APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.

SIDNEY GODOLPHIN AND SAndys.

THE very first appearance of the new school of poets in print was, so far as I am able to discover, in George Sandys' Poems:—

"A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems. By George Sandys. London. At the Bell in St Paul's Churchyard. MDCXXXVIII. (Licenced Nov. 1637.)"

To this charming little folio, specially sought after by collectors because it contains Henry Lawes' music to the Psalms, both Sidney Godolphin and Waller contributed prefatory eulogies, in company with Lord Falkland, Henry King, Carew, Dudley Digges, and others less eminent. Waller, whose Christian name is misprinted Edward, appears with the verses "How bold a work attempts that pen,” reprinted in all succeeding collections of his work. Sidney Godolphin's long and courtly poem of compliment has great merit, and in consideration of the entire obscurity which has fallen upon this name, an obscurity from which I hope to be the means in some degree of lifting it, I quote a few stanzas:—

"Music, the universal language, sways

In every mind; the world this power obeys,
And Nature's self is charmed by well-tun'd lays.

All disproportioned, harsh, disordered cares,
Unequal thoughts, vain hopes and low despairs
Fly the soft breath of these harmonious airs.

Here is that harp, whose charms uncharm'd the breast Of troubled Saul, and that unquiet guest

With which his passions travail'd, disposses d.

This work had been proportioned to our sight,
Had you but known with some allay to write,
And not preserv'd your author's strength and light.

But you so crush those odours, so dispense
Those rich perfumes, you make them too intense
And such, alas! as too much please our sense.

We fitter are for sorrows than such love;
Josiah falls, and by his fall doth move
Tears from the people, mourning from above.

Judah, in her Josiah's death, doth die;
All springs of grief are opened to supply
Streams to the torrent of this elegy.

Others break forth in everlasting praise,

Having their wish, and wishing they might raise
Some monument of thanks to after-days.

These are the pictures which your happy art
Gives us, and which so well you do impart,
As if these passions sprang in your own heart.

Others translate, but you the beams collect
Of your inspired authors, and reflect

Those heavenly rays with new and strong effect.

Yet human language only can restore

What human language had impaired before,
And when that once is done, can give no more.

Sir, I forbear to add to what is said,
Lest to your burnished gold I bring my lead,
And with what is immortal mix the dead."

Sandys, himself, though with an ear imperfectly trained, is found making a direct effort to reform the lax versification of his day. The volume is, in various ways, one of considerable importance in the history of English poetry.

In view of the curious solidarity of the earliest classical English school, it is not uninteresting to find Hobbes, in his Leviathan, incidentally mentioning in these terms of respect a man at least a quarter of a century younger than himself:-"Mr Sidney Godolphin, when he lived, was pleased to think my studies something, and otherwise to oblige me with real testimonies of his good opinion, great in themselves, and the greater for the worthiness of his person."