New Way to Pay Old Debts.

Yet in this servitude the father of Philip Massinger lived and died. These grand establishments, in which the noble head saw around him none but persons of gentle blood and breeding, would long since have ceased to be congenial, even if they still existed, to the English notions of independence, by which servitude is confounded with slavery. But they had this advantage--the son of a retainer was supposed to have a claim on the illustrious noble, who estimated his father’s fidelity and offices; and that this was the case with Philip Massinger, might seem probable from the advantages of education which he was enabled to derive; and the value of which he had learned to appreciate, in the proximity to the really noble and intellectual family of Herbert. It appears from Philip Massinger’s dedication of the “Bondman,” that he never had any personal communication with Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; but that is no proof that he may not have been indebted for the advantage of a university education to the far more intellectual and estimable Henry, Earl of Pembroke, his father’s patron, as appears from the following passage in the dedication of the “Bondman” to the Earl of Montgomery:--

“However, I could never arrive at the happiness to be made known to your lordship; yet a desire born with me, to make a tender of all duties and service to the noble family of the Herberts, descended to me as an inheritance from my dead father, Arthur Massinger. Many years he happily spent in the service of your honourable house, and died a servant in it, leaving his to be ever most glad and ready to be at the command of all such as derive themselves from his most honoured master, your lordship’s most honoured father.”[[179]]

It would be agreeable to reflect that Massinger had passed his childhood and youth, partly at all events, in the classical region of Wilton Castle, which Sir Philip Sidney had almost sanctified to the Muses by his presence, and whence he had issued forth on that expedition in which he died a hero’s death. But those were not the days in which the childhood and youth of celebrated men were recorded, and of Massinger’s not a trace remained. We only guess at the early influences which formed his imaginative, yet vigorous mind. We only conjecture that his taste was directed to poetry by the taste of those whom he must have learned first to respect. We are not sure, yet we are glad to believe, that whilst his mind took on afterwards the impressions of the age in which he lived, it was in earliest youth incited by the author of the “Arcadia,” and by the acquirements of her to whom that poem was dedicated, to culture and exercise, until circumstances brought its powers into full activity.

The dedication of the “Bondman” was written in 1624; and whilst it shews that the poet had never seen Philip, Earl of Montgomery, it does not follow, as has been stated, that he was not reared at Wilton during the life-time of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the “noble father” of Philip, who, as a younger son, was created Earl of Montgomery, and long known by that title only. Henry, who was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Earl of Pembroke, died in 1600; and since Massinger was born in 1584, it is extremely probable that he passed his childhood at Wilton, although, in compliance with the custom of the age, he was probably sent out to nurse. Even the name of his mother is unknown. Few authors of so much merit as Massinger have been, as Hartley Coleridge observes, “so little noticed by contemporaries;” and none so soon forgotten by succeeding times.

There can, however, be but little doubt that Philip Massinger imbibed at Wilton that value for letters which is so soon caught by children from the society of the intellectual; and that a gentler influence than that of Earl Henry stimulated the natural inclinations of his mind. A learned education for women of rank was in vogue for nearly a century after the Reformation: with Protestantism came in the notion that the female understanding was worthy of high cultivation; and our earliest and most superior women, in those times, were prepared for their important part in life by a sound and almost masculine training. Witness the learning of Lady Jane Grey, of Queen Elizabeth, of Joanna, Lady Abergavenny, whom Walpole believes to have been the “foundress of that noble school of female learning, of which (with herself) there were,” he says, “no less than four authoresses in the three descents.”[[180]] Among the learned and the virtuous none was more esteemed in her time than Mary, the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and the third wife of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the son of Arthur Massinger’s patron. She was one of those ornaments of her age who added lustre to her station without forfeiting one feminine attribute. What was then called a “polite education” comprised not only the acquisition of light literature, but that also of classical learning. From her mother, Lady Mary Dudley, this admirable woman inherited a noble and congenial spirit; from her father, Sir Henry Sidney, surpassing abilities, moral excellencies, enlarged views, generous motives. That father, superior to the venal courtiers of his time, spent his whole fortune in his endeavours to benefit Ireland and Wales, of the affairs of which he held the administration. In her brother, Sir Philip Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke found a companion in all her pursuits, as well as in affection. Hence, as Spenser wrote, their minds grew in unison:--

“The gentlest shepherdess that liv’d that day,

And most resembling, both in shape and spirit,

Her brother dear.”

In conjunction with him, this gifted woman is said to have translated the Psalms;[[181]] of which effort Daniel says:--