Part 4

This historically-memorable treatise has already been reproduced in the Prose Works.[43] Elsewhere I examine it critically.[44] It must suffice here to state that later the King (Charles I.), having an impoverished exchequer, had recourse to forced loans of various amounts. Hating the control of Parliament, he persisted in substituting his will for law, his "proclamation" for statute. Feeling the treacherousness of his standing-ground of prerogative, the Judges were applied to, and with loyalty to the monarch rather than to their country, they somewhat favoured the King's 'demands.' Charles deemed their "opinion" to have a somewhat "uncertain sound," and presented to the Judges a paper for their signature, recognising the legality of the collection. This was refused. One of the victims of the sovereign's wrath was Chief-Justice Crew, who was "discharged" on the 9th of November, 1626 (Foss's Judges, vi., p. 291). Sir John Davies was appointed as his successor; and one cannot help recognising that the opinions revealed in his "Jus Imponendi" contributed to the succession. For one, I should rather have found Sir John Davies on the other side, spite of his great array of "precedents" and ingenious applications to the then circumstances and exigencies, and necessarily ignorant of the lengths Charles as distinguished from James, was to proceed. Technically, there had been "precedents" no doubt; but long "use and wont" had rendered so-called regal rights obsolete, and it was insanity to revive them, as Charles I.,--who inherited James's high notions of regal authority,--found out when too late. But, passing to Davies, the "lean fellow" called Death was nearer the Knight than was the Chief-Justiceship. Purple and ermine robes were actually bought, but they were not to be donned. He had told a Mr. Mead that he was at supper with the Lord Keeper on the 7th of December,[45] and that he fully expected the great promotion. The air was thick with "reports" to the same effect. He was found dead in his bed on the morning of the 8th December, cut down, it has been supposed, by apoplexy. Three days after, he was interred in S. Martin's Church, London. Later a double inscription for himself and his widow (who was re-married to Sir Archibald Douglas,) long hung on the third pillar, near the grave. The original Latin, with our translation, are as follow:[46]--

[Footnote 43: Vol. III., pp. 1-116.]

[Footnote 44: In the fuller Life, as before.]

[Footnote 45: Pearce's "Inns of Court," p. 293.]

[Footnote 46: See Stow's "Environs of London," by Strype, Book VI., p. 72. But our text of the Inscriptions is from the Carte MSS. Dr. E. F. Rimbault's MS. in the autograph of John Le Neve, as published in Notes and Queries, 1st series, Vol. V., p. 331, is inexplicably imperfect and blundering.]

D. O. M. S.

Johannes Davys Equestris ordinis quondam Attornati Regii Generalis amplissima prudentiâ in regno Hyberniæ functus, inde in patriam revocatus inter servientes Domini Regis ad Legem primum Locum obtinuit; post varia in utrone munere præ clare gesta ad ampliora jam designatus, repente spem suorum destituit suam implevit ab humanis honoribus ad c[oe]lestem gloriam evocatus Ætatis anno 57.^{o} Vir ingenio compto, rarâ facundiâ Oratione cum solutâ tum numeris restrictâ Felicissimus. Juridicam severitatem morum elegantiâ et ameniore eruditione temperavit. Iudex incorruptus; Patronus fidus Ingenuæ pietatis amore et anxiæ superstitionis contemptu Iuxta insignis. Plebeiarum animarum in religionis negotio Pervicacem [Greek: mikropsuchian] ex edito despiciebet Fastidium leniente miseratione. Ipse magnanimè probus, religiosus, liber, et c[oe]lo admotus Uxorem habuit Dominam Eleanoram Honoratissimi Comitis de Castlehaven Baronis Audley filiam Unicam ex eâ prolem superstitem hæredem reliquit Luciam illustrissimo Ferdinando Baroni Hastings Huntingdoniæ Comiti nuptam. Diem Supremam obiit 8^{o} idus Decembris Anno Domini 1626. Apud nos exemplum relinquens, hic resurrectionem justorum expectat. Accubat dignissimo marito incomparabilis uxor Quæ illustre genus Et generi pares animos Christianâ mansuetudine temperavit Erudita super sexum Mitis infra sortem Plurimis Major Quia humilior In eximiâ formâ sublime ingenium In venustâ comitate singularem modestiam In femineo corpore viriles animos In rebus adversissimis serenam mentem In impio sæculo pietatem et rectitudinem inconcussam Possedit. Non illi robustam animam aut res lauta laxavit, aut Angusta contraxit, sed utramque sortem pari vultu Animoque non excepit modo sed rexit Quippe Dei plena cui plenitudini Mundus nec benignus addere Nec malignus detrahere potuisset Satis Deum jamdudum spirans et sursum aspirans sui Ante et Reip. fati præsaga, salutisque æternæ certissima Ingente latoque ardore in Servatoris dilectissimi sinum Ipsius sanguine lotam animam efflavit Rebus humanis exempta immortalitatem induit III. Non. Quintilis Anno Salutis 1652. Ps. 16. 9. Etiam caro mea habitat securè quà non es Derelicturus animam meam in sepulchro.

