The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume I Part 30

A Letter concerning the frequent Injection of Temptations.

A Consolatory Letter to one under Censure.

A Short Answer to the Nine Arguments which are brought against the Bishops sitting in Parliament.

For Episcopacy and Liturgy.

A Speech in Parliament.

A Speech in Parliament, in Defence of the Canons made in Convocation.

A Speech in Parliament, concerning the Power of Bishops in secular things.

The Anthems for the Cathedral of Exeter.

All these are printed in 4to, and were published 1660. There are also other Works of this author. An Edition of the whole has been printed in three Vols. folio.

Besides these works, Bishop Hall is author of Satires in Six Books, lately reprinted under the t.i.tle of Virgidemiarum, of which we cannot give a better account than in the words of the ingenious authors of the Monthly Review, by which Bishop Hall's genius for that kind of poetical writing will fully appear.

He published these Satires in the twenty third year of his age, and was, as he himself a.s.serts in the Prologue, the first satirist in the English language.

I first adventure, follow me who list, And be the second English satyrist.

And, if we consider the difficulty of introducing so nice a poem as satire into a nation, we must allow it required the a.s.sistance of no common and ordinary genius. The Italians had their Ariosto, and the French their Regnier, who might have served him as models for imitation; but he copies after the ancients, and chiefly Juvenal and Persius; though he wants not many strokes of elegance and delicacy, which shew him perfectly acquainted with the manner of Horace. Among the several discouragements which attended his attempt in that kind, he mentions one peculiar to the language and nature of the English versification, which would appear in the translation of one of Persius's Satires: The difficulty and dissonance whereof, says he, shall make good my a.s.sertion; besides the plain experience thereof in the Satires of Ariosto; save which, and one base French satire, I could never attain the view of any for my direction. Yet we may pay him almost the same compliment which was given of old to Homer and Archilochus: for the improvements which have been made by succeeding poets bear no manner of proportion to the distance of time between him and them. The verses of bishop Hall are in general extremely musical and flowing, and are greatly preferable to Dr. Donne's, as being of a much smoother cadence; neither shall we find him deficient, if compared with his successor, in point of thought and wit; but he exceeds him with respect to his characters, which are more numerous, and wrought up with greater art and strength of colouring. Many of his lines would do honour to the most ingenious of our modern poets; and some of them have thought it worth their labour to imitate him, especially Mr. Oldham. Bishop Hall was not only our first satyrist, but was the first who brought epistolary writing to the view of the public; which was common in that age to other parts of Europe, but not practised in England, till he published his own epistles. It may be proper to take notice, that the Virgidemiarum are not printed with his other writings, and that an account of them is omitted by him, through his extreme modesty, in the Specialities of his Life, prefixed to the third volume of his works in folio.

The author's postscript to his satires is prefixed by the editor in the room of a preface, and without any apparent impropriety. It is not without some signatures of the bishop's good sense and taste; and, making a just allowance for the use of a few obsolete terms, and the puerile custom of that age in making affected repet.i.tions and reiterations of the same word within the compa.s.s of a period, it would read like no bad prose at present. He had undoubtedly an excellent ear, and we must conclude he must have succeeded considerably in erotic or pastoral poetry, from the following stanza's, in his Defiance to Envy, which may be considered as an exordium to his poetical writings.

Witnesse, ye muses, how I wilful sung These heady rhimes, withouten second care; And wish'd them worse my guilty thoughts among; The ruder satire should go ragg'd and bare, And shew his rougher and his hairy hide, Tho' mine be smooth, and deck'd in carelesse pride.

Would we but breathe within a wax-bound quill, Pan's seven-fold pipe, some plaintive pastoral; To teach each hollow grove, and shrubby hill, Each murmuring brook, each solitary vale To found our love, and to our song accord, Wearying Echo with one changelesse word.

Or lift us make two striving shepherds sing, With costly wagers for the victory, Under Menalcas judge; while one doth bring A carven bowl well wrought of beechen tree, Praising it by the story; or the frame, Or want of use, or skilful maker's name.

Another layeth a well-marked lamb, Or spotted kid, or some more forward steere, And from the paile doth praise their fertile dam; So do they strive in doubt, in hope, in feare, Awaiting for their trusty empire's doome, Faulted as false by him that's overcome.

Whether so me lift my lovely thought to sing, Come dance ye nimble Dryads by my side, Ye gentle wood-nymphs come; and with you bring The willing fawns that mought their music guide.

Come nymphs and fawns, that haunts those shady groves, While I report my fortunes or my loves.

The first three books of satires are termed by the author Toothless satires, and the three last Biting satires. He has an animated idea of good poetry, and a just contempt of poetasters in the different species of it. He says of himself, in the first satire.

Nor can I crouch, and writhe my fawning tayle, To some great Patron for my best avayle.

Such hunger-starven trencher-poetrie, Or let it never live, or timely die.

