Adventures in Criticism Part 4

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Sc. Elizabeth's.

WILLIAM BROWNE

April 21, 1894. William Browne of Tavistock.

It has been objected to the author of _Britannia's Pastorals_ that their perusal sends you to sleep. It had been subtler criticism, as well as more amiable, to observe that you can wake up again and, starting anew at the precise point where you dropped off, continue the perusal with as much pleasure as ever, neither ashamed of your somnolence nor imputing it as a fault to the poet. For William Browne is perhaps the easiest figure in our literature. He lived easily, he wrote easily, and no doubt he died easily. He no more expected to be read through at a sitting than he tried to write all the story of Marina at a sitting. He took up his pen and composed: when he felt tired he went off to bed, like a sensible man: and when you are tired of reading he expects you to be sensible and do the same.

A placid life.

He was born at Tavistock, in Devon, about the year 1590; and after the manner of mild and sensible men cherished a particular love for his birth-place to the end of his days. From Tavistock Grammar School he pa.s.sed to Exeter College, Oxford--the old west-country college--and thence to Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple. His first wife died when he was twenty-three or twenty-four. He took his second courtship quietly and leisurely, marrying the lady at length in 1628, after a wooing of thirteen years. "He seems," says Mr. A.H. Bullen, his latest biographer, "to have acquired in some way a modest competence, which secured him immunity from the troubles that weighed so heavily on men of letters." His second wife also brought him a portion. More than four years before this marriage he had returned to Exeter College, as tutor to the young Robert Dormer, who in due time became Earl of Carnarvon and was killed in Newbury fight. By his fellow-collegians--as by everybody with whom he came into contact--he was highly beloved and esteemed, and in the public Register of the University is styled, "vir omni humana literarum et bonarum artium cognitione instructus." He gained the especial favor of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whom Aubrey calls "the greatest Maecenas to learned men of any peer of his time or since," and of whom Clarendon says, "He was a great lover of his country, and of the religion and justice, which he believed could only support it; and his friendships were only with men of those principles,"--another tribute to the poet's character. He was familiarly received at Wilton, the home of the Herberts. After his second marriage he moved to Dorking and there settled. He died in or before the year 1645. In the letters of administration granted to his widow (November, 1645) he is described as "late of Dorking, in the county of Surrey, Esquire." But there is no entry of his death in the registers at Dorking or Horsham: so perhaps he went back to lay his bones in his beloved Devon.

A William Browne was buried at Tavistock on March 27th, 1643. This may or may not have been our author. "Tavistock,--Wilton,--Dorking," says Mr.

Bullen,--"Surely few poets have had a more tranquil journey to the Elysian Fields."

An amiable poet.

As with his life, so with his poetry--he went about it quietly, contentedly. He learned his art, as he confesses, from Spenser and Sidney; and he took it over ready-made, with all the conventions and pastoral stock-in-trade--swains languishing for hard-hearted nymphs, nymphs languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented for the perpetual menace of chast.i.ty; chast.i.ty undergoing the most surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-G.o.d or earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless ramifications. Beauty, eluding unwelcome embraces, is never too hotly pressed to dally with an engaging simile or choose the most agreeable words for depicting her tribulation. Why indeed should she hurry? It is all a polite and pleasant make-believe; and when Marina and Doridon are tired, they stand aside and watch the side couples, Fida and Remond, and get their breath again for the next figure. As for the finish of the tale, there is no finish. The narrator will stop when he is tired; just then and no sooner. What became of Marina after Triton rolled away the stone and released her from the Cave of Famine? I am sure I don't know. I have followed her adventures up to that point (though I should be very sorry to attempt a _precis_ of them without the book) through some 370 pages of verse. Does this mean that I am greatly interested in her? Not in the least. I am quite content to hear no more about her. Let us have the lamentations of Celadyne for a change--though "for a change" is much too strong an expression. The author is quite able to invent more adventures for Marina, if he chooses to, by the hour together. If he does not choose to, well and good.

Was the composition of _Britannia's Pastorals_ then, a useless or inconsiderable feat? Not at all: since to read them is to taste a mild but continuous pleasure. In the first place, it is always pleasant to see a good man thoroughly enjoying himself: and that Browne thoroughly "relisht versing"--to use George Herbert's pretty phrase--would be patent enough, even had he not left us an express a.s.surance:--

"What now I sing is but to pa.s.s away A tedious hour, as some musicians play; Or make another my own griefs bemoan--"

--rather affected, that, one suspects:

"Or to be least alone when most alone, In this can I, as oft as I will choose, Hug sweet content by my retired Muse, And in a study find as much to please As others in the greatest palaces.

Each man that lives, according to his power, On what he loves bestows an idle hour.

Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills Talk in a hundred voices to the rills, I like the pleasing cadence of a line Struck by the consort of the sacred Nine.

In lieu of hawks ..."

--and so on. Indeed, unless it be Wither, there is no poet of the time who practised his art with such entire cheerfulness: though Wither's satisfaction had a deeper note, as when he says of his Muse--

"Her true beauty leaves behind Apprehensions in the mind, Of more sweetness than all art Or inventions can impart; Thoughts too deep to be express'd, And too strong to be suppressed."

