In fancy as in melody this and Marvell’s other gems belong to the age of Charles I. Apart from Dryden, the Restoration has little to show beside three songs of genuine inspiration in the plays of Crowne, to be mentioned in his place as a middling dramatist; Sir Charles Sedley’s charming verses to Chloris; others, mostly from the same hand Motteux, and, strange to say, the Dryasdust Rymer, which have found a harbour in Mr. Arthur Bullen’s Musa Proterva; a few songs of Rochester’s and Aphra Behn’s; some few carols in Mr. Ebsworth’s collections; and the elegant and animated To all you ladies now at land of Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1637-1706), less known for his occasional verses, these excepted, than as the arbiter of taste and the benefactor of needy men of letters.
It was but natural that the lyrists, like the dramatists, should endeavour to make up in bombastic extravagance for their deficiencies in simplicity and truth to nature. An appropriate instrument was at hand in the Pindaric ode, the miscreation of a true poet, Cowley. So little were the genuine characteristics of Pindaric versification then understood even by scholars, that it is no wonder that Cowley should have conceived them to be equivalent to absolute irregularity. His own compositions are not within our province; but it may be remarked that they are distinguished from the Pindarics of Charles II.’s time by the preponderance of what was then called wit, which we should describe as a perverse ingenuity in discovering superficial resemblances between dissimilar things. It is impossible not to admire in a measure some of the feats of this kind performed by Cowley, Crashaw, and Donne; but common sense intimates that the real criterion of the merit of a comparison is its justice. The movement, nevertheless, had considerable significance as indicating the exhaustion of the old forms of poetry. It had triumphed in Italy and in Spain in the persons of Marino and Gongora, with most disastrous effects on the literature of those countries. Fortunate it was for England that this fashion arrived late, and before it could take much root was dislodged by the saner methods of France. Pindarics, however, went on existing, but with comparatively little wit, and even less poetry. Sprat, of whom we shall have to speak as the historian of the Royal Society, was perhaps the most conspicuous practitioner. The following lines on Prometheus are a bright example of his amalgam of poetry and wit:
‘Along he brought the sparkling coal
From some celestial chimney[6] stole;
Quickly the plundered stars he left,
And as he hastened down,
With the robbed flames his hands still shone,
And seemed as if they were burnt for the theft.’
Congreve is equally absurd in his personification of Sleep:
‘An ancient sigh he sits upon,
Whose memory of sound is long since gone,
And purposely annihilated for his throne.’
This poet, nevertheless, who, as pointed out by Dr. Johnson and Mr. Gosse, has the critical merit of having given the English Pindaric a regular structure, was capable of much better things. The opening of the ode which yields the above choice morceau (To Mrs. Arabella Hunt, Singing) is in a fine strain of poetry:
‘Let all be hushed, each softest motion cease,
Be every loud tumultuous thought at peace,
And every ruder gasp of breath
Be calm, as in the arms of death:
And then, most fickle, most uneasy part,
Thou restless wanderer, my heart,
Be still; gently, ah gently, leave,
Thou busy, idle thing, to heave:
Stir not a pulse; and let my blood,
That turbulent unruly flood,
Be softly staid:
Let me be all, but my attention, dead.
Go, rest, unnecessary springs of life,
Leave your officious toil and strife;
For I would hear her voice, and try
If it be possible to die.’
FOOTNOTES:
[6] It should be noted that this word is not so absurd as it may appear to the modern reader. Chimney (Fr. cheminée) here means the fireplace, not the flue. ‘The mantle of the chimney in his hall.’—Walton, Life of George Herbert.