D(eo) O(ptimo) M(aximo) S(acrum)

To God the Best and Greatest: Sacred. John Davys of knightly rank, having formerly discharged with prudence the highest duties of King's Attorney General in the realm of Ireland: thence having been recalled to his own country, secured the first place among the servants of his lord the King, at the Law. After various services nobly rendered in each office, being now nominated to more distinguished (appointments) he suddenly frustrated the hope of his friends but fulfilled his own--being called away from human honours to celestial glory, in the year of his age 57. A man for accomplished genius, for uncommon eloquence, for language whether free or bound in verse, Most happy. Judicial sternness with elegance of manners and more pleasant learning he tempered. An uncorrupt Judge, a faithful Patron For love of free-born piety and contempt of fretting superstition alike remarkable. He looked down from on high on the obstinate narrowness of plebeian souls in the matter of religion, pity softening his disdain. Himself magnanimously just, religious, free, and moved by heaven, Had for wife the Lady Eleanor of the Right Honble. Earl of Castlehaven, Baron Audley, daughter: His only surviving offspring by her he left as heiress, Lucy, to the most illustrious Ferdinand Baron Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, married. He spent his last day the 8th December In the year of our Lord 1626. With us leaving an example: here for the resurrection of the Just, he waits.

* * * * *

Near to her most worthy husband lies his incomparable Wife: Who her illustrious birth And spirit equal to her race With Christian mildness tempered. Learned above her sex, Meek below her rank, Than most people greater Because more humble, In eminent beauty She possessed a lofty mind, In pleasing affability, singular modesty: In a woman's body a man's spirit, In most adverse circumstances a serene mind, In a wicked age unshaken piety and uprightness. Not for her did Luxury relax her strong soul, or Poverty narrow it: but each lot with equal countenance And mind, she not only took but ruled. Nay she was full of God, to which fulness Neither a smiling world could have added, Nor from it a frowning world have taken away. Now for a long time sufficiently breathing of God and aspiring above, of her own And the Commonwealth's fate divining beforehand, And most sure of Eternal Salvation With a mighty and huge ardour into her Beloved Saviour's breast, She breathed forth her soul washed in His own blood. Taken away from things human she put on immortality on the fifth of July, in the year of Salvation, 1652. Ps. 16. 9. My flesh also dwells securely because Thou wilt not leave my soul in the sepulchre.

One is willing to accept the "golden lies" of these Epitaphs in either case.

Sir John Davies had several children. One, who was semi-idiotic, was drowned in Ireland. Others alleged to have been born, have not been traced. His daughter Lucy, of the Inscriptions, and by whom, no doubt, they were procured, became famous in her generation as Countess of Huntingdon. We have to deplore that while we have a fine portrait of her, none, as yet, has been found of her Father. His Will and Charities, and their singular after-history, will be given in my fuller Life (as before). Pass we now to

