Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Vol. III

Chapter II: Introduction: To John Cleveland (1)

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Almost everybody--an everybody not including many bodies--who has dealt with Cleveland since the revival of interest in seventeenth-century writers has of necessity dwelt more or less on the moral that he points, and the tale that he illustrates, if he does not exactly adorn it. Moral and tale have been also generally summarized by referring to the undoubted fact that Cleveland had twenty editions while Milton's _Minor Poems_ had two. I do not propose myself to dwell long on this part of the matter. The moral diatribe is not my trade: and while almost any one who wants such a thing can deduce it from the facts which will be given, those who are unable to effect the deduction may as well go without it. What I wish to provide is what it is not easy for any one to provide, and impossible for any one to provide 'out of his own head'--that is to say an edition, sufficient for reading and for all literary purposes, of the most probably authentic of the heterogeneous poems which have clustered round Cleveland's name. Such an edition did not exist when this collection of Caroline poets was planned, nor when it was announced: nor has it been supplied since in this country. One did appear very shortly afterwards in America,[1] and it has been of use to me: but it certainly does not make Cleveland's appearance here superfluous. Had not Professor Case of Liverpool, who had long made Cleveland a special study, insisted on my giving him in this collection, and most kindly provided me with stores of his own material, I should not have attempted the task: and I still hope that Mr. Case will execute a more extensive edition with the prose, with the doubtful or even certainly spurious poems duly annotated, and with apparatus which would be out of place here. It cannot, however, be out of place to include--in what is almost a corpus of 'metaphysical' poetry of the less easily accessible class--one who has been regarded from different, but not very distant, points of view as at once the metaphysical 'furthest' and as the metaphysical _reductio ad absurdum_.

Cleveland (the name was also very commonly spelt in his own day 'Cleiveland'[2] and 'Cleaveland', as well as otherwise still) was born at Loughborough, and christened on June 20, 1613. His father, Thomas, was curate of the parish and assistant master at the Grammar School. Eight years later the father was made vicar of Hinckley, also provided with a grammar school, at which John appears to have been educated till in 1627 he went to Christ's College, Cambridge--where, of course, the everlasting comparison with his elder contemporary Milton comes in again for those who like it. He remained at Christ's for seven years as usual, performing divers college exercises on public occasions, occasionally of some importance; took his bachelor's degree (also as usual) in 1631; and in 1634 was elected to a fellowship at St. John's, proceeding to his M.A. next year. At the end of his probationary period he did not take orders, but was admitted as _legista_--perhaps also, though the statement is uncorroborated officially, to the third learned faculty of Physic. There is also doubt about his incorporation at Oxford. He served as Tutor and as Rhetoric Praelector: nor are we destitute of Orations and Epistles of an official character from his pen. Like the majority of university men at the time--and indeed like the majority of men of letters and education--he was a strong Royalist: and was unlikely to stay in Cambridge when the Roundhead mob of the town was assisted by a Parliamentary garrison in rabbling the University. It was natural that he should 'retire to Oxon.', and it is probable that Oxford was his head-quarters from 1642 to 1645. But he does not seem to have been actually deprived of his fellowship at St. John's till the last-named year, when the Earl of Manchester, whom (especially as Lord Kimbolton) Cleveland had bitterly satirized, had his opportunity of revenge and took it.

For Cleveland had already been active with his pen in the Royalist cause, and was now appointed to a post of some importance as 'Judge Advocate' of Newark. The Governor was Sir Richard Willis, for whom Cleveland replied to Leven's summons to surrender. They held the town for the King from November to May, when it was given up on Charles's own order. Then comes the anecdote--more than a hundred years after date--of Leven's dismissing him with contemptuous lenity. 'Let the poor fellow go about his business and sell his ballads.' This, though accepted by Carlyle, and a smart enough invention, has no contemporary authority, and is made extremely suspicious by its own addition that Cleveland was so vexed that he took to strong liquors which hastened his death. Now Newark fell in 1646 and Cleveland lived till 1658. It would make an interesting examination question, 'How much must a man drink in a day in order to hasten his death thereby twelve years afterwards?' And it must be admitted, if true, to be a strong argument on the side of the good fellow who pleaded that alcohol was a very _slow_ poison.

He escaped somehow, however: and we hear nothing of his life for another decade. Then he is again in trouble, being informed against, to the Council of State, by some Norwich Roundheads who have, however, nothing to urge against him but his antecedents, his forgathering with 'papists and delinquents', his 'genteel garb' with 'small and scant means', and (which is important) his 'great abilitie whence he is able to do the greater disservice', this last a handsome testimonial to Cleveland, and a remarkable premium upon imbecility. He was imprisoned at Yarmouth and wrote a very creditable letter to Cromwell, maintaining his principles, but asking for release, which seems to have been granted. Cromwell--to do him justice and to alter a line of his greatest panegyrist save one in verse on another person--

Never _persecuted_ but for gain,

and he probably did not agree with the officious persons at Norwich that there was much to be gained by incarcerating a poor Royalist poet. But Cleveland had been at least three months in prison, and it is alleged, with something more like _vera causa_ in the allegation, that he there contracted 'such a weakness and disorder as soon after brought him to the grave'. A seventeenth-century prison was much more likely to kill a man in two years than 'strong waters' which had already been vigorously applied and successfully resisted for ten. He died in Gray's Inn, of an intermittent fever, on April 29, 1658.

