Halleck's New English Literature Part 31

In the first place, his style is simple. In the second place, rare earnestness is coupled with this simplicity. He had something to say, which in his inmost soul he felt to be of supreme importance for all time. Only a great man can tell such truths without a flourish of language, or without straining after effect. At the most critical part of the journey of the Pilgrims, when they approach the river of death, note that Bunyan avoids the tendency to indulge in fine writing, that he is content to rely on the power of the subject matter, simply presented, to make us feel the terrible ordeal:--

"Now I further saw that betwixt them and the gate was a river; but there was no bridge to go over, and the river was very deep... The Pilgrims then, especially Christian, began to despond in their minds, and looked this way and that, but no way could be found by them by which they might escape the river... They then addressed themselves to the water, and entering, Christian began to sink...

And with that, a great darkness and horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him..."

"Now, upon the bank of the river, on the other side, they saw the two s.h.i.+ning men again, who there waited for them... Now you must note that the city stood upon a mighty hill; but the Pilgrims went up that hill with ease, because they had these two men to lead them up by the arms; they had likewise left their mortal garments behind them in the river; for though they went in with them, they came out without them."

[Ill.u.s.tration:

Let Badman's broken leg put check To Badman's course of evil, Lest, next time, Badman breaks his neck, And so goes to the devil.

WOODCUT FROM THE FIRST EDITION OF MR. BADMAN]

Of all the words in the above selection, eighty per cent are monosyllables. Few authors could have resisted the tendency to try to be impressive at such a climax. One has more respect for this world, on learning that it has set the seal of its approval on such earnest simplicity and has neglected works that strive with every art to attract attention.

Bunyan furthermore has a rare combination of imagination and dramatic power. His abstractions became living persons. They have warmer blood coursing in their veins than many of the men and women in modern fiction. Giant Despair is a living giant. We can hear the clanking of the chains and the groans of the captives in his dungeon. We are not surprised to learn that Bunyan imagined that he saw and conversed with these characters. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ is a prose drama. Note the vivid dramatic presentation of the tendency to evil, which we all have at some time felt threatening to wreck our n.o.bler selves:--

"Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, 'I am void of fear in this matter; prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den that thou shall go no further; here will I spill thy soul.'"

It would be difficult to find English prose more simple, earnest, strong, imaginative, and dramatic than this. Bunyan's style felt the shaping influence of the _Bible_ more than of all other works combined. He knew the _Scriptures_ almost by heart.

THE POETRY OF THE PURITAN AGE

Lyrical Verse.--The second quarter of the seventeenth century witnessed an outburst of song that owed its inspiration to Elizabethan lyrical verse.

Soon after 1600 a change in lyric poetry is noticeable. The sonnet fell into disfavor with the majority of lyrists. The two poets of greatest influence over this period, Ben Jonson and John Donne, opposed the sonnet. Ben Jonson complained that it compels all ideas, irrespective of their worth, to fill a s.p.a.ce of exactly fourteen lines, and that it therefore operates on the same principle as the bed of Procrustes. The lyrics of this period, with the exception of those by Milton, were usually less idealistic, ethereal, and inspired than the corresponding work of the Elizabethans. This age was far more imitative, but it chose to imitate Jonson and Donne in preference to Shakespeare. The greatest lyrical poet of this time thus addresses Jonson as a patron saint:--

"Candles I'll give to thee, And a new altar; And thou, Saint Ben, shall be Writ in my psalter."[2]

Cavalier Poets.--Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Thomas Carew (1598?-1639?), Sir John Suckling (1609-1642), and Richard Lovelace (1618--1658) were a contemporary group of lyrists who are often called Cavalier poets, because they sympathized with the Cavaliers or adherents of Charles I.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT HERRICK.]

By far the greatest of this school is Robert Herrick, who stands in the front rank of the second cla.s.s of lyrical poets. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, who by an accident of the time became a clergyman. The parish, or "living," given him by the king, was in the southwestern part of Devons.h.i.+re. By affixing the t.i.tle _Hesperides_ to his volume of nearly thirteen hundred poems, Herrick doubtless meant to imply that they were chiefly composed in the western part of England. In the very first poem of this collection, he announces the subject of his songs:--

"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers; Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.

