Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

but the harvest had been gathered in, and the sheaves were bound up. He had passed a religious and useful life, and had opened a new spring of comfort to his christian brethren, which was not without a beneficial influence upon the stream of our literature. No cloud appears to have darkened the evening of his days: he lived and died among his friends, admired, beloved, and revered. "It did me good," says Baxter, "when Mrs. Wyatt invited me to see Bexley Abbey, in Kent, to see upon the old stone wall in the garden, a summer-house, with this inscription, that 'In that place Mr. George Sandys, after his travels over the world, retired himself for his poetry and contemplations." Of his character, we can only judge from his writings; but his portrait is preserved at Ormsberley Court, and the full benignant eye, and placid forehead, accord with the gentle spirit of his verse.

Sandys occupies a very interesting position among our minor poets. Pope, who when a child of eight years, had been delighted with Ogilby's Homer, was equally pleased with Sandys' translation of Ovid; and Dryden declared him to be the best versifier of his time. His Paraphrase of the Psalms was esteemed by Burney the most harmonious in our language. He was a master of versification, and, although excelling chiefly in lyric measures, could construct the polished couplet with the art of Pope. The lines prefixed to his Paraphrase of the Psalms are polished and musical:

Our graver Muse from her long dream awakes;
Peneian Groves, and Cirrha's caves forsakes:
Inspired with zeal, she climbs th' ethereal Hills
Of Solyma, where bleeding balm distills;
Where Trees of Life unfading youth assure,
And Living Waters all diseases cure.

Lord Falkland justly praised his flowing elegance; his diction is pure and simple; and his fancy, although

deficient in the richness of Crashaw and the energy of Quarles, often imparts a pleasing lustre to the subject. Without rivalling the quaint pathos of Herbert, his strains glow with the same fervour of piety, and he rarely deviates into the eccentricities of that amiable poet. Sandys had not been dazzled by the splendid errors which bewildered the more powerful genius of Cowley; and it should be mentioned to his honour, that he brought no offering from pagan mythology to the Altar of Heavenly Truth, and that the translator of the Metamorphoses is not recognised in the translator of the Psalms. The gentleness and simplicity of his manner will be seen in the following version of the forty-second Psalm.

[ocr errors]

PSALM XLII.

Lord! as the hart embost with heat
Brays after the cool rivulet,

So sighs my soul for thee.

My soul thirsts for the living God:
When shall I enter his abode,

And there his beauty see?

Tears are my food both night and day;
While, Where's thy God? they daily say;
My soul in plaints I shed;
When I remember, how in throngs
We filled thy house with praise and songs;
How I their dances led.

My soul, why art thou so deprést?
Why, O! thus troubled in my breast;
With grief so overthrown?
With constant hope on God await:
I yet his name shall celebrate,
For mercy timely shown.

My fainting heart within me pants:
My God, consider my complaints;

My songs shall praise thee still,
Even from the vale where Jordan flows;
Where Hermon his high forehead shows,
From Mitzar's humble hill.

Deeps unto deeps enraged call,
When thy dark spouts of waters fall,
And dreadful tempest raves:

For all thy floods upon me burst,
And billows after billows thrust
To swallow in their graves.

But yet by day the Lord will charge
His ready mercy to enlarge

My soul, surprised with cares;
He gives my songs their argument;
God of my life, I will present

By night to thee my prayers;

And say, My God, my Rock, O why
And I forgot, and mourning die,
By foes reduced to dust?

Their words, like weapons pierce my bones;
While still they echo to my groans,
Where is the Lord thy trust?

My soul, why art thou so deprest?
O why so troubled in my breast?
Sunk underneath thy load!
With constant hope on God await:
For I his name shall celebrate,
My Saviour and my God.

Fuller mentions Sandys with lively interest.

"He

lived," are his words, " to be a very aged man, whom I saw in the Savoy, anno 1641, having a youthful soul in a decayed body."

62

GILES FLETCHER.

GILES FLETCHER, the author of one of the finest religious poems to which the seventeenth century gave birth, has not received the attention due to his genius, either from his contemporaries, or from posterity. Yet in him and his brother Phineas we behold the two most gifted followers of Spenser; in their hands the torch of allegorical poetry was extinguished, until it was rekindled, after many years, by Dryden, in the Hind and Panther; and by Thomson, in the Castle of Indolence. Browne, indeed, was an admirer and an imitator of Spenser, but in his pastoral vein, rather than in the arabesque imagery of the Fairy Queen. Of Giles Fletcher's life little has hitherto been told, and that little imperfectly. Mr. Chalmers has reprinted Christ's Victory, with a prefatory notice of the writer, in his edition of the British Poets, but without adding much, if anything, to the previous stock of knowledge. In the following memoir something has, perhaps, been accomplished towards the illustration of the poet's history, and the additional facts relating to his father will not, it is trusted, be uninteresting.

Dr. Giles Fletcher, the father of the poet, was the brother of Richard Fletcher, bishop of London. Having been educated at Eton in 1565, he was elected to King's College, Cambridge, where, in 1569, he took the degree of B.A.; that of M.A. in 1573; and LL. D. in 1581. Anthony Wood says that he became an excellent poet. The only specimens of his poetical talent I have seen are the verses upon the death of Walter Haddon*.

Fletcher's political talents appear to have been highly *Haddon was a member of King's College, and one of the most eminent men of the age.

appreciated by Elizabeth, who employed him as her Commissioner in Scotland, Germany, and the Low Countries. I have ascertained that he sat in Parliament in 1585, with Herbert Pelham, Esq., for the then flourishing town of Winchelsea*. In 1588, the memorable year of the Armada, he was sent to Russia, where he concluded a treaty with the Czar, beneficial to English commerce. Soon after his return, he published his observations upon that country; they were, however, soon suppressed, and not reprinted until 1643. They were afterwards incorporated in Hackluyt's Voyages.

The worthy Fuller informs us that, upon Fletcher's arrival in London, he sent for his intimate friend Mr. Wayland, prebendary of St. Paul's, and tutor to Fuller's father, "with whom he expressed his thankfulness to God for his return from so great a danger." The quaint historian, in his careless way, talks of the emperor being habited in blood, and adds that, if he had cut off the ambassador's head, he and his friends might have sought their own amends; but, says he, the question is, "where he would have found it." The reigning monarch was Theodore Ivanowich, and Dr Fletcher expressly assures us that "he was verie gentle, of an easie nature, quiet and mercyful." P. 110, ed. 1591.

On his return, Fletcher was made secretary (townclerk) to the city of London, and one of the Masters of the Court of Requests. The situation of treasurer of St. Paul's he seems to have resigned in 1610. His death is thought to have taken place in the same year.

He also wrote a very curious Discourse concerning the Tartars, which Whiston reprinted in his Memoirs.

Giles Fletcher, the poet, we are told by Fuller, was born in the city of Londont, and according to Mr. Chalmers's *Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. iii. p. 107.

+ Worthies of England, vol. ii. London, p. 82, ed. Nichols, 1811..

« AnteriorContinuar »