The Jacobean Poets the University Series
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THE JACOBEAN POETS THE UNIVERSITY SERIES. THE USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY. By W. Cunningham, Net, $1.00. THE FINE ARTS. By G. Baldwin Brown. Net, $1.00 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. Being the Outlines of the History of Aesthetics. By William Knight Net, $1.00. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. Part II. By William Knight. In Press. ENGLISH COLONIZATION AND EMPIRE. By A. Caldecott. Net, $1.00. THE LITERATURE OF FRANCE. By H. G. Keene. Net, $1.00. THE REALM OF NATURE. An Outline of Physiography. By Hugh R. Mill. Net, $1.50. THE ELEMENTS OF ETHICS. By John H. Muirhead. Net, $1.00. THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LIFE. By T. Arthur Thomson. Net, $1.50. THE EARTH S HISTORY. An Introduction to Modern Geology. By R. D. Roberts. Net, $1.50. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SENSES. By John G. McKen- drick and William Snodgrass. Net, $1.50. CHAPTERS IN MODERN BOTANY. By Patrick Geddes. Net, $1.25. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By C. E. Mallet. Net, $1.00. LOGIC, INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE. By William Minto. Net, $1.25. OUTLINES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. By William Renton. Net, $1.00. GREECE IN THE AGE OF PERICLES. By A. J. Grant, $1.25. THE JACOBEAN POETS. By Edmund Gosse. $1.00. SHAKESPEARE AND HIS PREDECESSORS IN THE ENGLISH DRAMA. By F. S. Boas. In Press. THE UNIVERSITY SERIES The 'Jacobean Poets By EDMUND GOSSE HON. M.A. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1894 Sj^zs fR6- PREFACE. In this volume, for the first time, an attempt has been made to concentrate attention on what was produced in English poetry during the reign of James L, that is to say, during twenty-two years of th'e opening of the seventeenth century. It is hoped that a certain freshness may be gained by approaching the subject from this empirical point of view, rather than, as hitherto has been the custom, by including the poets of James, and even of Charles, under the vague and conventional heading of " Elizabethan." It would not be wise, doubtless, to make a general habit of regarding literary history through artificial barriers of this kind; but for once, and in dealing with a fragment of such a hackneyed period, it is hoped that it may be found beneficial. The unparalleled wealth of English poetry during the reign of James I. will certainly strike the student, and in many cases he may be surprised to find that "Elizabethans" of the hand- vi Preface. books had not emerged from childhood, or published a single copy of verses, when EHzabeth resigned the seat of kings to her cousin of Scotland. This little volume, then, is an attempt to direct critical attention to all that was notable in English poetry from 1603 to 1625. The scope of the work has made it possible to introduce the names of many writers who are now for the first time chronicled in a work of this nature. The author believes the copious use of dates to be indis- pensable to the rapid and intelligent comprehension of literary history, and he has forced himself to supply as many as possible ; the student will, however, not need to be reminded that in the dramatic chapters these must in large measure be regarded as conjectural. When we consider the vagueness of knowledge regarding the detail of Jacobean drama even a generation ago, it is surprising that scholarship has attained such a measure of exacti- tude, yet the discovery of a bundle of papers might at any moment disturb the ingenious constructions of our theoretical historians. In selecting illustrative passages for quotation, the aim has been to find unfamiliar beauties rather than to reprint for the thousandth time what is familiar in every anthology. E. G. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE Preface ... ... ... ... ... v I. The Last Elizabethans ... ... ... i II. Ben Jonson—Chapman ... ... ... 23 III. John Donne ... ... ... ... 47 IV. Beaumont and Fletcher ... ... ... 68 V. Campion — Drayton — Drummond — Sir John Beaumont ... ... ... ... 89 VI. HeYVVOOD—MiDDLETON—RoWLEY ... ... ii6 VII. Giles and Phineas Fletcher—Browne ... 137 VIII. Tourneur—Webster—Day—Daborne ... 159 — IX. Wither Quarles—Lord Brooke ... ... iSi X. Philip Massinger ... ... ... 202 Index ... ... ... ... ... 