The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw Volume II Part 74

[1] Crashaw's version is inadvertently inserted here instead of at p.

201. G.

[2] See p. 261 (ll. 13-14 of the Poem) for the subject of the above vivid ill.u.s.tration of the captive Bird, by Mrs. Blackburn, as before, specially for us (in 4to).

[3] Not to be confounded with Handsworth in Staffordshire, or Hensworth near Doncaster.

[4] In his Will (as before) he leaves 'to my aunt Rowthe my owne works.'

She was Dorothy, daughter of John Eyre, of Laughton, co. York.

[5] Mr. Hunter cannot have gone about his inquiries at Handsworth with his usual persistence, for he says (as _supra_), 'I conjecture that he may have been born about 1575, but I do not remember of his baptism in my extracts from the Parish Register of Hansworth, nor indeed any notice of the name of Crashaw,' &c. The Register, as shown above, abounds in the name of Crashaw. For the 'conjecture' of 1575 it is gratifying to be able to subst.i.tute the baptism-record in 1572. Later, indeed, Mr. Hunter discovered his mistake. It is not very creditable to the Rev. Dr. Gatty that in his edition of Hunter's 'Hallamshire'--a district which includes Handsworth--he has left the interesting facts laid to his hand unused.

Surely it was worth while to claim Crashaw as sprung of Handsworth.

[6] I have very specially to thank Dr. Henry Hunter, of Taunton, the Rector of Handsworth (Rev. John Hand, M.A.), and Mr. Henry Cadman, of Ballifield Hall, for continued help in these local searches and recoveries. Dugdale's 'Visitation of Yorkshire' (under Strafford and Tickhill Wapentake) has other Crashaws.

[7] His Will, as before.

[8] Communicated by W. Aldis Wright, Esq. M.A., as before. The remainder of the note refers to after-matters not necessary to be recorded here.

[9] Communicated to me by Professor Mayor, of Cambridge.

[10] On Alvey, see Brook's Puritans, ii. 85-6.

[11] From the 'Honovr of Vertve' we also learn that Usher had baptised our Richard; another very interesting fact. We give the opening words, after the monumental inscription: 'The Funerall Sermon was made by Doctor Vsher of Ireland, then in England, and now Lord Bishop of Meath, in Ireland. It was her owne earnest request to him, that he would preach at the baptisme of her sonne, as he had eight yeares afore, being then also in England, at the baptisme _of her husband's elder sonne_. Now because it proued to be both the baptisme of the sonne and buriall of the mother, as she often said it would, he therefore spake out of this text, 1 Sam. iv. 2.' It will be noticed that 'eight years' from 1620 take us back to 1612-13, our Crashaw's birth-year. I add farther this on Mrs. Crashaw: 'Being yong, faire, comely, brought vp as a gentlewoman, in musick, dancing, and like to be of great estate, and therefore much sought after by yong gallants and rich heires, and good joinctures offered, yet she chose a Divine twise her owne age.'

[12] The longest poem is anonymous. It commences with a curious enumeration of popular 'omens' supposed to precede death or misfortune.

The lines onward put some of the sweet commonplaces of our Literature very well:

'Her time was short, the longer is her rest; G.o.d takes them soonest whom He loveth best; For he that's borne to-day and dyes to-morrow Looseth some dayes of ioy, but yeares of sorrow.'

A fragment of it is in the Dr. Farmer Chetham MS. (as edited by us).

[13] The t.i.tle-page of the 'Iesvites' Gospell,' is extremely disingenuous, as there is no hint whatever of a prior publication, and the wording indeed is such as to make it seem that the Author, though dead well-nigh a quarter of a century at the time, was still living; for it thus runs: 'By W.C. And now presented to the Honourable the House of Commons in Parliament a.s.sembled' (1641). Crashaw senior was Ultra-Protestant, but he is made insulting and offensive beyond his intention, as his own t.i.tle-pages show. Any t.i.tle-page after 1626 was not his.

[14] Robert Dixon, gent., proved the Will on 16th October 1626, and power was reserved for farther proof by Richard Crashaw, who, as under age, could not then act. Except that young Richard is named executor, there is no special provision made for him; and we must a.s.sume that as only son and child he necessarily inherited his portion over and above the (considerable) legacies. It was no uncommon thing at the period to name one young as Master Richard an executor; there are instances even of an unborn child being nominated.

