Chapter 55
In my labour Thou reliev'st me; Thou reform'st whatever grieves me.
Al my wrongs Thy hand revengeth, And from hurt my soul defendeth.
Thou my deepest doubts revealest, Thou my secret faults concealest.
O do Thou stay my feet from treading In paths to hel and horror leading, Where eternal torment dwels, With fears and tears and lothsome smels; Where man's deepest shame is sounded, And the guilty still confounded; Where the scourge for ever beateth, And the worme that alwaies eateth; Where all those endless do remain, Lord, preserve us from this paine.
In Sion lodge me, Lord, for pitty-- Sion, David's kingly citty, Built by Him that's onely good; Whose gates be of the Crosse's wood; Whose keys are Christ's undoubted word; Whose dwellers feare none but the Lord; Whose wals are stone, strong, quicke and bright; Whose Keeper is the Lord of Light: Here the light doth never cease, Endlesse Spring and endles peace; Here is musicke, heaven filling, Sweetnesse evermore distilling; Here is neither spot nor taint, No defect, nor no complaint; No man crooked, great nor small, But to Christ conformed all.
Blessed towne, divinely graced, On a rocke so strongly placed, Thee I see, and thee I long for; Thee I seek, and thee I grone for.
O what ioy thy dwellers tast, All in pleasure first and last!
What full enioying blisse divine, What iewels on thy wals do s.h.i.+ne!
Ruby, iacinth, chalcedon, Knowne to them within alone.
In this glorious company, In the streets of Sion, I With Iob, Moses, and Eliah, Will sing the heauenly Alleviah. Amen.
Surely this is a very noteworthy transfusion of old Latin pieties into vivid English. 'Visions' of Jerusalem the Golden transfigure even the austere words towards the close. One can picture Master Richard's eyes kindling over his Father's verses when he was gone.
So endeth what I have thought it needful to tell of the elder Crashaw.
As..h.i.therto almost nothing has been told of him, even our compressed little Memorial--keeping back many things and notices that have gathered in our note-books--may be welcome to some. I pa.s.s now to
II. A STUDY OF THE LIFE AND POETRY OF RICHARD CRASHAW.
The outward facts of our 'sweet Singer's' story are given with comparative fulness in our Memorial-Introduction (vol. i. pp.
xxvii.-x.x.xviii.). In the present brief Essay we wish to look into some of these, so as to arrive at a true estimate of them and of the Poetry, now fully (and for the first time) collected.
I think I shall be able to say what has struck myself as worth saying about Crashaw, under these three things:
I. His change from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, using the terms as historic words, not polemically.
II. His friends and a.s.sociates, as celebrated in his Writings.
III. His characteristics and place as a Poet. These successively.
I. _His change from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism._ From our Memoir of his Father it will be apparent to all that _he_ was a Protestant of Protestants; and it is an inevitable a.s.sumption that his son from infancy would be indoctrinated with all vigilance and fervour in the paternal creed, which may be designated Puritan, as opposed to Laudian High-Churchism within the Church of England.[15] I think we shall not err either, in concluding that the younger Crashaw had a very impressionable and plastic nature; so that the strong and self-a.s.sertive character of his Father could not fail to mould his earliest thinking, opinions, beliefs, and emotion. Still it will not do to p.r.o.nounce our Poet's change to have been a revolt and rebound from the narrowness of the paternal teaching and writing, seeing that his Father died in 1626, when he was only pa.s.sing into his 13-14th year.[16] It is palpable that the elder Crashaw was spared the distress of the apostacy (as he should most trenchantly have named it) of his only son. Moreover, the very notable poems from the Tanner MSS. on the _Gunpowder Treason_ (vol. i.
pp. 188-194) are p.r.o.nounced and intense in their denunciations of (to quote from them) that 'vnmated malice,' that 'vnpeer'd despight' and 'very quintessence of villanie,' for 'singing' of which he feels he must have not 'inke' but 'the blood of Cerberus, or Alecto's viperous brood,'
and demonstrate that he carried with him to, and kept in, Cambridge all his father's wrath, and more than even his father's vocabulary of vituperation, with too his own after-epithets, instinct with poetic feeling, as a thoughtful reading reveals. These poems belong to 1631-3.
Even in the Latin Epigrams of 1634 there is (to say the least) a 'slighting' allusion to the Pope in the 'Umbra S. Petri,' being 'Nunc quoque, Papa, tuum sustinet illa decus' (see Epigram xix. p. 47). That volume, also, is dedicated in the most glowing words of affection and indebtedness to Dr. Benjamin Lany (vol. ii. pp. 7-15), afterwards, as we shall find onward, a distinguished bishop in the Church of England. And he was a man after the elder Crashaw's own heart, as we shall now have revealed in a little overlooked poem addressed to Crashaw senior, which is appended to the 'Manvall for True Catholicks' (as before). Here it is; and let the Reader ponder its anti-papal sentiment:
A CONCLUSION TO THE AUTHOR AND HIS BOOKE.
Tradition and antiquitie, the ground Whereon that erring Church doth so relye, Breakes out to light, from darknesse, to confound The novel doctrine of their heresie, Which plaine by these most sensible degrees Doth point the wayes it hath digrest to fall; Where each observing iudgement plainely sees, From good to bad, from bad to worst of all It is arriv'd: so that it can aspire, Obscure, deface, suppresse, doe what it may, To blinde this truth; to no step any higher By any policie it can essay.
