Stanley died in London, April 12th, 1678, at the comparatively early age of 53. As a poet Stanley had nothing in common with his immediate contemporaries. He belonged to what Johnson has designated (not very happily) the Metaphysical School, the School of Crashaw and Donne, though his scholarly taste enabled him to avoid the extravagant conceits and far-fetched ingenuities on which his predecessors so often made shipwreck. An innate refinement led him also to avoid the indelicacy which disfigures so much of the poetry of the age. His translations are, perhaps, even better than his original poems; they are singularly graceful, while conveying, with happy fidelity, the spirit of the originals. But it is of his own work that we shall give a brief specimen. One could wish there had been more of it, for it is always finished in execution, and admirable in tone. "CELIA, singing. Roses in breathing forth their scent, Or stars their borrowed ornament, Nymphs in the watery sphere that move, The winged chariot of the light, Or the slow silent wheels of night, The shade which from the swifter sun Doth in a circular motion run, Or souls that their eternal rest do keep, Make far less [more ?] noise than Celia's breath in sleep. But if the Angel which inspires This subtle flame with active fires, Should mould this breath to words, and those Into a harmony dispose, The music of this heavenly sphere Would steal each soul out at the ear, And into plants and stones infuse A life that Cherubim would choose, And with new powers invest the laws of fate, We may add that in 1657 Stanley published the "Psalterium Carolinum; the Devotions of his Sacred Majestie in his Solitude and Sufferings, rendered into verse." An elder brother of Thomas Killigrew-the wit and dramatist, and unofficial jester to Charles II.-Sir William Killigrew (born in 1605) dabbled freely in verse, some specimens of which are embedded in the dulness of his "Artless Midnight Thoughts of a Gentleman at Court, who for many years built of sand, which every blast of cross fortune has defaced; but now he has laid new foundations on the Rock of his Salvation" (1693). Unfortunately the "Artless Thoughts" were built on sand. They are upwards of two hundred and thirty in number, but not one is worth preservation. Killigrew was a brave Cavalier and a loyal servant of the Crown; he held the post of Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen for two-andtwenty years; but he was neither poet, philosopher, nor dramatist. He wrote five plays-"The Siege of Urbin," "Selindra," "Pandora," and "Love and Friendship"published in 1666, in which there is none of the wit that, it is said, his conversation displayed-and "The Imperial Tragedy," published in 1669. Sir William lived to a ripe old age, dying in the early part of 1693, when he had just attained his eighty-ninth year. Sir William's niece, Anne Killigrew, daughter of his youngest brother, Dr. Henry Killigrew (author of "The Conspiracy,") maintained the reputation of the family for *This was cast, at first, in the form of a tragedy; but as the authorities of the theatre did not want tragedies, its author obligingly converted it into a comedy. Sir Robert Stapylton says of Sir William's plays that they contained plots well laid, The language pure and every sentence weighed! literary gifts and accomplishments. Dryden has celebrated her genius for painting and poetry in one of the finest of his odes; and she deserves to be remembered with gratitude if only for having inspired this noble lyric effusion. Allowing for the genial extravagances of a poet's imagination, there must still have been rare merit in the young artist of whom Dryden could say : "Art she had none, yet wanted none, So rich in treasure of her own, She might our boasted stores defy : Such noble vigour did her verse adorn, That it seemed borrowed where 'twas only born." Anthony Wood affirms that "she was a Grace for beauty, and a Muse for wit; and gave the earliest discoveries of a great genius, which, being improved by a polite education, she became eminent in the arts of poetry and painting." These engaging and eminent accomplishments, says Betham, were the least of her perfections, for "she crowned all with an exemplary piety and unblemished virtue." She painted several historical compositions, some pieces of still life, and portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York. But the promise of her genius never ripened into performances; she was carried off by small-pox, on the 16th of June, 1685, in her twenty-fifth year. Her "Poems," in a thin quarto, were published in 1686. Hallam ranks Oldham as a satirist "next to Dryden;" he characterises him as "spirited and pointed," but thinks his versification "too negligent" and his subjects "temporary." It is his good fortune, however, that he preceded Dryden, so that no one can diminish his merits by accusing him of imitation. For ourselves, the chief interest of his poetry lies in its indications of what he might have become if his genius had had time to mature. With longer experience, riper thought, and calmer judgment he would have been the English Juvenal. As it is, the strength and strenuousness of his verse compel our admiration; but we can hardly forgive the occasional grossness of his language and the unmeasured fury of his invective, to say nothing of his defects of execution. To these defects Dryden, who greatly valued his young predecessor, and praised him with the fullest generosity, alludes, when he admits that, had his brief career been prolonged, "Years might (what Nature gives the young) Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue." We who know how Keats and Shelley wrote while young," can hardly accept this kindly excuse; nor Dryden's other plea, that "Satire needs not those, and wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line." The full splendour of the diamond is not brought out until it has been polished. Oldham was never feeble. Even in his Translations, or rather, Imitations from Horace, Juvenal, and Boileau, his manly vigour and force and frankness are very noticeable. The following quotation affords not only a good specimen of his style, but an interesting illustration of the social position of a domestic chaplain in the days of Charles II. : "Some think themselves exalted to the sky, If they light in some noble family, Diet, a horse, and thirty pounds a year, Besides the advantage of his lordship's car, The credit of the business, and the state, Are things that in a youngster's sense sound great. What slavery he oft must undergo, Who, though in silken scarf and cassock drest, When dinner calls, the implement must wait, For mere board wages such their freedom sell, Always the marks of slavery remain, And they, though loose, still drag about their chains. A chaplainship served up, and seven years' thrall ? Is to some slender benefice perferred, With this proviso bound: that he must wed My lady's antiquated waiting-maid In dressing only skilled, and marmalade."+ John Oldham, the author of this forcible satire, was born at Shipton, in Gloucestershire, on the 9th of August, 1653. He received from his father, a non-conforming clergyman, the elements of a sound education, and was afterwards sent to Tilbury Grammar School, whence, with credit, he proceeded to Edmund Hall, Oxford. His natural ability was soon made manifest, and he acquired a local reputation as a writer of good English verse and a proficient in Latin scholarship. In 1674 he took his degree of B.A., and in the same year was engaged as a master at Whitgift Hospital, Croydon, where he remained for three years, wrote his "Satires against the * The basket containing the broken victuals left over from dinner. + Lord Macaulay has largely availed himself of this passage in his description of the condition of the clergy at the Restoration. |