[15] Yet is it notable that the elder Crashaw inst.i.tuted 'a daily Morning Exercise'--reckoned High-churchly then and since. The 'Honour of Vertue' records that 'many hundred poore soules' had to bless G.o.d for the 'Exercise.'

[16] Thomas Baker's note in W. Crashaw's 'Romish Forgeries' (as partly quoted before) is utterly mistaken and misdirectedly strong: 'Erat ille [the elder Crashaw] acerrimus Propugnator Religionis Reformatae, quam Filius ejus Ric. Crashaw, injuriis vexatus, pressus inopia, Patria extorris, et complexu Matris Ecclesiae avulsus, abjuravit.'

[17] The pa.s.sage occurs in his Sermon before 'Lord Lawarre' on setting out for Virginia (see its t.i.tle-page _ante_). After disposing of (1) the divels, (2) the Papists, he comes, as follows, to (3) the Plaiers. 'As for the Plaiers: (pardon me, right honourable and beloued, for wronging this place and your patience with so base a subject), they play with Princes and Potentates, Magistrates and Ministers, nay with G.o.d and Religion and all holy things: nothing that is good, excellent, or holy can escape them: how then can this action? But this may suffice, that they are Players: they abuse Virginia, but they are Players: they disgrace it; true, but they are but Players, and they haue played with better things, and such as for which, if they speedily repent not, I dare say, vengeance waites for them. But let them play on; they make men laugh on earth, but "Hee that sits in heaven laughes them to scorne;"

because like the flie, they so long play with the candle, till first it singe their wings, and at last burnes them altogether. But why are the Players enemies to this Plantation and doe abuse it? I will tell you the causes. First, for that they are so multiplied here, that one cannot liue by another, and they see that wee send of all trades to Virginia, but wee send no Players, which if wee would doe, they that remaine would gaine the more at home. Secondly, as the diuell hates vs because wee purpose not to suffer Heathens, and the Pope because wee have vowed to tolerate no Papists, so doe the Players, because wee resolue to suffer no idle persons in Virginia; which course, if it were taken in England, they know they might turne to new occupations' [sheet H 3, unpaged]. The 'Talk' in Selden's 'Table-Talk' is as follows: 'I never converted but two; the one was Mr. Crashaw, from writing against Plays, by telling him a way how to understand that place [of putting on women's apparel], which has nothing to do in the business [as neither has it]--that the Fathers speak against Plays in their time with reason enough, for they had real idolatries mixed with their Plays, having three altars perpetually upon the stage' ('Poetry,' -- 3). In confirmation farther of our correction of a long-continued error, I find the elder Crashaw in another of his sermons touching incidentally on the very point of 'women's apparel,' as follows: 'The unG.o.dly playes and enterludes so rife in this nation: what are they but a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Babylon, a daughter of error and confusion, a h.e.l.lish device (the divel's own recreation to mock at holy things), by him delivered to the heathen, from them to the Papists, and from them to us?... They know all this, _and that G.o.d accounts it abomination for a man to put on woman's apparel_, and that the ancient Fathers expounded that place against them' (Sermon preached at the Crosse, Feb. 14, 1607 ... justified by the Author ... 1609, 4to, p. 169). Probably the preacher intimated his intention to pursue his condemnation farther, and so the great Scholar put him right on the well-known text.

[18] See Professor Mayor's 'Nicholas Ferrar' (1855), pp. vi. vii. 330.

He has satisfied us that Crashaw was not the author of the Epitaph on Nicholas Ferrar, as Sancroft supposed. See p. 144.

[19] His reading included Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish. His 'exercises' were 'Poetry, Drawing, Limming, Graving' ('exercises of his curious invention and sudden fancy'). See our vol. i. p. xlvii.

[20] 'Pope Alexander the Seventh and the College of Cardinals.' By John Bargrave, D.D., Canon of Canterbury [1662-1680]. With a Catalogue of Dr.

Bargrave's Museum. Edited by J.C. Robertson, M.A., Canon of Canterbury.

Camden Society, 1867, 4to. Todd, in his Milton (i. 250-1), first quoted the above from the MS.

