Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.
On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out,
“Confusion worse confounded”:
Here lies a she sun, and a he moon here,
She gives the best light to his sphere,
Or each is both, and all, and so
They unto one another nothing owe.
— Donne.
Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?
Though God be our true glass, through which we see
All, since the being of all things is He,
Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
Things, in proportion fit, by perspective
Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together?
Since’t is my doom, Love’s undershrieve,
Why this reprieve?
Why doth my She Advowson fly
Incumbency?
To sell thyself dost thou intend
By candle’s end,
And hold the contrast thus in doubt,
Life’s taper out?
Think but how soon the market fails,
Your sex lives faster than the males;
As if to measure age’s span,
The sober Julian were th’ account of man,
Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.
— Cleveland.
Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:
By every wind, that comes this way,
Send me at least a sigh or two,
Such and so many I’ll repay
As shall themselves make winds to get to you.
— Cowley.
In tears I’ll waste these eyes,
By Love so vainly fed;
So lust of old the Deluge punished.
— Cowley.
All arm’d in brass the richest dress of war,
(A dismal glorious sight) he shone afar.
The sun himself started with sudden fright,
To see his beams return so dismal bright.
— Cowley.
An universal consternation:
His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.
Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;
Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
Silence and horror fill the place around:
Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.
— Cowley.
Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.
OF HIS MISTRESS BATHING.
The fish around her crowded, as they do
To the false light that treacherous fishers shew,
And all with as much ease might taken be,
As she at first took me:
For ne’er did light so clear
Among the waves appear,
Though every night the sun himself set there.
— Cowley.
The poetical effect of a lover’s name upon glass:
My name engrav’d herein
Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;
Which, ever since that charm, hath been
As hard as that which grav’d it was.
— Donne.
Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling.
ON AN INCONSTANT WOMAN.
He enjoys thy calmy sunshine now,
And no breath stirring hears,
In the clear heaven of thy brow,
No smallest cloud appears.
He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,
And trusts the faithless April of thy May.
— Cowley.
Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:
Nothing yet in thee is seen:
But when a genial heat warms thee within,
A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
Here buds an L, and there a B,
Here sprouts a V, and there a T,
And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.
— Cowley
As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.
PHYSICK AND CHIRURGERY FOR A LOVER.
Gently, ah gently, madam, touch
The wound, which you yourself have made;
That pain must needs be very much,
Which makes me of your hand afraid.
Cordials of pity give me now,
For I too weak for purgings grow.
— Cowley.
THE WORLD AND A CLOCK.
Mahol, th’ inferior world’s fantastic face,
Through all the turns of matter’s maze did trace;
Great Nature’s well-set clock in pieces took;
On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
Of life and motion; and with equal art
Made up again the whole of every part.
— Cowley.
A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its due honour, Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun:
The moderate value of our guiltless ore
Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
Yet why should hallow’d vestals’ sacred shrine
Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be
Than a few embers, for a deity.
Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
No sun, but warm’s devotion at our fire:
He’d leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
Our profound Vulcan ‘bove that waggoner.
For wants he heat or light? or would have store
Of both? ’tis here: and what can suns give more?
Nay, what’s the sun but, in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!
Then let this truth reciprocally run
The sun’s heaven’s coalery, and coals our sun.
DEATH, A VOYAGE.
No family
E’er rigg’d a soul for heaven’s discovery,
With whom more venturers might boldly dare
Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.
— Donne.
Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.
A LOVER NEITHER DEAD NOR ALIVE.
Then down I laid my head,
Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled:
Ah, sottish soul, said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly:
Fool to resume her broken chain!
And row her galley here again!
Fool, to that body to return
Where it condemn’d and destin’d is to burn!
Once dead, how can it be,
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
That thou should’st come to live it o’er again in me?
— Cowley.
A LOVER’S HEART A HAND GRENADO.
Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
Into the self-same room,
’T will tear and blow up all within,
Like a grenado shot into a magazin.
Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts,
Of both our broken hearts:
Shall out of both one new one make;
From hers th’ allay; from mine, the metal take.
— Cowley.
THE POETICAL PROPAGATION OF LIGHT.
The Prince’s favour is diffus
’d o’er all,
From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall;
Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride’s bright eyes,
At every glance a constellation flies,
And sows the court with stars, and doth prevent
In light and power, the all-ey’d firmament:
First her eye kindles other ladies’ eyes,
Then from their beams their jewels’ lustres rise;
And from their jewels torches do take fire,
And all is warmth, and light, and good desire.
— Donne.
They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their thoughts.
That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality is by Cowley thus expressed:
Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand,
Than woman can be plac’d by Nature’s hand;
And I must needs, I’m sure, a loser be,
To change thee, as thou ‘rt there, for very thee.
That prayer and labour should co-operate are thus taught by Donne:
In none but us, are such mixt engines found,
As hands of double office: for the ground
We till with them; and them to heaven we raise;
Who prayerless labours, or without this, prays,
Doth but one half, that’s none.
By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procrastination, is thus illustrated:
— That which I should have begun In my youth’s morning, now late must be done; And I, as giddy travellers must do, Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost Light and strength, dark and tir’d must then ride post.
