GILES FLETCHER. [BORN about 1588, died 1623. Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death was published in 1640.] Giles, the brother of Phineas, and cousin of John Fletcher, is one of the chief poets of what may be called the Spenserian School, which 'flourished' in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Spenser and Chaucer were the supreme names in nondramatic poetry till Milton arose; and in the Jacobean period the Plantagenet poet was eclipsed by the Elizabethan; and thus it was to Spenser that the lesser poetic spirits of the age looked up to as their master, and upon their writings his influence is deeply impressed. Amongst these retainers of Colin' must be counted Milton when young, before he had developed his own style and become himself an original power, himself a master; and not the least of the interests that distinguish Giles Fletcher and his fellow Spenserians is that Milton extended to them the study and attention which he gave with no ordinary sympathy to 'our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus and Aquinas.' These words of Milton's suggest some leading characteristics of the Spenserian school. It too proposed to be 'sage and serious.' It inclined indeed to be didactic. In that notorious production, 'The Purple Island,' we have in fact a lecture on Anatomy. More commonly its purpose was directly ethical; and it must be allowed that the artist is at times lost in the moralist. Giles Fletcher is eminently a religious poet-in the technical sense of the word, as happily also in the more general sense. He deals with Christian themes: Christ's Victory in Heaven,' 'Christ's Victory on Earth,' 'Christ's Triumph over Death,' 'Christ's Triumph after Death'; and it is his special distinction, that in handling such themes he does not sink into a mere rhyming dogmatist, but writes with a genuine enthusiasm and joy. For certainly what has commonly been written for 'religious' poetry has been 'religious' rather than poetical. Its orthodoxy may have been unimpeachable; but no less so its prosiness. How few hymns are worthy of the name of poems! The cause of this frequent failure is probably to be looked for in the writer's relation to his subject. It is not, and cannot be, one of sufficient freedom. His mind is in a sense subdued and fettered by the very conditions of the case. He is dealing with a certain definite interpretation of profound mysteries; and the mysteries themselves are such as to overpower and paralyse the free movement of his intelligence. How can he sing at ease? He is like one with a lesson set him, which he must reproduce as best he may. It is rather his faith and his memory that are called into action than his imagination. At all events his imagination has an inferior part assigned her; she is not to create but rather to decorate and glorify what is created. To worship and adore and love—these are real movements and impulses of the poet's mind, and may have and have had their expression in lyrics that may be fully styled divine; but, when the details of a creed are celebrated, then for the most part the sweet enthusiasm dies away out of the poet's eyes, the rapture chills and freezes, and we are reminded of the Thirty-nine Articles rather than of the Beatific Vision. Giles Fletcher's success as a 'religious' poet, so far as he succeeds, is due first to the selection of themes which he makes, and secondly to the genuine religious ardour that inspired him. He delighted to contemplate the career of the central Hero of his Christian faith and love-His ineffable self-sacrifice, His leading captivity captive, His complete and irreversible triumph. That career he conceived and beheld vividly and intensely with a pure unalloyed acceptance; it thrilled and inspired him with a real passion of worship and delight. So blissfully enthralled and enraptured, what else could he sing of? His heart was hot within him; while he was musing, the fire burned; then spake he with his tongue. It was the tongue of one highly cultured and accomplished, of a rich and clear imagination, with a natural gift of eloquence, with a fine sense of melody, and metrical skill to express it. JOHN W. HALES. CHRIST'S VICTORY IN HEAVEN. But Justice had no sooner Mercy seen Meeting with fresh Eoüs, that but now Open'd the world, which all in darknesse lay, Doth heav'n's bright face of his rayes disarray, And sads the smiling Orient of the springing day. She was a Virgin of austere regard; Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind; Her eye with Heav'n's, so, and more brightly shin'd The silence of the thought loud speaking hears, No riot of affection revel kept Within her brest, but a still apathy Possessed all her soule, which softly slept Securely, without tempest; no sad cry Awakes her pity, but wrong'd poverty, Sending her eyes to heav'n swimming in tears, With hideous clamours ever struck her ears, Whetting the blazing sword, that in her hand she bears. The winged lightning is her Mercury, And round about her mighty thunders sound: Impatient of himself lies pining by. Pale Sickness with his kercher'd head upwound, And thousand noisome plagues attend her round; And airy mountaines shake, and frighted shadows howl. Famine, and bloodless Care, and bloody War, That lanks the cheeks, and pales the freshest sight, Before this cursed throng goes Ignorance, And underneath, Hell's hungry throat still yawning lies. Upon two stony tables, spread before her, Where good, and bad, and life, and death were painted: But when that scroll was read, with thousand terrors fainted. Witness the thunder that mount Sinai heard, On this dead Justice, she, the Living Law, All heav'n, to hear her speech, did into silence draw. SIR HENRY WOTTON. [BORN 1568, died 1639. How happy is he born and taught,' said to have been printed in 1614; see Courtly Poets, ed. Hannah, 1875. It was quoted to Drummond by Ben Jonson in 1618 or 1619: 'Sir Edward [Henry] Wotton's verses of a happy life he hath by heart.' 'You meaner beauties of the night,' printed with music in Est's Sixth Set of Books, 1624. It was probably written a few years before. In 1651, Reliquiae Wottonianae.] Sir Henry Wotton, a highly accomplished gentleman and distinguished diplomatist in his day, is now best known to us personally through the affectionate memoir of his humble friend and fellow angler Isaac Walton, and the kindly interest he showed in Milton, whose Comus had excited his warm admiration. He was well born, well bred, and one of the most cultivated men of his time. But, immersed in politics and society, he found but little leisure for the studies he loved till his appointment to the Provostship of Eton in 1624, when he was some 56 years of age. All the middle period of his life from 1595 he was occupied with affairs, not without peril, as when he was one of the secretaries of the Earl of Essex (his fellow secretary, Cuffe, was hanged), not without much vexation, as when his famous definition of an ambassador, public attention being called to it eight years after it was entered in Flecamon's 'albo' at Augsburg, brought him for a time into disgrace with James I. Of poetry he wrote but little; but of that little two pieces at least have obtained a permanent place in English literature, his Character of a Happy Life, written probably circ. 1614; and the lines, On his mistress the Queen of Bohemia, circ. 1620. Of the apophthegm 'the style is of the man,' it would be difficult to find better illustrations. As in a mirror, they reflect the high refined nature of one who, living in the world, and a master of its ways and courtesies, was yet never of it-was never a worldling. JOHN W. HALES. |