[21] Crashaw's name is duly entered in the list of Converts of the 1648-9 edition of Dr. Carier's 'Missive to his Majesty of Great Britain ... containing the Motives of his Conversion to Catholike Religion'--thus: 'Mr. Richard Crashaw, Master of Arts of Peterhouse, Cambridge, now Secretary to a Cardinall in Rome, well known in England for his excellent and ingenious Poems.' The Countess of Denbigh is also in the list.

[22] In its place (vol. i. p. 234) an Epitaph is headed 'Vpon Doctor Brooke.' This may possibly have been Brook of the Charterhouse; but I had thought it the brother of Christopher Brook (or Brooke)--Dr. Samuel Brooke, the a.s.sociate of Dr. Donne, and author of a dainty little poem on 'Tears.' I am not aware that the Master of the Charterhouse was 'Doctor.' But his name is spelled Brooks in 'Domus Carthusiana,' p. 139.

With reference to 'Priscia.n.u.s' and 'Stomachus' and 'Hymn to Venus,' &c., two things are noticeable: (1) that earlier Crashaw was of the 'earth earthy,' as much as any of his contemporary poets;--his 'Royal' and other early poetry (as above) is heathenish almost--in strange and suggestive contrast with his later, when every atom of him was religious: (2) that he was not without humour or power of satire. It is a man's loss to be without humour--he has a poorer nature if he be without it; and for myself, I relish the human-ness of some of Crashaw's earlier Verse, as distinguished from his after intensely-unearthly spiritual Poetry.

[23] The following entry from the Admission-Book of Pembroke College refers to Crashaw's Tournay: 'Mar. 1, 1620. Joannes Turney, Cantia.n.u.s, annos habens [blank] admissus est sizator sub custodia Mri Duncon.' In another account of the Fellows of Pembroke by Attwood in continuation of Bishop Wren is this: 'Joannes Tourney, Cantia.n.u.s, scholaris Collegii Mro Vaughan [_i.e._ 20 Oct. 1627] t.i.tulum obtinet eodem anno. An. 1632 Praedicator Academiae. An. 1634, Thesaurarius Junior et S. Theologiae Baccalaureus. Thesaurarius Senior an. 1635, et Attornatus Collegii c.u.m Mro Vaughan in negotiis collegium quocunque modo spectantibus.'

[24] From the Admission-Book of Christ's College I get the following: 'Gulielmus Harris, Ess.e.xiensis, filius Gulielmi Equitis de Margret-Ing.

inst.i.tutus in rudimentis grammaticis sub Mro Plumtrae Scholae publicae de Brentwood Archididasculo, admissus Mar. 2, 1623, aetatis 16, sub Mro Siddall.' The family of Harris, lords of the manor of Shenfield in the parish of Margaret-Ing in Ess.e.x, occurs in Morant's 'Ess.e.x.' Sir William Herrys married Frances Astley. From Attwood (as before) I glean these farther entries: 'Gulielmus Herrys, Ess.e.xiensis, Colegii Christi alumnus, Artium Baccalaureus; electus et ille Jan. 8, an. 1630. An. 1631 incipit in Artibus. Monitor autem illo anno, Oct. 15. Optimae spei juvenis.' He may have died of the plague (cf. Cooper's 'Annals of Cambridge,' iii. 243). (From Mr. Wright, as before.)

[25] Stanynough has also verses in the Univ. Collections of 1625 and 1633. He was buried in Queen's College Chapel, 5 March 1634-5 (St. Bot.

Regr.). I do not deem it necessary to record the college entries concerning him, from his admission as pensioner, 30 April 1622, to 'leave to forbear to take orders,' Sept. 1631: renewed 22 July 1633.

[26] The whole --, pp. 34-37, is full of anecdote and of rare interest, and sorrowfully confirmatory of Crashaw's words.

[27] I find I cannot spare room for Cowley's own separate poem on Hope.

It is in all the editions of his Poems.

[28] Bishop Laud, in his Defence, pleads that he had retained many in the Church of England, and names the Duke of Buckingham, spite of his mother's and sister's influence (Works, _s.n._). Buckingham's mother was a fervent Catholic, and here his 'sister,' _i.e._ Susan first Countess of Denbigh, is placed with her as Roman Catholic. Other references go to make the fact certain. I hope to be called on hereafter to give details (as _supra_).

