in these verses:--

Hurgonil, Astolpho, Borgia, Goltha, Tibalt,
Astragon, Hermogild, Ulfinor, Orgo, Thula.

And "epithets that will serve for any substantives, either in this part or the next."

Such are the labours of the idlers of genius, envious of the nobler industry of genius itself!--How the great author's spirit was nourished by the restoratives of his other friends, after the bitter decoctions prescribed by these "Four," I fear we may judge by the unfinished state in which "Gondibert" has come down to us. D'Avenant seems, however, to have guarded his dignity by his silence; but Hobbes took an opportunity of delivering an exquisite opinion on this Club of Wits, with perfect philosophical indifference. It is in a letter to the Hon. EDWARD HOWARD, who requested to have his sentiments on another heroic poem of his own, "The British Princes."

"My judgment in poetry hath, you know, been once already censured, by very good wits, for commending 'Gondibert;' but yet they have not, I think, disabled my testimony. For, _what authority is there in wit_? A jester may have it; a man in drink may have it, and be fluent over-night, and wise and dry in the morning. What is it? or who can tell whether it be better to have it, or be without it, especially if it be a pointed wit? I will take my liberty to praise what I like, as well as they do to reprehend what they do not like."

The stately "Gondibert" was not likely to recover favour in the court of Charles the Second, where man was never regarded in his true greatness, but to be ridiculed; a court where the awful presence of Clarendon became so irksome, that the worthless monarch exiled him; a court where nothing was listened to but wit at the cost of sense, the injury of truth, and the violation of decency; where a poem of magnitude with new claims was a very business for those volatile arbiters of taste; an epic poem that had been travestied and epigrammed, was a national concern with them, which, next to some new state-plot, that occurred oftener than a new epic, might engage the monarch and his privy council. These were not the men to be touched by the compressed reflections and the ideal virtues personified in this poem. In the court of the laughing voluptuary the manners as well as the morals of these satellites of pleasure were so little heroic, that those of the highest rank, both in birth and wit, never mentioned each other but with the vulgar familiarity of nicknames, or the coarse appellatives of Dick, Will, and Jack! Such was the era when the serious "Gondibert" was produced, and such were the judges who seem to have decided its fate.

FOOTNOTES:

[321] D'Avenant commenced his poem during his exile at Paris. The
preface is dated from the Louvre; the postscript from Cowes
Castle, in the Isle of Wight, where he was then confined,
expecting his immediate execution. The poem, in the first
edition, 1651, is therefore abruptly concluded. There is
something very affecting and great in his style on this
occasion. "I am here arrived at the middle of the third book.
But it is high time to strike sail and cast anchor, though I
have run but half my course, when at the helm I am threatened
with _death_; who, though he can visit us but once, seems
troublesome; and even in the innocent may beget such a
gravity, as diverts the music of verse. Even in a worthy
design, I shall ask leave to desist, when I am interrupted by
so great an experiment as _dying_;--and 'tis an experiment to
the most experienced; for no man (though his mortifications
may be much greater than mine) can say _he has already
died_."--D'Avenant is said to have written a letter to Hobbes
about this time, giving some account of his progress in the
third book. "But why (said he) should I trouble you or myself
with these thoughts, when I am pretty certain I shall be
hanged next week?"--A stroke of the gaiety of temper of a very
thoughtful mind; for D'Avenant, with all his wit and fancy,
has made the profoundest reflections on human life.

The reader may be interested to know, that after D'Avenant's
removal from Cowes to the Tower, to be tried, his life was
saved by the gratitude of two aldermen of York, whom he had
obliged. It is delightful to believe the story told by
Bishop Newton, that D'Avenant owed his life to Milton; Wood,
indeed, attributes our poet's escape to both; at the
Restoration D'Avenant interposed, and saved Milton. Poets,
after all, envious as they are to a brother, are the most
generously-tempered of men: they libel, but they never hang;
they will indeed throw out a sarcasm on the man whom they
saved from being hanged. "Please your Majesty," said Sir
John Denham, "do not hang George Withers--that it may not
be said I am the worst poet alive."

