Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Lodge says that this Topcliffe was respectably connected, but that he could only find that he was distinguished as a most implacable persecutor of Roman Catholics. In a letter of Sir Anthony Standen, in which he praises the agreeable manners of the Earl of Essex, he writes: “Contrary to our _Topcliffian_ customs, he hath won more with words than others could do with racks.” From another letter of the period it appears that _Topcliffzare_ in the quaint language of the court signified to hunt a recusant.

But to return to Southwell. Transferred to a dungeon in the Tower, “so noisome and filthy that, when he was brought out at the end of the month, his clothes were covered with vermin,” his father wrote to her majesty Queen Elizabeth the letter we have already mentioned. This petition was to some extent regarded. A better lodging was allowed him, and leave accorded his father to supply him with “cloaths and other necessaries”; and amongst the rest, with books which he asked for, which were only the Holy Bible and the works of S. Bernard. “The selection of books,” says Mr. Grosart, “_the_ book of books, and the father of the fathers, for a poet is very noteworthy; and through all his weary imprisonment ‘spiritual things,’ not civil or earthly, were his theme when he discoursed to his sister Mary (Mrs. Bannister) or others permitted occasionally to visit him.”

TRIAL AND EXECUTION.

We adopt mainly the relation of Southwell’s trial and execution as it is given by Bishop Challoner, supported by a Latin MS. preserved in the archives of the English College of S. Omer’s:

“After Father Southwell had been kept close prisoner for three years in the Tower, he sent an epistle to Cecil, Lord Treasurer, humbly entreating his lordship that he might either be brought upon his trial to answer for himself, or at least that his friends might have leave to come and see him. The treasurer answered that, if he was in so much haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire. Shortly after this orders were given that he should be removed from the Tower to Newgate, where he was put down into the dungeon called _Limbo_, and there kept for three days.

“On the 22d of February, without any previous warning to prepare for his trial, he was taken out of his dark lodging and hurried to Westminster, to hold up his hand there at the bar. The first news of this step towards his martyrdom filled his heart with a joy which he could not conceal. The judges before whom he was to appear were Lord Chief-Justice Popham, Justice Owen, Baron Evans, and Sergeant Daniel. As soon as Father Southwell was brought in, the lord chief-justice made a long and vehement speech against the Jesuits and seminary priests, as the authors and contrivers of all the plots and treasons which, he pretended, had been hatched during that reign. Then was read the bill of indictment against Father Southwell, drawn up by Cook, the queen’s solicitor.”

THEIR FAITH WAS THEIR GUILT.

It would be well to remark here that Protestants nowadays frequently contend that the missionary priests judicially murdered during the reign of Elizabeth were not executed on account of their religion, but because they were stirrers up of sedition and traitors, and were in every case so proven to be upon their respective trials. The good people who set up such pretext are sadly in ignorance of the history of that dark period. So far from asserting the slightest pretence of guilt on the part of such acts accused of as commonly constitute sedition and high treason, the statute of Elizabeth under which they were sent to the gallows only made it necessary to show that they were Englishmen and Catholic priests, and were arrested in England. The statute, in fact, enacted substantially that, “if any Jesuit, seminary priest, or deacon, or religious or ecclesiastical person whatever, born within the realm, shall come into, be, or remain in any part of this realm, every such offence shall be taken and adjudged to be high treason.” The indictment against Southwell was “drawn up by Cook, the queen’s solicitor,” says the S. Omer MS. Now, “Cook, the queen’s solicitor” here referred to was no less a personage than the great Coke. Here is the indictment presented by him in Southwell’s case, from which it will be seen that the prisoner was charged only with the crimes of, _first_, being a priest of English birth; _second_, of having remained in the county of Middlesex:

“The jury present, on the part of our sovereign lady the queen, that Robert Southwell, late of London, clerk, born within this kingdom of England; to wit, since the feast of S. John the Baptist, in the first year of the reign of her majesty, and before the first day of May, in the thirty-second year of the reign of our lady the queen aforesaid, made and ordained priest by authority derived and pretended from the See of Rome; not having the fear of God before his eyes, and slighting the laws and statutes of this realm of England, without any regard to the penalty therein contained, on the 20th day of June, the thirty-fourth year of the reign of our lady the queen, at Uxenden, in the county of Middlesex, traitorously, and as a false traitor to our lady the queen, was and remained, contrary to the form of the statute in such case set forth and provided, and contrary to the peace of our said lady the queen, her crown, and dignities.”

The grand jury having found the bill, Father Southwell was ordered to come up to the bar. He readily obeyed, and, bowing down his head, made a low reverence to his judges; then modestly held up his hand according to custom, and, being asked whether he was guilty or not guilty, he answered, “I confess that I was born in England, a subject to the queen’s majesty, and that, by authority derived from God, I have been promoted to the sacred order of priesthood in the Roman Church, for which I return most hearty thanks to his divine Majesty. I confess, also, that I was at Uxenden, in Middlesex, at that time, when, being sent for thither by trick and deceit, I fell into your hands, as is well known; but that I never entertained any designs or plots against the queen or kingdom, I call God to witness, the revenger of perjury; neither had I any other design in returning home to my native country than to administer the sacraments according to the rite of the Catholic Church to such as desired them.”