Something will be said presently of the almost hopeless tangle of the so-called editions of Cleveland's _Poems_. It seems at least probable that no single one of the twenty--or whatever the number is--can be justly called authoritative. That he was an extremely popular poet or rather journalist in verse as well as prose, is absolutely beyond dispute--the very tangle just referred to proves it--and, though it may be excessive to call him the most popular poet of his time, he may fairly be bracketed with Cowley as joint holder of that position. Nor did his popularity cease as quickly as Cowley's did--the Restoration indeed was likely to increase rather than diminish it; and the editions went on till close upon the Revolution itself, while there were at least two after it, one just on the eve of the eighteenth century in 1699 and one near its middle in 1742.[3] Considerably before this, however, the critics had turned against him. 'Grave men', to quote Edward Phillips and the _Theatrum Poetarum_, 'affirmed him the best of English poets', but not for long. Fuller, who actually admired him, admitted that 'Clevelandizing' was dangerous; and Dryden, who must have admired him at one time, and shows constant traces of his influence, talks in the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ of a 'Catachresis or Clevelandism'. In the eighteenth century he passed almost out of sight till Johnson brought him up for 'awful exampling' in the famous Life of Cowley: and he has had few advocates since. Let us, without borrowing from these advocates or attempting tediously to confute his enemies, deal with the facts, so far as they are known, of his life, and with the characteristics of the carefully sifted, but in no sense 'selected', poetry which will follow.

As for his character as a man, the evidence is entirely in his favour. He was an honest and consistent politician on his own side, and if some people think it the wrong side, others are equally positive that it was the right. If (rather unfairly) we dismiss the encomia on his character as partisan, there remains the important fact that no one on the other side says anything definite against it. If he was abusive, it certainly does not lie with anybody who admires Milton to reproach him with that. But the fact is, once more, that except in so far as there is a vague idea that a cavalier, and especially a cavalier poet, must have been a 'deboshed' person, there is absolutely no evidence against Cleveland and much in his favour. Also, this is not our business, which is with him as a poet.

As such he has been subjected to very little really critical examination.[4] The result of such as I myself have been able to give him was arrived at somewhat slowly: or rather it flashed upon me, after reading the poems several times over in different arrangements, that which gives the serious and satiric pieces higgledy-piggledy as in the older editions, and that which separates them, as in 1677 and in Mr. Berdan's American reprint. This result is that I entertain a very serious doubt whether Cleveland _ever_ wrote 'serious' poetry, in one sense--he was of course serious enough in his satires--at all. That, on the other hand, he deliberately set himself to burlesque the 'metaphysical' manner I do not think: or at least (for rather minute definition is necessary here) I do not think that he executed this burlesque with any reforming intention or any particular contempt for the style. Like Butler, whom he in so many ways resembles--who pretty certainly owed him not a little, and of whom he was, as has often been pointed out, a sort of rough copy or spoiled draft--he was what he satirized in the literary way, and he caricatured himself. Of course if anybody thinks, as the _Retrospective_ Reviewer thought, that 'Fuscara' and 'To the State of Love' are actually and intrinsically 'beautiful specimens of poetic conception', he will scout my notion. But I do not think that any one who has done me the honour even to look into these volumes will think me an 'antimetaphysical', and I must confess that I can see only occasional poetry here--only a caricature of such methods as may be suggested by Donne's 'Bracelet' piece, and the best things in Crashaw. It is, for instance, a very tell-tale thing that there is not, in Cleveland's work, a single one of the lovely lyrics that enshrine and ennoble the conceits in almost every one else of the school, from Donne himself to Sherburne. An American critic, defending Cleveland with the delightful indiscreetness of most defenders, maintains that these lyrics were failures--that they were _not_ characteristic of the time. Well, let us be thankful that almost everybody down to Kynaston and John Hall 'failed' in this way not seldom.

But Cleveland never failed in it: and unfortunately it wants a failure or two at least of this kind to make a poet. To illustrate what I mean, let me refer readers to Benlowes--comparison of Cleveland with whom would not long ago have been impossible except in a large library. Benlowes is as extravagant as Cleveland, whom (I rather think) he sometimes copied.[5] But he cannot help this kind of poetic 'failure' from breaking in. Cleveland can, or rather I should say that he does not try--or has no need to try--to keep it out. In 'Fuscara', eminently; in 'To the State of Love', perhaps most prettily; in the 'Antiplatonic', most vigorously--in all his poems more or less, he sets himself to work to accumulate and elaborate conceits for their own sake. They are not directly suggested by the subject and still less by each other; they are no spray or froth of passion; they never suggest (as all the best examples and many not so good in others do) that indomitable reaching after the infinite which results at least in an infinite unexpectedness. They are merely card-castles of 'wit' in its worst sense; mechanical games of extravagant idea-twisting which simply aim at 'making records'. It is true that people admired them for being this. It is still truer that similar literary exercises may be found, and found popular, at the present day. It is even true, as will be shown later, that it is possible positively to enjoy them still. But these are different questions.

If Cleveland had little or nothing of the poetry of enthusiastic thought and feeling, he had not much more of the poetry of accomplished form, though here also he is exceptionally interesting. His 'Mark Antony'[6] has been indicated as an early example of 'dactylic' metre. It certainly connects interestingly with some songs of Dryden's, and has an historical position of its own, but I am by no means sure (_v. inf._) that it was meant to be dactylic or even anapaestic.

