If ever a man needed resuscitation2 in our antiquarian times it was George Wither3. When most of the Jacobean poets sank into comfortable oblivion, which merely meant being laid with a piece of camphor in cotton-wool to keep fresh for us, Wither had the misfortune to be recollected4. He became a byword of contempt, and the Age of Anne persistently5 called him Withers6, a name, I believe, only possessed7 really by one distinguished8 person, Cleopatra Skewton's page-boy. Swift, in The Battle of the Books, brings in this poet as the meanest common trooper that he can mention in his modern army. Pope speaks of him with the utmost freedom as "wretched Withers." It is true that he lived too long and wrote too much—a great deal too much. Mr. Hazlitt gives the titles of more than one hundred of his publications, and some of them are wonderfully unattractive. I should not like to be shut up on a rainy day with his Salt upon Salt, which seems to have lost its savour, nor do I yearn9 to blow upon his Tuba Pacifica, although it was "disposed of rather for love than money." The truth is that good George Wither lost his poetry early, was an upright, honest, and patriotic10 man who unhappily developed into a scold, and got into the bad habit of pouring out "precautions," "cautional expressions," "prophetic phrensies," "epistles at random," "personal contributions to the national humiliation," "passages," "raptures," and "allarums," until he really became the greatest bore in Christendom. It was Charles Lamb who swept away this whole tedious structure of Wither's later writings and showed us what a lovely poet he was in his youth.
When the book before us was printed, George Wither was aged11 twenty-seven. He had just stepped gingerly out of the Marshalsea Prison, and his poems reveal an amusing mixture of protest against having been put there at all and deprecation of being put there again. Let no one waste the tear of sensibility over that shell of the Marshalsea Prison, which still, I believe, exists. The family of the Dorrits languished12 in quite another place from the original Marshalsea of Wither's time, although that also lay across the water in Southwark. It is said that the prison was used for the confinement13 of persons who had spoken lewdly14 of dignitaries about the Court. Wither, as we shall see, makes a great parade of telling us why he was imprisoned15; but his language is obscure. Perhaps he was afraid to be explicit16. In 1613 he had published a little volume of satires17, called Abuses stript and whipt. This had been very popular, running into six or seven editions within a short time, and some one in office, no doubt, had fitted on the fool's cap. Five years later the poor poet would have had a chance of being shipped straight off to Virginia, as a "debauched person"; as it was, the Marshalsea seems to have been tolerably unpleasant. We gather, however, that he enjoyed some alleviations. He could say, like Leigh Hunt, "the visits of my friends were the bright side of my captivity18; I read verses without end, and wrote almost as many." The poems we have before us were written in the Marshalsea. The book itself is very tiny and pretty, with a sort of leafy trellis-work at the top and bottom of every page, almost suggesting a little posy of wild-flowers thrown through the iron bars of the poet's cage, and pressed between the pages of his manuscript. Nor is there any book of Wither's which breathes more deeply of the perfume of the fields than this which was written in the noisome19 seclusion20 of the Marshalsea.
