D’Avenant commenced his poem during his exile at Paris. The preface is dated from the Louvre; the postscript from Cowes Castle, in the Isle of Wight, where he was then confined, expecting his immediate execution. The poem, in the first edition, 1651, is therefore abruptly concluded. There is something very affecting and great in his style on this occasion. “I am here arrived at the middle of the third book. But it is high time to strike sail and cast anchor, though I have run but half my course, when at the helm I am threatened with death; who, though he can visit us but once, seems troublesome; and even in the innocent may beget such a gravity, as diverts the music of verse. Even in a worthy design, I shall ask leave to desist, when I am interrupted by so great an experiment as dying;—and ’tis an experiment to the most experienced; for no man (though his mortifications may be much greater than mine) can say he has already died.”—D’Avenant is said to have written a letter to Hobbes about this time, giving some account of his progress in the third book. “But why (said he) should I trouble you or myself with these thoughts, when I am pretty certain I shall be hanged next week?”—A stroke of the gaiety of temper of a very thoughtful mind; for D’Avenant, with all his wit and fancy, has made the profoundest reflections on human life.
The reader may be interested to know, that after D’Avenant’s removal from Cowes to the Tower, to be tried, his life was saved by the gratitude of two aldermen of York, whom he had obliged. It is delightful to believe the story told by Bishop Newton, that D’Avenant owed his life to Milton; Wood, indeed, attributes our poet’s escape to both; at the Restoration D’Avenant interposed, and saved Milton. Poets, after all, envious as they are to a brother, are the most generously-tempered of men: they libel, but they never hang; they will indeed throw out a sarcasm on the man whom they saved from being hanged. “Please your Majesty,” said Sir John Denham, “do not hang George Withers—that it may not be said I am the worst poet alive.”
It would form a very curious piece of comparative criticism, were the opinions and the arguments of all the critics—those of the time and of the present day—thrown into the smelting-pot. The massiness of some opinions of great authority would be reduced to a thread of wire; and even what is accepted as standard ore might shrink into “a gilt sixpence.” On one side, the condemners of D’Avenant would be Rymer, Blackwall, Granger, Knox, Hurd, and Hayley; and the advocates would be Hobbes, Waller, Cowley, Dr. Aikin, Headley, &c. Rymer opened his Aristotelian text-book. He discovers that the poet’s first lines do not give any light into his design (it is probable D’Avenant would have found it hard to have told it to Mr. Rymer); that it has neither proposition nor invocation—(Rymer might have filled these up himself); so that “he chooses to enter into the top of the house, because the mortals of mean and satisfied minds go in at the door;” and then “he has no hero or action so illustrious that the name of the poem prepared the reader for its reception.” D’Avenant had rejected the marvellous from his poem—that is, the machinery of the epic: he had resolved to compose a tale of human beings for men. “This was,” says Blackwall, another of the classical flock, “like lopping off a man’s limb, and then putting him upon running races.” Our formal critics are quite lively in their dulness on our “adventurer.” But poets, in the crisis of a poetical revolution, are more legitimate judges than all such critics. Waller and Cowley applaud D’Avenant for this very omission of the epical machinery in this new vein of invention:—
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“Here no bold tales of gods or monsters swell, But human passions such as with us dwell; Man is thy theme, his virtue or his rage, Drawn to the life in each elaborate page.” Waller. |
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“Methinks heroic poesy, till now, Like some fantastic fairy-land did show, And all but man, in man’s best work had place.” Cowley. |
Hurd’s discussion on “Gondibert,” in his “Commentaries,” is the most important piece of criticism; subtle, ingenious, and exquisitely analytical. But he holds out the fetter of authority, and he decides as a judge who expounds laws; not the best decision, when new laws are required to abrogate obsolete ones. And what laws invented by man can be immutable? D’Avenant was thus tried by the laws of a country, that of Greece or Rome, of which, it is said, he was not even a denizen.
It is remarkable that all the critics who condemn D’Avenant could not but be struck by his excellences, and are very particular in expressing their admiration of his genius. I mean all the critics who have read the poem: some assuredly have criticised with little trouble.
It is written in the long four-lined stanzas, which Dryden adopted for his Annus Mirabilis; nearly 2000 of such stanzas are severe trials for the critical reader.—Ed.