Here the judge interrupted him, and told him that he was to let all that alone, and plead directly guilty or not guilty. Upon which he said, _he was not guilty of any treason whatsoever_. And being asked by what he would be tried, he said, “By God and by you.” The judge told him he was to answer, “By God and his country,” which, at first, he refused, alleging that the laws of his country were disagreeable to the law of God, and that he was unwilling these poor harmless men of the jury, whom they obliged to represent the country, should have any share in their guilt, or any hand in his death. “But,” said he, “if through your iniquity it must be so, and I cannot help it, be it as you will; I am ready to be judged by God and my country.” When the twelve were to be sworn, he challenged none of them, saying that they were all equally strangers to him, and therefore charity did not allow him to except against any one of them more than another.

After Coke had presented the case to the jury, they went aside to consult about the verdict, and in a short time brought him in guilty. He was asked if he had anything more to say for himself why sentence should not be pronounced against him? He said: “Nothing; but from my heart I beg of Almighty God to forgive all who have been any ways accessory to my death.” The judge having pronounced sentence according to the usual form, Father Southwell made a very low bow, returning him most hearty thanks as for an unspeakable favor. The judge offered him the help of a minister to prepare him to die. Father Southwell desired he would not trouble him upon that head; that the grace of God would be more than sufficient for him. And so, being sent back to Newgate through the streets, lined with people, he discovered, all the way, the overflowing joy of his heart in his eyes, in his whole countenance, and in every gesture and motion of his body. He was again put down into limbo, at his return to Newgate, where he spent the following night, the last of his life, in prayer, full of the thoughts of the journey he was to take the next day, through the gate of martyrdom, into a happy eternity; to enjoy for ever the sovereign object of his love.

We have seen by what device and with what ill success the officials directing the execution sought, on the next morning, to draw away the crowd from Tyburn where Father Southwell was to be “hung, bowelled, and quartered.”

EXECUTIONS UNDER ELIZABETH.

The modern reader generally, and very naturally, supposes that this sentence, horrible as it is in its simplest form, would be carried out as stated, that is to say, that, when the condemned man was hung until dead, his body was then butchered as described. This probably was the intention of the law, and the latter two of the three incidents of the executions were intended more as indignities to the remains of a criminal supposed to be guilty of the greatest of human crimes than as any part of the means of procuring death. But under the reign of Elizabeth the cruelty and bestiality of the mode in which the horrible sentence was carried out had reached its height. As a general thing, the victim was butchered alive. According to the whim or the bloodthirstiness of the executioner, the condemned man was allowed to hang a short time, or he was scarcely swung off before he was cut down and the hangman was—as he is described in a well-known phrase—“grabbling among his entrails.” Sometimes the executioner would spring upon the body as it was swung off, and plunge his knife into the victim before they reached the ground in their fall together. When a young priest named Edward Genings was executed, in 1591, the butchery was superintended by Topcliffe, who adjured the victim to submit and recant and he should be pardoned. His reply was: “I know not in what I have offended my dear anointed princess; if I had, I would willingly ask forgiveness. If she be offended with me because I am a priest, and because I profess my faith and will not turn minister against my conscience, I shall be, I trust, excused and innocent before God. I must obey God, saith S. Peter, rather than men.” At this Topcliffe was enraged, and bade the hangman turn the ladder; scarcely giving him time to say a _Pater Noster_. Cut down by his order before he was dead, the butchery began, and, the hangman’s hand being already on his heart, Genings was heard to say, “Sancte Gregori, ora pro me!”—which the hangman hearing, he swore, “_Zounds, see, his heart is in my hand_, and yet Gregory is in his mouth! O egregious papist!”[25]

We return to Father Southwell, who was drawn on a hurdle or sled from Newgate to Tyburn, and resume the account of the S. Omer’s MS.: “When he was come to the place, getting up into the cart, he made the sign of the cross in the best manner that he could, his hands being pinion’d, and began to speak to the people those words of the apostle (Rom. xiv), ‘Whether we live, we live to the Lord, or whether we die, we die to the Lord; therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.’ Here the sheriff would have interrupted him, but he begged leave that he might go on, assuring him that he would utter nothing that should give offence. Then he spoke as follows: ‘I am come to this place to finish my course, and to pass out of this miserable life; and I beg of my Lord Jesus Christ, in whose most precious Passion and Blood I place my hope of salvation, that he would have mercy on my soul. I confess I am a Catholic priest of the Holy Roman Church, and a religious man of the Society of Jesus; on which account I owe eternal thanks and praises to my God and Saviour.’ Here he was interrupted by a minister telling him that, if he understood what he had said in the sense of the Council of Trent, it was damnable doctrine. But the minister was silenc’d by the standers-by, and Mr. Southwell went on, saying: ‘Sir, I beg of you not to be troublesome to me for this short time that I have to live: I am a Catholic, and in whatever manner you may please to interpret my words, I hope for my salvation by the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and as to the queen, I never attempted, nor contrived, or imagined any evil against her, but have always prayed for her to Our Lord, and for this short time of my life still pray, that, in his infinite mercy, he would be pleased to give her all such gifts and graces which he sees, in his divine wisdom, to be most expedient for the welfare both of her soul and body, in this life and in the next. I recommend in like manner, to the same mercy of God, my poor country, and I implore the divine bounty to favor it with his light and the knowledge of his truth, to the greater advancement of the salvation of souls, and the eternal glory of his divine Majesty. In fine, I beg of the almighty and everlasting God, that this my death may be for my own and for my country’s good, and the comfort of the Catholics my brethren.’