Cleveland, therefore, was not a great poet, nor even a failure of one: but he was but just a failure of a very great satirist. Even here, of course, the Devil's Advocate will find only too much to say against him. Every one of the pieces requires the editing, polishing, and criticizing which (we know pretty well) the author never gave to anything of his. Every one suffers from Cleveland's adoption of the same method which he used in his purely metaphysical poems, that of stringing together and heaping up images and observations, instead of organizing and incorporating them. Every one is a tangled tissue of temporary allusion, needing endless scholiastry to unravel and elucidate it. It has been said, and it is true, that we find not a few reminiscences of Cleveland in Dryden. There is even in the couplet of the older and smaller poet something of the weight, the impetus, the _animosity_ of that of the younger and greater. But of Dryden's _ordonnance_, his generalship, his power of coupling up his couplets into irresistible column, Cleveland has practically nothing. He has something of his own 'Rupertismus': but nothing more.

But, for all that, the Satires give us ample reason for understanding why the Roundheads persecuted Cleveland, and justify their fear of his 'abilities'. He has, though an unequal, an occasional command of the 'slap-in-the-face' couplet which--as has just been said--not impossibly taught something to Dryden, or at least awoke something in him. 'The Rebel Scot', his best thing, does not come so very far short of the opportunity which the Scots had given: and its most famous distich

Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom,
Not forced him wander, but confined him home,

was again and again revived till the unpopularity of North with South Britain flamed out last in Bute's time, a hundred years and more after Cleveland's. Of course it is only ignorance which thinks that this form of the couplet was invented by Cleveland, or even in his time. It may be found in Elizabeth's, and in Cleveland's own day was sporadic; nor did he himself ever approach such continuous and triumphant use of it as Dryden achieved only two years after Cleveland's own death. But there is, so to speak, the 'atmosphere' of it, and that atmosphere occasionally condenses into very concrete thunderbolts. Unfortunately he knew no mood but abuse, and such an opportunity as that of the 'Elegy on Laud' is almost entirely lost.

However, such as he is--in measure as full as can with any confidence be imparted; and omitting of course prose work--he is now before the reader, who will thus be able at last to form his own judgement on a writer who, perhaps of all English writers, combines the greatest popularity in his own time with the greatest inaccessibility in modern editions.

Nor should any reader be deterred from making the examination by the strictures which have been given above on Cleveland's purely poetical methods and merits. These strictures were made as cautions, and as a kind of antidote to the writer's own undisguised partiality for the 'metaphysical' style. It is true that Cleveland, like Benlowes, has something of a helot of that style about him: and that his want of purely lyrical power deprives his readers of much of the solace of his (if not of their) sin. But those natures must be very morose, very prosaic, or at best steeled against everything else by abhorrence of 'False Wit' who can withstand a certain tickling of amused enjoyment at the enormous yet sometimes pretty quaintnesses of 'Fuscara' itself; and still more at those of the 'To the State of Love', which is his happiest non-satirical thing. From the preliminary wish to be a 'Shaker' to the final description of Chanticleer as

That Baron Tell-Clock of the night,

the thing is a kind of a carnival of conceit, a fairy-tale of the fantastic. 'To Julia to expedite her Promise' is somewhat more laboured and so less happy: and the loss of the lyric form in 'The Hecatomb to his Mistress' is considerable. The heroic couplet squares ill with this sort of thing: but the octasyllabic admits it fairly, and so 'The Antiplatonic' with its greater part, and 'Upon Phillis walking' with the whole in this metre, are preferable. Yet it must be acknowledged that one heroic couplet in the former--

Like an ambassador that beds a queen
With the nice caution of a sword between,

is worthy of Dryden. Most of the other _seria_ are but _nugae_: and the chief interest of the 'Edward King' epicede, besides its contrast with _Lycidas_, is its pretty certain position as model to Dryden's 'Lord Hastings'. But the two 'Mark Antony' pieces and 'Square-Cap' demand, both from the point of view of tone and from that of metre, more attention than was given to them above.

If any one not previously acquainted with the piece or the discussions about it will turn to the text of 'Mark Antony' and read it either aloud or to himself, I should say that, in the common phrase, it is a toss-up what scansion his voice will adopt supposing that he 'commences with the commencement'. The first stanza can run quite agreeably to the usual metrical arrangements of the time, thus:

or, in technical language, a decasyllabic quatrain, like _Annus Mirabilis_ or Gray's _Elegy_, but with hypercatalexis or redundance in the first and third lines and occasional trochees for iambics; followed by a batch, rhymed _a a a b c c b_, of seven three-foot lines also iambic. This, which as far as the first quatrain is concerned is very nearly the exact metre of Emily Brontë's _Remembrance_ and of Myers's _St. Paul_, suits the second and third stanzas as well as the first.

When the reader comes to the fourth stanza, or if, like some irregular spirits, he takes the last first and begins with it, the most obvious scansion, though the lines are syllabically the same, will be different.

(Trisyllabic rhythm either dactylic[7] or anapaestic[8] as may be on general principles preferred.) And this may have occurred to him even with the first as thus:

When ¦ as the | night¦ingale | chan¦ted her | ves¦pers.

Now which of these is to be preferred? and which did the author mean? (two questions which are not so identical as they may seem). My own answer, which I have already given elsewhere,[9] is that both are uncertain, and that he probably had each of the rhythms in his head, but confusedly.[10]

'Square Cap' is much less doubtful, or not doubtful at all, and it may be thought to prove the anapaestic-dactylic scansion, especially the anapaestic of 'Mark Antony'. For it will be observed that, even from the first two verses, you can get no iambic run, except of the most tumbling character, on the line _here_.

The problem is scarcely one for dogmatic decision, but it is one of some interest, and of itself entitles Cleveland to attention of the prosodic kind. For these pieces are quite early--before 1645--and a third, 'How the Commencement grows new' (q.v.), is undeniably trisyllabic and meant for some such a tune as the 'Sellenger's Round' which it mentions.

