Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 94

'And as I near approached the verge of life, Some kind relation (for I'd have no wife) Should take upon him all my worldly care, Whilst I did for a better state prepare.'

The words in the second line, coupled with a glowing description, in a previous part of the poem, of his ideal of an 'obliging modest fair'

one, near whom he wished to live, led to the suspicion that he preferred a mistress to a wife. In vain did he plead that he was actually a married man. His suit for a better living made no progress, and while dancing attendance on his patron in London he caught small-pox, and died in 1703, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.

His Pindaric odes, &c., are feeble spasms, and need not detain us. His 'Reason' shews considerable capacity and common sense. His 'Choice'

opens up a pleasing vista, down which our quiet ancestors delighted to look, but by which few now can be attracted. We quote a portion of what a biographer calls a 'modest' preface, which Pomfret prefixed to his poems:--'To please every one would be a new thing, and to write so as to please n.o.body would be as new; for even Quarles and Withers have their admirers. It is not the mult.i.tude of applauses, but the good sense of the applauders which establishes a valuable reputation; and if a Rymer or a Congreve say it is well, he will not be at all solicitous how great the majority be to the contrary.' How strangely are opinions now altered! Rymer was some time ago characterised by Macaulay as the worst critic that ever lived, and Quarles and Withers have now many admirers, while 'The Choice' and its ill-fated author are nearly forgotten.

THE CHOICE.

If Heaven the grateful liberty would give, That I might choose my method how to live, And all those hours propitious fate should lend, In blissful ease and satisfaction spend, Near some fair town I'd have a private seat, Built uniform, not little, nor too great: Better, if on a rising ground it stood, On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.

It should within no other things contain, But what are useful, necessary, plain: Methinks 'tis nauseous, and I'd ne'er endure, The needless pomp of gaudy furniture.

A little garden, grateful to the eye; And a cool rivulet run murmuring by, On whose delicious banks, a stately row Of shady limes or sycamores should grow.

At the end of which a silent study placed, Should be with all the n.o.blest authors graced: Horace and Virgil, in whose mighty lines Immortal wit and solid learning s.h.i.+nes; Sharp Juvenal, and amorous Ovid too, Who all the turns of love's soft pa.s.sion knew; He that with judgment reads his charming lines, In which strong art with stronger nature joins, Must grant his fancy does the best excel; His thoughts so tender, and expressed so well; With all those moderns, men of steady sense, Esteemed for learning and for eloquence.

In some of these, as fancy should advise, I'd always take my morning exercise; For sure no minutes bring us more content, Than those in pleasing, useful studies spent.

I'd have a clear and competent estate, That I might live genteelly, but not great; As much as I could moderately spend, A little more sometimes t' oblige a friend.

Nor should the sons of poverty repine Too much at fortune; they should taste of mine; And all that objects of true pity were, Should be relieved with what my wants could spare; For that our Maker has too largely given, Should be returned in grat.i.tude to Heaven.

THE EARL OF DORSET.

This n.o.ble earl was rather a patron of poets than a poet, and possessed more wit than genius. Charles Sackville was born on the 24th January 1637. He was descended directly from the famous Thomas, Lord Buckhurst.

He was educated under a private tutor, travelled in Italy, and returned in time to witness the Restoration. In the first parliament thereafter, he sat for East Grinstead, in Surrey, and might have distinguished himself, had he not determined, in common with almost all the wits of the time, to run a preliminary career of dissipation. What a proof of the licentiousness of these times is to be found in the fact, that young Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, and Sir Thomas Ogle were fined for exposing themselves, drunk and naked, in indecent postures on the public street! In 1665, the erratic energies of Buckhurst found a more legitimate vent in the Dutch war. He attended the Duke of York in the great sea-fight of the 3d June, in which Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was, with all his crew, blown up. He is said to have composed the song, quoted afterwards, 'To all you ladies now at land,' on the evening before the battle, although Dr Johnson (who observes that seldom any splendid story is wholly true) maintains that its composition cost him a whole week, and that he only retouched it on that remarkable evening.

