These "Emblems" were illustrated in the first editions by most ridiculous prints; and yet, as Southey has noted, it is the prints that have been most popular, while the poems have been neglected. It is owing to both, however, that Quarles became so early what Philips, Milton's nephew, calls him, "the darling of our plebeian judgments." After the Restoration Quarles was completely forgotten, and Pope even gives him a place in the "Dunciad." The better taste, or, as Campbell says, the more charitable criticism, of modern times has admitted him into "the laurelled fraternity of the poets,' and he is now admired for his quaintness, vigour, and occasional beauty.—ANGUS, JOSEPH, 1865, The Handbook of English Literature, p. 159. It is difficult to conceive of any poet who could produce verse of a high order of merit in close on a hundred and fifty short poems written to order on as many pictures; and the author of the "Emblems" has certainly written nothing that can be classed with the best of Crashaw or Vaughan. But he has here kept a level of poetic excellence in his verse considerably above that to which it sometimes sank.-MASTERMAN, J. HOWARD B., 1897, The Age of Milton, p. 117. GENERAL Had he been contemporary with Plato (that great back-friend to Poets), he would not onely have allowed him to live, but advanced him to an office in his Commonwealth. Some Poets, if debarr'd profaness, wantoness, and satyricalness (that they may neither abuse God, themselves, nor their neighbours), have their tongues cut out in effect. Others onely trade in wit at the second hand, being all for translations, nothing for invention. Our Quarles was free from the faults of the first, as if he had drank of Jordan instead of Helicon, and slept on Mount Olivet for his Parnassus: and was happy in his own invention. His visible Poetry (I mean his "Emblems") is excellent, catching therein the eye and fancy at one draught, so that he hath outAlciated therein, in some men's judgement. His Verses on Job are done to the life, so that the Reader may see his sores, and through them the anguish of his soul. -FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, vol. 1, p 354. Milton was forced to wait till the world had done admiring Quarles.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1757, Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. III, p. 99. Examples of bad writing might no doubt be produced, on almost any occasion, from Quarles and Blackmore; but as no body reads their works, no body is liable to be misled by them.-BEATTIE, JAMES, 177679, An Essay on Poetry and Music, p. 15, note. The charitable criticism of the present age has done justice to Quarles, in contrasting his merits with his acknowledged deformities. A considerable re semblance to Young may be traced in the blended strength and extravagance, and ill-assorted wit and devotion of Quarles. Like Young, he wrote vigorous prosewitness his "Enchiridion." In the parallel, however, it is due to the purity of Young to acknowledge, that he never was guilty of such indecency as that which disgraces the "Argalus and Parthenia" of our pious author.--CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets. I have been reading lately what of Quarles's poetry I could get. He was a contemporary of Herbert, and a kindred spirit. I think you would like him. It is rare to find one who was so much of a poet and so little of an artist. He wrote long poems, almost epics for length, about Jonah, Esther, Job, Samson, and Solomon, interspersed with meditations after a quite original plan,-Shepherd's Oracles, Comedies, Romancies, Fancies, and Meditations, the quintessence of meditation,and Enchiridions of Meditation all divine, -and what he calls his Morning Muse; besides prose works as curious as the rest. He was an unwearied Christian, and a reformer of some old school withal. Hopelessly quaint, as if he lived all alone and knew nobody but his wife, who appears to have reverenced him. He never doubts his genius; it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of tough, crooked timber. In an age when Herbert is revived, Quarles surely ought not to be forgotten.THOREAU, HENRY DAVID, 1843, Letter to Mrs. Emerson, Familiar Letters, ed. Sanborn, p. 134. As a poet he has been somewhat hardly dealt with; having been judged more by the evidence of his conceits, absurdities, and false taste, than by his striking and original images, his noble and manly thoughts, and the exceeding fertility of his language. It is not surprising that posterity has failed to reverse the unjust judgment passed upon him by his contemporaries. No writer is either more affected or more obscure. It is only by raking that we can gather the gold; yet it is such as will reward the seeker who has courage to undertake the search. His sagacity and good sense are unquestionable, and occasionally there is a rich outbreak of fancy; while at times he startles us by compressing, as it were, a volume into a single line.