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, All disproportioned, harsh, disordered cares, 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, But you so crush those odours, so dispense We fitter are for sorrows than such love; Judah, in her Josiah's death, doth die; Others break forth in everlasting praise, Having their wish, and wishing they might raise These are the pictures which your happy art Others translate, but you the beams collect Those heavenly rays with new and strong effect. Yet human language only can restore What human language had impaired before, Sir, I forbear to add to what is said, 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." |