The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II

by Richard Crashaw

III. His characteristics and place as a Poet. These successively.

I. His change from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. From our Memoir of his Father it will be apparent to all that he was a Protestant of Protestants; and it is an inevitable assumption that his son from infancy would be indoctrinated with all vigilance and fervour in the paternal creed, which may be designated Puritan, as opposed to Laudian High-Churchism within the Church of England.[15] I think we shall not err either, in concluding that the younger Crashaw had a very impressionable and plastic nature; so that the strong and self-assertive character of his Father could not fail to mould his earliest thinking, opinions, beliefs, and emotion. Still it will not do to pronounce our Poet's change to have been a revolt and rebound from the narrowness of the paternal teaching and writing, seeing that his Father died in 1626, when he was only passing into his 13-14th year.[16] It is palpable that the elder Crashaw was spared the distress of the apostacy (as he should most trenchantly have named it) of his only son. Moreover, the very notable poems from the Tanner mss. on the Gunpowder Treason (vol. i. pp. 188-194) are pronounced and intense in their denunciations of (to quote from them) that 'vnmated malice,' that 'vnpeer'd despight' and 'very quintessence of villanie,' for 'singing' of which he feels he must have not 'inke' but 'the blood of Cerberus, or Alecto's viperous brood,' and demonstrate that he carried with him to, and kept in, Cambridge all his father's wrath, and more than even his father's vocabulary of vituperation, with too his own after-epithets, instinct with poetic feeling, as a thoughtful reading reveals. These poems belong to 1631-3. Even in the Latin Epigrams of 1634 there is (to say the least) a 'slighting' allusion to the Pope in the 'Umbra S. Petri,' being 'Nunc quoque, Papa, tuum sustinet illa decus' (see Epigram xix. p. 47). That volume, also, is dedicated in the most glowing words of affection and indebtedness to Dr. Benjamin Lany (vol. ii. pp. 7-15), afterwards, as we shall find onward, a distinguished bishop in the Church of England. And he was a man after the elder Crashaw's own heart, as we shall now have revealed in a little overlooked poem addressed to Crashaw senior, which is appended to the 'Manvall for True Catholicks' (as before). Here it is; and let the Reader ponder its anti-papal sentiment:

A CONCLUSION TO THE AUTHOR AND HIS BOOKE.

Tradition and antiquitie, the ground
Whereon that erring Church doth so relye,
Breakes out to light, from darknesse, to confound
The novel doctrine of their heresie,
Which plaine by these most sensible degrees
Doth point the wayes it hath digrest to fall;
Where each observing iudgement plainely sees,
From good to bad, from bad to worst of all
It is arriv'd: so that it can aspire,
Obscure, deface, suppresse, doe what it may,
To blinde this truth; to no step any higher
By any policie it can essay.
These holy Hymnes stuft with religious zeale
And meditations of most pious use,
Able their whole to wound, our wounded heale:
Free from impiety, or least abuse,
Blot out all merit in ourselves we have,
And onely, solely, doe on Christ relye:
Offer not prayers for those are in the grave,
Nor unto saints, that heare not, doe not cry.
Then in a word, since God hath thee preserv'd
From the Inquisitors' most cruel rage,
Though in their worth they else might have deserv'd
To passe among the good things of this Age,
Yet are in this respect of more regard,
Since God would have them to these times appeare,
So many having perisht; and be heard
With more true zeale, that God hath kept so deare.
By all which I conclude, from thine owne heart,
Thou wicked servant, that might know and would not,
He hath discharg'd himselfe in all and part,
That would have cur'd your Babel, but hee could not.B.L.