-HALL, SAMUEL CARTER, 1848, Book of Gems. He has not so much of beauty and elegance as some of his contemporaries; his taste is coarser than even that of his time; but the ruggedly sublime knows and loves him well. . . . Besides the qualities we have chiefly ascribed to this poet, namely, grandeur and deep-hearted Christian earnestness, he has some minor but interesting qualities. He possesses a style, manly, nervous, generally clear, and more modern than that of almost any poet in his age. He has a keen discrimination of human nature, a copious supply of apt and bold imagery, and adds to this, extensive reading, particularly in the ancient fathers of the Church. Being a layman, too, his piety and zeal tell much better in favour of Christianity than had he been a minister; and Quarles ranks with Grotius, Addison, Pascal, Johnson, Coleridge, and Isaac Taylor, as one of the emnient "lay brothers" in the Christian Church, whose testimony is above all challenge, and whose talents lift their religion above all contempt.-GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1857, ed. Quarles Emblems, pp. 191, 196. His verses are characterized by ingenuity rather than fancy, but, although often absurd, he is seldom dull or languid. There is a good deal of spirit and coarse vigor in some of his pieces.—CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 19. With honoured, thrice honoured George Herbert waiting at the door, I cannot ask Francis Quarles to remain longer: I can part with him without regret, worthy man and fair poet as he is.-MACDONALD, GEORGE, 1868, England's Antiphon, p. 173. His poems, like those of so many others in this and the preceding age, bespeak a full mind and a meditative temper.-ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1868-75, Chaucer to Wordsworth, p. 193. Whose name is preserved from oblivion. by a touch of originality in his most characteristic productions.-WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1875-99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. III, p. 286. Like Byrom in the next century, like not a few poets in the Middle Ages, Quarles was a kind of journalist to whom the vehicle of verse came more easily than the vehicle of prose, and the dangers of that state of things are well known. All Quarles's work is journeywork, but it is only fair to note the frequent wealth of fancy, the occasional felicity of expression, which illustrate this wilderness. I should not like to be challenged to produce twenty good lines of his in verse or prose written consecutively, yet it might be a still more dangerous challenge to produce any journalist in verse or prose of the present day who has written so much, and in whom the occasional flashes-the signs of poetical power in the individual and of what may be called poetical atmosphere in his "surroundings"-are more frequent.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 378. The wretchedness of man's earthly existence was the main topic of Quarles' muse, and it was exclusively in religous circles that the bulk of his work has been welcomed with any enthusiasm. In his own day he found very few admirers among persons of literary cultivation, and critics of a later age treated his literary pretentions with contempt. Anthony á Wood sneered at him as "an old puritanicall poet. . . the sometime darling of our plebeian judgment." Phillips, in his "Theatrum Poetarum" (1675), wrote that his verses "have been ever, and still are, in wonderful veneration among the vulgar" Pope who criticised his "Emblems" in detail in a letter to Atterbury, denounces the books in the "Dunciad" (bk. i. ii., 139-40) as one Where the pictures for the page atone, Horace Walpole wrote that "Milton was forced to wait till the world had done admiring Quarles." But Quarles is not quite so contemptible as his seventeenthand-eighteenth-century critics assumed. Most of his verse is diffuse and dull; he abounds in fantastic, tortuous and irrational conceits, and he often sinks into ludicrous bathos; but there is no volume of his verse which is not illumined by occasional flashes of poetic fire. Charles Lamb was undecided whether to prefer him to Wither, and finally reached the conclusion that Quarles was the wittier writer, although Wither "lays more hold of the heart" ("Letters," ed. Ainger, i., 95). Pope deemed Wither a better poet but a less honest man. Quarles's most distinguished admirer of the present century was the American writer, H. D. Thoreau, who asserted, not unjustly, that "he uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare" ("Letters" 1865.) Quarles's "Enchiridion," his most popular prose work, contains many aphorisms forcibly expressed.