“Having finished these words, and looking for the cart to be immediately drove away, he again blessed himself, and, with his eyes raised to heaven, repeated with great calmness of mind and countenance, ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,’ with other short ejaculations, till the cart was drawn off. The unskilful hangman had not applied the noose of the rope to the proper place, so that he several times made the sign of the cross whilst he was hanging, and was some time before he was strangled, which some perceiving, drew him by the legs to put an end to his pain, and when the executioner was for cutting the rope before he was dead, the gentlemen and people that were present cried out three several times, ‘Hold, hold!’ for the behavior of the servant of God was so edifying in these his last moments, that even the Protestants who were present at the execution were much affected with the sight.” After he was dead he was cut down and the remainder of the sentence carried out. Turnbull relates that “Lord Mountjoy (Charles Blount), who happened to be present, was so struck by the martyr’s constancy that he exclaimed, ‘May my soul be with this man’s!’ and he assisted in restraining those who would have cut the rope while he was still in life.”

Father Southwell’s reverend and Protestant biographer declares, in concluding his relation of the execution: “I must regard our worthy as a ‘martyr’ in the deepest and grandest sense—a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost. I should blush for my Protestantism if I did not hold in honor, yea reverence, his stainless and beautiful memory.

‘Through this desert, day by day,
Wandered not his steps astray,
Treading still the royal way.’

—_Paradisus Animæ._

“So perished Father Southwell, at thirty-three years of age, and so, unhappily, have perished many of the wise and virtuous of the earth. Conscious of suffering in the supposed best of causes, he seems to have met death without terror—to have received the crown of martyrdom not only with resignation, but with joy.”[26]

It is matter of regret that there exists no authentic portrait of Southwell. His biographer is of opinion that a genuine likeness of him would have shown an intellectual, etherealized face, and fancies that he might have sat for the portrait of the Prior in _The Lady of Garaye_:

“Tender his words, and eloquently wise;
Mild the pure fervor of his watchful eyes;
Meek with serenity and constant prayer,
The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare.
The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still
With a sweet calm that speaks an angel’s will.
Resolving service to his God’s behest,
And ever musing how to serve _him_ best,
Not old, nor young; with manhood’s gentlest grace,
Pale to transparency the pensive face,
Pale not with sickness but with studious thought,
The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought;
With something faint and fragile in the whole,
As though ‘twere but a lamp to hold a soul.”

PART SECOND.—POET.

And here, first, a few words on the prose writings of Southwell. We have already referred to the remarkable letter of admonition by him addressed to his father. It is a severe test to put the prose of any cultivated language to that of comparison with the productions of the same tongue nearly three centuries later. And yet this letter will support such comparison surprisingly well both as to substance and style. The reader will bear in mind the peculiar circumstances under which Southwell addressed this

LETTER TO HIS FATHER.

“I am not of so unnatural a kind, of so wild an education, or so unchristian a spirit, as not to remember the root out of which I have branched, or to forget my secondary maker and author of my being. It is not the carelessness of a cold affection, nor the want of a due and reverent respect, that has made me such a stranger to my native home, and so backward in defraying the debt of a thankful mind, but only the iniquity of these days that maketh my presence perilous, and the discharge of my duties an occasion of danger. I was loath to enforce an unwilling courtesy upon any, or by seeming officious to become offensive; deeming it better to let time digest the fear that my return into the realm had bred in my kindred than abruptly to intrude myself, and to purchase their danger, whose good-will I so highly esteem. I never doubted but what the belief, which to all my friends by descent and pedigree is, in a manner, hereditary, framed in them a right persuasion of my present calling, not suffering them to measure their censures of me by the ugly terms and odious epithets wherewith heresy hath sought to discredit my functions, but rather by the reverence of so worthy a sacrament and the sacred usages of all former ages. Yet, because I might easily perceive by apparent conjectures that many were more willing to hear of me than from me, and readier to praise than to use my endeavors, I have hitherto bridled my desire to see them by the care and jealousy of their safety; and banished myself from the scene of my cradle in my own country. I have lived like a foreigner, finding among strangers that which, in my nearest blood, I presumed not to seek.”

Then, regretting that he has been barred from affording to his dearest friends that which hath been eagerly sought and beneficially attained by mere strangers, he exclaims passionately:

“Who hath more interest in the grape than he who planted the vine? Who more right to the crop than he who sowed the corn? or where can the child owe so great service as to him to whom he is indebted for his very life and being? With young Tobias I have travelled far, and brought home a freight of spiritual sustenance to enrich you, and medicinable receipts against your ghostly maladies. I have with Esau, after long toil in pursuing a long and painful chase, returned with the full prey you were wont to love, desiring thereby to ensure your blessing. I have, in this general famine of all true and Christian food, with Joseph prepared abundance of the mead of angels for the repast of your soul. And now my desire is that my drugs may cure you, my prey delight you, and my provisions feed you, by whom I have been cured, enlightened, and fed myself; that your courtesies may, in part, be counterveiled, and my duty, in some sort, performed.