With such a combination of interests, political, historical, poetical (as regards school and period), and prosodic, it will hardly be denied that Cleveland deserves his place here. But I must repeat that I am here endeavouring to deal with him strictly on the general principles of this Collection, and am in no way trying to occupy the ground so as to keep out a more elaborate edition. I have had help from my friends Professors Firth and Case in information and correction of contemporary facts; but full comment on Cleveland, from the historical side, would nearly fill this volume: and the problems of the work attributed to him would suffice for a very substantial bibliographical monograph. Neither of these, nor any exhaustive apparatus, even of the textual kind, do I pretend to supply. I simply endeavour--and have spent not a little time and trouble in endeavouring--to provide the student and lover of English literature with an accessible copy, sufficient in amount and fairly trustworthy in substance, of a curious and memorable figure in English verse.[11]

[Footnote 1: _Poems of John Cleveland_, by John M. Berdan, New
York, 1903.]

[Footnote 2: It has been said that we ought to adopt
this spelling because of its connexion with a district of
Yorkshire, which, before it was ransacked for iron ore, was
both wild and beautiful. But as everybody now spells _this_
'Cleveland', and as the title derived from it has always been
so spelt, the argument seems an odd one.]

[Footnote 3: I am not certain that I have seen a copy of this,
and its existence has been denied: but I have certainly seen
it catalogued somewhere. It should perhaps be added that
_1699_ is only _1687_ with a fresh title.]

[Footnote 4: The most important treatments besides Johnson's,
treatments usefully separated in date, are contained in the
_Retrospective Review_ (vol. xii), Mr. Gosse's remarks in
_From Shakespeare to Pope_, and Mr. Berdan's in the edition
above mentioned.]

[Footnote 5: They were both St. John's men; and Benlowes must
have been a benefactor of the College (see Evelyn's _Diary_)
while Cleveland was Fellow. Also Cleveland's Poems had been
published, and again and again republished, years before
_Theophila_ appeared.]

[Footnote 6: The _Retrospective_ eulogist was deeply hurt by
Cleveland's parodying this, and of course drags in Milton once
more. 'Could one fancy Milton parodying _Lycidas_?' Now
there is considerable difference between 'Mark Antony' and
_Lycidas_: nor did Cleveland, so far as we know, dream of
parodying his own poem on King. If Milton had had the humour
to parody some of his own work, it would have been much the
better for him and for us. No doubt Cleveland's actual parody
is rather coarse and not extraordinarily witty: but there is
no more objection to it in principle than to Thackeray's two
forms of the 'Willow Song' in _Ottilia_.]

[Footnote 7: Marked by straight bars.]

[Footnote 8: Marked by dotted bars.]

[Footnote 9: _History of English Prosody_ (London, 1906-10),
vol. iii, app. iii.]

[Footnote 10: _Very_ confusedly on the trisyllabic side or
ear: for 'In th' [)e]ven[)i]ng' is a very awkward dactyl, and
'th' [)e]ven[=i]ng wh[=i]sp' not a much cleverer anapaest,
while the same remark applies to 'fr[=a]gr[)a]nt f[)i]eld' and
'w[=i]th r[=o]s[)e]s' and their anapaestic counterparts.]

[Footnote 11: The extraordinary complexity of the editions
of Cleveland has been glanced at above. The following summary
will at least give the reader some idea of the facts, and the
two original Prefaces will extra-illustrate these facts with
some views of causes. It need only be added here that the
principle of the collection now given is, of course, to
exclude everything that is certainly _not_ Cleveland's: and,
in giving what certainly and probably is his, to arrange the
items as far as possible in the order of their publication
in the author's lifetime, though the impossibility of working
with an actually complete collection of all the issues before
one may have occasioned some error here. In the following
abstract only the _Poems_ are referred to, as they alone
concern us.

The original collection is contained in _The Character of a
London Diurnal_ [prose] with several select _Poems_, London,
1647. This was reprinted in the same year and the next so
often that some admit _thirteen_ different issues (of course,
as was usual at the time, sometimes only 'stop-press' batches
with slight changes made in what is practically the same
edition), while no one I think has allowed less than _five_.
There are substantive additions in several of these, but
the singular characteristic of the whole, and indeed of
Cleveland's published _Poems_ generally, is that part of the
matter, even in the very earliest issue, is certainly not his:
and that in very early forms these pieces were coolly headed
'Uncertain Authors'. The extent to which this jumbling and
misattributing went on in the seventeenth century is generally
if not very precisely known from the famous cases of _Sic
Vita_ (_v. inf._, on Bishop King, &c.), and of the epitaph
sometimes assigned to Browne, more usually to Jonson. Another
almost equally strange, though perhaps not so commonly known,
is the assignment of some of the poems of a writer of position
like the dramatist James Shirley to Carew. But Cleveland must
have been rather exceptionally careless of his work during
his life, and he was treated with exceptional impudence (see
Williamson's _Preface_) after his death. The process went on
in 1651, to which two issues are assigned, with three or four
pretty certainly spurious additions, while 1653 and 1654 each
saw two more, the last being printed again in 1656 and 1657.
This last was also the last printed in Cleveland's lifetime.

But he was hardly dead when in 1659 two different issues,
each of them many times reprinted, took the most astounding
liberties with his name. The first foisted in more than thirty
pieces by Robert Fletcher, the translator of Martial. The
other, calling itself _Cleveland Revived_, contains the
remarkable and perfectly frank explanation, given below,
of the principles on which the work of Mr. Williamson was
conducted, and the critical notions which directed his
'virtuous endeavours'.

