Part 5

We that acquaint our selues with euery _Zoane_ And passe both _Tropikes_ and behold the _Poles_, When we come home, are to our selues vnknown, And vnacquainted still with our owne _Soules_.

We study _Speech_ but others we perswade; We _leech-craft_ learne, but others cure with it; We interpret _lawes_, which other men haue made, But reade not those which in our hearts are writ."

(pp. 18-20.)

Again:--

IN WHAT MANNER THE SOULE IS UNITED TO THE BODY.

But how shall we this _union_ well expresse? Nought ties the _soule_; her subtiltie is such She moues the bodie, which she doth possesse, Yet no part toucheth, but by _Vertue's_ touch.

Then dwels shee not therein as in a tent, Nor as a pilot in his ship doth sit; Nor as the spider in his web is pent; Nor as the waxe retaines the print in it;

Nor as a vessell water doth containe; Nor as one liquor in another shed; Nor as the heat doth in the fire remaine; Nor as a voice throughout the ayre is spread:

But as the faire and cheerfull _Morning light_, Doth here and there her siluer beames impart, And in an instant doth herselfe vnite To the transparent ayre, in all, and part:

Still resting whole, when blowes th' ayre diuide: Abiding pure, when th' ayre is most corrupted; Throughout the ayre, her beams dispersing wide, And when the ayre is tost, not interrupted:

So doth the piercing _Soule_ the body fill, Being all in all, and all in part diffus'd; Indiuisible, incorruptible still, Not forc't, encountred, troubled or confus'd.

And as the _sunne_ aboue, the light doth bring, Though we behold it in the ayre below; So from th' Eternall Light the _Soule_ doth spring, Though in the body she her powers doe show.

(pp. 61-2.)

Further, "An Acclamation":--

AN ACCLAMATION.

O! what is Man (great Maker of mankind!) That Thou to him so great respect dost beare! That Thou adornst him with so bright a mind, Mak'st him a king, and euen an angel's peere!

O! what a liuely life, what heauenly power, What spreading vertue, what a sparkling fire! How great, how plentifull, how rich a dower Dost Thou within this dying flesh inspire!

Thou leau'st Thy print in other works of Thine, But Thy whole image Thou in Man hast writ; There cannot be a creature more diuine, Except (like Thee) it should be infinit.

But it exceeds man's thought, to thinke how hie _God_ hath raisd _Man_, since _God a man_ became; The angels doe admire this _Misterie_, And are astonisht when they view the same.

(pp. 81-2.)

Again:--

THAT THE SOULE IS IMMORTAL, AND CANNOT DIE.

Nor hath he giuen these blessings for a day, Nor made them on the bodie's life depend; The _Soule_ though made in time, _suruives for aye_, And though it hath beginning, sees no end.

Her onely _end_, is _neuer-ending_ blisse; Which is, _th' eternall face of God to see_; Who _Last of Ends_, and _First of Causes_, is: And to doe this, she must _eternall_ bee.

How senselesse then, and dead a soule hath hee, Which _thinks_ his _soule_ doth with his body die! Or _thinkes_ not so, but so would haue it bee, That he might sinne with more securitie.

For though these light and vicious persons say, Our _Soule_ is but a smoake, or ayrie blast; Which, during life, doth in our nostrils play, And when we die, doth turne to wind at last:

Although they say, '_Come let us eat and drinke_'; Our life is but a sparke, which quickly dies; Though thus they _say_, they know not what to think, But in their minds ten thousand doubts arise.

Therefore no heretikes desire to spread Their light opinions, like these _Epicures_: For so the staggering thoughts are comfortèd, And other men's assent their doubt assures.

Yet though these men against their conscience striue, There are some sparkles in their flintie breasts Which cannot be extinct, but still reuiue; That though they would, they cannot quite bee _beasts_;

But who so makes a mirror of his mind, And doth with patience view himselfe therein, His _Soule's_ eternitie shall clearely find, Though th' other beauties be defac't with sin.

(pp. 82-3.)

Further, "An Acclamation":--

AN ACCLAMATION.