[322] It would form a very curious piece of comparative criticism,
were the opinions and the arguments of all the critics--those
of the time and of the present day--thrown into the
smelting-pot. The massiness of some opinions of great
authority would be reduced to a thread of wire; and even what
is accepted as standard ore might shrink into "a gilt
sixpence." On one side, the condemners of D'Avenant would be
Rymer, Blackwall, Granger, Knox, Hurd, and Hayley; and the
advocates would be Hobbes, Waller, Cowley, Dr. Aikin, Headley,
&c. Rymer opened his Aristotelian text-book. He discovers that
the poet's first lines do not give any light into his design
(it is probable D'Avenant would have found it hard to have
told it to Mr. Rymer); that it has neither proposition nor
invocation--(Rymer might have filled these up himself); so
that "he chooses to enter into the top of the house, because
the mortals of mean and satisfied minds go in at the door;"
and then "he has no hero or action so illustrious that the
_name_ of the poem prepared the reader for its reception."
D'Avenant had rejected the marvellous from his poem--that is,
the machinery of the epic: he had resolved to compose a tale
of human beings for men. "This was," says Blackwall, another
of the classical flock, "like lopping off a man's limb, and
then putting him upon running races." Our formal critics are
quite lively in their dulness on our "adventurer." But poets,
in the crisis of a poetical revolution, are more legitimate
judges than all such critics. Waller and Cowley applaud
D'Avenant for this very omission of the epical machinery in
this new vein of invention:--

"Here no bold tales of gods or monsters swell,
But human passions such as with us dwell;
_Man is thy theme_, his virtue or his rage,
Drawn to the life in each elaborate page."
WALLER.

"Methinks heroic poesy, till now,
Like some fantastic fairy-land did show,
_And all but man, in man's best work had place_."
COWLEY.

Hurd's discussion on "Gondibert," in his "Commentaries," is
the most important piece of criticism; subtle, ingenious, and
exquisitely analytical. But he holds out the fetter of
authority, and he decides as a judge who expounds laws; not
the best decision, when new laws are required to abrogate
obsolete ones. And what laws invented by man can be immutable?
D'Avenant was thus tried by the laws of a country, that of
Greece or Rome, of which, it is said, he was not even a
denizen.

It is remarkable that all the critics who condemn D'Avenant
could not but be struck by his excellences, and are very
particular in expressing their admiration of his genius. I
mean all the critics who have read the poem: some assuredly
have criticised with little trouble.

[323] It is written in the long four-lined stanzas, which Dryden
adopted for his _Annus Mirabilis_; nearly 2000 of such stanzas
are severe trials for the critical reader.--ED.

[324] I select some of these lines as examples.

Of Care, who only "seals her eyes in cloisters," he says,

"She visits cities, but she dwells in thrones."

Of learned Curiosity, eager, but not to be hurried--the
student is

"Hasty to know, though not by haste beguiled."

He calls a library, with sublime energy,

"The monument of vanish'd minds."

Never has a politician conveyed with such force a most
important precept:

------------"The laws,
Men from themselves, but not from power, secure."

Of the Court he says,

"There prosperous power sleeps long, though suitors wake."

"Be bold, for number cancels bashfulness;
Extremes, from which a King would blushing shrink,
Unblushing senates act as no excess."

And these lines, taken as they occur:

"Truth's a discovery made by travelling minds."
"Honour's the moral conscience of the great."
"They grow so certain as to need no hope."
"Praise is devotion fit for mighty minds."

I conclude with one complete stanza, of the same cast of
reflection. It may be inscribed in the library of the student,
in the studio of the artist, in every place where excellence
can only be obtained by knowledge.

"Rich are the diligent, who can command
Time, nature's stock! and, could his hour-glass fall,
Would, as for seed of stars, stoop for the sand,
And by incessant labour gather all!"

[325] Can one read such passages as these without catching some of the
sympathies of a great genius that knows itself?

"He who writes an heroic poem leaves an estate entailed, and
he gives a greater gift to posterity than to the present age;
for a public benefit is best measured in the number of
receivers; and our contemporaries are but few when reckoned
with those who shall succeed.

"If thou art a malicious reader, thou wilt remember my preface
boldly confessed, that a main motive to the undertaking was a
desire of fame; and thou mayest likewise say, I may very
possibly not live to enjoy it. Truly, I have some years ago
considered that Fame, like Time, only gets a reverence by long
running; and that, like a river, 'tis narrowest where 'tis
bred, and broadest afar off.