-LEE, SIDNEY, 1896, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLVII, p. 96. George Sandys 1578-1644 Born in England; went to Oxford in 1589; traveled in the east, 1610-12, and published in 1615 an account of his travels in a work entitled a "Relation of a Journey in Four Books, containing a description of the Turkish Empire, of Egypt, of the Holy Land, etc." In 1621 he removed to America, succeeding his brother as treasurer to the English colony of Virginia. He was much interested in the welfare of the colony, establishing iron-works and introducing ship-building. The Virginia company broke up in 1624, and he returned to England. He published translations of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," the first translation of a classic to appear in America; also poetical versions of the Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, etc.-PECK, HARRY THURSTON, ed., 1898, The International Cyclopaedia, vol. XIII, p. 105. Content with little; to this work design'd, By an admirer of talents, piety, and virtue, He lived to be a very aged man, whom I saw in the Savoy, anno 1641, having a youthful soul in a decayed body; and I believe he dyed soon after.-FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, vol. II, p. 519. I happened to speake with his niece, my lady Wyat, at whose howse, viz. at Boxley abbey, he dyed. She saies he told her a little before he dyed that he was about 63. He lies buried in the chancel neer the dore of the south side, but without any rememberance of stone-which is pitty so sweet a swan should lye so ingloriously. He had something in divinity ready for the presse, which my lady lost in the warres the title of it shee does not remember.-AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. II, p. 212. The Author upon his return in 1612 or after, being improved in several respects by this his large journey, became an accomplish'd Gent. as being Master of several Languages, of a fluent and ready discourse and excellent Comportment. He had also naturally a poetical fancy, and a zealous inclination to all human learning, which made his Company desir'd, and acceptable to most virtuous Men and Scholars of his time. . . . Was buried in the Chancel of the Parish Church there, near to the Door, on the South side, but hath no remembrance at all over his Grave, nor anything at that place, only this which stands in the common Register belonging to the said Church. Georgius Sandys Poetarum Anglorum sui sæculi facile princeps, sepultus fuit Martii 7 stilo Anglic. an. dom. 1643.-WOOD, ANTHONY, 1691-1721, Athena Oxonienses, vol. II, ff. 46, 47. It would be injurious to the memory of Sandys, to dismiss his life without informing the reader that the worthy author stood high in the opinion of that most accomplished young nobleman the lord. viscount Falkland, by whom to be praised, is the highest compliment that can be paid to merit; his lordship addresses a copy of verses to Grotius, occasioned by his "Christus Patiens," in which he introduces Mr. Sandys, and says of him, that he had seen as much as Grotius had read; he bestows upon him likewise the epithet of a fine gentleman, and observes, that though he had travelled to foreign countries to read life, and acquire knowledge, yet he was worthy, like another Livy, of having men of eminence from every country come to visit him.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. I, p. 284. A RELATION OF A JOURNEY are written in a pleasant style. -KERR, ROBERT, 1811-24, General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels. Like Sir John Mandeville; the first English prose writer, Sandys was a distinguished traveller, and his book on the countries of the Mediterranean and the Holy Land enjoyed great popularity. It is said that Addison, in the history of his Italian tour took Sandys as his model. Sandys seems to have been one of the first to quote the allusions of the ancient poets to the places through which he passed, a plan so successfully adopted by Dodwell in his Classical Tour through Greece, and by Eustace in his Classical Tour through Italy.