“Despise not, good sire, the youth of your son, neither deem your God measureth his endowments by number of years. Hoary senses are often couched under youthful locks, and some are riper in the spring than others in the autumn of their age. God chose not Esau himself, nor his eldest son, but young David, to conquer Goliath and to rule his people; not the most aged person, but David, the most innocent youth, delivered Susannah from the iniquity of the judges. Christ, at twelve years of age, was found in the temple questioning with the greatest doctors. A true Elias can conceive that a little cloud may cast a large and abundant shower; and the Scripture teacheth us that God unveileth to little ones that which he concealeth from the wisest sages. His truth is not abashed by the minority of the speaker; for out of the mouths of infants and sucklings he can perfect his praises.... The full of your spring-tide is now fallen, and the stream of your life waneth to a low ebb; your tired bark beginneth to leak, and _grateth oft upon the gravel of the grave_; therefore it is high time for you to strike sail and put into harbor, lest, remaining in the scope of the winds and waves of this wicked time, some unexpected gust should dash you upon the rock of eternal ruin.”

The entire letter is given in both Walter and Turnbull’s _Memoirs of Southwell_, and has been extravagantly praised as being the composition of Sir Walter Raleigh, among whose _Remains_ it is frequently reprinted. Mr. Grosart, a Protestant clergyman, says of it: “I know nothing comparable with the mingled affection and prophetlike fidelity, the wise instruction, correction, reproof, the full rich scripturalness and quaint applications, the devoutness, the insistence, the pathos of this letter.” The edition of Sir Walter Raleigh’s _Remains_, published in London in 1675, was the subject of an article in the _Retrospective Review_ for 1820, in which the reviewer remarks: “‘The Dutiful Advice of a Loving Son to his Aged Father’ is supposed to be a libel on Sir Walter, written by his enemies. It will be seen, however, that it bears a strong resemblance to his style, although the metaphor is more profuse and ornamental, and seems to be rather engrafted on his thoughts than to spring up with them. That this piece should be dictated by personal hostility is strange. It contains exhortations that might with the greatest propriety be directed to any man.

“It is possible that it might be written by another in imitation of Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘Advice to his Son’; _yet if he was an enemy, he was of a most uncommon description_. As the advice, however, is worth quoting for its own merit, and is written with great force and beauty, we shall give our readers an opportunity of judging for themselves.”

This letter is Southwell’s earliest dated prose, and was followed by a variety of treatises, epistles, and pamphlets, printed on the “private press” at his own house in London. Besides these, there remain several English and a large number of Latin prose writings still in manuscript. “Mary Magdalene’s Funerall Teares,” although prose in form, is in fact far more fervid and impassioned than the greater part of his poetry.

SOUTHWELL’S POETRY.

To the readers of poetry for its merely sensuous qualities of flowing measure, attractive imagery, and brilliant description, the poems of Southwell possess but few attractions. Their subjects are all religious, or, at least, serious; and, in reading him, we must totally forget the traditional pagan poet pictured to us as crowned with flowers, and holding in hand an overflowing anacreontic cup. Serious, indeed, his poems might well be, for they were all composed during the intervals of thirteen bodily rackings in a gloomy prison that opened only upon the scaffold. And yet we look in vain among them for expressions of the reproaches or repining such a fate might well engender, and we search with but scant result for record or trace of his own sufferings in the lines traced with fingers yet bent and smarting with the rack. The vanity of all earthly things, the trials of life, the folly and wickedness of the world, the uncertainty of life, and the consolations and glories of religion, are the constantly returning subjects of his productions, and, however treated, they always reflect the benignity and elevation of the poet’s character.

Certain it is that Southwell was largely read by the generation that immediately succeeded him. Many years ago, Ellis[27] said: “The very few copies of his works which are now known to exist are the remnant of at least seventeen different editions, of which eleven were printed between 1593 and 1600”; and at a later period, Drake, in his _Shakespeare and his Times_, says:[28] “Both the poetry and the prose of Southwell possess the most decided merit; the former, which is almost entirely restricted to moral and religious subjects, flows in a vein of great harmony, perspicuity, and elegance, and breathes a fascination resulting from the subject and the pathetic mode of treating it which fixes and deeply interests the reader.”

A valuable tribute of admiration to Southwell’s poetic talent is that of Ben Jonson, who said: “that Southwell was hanged; yet so he (Jonson) had written that piece of his, ‘The Burning Babe,’ he would have been content to destroy many of his.”[29] Our readers, we are sure, will thank us for giving it here, although we strongly suspect that Mr. Grosart will not approve of its modern orthography.

