the sweetest singer of Jonson's school, it is difficult, amid the all-pervading paganism of the form, to distinguish even a faint note of Christian sentiment. The Petrarcan tradition has lost all its inspiration: neither the Sacharissa of Waller nor the Castara of Habington rouses her lover to the semblance of amorous enthusiasm: but Waller's smooth versification and vein of courtly compliment, together with Denham's more masculine power of didactic expression, bring the language one step nearer, than Sir John Beaumont had brought it, to the standard of "wit " finally established by Dryden. To the view of the historian these characteristics of the poetry of Charles I.'s reign seem nothing if not the outward emblems of social disintegration and decay. Nor indeed, it might be thought, could the poets of that age themselves have been blind to the signs of the times in what was passing on the continent of Europe. They might have seen the imperial seat of the Christian Republic deluged with the blood of Catholic and Protestant. They might have seen the Protestant hero of the North dying for the cause of religion on the field of Lutzen. They might have seen the liberties of the French noble and the French Huguenot alike trodden under foot by the great minister of French absolutism. In England, however, almost up to the outbreak of the Civil War, a peace prevailed profound as that in the abode of the gods of Epicurus. The King contrived to rule without the aid of a Parliament. He cultivated to the top of his bent his taste for the arts of painting and music. The poets of his Court called on the society about them to turn from the scenes of foreign bloodshed to the domestic pleasures of masque, tilt-yard, and courtly compliment. Falkland and his philosophic circle indulged in the joy of speculation, little dreaming of the tragic times awaiting them. Without any warning from poetry or philosophy, except a few stern lines in the Lycidas of Milton, the life of Charles's Court, during the first fifteen years of his reign, seemed to glide on almost like a procession of pleasure barges on some placid river, beguiled up to the very brink of the cataract by "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below." I shall attempt in this chapter to show how the outward movement of things is reflected in the respective developments of the schools of Theological and Court "wit." I. Of all the theological "wits" of Charles I.'s reign, the one who retained most of the medieval spirit and of the Jacobean style was Francis Quarles. He was the third son of James Quarles of Stewards, in the parish of Romford, a member of a very ancient family, and was born in 1592. His father, who died in Francis' seventh year, left him an annuity, chargeable on the family estate, which served to pay his expenses at Christ's College, Cambridge, whence he graduated as B.A. in 1608. From Cambridge, according to the account of him given by his widow, he was "transplanted to Lincoln's Inn, where for some years he studied the laws of England-not so much out of desire to benefit himself thereby, as his friends and neighbours (showing therein his continual inclination to peace) by composing suits and differences among them." On the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of James I., to the Elector Palatine, he was made that princess's cup-bearer, and accompanied her to Germany. Returning to England about 1618, he married, in the May of that year, Ursula Woodgate, by whom he had eighteen children, and who survived to write a short memoir of him. In 1620 he published his first work, A Feast for Worms, set forth in a poem of the History of Jonah, the object of which was to enforce the necessity of repentance. This was followed by a series of metrical compositions on Scripture subjects: Hadassa, or The History of Queen Esther (1621); Job Militant (1624); Sion's Elegies, wept by Jeremy the Prophet (1624); Sion's Sonnets, sung by Solomon the King (1625). After this he paused, but renewed his vein of religious poetry in 1631 with The History of Samson; Divine Fancies (1632); Emblems (1635); Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man (1638). The only secular exceptions to this long list of poems on sacred subjects were his metrical romance, Argalus and Parthenia (1628), and The Shepherd's Oracles, published posthumously. He was, however, quite ready to mingle secular flattery with his Divine Fancies, as may be seen from his epigram "On Mary": Four Maries are eternised for their worth: Our Saviour found out three, our Charles the fourth. Quarles was much esteemed at Court, though not quite to the extent suggested by Pope in his well-known couplet : The hero William, and the martyr Charles. One knighted Blackmore, and one pensioned Quarles. Through the influence of the Court, and particularly of the Earl of Dorset, he obtained in 1639 the appointment of City Chronologer, which he held till his death. He made