PERSONAL

'Tis not to be forgott that king Charles 1st dropt a teare at the newes of his death. William Cartwright was buried in the south aisle in Christ Church, Oxon. Pitty 'tis so famous a bard should lye without an inscription.—AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. 1, p. 148.

A Person as Eminent for Loyalty and Learning, (his years consider'd) as any this Age has produc'd. One, whose Character has been written by several Pens; and therefore has afforded me, (who fetch my knowledge from Books, more than verbal Information) the larger subject to expatiate on. He was extremely

remarkable both for his outward, and inward Endowments; his Body being as handsome as his Soul. He was an expert He was an expert Linguist, understanding not only Greek and Latine, but French and Italian, as perfectly as his Mother-tonuge. He was an excellent Orator, and yet an admirable Poet, a Quality which Cicero with all his pains could not attain to. Nor was Aristotle less known to him than Cicero and Virgil: and those who heard his Metaphysical Lectures, gave him the Preference to all his Predecessors, the present Bishop of Lincoln excepted. His Sermons were as much admired as his other Composures, and One fitly applied to our Author, that Saying of Aristotle concerning Eschron the Poet, that He could not tell what schron could not do. In a word he was of so sweet a disposition, and so replete with all Virtues, that he was beloved by all Learned Men that knew him,

and admired by all Strangers.-LANGBAINE, GERARD, 1691, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, pp. 51, 52.

He was another Tully and Virgil, as being most excellent for oratory and poetry, in which faculties, as also in the Greek tongue, he was so full and absolute, that those that best knew him, knew not in which he most excelled. . If the wits read his poems, divines his sermons, and philosophers his lectures on Aristotle's metaphysics, they would scarce. believe that he died at a little above thirty years of age.-WOOD, ANTHONY, 16911721, Athena Oxonienses, vol. ii, f. 35.

William Cartwright not only wrote some of the best poems and plays of his time, and preached some of the best sermons, but as reader of metaphysics in his University he earned especial praise. King Charles wore black on the day of his funeral, and fifty wits and poets of the time supplied their tributary verses to the volume, first published in 1651, of "Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with other Poems, by Mr. William Cartwright, late Student of Christ Church in Oxford, and Proctor of the University. The Airs and Songs set by Mr. Henry Lawes." There is in this book a touching portrait of young Cartwright, evidently a true likeness, with two rows of books over his head, and his elbow upon the open volume of Aristotle's metaphysics. He rests on his hand a young head, in which the full under-lip and downy beard are harmonized to a face made spiritual by intensity of thought. Cartwright died, in his thirty-second year, of a camp fever that killed many in

'Tis known true beauty hath no need of paint.
Yet, since a label fix'd to thy fair hearse
Is all the mode, and tears put into verse
Can teach posterity our present grief

And their own loss, but never give relief;
I'll tell them-and a truth which needs no
pass-

That wit in Cartwright at her zenith was.
Arts, fancy, language, all conven'd in thee,
With those grand miracles which deify
The old world's writings, kept yet from the
fire

Because they force these worst times to admire.

Thy matchless genius, in all thou didst write, Like the sun, wrought with such staid heat and light,

That not a line-to the most critic heOffends with flashes, or obscurity. -VAUGHAN, HENRY, 1651, Upon the Poems and Plays of the Ever-Memorable Mr. William Cartwright.

Cartwright, rare Cartwright, to whom all must bow,

That was best preacher, and best poet too;
Whose learned fancy never was at rest,
But always labouring, yet labour'd least.
-LEIGH, JOHN, 1651, Prefixed to Cart-
wright's Plays and Poems.

To have the same person cast his net and catch souls as well in the pulpit as on the stage! . . A miracle of industry and wit, sitting sixteen hours a day at all manner of knowledge, an excellent preacher in whom hallowed fancies and reason grew visions and holy passions, raptures and extasies, and all this at thirty years of age!-LLOYD, DAVID, 1668, Memoirs of Excellent Personages.

In noticing the catalogue of poets ranged under the title of "Amatory and Miscellaneous," it is impossible not to be struck with the mutability of popular applause. Cowley and Cartwright were the favourites of their times, were considered as the first of poets, celebrated by their literary contemporaries in loud and

repeated panegyrics, and their names familiar in every class of society. What is now their fate? To be utterly neglected, and, except to those who justly think it necessary to be intimate with every stage of our literature, nearly unknown. Have they deserved this? Let the patient reader wade through their numerous works, and he will probably answer, Yes. -DRAKE, NATHAN, 1798, Literary Hours, No. xxviii, p. 97.

Perhaps there is no instance in the annals of English literature of an author more admired by his contemporaries of distinction than Cartwright appears to have been. Indeed, he is now better known by the praises of others than by his own works. These, with the exception of his plays, which are now entirely neglected, consist principally of political addresses to distinguished characters of the day. ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN, 1854-58, Dictionary of English Literature, vol. I, p. 350.

