A Household Book of English Poetry: Selected and Arranged with Notes
General
A Household Book of English Poetry: Selected and Arranged with Notes
American poetry; English poetry
P. 108, No. c.--Davenant is scarcely known except by his
strong-thoughted but heavy poem of _Gondibert_; and very little known, I
should suppose, by this. But three of his poems, this and Nos. cvii. and
clii., show that in another vein, that of graceful half play, half
earnest, few have surpassed him. I know nothing in its kind happier than
clii., which by an oversight has been placed somewhat too late in this
volume.
P. 111, No. ci. l. 43-48: Cicero (_De Nat. Deor._ 3, 28, and elsewhere)
refers to the remarkable story of Jason, tyrant of Pheræe, whom one
would have stabbed, but did in fact only open a dangerous ulcer in his
body.--l. 59: ‘Adamant’ is here used in the sense of loadstone; as in
Shakespeare’s _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, 2, i.
‘You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant,
And yet you draw not iron.’
P. 112, No. cii.--I have dealt somewhat boldly with this poem, of its
twenty-four triplets omitting all but ten, these ten seeming to me to
constitute a fine poem, which the entire twenty-four altogether fail to
do. Few, I think, will agree with Horace Walpole that ‘the poetry is
most uncouth and inharmonious;’ so far from this, it has a very solemn
and majestic flow. Nor do I doubt that these lines are what they profess
to be, the composition of King Charles; their authenticity is stamped on
every line. We are indebted to Burnet for their preservation. He gives
them in his _Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton_, saying, ‘A very worthy
gentleman who had the honour of waiting on him then [at Carisbrook
Castle], and was much trusted by him, copied them out from the original,
who avoucheth them to be a true copy.’--l. 2: A word has evidently
dropped out here, which is manifestly wanted by the metre, and, as it
seems to me, also by the sense. I have enclosed within brackets the
‘earthly’ with which I have ventured to supply the want.
P. 113, No. ciii.--Marvell showed how well he understood what he was
giving to the world in this ode, one of the least known but among the
grandest which the English language possesses, when he called it
‘Horatian.’ In its whole treatment it reminds us of the highest to which
the greatest Latin Artist in lyrical poetry did, when at his best,
attain. To one unacquainted with Horace, this ode, not perhaps so
perfect as his are in form, and with occasional obscurities of
expression which Horace would not have left, will give a truer notion of
the kind of greatness which he achieved than, so far as I know, could
from any other poem in the language be obtained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account