On the 20th of November, 1636, he removed to Peterhouse, of which he was made fellow in 1637, and Master of Arts in the following year. Of his occupations in these seasons of tranquillity, the only fruits are to be found in his poems; but his various acquirements prove him to have been something more than a dreamer. In 1641, Wood says that he took degrees at Oxford. He also entered into Holy Orders, and soon became a preacher of great energy and power. His richness of diction, and animation of style, were well calculated to render him an effective minister of the Gospel. Stormy days were swiftly coming on. In August, 1642, the University had testified its loyalty by sending the public plate to the King to coin into money; and Cromwell, then member of Parliament for the Town of Cambridge, is supposed to have succeeded in intercepting a portion of the treasure. An act of devotion to the royal cause was not likely to be forgotten. In 1644, the University was converted into a garrison for the Parliament, principally under the superintendence of Cromwell. "That his soldiers," says Mr. Godwin, were not debauched or licentious, is shown by the most indubitable testimony:" and he proceeds to confirm his assertion in a strange manner, by admitting that they frequently displayed the fervour of their zeal, in the demolishing of images and painted windows. The hand of the spoiler was, of a truth, stretched out with impunity; the beautiful grove of Jesus College was cut down, and the precious collection of coins taken away from St. John's. But the animosity of the Sectaries was not exhausted in these excesses. In the same year they prepared to introduce those changes into the system of the University, which their defenders affirm to have been demanded by the circumstances of the times. The direction of these alterations was intrusted to the Earl of Manchester, whose courtly elegance and winning affability have gained the applause of Clarendon. Crashaw was ejected from his fellowship on the 8th of April, 1644, and was succeeded by Howard Beecher. Joseph Beaumont, the author of Psyche, was banished on the same day. Whether he endured this unexpected calamity with patience and resignation, we are left to conjecture. Cambridge had been his abode for twelve years: his own College was full of old familiar faces, and every spot in its neighbourhood must have been endeared by delightful associations. He had besides been accustomed so long to indulge the romance of his imagination, that the intelligence of his dismissal startled him like a hasty awakening from a pleasant dream. How he supported himself after leaving Cambridge is not known; his friends were as poor and helpless as himself. About this time he is considered by Carter to have seceded from the Protestant Church*. Carter, after mentioning his conversion, adds, that "though a person of exalted piety, yet he was a disgrace to the list." We must not be too harsh in our censure of his conduct. The seed of error that took deep root in the poet's bosom had also sprung up and flourished for a little while in the breasts of Jeremy Taylor and Chillingworth, who were both, for a short period, Catholics. In the Legenda Lignea, Crashaw is termed an active ring-leader, and his motives are attacked with great virulence and malignity: "Master Crashaw (son to the London Divine), and sometimes Fellow of St. Peterhouse, in Cambridge, is another slip of the times that is transplanted into Rome. This peevish, silly seeker, glided away from his principles in a poetical vein of fancy, and an impertinent curiosity: and finding that verses and measured flattery took and much pleased some female wits, Crashaw crept by degrees into favour and acquaintance with some court ladies VOL. I. * History of the University of Cambridge. X * and got first the estimation of an innocent, harmless convert; and a purse being made by some deluded, vain-glorious ladies and their friends, the poet was despatched in a pilgrimage to Rome, where if he had found in the See Pope Urban the Eighth, instead of Pope Innocent, he might possibly have received a greater number and a better quantity of benedictions. But Innocent being more harsh and dry, the poor small poet, Crashaw, met with none of the generation and kindred of Mecenas, nor any great blessing from his Holiness, which misfortune puts the pitiful wire-drawer into a humour of admiring his own raptures; and in this fancy, like Narcissus, he is fallen in love with his own shadow, conversing with himself in verse, and admiring the birth of his own brains. He is only laughed at, or at most pitied, by his new patrons, who, conceiving him unworthy of any preferment in their Church, have given him leave to live like a lean swine, and almost ready to starve in poor mendicant quality*." One of the "Court ladies" particularly alluded to, was the Countess of Denbight in whose conversion to the Papal creed he appears to have been instrumental. But the charges of dishonesty and desire of gain, so vehemently urged against him, are unfounded; whatever his sentiments may have been, he was not drawn from the faith of his father by those "chords of gold and silver twist,” which the writer of the Legenda says "fetched over so many." Crashaw did not remain long in England; he retired to France, where his sufferings were very severe. An unknown and humble scholar could not hope to obtain, in a foreign land, the assistance denied him in his own. In 1646, Cowley, then Secretary to Lord Jermyn, found him in Paris, and in great poverty. Cowley had *Legenda Lignea, Lond. 1652, p. 169. † Among his poems is a letter to his Lady, against irresolution and delay in matters of religion. been his companion at Cambridge, and in this hour of affliction is said to have made him partaker of his slender fortunes. Crashaw's introduction to the Queen of Charles the First, has been usually attributed to the influence of Cowley; but Dodd, the Catholic Church-historian, ascribes it to Dr. Gough and Mr. Car. Cowley's connexion with the fortunes of the King point him out as the most probable benefactor. From the Queen, Crashaw received letters of recommendation to Italy, where he became Secretary to a Cardinal at Rome. Cole thinks that he was acting in this capacity in 1648, a surmise undoubtedly well founded, although the reference to Carrier's letter to James must be erroneous, since it was published more than thirty years before; and George Hakewill's learned reply to it appeared in 1616. Of Crashaw's condition in Italy, a brief, but interesting account is given by Dr. John Bargrave, who had been his fellow-collegian at Peterhouse, and who was also driven from Cambridge by the warrant of the Earl of Manchester*. Upon his expulsion he went abroad, and Wood calls him a great traveller :— "When I first went of my four times to Rome, there were three or four revolters to the Roman Church, that had been Fellows of Peterhouse, in Cambridge, with myself. The name of one of them was Mr. R. Crashaw, who was of the Seguita (as their term is), that is, an attendant, or one of the followers of Cardinal Palotta, for which he had a salary of crowns by the month (as the custom is), but no diet. Mr. Crashaw infinitely commended his Cardinal, but complained extremely of the wickedness of those of his retinue, of which he, having his Cardinal's ear, complained to him; upon which, the Italians fell so far out with him, that the Cardinal, to * Cole's MSS., vol. 42, p. 114, 115, 125, 126, 127. secure his life, was fain to put him from his service, and procuring him some small employ at the Lady's of Loretto, whither he went in pilgrimage in the summer-time, and, over-heating himself, died in a few weeks after he came thither; and it was doubtful whether he was not poi soned*." In the margin of the folio edition of Cowley's Works, he is said to have died of a fever at Loretto, but the time is not mentioned. He was certainly dead before 1652, for in that year his Carmen Deo Nostro, Te Decet Hymnus, &c., were published at Paris, by his friend, Thomas Car, to whom the poet's manuscripts appear to have been bequeathed; for he says, 'Twas his intent That what his riches penn'd, poor Car should print. His fate was wept by Cowley in a strain of noble tenderness and enthusiasm. Poet and Saint! To thee alone are given The two most sacred names of earth and heaven, Next that of Godhead with humanity. And built their pyramids to human pride; Like Moses, thou, though spells and charms withstand, Hail, Bard triumphant, and some care bestow On us, the poets militant below, Oppos'd by our old enemy, adverse chance, Attack'd by envy and by ignorance. Thou, from low earth in nobler flames didst rise, The few particulars it is in my power to communicate respecting his manners and acquirements, are *The MS. from which the above extract is taken is printed in Todd's Works of Milton. Folio edition, 1669. This line cannot surely be correct. Might not Cowley have written The hardest, rarest, union which can be? |