Or, after a grand invocation, endure to drop into verses like these?—
But stop, my muse;
Hold thy Pindaric Pegusus closely in,
Which docs 10 rage begin—
'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouthed horse—
'Twill no unskilful touch endure,
But flings rider and reader too that sits not sure.
Cowley, in his "Dandies," aspired to the honours of the epopee, but what a contrast to Milton! Take a description of the costume of the angel Gabriel:—
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That e'er the mid-day sun pierced through with light;
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread.
Washed from th' morning beauties' deepest red;
A harmless, fluttering meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleased the eyes;
This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
Took in their prime, ere they grow ripe and fall.
Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade.
The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made, &c.
Cowley was a zealous royalist; he went over to France
when the queen of Charles I. retired thither, and became her secretary for her private correspondence with Charles. Afterwards he was sent over in the character of a spy on the republican party and its proceedings. "Under pretence of privacy and retirement, he was to take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation;" but became suspected, and was arrested. He then fawned on Cromwell, Wrote verses in his honour, which, however, were only shown in private; and, when the commonwealth began to show signs of dissolution, he again hastened to the exiled court in France, and came back in the crowd of royalists eager for promotion. But his flattering of Cromwell had been reported, and he was treated with coldness. Yet, after some time, through Buckingham and the earl of St. Albans, he obtained a lease of some lands, and, after the ill reception
of his play of "The Cutler of Colman Street," he retired into the country, first to Barn Elms, and next to Chertsey, in Surrey, where he died in his forty-ninth year. No one who reads such dialogues as those from which these few lines are taken, will wonder at the utter failure of his "Cutler of Colman Street":—
Cutler.
What health do we lack?
Worm.
Confusion to the quack!
Both.
Confound him, confound him Diseases all around him
Cutler.
And till again the sack;
Worm.
That no man may lack.
Cutler.
Confusion to the quack!
Both.
Confusion to the quack! Confound him, confound him!
Diseases all around him!
Worm.
He's a kind of grave-maker.
Cutler.
A urinal shaker.
Worm.
A wretched groat-taker.
Cutler.
A stinking close-stool raker.
Worm.
He's a quack, that's worse than a quaker.
Both.
He's a quack, &.c.
Worm.
Hey, boys, gingo! &.c
We should be sorry to soil our pages with the least of
the obscenities of Copley. Such are the men who are in
almost every age the darlings of critics, and the popular
luminaries of their little day. Such was Cowley in times
which possessed a Milton, which had just seen a Shakspeare and a Ben Jonson, and which had a Dryden, a Butler, a Denham, an Otway, a Wither, and a Marvel!
The great satirist of the age was Samuel Butler, who in
his "Hudibras" introduced a totally new kind of poetry—a most comic doggerel, now styled, as sui-generis, Hudibrastic. Butler was the son of a yeoman, who had been educated for the church without those connections which lead to promotion. With an immense accumulation of learning, and talent enough to have made half-a-dozen bishops, he became at one time a clerk to one Jeffreys, a justice of the peace, at Earl's Coomb, in Worcestershire, and afterwards to Sir Samuel Lake, at Woodend, in Bedfordshire. In these situations he gleaned up the characters and materials for his "Hudibras," a burlesque on the puritans. Sir Samuel Lake was the actual Hudibras, if we are to believe Butler himself, though some of his critics—of course, wiser than the author—will insist that it was a Sir Henry Rosewell, of Devonshire. The poem ridicules the puritans in every way, but especially for attempting to put down bear-baiting; and accordingly the first canto—
The adventure of the bear and fiddle Is sung, but breaks off in the middle.
Hudibras and his man Ralpho attack the bear, but are
defeated, and then Hudibras retires and makes love to a
rich widow. He is a presbyterian, and Ralpho an independent; and in the course of the story all the leading characters of the commonwealth, Cromwell, Fleetwood, L'esborough, Lambert, are ridiculed by name, as are Pym, Calamy, Case, Byfield, Lentham, and the rest, as Ashley Cooper, under the name of "the politician," and John Lilbourne, under that of "brother haberdasher," &c. The first part was published in 1663, the second in 1664, and the third in 1678, fourteen years later. Still the poem remained unfinished. It did
not require, however, even the second part to appear to make it famous. It was received with one universal burst of laughter and applause by the royalists. Charles II. and his courtiers were merrier over it than all, and Charles quoted it continually with unfading gusto. The earl of Dorset resolved to seize the opportunity, and introduce the author, through Buckingham, to Charles. Buckingham gave him an audience, but, just as they were entering on conversation, Buckingham saw some ladies of loose character going past, ran out after them, and the poet was not only forgotten, but could never get a second interview. Clarendon, however, promised to see him duly rewarded, but never kept his word, and Butler lived poor and died neglected, at the age of sixty-eight. This shameful neglect has been much commented on; but no one seems to have reflected that there may have been more in this than mere neglect. Butler, in his double-edged satire, made some very hard hits at the church, and, while ridiculing the puritans, gave some not very light back-strokes to the licentiousness of the royalists. He wrote an avowed "Satire on the Licentiousness of the Age;" and in his third part so far vented his resentment at his neglect as to satirise Charles himself for being led by the apron-strings of his numerous mistresses. He laughed at the sages of the newly-established Royal Society, by his "Elephant in the Moon;" and such a man is more frequently kicked than rewarded. The church did not forget his salies against it, and refused him burial in Westminster Abbey