There is some obscurity in these Donne- or Ben-Jonson-like rugged lines, but none as to the opinions of their writer on Popery. Thus up to 1634 at least, or until his twenty-second or twenty-third year, Crashaw the younger was as thoroughly Protestant, in all probability, as his father could have desired. The 'change' accordingly was a radical one when he left his mother-Church, and one laments that our light is so dim and our view so distant. Anthony a-Wood (as before) and the usual authorities state that our Crashaw became famous as a preacher: he became, says Willmott, 'a preacher of great energy and power,' id est, in England, and therefore while still belonging to the Church of England. I have an impression that somehow the son has been confounded with the father, whose renown as a preacher was lasting; just as it seems certain that son and father have been confounded by the continuous editors of Selden's 'Table-Talk,' wherein the illustrious Thinker recounts somewhat proudly that he had converted Crashaw from his opposition to stage-plays. We may as well expiscate this point here. The younger Crashaw, then, never expressed himself, so far as is known, against stage-plays: contrari-wise, in his fine Epigram on Ford's 'Love's Sacrifice' and 'Broken Heart' he is in sympathy with these 'stage-plays.' On the other hand, in one of his most impassioned sermons, his father had, with characteristic pungency, condemned 'Plaies and Players'—as given below.[17] To return: be this as it may in the matter of 'preaching,' the matter-of-fact is, that our Crashaw retained his Fellowship up to his ejection on the 11th of June 1644 (vol. i. pp. xxxiii.-iv.), or when he was in his 32d-33d year; or, as gentle Father Southwell gently put it, about his 'dear Lord's' age. We get a glimpse of his religious life while a Protestant, in the original 'Preface to the Reader' of 'Steps to the Temple,' &c. as follows: 'Reader, we stile his Sacred Poems, Steps to the Temple, and aptly; for in the Temple of God, under His wing, he led his life, in St. Marie's Church neere St. Peter's Colledge: there he lodged under Tertullian's roofe of angels; there he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow neere the house of God, where, like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night than others usually offer in the day; there he penned these poems, Steps for happy soules to climbe heaven by' (vol. i. p. xlvii.). Coinciding with this is the love he had for the writings of 'Sainte Teresa,' when (in his own words) 'the Author' of 'A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the admirable Sainte Teresa' was 'yet among the Protestants.' In his 'Apologie for the foregoing Hymn'—than which, for subtle, delicate, finest mysticism, in words that are not so much words as music, and yet definite words too, changing with the quick bright changes of a dove's neck, there is hardly anything truer—the Poet traces up his devotion to her to his 'reading' of her books; as thus:

'Thus haue I back again to thy bright name,
Fair floud of holy fires! transfus'd the flame
I took from reading thee....
... O pardon, if I dare to say
Thine own dear bookes are guilty.' (vol. i. p. 150.)

The words of the Preface (as above) remind us also that Crashaw took his part in the Fasts and Vigils and austerities of the Ferrars and the saintly, if ascetic, 'Little Gidding' group.[18] Going back on the 'Hymn,' such lines as these show how even then the Poet had drunk-in the very passion of Teresa: e.g.

'Loue toucht her heart, and, lo, it beates
High, and burnes with such braue heates,
Such thirsts to dy, as dares drink vp
A thousand cold deathes in one cup.
Good reason: for she breathes all fire;
Her white breast heaues with strong desire.
. . . . . . . .
Sweet, not so fast! lo, thy fair Spouse,
Whom thou seekst with so swift vowes,
Calls thee back, and bidds thee come
T'embrace a milder martyrdom.
Blest powres forbid thy tender life
Should bleed vpon a barbarous knife:
Or some base hand have power to raze
Thy brest's chast cabinet, and vncase
A soul kept there so sweet: O no,
Wise Heaun will neuer haue it so.
Thou art Love's victime, and must dy
A death more mystical and high:
Into Loue's armes thou shalt let fall
A still-suruiuing funerall.
His is the dart must make the death
Whose stroke shall tast thy hallow'd breath;
A dart thrice dipt in that rich flame
Which writes thy Spouse's radiant name
Vpon the roof of Heau'n, where ay
It shines; and with a soueraign ray
Beates bright vpon the burning faces
Of soules which in that Name's sweet graces
Find everlasting smiles. . . .
O how oft shalt thou complain
Of a sweet and subtle pain;
Of intolerable ioyes;
Of a death, in which who dyes
Loues his death, and dyes again,
And would for ever so be slain,
And liues and dyes; and knowes not why
To live, but that he thus may neuer leaue to dy.'

