upon the King in the garden at Caversham, his Majesty smiled and said that he could give him news of himself, for that he had just seen some verses of his. The verses1 were those prefixed in 1647, to Fanshawe's Pastor Fido, a presentation copy of which had probably just reached the King. Charles seems to have been very unsympathetic about them: perhaps he had no great idea of Denham's ability in other matters. He told him, in terms which must have been very galling to the author of Cooper's Hill, that he liked the verses well, but he would advise him to write no more, "for that when men are young and have little else to do, they may vent the outcomings of their fancy in that way, but when they are thought fit for more serious employments, if they still persisted in that course, it would look as if they minded not the way to any better." It is a little odd that Denham himself was the person who informed the world of this royal reprimand; the reason possibly was that he might remind Charles II., to whom he addressed these remarks in 1667, of the "serious employment" he 1 Four of them are worth quoting: A new and nobler way thou dost pursue had been entrusted with in 1647, namely, the being charged by the Queen with a private message to Charles I., who was then at St James's. Denham stayed with the King, until in November the latter made his escape from Hampton Court. Denham remained in London, and in April, 1648, after the civil war had broken out anew, he managed to steal from the Earl of Northumberland his royal charge the Duke of York, then a boy of fifteen. It would seem from what Clarendon and others say of this flight of James, who was dressed as a girl, and had great difficulty in reaching Middelburg without discovery, that Denham's share in effecting his escape was less than the poet afterward reported it to be. He seems, however, to have gained a reputation for diplomacy, for soon after the execution of the King, he was sent from Paris, in company with William, Lord Crofts, to collect money in Poland from Scotch people settled in that country, and with such extraordinary success that he brought £10,000 back with him. He made a doggerel poem about this expedition, in which he gives us no very clear account of what occurred on the occasion. He wrote very little more verse until the Restoration. He pretends that he took that remark of His Majesty's in the garden at Caversham so much to heart that he never felt any inclination to write again; but that, of course, is nonsense1. He probably found that his vein, which never flowed very freely, had run dry. It gushed again before he died, as we shall see. His best poem written during the Exile is one "Against Love," which is inspired by a sort of spirited cynicism, very paradoxical and fantastic, but rather refreshing after the interminable love-languishings and melting sonnets to my lady's eyebrow which had constituted the main part of lyrical literature in the preceding generation. I will close the present chapter by printing a few of these stanzas, the versification of which appears to me to be particularly forcible and graceful: "AGAINST LOVE. Love making all things else his foes, This was the cause the poets sung, 1 He had forgotten that in the very next year, 1648, he had published a paraphrase of Cato Major on Old Age. Was it modesty at the Royal reprimand, or a desire to seem consistent, which made him omit this poem in 1667? Her father, not her son, art thou; Love is as old as place or time; 'Twas he the fatal tree did climb, Grandsire of Father Adam's crime. Love drowsy days and stormy nights How happy he, that loves not, lives! How unconcerned in things to come! Secure from low and private ends, |