"If thou, reader, art one of those who have been warmed with
poetic fire, I reverence thee as my judge; and whilst others
tax me with vanity, I appeal to thy conscience whether it be
more than such a necessary assurance as thou hast made to
thyself in like undertakings? For when I observe that writers
have many enemies, such inward assurance, methinks, resembles
that forward confidence in men of arms, which makes them
proceed in great enterprise; since the right examination of
abilities begins with inquiring whether we doubt ourselves."

Such a composition is injured by mutilation. He here also
alludes to his military character: "Nor could I sit idle and
sigh with such as mourn to hear the drum; for if the age be
not quiet enough to be taught virtue a pleasant way, the next
may be at leisure; nor could I (like men that have civilly
slept till they are old in dark cities) think war a novelty."
Shakspeare could not have expressed his feelings, in his own
style, more eloquently touching than D'Avenant.

[326] It is said there were four writers. The Clinias and Dametas were
probably Sir John Denham and Jo. Donne; Sir Allan Broderick
and Will Crofts, who is mentioned by the clubs as one of their
fellows, appear to be the Sancho and Jack Pudding. Will Crofts
was a favourite with Charles II: he had been a skilful agent,
as appears in Clarendon. [In the accounts of moneys disbursed
for secret services in the reign of Charles II., published by
the Camden Society, his name appears for 200_l._, but that of
his wife repeatedly figures for large sums, "as of free
guift." In this way she receives 700_l._ with great regularity
for a series of years, until the death of Charles II.] Howell
has a poem "On some who, blending their brains together,
plotted how to bespatter one of the Muses' choicest sons, Sir
William D'Avenant."

[327] The story was current in D'Avenant's time, and it is certain he
encouraged the believers in its truth. Anthony Wood speaks of
the lady as "a very beautiful woman, of a good wit and
conversation, in which she was imitated by none of her
children but by this William." He also notes Shakspeare's
custom to lodge at the Crown Inn, Oxford, kept by her husband,
"in his journies between Warwickshire and London." Aubrey
tells the same tale, adding that D'Avenant "would sometimes,
when he was pleasant over a glass of wine with his most
intimate friends, _e.g._ Sam. Butler (author of 'Hudibras,'
&c.,) say, that it seemed to him that he writ with the very
same spirit that Shakspeare did, and was contented enough to
be thought his son;" he adds that "his mother had a very light
report." It was Pope who told Oldys the jesting story he had
obtained from Betterton, of little Will running from school to
meet Shakspeare, in one of his visits to Oxford, and being
asked where he was running, by an old townsman, replied, to
"see my godfather Shakspeare." "There's a good boy," said the
old gentleman, "but have a care that you don't take God's name
in vain."--ED.

[328] The scene where the story of "Gondibert" is placed, which the
wits sometimes pronounced _Lumber_ and _Lumbery_.

THE PAPER-WARS OF THE CIVIL WARS.

The "Mercuries" and "Diurnals," archives of political fictions--"The
Diurnals," in the pay of the Parliament, described by BUTLER and
CLEVELAND--Sir JOHN BIRKENHEAD excels in sarcasm, with specimens
of his "Mercurius Aulicus"--how he corrects his own lies--Specimens
of the Newspapers on the side of the Commonwealth.

Among these battles of logomachy, in which so much ink has been spilt, and so many pens have lost their edge--at a very solemn period in our history, when all around was distress and sorrow, stood forwards the facetious ancestors of that numerous progeny who still flourish among us, and who, without a suspicion of their descent, still bear the features of their progenitors, and inherit so many of the family humours. These were the MERCURIES and DIURNALS--the newspapers of our Civil Wars.

The distinguished heroes of these Paper-Wars, Sir John Birkenhead, Marchmont Needham, and Sir Roger L'Estrange, I have elsewhere portrayed.[329] We have had of late correct lists of these works; but no one seems as yet to have given any clear notion of their spirit and their manner.

The London Journals in the service of the Parliament were usually the _Diurnals_. These politicians practised an artifice which cannot be placed among "the lost inventions." As these were hawked about the metropolis to spur curiosity, often languid from over-exercise, or to wheedle an idle spectator into a reader, every paper bore on its front the inviting heads of its intelligence. Men placed in the same circumstances will act in the same manner, without any notion of imitation; and the passions of mankind are now addressed by the same means which our ancestors employed, by those who do not suspect they are copying them.

These _Diurnals_ have been blasted by the lightnings of Butler and Cleveland. Hudibras is made happy at the idea that he may be

Register'd by fame eternal,
In deathless pages of DIURNAL.