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear,
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears
were fed;
Alas! quoth he, but newly born, in fiery heats I frye,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scornes;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now, on fire I am, to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to washe them in my blood:
With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Our limits will permit but slight citation from the body of Southwell’s poetry. He is most widely known by his chief poem “S. Peter’s Complaint,” consisting of one hundred and thirty-six stanzas (six-line). But his most attractive pieces are his shorter poems—“Times go by Turns,” “Content and Rich,”[30] “Life is but Loss,” “Look Home,” “Love’s servile Lot,” and the whole series on our Saviour and his Mother; and, making some allowance for the enthusiasm of our editor, no true lover of poetry who reads these productions of Southwell will seriously dissent from Mr. Grosart’s estimate of them. “The hastiest reader will come on ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ that are as musical as Apollo’s lute, and as fresh as a spring budding spray; and the wording of all (excepting over-alliteration and inversion occasionally), is throughout of the ‘pure well of English undefiled.’ When you take some of the Myrtæ and Mæoniæ pieces, and read and re-read them, you are struck with their condensation, their concinnity, their polish, their _élan_, their memorableness. Holiness is in them not as scent on love-locks, but as fragrance in the great Gardener’s flowers of fragrance. His tears are pure and white as the ‘dew of the morning.’ His smiles—for he has humor, even wit, that must have lurked in the burdened eyes and corners o’ mouth—are sunny as sunshine. As a whole, his poetry is healthy and strong, and, I think, has been more potential in our literature than appears on the surface. I do not think it would be hard to show that others of whom more is heard drew light from him, as well early as more recent, from Burns to Thomas Hood. For example, limiting as to the latter, I believe every reader who will compare the two deliberately will see in the ‘Vale of Tears’ the source of the latter’s immortal ‘Haunted House’—dim, faint, weak beside it, as the earth-hid bulb compared with the lovely blossom of hyacinth or tulip or lily, nevertheless really carrying in it the original of the mightier after-poem.”

Our warmest tribute of praise can render but scant justice to the intelligence, the industry, the erudition, the keen poetic sense, and the enthusiasm which the editor of the volume before us has devoted to what has evidently been to him a labor of love. Mr. Grosart is well known in the literary world as the editor of Crashawe and of Vaughan, as also of the forthcoming editions of Marvell, Donne, and Sidney. His laboriously corrected version of our martyr-poet’s legacy has, it may be said, restored Southwell to us, so obscured had he become by mistakes, misprints, and false readings. Indeed Mr. Grosart’s somewhat jealous love of his subject betrays him into apparently harsh judgment on the efforts of others, when, for instance, he declares himself “vexed by the travesties on editing and mere carelessness of Walter earlier (1817) and Turnbull later (1856) in their so-called editions of the poems of Father Southwell,” adding: “Turnbull said contemptuously, ‘I refrain from criticism on Mr. Walter’s text’—severe but not undeserved, only his own is scarcely one whit better, and in places worse.”

There is one passage at the close of Mr. Grosart’s interesting preface which has a special interest for us as Americans. We mean his reference to the verdict pronounced on Father Southwell’s poetry by Prof. James Russell Lowell in his charming book _My Study Windows_. “It seems to me,” says Mr. Grosart, “harsh to brutality on the man (meet follower of him ‘the first true gentleman that ever breathed’); while on the poetry it rests on self-evidently the most superficial acquaintance and the hastiest generalization. To pronounce ‘S. Peter’s Complaint’ a ‘drawl’ of thirty pages of ‘maudlin repentance, in which the distinctions between the north and northeast sides of a (_sic_) sentimentality are worthy of Duns Scotus,’ shows about as much knowledge—that is, ignorance—of the poem as of the schoolman, and as another remark does of S. Peter; for, with admitted tedium, S. Peter’s complaint sounds depths of penitence and remorse, and utters out emotion that flames into passion very unforgettably, while there are felicities of metaphor, daintinesses of word-painting, brilliancies of inner-portraiture, scarcely to be matched in contemporary verse. The ‘paraphrase’ of David (to wit, ‘David’s Peccavi’) is a single short piece, and the ‘punning’ conceit, ‘fears are my feres,’ is common to some of England’s finest wits, and in the meaning of ‘fere’ not at all to be pronounced against. If we on this side of the Atlantic valued less the opinion of such a unique genius as Prof. Lowell’s, if we did not take him to our innermost love, we should less grieve over such a vulgar affront offered to a venerable name as his whole paragraph to Southwell. I shall indulge the hope of our edition reaching the ‘Study,’ and persuading to a real ‘study’ of these poems, and, if so, I do not despair of a voluntary reversal of the first judgment.”

ARIS WILMOTT

pronounced Southwell to be the Goldsmith of our early poets; and ‘Content and Rich,’ and, ‘Dyer’s phansie turned to a Sinner’s Complaint’ warrant the great praise. But beneath the manner recalling Goldsmith, there is a purity and richness of thought, a naturalness, a fineness of expression, a harmony of versification, and occasionally a tide-flow of high-toned feeling, not to be met with in him.

“Nor will Prof. Lowell deem his (I fear) hasty (mis)judgment’s reconsideration too much to count on, after the present Archbishop of Dublin’s well-weighed words in his notes to his _Household Book of English Poetry_ (1868):

“‘Hallam thinks that Southwell has been of late praised at least as much as he deserves. This may be so; yet, taking into account the finished beauty of such poems as this (“Lewd Love is Loss”) and No. 2 (“Times go by Turns”) of this collection, poems which, as far as they go, leave nothing to be desired, he has scarcely been praised more than he deserves. How in earlier times he was rated, the fact that there were twenty-four editions of his poems will sufficiently testify; though probably the creed be professed, and the death which he died, may have had something to do with this. Robert Southwell was a seminary priest, and was executed at Tyburn in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in conformity with a law, which even the persistent plottings of too many of these at once against the life of the sovereign and the life of the state must altogether fail to justify or excuse’ (pp. 391-392).