From the disaster of this singular fashion of building a
poet's monument out of the fragments of other people's work,
Cleveland may be said to have never been entirely relieved.
For though twenty years later, in 1677 _Clievelandi Vindiciae_
(Preface and full title again subjoined) undertook the task
and provided a sort of standard (which may, however, be
over-valued), ten years later still, in 1687, the purged
collection was reissued with all the spurious matter from
previous ones heaped again on it, and this, with a fresh
reissue (new title-paged and with a pasted-on finis[A]) in
1699, appear to be the commonest copies that occur.

In such a tangle it is not easy to know how to proceed, and I
had made and discarded several plans before I fixed upon that
actually adopted. I have taken the edition of 1653, which,
with its reprints almost unaltered to 1657, represents the
latest text current during the author's life and during a full
lustrum of that. The contents of this I have printed, putting
its few _spuria_ in italic, in the order in which they there
appear. Next, I have given a few additions from 1677 (the only
one of the later accessible editions which even pretends
to give Cleveland, the whole Cleveland, and nothing but
Cleveland) and other sources. As was notified above, complete
_apparatus criticus_ is not attempted in a text with such
a history, for this would only suit a complete edition of
Cleveland's whole works: but variants of apparent importance
are supplied. I should add that while I myself have for many
years possessed the _textus quasi-receptus_ of 1677, the
exceeding kindness of Mr. Case left on my shelves--for a time
disgracefully long as far as I am concerned--copies of 1653
itself, 1654, 1659, 1662 (with the 'exquisite remains' of
Dick, Tom, and Harry), 1665, 1668, 1669 (with the letters
added), and the _omnium gatherums_ of 1687 and 1699. The
Bodleian copies of the _Poems_ of 1647, 1651, 1653, 1654,
1657, 1659, 1662, 1668, 1669, 1677, 1687 have also been used
to check the collations; and the stitched quartos of _The
King's Disguise_ (undated, but known to be 1647) and the _News
from Newcastle_, 1651. The British Museum broadside of _The
Scots' Apostasy_ has also been collated. Mr. Berdan's edition
I have already mentioned. I have treated the text, as far as
modernization of spelling goes, on the same principles as in
preceding volumes.[B]
]

[Footnote A: This is apparently peculiar to some, perhaps to
one, copy. The British Museum, Bodleian, &c. copies have it
not.]

[Footnote B: Since the above Introduction was first written
an additional revision of the texts has been made by Mr. Percy
Simpson with assistance from Mr. Thorn-Drury, as referred to
in the General Preface of this volume. There can be no doubt
that their labours, superadded to those of Professor Case,
have enabled me to put forth in this edition a text infinitely
superior to any previous one, though my part of the credit is
the least. Yet, after all, I dare say Cleveland remains, as he
has been impartially described, 'a terrible tangle'.]

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface of _Cleaveland Revived_ 15

Preface of _Clievelandi Vindiciae_ 17

POEMS FROM THE 1653 EDITION:
To the State of Love 19
The Hecatomb to his Mistress 21
Upon Sir Thomas Martin 24
On the Memory of Mr. Edward King 26
Upon an Hermaphrodite 28
The Author's Hermaphrodite 30
* _To the Hectors upon the unfortunate
death of H. Compton_ 32
Square-Cap 33
Upon Phillis walking in a morning
before sun-rising 35
Upon a Miser that made a great
feast, and the next day died
for grief 36
A Young Man to an Old Woman
courting him 39
To Mrs. K. T. 41
A Fair Nymph scorning a Black
Boy courting her 42
A Dialogue between two Zealots
upon the &c. in the Oath 43
Smectymnuus, or the Club-Divines 45
The Mixed Assembly 49
The King's Disguise 52
The Rebel Scot 56
The Scots' Apostasy 60
Rupertismus 62
Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford 67
An Elegy upon the Archbishop
of Canterbury 68
* _On I. W. A .B. of York_ 69
Mark Antony 71
The Author's Mock Song to
Mark Antony 72
How the Commencement grows new 73
The Hue and Cry after Sir John
Presbyter 75
The Antiplatonic 77
Fuscara, or the Bee Errant 79
* _An Elegy upon Doctor Chad[d]erton,
the first Master of
Emanuel College in Cambridge_ 81
* _Mary's Spikenard_ 82
To Julia to expedite her Promise 83

POEMS IN 1677 BUT NOT IN 1653:
Upon Princess Elizabeth, born
the night before New Year's Day 85
The General Eclipse 85
Upon the King's Return from Scotland 86

POEMS CERTAINLY OR PROBABLY GENUINE,
NOT IN 1653 OR 1677:
An Elegy on Ben Jonson 87
News from Newcastle 88
An Elegy upon King Charles the First 92

As stated above, it has been thought better to follow the miscellaneous arrangement of _1653_ than the classified but not strictly chronological one of _1677_. For those, however, who may desire it, the chronological order of the _political_ poems is here added: 1637-8, _Princess Elizabeth's Birth_; 1640, _A Dialogue_; 1641, _Epitaph on Strafford_, _Smectymnuus_, _The King's Return_; 1642, _Rupertismus_; 1643, _Upon Sir Thomas Martin_, _The Mixed Assembly_; 1643-4, _The Rebel Scot_, _The Scots' Apostasy_; 1645, _The Hue and Cry_, _Elegy on Laud_, _The General Eclipse_, _The King's Disguise_; 1649, _Elegy on Charles I_.

_Preface of Cleaveland Revived_

To the Discerning Reader.