Yet Charles Lamb's nice observation--

"Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from their art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession as well as a rich reversion, and that the muse had promise of both lives--of this, and of that which was to come."

--must be extended by us, after reading his lines quoted above, to include William Browne. He, at least, had no doubt of the Muse as an earthly companion.

As for posthumous fame, Browne confides to us his aspirations in that matter also:--

"And Time may be so kind to these weak lines To keep my name enroll'd past his that shines In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves: Since verse preserves, when stone and bra.s.s deceives.

Or if (as worthless) Time not lets it live To those full days which others' Muses give, Yet I am sure I shall be heard and sung Of most severest eld and kinder young Beyond my days; and maugre Envy's strife, Add to my name some hours beyond my life."

This is the amiable hope of one who lived an entirely amiable life in

"homely towns, Sweetly environ'd with the daisied downs:"

and who is not the less to be beloved because at times his amiability prevents him from attacking even our somnolence too fiercely. If the casual reader but remember Browne as a poet who had the honor to supply Keats with inspiration,[A] there will always be others, and enough of them, to prize his ambling Muse for her own qualities.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _Cf._ his lament for William Ferrar (brother of Nicholas Ferrar, of Little Gidding), drowned at sea--

"Glide soft, ye silver floods, And every spring: Within the shady woods Let no bird sing...."

THOMAS CAREW

July 28, 1894. A Note on his Name.

Even as there is an M alike in Macedon and Monmouth, so Thomas Carew and I have a common grievance--that our names are constantly misp.r.o.nounced. It is their own fault, of course; on the face of it they ought to rhyme with "few" and "vouch." And if it be urged (impolitely but with a fair amount of plausibility) that what my name may or may not rhyme with is of no concern to anybody, I have only to reply that, until a month or so back, I cheerfully shared this opinion and acquiesced in the general error. Had I dreamed then of becoming a subject for poetry, I had pointed out--as I do now--for the benefit of all intending bards, that I do not legitimately rhyme with "vouch" (so liable is human judgment to err, even in trifles), unless they p.r.o.nounce it "vooch," which is awkward. I believe, indeed (speaking as one who has never had occasion to own a Rhyming Dictionary), that the number of English words consonant with my name is exceedingly small; but leave the difficulty to the ingenious Dr. Alexander H. j.a.pp, LL.D., F.R.S.E., who has lately been at the pains to compose and put into private circulation a sprightly lampoon upon me. As it is not my intention to reply with a set of verses upon Dr. j.a.pp, it seems superfluous to inquire if _his_ name should be p.r.o.nounced as it is spelt.

But Carew's case is rather important; and it is really odd that his latest and most learned editor, the Rev. J.F. Ebsworth, should fall into the old error. In a "dedicatory prelude" to his edition of "The Poems and Masque of Thomas Carew" (London: Reeves & Turner), Mr.

Ebsworth writes as follows:--

"Hearken strains from one who knew How to praise and how to sue: _Celia's_ lover, TOM CAREW."

Thomas Carew (born April 3d, 1590, at Wickham, in Kent) was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, Master in Chancery, and the grandson of Sir Wymond Carew, of East Antony, or Antony St. Jacob, between the Lynher and Tamar rivers in Cornwall, where the family of Pole-Carew lives to this day. Now, the Cornish Carews have always p.r.o.nounced their name as "Carey," though, as soon as you cross the Tamar and find yourself (let us say) as far east as Haccombe in South Devon, the name becomes "Carew"--p.r.o.nounced as it is written. The two forms are both of great age, as the old rhyme bears witness--

"Carew, Carey and Courtenay, When the Conqueror came, were here at play"--

and the name was often written "Carey" or "Cary," as in the case of the famous Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, and his descendants. In Cornwall, however, where spelling is often an untrustworthy guide to p.r.o.nunciation (I have known people to write their name "Hix" and p.r.o.nounce it as "Hic"--when sober, too), it was written "Carew" and p.r.o.nounced as "Carey"; and there is not the slightest doubt that this was the case with our poet's name. If anyone deny it, let him consider the verse in which Carew is mentioned by his contemporaries: and attempt, for instance, to scan the lines in Robert Baron's "Pocula Castalia," 1650--

"Sweet _Suckling_ then, the glory of the Bower Wherein I've wanton'd many a genial hour, Fair Plant! whom I have seen _Minerva_ wear An ornament to her well-plaited hair, On highest days; remove a little from Thy excellent _Carew_! and thou, dearest _Tom_, _Love's Oracle_! lay thee a little off Thy flourishing _Suckling_, that between you both I may find room...."

Or this by Suckling--

"_Tom Carew_ was next, but he had a fault, That would not well stand with a Laureat; His Muse was hard-bound, and th' issue of 's brain Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain."

Or this, by Lord Falkland himself (who surely may be supposed to have known how the name was p.r.o.nounced), in his "Eclogue on the Death of Ben Jonson"--

"_Let Digby, Carew, Killigrew_ and _Maine, G.o.dolphin, Waller_, that inspired train-- Or whose rare pen beside deserves the grace Or of an equal, or a neighbouring place-- Answer thy wish, for none so fit appears To raise his Tomb, as who are left his heirs."

In each case "Carey" scans admirably, while "Carew" gives the line an intolerable limp.

Mr. Ebsworth's championship.