II. CRITICAL.

I shall limit myself in this second half of the Memorial-Introduction to a brief statement and examination of certain characteristics of the Poetry of Sir John Davies--the limitation being imposed by the contents of the present volumes.[47] There are Poets whose truest and most certain fame rests on so-called minor poems; and yet commonly their bulkier productions have over-shadowed these. From Milton to Wordsworth it is to be lamented that to the many they should be represented by "Paradise Lost" and "The Excursion"; or to descend, that Thomas _Campbell_ and Samuel _Rogers_ should have so hidden behind their "Pleasures of Hope" and "Pleasures of Memory" their rare and real faculty as Poets--for while in the larger poems of Milton and Wordsworth there is of the imperishable stuff that only genius of a lofty type weaves, it is rather (_meo judicio_) in "purple patches" than in the web as a whole. In Milton and Wordsworth you do not read them at their high_est_ in their Epics but in their shorter poems; while Campbell and Rogers should long since have died out of men's hearts had they left nothing behind them save the smooth and prize-poem-like common-places of their "Pleasures." In Milton the remark requires modification, for only in "Paradise Lost" has he put forth to uttermost daring his Imagination--than which no writer of all time has approached him for grandeur of vision and splendour of utterance. But substantially I think that those capable of discernment will agree with me that if Time may shut and leave unread except by an elect few, many pages of the 'great' and volume-filling poems, the lesser will assuredly draw more and more homage, and abide the regalia of our Literature.

[Footnote 47: His Prose is of no common order; and will be critically examined in the fuller Life, along with his Prose Works in the Fuller Worthies' Library, as before.]

It is different with Sir John Davies. His "Orchestra" and "Hymnes to Astræa" and Minor Poems, preceded considerably his "Nosce Teipsum," but it was his "Nosce Teipsum" that made King James I. prick up his ears on hearing his name, and it is "Nosce Teipsum" that is the poem that will secure immortality to Sir John Davies. His other poetry has special remarkablenesses--as will appear--but in "Nosce Teipsum" alone have we the inspiration and spontaneity, the insight and speculation, the subtlety and yet definiteness, the "burden" (in the prophetic sense) and the melody of the Poet as distinguished from the versifier or verse-Rhetorician.

I value "Nosce Teipsum" as a first thing for its _deep and original thinking_, i.e. for its _intellectual strength_--all the more remarkable that as the former part of the Memorial-Introduction shows, he was only in his 28th-29th year when he composed it. Of its art I shall have somewhat to say anon: but regarding it as a "_philosophical_ poem" and as a contribution to metaphysic, I place foremost the THOUGHT in it, as at once a characteristic and a merit (if merit be not too poor a word). DAVIES (along with FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE and DONNE) simply as Thinker on the profoundest problems of nature and human nature, seems to me to stand out pre-eminently, and in saying this, I regard it as sheer nonsense to exalt the workmanship at the expense of the material--to ask me to recognize in a bit of tin ingeniously and painstakingly etched into a kind of miracle of execution something co-equal with a solid bar of gold as it gleams i' the face of the sun in its purged and massive simpleness; or to put it unmetaphorically, I must pronounce judgment on the rank of a Poet _qua_ a Poet fundamentally on the kind and quality of the thought on higher and deeper things that he puts into his verse and that he strikes out in others. Your mere artist-Poet is surely third-rate and must even go beneath the music-composer of to-day.

"Nosce Teipsum" as it was practically the earliest so it remains the most remarkable example of deep reflective-meditative thinking in verse in our language or in any language. The student of this great poem will very soon discover that within sometimes homeliest metaphors there is folded a long process of uncommon thought on the every-day facts of our mysterious existence. I call the thinking deep, because "Nosce Teipsum" reveals more than eyes that looked on the surface--reveals penetrative and bold descent to the roots of our being and reachings upward to the Highest. Your mere realistic word-painter of what he sees, is shallow beside a Poet who passes beneath the surface and circumstance and fetches up from sunless depths or down from radiant altitudes fact and facts--each contributory to that ultimate philosophy which while it shall accept every proved fact, will not rush off hysterically shouting "eureka," with ribald accusations of all that generations have held to be venerable and sustaining. I call the thinking original, for there is evidence everywhere in "Nosce Teipsum" that the penitent recluse of Oxford made his own self his study--as really if not as avowedly as Wordsworth.

