March 3rd
Born: Gisbert Voet, Leyden theologian, 1589; Edmund
Waller,
poet, 1605, Coleshill; Sir William Davenant, poet
laureate, 1606, bapt. Orford; Thomas Otway, dramatic
poet, 1651, Trotten, Sussex; William Godwin, novelist,
1756, Widened; W. C. Macready, tragedian, 1793,
London.
Died: Sir Nicholas
Carew, beheaded, 1539, Aldgate; John Frederick, the
Magnanimous, of Saxony, 1554; John Sturm, Lutheran
teacher, 1589; George Herbert, poet, rector of
Bemerton, 1633; Robert Hooke, philosopher, 1703;
Camillo, Duke do Tullard, French Marshal, 1728; Rev.
Dr. William Stukeley, antiquary, 1765, East Tram; Dr.
William Hunter, 1783, London; Robert Adam, architect,
1792; Copley Fielding, landscape painter, 1855.
Feast Day: St. Marinas
and Asterius, martyrs in Palestine, about 272. Saints
Emeterius and Chelidonius, martyrs in Spain. St.
Winwaloc, abbot in Armorica, about 529. St. Lamalisse,
of Scotland, 7th century. St. Cunegundes, empress,
1040.
WALLER, DAVENANT, AND OTWAY
This day is the anniversary of
the birth of three English poets: Edmund Waller, in
1605; Sir William Davenant, in 1606; and Thomas Otway,
in 1651.
Waller was the descendant of
an ancient and honourable family in Buckinghamshire,
and his mother was the sister of the patriot, John
Hampden. He was educated at Eton, subsequently took
his degree at King's College, Cambridge, and was sent
to Parliament at the age of seventeen, as
representative of the family borough of Agmondesham,
having even then obtained considerable reputation as a
poet. He was twice married; between the death of the
first, and his union with the second, the more
valuable productions of his muse were given to the
world. He had become the suitor of the Lady Dorothea
Sydney, daughter of the Earl of Leicester, whom he
immortalized as Sacharissa, a name, 'formed,' as he
used to say, 'pleasantly,' from sacharum, sugar. Yet
he describes her as haughty and scornful. Sacharissa
and her lover met long after the spring of life had
passed, and on her asking him, 'When he would write
such fine verses upon her again?' the poet ungallantly
replied, 'Madam, when you are as young again.' As a
politician, he was fickle and unsteady. The affair
called his Plot, which terminated in his securing his
own safety by appearing against his associates, has
condemned his name to infamy.
During the Commonwealth, he
panegyrized Cromwell, but from no sincere conviction.
The act, however, is almost redeemed by the wit of his
reply to Charles II, with reference to the verses,
that poets usually succeed best in fiction. He died in
London in the autumn of 1688. Waller is described as
possessing rare personal advantages, exceedingly
eloquent, and as one of the most witty and gallant men
of his time; so much so, that, according to Clarendon,
'his company was acceptable where his spirit was
odious.' The first edition of his poems was printed in
1645. Prefixed to it was a whimsical address,
purporting to be 'from the Printer to the Reader,'
assigning as a reason for their publication, that
surreptitious copies had found their way into the
world, ill set forth under his name�so ill that he
might justly disown them.
As a specimen of Waller's
'smoothness,' (which was the admiration of Pope), we
give one of his lyrical poems, well-known, but which
can never be met with anywhere without giving
pleasure:
Go, lovely Rose,
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee:
How small a part of time they share,
That are so wondrous sweet and fair.'
In the churchyard of
Beaconsfield, near the place of his birth, Waller lies
buried beneath a handsome monument of white marble.
Davenant, aptly designated by
Leigh Hunt, 'as the restorer of the
stage in his
time, and the last of the deep-working poetical
intellects of the age that followed that of
Elizabeth,' was the son of an innkeeper at Oxford. His
mother was 'a very beautiful woman, of a good wit and
conversation,' and as Shakspeare had frequented "The
Crown in his journeys from Warwickshire to London,
scandal assigned other motives than those of
friendship to the interest he early manifested to the
youth, his namesake and godson. Davenant succeeded to
the laureateship on the death of Ben Jonson. He was a
great favourite with the Earl of Newcastle, who
appointed him lieutenant-general of his ordnance.
In the civil war he obtained
credit as a soldier, and was knighted by Charles I at
the siege of Gloucester. On the decline of the king's
affairs, his life was saved, it is said, chiefly by
the interference of Milton; and it is believed that
the intercession of Davenant afterwards mainly
contributed to preserve Milton from the scaffold when
matters changed in England. After the Restoration,
Davenant obtained a patent for the representation of
dramatic pieces at the Duke's Theatre, in. Lincoln's
Inn Fields, and the house was opened with a new play
of his own, entitled the Siege of Rhodes, in which he
introduced a variety of beautiful scenery and
machinery.
