Cavalier Here "an ancient clergyman house in Bunhill Row, where he lived until his death. of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in a small chamber, hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk-stones." John Milton After the Portrait by Pieter Van der Plaas St. Giles, and there is every reason to suppose that Agonistes had been completed by September 1667. He had always a garden, in every change of house, and would walk for several hours in it each day. In February 1663 he married a third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, who perhaps helped the old man to cope with his three graceless and unruly daughters. Deborah, the youngest of these, was his amanuensis, and is supposed to have written Paradise Lost from his dictation. The main composition of that poem occupied, it is believed, from 1658 to 1663. When the plague broke out in 1665, Milton retired to the village of Chalfont St. Giles, and there he placed in the hands of Ellwood the finished MS. of Paradise Lost, which was not published until 1667. He had yet nine years more to live, and much of eternal value to compose. But his life was extremely uneventful. He had begun Paradise Regained before he returned from Chalfont both it and even the Samson They were published together in 1671, and the Poems, in a second and enlarged edition, in 1673. In the last seven years of his life Milton wrote no more poetry. His health gradually failed, but "he would be very cheerful even in his gout fits, and sing." He died on Sunday, November 8, 1674, and was buried in the chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate. In 1790 his tomb was profaned, the coffin broken open, and the bones dispersed by the parish authorities. Other lyrics there were less imperishable than Milton's, yet excellent in their way, and vastly more popular than those. Almost without exception, such lyrics were the work of non-professional authorssoldiers, clergymen, or college wits-thrown off in the heat of youth, and given first first to the world posthumously, by the piety of some friend. Of the leading lyrists of the earlier Cavalier group of the reign of Charles I., WILLIAM HABINGTON was the only one who certainly published his poems in his lifetime. The forerunner of them all, and potentially the greatest, was THOMAS CAREW, who as early as 1620 John Milton, æt. 62 Engraved by Faithorne for the "History of Britain," 1670, probably after the crayon portrait at Bayfordbury. See frontispiece to this volume. first was probably writing those radiant songs and "raptures" which were not printed until twenty years later. To an amalgam of Carew and Donne (whose poems, also, were published posthumously, in 1633) most of the fashionable poetry written in England between 1630 and 1660 may be attributed. Carew invented a species of love-poetry which exactly suited the temper of the time. It was a continuation of the old Elizabethan pastoral, but more personal, more ardent, more coarse, and more virile. He was the frankest of hedonists, and his glowing praise of woman has genuine erotic force. In technical respects, the flexibility and solidity of his verse was remarkable, and, though he greatly admired Donne, he was able to avoid many of Donne's worst faults. Carew cultivated the graces of a courtier; he was a Tibullus holding the post of sewer-in-ordinary to King Charles I. His sensuality, therefore, is always sophisticated and well-bred, and he is the father of the whole family of gallant gentlemen, a little the worse for wine, who chirruped under Celia's window down to the very close of the century. Indeed, to tell Milton's Cottage at Chalfont St. Giles the truth, what began with Carew may be said to have closed with Congreve. Thomas Carew (1594?-1644?) was one of the eleven children of Sir Matthew Carew, Master in Chancery, and of his wife, Alice Ingpenny, Lady Rivers. Very little is definitely known of this poet's career, but he was born, probably in 1594, at West Wickham, in Kent. In June 1608, he entered Merton College, Oxford, and the Middle Temple in January 1611. He did little at law, and in 1613 was sent, as an attaché, to the English ambassador at Venice, Sir Dudley Carleton; to whom, in 1616, we find him acting as secretary at the the Hague. He was very shortly dismissed for misconduct, and returning to London, fell into vagrant and debauched habits. In 1619, however, he was permitted to accompany Lord Herbert of Cherbury on an embassy to France, where he remained, perhaps, until 1624. After his return to England, he seems to have ingratiated himself with the court, and in 1628, he was appointed gentleman of the privy-chamber, and sewer (or taster of the royal dishes) to the king. A scandalous story, preserved by Sir John Percival, shows that Carew possessed readiness and tact in the office of a courtier. He lived a very Thomas Carew After Vandyck's Portrait in his Majesty's Collection at IVindsor Castle unseemly life almost to the last, but, falling into "sickness and agony," was just in time to redeem his faults by a public repentance on his death-bed. This, however, came so late, that John Hales, of Eton (1584-1656), who was attending him, "told him he should have his prayers, but would by no means give him either the sacrament or absolution." It is believed that Carew came up from West Horsley to King Street, Westminster, when he felt he was dying, and that Hales visited him in those lodgings. There, too, he probably died, perhaps in 1644. He published the masque of Coelum Britanicum in 1634, and Poems in 1640. Carew had many friends among the Cavalier poets of his time, and was, in particular, intimate with Donne, Ben Jonson, Suckling, and Davenant. His portrait, now in Windsor Castle, was painted by Vandyck, and is one of the finest representations of a seventeenthcentury poet which we possess. ASK ME NO MORE. Ask me no more where Jove bestows, Ask me no more whither do stray Ask me no more whither doth haste Ask me no more where those stars light Ask me no more if east or west William Habington (1605-1654) belonged to an ancient Catholic family and was the son of Thomas Habington and his wife, Mary Parker, daughter of Lord Morley; it was this lady, the Hon. Mrs. Habington, who is believed to have written the letter which revealed the Gunpowder Plot. William was born at Hindlip Hall, in Worcestershire, on the 4th of November 1605, and was educated at St. Omer and at Paris, with the purpose of becoming a Jesuit. On arriving at man's estate, however, he found that he had no vocation for the priesthood, and returned to England. About 1632 he married the Hon. Lucy Herbert, Lord Powis's second daughter; she was the "Castara" of Habington's poems. In 1634 these were published, with enlarged editions in 1635 and 1640. Habington, according to Wood, ran with the times, and was not unknown to Oliver the Usurper." In 1640 he published a prose History of Edward IV. and a tragi-comedy of The Queen of Arragon. His last work was Cbservat.ons upon History, 1641. Habington lived, "an accomplished gentleman," at his father's house until the death of Thomas Habington in 1647, and then for five years was himself the master of Hindlip Hall, where he died on the 30th of November 1654. 66 |