Although the title-page assures us that these "eglogues" were written during the author's imprisonment, we may have a suspicion that the first three were composed just after his release. They are very distinct from the rest in form and character. To understand them we must remember that in 1614, just before the imprisonment, Wither had taken a share with his bosom21 friend, William Browne, of the Inner Temple, in bringing out a little volume of pastorals, called The Shepherd's Pipe. Browne, a poet who deserves well of all Devonshire men, was two years younger than Wither, and had just begun to come before the public as the author of that charming, lazy, Virgilian poem of Britannia's Pastorals. There was something of Keats in Browne, an artist who let the world pass him by; something of Shelley in Wither, a prophet who longed to set his seal on human progress. In the Shepherd's Pipe Willy (William Browne) and Roget (Geo-t-r) had been the interlocutors, and Christopher Brooke, another rhyming friend, had written an eclogue under the name of Cutty. These personages reappear in The Shepherd's Hunting, and give us a glimpse of pleasant personal relations. In the first "eglogue," Willy comes to the Marshalsea one afternoon to condole22 with Roget, but finds him very cheerful. The prisoner poet assures his friend that
This barren place yields somewhat to relieve, For I have found sufficient to content me, And more true bliss24 than ever freedom lent me;
and Willy goes away, when it is growing dark, rejoiced to find that "the cage doth some birds good." Next morning he returns and brings Cutty, or Cuddy, with him, for Cuddy has news to tell the prisoner that all England is taking an interest in him, and that this adversity has made him much more popular than he was before. But Willy and Cuddy are extremely anxious to know what it was that caused Roget's imprisonment, and at last he agrees to tell them. Hitherto the poem has been written in ottava rima, a form which is sufficiently25 uncommon26 in our early seventeenth-century poetry to demand special notice in this case. In a prose postscript27 to this book Wither tells us that the title, The Shepherd's Hunting, which he seems to feel needs explanation, is due to the stationer, or, as we should say now, to the publisher. But perhaps this was an afterthought, for in the account he gives to Willy and Cuddy he certainly suggests the title himself. He represents himself as the shepherd given up to the delights of hunting the human passions through the soul; the simile28 seems a little confused, because he represents these qualities not as the quarry29, but as the hounds, and so the story of Actaeon is reversed; instead of the hounds pursuing their master, the master hunts his dogs. At all events, the result is that he "dips his staff in blood, and onwards leads his thunder to the wood," where he is ignominiously30 captured by his Majesty's gamekeeper. But the allegory hardly runs upon all-fours.
The next "eglogue" represents again another visit to the prisoner, and this time Willy and Cuddy bring Alexis with them; perhaps Alexis is John Davies, of Hereford, another contributor to The Shepherd's Pipe. Roget starts his allegory again, in the same mild, satiric31 manner he had adopted, to his hurt, in Abuses stript and whipt. Wither becomes quite delightful32 again, when cheerfulness breaks through this satirical philosophy, and when he tells us:
But though that all the world's delight forsake33 me,
I have a Muse34, and she shall music make me;
Whose aery notes, in spite of closest cages,
Shall give content to me and after ages.
They all felt certain of immortality35, these cheerful poets of Elizabeth and James, and Prince Posterity36 has seen proper to admit the claim in more instances than might well have been expected.
But the delightful part of The Shepherd's Hunting has yet to come. With the fourth "eglogue" the caged bird begins to sing like a lark37 at Heaven's gate, and it is the prisoned man—who ought to be in doleful dumps—that rallies his free friend Browne on his low spirits. It is time, he says, to be merry:
Coridon, with his bold rout38,
Hath already been about,
For the elder shepherds' dole23,
And fetched in the summer pole;
Whilst the rest have built a bower39
To defend them from a shower,
Sealed so close, with boughs40 all green,
Titan cannot pry41 between;
Now the dairy-wenches dream
Of their strawberries and cream,
And each doth herself advance,
To be taken in to dance.
What summer thoughts are these to come from a pale prisoner in the hot and putrid42 Marshalsea! They are either symptoms of acute nostalgia43, or proofs of a cheerfulness that lifts their author above a mortal pitch. But Willy declines to join the Lady of the May at her high junketings; he also has troubles, and prefers to whisper them through Roget's iron bars. There are those who "my Music do contemn," who will none of the poetry of Master William Browne of the Inner Temple. It is useless for him to wrestle44 with brown shepherds for the
Cups of turnèd maple-root, Whereupon the skilful45 man Hath engraved46 the Loves of Pan,
or contend for the "fine napkin wrought47 with blue," if those base clowns called critics are busy with his detraction48. But Roget instructs him that Verse is its own high reward, that the songs of a true poet will naturally arise like the moon out of and beyond all racks of envious49 cloud, and that the last thing he should do is to despair. He rises to his own greatest and best work in this encouragement of a brother-poet, and no one who reads such noble verses as these dare question Wither's claim to a fauteuil in the Academy of Parnassus:
If thy Verse do bravely tower
As she makes wing, she gets power,
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted50 still the more;
Till she to the highest hath past,
Then she rests with Fame at last.