“To Archbishop Trench’s I add, as equally weighty and worthy, the fine and finely sympathetic yet discriminative judgment of Dr. George Macdonald in _Antiphon_ as follows:

“‘I proceed to call up one WHO WAS A POET INDEED, although little known as such, being a Roman Catholic, a Jesuit even, and therefore, in Elizabeth’s reign, a traitor and subject to the penalties according (accruing)? Robert Southwell, thirteen times most cruelly tortured, could “not be induced to confess anything, not even the color of the horse whereon he rode on a certain day, lest from such indication his adversaries might conjecture in what house, or in company of what Catholics, he that day was,’ etc.

“I believe, then,” concludes Dr. Grosart, “I shall not appeal in vain to Prof. Lowell to give a few hours behind his ‘Study Windows’ to a reperusal of some of the poems of Southwell named by us and these sufficiently qualified critics.”

SOMETHING ABOUT LACE.

THERE is probably no article, not a necessity, which has employed so many heads and hands, and been the subject of such varied interests, as lace. The making of it has given employment to countless nunneries, where the ladies, working first and most heartily for the church, have also taught this art to their pupils as an accomplishment or a means of support. It was, indeed, so peculiarly the province of the religious that, long after it was done in the world, it still bore the name of “nun’s-work.”

In those old days when railroads were not, and when swamps and forests covered tracts of land now thick with villages and cities, country ladies made fine needle-work their chief occupation; and it was the custom in feudal times for the squires’ daughters to spend some time in the castle, in attendance on the _châtelaine_, where they learned to embroider and make lace. It was then a woman’s only resource, and was held in high esteem. In the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, one Catherine Sloper was laid to rest, in 1620, with the inscription on her tombstone that she was “exquisite at her needle.”

Millions of poor women, and even men and children, have earned their bread by this delicate labor; women of intelligence and fair estate have devoted their lives to it; and noble and regal ladies have been proud to excel in the art.

It is related that when Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio went down to the palace at Bridewell to seek an interview with the repudiated wife of Henry VIII., they found her seated among her ladies embroidering, and she came to meet them with a skein of red silk around her neck. In those days they wrought and made lace with colored silk. We can imagine how the bright floss must have trembled over the tumultuous beatings of that wronged heart during the cruel interview that followed.

But the work of Catherine of Aragon was not for vanity’s sake, nor even to pass the heavy hours. In her native Spain the rarest laces were made for the church, and not only nuns, but ladies of the world, wove pious thoughts in with that fairy web. Perhaps nowhere else, save in Rome, was the church lace so rich as in Spain. Images of favorite saints and Madonnas had wardrobes of regal magnificence, changed every day, and the altars and vestments were no less regally adorned.

Beckford writes that, in 1787, the Marchioness of Cogalhudo, wife of the eldest son of the semi-regal race of Medina Cœli, was appointed Mistress of the Robes to Our Lady of La Solidad, in Madrid, and that the office was much coveted.

It is supposed that the peasantry of Bedfordshire, in England, first learned lace-making through the charity of Queen Catherine. While at Ampthill, it is recorded that, when not at her devotions, she, with her ladies, “wrought a needle-work costly and artificially, which she intended for the honor of God to bestow on some of the churches.”

The country people had the greatest love and respect for the disgraced queen; and, till lately, the lace-makers held “Cattern’s Day,” the 25th of November, as the holiday of their craft, “in memory of good Queen Catherine, who, when trade was dull, burnt all her laces, and ordered new to be made. The ladies of the court followed her example, and the fabric once more revived.” Lace was and is considered a suitable present from a king to a pontiff. These earlier gifts were, it is true, sometimes of gold and silver lace wrought with precious stones, but they were scarcely more costly than the later white-thread points. In the Exhibition of 1859 was shown a dress valued at 200,000 francs, the most costly work ever executed at Alençon. This Napoleon III. purchased for the empress, who, it is said, presented it to his Holiness the Pope as a trimming for his rochet. Also, so early as the XIIIth century, the English cut-work was so fine that, according to Matthew Paris, Pope Innocent IV. sent official letters to some of the Cistercian abbots of England to procure a certain quantity of those vestments for his own use. His Holiness had seen and admired the orfrays of the English clergy.

The finest specimens extant of this old English work (_opus Anglicanum_) are the cope and maniple of S. Cuthbert, taken from his coffin many years ago in the cathedral of Durham, and now preserved in the chapter library of that city. One who has seen them declares them beautiful beyond description.

This work seems to have been at first used only for ecclesiastical purposes, and the making of it to have been a secret preserved in the monasteries.

Nor have the clergy been merely the wearers of lace. We hear of monks being praised for their skill in “imbrothering”; and S. Dunstan himself did not disdain to design patterns for church lace. Pattern-books for these needle-laces were made by monks as well as laymen, and plates in them represent men seated at the embroidering frame. Some of these old pattern books of the XVIth century are preserved in the library of S. Geneviève at Paris, inherited from the monastery of that name. These books are prized and sought for as some of the earliest specimens of block-printing. But few remain, and doubtless their high price prevented them from being made in great numbers. Their place was taken by samplers, into which were copied the patterns desired. From these old lace-samplers come the later alphabetical samplers, which many now living will remember to have made in their youth.

