Thus from all sides came potent influences of personal friendship—of his friends and associates more onward—to give impulse and momentum to Crashaw's mystical Roman-Catholic sympathies. The 'Ejection' of 1644 found Crashaw in the very heart of these influences, not swayed simply, but mastered by them. To one so secluded and unworldly, a crisis in which the pillars of the throne were shattered, and in which not the many for the one, but the one rather than the many, must be sacrificed, was a dazing bewilderment, and terror, and agony. All was chaos and weltering confusion; no resting-place in England for his dove-feet: dissonance, blasphemy as he weened, came to his shuddering heart: he saw the lifting-up of anchors never before lifted, and the Church drifting, drifting away aimlessly and helplessly (as he misjudged). Moses-like, he looked this way and that way, and saw no man—saw not The Man—and failed, I fear, to look UP, because of his very agony of looking down and in. And so, in his tremor and sorrow and weariness, he passed over to Roman Catholicism as the 'ideal' of his reading, and as the 'home' of the sainted ones whose words were as manna to his spirit. Not a strong, defiant, masterful soul, by any means—frail, timorous, shrinking, rather—he would 'fly away,' even if out to the wilderness, to be 'at rest.' The very 'inner life' of God was in his soft gentle heart, and that he carried with him through after-years, as Cowley bore brave witness by his magnanimous title of 'Saint.' Conscience too—ill-instructed possibly, yet true to its light, if true also to feelings that ought to have been wrestled with, not succumbed to—went with him: and what of God's grace is in a man keeps him, wherever ecclesiastically he may abide.
Such is our solution of the 'change' of Crashaw from Protestantism to Catholicism. It is sheer fanaticism to rave against the 'change,' and to burrow for ignoble motives. Gross ignorance of the facts of the period is betrayed by any one who harshly 'judges' that the humble 'ejected Fellow' made a worldly 'gain' by his 'change.' Nay verily, it was no 'gain,' in that paltry sense, for an Englishman then to become a Roman Catholic. It was to invite obloquy, misconstruction, 'evil-speaking.' In Crashaw's case he had wealthy uncles and aunts, and other relatives, who should have amply provided for him, and 'sheltered' him through the 'troublous times.' Prynne's 'Legenda Lignea, with an Answer to Mr. Birchley's Moderator (pleading for a Toleration of Popery) and a Character of some hopeful saints revolted to the Church of Rome' (1653), is brutal as it is inaccurate; but it must be adduced as an example of what 'Revolters' (so called) had to endure, albeit Crashaw was gone into the silences whither no clamour reaches, when the bitter book came forth. 'Master Richard Crashaw (son to the London divine, and sometime Fellow of St. Peterhouse in Cambridge) is another slip of the times that is transplanted to Rome. This peavish sillie seeker glided away from his principles in a poetical vein of fancy and impertinent curiosity, and finding that verses and measured flattery took and much pleased some female wits, Crashaw crept by degrees into favour and acquaintance with some court ladies, and with the gross commendations of their parts and beauties (burnished and varnished with some other agreeable adulations) he got first the estimation of an innocent, harmless convert; and a purse being made by some deluded, vain-glorious ladies and their friends, the poet was despatched on a pilgrimage to Rome, where, if he had found in the see Pope Urban the Eighth instead of Pope Innocent, he might possibly have received a greater quantity and a better number of benedictions; for Urban was as much a pretender to be prince and œcumenical patron of poets as head of the Church; but Innocent being more harsh and dry, the poor small poet Crashaw met with none of the generation and kindred of Mecænas, nor any great blessing from his Holiness; which misfortune puts the pitiful wier-drawer to a humour of admiring his own raptures; and in this fancy (like Narcissus) he is fallen in love with his own shadow, conversing with himself in verse, and admiring the birth of his own brains; he is only laughed at, or at most but pitied, by his few patrons, who, conceiving him unworthy of any preferment in their Church, have given him leave to live (like a lean swine almost ready to starve) in a poor mendicant quality; and that favour is granted only because Crashaw can rail as satirically and bitterly at true religion in verse as others of his grain and complexion can in prose and loose discourses: this fickle shuttlecock, so tost with every changeable puff and blast, is rather to be laughed at and scorned for his ridiculous levity than imitated in his sinful and notorious apostacy and revolt' (cxxxviii.).