Worthy Friend, there is a saying, _Once well done, and ever done_; the wisest men have so considerately acted in their times, as by their learned works to build their own monuments, such as might eternize them to future ages: our Jonson named his, Works, when others were called Plays, though they cost him much of the lamp and oil; yet he so writ, as to oblige posterity to admire them. Our deceased Hero, Mr. Cleveland, knew how to difference legitimate births from abortives, his mighty genius anvilled out what he sent abroad, as his informed mind knew how to distinguish betwixt writing much and well; a few of our deceased poet's pages being worth cartloads of the scribblers of these times. It was my fortune to be in Newark, when it was besieged, where I saw a few [some] manuscripts of Mr. Cleveland's. Amongst others I have heard that he writ of the Treaty at Uxbridge, as I have been informed since by a person I intrusted to speak with one of Mr. Cleveland's noble friends, who received him courteously, and satisfied his inquiries; as concerning the papers that were left in his custody, more particularly of the Treaty at Uxbridge, that it was not finished, nor any of his other papers fit for the press. They were offered to the judicious consideration of one of the most accomplished persons of our age, he refusing to have them in any further examination, as he did not conceive that they could be published without some injury to Mr. Cleveland; from which time they have remained sealed and locked up: neither can I wonder at this obstruction, when I consider the disturbances our author met with in the time of the siege, how scarce and bad the paper was, the ink hardly to be discerned on it. The intimacy I had with Mr. Cleveland before and since these civil wars, gained most of these papers from him, it being not the least of his misfortunes, out of the love he had to pleasure his friends, to be unfurnished with his own manuscripts, as I have heard him say often. He was not so happy as to have any considerable collection of his own papers, they being dispersed amongst his friends; some whereof when he writ for them, he had no other answer, but that they were lost, or through the often reading, transcribing, or folding of them, worn to pieces. So that though he knew where he formerly bestowed some of them, yet they were not to be regained. For which reason, the poems he had left in his hands being so few, [and] of so inconsiderable [small] a volume, he could not (though he was often solicited) with honour to himself give his consent to the publishing of them, though indeed most of his former printed poems were truly his own, except such as have been lately added, to make up the volume. At the first some few of his verses were printed with the[2] character of the London Diurnal, a stitched pamphlet in quarto. Afterwards, as I have heard Mr. Cleveland say, the copies of verses that he communicated to his friends, the book-seller by chance meeting with them, being added to his book, they sold him another impression; in like manner such small additions (though but a paper or two of his incomparable verses or prose) posted off other editions, [whereas this edition hath the happiness to flourish with the remainder of Mr. Cleveland's last never before printed pieces.] I acknowledge some few of these papers I received [many of these last new printed papers] from one of Mr. Cleveland's near acquaintance, which when I sent to his ever to be honoured friend of Grays-Inn, he had not at that time the leisure to peruse them; but for what he had read of them, he told the person I intrusted, that he did believe them to be Mr. Cleveland's, he having formerly spoken of such papers of his, that were abroad in the hands of his friends, whom he could not remember. My intention was to reserve the collection of these manuscripts for my own private use; but finding many of these I had in my hands already published in the former poems, not knowing what further proceedings might attend the forwardness of the press, I thought myself concerned, not out of any worldly [unworthy] ends of profit, but out of a true affection to my deceased friend, to publish these his never [other] before extant pieces in Latin and English and to make this to be somewhat [like] a volume for the study. Some other poems are intermixed, such as the reader shall find to be of such persons as were for the most part Mr. Cleveland's contemporaries; some of them no less eminently known to the three nations. I hope the world cannot be so far mistaken in his genuine muse, as not to discern his pieces from any of the other poems; neither can I believe there are any persons so unkind, as not candidly to entertain the heroic fancies of the other gentlemen that are worthily placed to live in this volume. Some of their poems, contrary to my expectation--I being at such a distance--I have since heard[3] were before in print, but as they are excellently good and so few, the [but in this second edition I have crossed them out, only reserving those that were excellently good, and never before extant. The] reader (I hope) will the more freely accept them. Thus having ingenuously satisfied thee in these particulars, I shall not need to insert more; but that I have, to prevent surreptitious editions, published this collection; that by erecting this Pyramid of Honour, I might oblige posterity to perpetuate their memories, which is the highest ambition of him, who is,

Newark. Nov. 21, 1658.

Yours in all virtuous endeavours,
E. WILLIAMSON.

[Footnote 1: This singular production is, in the original,
punctuated after a fashion very suitable, in its entire
irrationality, to the sentiments of its writer; but I have
taken the liberty (and no other) of relieving the reader of
an additional burden by at least separating the sentences. The
second edition of 1660 shows some alterations which are given
above in brackets.

Whether Mr. Williamson was one of the most impudent persons
in the world, or merely (which seems more probable) an abject
fool, may be left to the reader to determine. The thing does
not seem to require much, if any, annotation. The author, I
think, is not otherwise known, and the name is common enough.
The well-known Secretary Williamson must have been his
contemporary, and may have had some connexion with our paragon
besides that of Cavalier principles. But _he_ was Joseph.]

[Footnote 2: 'a character' 1662 (third edition).]

[Footnote 3: 'I have since heard' omitted in 1662.]

The Stationer to the Reader.

Courteous Reader, thy free Acceptance of the former edition, encouraged me so far as to use my best diligence to gain what still remained in the hands of the Author's friends. I acknowledge myself to be obliged to Mr. Williamson, whose worthy example Mr. Cleveland's other honourers have since pursued. I shall not trouble thee, Reader, with any further Apologies, but only subscribe Mr. W. W. his last Verses in his following Elegy on Mr. Cleveland.

That Plagiary that can filch but one
Conceit from Him, and keep the Theft unknown,
At Noon from Phoebus, may by the same sleight,
Steal Beams, and make 'em pass for his own light.