I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wa.s.sails, wakes; Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes * * * * *

I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing The court of Mab, and of the Fairie-king.

I write of h.e.l.l; I sing and ever shall, Of heaven, and hope to have it after all."

His lyric range was as broad as these lines indicate. The most of his poems show the lightness of touch and artistic form revealed in the following lines from _To the Virgins_:--

"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may: Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow will be dying."

His facility in melodious poetic expression is evident in this stanza from _The Litany_, one of the poems in _n.o.ble Numbers_, as the collection of his religious verse is called:--

"When the pa.s.sing-bell doth toll And the furies in a shoal Come to fright a parting soul, Sweet Spirit, comfort me."

The lyric, _Disdain Returned_, of the courtier, Thomas Carew, shows both a customary type of subject and the serious application often given:--

"He that loves a rosy cheek, Or a coral lip admires, Or from starlike eyes doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires, As old time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away."

Carew could write with facility on the subjects in vogue at court, but when he ventures afield in nature poetry, he makes the cuckoo hibernate! In his poem _The Spring_, he says:--

"...wakes in hollow tree The drowsy Cuckoo and the Humble-bee."

In these lines from his poem _Constancy_, Sir John Suckling shows that he is a typical Cavalier love poet:--

"Out upon it, I have loved Three whole days together; And am like to love three more, If it prove fair weather."

From Richard Lovelace we have these exquisite lines written in prison:--

"Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."

To characterize the Cavalier school by one phrase, we might call them lyrical poets in lighter vein. They usually wrote on such subjects as the color in a maiden's cheek and lips, blossoms, meadows, May days, bridal cakes, the paleness of a lover, and--

"...wa.s.sail bowls to drink, Spiced to the brink."

but sometimes weightier subjects were chosen, when these lighter things failed to satisfy.

Religious Verse.--Three lyrical poets, George Herbert (1593-1633), Henry Vaughan (1622-1695), and Richard Crashaw (1612?-1650?), usually chose religious subjects. George Herbert, a Cambridge graduate and rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury, wrote _The Temple_, a book of religious verse. His best known poem is _Virtue_:--

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky: The dew shall weep the fall to night; For thou must die."

The sentiment in these lines from his lyric _Providence_ has the genuine Anglo-Saxon ring:--

"Hard things are glorious; easy things good cheap.

The common all men have; that which is rare, Men therefore seek to have, and care to keep."

Henry Vaughan, an Oxford graduate and Welsh physician, shows the influence of George Herbert. Vaughan would have been a great poet if he could have maintained the elevation of these opening lines from _The World_:--

"I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright."

Richard Crashaw, a Cambridge graduate and Catholic mystic, concludes his poem, _The Flaming Heart_, with this touching prayer to Saint Teresa:--

"By all of Him we have in thee Leave nothing of myself in me.

Let me so read my life that I Unto all life of mine may die."

His verse, like that of his contemporaries, is often marred by fantastic conceits which show the influence of Donne. Although much of Crashaw's poem, _The Weeper_, is beautiful, he calls the eyes of Mary Magdalene:--

"Two walking baths, two weeping motions, Portable and compendious oceans."

JOHN MILTON, 1608-1674

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN MILTON. _After a drawing by W. Faithorne, at Bayfordbury_.]

His Youth.--The second greatest English poet was born in London, eight years before the death of Shakespeare. John Milton's father followed the business of a scrivener and drew wills and deeds and invested money for clients. As he prospered at this calling, his family did not suffer for want of money. He was a man of much culture and a musical composer of considerable note.

A portrait of the child at the age of ten, the work of the painter to the court, still exists and shows him to have been "a sweet, serious, round-headed boy," who gave early promise of future greatness. His parents, seeing that he acted as if he was guided by high ideals, had the rare judgment to allow him to follow his own bent. They employed the best teachers to instruct him at home. At the age of sixteen he was fully prepared to enter Christ's College. Cambridge, where he took both the B.A. and M.A. degrees.