BY REV. A. E. WINSHIP.

CHAPTER II.

Samuel Daniel, Spenser’s successor as laureate, is unknown to the general reader, though by the reader of his time he was well considered, and literary critics of every age have admired him. He has had no superior in the correct, classic use of English. Lowell says that in two hundred years not a dozen of his words or turns of phrase have become obsolete, a thing that can not be said, probably, of any other English writer. He failed not in rhythmic skill, or linguistic art, but in that element which marks the literary genius’ power to speak to his neighbors in such a way as to speak to all times and climes. Shakspere’s words are as much at home in one nation or century as another. Bunyan had a similar skill, so had Burns, but Daniel had it not. In comparing him with men of permanent literary fame we see the superiority of processes to facts, of methods to transient results.

Daniel’s lines are so exquisite that in every age the great poets have not only been his admirers, but have made systematic effort to revivify his lines. In the time of Hazlitt, he secured the coÖperation of Lamb and Coleridge, and the three combined their talent and friends to resurrect his fame by placing beneath his poems their own genius and reputation, but they could not call his verses from the oblivion in which they had been decently interred.

This incident is a capital answer to the charge that great men, notably literary men, depend upon circumstances for their fame. Nothing can buoy up fame but the filling of the veins with a personality through genius. At some stages circumstances aid, friends are serviceable, but it is the inherent qualities that survive in the tempestuous waves of public opinion and criticism. Daniel won the title of voluntary laureate by serving from Spenser to Ben Jonson without stated financial reward, though he was benefited financially and otherwise. Samuel Daniel was born 1562, near Taunton. His father was a music teacher, and the son studied at Oxford, but did not take his degree. He published poems at twenty-three. He was tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, afterward Countess of Pembroke, and became historian and poet under Earl of Pembroke’s patronage. His admiration for the Italian verse influenced his original stanzas, and led him to devote much time to translations. His most extensive work was the poetic history of the civil wars between the houses of Lancaster and York.

Ben Jonson, who succeeded Daniel, is a curiosity in literature. Physically, mentally, morally, he was unquestionably the most unique character among English “Men of Letters.” In build heavy and uncouth, face broad and long, with square jaw and large cheeks, disfigured by scurvy, with a “mountain bellie and ungracious gait.” He was the son of a clergyman who died before he was born. His mother married shortly after for her second husband a bricklayer, whom the child royally disliked. The coarsely framed, energetic lad was, in the eyes of the step-father, only fitted for manual labor, and consequently he was taken from school as soon as he could handle a trowel, and placed at brick laying. In this action two elements in the boy’s nature were overlooked; combativeness and pride; and it was not long after this summary parental authority assigned him menial employment that the impetuous lad unceremoniously withdrew from home associations to parts unknown. The army was his retreat, and he was not long in making a record for personal bravery by meeting a man in single combat, at the age of seventeen, in the presence of both armies, Spanish and English, killing his opponent single handed.

At the age of eighteen he retired from the army, and for a brief period resumed his studies, from which he early retreated and sought a livelihood with his pen at drama writing, and to assure their success and increase his income he attempted to act them in the theater, but pride and combativeness led to a violent quarrel with an associate actor, and in the duel which followed he killed his opponent with the sword. Arrest and imprisonment followed, and execution was inevitable but for the gracious interference of a priest, whose interposition secured his release before the sentence was passed upon him.

When at twenty years of age he came out of prison his hands were stained with the blood of two fellow-beings; his first act was to secure himself a wife, though he had not a penny in the world, and no visible means of support. This apparently rash act was the wisest movement of his life, as it necessitated a vigorous wrestling with poverty for four stern years, which balanced his temper and disposition and intensified his mental powers. During these years of galling poverty be produced under its stimulus the greatest work of his life, “Every man in his Humor.” His works all show learning of the highest order. Hume said that he had the learning Shakspere lacked, but lacked his genius. But when and how did he acquire it? Largely by unparalleled reading in these four years when his poverty goaded him to acquire the skill to earn money with his pen.

He was a scathing critic, lashing play writers, actors and theater-goers with unmerciful sarcasm in the prefaces of his plays, until he became the best hated man in England, actors frequently denouncing him in unmeasured censure before their audiences, which only goaded him to the public declaration that he had no fear of “strumpet’s drugs or ruffian’s stab.”

When James VI. of Scotland ascended the throne as James I. of England, there appeared a comedy styled, “Eastward Hoe,” written by Jonson’s most intimate friends, Marston and Chapman. The work reflected sarcastically upon certain Scotch traits, exasperating the newly crowned king so greatly that he caused the joint authors to be thrown into prison, and it was currently reported that they were to lose their noses and ears.

When Jonson, who was in high favor with the court and people, heard this report he was exasperated, as he had written certain passages of the book for them, and he promptly surrendered himself as a fellow-author, and took his place defiantly in prison, which placed the king in a most uncomfortable position, as he had neither the desire nor the courage to mutilate the face of the most popular writer of the day. The three were in consequence released, and Jonson gave a great feast in honor of the event, at which his mother displayed a phial of violent poison, saying that had he been mutilated she would first have drank from the deadly phial and then have given him to drink. He was universally recognized as one of the most jovial characters of the day, and spent much of his time with literary companions at the “Mermaid Club,” a socio-literary association of brilliant men, among whom were Shakspere, Beaumont, and Fletcher.