Buckhurst was soon after made a gentleman of the bed-chamber, and despatched on short emba.s.sies to France. In 1674, his uncle, James Cranfield, the Earl of Middles.e.x, died, and left him his estate, and the next year the t.i.tle, too, was conferred on him. In 1677, he became, by the death of his father, Earl of Dorset, and inherited the family estate. In 1684, his wife, whose name was Bagot, and by whom he had no children, died, and he soon after married a daughter of the Earl of Northampton, who is said to have been celebrated both for understanding and beauty. Dorset was courted by James, but found it impossible to coincide with his violent measures, and when the bishops were tried at Westminster Hall, he, along with some other lords, appeared to countenance them. He concurred with the Revolution settlement, and, after William's accession, was created lord chamberlain of the household, and received the Order of the Garter. His attendance on the king, however, eventually cost him his life, for having been tossed with him in an open boat on the coast of Holland for sixteen hours, in very rough weather, he caught an illness from which he never recovered. On 19th January 1705-6, he died at Bath.

During his life, Dorset was munificent in his kindness to such men of genius as Prior and Dryden, who repaid him in the current coin of the poor Parna.s.sus of their day--gross adulation. He is now remembered mainly for his spirited war-song, and for such pointed lines in his satire on Edward Howard, the notorious author of 'British Princes,' as the following:--

'They lie, dear Ned, who say thy brain is barren, When deep conceits, like maggots, breed in carrion; Thy stumbling, foundered jade can trot as high As any other Pegasus can fly.

So the dull eel moves nimbler in the mud Than all the swift-finned racers of the flood.

As skilful divers to the bottom fall Sooner than those who cannot swim at all, So in this way of writing without thinking, Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking.'

This last line has not only become proverbial, but forms the distinct germ of 'The Dunciad.'

SONG.

WRITTEN AT SEA, IN THE FIRST DUTCH WAR, 1665, THE NIGHT BEFORE AN ENGAGEMENT.

1 To all you ladies now at land, We men at sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write; The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you, With a fa, la, la, la, la.

2 For though the Muses should prove kind, And fill our empty brain; Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind, To wave the azure main, Our paper, pen, and ink, and we, Roll up and down our s.h.i.+ps at sea.

With a fa, &c.

3 Then if we write not by each post, Think not we are unkind; Nor yet conclude our s.h.i.+ps are lost, By Dutchmen, or by wind; Our tears we'll send a speedier way, The tide shall bring them twice a-day.

With a fa, &c.

4 The king, with wonder and surprise, Will swear the seas grow bold; Because the tides will higher rise Than e'er they used of old: But let him know, it is our tears Bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs.

With a fa, &c.

5 Should foggy Opdam chance to know Our sad and dismal story, The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe, And quit their fort at Goree: For what resistance can they find From men who've left their hearts behind?

With a fa, &c.

6 Let wind and weather do its worst, Be you to us but kind; Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse, No sorrow we shall find: 'Tis then no matter how things go, Or who's our friend, or who's our foe.

With a fa, &c.

7 To pa.s.s our tedious hours away, We throw a merry main; Or else at serious...o...b..e play: But why should we in vain Each other's ruin thus pursue?

We were undone when we left you.

With a fa, &c.

8 But now our fears tempestuous grow, And cast our hopes away; Whilst you, regardless of our woe, Sit careless at a play: Perhaps, permit some happier man To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan.

With a fa, &c.

9 When any mournful tune you hear, That dies in every note, As if it sighed with each man's care, For being so remote, Think how often love we've made To you, when all those tunes were played.

With a fa, &c.

10 In justice you can not refuse To think of our distress, When we for hopes of honour lose Our certain happiness; All those designs are but to prove Ourselves more worthy of your love.

With a fa, &c.

11 And now we've told you all our loves, And likewise all our fears, In hopes this declaration moves Some pity from your tears; Let's hear of no inconstancy, We have too much of that at sea.