To the Right Worshipful and Reverend Francis Turner, D.D., Master of St. John's College in Cambridge, and to the Worthy Fellows of the same College.

GENTLEMEN,

That we interrupt your more serious studies with the offer of this piece, the injury that hath been and is done to the deceased author's ashes not only pleadeth our excuse, but engageth you (whose once he was, and within whose walls this standard of wit was first set up) in the same quarrel with us.

Whilst Randolph and Cowley lie embalmed in their own native wax, how is the name and memory of Cleveland equally profaned by those that usurp, and those that blaspheme it?--by those that are ambitious to lay their cuckoo's eggs in his nest, and those that think to raise up Ph[oe]nixes of wit by firing his spicy bed about him?

We know you have, not without passionate resentments, beheld the prostitution of his name in some late editions vended under it, wherein his orations are murthered over and over in barbarous Latin, and a more barbarous translation: and wherein is scarce one or other poem of his own to commute for all the rest. At least every Cuirassier of his hath a fulsome dragooner behind him, and Venus is again unequally yoked with a sooty anvil-beater. Cleveland thus revived dieth another death.

You cannot but have beheld with like zealous indignation how enviously our late mushroom-wits look up at him because he overdroppeth them, and snarl at his brightness as dogs at the Moon.

Some of these grand Sophys will not allow him the reputation of wit at all: yet how many such authors must be creamed and spirited to make up his Fuscara?[2] And how many of their slight productions may be gigged[3] out of one of his pregnant words? There perhaps you may find some leaf-gold, here massy wedges; there some scattered rays, here a galaxy; there some loose fancy frisking in the air, here Wit's Zodiac.

The quarrel in all this is upbraiding merit, and eminence his crime. His towering[4] fancy scareth so high a pitch that they fly like shades below him. The torrent thereof (which riseth far above their high water mark) drowneth their levels. Usurping upon the State Poetic of the time, he hath brought in such insolent measures of Wit and Language that, despairing to imitate, they must study to understand. That alone is Wit with them to which they are commensurate, and what exceedeth their scantling[5] is monstrous.

Thus they deifie[6] his Wit and Fancy as the clown the plump oyster when he could not crack it. And now instead of that strenuous masculine style which breatheth in this author, we have only an enervous effeminate froth offered, as if they had taken the salivating pill before they set pen to paper. You must hold your breath in the perusal lest the jest vanish by blowing on.

Another blemish in this monster of perfection is the exuberance of his fancy. His manna lieth so thick upon the ground they loathe it. When he should only fan, he with hurricanos of wit stormeth the sense, and doth not so much delight his reader, as oppress and overwhelm him.

To cure this excess, their frugal wit hath reduced the world to a Lessian Diet.[7] If perhaps they entertain their reader with one good thought (as these new Dictators affect to speak) he may sit down and say Grace over it: the rest is words and nothing else.

We will leave them therefore to the most proper vengeance, to humour themselves with the perusal of their own poems: and leave the barber to rub their thick skulls with bran[8] until they are fit for musk. Only we will leave this friendly advice with them; that they have one eye upon John Tradescant's executor,[9] lest among his other Minims of Art and Nature he expose their slight conceits: and another upon the Royal Society, lest they make their poems the counterbalance when they intend to weigh air.

From these unequal censures we appeal to such competent judges as yourselves, in whose just value of him Cleveland shall live the wonder of his own, and the pattern of succeeding ages. And although we might (upon several accompts) bespeak your affections, yet (abstracting from these) we submit him to your severer judgements, and doubt not but he will find that patronage from you which is desired and expected by

Your humble Servants.

J. L. S. D.[10]

[Footnote 1: Here we get into _terra cognita_ as regards
authorship. The editors had been, both of them, Cleveland's
pupils at St. John's. 'J. L.' was John Lake (1624-1689), a
man of great distinction--at this time Vicar of Leeds and
Prebendary of York, later Bishop, first of Sodor and Man and
then of Chichester, who while he held the last-named see
had the double glory of withstanding James II as one of 'the
Seven', and of refusing the Oath to William. 'S. D.' was also
a Yorkshire clergyman--Samuel Drake--who had not only studied
under Cleveland at Cambridge, but fought under him at Newark.
He became Vicar of Pontefract; but (if the _D.N.B._ is right
in assigning his death to the year 1673) his work on the great
vindication of his tutor must have been done some time before
publication. Francis Turner (1638-1700), of a much younger
generation and an Oxford man, though admitted _ad eundem_ at
Cambridge in 1662, had been Master of St. John's College since
1670, and was therefore properly selected as chief dedicatee.
He was destined to be connected with Lake again in the great
actions above noted as Bishop of Ely, and for the last ten
years of his life was an active Jacobite agent.]

[Footnote 2: The description of _Cleaveland Revived_ in the
third paragraph is perfectly just, and 'anvil-beater' is an
obvious echo-gibe at Williamson's own phraseology. It is less
certain what 'grand Sophys' are specially referred to further
on--but Dryden _might_ be one.]

[Footnote 3: A Clevelandish word; _v. infra_, p. 65
(_Rupertismus_, l. 120).]

[Footnote 4: In orig., as often, 'touring', but to print this
nowadays would invite misconception.]

[Footnote 5: 'Scantling' is used in various senses. Either
that of 'rough draft' or, as in Taylor, 'small piece' would
do; but it is at least possible that it is not a noun at all,
but a direct participle from the verb to 'scantle', found in
Drayton, and meaning 'to be deficient', 'come short'. Some,
however, prefer the sense 'dimension' or 'measurement', which
would make it a sort of varied repetition of 'commensurate'.]