O ignorant poor man! what dost thou beare Lockt vp within the casket of thy brest? What iewels, and what riches hast thou there! What heauenly treasure in so weak a chest!

Looke in thy _soule_, and thou shalt _beauties_ find, Like those which drownd _Narcissus_ in the flood: _Honour_ and _Pleasure_ both are in thy mind, And all that in the world is counted _Good_.

Thinke of her worth, and thinke that God did meane. This worthy mind should worthy things imbrace; Blot not her beauties with thy thoughts vnclean, Nor her dishonour with thy passions base;

Kill not her _quickning power_ with surfettings, Mar not her _Sense_ with sensualitie; Cast not her serious wit on idle things: Make not her free-_will_, slaue to vanitie.

And when thou think'st of her _eternitie_, Thinke not that _Death_ against her nature is; Thinke it a _birth_; and when thou goest to die, Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to blisse.

And if thou, like a child, didst feare before, Being in the darke, where thou didst nothing see: Now I haue broght thee _torch-light_, feare no more; Now when thou diest, thou canst not hud-winkt be.

And thou, my _Soule_, which turn'st thy curious eye, To view the beames of thine owne forme diuine; Know, that thou canst know nothing perfectly, While thou art clouded with this flesh of mine.

Take heed of _ouer-weening_, and compare Thy peacock's feet with thy gay peacock's traine; Study the best, and highest things, that are, But of thy selfe, an humble thought retaine.

Cast down thy selfe, and onely striue to raise The glory of thy Maker's sacred Name; Vse all thy powers, that Blessed Power to praise, Which giues the power to _bee_, and _use the same_.

(pp. 114-16.)

Finally, here is a simile well-wrought in itself and accidentally to be for ever associated with a celebrated criticism:--

THE MOTION OF THE SOULE.

.... how can shee but immortall bee? When with the motions of both _Will_ and _Wit_, She still aspireth to eternitie, And neuer rests, till she attaine to it?

Water in conduit pipes, can rise no higher Then the wel-head, from whence it first doth spring: Then sith to eternall GOD shee doth aspire, Shee cannot be but an eternall thing.

(p. 85.)

The second stanza contains a metaphor that was stolen and murdered as well, by Robert Montgomery. Concerning _his_ use of it Macaulay thus wrote in his merciless review:--"We would not be understood, however, to say that Mr. Robert Montgomery cannot make similitudes for himself. A very few lines further on we find one which has every mark of originality and on which we will be bound, none of the poets whom he has plundered will ever think of making reprisal:--

'The soul aspiring, pants its source to mount, As streams meander level with their fount.'

"We take this to be on the whole the worst similitude in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their fount, no two motions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting upwards." True; but none the less is the original 'spoiled' and despoiled metaphor, accurate and vivid.

If the Reader will surrender himself to the task, he will be rewarded for studying and re-studying the entire poem of "Nosce Teipsum;" and, unless I very much mistake, will then regard Hallam's judgment on it as inadequate rather than exaggerate, as (with intercalated remarks), thus: "A more remarkable poem [than Drayton's and Daniel's] is that of Sir John Davies, afterwards Chief Justice of Ireland [a mistake], entitled, 'Nosce Teipsum,' published in 1599, usually, though rather inaccurately, called 'On the Immortality of the Soul.' Perhaps no language can produce a poem, extending to so great a length, of more condensation of thought, or in which fewer languid verses will be found. Yet, according to some definitions [of poetry] the 'Nosce Teipsum' is wholly unpoetical, inasmuch as it shows no passion [a greater blunder still] and little fancy [a third mistake]. If it reaches the heart at all, it is through the reason. But since strong argument in terse and correct style fails not to give us pleasure in prose, it seems strange that it should lose its effect when it gains the aid of regular metre to gratify the ear and assist the memory. Lines there are in Davies which far out-weigh much of the descriptive and imaginative poetry of the last two centuries, whether we estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual vigour they display. Experience has shown that the faculties familiarly deemed poetical are frequently exhibited in a considerable degree, but very few have been able to preserve a perspicuous beauty without stiffness or pedantry (allowance made for the subject and the times), in metaphysical reasoning, so successfully as Sir John Davies."[48] The alleged "no passion" is contradicted by the various pathetic autobiographic introspections and confessions brought out in this Memorial-Introduction, and not less so by the outbursts of adoration and praise that thunder up like the hosannahs before the great White Throne. The similarly alleged "little fancy" is one of manifold proofs that the critic was the most superficial of all imaginable readers with so much pretention. "Nosce Teipsum" is radiant as the dew-bedabbled grass with delicacies of fancy, not a few of the "fancies" being as exquisitely touched as divine work.

