When his majesticke tragedies relate, All the disorders of a tottering State, All the distempers which on kingdomes fall And yet the minds against all feare assure, Whom vast desires or mighty wants doth move In proud Sejanus and bold Catalene; So in his vigilant Prince and consul's parts, By which a State may be unhurt upheld, And all those workes destroy'd which hell would build Us'd not a tutoring hand his to direct The happy fields hold not a happier ghost. Of Falkland's own position and powers as a poet something remains to be said. Considerable extracts from his poems have already been given, sufficient, it is hoped, to enable the reader to estimate fairly his merits. It would be absurd to make any high claim on his behalf. The quantity of his output is inconsiderable, his poems, as collected by Dr. Grosart, occuping some sixty pages octavo; and the quality is not such as to entitle him to any very exalted place among the minor poets. His poems are obviously the work of a scholar, a critic, a philosopher and above all a generous-hearted friend. "His first years of reason," writes Wood, "were spent in poetry and polite learning, into the first of which he made divers plausible sallies which caused him, therefore, to be admired by the poets of those times "1 "Plausible sallies" describes not inaptly Falkland's essays in poetry; but, without cynicism, doubt may be expressed whether they would have gained him the admiration of contemporaries had they been the work of a poor rival instead of a generous patron and devoted friend. Mr. Courthope, one of the sanest and soundest of modern critics, after pointing out that he worked mainly in the elegiac vein which Ben Jonson had developed, declares that "he had not inspiration enough to make his memorial verses vital and pathetic ". Moreover, while willing to admit that the formal pastoral style represented something of reality to the poet's imagination," he concludes, "the fact remains that Falkland fails to convince the reader that he is writing the language of his heart" But perhaps the last word on the matter rests with Bishop Earle whose judgment on his friend's poems (if Aubrey accurately reports him) was as sound as it was terse. "Dr. Earle would not allow Falkland to be a good poet, though a great wit; he writ not a smooth verse, but a good deal of sense." The criticism is precisely true. If Falkland lacks the high gifts of music and imagination which would give him a place among the great poets, still less is he guilty of those affectations or worse-which are too often characteristic of the minor poets. He is at least manly, straightforward and simple; and eminently distinguished for good sense. That he lacks "smoothness" he is himself painfully conscious. Thus in the last of the poems to Sandys he contrasts the acknowledged "smoothness" of Sandys with his own plausible sallies :— Such is the verse thou writ'st, that who reads thine Can never be content to suffer mine; Such is the verse I write, that reading mine I hardly can believe I have read thine; 1ii., 566. And wonder that their excellence once knowne, I nor correct, nor yet conceale mine owne. This poem was written in 1640, only three years before his own mournful end. There seems, therefore, a strange pathos, as well as unquestionable poetic feeling, in its concluding lines, the last, as far as we know, that Falkland ever wrote:-1 Howe're, I finish here; my Muse her daies, To have so just an action for her last. And since there are who have been taught that death I hope when these foretell what happie gaines But they shall always live and always teach, And the so taught will not beliefe refuse, To the last accents of a dying Muse. 1 Grosart: Memorial Introduction, p. 26. WE CHAPTER IV THE CONVIVIUM PHILOSOPHICUM E pass to the second and more important stage in Falkland's literary career. The writing of verse seems to have remained to him as an occasional pastime until his absorption into the stern realities of political life. But his intimacy with the Cavalier poets represents after all merely a passing phase in his intellectual development, and the Sessions of the Poets gave way before long to the Convivium Philosophicum and Convivium Theologicum. Theology was the absorbing interest of Falkland's ripening manhood. To Suckling's obvious regret he was "gone with divinity". But theological speculation was with him only the intellectual reflex of deep religious earnestness and a lofty moral purpose. "His religion," says the good Triplet, was the more eminent because the more early at that age when young gallants think least on it: when they, young candidates of Atheisme begin to dispute themselves out of a beleefe of a Deity, urging hard against that which indeed is best for them that it should never be, a judgment to come; then, I say that Salvation which these mention with a scoff or a jeere he began to work out with feare and trembling." Triplet's passing hint as to the genesis of much intellectual "doubt" proves him to have been a close and shrewd observer of youth. With Falkland the impulse to theological speculation was derived from individual reflec tion upon the moral bases of conduct and life. At the same time he neglected no means of intellectual equipment for the task to which he now seriously devoted his life. On this point Clarendon is explicit. "He made so prodigious a progress in learning that there were very few classic authors. in the Greek or Latin tongue that he had not read with great exactness. He had read all the Greek and Latin fathers; all the most allowed and authentic ecclesiastical writers; and all the councils with wonderful care and observation; for in religion he thought too careful and too curious an enquiry could not be made amongst those, whose purity was not questioned, and whose authority was constantly and confidently urged by men who were furthest from being of one mind among themselves; and for the mutual support of their several opinions in which they most contradicted each other; and in all those controversies, he had so dispassioned a consideration, such a candour in his nature, and so profound a charity in his conscience, that in those points, in which he was in his own judgment most clear, he never thought the worse, or in any degree declined the familiarity of those who were of another mind; which without doubt is an excellent temper for the propagation and advancement of Christianity. With these great advantages of industry he had a memory retentive of all that he had ever read, and an understanding and judgment to apply it seasonably and appositely, with the most dexterity and address, and the least pedantry and affectation that ever man, who knew so much, was possessed with, of what quality soever." It is a wonderful picture which Clarendon draws of the precise and painstaking scholar, the calm but eager searcher after truth, the courteous but keen controversialist, above all the large-hearted and simple-minded Christian who, with his own clear and un 1 Life, i., 48, 49. |