no secret of his strong Royalist opinions, and after the outbreak of the Civil War denounced the Parliament in several vehement pamphlets, thus bringing on himself the vengeance of the opposite party, who caused his house to be ransacked and his manuscripts destroyed, while eight of them presented a petition against him, "full of unjust aspersions." This, says his widow, "struck him so to the heart that he never recovered it, but said plainly, it would be his death." He did, in fact, die on the 8th September 1644, and was buried in the church of St. Olave, Silver Street. The scholastic or allegorical system of interpreting Scripture, preserved from the time of Gregory the Great, is so vividly reflected in Quarles's poetry that it is worth while to listen to his own explanation of his poetical intentions. He opens his Hadassa with a "Preface to the Reader," in which he says: A sober vein best suits with Theology: if therefore thou expect'st such elegancy as takes the times, affect some subject as will bear it. Had I laboured with over-abundance of fictions or flourishes, perhaps they had exposed me censurable, and dsprised the sacred subject. Therefore I rest more sparing in that kind. Two things I would treat of: First the Matter, secondly the Manner of this History. As for the Matter (so far as I have dealt), it is canonical, and indited by the Holy Spirit of God, not liable to error, and needs no blanching. In it Theology sits as Queen, attended by her handmaid Philosophy; both concurring to make the understanding reader a good divine and a wise moralist. As for the Divinity, it discovers the Almighty in His two great attributes: in His Mercy delivering His Church; in His Justice confounding His enemies. As for the Morality, it offers to us the wholly practick part of Philosophy dealt out into Ethics, Politics, and Economics. The Ethical part (the object whereof is the manners of a private man) ranges through the whole book and empties itself into the catalogue of Moral Virtues. . . . The Political part (the object whereof is Public Society) instructs first in the behaviour of a prince to his Subject. The Economical part (the object whereof is Private Society) teacheth, etc. Furthermore in this History the two principal faculties of the soul are (nor in vain) employed. First the Intellect, whose proper object is Truth. Secondly the Will, whose proper object is Good, whether Philosophical, which the great master of Philosophy calls Wisdom, or Theological, which we point at now, hoping to enjoy hereafter. Thus interpreted, everything in the literal text of Scripture admits of a further application, and, as we have so often seen, the interpretation is given through the medium of allegorical imagery, the visible object being taken as a sign of the spiritual truth. This method is well illustrated by what Quarles calls, in his Job Militant, "The Proposition of the Work" : Wouldst thou discover in a curious map That Island which fond worldlings call Mishap, The rocky Dangers, and the boggy Fears, The storms of Trouble, the afflicted Nation, The heavy Soil, the lowly Situation? On wretched Job then spend thy weeping eye, From this point we readily pass to the design of Emblems, Quarles's most famous work, which the poet thus describes in an address "To the Reader":— An Emblem is but a silent Parable. Let not the tender eye check to see the allusion to our blessed Saviour figured in these types. In holy Scripture he is sometimes called a Sower; sometimes a Fisher; sometimes a Physician: and why not presented to the eye as to the ear? Before the knowledge of letters God was known by Hieroglyphics. And indeed what are the Heavens, the Earth, and every creature, but Hieroglyphics and Emblems of His Glory? I have no more to say. I wish thee as much pleasure in the reading as I had in the writing. Farewell, Reader. Quarles's Emblems may be regarded as (with the exception of the Pilgrim's Progress) the last well-known work constructed on the allegorical principle described by Boccaccio.1 Each of these Emblems starts from some text of Scripture, on which the author founds a Meditation; this again is illustrated by a pictorial engraving. The illustrations were not invented to make clear Quarles's own ideas they were taken by him from the Pia Desideria of Herman Hugo, and suggested to him the thought which he elaborates in his verse. The Emblem founded on the text, "The sorrows of hell compassed me about, and the snares of death prevented me," and illustrated by an engraving in which the soul is represented as caught in a net, and about to be captured by fiends and hellhounds, is an average specimen of his poetry : Is not this type well-cut? in every part Of the strong-winded horn, recheats, and deaths, 1 Compare with the above definition of an "Emblem" the parallel passage from Boccaccio's Vita e Costumi di Dante Alighieri, cited in my Life of Pope, p. 50 (vol. v. of the edition of the Works). |