[Footnote 48: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries: Vol. II., p. 227, edn. 1860.]

Campbell in his "Essay on English Poetry" (prefixed to his "Specimens") may be read with interest after Hallam. Accepting from Johnson as Johnson from Dryden the name of "metaphysical poets," he observes:--"The term of metaphysical poetry would apply with much more justice to the quatrains of Sir John Davies and those of Sir Fulke Greville, writers who, at a later period, found imitators in Sir Thomas Overbury and Sir William Davenant. Davies's poem on the Immortality of the Soul, entitled "_Nosce teipsum_," will convey a much more favourable idea of metaphysical poetry than the wittiest effusions of Donne and his followers. Davies carried abstract reasoning into verse with an acuteness and felicity which have seldom been equalled. He reasons undoubtedly with too much labour, formality, and subtlety, to afford uniform poetical pleasure. The generality of his stanzas exhibit hard arguments interwoven with the pliant materials of fancy so closely, that we may compare them to a texture of cloth and metallic threads, which is cold and stiff, while it is splendidly curious. There is this difference, however, between Davies and the commonly-styled metaphysical poets, that _he_ argues like a hard thinker, and _they_, for the most part, like madmen. If we conquer the drier parts of Davies' poem, and bestow a little attention on thoughts which were meant, not to gratify the indolence, but to challenge the activity of the mind, we shall find in the entire essay fresh beauties at every perusal: for in the happier parts we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poems seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction."

The 'coldness' of 'cloth and metallic threads' which the critic applies to the 'hard arguments' of _Nosce Teipsum_ is a mere imagination. But besides, the 'metallic threads' are not for warmth but for splendour. The lining of the 'splendidly curious' garment is to be looked for for warmth. Similarly the 'hard arguments' would have been unpoetical as unphilosophical had they been 'warm' with the warmth of the 'clothing' in similes and fancies. The 'hardness' is where it ought to be--in the thinking: but it is a hardness like the bough that is green with leafage and radiant with bloom and odorous with 'sweet scent' and pliant to every lightest touch of the breeze. The leaf and bloom start from the 'hard' bough rightly, fittingly 'hard' to its utmost twig. The alleged 'too much labour' is singularly uncharacteristic. As for the 'madness' I can but exclaim--Oh for more of such 'fine lunacy' as in Donne is condemned! His and compeers' 'madness' is worth cart-loads of most men's sanity.

In our own day Dr. George Macdonald has spoken more wisely if still somewhat superficially of "_Nosce Teipsum_" in his charming "England's Antiphon." Having explained that by "Immortality of the Soul" is intended "the spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence," he proceeds:--"It [_Nosce Teipsum_] is a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means of imaginative or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well it may comport itself when there naturalized; and consequently, although there are most poetic no less than profound passages in the treatise, a light scruple arises whether its constituent matter can properly be called poetry. At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions: power shades off into feeling; and the driest logic may find the heroic couplet render it good service." (pp. 105-6). The 'scruple' must be 'light' indeed that has to decide whether the 'reasoning' of "Nosce Teipsum" be or be not 'poetry.' It is astounding that at this time o' day any should attempt to exclude the highest region of the intellect and its noblest occupation from poetry. Poetry I must hold absolutely is poetry, whatever be its matter and form if the thinking be glorified by imagination or tremulous with emotion. It is sheer folly to refuse to the Poet any material within the compass of the universe. Especially deplorable is it to have to argue for possibilities of poetry in the greatest of all thinking, viz., metaphysics, in the face of such actualities of achievement as in Davies and Lord Brooke and Donne.