The specific gravity of the poems, so to speak, is far greater than that of any of his is contemporaries; everywhere thought, fancy, force, varied learning. He is never weak or dull; though he fails often enough, is often enough wrongheaded, fantastical, affected, and has never laid bare the deeper arteries of humanity, for good or for evil. Neither

is he altogether an original thinker; as one would expect he has over-read himself; but then he has done so to good purpose. If he imitates, he generally equals. The table of fare in "The Ordinary" smacks of Rabelais or Aristophanes, but then it is worthy of either; and if one cannot help suspecting that, "The Ordinary" never would have been written had not Ben Jonson written "The Alchemist,' one confesses that Ben Jonson need not have been ashamed to have written the play himself: although the plot, as all Cartwright's are, is somewhat confused and inconsequent. The "Royal

Slave," too, is a gallant play, righthearted and lofty from beginning to end, though enacted in an impossible courtcloud world akin to that in which the classic heroes and heroines of Corneille and Racine call each other Monsieur and Madame. . The "Royal Slave" seems to have been considered, both by the Court and by his contemporaries, his

masterpiece. And justly so. . . The songs are excellent, as are all Cartwright's; for grace, simplicity, and sweetness, equal to any (save Shakspeare's) which the seventeenth century produced: but, curiously enough, his lyric faculty seems to have exhausted itself in these half-dozen songs. His minor poems are utterly worthless, out-Cowleying Cowley in frigid and fantastic conceits; and his various addresses to the king and queen are as bombastic, and stupid, and artificial, as any thing which disgraced the reigns of Charles II. or his brother.KINGSLEY, CHARLES, 1859, Plays and Puritans, Miscellanies.

It was of William Cartwright Ben Jonson said, "My son Cartwright writes like a man." He has not left much behind to justify this eulogium; but his minor poems exhibit evidences of taste and scholarship which sufficiently explain the esteem and respect in which he was held by his contemporaries.-BELL, ROBERT, 1867? ed., Songs from the Dramatists, p. 215.

Cartwright, whom his academical and literary contemporaries regarded as a phenomenon, is to us chiefly interesting as a type. If it be allowable to regard as extravagant the tendencies represented by him in both his life and his poetry, he may justly be remembered by a sufficiently prominent title among English poets

that of the typically extravagant Oxford resident of his period. He pos

sessed a real rhetorical inventiveness, and an extraordinary felicity of expression. These gifts he was able to display on occasions of the most opposite and diverse character, great and small, public and private, from the occurrence of an unexampled frost to the publication of a treatise on the art of vaulting. Yet even with a panegyrical poet of the Fantastic School the relations between his theme and his own tastes and sentiments are of the highest importance.-WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. II, pp. 227, 228.

He was a man of learning as well as of zeal; and his admirable English style was well fitted to add to the favour with which his writings were received.-DOWDEN, JOHN, 1897, Outlines of the History of the Theological Literature of The Church of England, p. 50.

Nothing in the writings that he has left justify the warm admiration that his personality seems to have evoked. He is a facile verse writer, especially of panegyric addresses, and a few of his shorter poems are pleasant enough of their kindacademic exercises in amorous verse such as the minor poets of the age were accustomed to produce.-MASTERMAN, J. HowARD B., 1897, The Age of Milton, p. 121.

PERSONAL

In the same year he was actually created Master of Arts, as I shall tell you elsewhere in the Fasti, and after he had left the Coll. with his pupil, he became a retainer to the Pembrochian family, was

beloved by that generous Count, William E. of Pembroke, and got wealth and purchased an estate, which is all I know of him hitherto, only that as he had a little body, so a great mind. In my searches I find that one Will Browne of Ottery S.

Mary in Devon. died in the winter time 1645. Whether the same with the poet, I am hitherto ignorant. After the time of the said poet, appeared another person of both his names, author of two common law-books, written in English.-WOOD, ANTHONY, 1691-1721, Athena Oxonienses, vol. 1, f. 493.

Browne was fortunate in his friends. His life at the Inner Temple brought him. into contact not only with his intimate friend Wither and Charles Brooke, but also with such a man as Selden, who wrote commendatory verses to the first book of his "Pastorals." He was too, apparently, one of that knot of brilliant. young men who called themselves the "sons" of Ben Jonson, and there are some interesting verses, of warm yet not extravagant praise, prefixed by Ben Jonson to the second book of the same poem. With Drayton he appears to have been on cordial and intimate terms. Some verses by Browne are prefixed to the second edition of the "Polyolbion," and some of the most charming commendatory verses that were ever written were penned by Drayton in honour of "Britannia's Pastorals.' Chapman too, "the learned Shepherd of fair Hitching Hill," was, as more than one indication sufficiently proves, intimate with our poet, and Browne was not only familiar with his friend's Iliad and Odyssey, but also, we may be very sure, knew well that golden book of poetry, the "Hero and Leander." With such contemporary influences, and with the fullest knowledge of and reverence for such of his predecessors as Sidney and Spenser, Browne had every advantage given to his genius, and every help to enable him to float in the full and central stream of poetic tradition. ARNOLD, W. T., 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. II, p. 65.

BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS

So may'st thou thrive, among the learned prease,

As thou young shepherd art belov'd of me! -DRAYTON, MICHAEL, 1613, Commendatory Verses in Britannia's Pastorals. So much a stranger my severer Muse Is not to love-strains, or a shepward's reed, But that she knows some rites of Phoebus' dues,

Of Pan, of Pallas, and her Sisters' meed. Read and commend she durst these tun'd essays

Of him that loves her. (She hath ever found Her studies as one circle.) Next she prays His readers be with rose and myrtle crown'd! No willow touch them! As his bays are free From wrong of bolts, so may their chaplets

be.

-SELDEN, JOHN, 1613, Commendatory Verses in Britannia's Pastorals.

Some men, of books or friends not speaking right,

May hurt them more with praise than foes with spite.

But I have seen thy work, and I know thee: And, if thou list thyself, what thou canst be. For though but early in these paths thou tread,

I find thee write most worthy to be read. It must be thine own judgment yet that sends

This thy work forth: that judgment mine commends

JONSON, BEN, 1616, Commendatory Verses in Britannia's Pastorals, Second Book.

Thus do I spur thee on with sharpest praise,
To use thy gifts of Nature and of skill,
To double-gild Apollo's brows and bays,
Yet make great Nature Art's true sov'reign
still.

So Fame shall ever say, to thy renown,
The shepherd's-star, or bright'st in sky, is
Browne!

-DAVIES, JOHN, 1616, Commendatory
Verses in Britannia's Pastorals, Second
Book.

Many inferior faculties are yet left, wherein our Devon hath displaied her abilities as well as in the former, as in Philosophers, Historians, Oratours and Poets, the blazoning of whom to the life, especially the last, I had rather leave to my worthy friend Mr. W. Browne, who, as hee hath already honoured his countrie in his elegant and sweet "Pastoralls," so questionles will easily be intreated a little farther to grace it by drawing out the line of his Poeticke Auncesters, beginning in Josephus Iscanus and ending in himselfe. CARPENTER, NATHANIEL, 1625, Geography Delineated Forth in Two Books, p. 263.

Esteemed then, by judicious persons, to be written in a sublime strain, and for subject amorous and very pleasing. WOOD, ANTHONY, 1691-1721, Athena Oxonienses, vol. I, f. 492.

Browne was a pastoral poet, with much natural tenderness and sweetness, and a good deal of allegorical quaintness and prolixity.-HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1820, Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 192.

Brown is one of the sweetest Pastoral Writers in the world.-NEELE, HENRY, 1827-29, Lectures on English Poetry, Lecture v.

His "Britannia's Pastorals" appear to have been much read then by persons of fine taste; nor could persons of the same class find now, among the books of that time, a more pleasant book of the kind for a day or two of peculiar leisure. The plan of the book is that of a story of shepherds and shepherdesses, with allegorical personages introduced into their society, wandering in quest of their loves and adventures, through scenes of English rural nature; but the narrative is throughout subordinate to the descriptions for which it gives occasion. A rich and sweet, and yet varied sensuousness, characterizes these descriptions. The mood is

generally calm and quiet, like that of a painter of actual scenery; there is generally the faintest possible breath of human interest; but now and then the sensuous takes the hue of the ideal, and the strain rises in vigor. In the course of the poem Spenser is several times acknowledged as the poet whose genius the author venerates most. The influence of other poets may, however, be traced, and especially that of Du Bartas. Browne is a

far more cultured versifier than Sylvester, and his lines are linked together with an artist's fondness for truth of phrase and rhyme, and for natural ease of cadence. -MASSON, DAVID, 1858, The Life of John Milton, vol. 1, ch. vi.

Browne has no constructive power, and no human interest in his pastorals, but he has an eye for nature.-GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1860, ed. Specimens of the LessKnown British Poets, vol. 1, p. 288.

Browne was absolutely devoid of all epic or dramatic talent. His maids and shepherds have none of the sweet plausibility which enlivens the long recitals of Spenser. They outrage all canons of common sense. When a distracted mother wants to know if a man has seen her lost child, she makes the inquiry in nineteen lines of deliberate poetry. An air of silliness broods over the whole conception. Marina meets a lovely shepherd, whose snowy buskins display a still silkier leg, and she asks of him her way to the marish; he misunderstands her to say "marriage,' and tells her that the way is through love; she misunderstands him to refer to some village so entitled, and the languid comedy of errors winds on through pages. The best of the poem consists in its close and pretty pictures of country scenes. At his best, Browne is a sort of Bewick, and provides us with vignettes of the squirrel at play, a group of wrens, truant schoolboys, or a country girl,

When she upon her breast, love's sweet repose,

Doth bring the Queen of Flowers, the English Rose.

But these happy "bits" are set in a terrible waste of what is not prose, but poetry and water, foolish babbling about altars and anagrams, long lists of blooms and trees and birds, scarcely characterized at all, soft rhyming verse meandering about in a vaguely pretty fashion to no obvious purpose.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1894, The Jacobean Poets, p. 154.

INNER TEMPLE MASQUE

It was not only by the parade of processions, and the decorations of scenery, that these spectacles were were recommended. Some of them, in point of poetical composition, were eminently beautiful and elegant. Among these may be mentioned a masque on the story of Circe and Ulysses,