With a fa, la, la, la, la.

JOHN PHILIPS.

Bampton in Oxfords.h.i.+re was the birthplace of this poet. He was born on the 30th of December 1676. His father, Dr Stephen Philips, was archdeacon of Salop, as well as minister of Bampton. John, after some preliminary training at home, was sent to Winchester, where he distinguished himself by diligence and good-nature, and enjoyed two great luxuries,--the reading of Milton, and the having his head combed by some one while he sat still and in rapture for hours together. This pleasure he shared with Vossius, and with humbler persons of our acquaintance; the combing of whose hair, they tell us,

'Dissolves them into ecstasies, And brings all heaven before their eyes.'

In 1694, he entered Christ Church, Cambridge. His intention was to prosecute the study of medicine, and he took great delight in the cognate pursuits of natural history and botany. His chief friend was Edmund Smith, (Rag Smith, as he was generally called,) a kind of minor Savage, well known in these times as the author of 'Phaedra and Hippolytus,' and for his cureless dissipation. In 1703, Philips produced 'The Splendid s.h.i.+lling,' which proved a hit, and seems to have diverted his aspirations from the domains of Aesculapius to those of Apollo.

Bolingbroke sought him out, and employed him, after the battle of Blenheim, to sing it in opposition to Addison, the laureate of the Whigs. At the house of the magnificent but unprincipled St John, Philips wrote his 'Blenheim,' which was published in 1705. The year after, his 'Cider,' a poem in two books, appeared, and was received with great applause. Encouraged by this, he projected a poem on the Last Day, which all who are aware of the difficulties of the subject, and the limitations of the author's genius, must rejoice that he never wrote.

Consumption and asthma removed him prematurely on the 15th of February 1708, ere he had completed his thirty-third year. He was buried in Hereford Cathedral, and Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancellor, erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Bulwer somewhere records a story of John Martin in his early days. He was, on one occasion, reduced to his last s.h.i.+lling. He had kept it, out of a heap, from a partiality to its appearance. It was very bright. He was compelled, at last, to part with it. He went out to a baker's shop to purchase a loaf with his favourite s.h.i.+lling. He had got the loaf into his hands, when the baker discovered that the s.h.i.+lling was a bad one, and poor Martin had to resign the loaf, and take back his dear, bright, bad s.h.i.+lling once more. Length of time and cold criticism in like manner have reduced John Philips to his solitary 'Splendid s.h.i.+lling.' But, though bright, it is far from bad. It is one of the cleverest of parodies, and is perpetrated against one of those colossal works which the smiles of a thousand caricatures were unable to injure. No great or good poem was ever hurt by its parody:--the 'Paradise Lost' was not by 'The Splendid s.h.i.+lling'--'The Last Man' of Campbell was not by 'The Last Man' of Hood--nor the 'Lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore' by their witty, well-known caricature; and if 'The Vision of Judgment' by Southey was laughed into oblivion by Byron's poem with the same t.i.tle, it was because Southey's original was neither good nor great. Philip's poem, too, is the first of the kind; and surely we should be thankful to the author of the earliest effort in a style which has created so much innocent amus.e.m.e.nt. Dr Johnson speaks as if the pleasure arising from such productions implied a malignant 'momentary triumph over that grandeur which had hitherto held its captives in admiration.' We think, on the contrary, that it springs from our deep interest in the original production, making us alive to the strange resemblance the caricature bears to it. It is our love that provokes our laughter, and hence the admirers of the parodied poem are more delighted than its enemies. At all events, it is by 'The Splendid s.h.i.+lling' alone--and that princ.i.p.ally from its connexion with Milton's great work--that Philips is memorable.

His 'Cider' has soured with age, and the loud echo of his Blenheim battle-piece has long since died away.

THE SPLENDID s.h.i.+LLING.

"... Sing, heavenly Muse!

Things unattempted yet, in prose or rhyme,"

A s.h.i.+lling, Breeches, and Chimeras dire.