The short and crushing answer to all this Billingsgate is: The poems of Crashaw are now fully before the reader, and he will not find, from the first page to the last, one line answering to Prynne's jaundiced representations: 'flatteries,' 'adulations,' 'railings,' you look for in vain. The wistfulness of persuasion of the Verse-Letter to the Countess of Denbigh would have been trampled on as a blind man or a boor tramples on a bed of pansies, by the grim lawyer-Puritan. Then, the very lowliness and (alleged) mendicancy of his post in the Church of Rome might have suggested a grain of charity, seeing that worldly advancement could not be motive to an all-but friendless scholar. As to the 'birth of his own brains,' and 'conversing with himself in verse,' would that we had more such 'births' and 'conversings'! Other accusations are malignant gossip, where they are not nonsense. Far different is the spirit of Dr. John Bargrave; whose MS. has at last been worthily edited and published for the Camden Society.[20] His notice of Crashaw at Rome is as follows: 'When I went first of my four times to Rome, there were there four revolters to the Roman Church that had been Fellows of Peterhouse in Cambridge with myself. The name of one of them was Mr. R. Crashaw, who was one of the Seguita (as their term is): that is, an attendant or of the followers of this Cardinal, for which he had a salary of crowns by the month (as the custom is), but no diet. Mr. Crashaw infinitely commended his Cardinal, but complained extremely of the wickedness of those of his retinue; of which he, having the Cardinal's ear, complained to him. Upon which the Italians fell so far out with him that the Cardinal, to secure his life, was fain to put him from his service, and procuring him some small employ at the Lady's of Loretto; whither he went on pilgrimage in summer time, and, overheating himself, died in four weeks after he came thither, and it was doubtful whether he was not poisoned' (p. 37). That brings before us a true, white-souled Man 'of God,' resolute to 'speak out,' whoever sinned in his sight; and it is blind sectarianism to deny that, from the noble and holy Loyola to our own Faber and Spencer and the living Newman, the Church of Rome has never been without dauntless preachers of the very righteousness of God, or unhesitant rebukers of the wickedness, immoralities, and frivolities of their co-religionists. The suspicion of 'poyson' I am unwilling to accept. Onward I shall give our recovered record of his death. Summarily, then, the 'change' of Crashaw from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism had its root and carries its solution in his 'mystical' dreamy temperament and yearnings, as these were over-encouraged instead of controlled; and as formative influences there were—(a) his reading in Teresa and kindred literature, until not 'hands,' but brain and heart, imagination and fancy, grew into the elements wherein they wrought—as one finds sprays of once-green moss and delicate-carven ferns changed by the dripping limestone into limestone: (b) the ritualistic revival being in the hands of those most loved and trusted, and from whom he fetched whatever of spiritual life and peace and joy and hope was in him—these too being of stronger will, and decisive in opinion and action—his vague 'feeling-after' rest was centred in the Rest of ideal Roman Catholicism: (c) the confusions and strifes of the transition-period of the Commonwealth terrified and wounded him; he mistook the crash of falling scaffolding, whose end was served, for the falling of the everlasting skies; saw not their serene shining beyond the passing clouds, lightning-charged for divine clarifying; and a 'quiet retreat,' which Imagination beckoned him to, won him to 'hide' there his weeping and dismay. Nothing sordid or expedient, or facing-both-ways, or unworthy, moved him to 'change.' Every one who has self-respect based on self-knowledge, and who thus has experienced the mystery of his deepest beliefs, will make all gentlest allowances, hold all tenderest sympathies with him, and feel the coarse abuse of Prynne and later as a personal wrong. Richard Crashaw was a true 'man of God,' and acted, I believe, in sensitive allegiance to his conscience as it spake to him. 'Change,' even fundamental change, in such a man is to be accepted without reserve as 'honest' and righteous and God-fearing. He dared not sign the 'Solemn League and Covenant,' however 'solemn' it might be to others; and so he went out.[21] I pass to—
