HENRY PRINCE OF WALES.
Upon the death of the promising Henry (Nov. 6, 1612), a prince, according to Arthur Wilson[58], as eminent in nobleness as in blood, and who fell not without suspicion of foul play, the poets his cotemporaries, whom he liberally patronised, poured forth by reams their tributary verses.
Corbet, as it has been before observed, pronounced his funeral oration at Oxford.
Nor was this all: while his bones were perishing and his flesh was rottenness, Dr. Daniel Price, his chaplain during his life, continued to commemorate his dissolution by preaching an anniversary sermon. Neither the practice nor its execution was agreeable to Corbet, who, after a triennial repetition, thus attacked the anniversarist.
IN QUENDAM
ANNIVERSARIORUM SCRIPTOREM.
Ter circum Iliacos raptaverat Hectora muros.
Virg. Æn. 1. 483.
Even soe dead Hector thrice was triumph’d on
The walls of Troy, thrice slain when Fates had done:
So did the barbarous Greekes before their hoast
Torment his ashes and profane his ghost:
As Henryes vault, his peace, his sacred hearse,
Are torne and batter’d by thine Anniverse.
Was ’t not enough Nature and strength were foes,
But thou must yearly murther him in prose?
Or dost thou thinke thy raving phrase can make
A lowder eccho then the Almanake?
Trust mee, November doth more ghastly looke
In Dade and Hopton’s[59] pennyworth then thy booke;
And sadder record their fixt figure beares
Then thy false-printed and ambitious teares.
For were it not for Christmas, which is nigh,
When spice, fruit eaten, and digested pye
Call for waste paper; no man could make shift
How to employ thy writings to his thrift.
Wherefore forbear, for pity or for shame,
And let some richer penne redeeme his fame
From rottennesse. Thou leave him captive; since
So vile a Price ne’ere ransom’d such a Prince.
AN ANSWER,
BY
DR. PRICE[60].
So to dead Hector boys may do disgrace,
That durst not look upon his living face;
So worst of men behind their betters’ back
May stretch mens names and credit on the rack.
Good friend, our general tie to him that’s gone
Should love the man that yearlie doth him moane:
The author’s zeal and place he now doth hold,
His love and duty makes him be thus bold
To offer this poor mite, his anniverse
Unto his good great master’s sacred hearse;
The which he doth with privilege of name,
Whilst others, ’midst their ale, in corners blame.
A pennyworth in print they never made,
Yet think themselves as good as Pond or Dade.
One anniverse, when thou hast done thus twice,
Thy words among the best will be of Price.
IN
POETAM
EXAUCTORATUM ET EMERITUM.
Nor is it griev’d, grave youth, the memory
Of such a story, such a booke as hee,
That such a copy through the world were read;
Henry yet lives, though he be buried.
It could be wish’d that every eye might beare
His eare good witnesse that he still were here;
That sorrowe ruled the yeare, and by that sunne
Each man could tell you how the day had runne:
O ’twere an honest boast, for him could say
I have been busy, and wept out the day
Remembring him. An epitaph would last
Were such a trophee, such a banner placed
Upon his corse as this: Here a man lyes
Was slaine by Henrye’s dart, not Destinie’s.
Why this were med’cinable, and would heale,
Though the whole languish’d, halfe the commonweale.
But for a Cobler to goe burn his cappe,
And cry, The Prince, the Prince! O dire mishappe!
Or a Geneva-bridegroom, after grace,
To throw his spouse i’ th’ fire; or scratch her face
To the tune of the Lamentation; or delay
His Friday capon till the Sabbath day:
Or an old Popish lady half vow’d dead
To fast away the day in gingerbread:
For him to write such annals; all these things
Do open laughter’s and shutt up griefe’s springs.
Tell me, what juster or more congruous peere
Than Ale, to judge of workes begott of beere?
Wherefore forbeare—or, if thou print the next,
Bring better notes, or take a meaner text.
ON
MR. FRANCIS BEAUMONT,
THEN NEWLY DEAD.
(The following lines, which have hitherto been omitted in the bishop’s poems, are found in the collected dramas of the
“twin stars that run
Their glorious course round Shakespeare’s honoured sun.”
Beaumont was born 1585, and was buried the ninth of March 1615, in the entrance of St. Bennet’s chapel, Westminster abbey.)
He that hath such acuteness and such wit
As would aske ten good heads to husband it;
He that can write so well, that no man dare
Refuse it for the best, let him beware:
Beaumont is dead! by whose sole death appears
Wit’s a disease consumes men in few yeares.
