The Companion, by L. Hunt

of the most worrying and not the least formidable of the retainers of orthodoxy; namely, the court wits, backed by their long walls of establishment; for, unfortunately, in those times the wits and the critics were the same people. They were not all indeed against him, but the fray appears to have been sufficient to disturb the common quiet; and whether this put him upon new thoughts of adventures, or the restless thoughts, and the hankering after a life of action, which are strongly discernible in Gondibert, would not suffer him long to sit still, he broke up his literary warfare, to turn his endeavours elsewhere. Davenant had heard of mighty improvements to be made in the loyal colony of Virginia, provided good hands could be carried thither; and accordingly, with the spirit of one of the military wanderers of old, he got together a number of industrious men in France, whose fortunes wanted mending, and embarked with them for that country in one of the ports of Normandy. He was destined however to experience more of the epic hindrance of great travellers,

and being intercepted by one of the Parliament ships of war, was taken into the Isle of Wight, and committed close prisoner to Cowes Castle. Here, with an energy which will astonish no one that has tasted of the wants of great calamities, and the strength with which they furnish us to supply them, he resumed his poem; and having written six cantos of a third book, full of his usual powers of thought, and enlivened with more fancy, he begged the reader's" leave to desist, being," as he says, "interrupted by so great an experiment as dying." This he says in a Postscript, as finely written as anything he produced, sweet and manly,—with a heart in it beating with as thoughtful yet noble pulses as ever lay down greatly to die. It is glorious to see a man's animal spirits vindicate themselves in this manner from the suspicion both of fear and levity, and shewing that the profoundest contemplations of death are not incompatible with a gallant encounter of it.

His Epitaph, and Ben Jonson's.

Davenant departed this life, a general favourite, at his house in Little Lincoln's Inn fields, on the 7th of April 1668, in the sixty-third year of his age; and was interred with great ceremony in Westminster Abbey. "I was at his funerall," quoth Aubrey: "he had a coffin of wallnut-tree. Sir John Denham saide 'twas the finest coffin that ever he sawe." Upon-the stone over his grave was cut, in imitation or rather echo of the epitaph on Ben Jonson, "O rare Sir William Davenant;" which is as bad as the other was good, being an impulse at second-hand.

Ben Jonson's epitaph is a genuine thing, and was done on the sudden. It appears to have been owing to a friend of Davenant and Suckling, whom we have mentioned in our account of the latter. "He lies buryed," says Aubrey, speaking of Jonson, "in the north aisle in the path of square stone (the rest is lozenge), opposite to the scutcheon of Robertus de Ros, with this inscription only on him, in a pavement square, blew marble, about 14 inches square, O RARE BEN JONSON-which was donne at the chardge of Jack Young (afterwards knighted) who walking there when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteen-pence to cutt it."We learn from the same authority, that Davenant lies in the south cross aisle, under a paving stone of marble.

Davenant would have shewn himself a greater poet, had he indulged less in putting philosophical reflections into verse, and given way in a greater degree to the impulses of his imagination, which were very genuine. His 'Gondibert' is better known than it used to be, in consequence of the remarks of Dr Aikin, Mr Hazlitt, and others. It is too full (as we have before observed) of the fault just mentioned, however noble the reflections are; and this, and the versification, will ever hinder it from becoming popular. The versification is heavy and clogged to an inconceivable degree, the lines being laden with spondees, which carry a fresh lump with them at every step; and this becomes tiresome, though the lumps are of gold. Among his other mistakes, it was he who, in restoring the theatre among us, was the first to bring over from the continent the seeds of that intermixture of the French and romantic drama, which

Dryden afterwards carried to such a flourishing height of absurdity; and in such lines as the following, we think we can trace the first footsteps of the return of certain classical common-places which will be obvious to the reader. Speaking of Fletcher, he says

'Twas he reduced Evadne from her scorne,

And taught the sad Aspasia how to mourne;
Gave Arethusa's love a glad reliefe ;
And made Panthea elegant in griefe.

His most unexceptionable beauties, setting aside a few most noble ones in Gondibert,' are to be found in his miscellaneous poems; some of which, whether for delicacy of feeling, force of imagery, or strength and sweetness of verse, are, we think, not to be surpassed. We must close this paper with a few specimens.

TO THE QUEEN, ENTERTAINED AT NIGHT BY THE COUNTESS OF ANGLESEY.

"Faire as unshaded light; or as the day

In its first birth, when all the year was May;
Sweet, as the altars smoak, or as the new
Unfolded bud, sweld by the early dew;
Smooth, as the face of waters first appear'd,
Ere tides began to strive, or winds were heard:
Kind as the willing saints, and calmer farre,
Than in their sleeps forgiven hermits are:
You that are more, then our discreter feare

Dares praise, with such full art, what make you here?
Here, where the summer is so little seen,

That leaves (her cheapest wealth) scarce reach at green
You come, as if the silver planet were

Misled awhile from her much-injur'd sphere,

And t'ease the travailes of her beames to-night,

In this small lanthorn would contract her light."

Another little poem, in a similar strain, but still finer, addressed to Lady Olivia Porter, his friend's wife, appeared the other day in the first number of the Keepsake.'

In the Elegy on the Earl of Rutland:

Thy bounties if I name; I'll not admit,

Kings when they love, or wooe, to equall it:
It shew'd like Nature's self, when she doth bring
All she can promise by an early spring;

Or when she payes that promise where she best
Makes summers for mankind; in the rich east.
And, as the wise sun silently imployes
His lib'rall beames, and ripens without noise

oems

agery,

je su

285 OF

Seveal u, it visittu kʊ MỤC.

The following is another specimen of the style in wh Queen was complimented. We here see Henrietta, with he tiful black eyes, painted to the life, and the King's uxori made noble. It is at the beginning of some lines to the Portland, on the marriage of his son.

"My Lord, this night is yours! each wand'ring star
That was unbusi'd, and irregular,

Most gravely now his bright companion leads,
To fix o're your glad roofe their shining heads;
And it is said, th' exemplar king's your guest;
And that the rich-ey'd darling of his breast
(To ripen all our joys) will there become
The music, odor, light of ev'ry roome !"

No man has written finer hyperboles on women; in wi find a certain natural track of philosophy, and a charming nature. The following is out of an elegy on a friend's mist

"Lovers (whose wise senses take delight

In warm contaction, and in real sight)
Are not with lean imagination fed,
Or satisfi'd with thinking on the dead.
'Tis fit we seek her then; but he that finds
Her out, must enter friendship with the winds;
Enquire their dwelling and uncertain walks;
Whither they blow, from their forsaken stålks
Flowers that are gone, ere they are smelt? or how
Dispose o'th' sweeter blossoms of the bough:
For she (the treasuress of these) is fled,

Not having the dull leasure to be dead;

But t'hoord this wealth; return, and this wealth bring
Still vary'd, and increas'd in ev'ry spring."

TWO SIMILES.

"Cold as the feet of rocks; silent in shade
As Chaos lay, before the winds were made."

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