Large quantities of rich old lace were lost in the last century, when the French Revolution brought in gauzes and blondes, and fashion tossed aside as worthless these exquisite products of the needle. In Italy, where the custom was to preserve old family lace, less was destroyed; but in England it was handed over to servants or farm people, or stowed away in attics, and afterwards burned. Some ladies gave point-laces which now they could not afford to buy, to their children to dress their dolls with. Sometimes it was thrown away as old rags.

In the church, however, fashion had no power, and old lace has been usually preserved. Some collections are exceedingly valuable. Notable among these is that of the Rohan family, who gave princes-archbishops to Strasbourg. Baroness de Oberkirck, in _Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVI._, writes: “We met the cardinal coming out of his chapel dressed in a soutane of scarlet moire and rochet of inestimable value. When, on great occasions, he officiates at Versailles, he wears an alb of old lace of needlepoint of such beauty that his assistants were almost afraid to touch it. His arms and device are worked in a medallion above the large flowers.” This alb is estimated at 100,000 livres.

It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which lace was used prior to the French Revolution, or the immense extravagance of the sums spent on it. Everybody wore it, even servants emulating their masters and mistresses. It trimmed everything, from the towering Fontanges, which rose like a steeple from ladies’ heads, to the boot-tops and shoe-rosettes of men. Men wore lace ruffles not only at the wrist, but at the knee, lace ruffs, cravats, collars, and garters; and bed furniture was made of lace, or trimmed with it, costly as it was. A pair of ruffles would amount to 4,000 livres, a lady’s cap to 1,200 livres. We read that Mme. du Barry gave 487 francs for lace enough to trim a pillow-case, and 77 livres for a pair of ruffles. Lace fans were made in 1668, and lace-trimmed bouquet-holders are not a new fancy. When the Doge of Venice made his annual visit to the convent _Delle Vergini_, the lady abbess used to meet him in the parlor, surrounded by her novices, and present him a nosegay in a gold handle trimmed with the richest lace that could be found in Venice.

Voltaire says that the mysterious Iron Mask was passionately fond of fine linen and rich lace.

So extravagant had the use of this luxury become that in England there was an outcry against it, and the Puritans laid great stress on discarding vanity in clothing.

We have a little scene illustrative, between the Princess Mary and Lady Jane Grey. The princess had given the maiden some gorgeous dresses trimmed with lace. “What shall I do with it?” asks Lady Jane. “Gentlewoman, wear it,” was the reply, a little vexed, may be. “Nay,” says Lady Jane, “that were a shame to follow my Lady Mary against God’s will, and leave my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth God’s will.”

“My Lady Elizabeth,” however, set aside her scruples before long, and, when queen, did not hesitate to adorn herself as bravely as she might, though she had no mind her fashions should be copied by the vulgar; for we read that, when the London Apprentices adopted white stitching and guards as ornaments for their collars, Queen Elizabeth forbade it, and ordered that the first transgressor should be publicly whipped in the hall of his company.

There is another incident, which, as one of the sex in whom vanity is supposed to be prominent, we take special pleasure in relating.

The Puritan nobles had not in dress conformed to Puritan rules as strictly as some desired, the foreign ambassadors dressing as richly as ever. When, therefore, the Spanish envoy accredited to the Protectorate of Cromwell arrived and was about to have an audience, Harrison begged Lord Warwick and Colonel Hutchinson to set an example by not wearing either gold or silver lace. These gentlemen did not disapprove of rich clothing, but, rather than give offence, they and their associates appeared the next day in plain black suits. But, to their astonishment, Harrison entered dressed in a scarlet coat so covered with lace and _clinquant_ as to hide the material of which it was made. Whereupon Mrs. Hutchinson remarks that Harrison’s “godly speeches were only made that he might appear braver above the rest in the eyes of the strangers.”

Lace has frequently employed the thoughts of law-makers, and in 1698 was the subject of a legislative duel between England and Flanders. There was already in England an act prohibiting the importation of bone-lace (_i.e._ bobbin-lace), loom-lace, cut-work, and needle-work point; but this proving ineffectual, since everybody smuggled, another act was passed setting a penalty of twenty shillings a yard and forfeiture. We regret to learn that forfeiture meant, in some cases at least, burning, and that large quantities of the finest Flanders lace were seized and actually burned. It reminds one of the burning of Don Quixote’s library of chivalric records.

Flanders, however, with its nunneries full of lace-makers, and its thousands of people depending on the trade, had no mind to be thus crippled without retaliation. An act was immediately passed prohibiting the importation of English wool; whereupon the wool-staplers echoed with addition the groans of the lace-makers, and England was forced to repeal the act so far as the Low Countries were concerned.