All that Man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is comprehended by Donne in the following lines:
Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie;
After, enabled but to suck and cry.
Think, when’t was grown to most, ‘t was a poor inn,
A province pack’d up in two yards of skin,
And that usurp’d, or threaten’d with a rage
Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.
But think that death hath now enfranchis’d thee;
Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;
Think, that a rusty piece discharg’d is flown
In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
And freely flies; this to thy soul allow,
Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatched but now.
They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus apostrophizes beauty:
— Thou tyrant, which leav’st no man free! Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be! Thou murderer, which hast kill’d, and devil, which would’st damn me.
Thus he addresses his mistress:
Thou who, in many a propriety,
So truly art the sun to me.
Add one more likeness, which I’m sure you can,
And let me and my sun beget a man.
Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:
Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been
So much as of original sin,
Such charms thy beauty wears as might
Desires in dying confest saints excite.
Thou with strange adultery
Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
Awake, all men do lust for thee,
And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
The true taste of tears:
Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,
And take my tears, which are Love’s wine,
And try your mistress’ tears at home;
For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
— Donne.
This is yet more indelicate:
As the sweet sweat of roses in a still
As that which from chaf’d musk-cat’s pores doth trill,
As th’ almighty balm of th’ early East,
Such are the sweet drops of my mistress’ breast.
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets:
Rank sweaty froth thy mistress’ brow defiles.
— Donne.
Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be pathetic:
As men in hell are from diseases free,
So from all other ills am I.
Free from their known formality:
But all pains eminently lie in thee.
— Cowley.
They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions.
It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke;
In vain it something would have spoke:
The love within too strong for’t was,
Like poison put into a Venice-glass.
— Cowley.
In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden’s Night is well known; Donne’s is as follows:
Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
Time’s dead low-water; when all minds divest
To-morrow’s business, when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
Who when he opens his eyes, must shut them then
Again by death, although sad watch he keep,
Doth practise dying by a little sleep,
Thou at this midnight seest me.
It must be, however, confessed of these writers that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle, yet where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention:
Hope, whose weak being ruin’d is,
Alike if it succeed, and if it miss;
Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of Fate’s dilemma wound.
Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite,
Both at full noon and perfect night!
The stars have not a possibility
Of blessing thee;
If things then from their end we happy call,
’T is hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
Hope, thou bold taster of delight,
Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour’st it quite!
Thou bring’st us an estate, yet leav’st us poor,
By clogging it with legacies before!
The joys, which we entire should wed,
Come deflower’d virgins to our bed;
Good fortune without gain imported be,
Such mighty customs paid to thee:
For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste;
If it take air before, its spirits waste.
To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin-compasses are two,
Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes
home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run.
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
— Donne.
In all these examples it is apparent that whatever is improper or vicious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange, and that the writers fail to give delight by their desire of exciting admiration.
ANECDOTES OF THE LATE SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. by Hester Lynch Piozzi
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
ANECDOTES OF THE LATE SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
INTRODUCTION
Mrs. Piozzi, by her second marriage, was by her first marriage the Mrs. Thrale in whose house at Streatham Doctor Johnson was, after the year of his first introduction, 1765, in days of infirmity, an honoured and a cherished friend. The year of the beginning of the friendship was the year in which Johnson, fifty-six years old, obtained his degree of LL.D. from Dublin, and — though he never called himself Doctor — was thenceforth called Doctor by all his friends.
Before her marriage Mrs. Piozzi had been Miss Hesther Lynch Salusbury, a young lady of a good Welsh family. She was born in the year 1740, and she lived until the year 1821. She celebrated her eightieth birthday on the 27th of January, 1820, by a concert, ball, and supper to six or seven hundred people, and led off the dancing at the ball with an adopted son for partner. When Johnson was first introduced to her, as Mrs. Thrale, she was a lively, plump little lady, twenty-five years old, short of stature, broad of build, with an animated face, touched, according to the fashion of life in her early years, with rouge, which she continued to use when she found that it had spoilt her complexion. Her hands were rather coarse, but her handwriting was delicate.
Henry Thrale, whom she married, was the head of the great brewery house now known as that of Barclay and Perkins. Henry Thrale’s father had succeeded Edmund Halsey, who began life by running away from his father, a miller at St. Albans. Halsey was taken in as a clerk-of-all-work at the Anchor Brewhouse in Southwark, became a house-clerk, able enough to please Child, his master, and handsome enough to please his master’s daughter. He married the daughter and succeeded to Child’s Brewery, made much money, and had himself an only daughter, whom he married to a lord. Henry Thrale’s father was a nephew of Halseys, who had worked in the brewery for twenty years, when, after Halsey’s death, he gave security for thirty thousand pounds as the price of the business, to which a noble lord could not succeed. In eleven years he had paid the purchase-money, and was making a large fortune. To this business his son, who was Johnson’s friend, Henry Thrale, succeeded; and upon Thrale’s death it was bought for £150,000 by a member of the Quaker family of Barclay, who took Thrale’s old manager, Perkins, into partnership.
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 656