II. His friends and associates, as celebrated in his writings. I use the word 'Writings' here rather than 'Poems,' because in his Epistles, e.g. to the 'Epigrammata' and those printed by us for the first time, as well as in his Poetry, names are found over which one pauses instinctively. Commencing with his school-days at the Charterhouse, there is Robert Brooke, 'Master' ('Preceptor') from 1628 to 1643.[22] Very little has come down to us concerning him, and the present head of the renowned School has been unable to add to Alexander Chalmers' testimony, 'A very celebrated Master.' All the more have I pleasure in inviting attention to the new 'Epistola' and related poems addressed to him, and which must be studied along with the previous poem, 'Ornatissimo viro præceptori suo colendissimo, Magistro Brook' (vol. ii. pp. 319); and perhaps the humorous and genial serio-comic celebration of 'Priscianus' grew from some school-incident (vol. ii. pp. 308, 315) having in the latter year, like Crashaw, been 'ejected' from the Charterhouse for not taking the 'Solemn League and Covenant.' He had been usher from 1626 to 1628. An apartment in the building is still called from him Brooke Hall ('Chronicles,' pp. 129, 159).
The next prominent name is that of Benjamin Lany—sometimes Laney, as in Masson's Milton (i. 97)—afterwards successively Bishop of Peterborough and Lincoln and Ely. We have already noted his marked Protestantism in the verse-eulogy of the elder Crashaw, so that probably it was as his father's son, Lany, then Master of Pembroke, received our Worthy there. Lany was of the 'ejected' in 1644. The present Bishop of Ely, with all willingness to help us, found no mss. or biographic materials in his custody. When may we hope each bishopric will find a qualified historian-biographer? A portrait of Lany is in the Master's Lodge at the Charterhouse ('Chronicles,' 1847, p. 140).
Crashaw's tutor at Pembroke was 'Master Tournay,' to whose praise and friendship he dedicates a Latin poem (vol. ii. pp. 371 et sqq.). Dr. Ward, Master of Sidney College, writes to Archbishop Usher thus of him: 'We have had some doings here of late about one of Pembroke Hall, who, preaching in St. Mary's, about the beginning of Lent, upon that text, James ii. 22, seemed to avouch the insufficiency of faith to justification, and to impugn the doctrine of our 11th Article, of Justification by faith only; for which he was convented by the Vice-Chancellor, who was willing to accept of an easy acknowledgment; but the same party preaching his Latin sermon, pro Gradu, the last week, upon Rom. iii. 28, he said he came not palinodiam canere, sed eandem cantilenam canere; which moved our Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Love, to call for his sermon, which he refused to deliver. Whereupon, upon Wednesday last, being Barnaby Day, the day appointed for the admission of the Bachelors of Divinity, which must answer Die Comitiorum, he was stayed by the major part of the suffrages of the Doctors of the faculty.... The truth is, there are some Heads among us that are great abettors of M. Tournay, the party above mentioned, who, no doubt, are backed by others' (June 14, 1643. Life of Parr, p. 470: Willmott, 1st series, pp. 302-3). In relation to Tournay's heresy on 'Justification,' it is profoundly interesting, biographically, to remember Crashaw's most striking Latin poems—so carelessly overlooked, if not impudently suppressed, by Turnbull—first published by Crashaw in the volume of 1648, viz. 'Fides, quæ sola justificat, non est sine spe et dilectione,' and 'Baptismus non tollit futura peccata.' The student will do well to turn to these two poems in their places (vol. ii. pp. 209, 216).[23]