[29] The poems ent.i.tled 'Prayer: an Ode which was prefixed to a little prayer-book given to a young gentlewoman,' and 'To the same Party: covncel concerning her choise' (vol. i. pp. 128-137), have much of the sentiment and turn of wording of the Verse-Letters to the Countess of Denbigh; but I have failed to discover who is designated by their 'M.R.'

It is clear she was a 'gentle'-born Lady. 'Mrs.' does not necessarily designate a married person. She may have been a 'fair young Lady.'

[30] The 'Epiphanie' has some of the grandest things of Crashaw, and things so original in the thought and wording as not easily to be paralleled in other Poets: _e.g._ '_Dread Sweet_' (l. 236), and the superb 'Something a _brighter shadow_, Sweet, of thee' (l. 250). The most Crashaw-like of early 'Epiphany' or Christmas Hymns is that of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, from which I take these lines:

'Awake, my soul, and come away!

Put on thy best array; Least if thou longer stay, Thou lose some minitts of so blest a day.

Goe run, And bid good-morrow to the sun; Welcome his safe return To Capricorn; And that great Morne Wherein a G.o.d was borne, Whose story none can tell, But He whose every word's a miracle.'

(Our ed. of Bp. Taylor's Poems, pp. 22-3.)

_En pa.s.sant_, since our edition of Bishop Taylor's Poems was issued we have discovered that a 'Christmas Anthem or Carol by T.P.,' which appeared in James Clifford's 'Divine Services and Anthems' (1663), is Bishop Taylor's Hymn. This we learn from 'The Musical Times,' Feb. 1st, 1871, in a paper on Clifford's book. Criticising the words as by an unknown T.P.--ignorant that he was really criticising Bp. Jeremy Taylor--the (I suppose) learned Writer thus appreciatively writes of the grand Hymn and these pa.s.sionate yearning words: 'Who, for instance, could seriously sing in church such stuff as the following Christmas Anthem or Carol, by T.P.? which Mr. William Childe (not yet made Doctor) had set to music.' Ahem! And so on, in stone-eyed, stone-eared stupidity.--Of modern celebrations I name as worthy of higher recognition than it has received the following 'Hymn to the Week above every Week,' by Thomas H. Gill; Lon., Mudie, 1844 (pp. 24). There is no little of the rich quaint matter and manner of our elder Singers in this fine Poem.

[31] Cf. vol. i. p. 143.

[32] Like Macaulay in his History of England (1st edition), Dr.

Macdonald by an oversight speaks of Crashaw as 'expelled from _Oxford_,'

instead of Cambridge (cf. our vol. i. p. 32).

[33] The Letter of Pope to Mr. Henry Cromwell is in all the editions of his Correspondence. Willmott (as before) also gives it _in extenso_. Of The Weeper Pope says: 'To confirm what I have said, you need but look into his first poem of The Weeper, where the 2d, 4th, 6th, 14th, 21st stanzas are as sublimely dull as the 7th, 8th, 9th, 16th, 17th, 20th, and 23d stanzas of the same copy are soft and pleasing. And if these last want anything, it is an easier and more unaffected expression. The remaining thoughts in that poem might have been spared, being either but repet.i.tions, or very trivial and mean. And by this example one may guess at all the rest to be like this; a mixture of tender gentle thoughts and suitable expressions, of forced and inextricable conceits, and of needless fillers-up of the rest,' &c. &c. 'Sweet' is the loftiest epithet Pope uses for Crashaw, and that in the knowledge of the 'Suspicion of Herod.' In The Weeper he pa.s.ses some of the very finest things. In his Abelard and Eloisa he incorporates felicities from Crashaw's 'Alexias' within inverted commas; but elsewhere is not very careful to mark indebtedness.

[34] He also quotes, as complete in themselves and 'best alone,' these two lines from No. LI.:

'This new guest to her eyes new laws hath given; Twas once _look up_, 'tis now look down to heaven.'

Dr. Robert Wilde in his Epitaph upon E.T. has the same idea, and puts it quaintly:

'Reader, didst thou but know what sacred dust Thou tread'st upon, thou'dst judge thyself unjust Shouldst thou neglect a shower of tears to pay, To wash the sin of thy own feet away.