A second characteristic of "Nosce Teipsum" that calls for notice is its _perfection of workmanship_ shown in the _mastery of an extremely difficult stanza_, as well as its solidity of material. Here unquestionably Sir John Davies far excels Lord Brooke and Donne, and later, Sir William Davenant in "Gondibert." The two former are occasionally (it must be granted) semi-inarticulate, and the last is very often monotonous and trying. "Nosce Teipsum" is throughout articulate and unmistakeable, and never flags. You have a fear o' times that a metaphor will prove grotesque or mean: or a vein of thought pinch and go out from ore to bare limestone. But invariably an imaginative touch, or a colour-like epithet, or a thrill of emotion, lifts up the mean into a transfiguring atmosphere as of sun-set purples and crysolites, and gives to grotesquest gargoyles (as of cathedrals) a strange fitness. Then when a thought or illustration seems about to end, debasedly, another forward-carrying and ennobling, swiftly succeeds.

There is more than dexterity, there is consummate art--the art of a conscious master--in the inter-weaving of the lines and stanzas of "Nosce Teipsum." Professor Craik recognised the difficulty and the triumph, but fails by ultra-ingenuity in accounting for either the selection of the measure or the miracle of its continuous success. His criticism is worth recalling, thus:--"A remarkable poem of this age ... is the 'Nosce Teipsum' of Sir John Davies ... a philosophical poem, the earliest of the kind in the language. It is written in rhyme, in the common heroic ten-syllable verse, but disposed in quatrains, like the early play of Misogonus, already mentioned, and other poetry of the same era, or like Sir Thomas Overbury's poem of 'The Wife,' the 'Gondibert' of Sir William Davenant, and the 'Annus Mirabilis' of Dryden, at a later period. No one of these writers has managed this difficult stanza so successfully as Davies: it has the disadvantage of requiring the sense to be in general closed at certain regularly and quickly-recurring turns, which yet are very ill adapted for an effective pause; and even all the skill of Dryden has been unable to free it from a certain air of monotony and languor,--a circumstance of which that poet may be supposed to have been himself sensible, since he wholly abandoned it after one or two early attempts. Davies, however, has conquered its difficulty; and, as has been observed, 'perhaps no language can produce a poem, extending to so great a length, of more condensation of thought, or in which fewer languid verses will be found.' (Hallam, as before.) In fact, it is by this condensation and sententious brevity, so carefully filed and elaborated, however, as to involve no sacrifice of perspicuity or fulness of expression, that he has attained his end. Every quatrain is a pointed expression of a separate thought, like one of Rochefoucault's maxims; each thought being, by great skill and painstaking in the packing, made exactly to fit and to fill the same case. It may be doubted, however, whether Davies would not have produced a still better poem if he had chosen a measure which would have allowed him greater freedom and real variety; unless, indeed, his poetical talent was of a sort that required the suggestive aid and guidance of such artificial restraints as he had to cope with in this; and what would have been a bondage to a more fiery and teeming imagination, was rather a support to his."[49]

[Footnote 49: _A Compendious History of English Literature_, &c., Vol. I., p. 577, edn. 1866.]