He wrote, in all, about
twenty-five dramatic pieces. He died in 1668, and was
interred in Westminster Abbey.
The only poem by Davenant, if
we except his dramas, and a few minor addresses, is
Gondibert which he unfortunately left unfinished.
Opinions differ greatly on the merits of Fns
production; but it is generally acknowledged to be
'without the charm of reality, and cold and
abstracted; yet full of chivalrous grandeur, noble
thoughts, harmonious diction, and displays an accurate
knowledge of human nature, and a deep spirit of
philosophy.'
As a sample of Sir William
Davenant's muse, we give the following song:
The lark now leaves his
wat'ry nest,
And climbing, shakes his dewy wings;
He takes this window for the east;
And to implore your light, he sings,
A wake, awake, the morn will never rise,
Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes.
The merchant bows unto the seaman's star,
The ploughman from the sun his season takes;
But still the lover wonders what they are,
Who look for day before his mistress wakes.
Awake, awake, break through your veils of lawn,
Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn.'
Otway was not more remarkable
for moving the tender passions, than for the variety
of fortune to which he himself was subjected. Born the
son of a clergyman, he was educated for the church,
but on quitting Oxford, and coming to London, he
became an actor, but performed with indifferent
success. Otway was more valued for the sprightliness
of his conversation and wit, which procured him the
friendship of the Earl of Plymouth, who obtained for
him a cornet's commission in the troops which then
served in Flanders. Otway was always in necessitous
circumstances, and particularly so on his return from
abroad. He had recourse to writing for the stage, and
this was the only employment that nature seems to have
fitted him for. Leigh Hunt terms Otway 'the poet of
sensual pathos; for, affecting as he sometimes is, he
knows no way to the heart but through the senses.' In
comedy, he has been considered too licentious, which,
however, was no great objection to those who lived in
the profligate days of Charles II; but in tragedy
'where he does not intend to be sublime, but confines
himself to his own element, the pathetic, no writer
can produce more powerful effects than his.'
But although Otway possessed,
in so eminent a degree, the rare talent of writing to
the heart, he was not favourably regarded by some of
his contemporary poets, nor was he always successful
in his dramatic compositions. After experiencing many
reverses of fortune in regard to his circumstances,
but generally changing for the worse, he died April
13, 1685, at a public-house on Tower-hill, whither he
had retired to avoid the pressure of his creditors.
The horrible story of his having been choked by
attempting too eagerly to swallow a piece of bread, of
which he had been some time in want, has been
success-fully controverted.
Besides ten plays, Otway
composed some miscellaneous poems, and wrote several
translations. The beauty and delicacy of Otway's
imagery will be seen in the following example:
You took her up a little
tender flower,
Just sprouted an a bank, which the next frost
Had nipt, and with a careful, loving hand,
Transplanted. her into your own fair garden,
Where the sun always shines. There long she
flourished;
Grew sweet to sense, and lovely to the eye;
Till at the last a cruel spoiler came,
Cropped this fair rose, and rifled all its
sweetness
Then threw it like a loathsome weed away.'
GEORGE HERBERT
Through
Izaak Walton the
personal memory of George Herbert has been preserved.
He was born on the 3rd of April 1593, in Montgomery
Castle, Wales, being the fifth brother of Lord Herbert
of Cherbury. He was educated at Trinity College,
Cambridge, and in 1619 was chosen orator for the
University. In those days King James used to go
hunting about Newmarket and Royston, and was
frequently invited to Cambridge, where Herbert,. as
orator, had to receive him. The King was so charmed by
Herbert's fine speeches that he gave him a pension
of ₤120 a-year, with hopes of yet better things.
Lord
Bacon, whom Walton happily designates 'the great
secretary of Nature,' made Herbert's acquaintance at
Cambridge, and so estimated his powers, that he
submitted some writings to his criticism and revision.
With the death of King James, in 1625, ended all
Herbert's cherished hopes of promotion at court. After
some severe struggles with his ambition, he resolved
to take sacred orders, and in 1626 he was appointed prebend of Layton Ecclesia, a
village in Hunts.
Plagued with ague, he removed in 1630 to the healthier
parsonage of Bemerton, a mile from Salisbury, where he
died in 1632, at the early age of thirty-nine.