As we have said, everybody in England smuggled lace in those days. Smuggling seems indeed to be everywhere looked on as the least shameful of law-breaking. But never, perhaps, were officers of the customs as incorruptible as these. Suspicious persons were searched, no matter what their rank, and no person living within miles of a seaport dared to wear a bit of foreign lace unless they could prove that it had been honestly obtained. Many were the devices by which men and women sought to elude the customs. When a deceased clergyman of the English Church was conveyed home from the Low Countries for burial, it was found that only his head, hands, and feet were in the coffin—the body had been replaced by Flanders lace of immense value. Years after, when the body of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire, who had died in France, was brought over, the custom-house officers not only searched the coffin, but poked the corpse with a stick to make sure that it was a body. The High Sheriff of Westminster was more fortunate, for he succeeded in smuggling £6,000 worth of lace in the coffin that brought over from Calais the body of Bishop Atterbury.

In the present century, Lady Ellenborough, wife of the lord chief-justice, was stopped near Dover, and a large quantity of valuable lace found secreted in the lining of her carriage.

At one period, much lace was smuggled into France from Belgium by means of dogs trained for the purpose. A dog was caressed and petted at home, then, after a while, sent across the frontier, where he was tied up, starved, and ill-treated. The skin of a larger dog was then fitted to his body, the intervening space filled with lace, and the poor animal was released. Of course he made haste to scamper back to his former home.

_A propos_ of the customs, there is a story in which George III. had an active part, and displayed his determination to protect home manufactures.

On the marriage of his sister, Princess Augusta, to the Duke of Brunswick, the king ordered that all stuffs and laces worn should be of English manufacture. The nobility, intent on outshining each other on this grand occasion, took but little notice of the command. We may well believe that the rooms of the court milliner were gorgeous with these preparations; that there was unusual hurry and flurry lest everything should not be done in time; and that high-born and beautiful ladies were constantly besieging the doors, bringing additions to the stock. Fancy, then, the consternation of the expectant and excited dames, when, only three days before the wedding, the customs made a descent on this costly finery, and carried off in one fell swoop the silver, the gold, and the laces! There was not only the loss of these dear gewgaws to mourn, but a new toilet to be prepared in three days!

The camp, too, as well as the church and the court, has cherished lace, and the warriors of those days did not fight less gallantly because they went into battle elegantly arrayed. Lace ruffles at the wrist did not weaken the sword or sabre stroke, nor laces on the neck and bosom make faint the heart beneath. Possibly they helped to a nobler courtesy and a braver death; for slovenly dress tends to make slovenly manners, and slovenly manners often lead to careless morals.

A graceful fashion called the Steinkerk had a martial origin, and was named from the battle so-called, wherein Marshal Luxembourg won the day against William of Orange. On that day, the young princes of the blood were suddenly and unexpectedly called into battle. Hastily knotting about their necks the laced cravats then in fashion, and usually tied with great nicety, they rushed into action, and won the fight.

In honor of that event, both ladies and gentlemen wore their cravats and scarfs loosely twisted and knotted, the ends sometimes tucked through the button-hole, sometimes confined by a large oval-shaped brooch; and Steinkerks became the rage.

But evidence enough, perhaps, has been brought to prove that lace is not an entirely trivial subject of discourse. We may, however, add that Dr. Johnson condescended to define net lace in his most Johnsonian manner. It is, he says, “anything reticulated or decussated, with interstices between the intersections.” After that, ladies may wear their ruffles not only with pleasure, but with respect; for if he was so learned in defining plain net, what unimaginable erudition would have entered his definition of Honiton guipure, or the points of Alençon, Brussels, or Venice!

Spiders were probably the first creatures that made lace, though the trees held a delicate white network under the green of their leaves. After the spiders came the human race, following closely. Old Egyptian pictures and sculptures show us women engaged in twisting threads; and the Scriptures are full of allusions to “fine twined linen” and needle-work. Almost as soon as garments were worn they began to be adorned at the edges; and among savages, to whom garments were of slight consequence, tattooing was practised, which is the same idea in a different form.

The Israelites probably learned from the Egyptians, and from them the art travelled westward. One theory is that Europe learned it from the Saracens. It matters but little to us which is the real version. It is most likely that all the children of Adam and Eve had some fancy of this sort which reached greater perfection in the more cultivated tribes and nations, and was by them taught to the others. The waved or serrated edges of leaves would suggest such adornments to them, or the fur hanging over the edge of the rude skins they wore. The very waves of the sea, that curled over in snowy spray at their tips, had a suggestion of lace and ornamental bordering; and the clouds of sunrise and sunset were fringed with crimson and gold by the sun. Flower petals were finished with a variegated edge, and it was not enough that birds had wings, but they must be ornamented.

When embroidery at length became an art, the Phrygian women excelled all others. Presently close embroidery became open-worked or cut-worked, and out of cut-work grew lace.

This cut-work was made in various ways. In one kind, a network of thread was made on a frame, and under this was gummed a piece of fine cloth. Then those parts which were to remain thick were sewed round on to the cloth; and afterward the superfluous cloth was cut away.

Another kind was made entirely of thread, which was arranged on a frame in lines diverging from the centre like a spider’s web, and worked across and over with other threads, forming geometrical patterns. Later, a fabric still more like our modern lace was made. A groundwork was netted by making one stitch at the beginning, and increasing a stitch on each side till the requisite size was obtained. On this ground was worked the pattern, sometimes darned in with counted stitches, sometimes cut out of linen, and _appliqué_. Still another kind was drawn-work, threads being drawn from linen or muslin, and the thinned cloth worked into lace. Specimens still exist of a six-sided lace net made in this way, with sprigs worked over it.