Most of this must be read _cum grano salis_. Davies elected his measure and stanza with evidently entire spontaneity; and it is an odd reversal of the simple matter of fact to ascribe the 'artificial restraints' chosen, to an absence 'of a fiery and teeming imagination,' when, as all observation demonstrates, the more fiery and fecund the imagination of a Poet, the more exquisitely obedient is he to the subtlest and most intricate movements of his measure--just as the bluest-blooded race-horse is a law to itself whereas your stolid dray-cart or plough-drawer needs the "artificial restraints" of all kinds of gear, and the constraint of whip and blow and vociferation. I can well suppose that but for the "Fairy Queen" Sir John Davies might have chosen its stanza, but just as to-day "In Memoriam" has taken to itself its form and music to the exclusion of every other--though a very ancient English measure--so Spenser's immortal poem precluded "Nosce Teipsum" following in the same. I cannot admit "artificial restraints" in the sense of needed restraints or aid. There was the stanza, and the genius of Sir John Davies appropriated it--since Spenser's, in all worship, could not be taken--and, like a great Vine, clad its natural slenderness and poorness of build with wealth of bright green leafage and clustered fruitage. The nicety and daintiness of workmanship, the involute and nevertheless firmly-completed and manifested imagery of "Nosce Teipsum" wherewith this nicety and daintiness are wrought, place Sir John Davies artistically among the finest of our Poets. Southey wrote decisively on this:--"Sir John Davies and Sir William Davenant, avoiding equally the opposite faults of too artificial and too careless a style, wrote in numbers which, for precision and clearness, and felicity and strength, have never been surpassed." For 'felicity' I should have said 'flexibility.'[50]

[Footnote 50: To Southey's praise be it remembered, that he was the first emphatically to regret that there had been no collective edition of Sir John Davies's Works, as thus: "It may be regretted that he did not leave representatives who would have thought it a duty and an honour to publish all that could be collected of his writings; thus erecting the best and most enduring monument to his memory." (British Poets: Chaucer to Jonson: p. 686). Our edition of his Prose and Verse fulfils Southey's wish.]

Again our examples of the mastery and perfection of workmanship must be brief; but take these:--

"Nor can her wide imbracements fillèd bee; For they that most, and greatest things embrace, Inlarge thereby their minds' capacitie, As streames inlarg'd, inlarge the channel's space.

_All things receiu'd, doe such proportion take, As those things haue, wherein they are receiu'd_: So little glasses little faces make, And narrow webs on narrow frames be weau'd;

Then what vast body must we make the _mind_ Wherin are men, beasts, trees, towns, seas, and lands; And yet each thing a proper place doth find, And each thing in the true proportion stands?

Doubtlesse this could not bee, but that she turnes Bodies to spirits, by _sublimation_ strange; As fire conuerts to fire the things it burnes As we our meats into our nature change.

From their grosse _matter_ she abstracts the _formes_, And draws a kind of _quintessence_ from things; Which to her proper nature she transformes, To bear them light on her celestiall wings:

This doth she, when, from things _particular_, She doth abstract the _universall kinds_; Which bodilesse and immateriall are, And can be lodg'd but onely in our minds:

And thus from diuers _accidents_ and _acts_, Which doe within her obseruation fall, She goddesses, and powers diuine, abstracts: As _Nature_, _Fortune_, and the _Vertues_ all."

(pp. 42-44.)

Again:--

_Are they not sencelesse_ then, that thinke the Soule Nought but a fine perfection of the _Sense_; Or of the formes which _fancie_ doth enroule, A _quicke resulting_, and a _consequence_?

What is it then that doth the _Sense_ accuse, Both of _false judgements_, and _fond appetites_? What makes vs do what _Sense_ doth most refuse? Which oft in torment of the _Sense_ delights?

_Sense_ thinkes the _planets_, _spheares_ not much asunder; What tels vs then their distance is so farre? _Sense_ thinks the lightning borne before the thunder; What tels vs then they both together are?

When men seem crows far off vpon a towre, _Sense_ saith, th'are crows; what makes vs think them men? When we in _agues_, thinke all sweete things sowre, What makes vs know our tongue's false iudgement then?

What power was that, whereby _Medea_ saw, And well approu'd, and prais'd the better course, When her rebellious _Sense_ did so withdraw Her feeble powers, as she pursu'd the worse?

Did _Sense_ perswade _Vlisses_ not to heare The mermaid's songs, which so his men did please; As they were all perswaded, through the eare To quit the ship, and leape into the _seas_?

Could any power of _Sense_ the _Romane_ moue, To burn his own right hand with courage stout? Could _Sense_ make _Marius_ sit vnbound, and proue The cruell lancing of the knotty gout?