-JENKINS, O. L., 1876, The Student's Handbook of British and American Literature, p. 393. OVID'S METAMORPHOSES from the howers of night and repose, for the day was not mine, but dedicated to the service of your Great Father, and yourselfe. SANDYS, GEORGE, 1621, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Dedication to Charles I. Dainty Sands, that hath to English done Smooth-sliding Ovid, and hath made him run With so much sweetness and unusual grace, As though the neatness of the English pace Should tell the jetting Latin that it came But slowly after, as though stiff and lame. -DRAYTON, MICHAEL, C 1627, Of Poets and Poesie. He most elegantly translated "Ovid's Metamorphoses" into English verse; so that, as the soul of Aristotle was said to have transmigrated into Thomas Aquinas. (because rendring his sense so naturally), Ovid's genius may seem to have passed into Master Sandys. He was a servant, but no slave, to his subject; well knowing that a Translatour is a person in Free Custody; Custody, being bound to give the true sense of the Author he translated; Free, left at liberty to cloath it in his own expression. Indeed some men are better Nurses then Mothers of a Poem; good only to feed and foster the Fancies. of others; whereas Master Sandys was altogether as dexterous at inventing as translating; and his own Poems as spritefull, vigorous, and masculine.-FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, vol. II, pp. 518, 519. 'Twas a wonderfull helpe to my phansie, my reading of Ovid's "Metamorphy" in English by Sandys, which made me understand the Latin the better.-AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. I, p. 36. And no better has Ovid been served by the so-much admired Sandys. This is at least the idea which I have remaining of his translation; for I never read him since I was a boy. They who take him upon content, from the praises which their fathers gave him, may inform their judgment by reading him again, and see (if they understand the original) what is become of Ovid's poetry in his version; whether it be not all, or the greatest part of it, evaporated. But this proceeded from the wrong judgment of the age in which he lived. They neither knew good verse, nor loved it; they were scholars, it is true, but they were pedants; and for a just reward of their pedantic pains, all their translations want to be translated into English. DRYDEN, JOHN, 1693, Third Miscellany, Dedication. One of the earliest literary productions of the English colonists in America, of which we have any notice.-HOLMES, ABEL, 1829, Annals of America, vol. 1, p. 184. This production, handed down to us in stately form through two centuries and half, is the very first expression of elaborate poetry, it is the first utterance of the conscious literary spirit, articulated in America. The writings which preceded this book in our literary history-the writings of Captain John Smith, of Percy, of Strachey, of Whitaker, of l'oey--were all produced for some immediate practical purpose, and not with any avowed literary intentions. This book may well have for us a sort of sacredness, as being the first monument of English poetry, of classical scholarship, and of deliberate literary art, reared on these shores. And when we open the book, and examine it with reference to its merits, first, as a faithful rendering of the Latin text, and second, as a specimen of fluent, idiomatic, and musical English poetry, we find that in both particulars it is a work that we may be proud to claim as in some sense our own, and to honor as the morningstar at once of poetry and of scholarship in the new world. TYLER, MOSES COIT, 1878, A History of American Literature, 1607– 1676, vol. 1, p. 54. Rendering of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" has chiefly preserved his name in literary circles. A writer in "Wits Recreations" (1640) congratulated Ovid on "the sumptous bravery of that rich attire" in which Sandys had clad the Latin poet's work. He followed his text closely, and managed to compress his rendering into the same number of lines as the originala feat involving some injury to the poetic quality and intelligibility of the English. But Sandys possessed exceptional metrical dexterity, and the refinement with which he handled the couplet entitles him to a place beside Denham and Waller. In a larger measure than either of them, he probably helped to develop the capacity of heroic rhyme. He was almost the first writer to vary the cæsura efficiently, and, by adroitly balancing one couplet against another, he anticipated some of the effects which Dryden and Pope brought to perfection. Both Dryden and Pope read Sandys's Ovid in boyhood.-LEE, SIDNEY, 1897, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. L, p. 292. DIVINE POEMS AND PSALMS 1636-38-40 Nor may you fear the poet's common lot, Read and commended, and then quite forgot. The brazen mines and marble rocks shall waste, When your foundation will unshaken last. 'Tis Fame's best pay, that you your labours see By their immortal subject crownéd be. Say, sacred bard, what could bestow To light this torch thou hast climb'd higher |