BEAUMONT: SANDYS: WALLER

67

TO THE BEST OF MEN,

AND

MOST EXCELLENT OF PRINCES,

CHARLES,

BY THE GRACE OF GOD KING
OF GREAT-BRITAINE, FRANCE,
AND IRELAND:

LORD OF THE FOVRE SEAS;
OF VIRGINIA, THE VAST TER-
RITORIES ADIOYNING, AND
DISPERSED ISLANDS OF THE
VYESTERNE OCEAN;

Sir John Beaumont (1583-1627), the elder brother of the dramatist, Francis Beaumont, and son of Francis Beaumont, of Grace Dieu, Justice of the Common Pleas, is believed to be the author of The Metamorphosis of Tobacco (1602); after his death in 1627 his son published his father's posthumous poems, and in particular Bosworth Field (1629). He was one of the very first to write in clearly finished couplets of heroic verse, and another writer for whom the same has been questionable merit claimed is George Sandys (1578-1644), the traveller, youngest son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York. He was born at Bishopsthorpe on the 2nd of March 1578, and was educated in Oxford. He started in 1610 upon an elaborate exploration of the East, of which he gave an account in a Relation of a Journey, published after his return in 1615. Sandys visited Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, and the remote parts of Italy. He enjoyed several appointments at court, and was lucky enough just to escape the troubles of the Civil War, dying at Boxley, in Kent, in 1644. He published a good deal in verse, his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1621-26) being his most successful enterprise in poetry. But he also paraphrased, in neat verses, large portions of Holy Scripture, and it is in these exercises that the peculiarities of his versification are met with.

THE ZEALOVS DEFENDOR OF
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH:

GEORGE SANDTI.

THE HVMBLEST OF HIS SERVANTS,
PRESENTS AND CONSECRATES
THESE HIS PARAPHRASES VPON
THE DIVINE POEMS,

TO RECEIVE THEIR LIFE AND ESTI-
MATION FROM HIS FAVOVR

Dedication to Charles I.
From Sandys's “Paraphrases upon the
Divine Poems"

Edmund Waller (1606-1687) was born in the manor-house of Coleshill, Waller Hertford (now Bucks), on the 3rd of March 1606. His father, Robert Waller, was a wealthy landed proprietor; he died in 1616. The poet's mother, a lady of much strength of character, sent him to Eton and to King's College, Cambridge (1620). It is believed that at the age of sixteen he was M.P. for Amersham; Clarendon tells us that Waller was "nursed in parliaments." He had certainly represented Ilchester, and then Chipping Wycombe, before he was twenty. His earliest poem, in the new style which he was to introduce, was probably written in 1623 or 1624. In 1631 Waller kidnapped a wealthy heiress from the City, and married her at St. Margaret's, Westminster; he was brought before the Star Chamber, but pardoned by the king. Mrs. Waller only lived until 1634. It is believed that it was soon after her death that Waller met his Sacharissa (Lady Dorothy Sidney, born 1617); he assailed her with an ardent suit, and many frigid verses, but she would not have him; and, marrying Lord Spencer in 1639, ultimately became Countess of Sunderland. In 1640 Waller entered the House again, as member for Amersham, in the Short Parliament, where he spoke prominently in a conciliatory spirit on Supply. In the Long Parliament, Waller sat for St. Ives; he gradually passed over from the party of Hampden (his kinsman) and Pym to that of Hyde and Falkland. Waller next posed as a champion of the king's prerogative; he spoke, Clarendon says, "on all occasions with great sharpness and free

dom . . . against the sense and proceedings of the House." He was gradually betrayed into making a plot in the king's interest, the details of which enterprise are

Edmund Waller
After the Portrait by Cornelis Janssen, at
Farmington Lodge, North Leach

still obscure. But the conspiracy was discovered, and on the 31st of May 1643, Waller and his fellows were arrested. It is said that the poet, "confounded with fear and apprehension," gave information regarding all his accomplices, and even impugned several great ladies by name. Several of the smaller conspirators were executed; Waller was allowed to appear in deep mourning at the Bar of the House (July 4), and express his contrition. He was fined £10,000 and was banished, after having been imprisoned for nearly two years in the Tower. He married a second wife, and settled in France in 1645. In 1646 he was travelling in Italy, and later on he settled down at Rouen and then in Paris. In 1651 the House of Commons revoked his sentence of banishment, and in 1652 In 1655 he sent his well-known

we find him at home again at Beaconsfield. Panegyric to Cromwell, but when the Restoration was imminent he published

an elegy on Cromwell, and a poem of welcome to Charles II. At the king's jesting with him about this characteristic piece of inconsistency, and complaining that the poem to Cromwell was better than the poem to himself, Waller wittily replied, "Sir, we poets never succeed so well in writing truth as fiction." In 1661 Waller entered the House of Commons again, as M.P. for Hastings. His experience of parliamentary precedents was so much valued that for the rest of his life "it was no House if Waller was not there," although Burnet declares that he never laid the real business of the House to heart, "being a vain and empty, though witty man.' He spoke, however, constantly in favour of mercy. and toleration. He predicted the fate of James II., that "he would be left like a whale upon the strand." In his old age Waller met his Sacharissa again, as the Dowager Lady Sunderland. "When, I wonder," said she, "will you write