He frequently avows his admiration of Spenser, whose cotemporary he was. His first book, consisting of nine satires, appears in a manner entirely levelled at low and abject poetasters. Several satires of the second book reprehend the contempt of the rich, for men of science and genius. We shall transcribe the sixth, being short, and void of all obscurity.

A gentle squire would gladly entertaine Into his house some trencher-chaplaine; Some willing man that might instruct his sons, And that would stand to good conditions.

First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed, While his young maister lieth o'er his head.

Second, that he do on no default, Ever presume to sit above the salt.

Third, that he never change his trencher twise.

Fourth, that he use all common courtesies; Sit bare at meales, and one halfe raise and wait.

Last, that he never his young maister beat, But he must ask his mother to define, How manie jerkes she would his breech should line.

All these observed, he could contented bee, To give five markes and winter liverie.

The seventh and last of this book is a very just and humorous satire against judicial astrology, which was probably in as high credit then, as witchcraft was in the succeeding reign.

The first satire of the third book is a strong contrast of the temperance and simplicity of former ages, with the luxury and effeminacy of his own tines, which a reflecting reader would be apt to think no better than the present. We find the good bishop supposes our ancestors as poorly fed as Virgil's and Horace's rustics. He says, with sufficient energy,

Thy grandsire's words favour'd of thrifty leekes, Or manly garlicke; but thy furnace reekes Hot steams of wine; and can a-loose descrie The drunken draughts of sweet autumnitie.

The second is a short satire on erecting stately monuments to worthless men. The following advice is n.o.bly moral, the subsequent sarcasm just and well expressed.

Thy monument make thou thy living deeds; No other tomb than that true virtue needs.

What! had he nought whereby he might be knowne But costly pilements of some curious stone?

The matter nature's, and the workman's frame; His purse's cost: where then is Osmond's name?

Deserv'dst thou ill? well were thy name and thee, Wert thou inditched in great secrecie.

The third gives an account of a citizen's feast, to which he was invited, as he says,

With hollow words, and [2] overly request.

and whom he disappointed by accepting his invitation at once, and not Maydening it; no insignificant term as he applies it: for, as he says,

Who looks for double biddings to a feast, May dine at home for an importune guest.

After a sumptuous bill of fare, our author compares the great plenty of it to our present notion of a miser's feast--saying,

Come there no more; for so meant all that cost; Never hence take me for thy second host.

The fourth is levelled at Ostentation in devotion, or in dress. The fifth represents the sad plight of a courtier, whose Perewinke, as he terms it, the wind had blown off by unbonnetting in a salute, and exposed his waxen crown or scalp. 'Tis probable this might be about the time of their introduction into dress here. The sixth, which is a fragment, contains a hyperbolical relation of a thirsty foul, called Gullion, who drunk Acheron dry in his pa.s.sage over it, and grounded Charon's boat, but floated it again, by as liberal a stream of urine.

It concludes with the following sarcastical, yet wholesome irony.

Drinke on drie foule, and pledge Sir Gullion: Drinke to all healths, but drink not to thyne owne.

The seventh and last is a humorous description of a famished beau, who had dined only with duke Humfrey, and who was strangely adorned with exotic dress.

To these three satires he adds the following conclusion.

Thus have I writ, in smoother cedar tree, So gentle Satires, penn'd so easily.

Henceforth I write in crabbed oak-tree rynde, Search they that mean the secret meaning find.

Hold out ye guilty and ye galled hides, And meet my far-fetched stripes with waiting sides.

In his biting satires he breathes still more of the spirit and stile of Juvenal, his third of this book being an imitation of that satirist's eighth, on Family-madness and Pride of Descent; the beginning of which is not translated amiss by our author. The princ.i.p.al object of his fourth satire, Gallio, would correspond with a modern Fribble, but that he supposes him capable of hunting and hawking, which are exercises rather too coa.r.s.e and indelicate for ours: this may intimate perhaps, that the reign of the great Elizabeth had no character quite so unmanly as our age. In advising him to wed, however, we have no bad portrait of the Pet.i.t Maitre.

Hye thee, and give the world yet one dwarfe more, Such as it got when thou thy selfe was bore.

His fifth satire contrasts the extremes of Prodigality and Avarice; and by a few initials, which are skabbarded, it looks as if he had some individuals in view; though he has disclaimed such an intention in his postscript (now the preface) p. 6. lin. 25, &c. His sixth sets out very much like the first satire of Horace's first book, on the Dissatisfaction and Caprice of mankind--Qui fit Mecaenas; and, after a just and lively-description of our different pursuits in life, he concludes with the following preference of a college one, which, we find in the Specialities of his life, he was greatly devoted to in his youth. The lines, which are far from inelegant, seem indeed to come from his heart, and make him appear as an exception to that too general human discontent, which was the subject of this satire.

'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife, Oh let me lead an academick life; To know much, and to think we nothing know; Nothing to have, yet think we have enowe; In skill to want, and wanting seek for more; In weele nor want, nor wish for greater store.

Envy, ye monarchs, with your proad excesse, At our low sayle, and our high happinesse.