When he was appointed laureate he was granted at first a hundred marks, or about sixty-five pounds, which was soon advanced to a hundred pounds, which with his literary income would have sufficed had he the gift of using money wisely, which he had not, and as life advanced he was continually annoyed from want of funds. Then it was that his sarcastic habits of speech bore fruit. When young and vigorous he rejoiced in his enemies, but as he aged his skill to make enemies increased, while his youthful powers to ward off their thrusts was waning. The time came, as it must always come to men in years, when he had nothing new to say, no vitality for originating thought, or freshly stating truth, and unfortunately he was forced to attempt to write for a living, and writing poorly, his enemies attacked him savagely, setting his words before the public in absurd relations, saddening the closing years of life. Misfortunes never come singly, and his mental chagrin was augmented by the humiliation of being a paralytic to such an extent that he could not walk, and dropsy and scurvy intensified his suffering. His wife and children had died and his only servant and companion was an uncomfortable old woman. The king withdrew his royal patronage, and he lived at last only by soliciting favors from his friends. In Westminster Abbey, where his remains lie among the famous poets, is a plain, square block of stone, marking the resting place of this erratic youth, brilliant man, suffering and neglected senior, with this inscription:

“O Rare Ben Jonson.”

No poet laureate adorned the royal household for a quarter of a century. Some time before the death of Jonson, Charles I. had fallen on troublesome times. The poetry of life in court circles was gone, and even the prose was shorn of its beauty.

It is a strange chapter that recounts the way in which the Romish church, as well as the English, lost all power in the nation; the way in which the Presbyterian church, so long an outlaw, came into power with all the vigor of youth, and almost instantly went out of power in a panic; the way the ever-to-be-feared Independent, who never knows law or reason, came to haunt the dreams of the nobility.

The king was weak, timid, vacillating; the nobility came to be of no account to anybody; the House of Commons that prided itself on being radical, suddenly found itself so conservative as to be frightened even from its parliamentary place of rendezvous, and became an insignificant factor in the government. What a day was that in which neither the Romish, English, or Presbyterian church was of sufficient account to be consulted, when the king was a cipher, the nobility a minus quantity, the House of Commons an unknown factor, and two men, Hampden and Cromwell, rallied fifty Independents, constituted themselves a law unto themselves, organizing what has been known in history as the Rump Parliament, and beheaded Charles I.

In Jonson’s day the king saw the drift of affairs, felt the throne trembling beneath him, and had neither the funds to continue Jonson’s pension, nor was he in the sentimental mood to appoint a successor upon his death. It would have been cruel mockery indeed for any poet to rhyme his praise.

The ten years in which Cromwell rode rough shod over every established order of things did not develop a spirit that called for poetry. Life was too hazardous to incline any to sing in joyous strain. But when he died and no Independent rose to fill his place, Charles II. was called to the throne, and the House Of Stuart once more held the reins of government securely, and the citizens called for a knightly laureate.

Sir William Davenant assumed the position of versifier for the king. He was the son of a wealthy vinter who kept the Crown Inn at Oxford, where Shakspere always stopped, who, by the way, was such an ardent admirer of Mrs. D’Avenaunt that her son bore his name, and it was the quiet boast of Sir William that he was the natural son of the great dramatist.

He was early attached to the household of the gorgeous Duchess of Richmond as a page, and later attached himself to the retinue of Lord Brooke, until that nobleman was murdered, which affliction threw Davenant upon his own resources, which induced him to try his hand at versifying, but without success until one of those periodic freaks of Ben Jonson led the great poet to quarrel with the court architect, who in the emergency discovered Davenant and gave him the opportunity to secure the position on limited literary capital.

There was that in his nature which made him an active partisan, and during the Long Parliament he was imprisoned for scheming to seduce the army and overthrow the Commons. He escaped, was captured and reimprisoned, escaped the second time and fled to France, where he joined the exile queen and served the cause of royalty by smuggling military stores into England, and for personal bravery in the army of the Earl of Newcastle, who espoused the queen’s cause, he was knighted. After the fatal battle of Naseby he returned to France and assumed the management of the colonization society and sailed for Virginia, but his vessel was captured by a parliamentary man-of-war and he imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, and afterward sent to the Tower on the charge of high treason. The timely interference of his old poet friend, Milton, who had espoused the Puritan cause, alone prevented his being beheaded. This successful importunity of an old friend was in many ways most gratifying to Davenant, who, a few years later, when Charles II. was called to assume the reins of government and executed vengeance on all old time enemies, dooming Milton to sudden execution, was privileged to reciprocate the favor, and by timely intercession, recounting the service the poet had been to him, saved Milton from the fatal consequences of his political affiliations.

After Milton secured Davenant’s release from imprisonment the humbled courtier endeavored to win an honorable living as a poet, but in vain. He could only write dramas, but the Puritans had closed the theaters with a rigor that knew no exception. It was in this emergency that the knight whose experiences had been so varied did the one bright thing of his life: he succeeded in writing inoffensive plays, and having them acted by calling them operas, thus pacifying the ruling public, at the same time giving the world a new name for a diluted drama.

Charles II. when in power rewarded the faithfulness and loyalty of Davenant by crowning him laureate. It has been truthfully but cruelly said that there is not a more hopelessly faded laurel on the slopes of the English Parnassus than that which once flourished around Davenant’s grotesque head. Of the brighter man who followed him another chapter must account.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]