such beautiful verses to me again!" "When, Madam," Waller replied, "your

Ladyship is as young and handsome again!"
Coleshill, where he had been
born, saying that "a stag,
when he is hunted, and near
spent, always returns home."
But he died at Hall Barn,
on the 21st of October 1687,
and was buried in woollen in
the churchyard of Beacons-
field. During his lifetime,
Waller was held easily first
among the poets of his time;
the fact that he, although
others may have written
smooth distichs before him,
was the real innovator in the
revolution of English poetry,
gave him a temporary pre-
eminence. For readers of the
present day the charm has
evaporated from all but a
few of his lyrics. Nothing,
however, can prevent Waller
from retaining great historic
interest as a curious and

characteristic product of the

middle of the seventeenth

He bought a small house at

century. He wrote verses at intervals from about 1622 to 1687, and is therefore an astonishing link between two great poetic ages.

THE BUD.

Lately on yonder swelling bush
Big with many a coming rose,
This early bud began to blush

And did but half itself disclose ;
I plucked it, though no better grown,
And now you see how full 'tis blown.
Still as I did the leaves inspire,

With such a purple light they shone
As if they had been made of fire,

And spreading so, would flame anon;
All that was meant by air or sun,

To the young flower my breath has done.

If our loose breath so much can do,
What may the same informed of love,-
Of purest love and music too,-

When Flavia it aspires to move?
When that which lifeless buds persuades
To wax more soft, her youth invades ?

Davenant

Waller's employment of the unbroken couplet, and his satisfaction at the result of his unsuccessful suit, are exemplified in The Story of Phœbus and Daphne Applied, which runs as follows:

POEMS, &c.

WRITTEN BY

"Thyrsis, a youth of the inspirèd train,

Fair Sacharissa loved, but loved in vain.
Like Phoebus sung the no less amorous boy;
Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy!

Mr. ED. WALLER With numbers he the flying nymph pursues,

of Beckonsfield, Elquire; Lately a
Member of the Honourable
Houfe of Commons,

And Printed by a Copy of

his own hand-writing.

All the Lyrick Poems in this Booke
were fet by Mr.HENRY LAVVES, Gent.
of the Kings Chappell, and one of his Ma-
jelties Private Mufick.

Printed and Published according to Order.

With numbers such as Phoebus' self might

Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) was baptized at Oxford on the 3rd of March 1606, as the son of John Davenant, the landlord of the Crown Inn. Shakespeare lodged here as he passed between Stratford and London, and it was early reported that William was Shakespeare's son. Davenant complacently encouraged this idea in later years. He was educated at the All Saints' Grammar School, Oxford, and when he was eleven years of age, at the death of Shakespeare, he wrote an ode on that event. In 1621 John Davenant was Mayor of Oxford, and it is the same year he and his wife died. William, who had entered Lincoln College, was removed to London, where he was attached to the service of the Duchess of Richmond as her page, and afterwards to that of the poet Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, with whom he was living when that peer was murdered by his valet, in 1628. In 1629 Davenant produced his first play, Albovine. He attracted the notice of the queen, and enjoyed a place at court. When Ben Jonson died, in 1637, Davenant succeeded him as Poet Laureate. Like other Royalists, he fell with the king's cause. In 1641, he was charged with complicity in a plot against Parliament, and fled; after being twice captured, he succeeded at last in escaping to France, where he joined the queen. But he made frequent clandestine

visits to England in the royal interest, and during one of these Charles I. knighted him before the walls of Gloucester. After Marston Moor, Davenant retired finally to

France, and became a Roman Catholic. He was given rooms in the Louvre by
Lord Jermyn, and here he settled down to the composition of his epic poem of
Gondibert, two books of which

he finished in January 1650. He then left France on a mission from the queen, but was captured and shut up in Cowes Castle. He was presently moved to the Tower, and would have been executed but, it is said, for the generous interposition of Milton. Gondibert was published in 1651. In 1656 Davenant began, very cautiously, to resume dramatic entertainments in London, and led public opinion on towards the foundation of a Restoration Theatre. When Charles II. returned, sentiment was ripe, and Sir William Davenant was granted a patent for a company of players (August 1660). He enjoyed a period of great theatrical prosperity, and brought out many plays by himself and other men. He died on the 7th of April

Sir William Davenant

1668, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
tion which was not spared by the wits of his time.

SONG.

The lark now leaves his watery nest,

And climbing shakes his dewy wings,

He takes your window for the east,

And to implore your light he sings,
Awake, 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.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was born late in 1618, in the parish of St. Cowley Michael le Quern, Cheapside; he was the posthumous son of Thomas Cowley, stationer, and his wife Thomasine. Mrs. Cowley was left substantially provided for.