It is deeply significant to find such a Hymn as that written while 'yet among the Protestants.' Putting the two things together—(a) his recluse, shy, meditative life 'under Tertullian's roofe of angels,' and his prayers THERE in the night; (b) his passionately sympathetic reading, as of Teresa, and going forth of his most spiritual yearnings after the 'sweet and subtle pain,' and Love's death 'mystical and high'—we get at the secret of the 'change' now being considered. However led to it, Crashaw's reading lay among books that were as fuel to fire brought to a naturally mystical and supersensitive temperament; and however formed and nurtured, such self-evidently was his temperament. His innate mysticism drew him to such literature, and the literature fed what perchance demanded rather to be neutralised.[19] I feel satisfied one main element of the attraction of Roman Catholicism for him was the nutriment and nurture for his profoundest though most perilous spiritual experiences in its Writers. His great-brained, strong-thewed father would have dismissed such 'intolerable ioyes' as morbid sentimentalism; but the nervous, finely and highly-strung organisation of his son was as an Æolian harp under their touch. To all this must be added certain local influences, and ultimately the crash of the Ejection. The history of the University during the period of Crashaw's residence makes it plain that there was then, as later, a revival of what may be technically called Ritualism—as an intended help-meet to Faith—and that by some of the most cultured and gracious scholars of the Colleges. I am not vindicating, much less judging such, any more than would I 'sit in judgment' on the Ritualist revival of our own day, i.e. of its adherents. For myself, I find it a diviner and grander thing to 'walk by faith' rather than by 'sight,' and not 'bodied' but 'disembodied truth' the more spiritual. But to not a few—and to such as Crashaw—the sensible, the visible, the actually looked-at—sanctified with the hoar of centuries—light up and etherealise. Contemporary records show that the chapel of Peterhouse—Crashaw's college—which was built in 1632, and consecrated by Francis White, Bishop of Ely, was a 'handsome' one, having a beautiful ceiling and a noble east window—its glass 'hid away in the troublesome times.' Among the benefactors to its building were (afterwards bishops) Cosin and Wren, and also Shelford, whose 'Five learned Discourses' were graced with a noticeable 'commendatory poem' by Crashaw (vol. ii. pp. 162-5). Before this chapel was built the society made use of the chancel of the adjacent church of Little St. Mary's, into which there was a door from Peterhouse College. The reader may at this point turn to our poet's heart-broken 'pleadings' for the 'restoration' of his College, now made 'to speak English.' On all which, and the like, dear old Fuller, in his History of the University, thus speaks, under a somewhat later date (1642), but the very turning-period with Crashaw: 'Now began the University to be much beautified in buildings; every college, after casting its skin with the snake, or renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts, or at least their fronts and gatehouse, repaired and adorned. But the greatest attention was in their chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of organs,' &c.

Contemporary records farther lead us to Peterhouse and Pembroke Colleges as specially 'visited' and 'spoiled' in the Commission from the Parliament in 1643 to remove crosses. We may read one 'report' out of many. 'Mr. Horscot: We went to Peterhouse, 1643, Dec. 21, with officers and soldiers, and [in] the presence [of] Mr. Wilson, of the president Mr. Francis, Mr. Maxy and other Fellows, Dec. 20 and 23, we pulled down two mighty great angells with wings, and divers other angells and the four Evangelists and Peter with his keies, over the Chappell Dore, and about a hundred cherubims and angells and divers superstitious letters in gold; and at the upper end of the chancel these words were written as followeth: "Hic locus est Domini Dei, nil aliud et Porta cœli." Witness, Will. Dowsing, Geo. Long.' Farther: 'These words were written at Keie's Coll. and not at Peterhouse, but about the walls were written in Latin, "We prays thee ever;" and on some of the images was written "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus;" or other, "Gloria Dei et Gloria Patri," and "Non nobis Domine;" and six angells in the windowes.' So at Pembroke, 'We brake and pulled down 80 superstitious pictures;' and so at Little St. Mary's, 'We brake down 60 superstitious pictures, some Popes and crucifixes and God the Father sitting in a chayer and holding a glass in his hand.' Looking on the since famous names of Peterhouse and Pembroke (Spenser's college)—Cosin, Wren, Shelford, Tournaye, Andrewes—they at once suggest ritualistic, if not Roman Catholic, proclivities.