As when wild Pentheus, grown mad with fear, With eyes flung back upon his mother's ghost, And torches quencht in blood, doth her stern son accost. Such horrid gorgons, and misformed forms Fly, fly, (he cries) thyself, whate'er thou art, So down into his Torturer's arms he fell And clasps the yielding pillow, half asleep, Euripides might have written these stanzas in the season of his solemn inspiration. In the "staring Orestes," we seem to behold the wretched mourner bursting from the enfolding arms of the weeping Electra, and fleeing in horror from the Furies surrounding his couch*. The poet describes Joseph of Arimathea at the cross. The still grief of the humble and affectionate mourner is described with some quaintness:— But long he stood in his faint arms upholding The departure of Joseph and his companions from the sepulchre is in a purer vein:— * Τας αἱματωπους καὶ δρακοντώδεις κορας.—Euripid. Orest. 1. 250. Thus spend we tears, that never can be spent Here bury we This heavenly earth; here let it softly sleep, So all the body kist, and homeward went to weep. The fourth canto, Christ's Triumph after Death, commences with a morning-landscape, not free from affectation, but displaying a poetical selection of circumstances, and in one or two passages recalling Milton. But now the second morning from her bower, In the eastern garden; for heaven's silent brow The early sun came lively dancing out And the brag lambs ran wantoning about, That heaven and earth might seem in triumph both to The engladdened Spring, forgetful now to weep, The waking swallow broke her half-year's sleep, With violets He illustrates the glorious unclouding of the Godhead, when it had put off the tabernacle of flesh, by an exquisite image: So fairest Phosphor, the bright morning star, Shooting his flaming locks with dew besprent, And the bright drove, fleeced in gold, he chases The entrance into heaven, the triumph of the angelic host, the everlasting happiness of the saints of God, these form the sacred subjects of the poet's pen in the concluding book of his poem: Christ will be the light of the Christian Paradise And if a sullen cloud, as sad as night, What lustre super-excellent will He Lighten on those that shall his sunshine see, In that all-glorious court, in which all glories be? There every tear is wiped away from the eyes of those who, having fought a good fight, have entered into the joy of their Lord : No sorrow now hangs clouding on their brow, No loss, no grief, no change, wait on their winged hours. The impersonation of the Deity is in the loftiest spirit of Hebrew poetry, although, towards the conclusion, it partakes of that beautiful mysticism of which Bishop Taylor, in his majestic prose, has furnished so many splendid examples : In midst of this city celestial, Where the eternal Temple should have rose, End and Beginning of each thing that grows, That hath no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, That moving all, is yet immoveable, Things past are present, things to come are past; It is no flaming lustre made of light, And yet it is a kind of inward feast, A harmony that sounds within the breast, An odour, light, embrace, in which the soul doth rest. Although several poems had appeared in Italy, founded upon the life and resurrection of our Saviour, Fletcher claims the merit of having been the earliest of our own poets who strung his lyre to this noble theme. In the management of the subject he was naturally influenced by the character of the Fairy Queen. Spenser died in 1598-9. At this time Fletcher could scarcely have been more than twelve or thirteen years old; but it is evident that his study of that charming poem commenced in childhood. In the preceding remarks it has been sometimes necessary to bring Fletcher into direct comparison with Milton. The peculiar excellencies of the Paradise Regained and Christ's Victory, are not difficult to define. In Scriptural simplicity of conception, and in calm and sustained dignity of tone, the palm of superiority must be awarded to Milton; while in fertility of fancy, earnestness of devotion, and melody of expression, Fletcher may be said to rival his sublime successor. Christ's Victory consists of a series of pictures; it is deficient in unity, and in the concentration of interest demanded by an epic poem. The power of the writer comes out in occasional touches of great vigour and beauty, indeed, but rendered comparatively ineffective by their uncertainty. His poem, to employ his own magnificent image, does not blaze like a rock of diamond. It has not the lustre of one great luminous whole, unbroken in the purity of its splendour; its brilliancy is dazzling, but fragmentary. Fletcher drew his sacred imagery from Spenser; Milton from the Bible. The first flashes; the second shines. 88 PHINEAS FLETCHER. THE life of Phineas Fletcher, though equally studious and retired, seems to have been more happy and tranquil than that of his brother. He was admitted from Eton, a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow. In 1621, Sir Henry Willoughby presented him to the living of Hilgay, in Norfolk, which he probably retained until his death, about 1650. In that year he was succeeded by Arthur Tower, who was appointed by the Committee of plundered ministers *. The poems of Fletcher, although not published until he was 66 entering upon his winter," we learn from the dedication to Mr. Edward Benlowes, were the “ raw essays" of his "very unripe years." Of his principal composition, The Purple Island, it does not come within my plan to give an elaborate account. It was praised by Cowley, and Quarles addressed the author as the Spenser of the age. Much of the picturesque fancy of the Fairy Queen certainly plays over the ingenious eccentricities of The Purple Island. Fletcher possessed, in no small degree, the same rich imagination, the same love of allegorical extravagances, and the same sweetness and occasional majesty of numbers. But of all the qualities required to form a poet, he was especially deficient in taste, in that sense of the soul, which, by a kind of Ithuriel instinct, examines every image and epithet, and rejects them when not accordant with the dignity of the art. No man of genius, with the exception of Fletcher, and Quarles, who meditated a poem on a similar subject, would have thought * Blomefield's Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 11 vols. 8vo. London, 1805-10, v. 7, p. 373. Mr. Chalmers, who refers to this History, takes no notice of its author's error in calling P. Fletcher the brother of the Bishop of London, who, we have seen, was his uncle. |