[Footnote 6: 'Deifie' is of course wrong. 'Defy' is likeliest,
and in a certain sense (frequent in Elizabethan writers) would
do; but 'decry' seems wanted.]

[Footnote 7: A common phrase for an earlier 'Banting' regime
derived from the _Hygiasticon_ (Antwerp, 1623) of Leonard
Lessius (1554-1624). I owe this information to the kindness
of Dr. Comrie, Lecturer on the History of Medicine in the
University of Edinburgh. The next sentence may, or rather
must, be a reference to (in fact, a fling at) Dryden, _Essay
of Dramatic Poesy_ (vol. i, p. 52, ed. Ker, Oxford, 1900),
who censures Cleveland for not giving 'a _great_ thought' in
'words ... commonly received'. I owe the reminder of this to
Mr. Thorn-Drury.]

[Footnote 8: The use of bran for shampooing is not perhaps so
well known as that for poultices, foot-baths, &c. It is always
a _softener_ as well as a detergent.]

[Footnote 9: Ashmole.]

[Footnote 10: Perhaps I should add a very few words explaining
why I have not made this 'authenticated' edition the base of
mine. I have not done so because the editors, excellent as was
evidently their intention, have after all given us no reasons
for their exclusions and inclusions; because, though they
have corrected some obvious errors, their readings by no means
always intrinsically commend themselves to me; and especially
because the distance between 1647 and 1677 reflects itself,
to no small degree, in a certain definite _modernisation_
of form, grammatical and prosodic. 1653 has much more
_contemporariness_.]

POEMS.

To the State of Love. Or the Senses' Festival.

I saw a vision yesternight,
Enough to sate a Seeker's sight;
I wished myself a Shaker there,
And her quick pants my trembling sphere.
It was a she so glittering bright,
You'd think her soul an Adamite;
A person of so rare a frame,
Her body might be lined with' same.
Beauty's chiefest maid of honour,
You may break Lent with looking on her. 10
Not the fair Abbess of the skies,
With all her nunnery of eyes,
Can show me such a glorious prize!

And yet, because 'tis more renown
To make a shadow shine, she's brown;
A brown for which Heaven would disband
The galaxy, and stars be tanned;
Brown by reflection as her eye
Deals out the summer's livery.
Old dormant windows must confess 20
Her beams; their glimmering spectacles,
Struck with the splendour of her face,
Do th' office of a burning-glass.
Now where such radiant lights have shown,
No wonder if her cheeks be grown
Sunburned, with lustre of her own.

My sight took pay, but (thank my charms!)
I now impale her in mine arms;
(Love's compasses confining you,
Good angels, to a circle too.) 30
Is not the universe strait-laced
When I can clasp it in the waist?
My amorous folds about thee hurled,
With Drake I girdle in the world;
I hoop the firmament, and make
This, my embrace, the zodiac.
How would thy centre take my sense
When admiration doth commence
At the extreme circumference?

Now to the melting kiss that sips 40
The jellied philtre of her lips;
So sweet there is no tongue can praise 't
Till transubstantiate with a taste.
Inspired like Mahomet from above
By th' billing of my heavenly dove,
Love prints his signets in her smacks,
Those ruddy drops of squeezing wax,
Which, wheresoever she imparts,
They're privy seals to take up hearts.
Our mouths encountering at the sport, 50
My slippery soul had quit the fort,
But that she stopped the sally-port.

Next to these sweets, her lips dispense
(As twin conserves of eloquence)
The sweet perfume her breath affords,
Incorporating with her words.
No rosary this vot'ress needs--
Her very syllables are beads;
No sooner 'twixt those rubies born,
But jewels are in ear-rings worn. 60
With what delight her speech doth enter;
It is a kiss o' th' second venter.
And I dissolve at what I hear,
As if another Rosamond were
Couched in the labyrinth of my ear.

Yet that 's but a preludious bliss,
Two souls pickeering in a kiss.
Embraces do but draw the line,
'Tis storming that must take her in.
When bodies join and victory hovers 70
'Twixt the equal fluttering lovers,
This is the game; make stakes, my dear!
Hark, how the sprightly chanticleer
(That Baron Tell-clock of the night)
Sounds boutesel to Cupid's knight.
Then have at all, the pass is got,
For coming off, oh, name it not!
Who would not die upon the spot?

[_To the State of Love, &c._ appeared first _1651_.
The stanzas are not divided in the early editions, but are so
in _1677_. Carew's _Rapture_ may have given some suggestions,
Apuleius and Lucretius also; but not much is required. The
substance is shocking to pure prudery, no doubt; but, as
observed in the introduction, there is perhaps more gusto in
the execution than in _Fuscara_.

A copy of this poem, with many minor variants, is in Bodleian
MS. Tanner 306, fol. 424: it has one noteworthy reading, 'took
sey', i.e. 'say' or 'assay'--the hunting term--in l. 27.]

[Lines: 2, 3 The use of capitals in the seventeenth century is
so erratic that it is dangerous to base much on it. But both
'Seekers' and 'Shakers' (a variant of 'Quakers') were actually
among the countless sects of the time, as well of course as
'Adamites'. _1651_. _1653_, _1654_, and _1657_ have 'tempt'
for _1677_ 'sate'.]

[Line: 4 pants _1677_: 'pulse' _1651_, _1653_, _1654_,
_1657_.]

[Line: 10 'You'd break a Lent' _1651_, _1653_.]

[Lines: 11-13 Benlowes's lines (_v. sup._ i. 356)--

The lady prioress of the cloistered sky, &c.--

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Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Vol. IIIChapter II: Introduction: To John Cleveland (1)

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