I am aware in claiming originality for Davies that in that huge waste-basket of our Literature--Nichols' Literary Illustrations (Vol. IV. pp. 549-50) there is a letter from an Alexander Dalrymple, Esq., who is designated "the great hydrographer" to "Mr. Herbert" (the Bibliographer I opine) wherein he takes different ground. We must traverse his charge. He thus writes:--"Dear Sir, I have lately purchased the following old books" (he enumerates several).... "I have also got 'Wither's translation of Nemesius de Naturâ hominis' by which I find Sir John Davies's poem on the Immortality of the Soul is chiefly taken from Nemesius" ... "I have picked up a tract in 4to. by Thomas Jenner, with some very good plates, the marginal notes of which seem to be what the heads of Tate's edition of Sir John Davies's are taken from."

Were this true it would utterly take from "Nosce Teipsum" the first characteristic and merit I claim for it--deep and original thought. But it is absolutely untrue, an utter delusion, as any one will find who takes the pains that I have done to read, either the original Nemesius, or what this sapient book-buyer mentions, Wither's translation. With my mind and memory full of "Nosce Teipsum" and the poem itself beside me, I have read and re-read every page, sentence and word of Nemesius and Wither (and there is a good deal of Wither in his translation: 1636) and I have not come upon a single metaphor or (as the old margin-notes called them) "similies," or even observation in "Nosce Teipsum" drawn from Nemesius or Wither. The only element in common is that necessarily Nemesius adduces and discusses the opinions of the Heathen Philosophers on the many matters handled by him, and Sir John Davies does the same with equal inevitableness. But to base a charge of plagiarism against "Nosce Teipsum" on this, is to reason on the connection between Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands (if the well-worn folly be a permissible reference). The following is the title-page of the quaint old tome and as it is by no means scarce, any reader can cross-question our witness: "The Nature of Man. A learned and useful Tract written in Greek by Nemesius, surnamed the Philosopher; sometime Bishop of a City in Ph[oe]necia, and one of the most ancient Fathers of the Church. Englyshed, and divided into Sections, with briefs of their principle contents by Geo. Wither. London: Printed by M. F. for Henry Taunton in St. Duncan's Churchyard in Fleetstreet. 1636." (12^{o} 21 leaves and pp. 661.) Chronologically--Wither's translation was not published until 1636, while "Nosce Teipsum" was published in 1599; but Nemesius' own book no more than Wither's warrants any such preposterous statements as this Alexander Dalrymple makes. Even in the treatment of the "opinions" of the Heathen Philosophers which come up in Nemesius, and in "Nosce Teipsum," the latter while 'intermedling' with the same returns wholly distinct answers in refutation. The "opinions" themselves as being derived of necessity from the same sources are identical; but neither their statement nor refutation. Nemesius is ingenious and well-learned, but heavy and prosaic. Sir John Davies is light of touch and a light of poetic glory lies on the lamest "opinion." The "Father of the Church" goes forth to war with encumbering armour: the Poet naked and unarmed beyond the spear wherewith he 'pierces' everything, viz. human consciousness. Jenner's forgotten book had perhaps been read by Tate, but that concerns Tate not Sir John Davies. I pronounce it a hallucination to write "Sir John Davies' poem on the immortality of the Soul is chiefly taken from Nemesius." Not one line was taken from Nemesius.

Before passing on it may be well to illustrate here from the "contents" of two chapters (representative of the whole) in Wither's Nemesius, the merely superficial agreement between them and "Nosce Teipsum." In the Poem under "The Soule of Man and the Immortalitie thereof" various opinions of its 'nature' are thus summarized:

"One thinks the _Soule_ is _aire_; another _fire_; Another _blood_, diffus'd about the heart; Another saith, the _elements_ conspire, And to her _essence_ each doth giue a part.

_Musicians_ thinke our _Soules_ are _harmonies_, _Phisicians_ hold that they _complexions_ bee; _Epicures_ make them swarmes of _atomies_, Which doe by chance into our bodies flee." (p. 26.)

