Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

An adamantine world she sees, more pure,

More glorious far than this-fram'd to endure
The shock of doomsday's darts.

This passage so strikingly resembles the splendid opening lines of Dryden's Religio Laici, as to leave the impression that it must have suggested them.

ANDREW MARVELL, the assistant of Milton as Latin secretary under the protectorate of Cromwell, was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Kingston, upon Hull, where his father officiated, in 1620. He early evinced great aptness for learning, and such was his proficiency in his studies that before he reached the thirteenth year of his age he was admitted into Trinity College, Cambridge. Some monks, however, of the Jesuit order, who resided near the university, prevailed upon him to relinquish his studies and repair to London, where they placed him, as a clerk, in a bookstore. Here his father found him, and having convinced him of his error, easily persuaded him to return to Cambridge and resume his studies.

In 1638, Marvell took the degree of bachelor of arts; and about the same time he had the misfortune to lose his excellent father, who was unfortunately drowned, while crossing the Humber, in attendance upon the daughter of an intimate female friend, to her marriage in Lincolnshire. The lady, thus rendered childless, sent for young Marvell, and in order to render him all the return in her power for his sad bereavement, conferred upon him a very considerable fortune. Possessed thus of ample means for the purpose, he resolved to enlarge his information by foreign travel; and he accordingly visited, in succession, all the polite countries of the continent. At Rome he passed some time in close and severe study, and thence went to Constantinople, as secretary to the English embassy at that court.

Marvell's expenses abroad had drawn so very considerably upon his fortune, that, on his return to England, in 1653, he accepted the situation. of tutor in languages to the daughter of General Fairfax; and four years after he became assistant to Milton, the Latin secretary of state, upon the recommendation of that great poet himself. Shortly before the Restoration, Marvell was elected member of parliament for his native city; and though not like Waller, an eloquent speaker, yet his consistency and integrity caused him to be highly esteemed and greatly respected. He is supposed to have been the last English member of parliament who was remunerated by his constituents for his services in the house. Charles the Second delighted in his society, and believing that every man had his price, he resolved to win Marvell over to his interest. With this view he sent his treasurer, Lord Danby, to wait upon him, with an offer of a place at court, and an immediate present of a thousand pounds. But the inflexible patriot resisted his offers, and it is said humorously illustrated his independence by calling his servant to witness that he had dined for three days successively on a shoulder of mutton! Marvell preserved his integrity to the last, and

till his death, continued to satirize, with great wit and pungency, the profligacy and arbitrary measures of the court. He died on the sixteenth of August, 1678, without any previous illness or visible decay, which gave rise to a report that he had been poisoned. The town of Hull voted an appropriate sum to erect a monument to his memory; but the court interfered, and forbade the votive tribute.

As an author, Marvell's reputation rested, in his day, much more upon his prose than upon his poetry. As his prosaic works were, however, chiefly written for temporary purposes, they have passed out of mind with the circumstances that produced them. In 1672, he attacked the future Bishop Parker, in a piece entitled The Rehearsal Transposed, and with great force of argument vindicated the fair fame of Milton, who he says, was and is a man of as great learning and sharpness of wit as any man living.' One of Marvell's treatises, An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, was considered so formidable that a reward was offered for the discovery of the author and printer. Among the first, if not the very first traces of that vein of sportive humor and raillery on national manners and absurdities, which was afterward carried to perfection by Addison, Steele, and others, may be found in Marvell. He wrote with great liveliness, point and vigor, though he was often too coarse and personal. His poetry is easy and elegant, rather than elevated and forcible: it was an embellishment to his character of patriot and controversialist, but not a ‘substantive ground of honor and distinction.' Yet none but a good and amiable man could have written verses so full of tenderness and pathos as the following:

THE EMIGRANTS IN BERMUDAS.

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In th' ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that row'd along
The list ning winds received their song.
'What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where He the huge sea monsters racks,
That left the deep upon their backs;

He lands us on a grassy stage,

Safe from the storms and prelates, rage.

He gave us this eternal spring

Which here enamels every thing,

And sends the fowls to us in care,

On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet.

But apples, plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars, chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar,
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
Oh let our voice his praise exalt,
Till we arrive at Heaven's vault,
Which then perhaps rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'
Thus sang they in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way to guide their chime
With falling oars they kept the time.

Lecture the Twenty-Third.

ABRAHAM COWLEY-THOMAS STANLEY-THE DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLEKATHERINE PHILIPS-CHARLES COTTON-JOHN DRYDEN.

WE

E are now in the midst of the poets of the Commonwealth, and of the Restoration. Authors were still a select class, and literature, the delight of the learned and the ingenious, had not yet become food for the multitude. The chivalrous and romantic spirit which prevailed in the age of Elizabeth, had even, before her death, begun to yield to more sober and practical views of human life and society; and a spirit of inquiry was fast spreading among the people. The long period of peace under James the First, and the progress of commerce, gave scope to domestic improvement, and fostered the reasoning faculties, rather than the imagination. The reign of Charles the First, a prince of taste and accomplishments, partially revived the style of the Elizabethan era, but its lustre extended little beyond the court and the nobility. During the civil war, and the protectorate, poetry and the drama were buried under the strife and anxiety of contending factions. Cromwell, with a just and generous spirit, boasted that he would make the name of an Englishman, as great as ever that of a Roman had been; and he realized the fulfillment of this declaration in Blake's naval triumphs, and the unquestioned supremacy of England abroad; but neither the time nor the inclination of the Protector allowed him to be a patron of literature. Charles the Second was, by natural powers, birth, and education, better fitted for such a task; but he had imbibed a false taste, which, added to his indolent and sensual disposition, was as injurious to art and literature as to the public morals. Poetry now declined, and was degraded from a high and noble art, to a mere courtly amusement, a pander to immorality. Happily, to this general truth, there were a few brilliant exceptions; and among these, Cowley, after Milton, is, perhaps, the most conspicuous.

ABRAHAM COWLEY, was born in the city of London in 1618, and was the posthumous son of a respectable grocer. His mother, through the influence of some powerful friends, procured admission for him as a king's scholar into Westminster school; and in his eighteenth year he was elected a member

« AnteriorContinuar »