Let nought51 therefore thee affright,
But make forward in thy flight;
For if I could match thy rhyme
To the very stars I'd climb,
There begin again, and fly
Till I reached Eternity52.
In the fifth "eglogue" Roget and Alexis compare notes about their early happiness in phrases of an odd commixture. The pastoral character of the poetry has to be carried out, and so we read of how Roget on a great occasion played a match at football, "having scarce twenty Satyrs on his side," against some of "the best tried Ruffians in the land." Great Pan presided at that match by the banks of Thames, and though the satyrs and their laureate leader were worsted, the moral victory, as people call it, remained with the latter. All this is an allegory; and indeed we walk in the very shadow of innuendo53 all through The Shepherd's Hunting.
The moral of the whole thing is that eternal ditty of tuneful youth: All for Verse and the World well lost. The enemy is around them on all sides, jailers of the Marshalsea and envious critics, the evil shepherds that preside over grates of steel and noisome beds of straw, but Youth has its mocking answer to all these:
Let them disdain54 and fret55 till they are weary!
We in ourselves have that shall make us merry;
Which he that wants and had the power to know it,
Would give his life that he might die a poet.
It was no small thing to be suffering for Apollo's sake in 1614. Shakespeare might hear of it at Stratford, and talk of the prisoner as he strolled with some friend on the banks of Avon. A greater than Shakespeare—as most men thought in those days—Ben Jonson himself, might talk the matter over "at those lyric56 feasts, Made at the Sun, The Dog, the triple Tun"; for had not he himself languished in a worse dungeon57 and under a heavier charge than Wither? To be seven-and-twenty, to be in trouble with the Government about one's verses, and to have other young poets, in a ferment58 of enthusiasm, clinging like swallows to the prison-bars—how delicious a torment59! And to know that it will soon be over, and that the sweet, pure meadows lie just outside the reek60 of Southwark, that summer lingers still and that shepherds pipe and play, that Fame is sitting by her cheerful fountain with a garland for the weary head, and that lasses, "who more excell Than the sweet-voic'd Philomel," are ready to cluster round the Interesting captive, and lead him away in daisy-chains—what could be more consolatory61! And we close the little dainty volume, with its delicate perfume of friendship and poetry and hope.
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1
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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resuscitation
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| n.复活 | |
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wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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recollected
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| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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withers
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| 马肩隆 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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yearn
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| v.想念；怀念；渴望 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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languished
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| 长期受苦( languish的过去式和过去分词 )； 受折磨； 变得（越来越）衰弱； 因渴望而变得憔悴或闷闷不乐 | |
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confinement
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| n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限 | |
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lewdly
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imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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satires
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| 讽刺，讥讽( satire的名词复数 )； 讽刺作品 | |
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captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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noisome
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| adj.有害的，可厌的 | |
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seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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condole
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| v.同情；慰问 | |
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dole
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| n.救济，（失业）救济金；vt.（out）发放，发给 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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ignominiously
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| adv.耻辱地，屈辱地，丢脸地 | |
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satiric
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| adj.讽刺的，挖苦的 | |
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32
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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33
forsake
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| vt.遗弃，抛弃；舍弃，放弃 | |
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34
muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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bower
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| n.凉亭，树荫下凉快之处；闺房；v.荫蔽 | |
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40
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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41
pry
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| vi.窥(刺)探，打听；vt.撬动(开，起) | |
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putrid
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| adj.腐臭的；有毒的；已腐烂的；卑劣的 | |
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nostalgia
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| n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧 | |
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wrestle
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| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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engraved
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| v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的过去式和过去分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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detraction
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| n.减损；诽谤 | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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affronted
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| adj.被侮辱的，被冒犯的v.勇敢地面对( affront的过去式和过去分词 )；相遇 | |
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nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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innuendo
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| n.暗指，讽刺 | |
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54
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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lyric
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| n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的 | |
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dungeon
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| n.地牢，土牢 | |
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ferment
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| vt.使发酵；n./vt.（使）激动，（使）动乱 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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reek
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| v.发出臭气；n.恶臭 | |
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consolatory
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| adj.慰问的，可藉慰的 | |
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