219 THE JACOBEAN POETS, CHAPTER I. THE LAST ELIZABETHANS. Queen Elizabeth died on the 24th of March, 1603, and was conducted to the grave by the poets with in- numerable " mournful ditties to a pleasant new tune," as one of the frankest of the rhymsters admitted. There were ^"elegies" and "lamentations," ^^luctus" and '•^threrwdia^' at the disappearance from so large a scene of so dread a sovereign ; and then, with the customary promptitude, there succeeded " panegyricks," and "congratulations," and " welcomes," and " wedding garments " addressed by humble eager versifiers to '' serenissimum et poten- tissium Jacobum beatissimae EHzabethae legitime et auspicatissime succedentem." Before we consider what poetry was to be throughout the reign of the Scottish monarch so radiantly conducted to the throne of England, we may glance at what poetry had ceased to be by the time his predecessor died, B — — 2 The Jacobean Poets, [Cn. I. There is a danger which, of course, must be faced and admitted, in our recognizing a hard-and-fast line of demarcation between one epoch and another. Eliza- bethan faded silently into Jacobean, and no curtain descended in 1603 which divided the earlier age from the later. But we may with safety assert that certain general features marked English poetry under the one monarch, and did not mark it under the other. To compare selected passages is notoriously unjust; but without special unfairness it may be advanced that such a stanza as the follovv^ing is characteristically Elizabethan Hark ! hark ! with what a pretty throat Poor robin-redbreast tunes his note ; Hark ! how the jolly cuckoos sing, Cuckoo ! to welcome in the spring ; and this no less characteristically Jacobean Who ever smelt the breath of morning flowers, New-sweeten'd with the dash of twilight showers. Of pounded amber, or the flowering thyme, Or purple violets in their proudest prime, Or swelling clusters from the cypress-tree ? So sweet's my love, aye, far more sweet is he, vSo fair, so sweet, that heaven's bright eye is dim. And flowers have no scent, compar'd with him. Of the two writers from whom quotation is here made, the later possessed the stronger genius, but in straight- forwardness and simplicity the former has the advantage. What were lost were the clear morning note, the serenity, the coolness, and sober sweetness of poets who had no rivals in the immediate past. What were gained were passion, depth of thought, a certain literary cleverness (which was in itself a snare), and a closer pertinence to Cii. I.] The Last Elizabethans. 3 passing events. Bohemia lost its seaports, the reahns of the Fairy Queen disappeared, when James I. came to the throne. His subjects knew more than their fathers had done, spoke out more boldly, were more boisterous and demonstrative. Romance ceased to rule their day, and in its place a certain realism came to the front. In poetry, that tended to become turbid which had been so transparent, and that conscious and artificial which had been so natural and unaffected. Erudition' became more and more a feature of poetry, and the appeal to primitive observations and emotions less piquant than references to the extraordinary, the violent, and even the unwhole- some. In this way, even in work of the magnificent first decade of James I., we can see the sprouting of those seeds which were to make a wilderness of poetry thirty or forty years later. It will be desirable to examine as closely as we can the aspects of the two schools of verse at the arbitrary moment which we have chosen for the opening date of this inquiry. The mere knife-cut of a political event across the texture of literature is not often of much use to those who study literary history. But, as a matter of fact, the year 1603 forms a more convenient point at which to pass into a new condition of things than almost any other neighbouring year would form. It is impossible, 'V of course, to pretend that a distinct line can be drawn between Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry; but it is a fact that while certain influences had by that year almost ceased to act, other influences began, about that same year, to make themselves felt. Before entering upon the discussion of purely Jacobean verse, that is to say, of 4 TJie Jacobean Poets. [Ch. I. the verse produced during the reign of James I., it will be well to glance at what had been characteristic of Elizabeth's reign, and had ceased to exist before the time of her death. In the first place, the primitive poetry which had flourished at the beginning of her reign was all wasted and gone. It had scarcely left behind it a trace of its transitory charm. It had given way to firmer and more brilliant kinds of writing. Three of its proficients lived on, in extreme old age, into the reign of James. Of these one was the venerable Bishop of Bath and Wells, John Still (1543-1607), who, more than half a century earlier, had opened the dance of English drama, with his "right pithy, pleasant, and merry comedy entitled, Ganwier Gurto7i's Needle.'''' Another was AVilliam Warner (i 558-1609), whose extremely popular Albion's E?igland, a rambling historical poem, first published nearly twenty years earlier, was still in good repute among the lower classes, and frequently reprinted. The third was "old hoarse Palamon" of Spenser's Colhi Clout^ Thomas Churchyard (i52o?-i6o4), now at the very extremity of his enormous life, but still pouring forth his doggerel publications, three of which celebrated events of the new reign.