WILLIAM LORD HOWARD,
OF EFFINGHAM,
the subject of the succeeding poem, was the eldest son of Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, (lord high admiral of England, and defeater of the Spanish Armada in the reign of Elizabeth, a nobleman of high estimation during greater part of the reign of her successor,) by Catharine, daughter of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon; celebrated for concealing the ring by which the life of the earl of Essex might have been saved, and upon whose death-bed discovery of the concealment Elizabeth told her, “God may forgive you, but I never can.”
Lord Howard makes no conspicuous figure in the page of history: he was summoned by writ to several parliaments during his father’s life, whom he accompanied on his embassy to the court of Spaine (1604), but died before him 10th Dec. 1615, and was buried at Chelsea.
He married in 1597 Anne, daughter and sole heiress to John lord St. John of Bletsoe, by whom he left one daughter, who became the wife of John lord Mordaunt, afterwards earl of Peterborough.
AN ELEGIE[61]
ON THE
LATE LORD WILLIAM HOWARD,
BARON OF EFFINGHAM.
I did not know thee, lord, nor do I strive
To win access, or grace, with lords alive:
The dead I serve, from whence nor faction can
Move me, nor favour; nor a greater man.
To whom no vice commends me, nor bribe sent,
From whom no penance warns, nor portion spent;
To these I dedicate as much of me,
As I can spare from my own husbandry:
And till ghosts walk as they were wont to do,
I trade for some, and do these errands too.
But first I do enquire, and am assur’d,
What tryals in their journeys they endur’d;
What certainties of honour and of worth
Their most uncertain life-times have brought forth;
And who so did least hurt of this small store,
He is my patron, dy’d he rich or poor.
First I will know of Fame (after his peace,
When flattery and envy both do cease)
Who rul’d his actions: Reason, or my lord?
Did the whole man rely upon a word,
A badge of title? or, above all chance,
Seem’d he as ancient as his cognizance?
What did he? Acts of mercy, and refrain
Oppression in himself, and in his train?
Was his essential table full as free
As boasts and invitations use to be?
Where if his russet-friend did chance to dine,
Whether his satten-man would fill him wine?
Did he think perjury as lov’d a sin,
Himself forsworn, as if his slave had been?
Did he seek regular pleasures? Was he known
Just husband of one wife, and she his own?
Did he give freely without pause, or doubt,
And read petitions ere they were worn out?
Or should his well-deserving client ask,
Would he bestow a tilting, or a masque
To keep need vertuous? and that done, not fear
What lady damn’d him for his absence there?
Did he attend the court for no man’s fall?
Wore he the ruine of no hospital?
And when he did his rich apparel don,
Put he no widow, nor an orphan on?
Did he love simple vertue for the thing?
The king for no respect but for the king?
But, above all, did his religion wait
Upon God’s throne, or on the chair of state?
He that is guilty of no quæry here,
Out-lasts his epitaph, out-lives his heir.
But there is none such, none so little bad;
Who but this negative goodness ever had?
Of such a lord we may expect the birth,
He’s rather in the womb, than on the earth.
And ’twere a crime in such a public fate,
For one to live well and degenerate:
And therefore I am angry, when a name
Comes to upbraid the world like Effingham.
Nor was it modest in thee to depart
To thy eternal home, where now thou art,
Ere thy reproach was ready; or to die,
Ere custom had prepar’d thy calumny.
Eight days have past since thou hast paid thy debt
To sin, and not a libel stirring yet;
Courtiers that scoff by patent, silent sit,
And have no use of slander or of wit;
But (which is monstrous) though against the tyde,
The watermen have neither rayl’d nor ly’d.
Of good or bad there’s no distinction known,
For in thy praise the good and bad are one.
It seems, we all are covetous of fame,
And, hearing what a purchase of good name
Thou lately mad’st, are careful to increase
Our title, by the holding of some lease
From thee our landlord, and for that th’ whole crew
Speak now like tenants, ready to renew.
It were too sad to tell thy pedegree,
Death hath disordered all, misplacing thee;
Whilst now thy herauld, in his line of heirs,
Blots out thy name, and fills the space with tears.
And thus hath conqu’ring Death, or Nature rather,
Made thee prepostrous ancient to thy father,
Who grieves th’ art so, and like a glorious light
Shines ore thy hearse.
He therefore that would write
And blaze thee throughly, may at once say all,
Here lies the anchor of our admiral.
Let others write for glory or reward,
Truth is well paid, when she is sung and heard.