In Nemesius, c. 2. § I, the 'headings' are: "I. The severall and different Opinions of the Ancients concerning the Sovl, as whether it be a Substance; whether corporeall, or incoporeall, whether mortal or immortal P. II. The confutation of those who affirme in general that the Sovl is a corporeall-substance. III. Confutations of their particular Arguments, who affirme that the Sovl is Blood, Water, or Aire." These are all common-places of ancient 'opinion' and of the subject; and anything less poetical than Nemesius' treatment of them is scarcely imaginable. Here if anywhere Davies' indebtedness must have been revealed; but not one scintilla of obligation suggests itself to the Reader. Again in the Poem, after a subtle and very remarkable 'confutation' of the notion that the Soul is a thing of 'Sense' only, there comes proof "That the Soule is more than the Temperature of the humours of the Body;" and nowhere does Davies show a more cunning hand than in his statement of the 'false opinion.' Turning once more to Nemesius c. II. § 3, these are its 'headings:'--"I. It is here declared, that the Soul is not (as Galen implicitly affirmeth) a Temperature in general. II. It is here proved also, that the Soul is no particular temperature or quality. III. And it is likewise demonstrated that the Soul is rather governesse of the temperatures of the Body, both ordering them, and subduing the vices which arise from the bodily tempers." Here again we would have expected some resemblances or suggestions; but again there is not a jot or tittle of either. Thus is it throughout. One might as well turn up the words used in "Nosce Teipsum" in a quotation-illustrated Dictionary of the English Language (such as Richardson's) and argue 'plagiarism' because of necessarily agreeing definitions, as from a few scattered places in "Nosce Teipsum" discussing the same topics, allege appropriation of Nemesius. Your mere readers of title-pages and contents, or glancers over indices are constantly blundering after this fashion. Dalrymple was one of these.

The headings of the successive sections--removed in our text from the margins to their several places--suffice to inform us of the original lines of thought and research and illustration pursued in "Nosce Teipsum" and thither I refer the Reader. The merest glance will show that in "Nosce Teipsum" you have the whole breadth of the field traversed--and that for the first time in Verse. I can only very imperfectly illustrate either the depth or the originality of the poem. Almost as at the opening of the book, take these uniting both:--

"And yet alas, when all our lamps are burnd, Our bodyes wasted, and our spirits spent; When we haue all the learnèd _Volumes_ turn'd, Which yeeld mens wits both help and ornament:

What can we know? or what can we discerne? When _Error_ chokes the windowes of the minde, The diuers formes of things, how can we learne, That haue been euer from our birth-day blind?

When _Reasone's_ lampe, which (like the _sunne_ in skie) Throughout _Man's_ little world her beames did spread; Is now become a sparkle, which doth lie Vnder the ashes, halfe extinct, and dead:

How can we hope, that through the eye and eare, This dying sparkle, in this cloudy place, Can recollect these beames of knowledge cleere, Which were infus'd in the first minds by grace?

So might the heire whose father hath in play Wasted a thousand pound of ancient rent; By painefull earning of a groate a day, Hope to restore the patrimony spent.

The wits that diu'd most deepe and soar'd most hie Seeking Man's pow'rs, haue found his weaknesse such: "Skill comes so slow, and life so fast doth flie, "We learne so little and forget so much.

For this the wisest of all morall men Said, '_He knew nought, but that he nought did know_'; And the great mocking-Master mockt not then, When he said, '_Truth was buried deepe below_.'

For how may we to others' things attaine, When none of vs his owne soule vnderstands? For which the Diuell mockes our curious braine, When, '_Know thy selfe_' his oracle commands.

For why should wee the busie Soule beleeue, When boldly she concludes of that and this; When of her selfe she can no iudgement giue, Nor how, nor whence, nor where, nor what she is?

All things without, which round about we see, We seeke to knowe, and how therewith to doe; But that whereby we _reason, liue and be_, Within our selues, we strangers are thereto.

We seeke to know the mouing of each spheare, And the strange cause of th' ebs and flouds of _Nile_; But of that clock, within our breasts we beare, The subtill motions we forget the while.