Herbert's fame rests on a
posthumous publication. When dying, he handed a
manuscript to a friend, saying, 'Sir, I pray deliver
this little book to my dear brother Farrer, and tell
him he shall find in it a picture of the many
spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and
my soul. Desire him to read it, and then, if he can
think it may turn to the advantage of any poor
dejected soul, let it be made public; if not, let him
burn it.' The little book was The Temple, or Sacred
Poems and Private Ejaculations. Mr. Farrer had it
printed at Cambridge in 1633, and it at once rose into
high popularity. Walton, writing in 1670, says that
20,000 copies had been sold, a large number for the
seventeenth century. Herbert's imagination found its
joy and exercise in the services and rites of the
Church of England; what Nature was to Wordsworth, the
Prayer-book was to him; and until Keble wrote, he was
par sp�cialit� the ecclesiastical poet. Our
enjoyment of his verses is greatly marred through his
free use of quaint conceits and fantastic imagery, by
which his pious and often profound thoughts are
obscured rather than illustrated. Herbert had a
passion for music, and composed many of his hymns,
that he might sing them to his Into and viol.
DR. STUKELEY, THE ANTIQUARY, AND HIS SPECULATIONS
This writer on Roman and
British antiquities, the next distinguished
investigator after Strype, died at the rectory-house
of St. George the Martyr, Queen-square, London.
He was born at Holbeach, in
Lincolnshire, in 1687, and completed his education at
Bonet College, Cambridge. Here, natural science was
his favourite pursuit, and with his friend and
fellow-collegian, Stephen Hales, he used to ramble
over Gogmagog Hills and the bogs of Cherry Hunt Moor,
gathering simples; they also studied together anatomy
and chemistry, and performed many curious dissections
and experiments. After practising for a time as a
physician, first at Boston, then in London, finally at
Grantham, Stukeley relinquished medicine, and took
orders. At first he obtained good preferments in
Lincolnshire, but in 1747, being presented to the
rectory of St. George the Martyr, in Queen-square, he
once more settled in the metropolis, where, and at
Kentishtown, he spent the rest of his life. Stukeley
obtained this living from the Duke of Montague, with
whom he had become acquainted some years before, when
they were associated as founders of the Egyptian
Society. It is curious to us now-a-days to hear
Stukeley thus describing his first lodging, at one
Mrs. Machin's, Ormond-street. 'On one side of my
lodgings we have a beau street, and those sorts of
entertainments it affords, and in my study backwards I
have a fine view to Hampstead, and the rural scene of
haymakers, &c. Next door I have the beautiful sight of
Lord Powis's house, the most regular piece of
architecture of any house in London, and a sharp fresh
air, so that I enjoy a perfect rus in urbe.' He next
lived in Queen-square, the north side of which 'was
left open,' it is said, for the sake of the beautiful
landscape view.
Stukeley's first antiquarian
work was an account of the celebrated Artlhan's Oven,
in Scotland; next, his Itinerarium Curiosuma, of which
the second volume, or Centuria, is of all Stukeley's
works the most sought after. He next published two
works on Abury and Stonehenge, and he was the first to
investigate the tumuli of that neighbourhood. He
carefully studied the form and arrangement of Abury,
and his engravings and restorations of Stonehenge are
valuable; he regarded this work as a temple of the
British Druids; but, in both cases, his essays are
full of fanciful and irrelevant speculation, which,
John Britton tells us, for many years so harassed and
distressed him, that he was 'often tempted to
relinquish the pursuit [of antiquities], in despair of
ever arriving at anything like proof, or rational
evidence.'
In 1757, Stukeley printed his
account of the work of Richard of Cirencester,
De Situ Britannice,' from the MS. sent to him as having been
recently discovered at Copenhagen, by Charles Julius
Bertram. The Itinerary contains eighteen journeys,
which Richard says he compiled from certain fragments
by a Roman general, from Ptolemy, and other authors;
he mentions 176 stations (while Antoninus has only
113), some of them considerably north of the wall of
Severus. The credit and fidelity of Richard have been
doubted, but wherever the subject has admitted of
local investigation, the result has been favourable to
his authenticity.
Gibbon says of him, that 'he
shows a
genuine knowledge of antiquity very extraordinary for
a monk of the fourteenth century.'
In 1758, Stukeley published
his Account of the Medallic History of Marcus Aurelius
Valerius Careusius, Emperor of Britain, of which work
Gibbon somewhat ungratefully says, 'I have used his
materials, and rejected most of his fanciful
conjectures.' It was this lively and licentious fancy
which brought the ingenuity and learning which he
really possessed into discredit. He undoubtedly
described much that was curious and valuable, and
which would probably have been lost but for his record
of it. But his theories wore his bane. Among his
Stonehenge speculations, he laments the loss of a
tablet of tin found there in the time of Henry VIII,
inscribed with strange characters, which Sammes
thought to be Punic, but Stukeley himself Irish. He
adds: 'No doubt but what it was a memorial of the
founders, wrote by the Druids, and had it been
preserved till now, would have been an in-valuable
curiosity.'
