THERE was never a poet more admired in his life or more despised after his death than Quarles. He was patronized by the best of his age while living, and when dead was first criticised, then contemned, and last of all totally forgotten, unless when some bard wanted a name of one syllable to fill up a list of miserable rhymers. Pope was the last who made this use of him, and at the same time, in a note, abused Benlowes for being his patron. I think it is Sir Philip Sidney who says that no piece was ever a favourite of the common people without merit. Now, though every thing I had heard of Quarles was much in his disfavour, I could not help thinking but that he had something good in him, from my never seeing one of his books of emblems that was not worn to rags; a sign of its being read a good deal, unless it may be imagined that it was so used by children in turning over the prints. Be that as it may, I have perused as much of him as a very dirty tattered book would give me leave, and will risque the declaring, that where he is good, I know but few poets better. He has a great deal of genuine fire, is frequently happy in similies, admirable in epithets and compound words, very smooth in his versification, so different from the poets of his own age; and possessed that great qualification of keeping you in perpetual alarm, so very different from the elegant writers of the present times.

I have run through his book of emblems to select some passages for your observation—they are buried, it must be confessed, in a heap of rubbish, but are of too much value not to be worth some pains in recovering.—Where Quarles is bad, “he sounds the very base-string of humility”—but this may be said of Shakspeare and Milton as well.—I mean not to put him in the same rank with these two poets; he has a much greater proportion of bad to good than is to be found in them, so much indeed as almost to prevent his good from appearing at all. My intention is to clear some of his shining passages of their incumbrances; which may occasion their being noticed, and preserved from oblivion.

What think you of the following similies?

The first, will probably remind you of Shakspeare’s description of the wounded stag in As you like it; which it may do, and not suffer by the comparison. The second, is very original in the expression—the circumstance of

is I believe new, and exquisitely tender. There are others not much inferior to these.

The following verses allude to the print prefixed, where a bubble is represented as heavier than the globe. It is necessary to observe, that the prints were designed first, and the poems are in a great measure explanatory of them.

Tho’ the considering mortality on the gloomy side, is not productive of much happiness, yet there are certain dispositions which feel some gratification in it—Quarles was one of these. He seizes all opportunities of abusing the world; and it must be confessed he has here done it in “choice and elegant terms.”

Sometimes he is more outrageous in his abuse.

Again—

The next quotation is an allusion to the print, where the world is made a mirror.

This is finely wrought up—Quarles perfectly comprehended the effect of the musical crescendo, which is instanced particularly in the last passage.

There is something very dreadful in the 4th line of this stanza.

Dr. Young has some lines on this subject which are by some much admired.—But tho’ the subject be the same, it is differently circumstanced.—Young’s is a general description of the last judgment, Quarles describes its effect on a single being who is supposed to have lived fearless of such an event.

Now to me, all this is a “pestilent congregation of vapour.”——The formidable sons of fire spewing out blazing magazines—and Ruin like a plough-man (or rather plough-woman) driving her plough-share—are mean, incoherent images. How much more sublimely Quarles expresses the same, and indeed some additional ones, in the last three lines?

In the print belonging to the emblem from which the following is taken, is a figure striking a globe with his knuckles.—The motto, Tinnit, inane est.

But that you may not think the good passages of this poet are only scattered unequally through his poems; take some entire ones—or nearly so.

At other times he complains of the shortness of life, and in strains equally pathetic.

“Read on this dial”—“Behold these lilies”—does not this put you in mind of the same form of expression in Ossian? “His spear was like that blasted fir.”

Quarles was commenting on his print in which the dial and lilies were represented; Ossian saw his images “in his mind’s eye”——but both the poets considered them as really existing—at least, they make them exist to their readers.

“How the shades devour,” &c. Shakspeare has the same figure

it is wonderfully expressive!

In what he calls his hieroglyphics, Quarles compares man to a taper, which furnishes him with a number of very striking allusions. It is at first unlighted, then a hand from heaven touches it with fire—the motto, Nescius unde.

The closeness of the reasoning, and the freedom of the verses cannot be enough admired. I believe it would be difficult if not impossible to reason so shortly and yet so clearly in prose. Pope says the thoughts in his Essay on Man are in less compass for their being in verse. The poetical language admits of elisions and other varieties we cannot have in prose. This poem is followed by another, before which is a design of the winds blowing the flame of the taper, with this motto, “The wind passeth over it, and it is gone!”

Tho’ I have purposely omitted pointing out many of the particular beauties of these poems, I would wish you to observe, in this last, the fine effect of compound words in which this author is so happy: also the noble swell in the third stanza—the application of his allegory to its meaning, in the fourth, where the expression so admirably suits with both “our peaceful flame, &c.”——if these are not genuine strokes of genius, I must, as a great critic says on a like occasion, acknowledge my ignorance of such subjects. I wish we had some word in our language to express the same idea in poetry as crescendo does in music; swell is applied to so many other purposes, that it has not the effect of an appropriated term.

But for the present I must quit the subject—in a little time expect the remainder of my observations on this poet.