Robert Shelford, 'of Ringsfield in Suffolk, Priest,' was another 'suspect:' as in Huntley's [ = Prynne] Breviate (3d ed. 1637, p. 308) we read, 'Master Shelford hath of late affirmed in print, that the Pope was never yet defined to be the Antichrist by any Synods.' More vehemently writes Usher to Dr. Ward (Sept. 15, 1635): 'But while we strive here to maintain the purity of our ancient truth, how cometh it to pass that you at Cambridge do cast such stumbling-blocks in our way, by publishing unto the world such rotten stuff as Shelford hath vented in his Five Discourses; wherein he hath so carried himself ut famosi Perni amanuensem possis agnoscere. The Jesuits of England sent over the book hither to assure them that we are now coming home to them as fast as we can. I pray God this sin be not deeply laid to their charge, who give an occasion to our blind thus to stumble' (as before). It was to these 'Five Discourses' our Poet furnished a 'commendatory' poem—given by us unmutilated from the volume (vol. i. pp. 162-5). Shelford, like his friend, was of Peterhouse. Another college-friend was William Herrys (or Herries or Harris), who was of Essex. He died in October 1631. He was of Pembroke and Christ's. The poems and 'Epitaph' consecrated to his memory are in various ways remarkable. But beyond a few college-dates, I have failed to recover notices of him. He seems to have been to Crashaw what young King was to Milton and his fellow-students (vol. i. pp. 220-30; vol. ii. pp. 378 et sqq.).[24] So with James Stanninow (or Staninough), 'fellow of Queene's Colledge'—the poem on whose death was first printed by us (vol. i. pp. 290-92). He has a Latin poem prefixed to Isaacson's 'Chronology' (our vol. i. pp. 246-49).[25] So too with 'Master Chambers,' of the fine pathetic hitherto anonymous poem 'Vpon the death of a Gentleman' (vol. i. pp. 218-19). Neither have I been able to add one syllable to the name and heading: 'An Epitaph vpon Mr. Ashton, a conformable citizen.' Wren, Cosin, and others of Cambridge, not being named by Crashaw, do not come under these remarks. The new poems on Dr. Porter (vol. i. pp. 293-4), Dr. Mansell (vol. ii. p. 323), and others, explain themselves—with our notes. Of Cardinal Palotta, or Palotto, we get most satisfying glimpses in Dr. Bargrave's volume (already quoted). The Protestant Canon's testimony is: 'He is very papable [placable], and esteemed worthy by all, especially the princes that know his virtue and qualities, being a man of angelical life; and Rome would be glad to see him Pope, to pull down the pride of the Barberini. Innocent the Xth, now reigning, hath a great regard for him, though his kindred care not for him, because he speaketh his mind freely of them to the Pope' (p. 36).[26]
It only remains that I notice our Crashaw's friendship with (a) Abraham Cowley; (b) the Countess of Denbigh.
(a) Abraham Cowley. Of the alternate-poem on Hope, composed by Cowley and Crashaw (vol. i. pp. 175-181), and that 'Vpon two greene Apricockes sent to Cowley by Sir Crashaw' (ib. pp. 269-70), more in our next division. These remain as the ever-enduring 'memorial' of their friendship, while the thought-full, love-full 'Elegy,' devoted by the survivor to the memory of his Friend, can never pale of its glory (vol. i. pp. xxxvi.-viii.). All honour to Cowley that he kept the traduced 'Apostate' and 'Revolter' in his heart-of-hearts, and 'sought' him out in his lowly 'lodgings' in the gay, and yet (to him) sad Paris. It is my purpose one day worthily to reproduce the Works of this in form fantastic, but in substance most intellectual, of our Poets; and I shall have then, perhaps, something additional to communicate on this beautiful Friendship. They had appeared together as Poets in the 'Voces Votivæ.' The various readings show that Cowley's portion of Hope was revised in Paris; and this, with the gift of the 'apricockes,' expresses that they had some pleasant intercourse.[27]