Horace Walpole, adverting to
the earthquake speculations of 1750, tells us: 'One Stukeley, a parson, has
accounted for it, and I think
prettily, by electricity�but that is the fashionable
cause, and everything is resolved into electrical
appearances, as formerly everything was accounted for
by Des Cartes's vortices and Sir Isaac's gravitation,'
Regarding Stukeley's
Lincolnshire life there is some pleasant gossip in
Thompson's History of Boston, gleaned from letters and
diaries, and affording some glimpses of the social
life of that period.
In London, as he tells us, he
frequented no levees, but 'took a vast deal of
solitude,' and, instead of running from the Royal
Society to the Antiquaries, retreated every night at
six o'clock to his contemplative pipe. ' I love
solitude in London,' he writes, ' and the beauty of
living there is, that we can mix in company and
solitude in just proportion; whilst in the country we
have nothing else but solitude?'
Dr. Stukeley was buried at
East Ham, in Essex, where, by his own particular
desire, there is no monument to denote his
resting-place. He appears to have been a
single-hearted; good man, who, after some experience
of public life, found that ' home was most agreeable.
In the library of the
Gentlemen's Society at Spalding are preserved several
of Stukeley's letters, in one of which he strenuously
maintains the opinion that Britain was originally
settled by Brute or Brito, the descendant of �neas and
Lavinia. 'In confidence of the truth of this descent
from �neas,' says Stukeley, 'I have endeavoured to
unravel his pedigree through all the labyrinths of
Grecian fable up to Noah, wherein one way or other is
comprehended some part at least of all the famous men
and kingdom of Greece, Italy, and Egypt, where there
is any mutual relation by marriage or descent, and
this will be particularly useful to me in reading the
classics.
The only geological opinion to
be found in these letters is the following:
'At Edmondthorp, in Leicestershire, I saw some huge and
perfect scallop-shells, antediluvian, in the stone.
You know Leicestershire consists of a red stone,
brimful of the petrified shells of the, old world,
especially all round the bottom of the great cliff,
which generally bounds Lincolnshire and that county. 'Tis
easy to conceive that when, the whole face of the
county was an ocean, this cliff of ours, which begins
at Hambledon, in Rutland-shire, and ends at Lincoln,
stopped these shells from rolling down with the
declining waters of the cataclysm into the sea, and so
left them incrusted in the stone. I know this is the
case all along the bottom of the cliff.'
THE MERRY UNDERTAKERS
One of the favourite bequests
of our ancestors in the time preceding the
Reformation, was for the purpose of keeping up an
annual visit to the tomb of the testator, attended by
a feast. This 'commemoration guttle,' as Dr. Fosbroke
calls it, probably took its rise in the Pagan
institution of anniversaries, but it was less
spiritual and elegant. Mr. Donee tells us that one. of
the meetings taking place at an inn, where the sign
was the arms of a nobleman, one having asked a
clergymen present to translate the motto, ' Virtus
post fastens vomit,' he made answer, 'Virtus, a parish
clerk, vivit, lives well, post funera, at funeral
feasts.'
The joyous private behaviour
of those whose business it is to take part in funeral
pageantry has supplied material of humorous
description to authors, from Richard Steele down to
Charles Dickens. These officials necessarily put on
looks of grave concern with their mourning
habiliments; and, after all, having a part to act, is
it not well that they act it? How should we regard
them if, instead of an outward solemnity, they
presented faces of merriment, or even of indifference?
Still, in an official assumption of woe, there is
something which we cannot view in other than a
ludicrous light.
In the last quarter of the
eighteenth century, there flourished, at the corner of
the lane leading from the Wandsworth-road to
Battersea-bridge, it tavern, yelept the Falcon, kept
by one Robert Death, a man whose figure is said to
have ill comported with. his name, seeing that it
displayed the highest appearances of jollity and good
condition. A. merry-hearted artist, named John Nixon,
passing this house one day, found an undertaker's
company regaling themselves at Death's Door. Having
just discharged their duty to a rich nabob in a
neighbouring cemetery, they had, the first time for
three or four hours, found an opportunity of
refreshing exhausted nature; and well did they ply the
joyful work before them. The artist, tickled at a
festivity among such characters in such a place,
sketched them on the spot, and his sketch was soon
after published, accompanied with a cantata from
another hand, of no great merit, in which Sable, the
foreman of the company, is represented as singing as
follows, to the tune of ' I've kissed and I've
prattled with fifty fair maids:
'Dukes, lords,
have I buried, and squires of fame,
And people of every degree;
But of all the line jobs that came in my way,
A fun'ral like this for me.
This is the job
That fills the fob,
0! the burying a nabob for me!
Unfeather the hearse, put the pall in the bag,
Give the horses some oats and some hay;
Drink our next merry meeting and quackery's increase,
With three times three and huzza, &c.'
Death has now submitted to his
mighty name-sake, and the very place where the merry
under-takers regaled themselves can scarce be
distinguished among the spreading streets which now
occupy this part of the environs of the metropolis.
March 4th
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