These holy Hymnes stuft with religious zeale And meditations of most pious use, Able their whole to wound, our wounded heale: Free from impiety, or least abuse, Blot out all merit in ourselves we have, And onely, solely, doe on Christ relye: Offer not prayers for those are in the grave, Nor unto saints, that heare not, doe not cry.
Then in a word, since G.o.d hath thee preserv'd From the Inquisitors' most cruel rage, Though in their worth they else might have deserv'd To pa.s.se among the good things of this Age, Yet are in this respect of more regard, Since G.o.d would have them to these times appeare, So many having perisht; and be heard With more true zeale, that G.o.d hath kept so deare.
By all which I conclude, from thine owne heart, Thou wicked servant, that might know and would not, He hath discharg'd himselfe in all and part, That would have cur'd your Babel, but hee could not.
B.L.
There is some obscurity in these Donne- or Ben-Jonson-like rugged lines, but none as to the opinions of their writer on Popery. Thus up to 1634 at least, or until his twenty-second or twenty-third year, Crashaw the younger was as thoroughly Protestant, in all probability, as his father could have desired. The '_change_' accordingly was a radical one when he left his mother-Church, and one laments that our light is so dim and our view so distant. Anthony a-Wood (as before) and the usual authorities state that our Crashaw became famous as a preacher: he became, says Willmott, 'a preacher of great energy and power,' _id est_, in England, and therefore while still belonging to the Church of England. I have an impression that somehow the son has been confounded with the father, whose renown as a preacher was lasting; just as it seems certain that son and father have been confounded by the continuous editors of Selden's 'Table-Talk,' wherein the ill.u.s.trious Thinker recounts somewhat proudly that he had converted Crashaw from his opposition to stage-plays. We may as well expiscate this point here. The younger Crashaw, then, never expressed himself, so far as is known, against stage-plays: contrari-wise, in his fine Epigram on Ford's 'Love's Sacrifice' and 'Broken Heart' he is in sympathy with these 'stage-plays.' On the other hand, in one of his most impa.s.sioned sermons, his father had, with characteristic pungency, condemned 'Plaies and Players'--as given below.[17] To return: be this as it may in the matter of 'preaching,' the matter-of-fact is, that our Crashaw retained his Fellows.h.i.+p up to his ejection on the 11th of June 1644 (vol. i. pp.
x.x.xiii.-iv.), or when he was in his 32d-33d year; or, as gentle Father Southwell gently put it, about his 'dear Lord's' age. We get a glimpse of his religious life while a Protestant, in the original 'Preface to the Reader' of 'Steps to the Temple,' &c. as follows: 'Reader, we stile his Sacred Poems, Steps to the Temple, and aptly; for in the Temple of G.o.d, under His wing, he led his life, in St. Marie's Church neere St.
Peter's Colledge: there he lodged under Tertullian's roofe of angels; there he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow neere the house of G.o.d, where, like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night than others usually offer in the day; there he penned these poems, STEPS for happy soules to climbe heaven by' (vol. i. p. xlvii.).
Coinciding with this is the love he had for the writings of 'Sainte Teresa,' when (in his own words) 'the Author' of 'A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the admirable Sainte Teresa' was 'yet among the Protestants.' In his 'Apologie for the foregoing Hymn'--than which, for subtle, delicate, fin_est_ mysticism, in words that are not so much words as music, and yet definite words too, changing with the quick bright changes of a dove's neck, there is hardly anything truer--the Poet traces up his devotion to her to his 'reading' of her books; as thus:
'Thus haue I back again to thy bright name, Fair floud of holy fires! transfus'd the flame I took from reading thee....
... O pardon, if I dare to say Thine own dear bookes are guilty.' (vol. i. p. 150.)
The words of the Preface (as above) remind us also that Crashaw took his part in the Fasts and Vigils and austerities of the Ferrars and the saintly, if ascetic, 'Little Gidding' group.[18] Going back on the 'Hymn,' such lines as these show how even then the Poet had drunk-in the very pa.s.sion of Teresa: _e.g._
'Loue toucht her heart, and, lo, it beates High, and burnes with such braue heates, Such thirsts to dy, as dares drink vp _A thousand cold deathes in one cup_.
Good reason: for she breathes all fire; Her white breast heaues with strong desire.
Sweet, not so fast! lo, thy fair Spouse, Whom thou seekst with so swift vowes, Calls thee back, and bidds thee come T'embrace a milder martyrdom.
Blest powres forbid thy tender life Should bleed vpon a barbarous knife: Or some base hand have power to raze Thy brest's chast cabinet, and vncase A soul kept there so sweet: O no, Wise Heaun will neuer haue it so.
Thou art Love's victime, and must dy A death more mystical and high: Into Loue's armes thou shalt let fall A still-suruiuing funerall.
His is the dart must make the death Whose stroke shall tast thy hallow'd breath; A dart thrice dipt in that rich flame Which writes thy Spouse's radiant name Vpon the roof of Heau'n, where ay It s.h.i.+nes;
O how oft shalt thou complain Of a sweet and subtle pain; Of intolerable ioyes; Of a death, in which who dyes Loues his death, and dyes again, And would for ever so be slain, And liues and dyes; and knowes not why To live, but that he thus may neuer leaue to dy.'
It is deeply significant to find such a Hymn as that written while 'yet among the Protestants.' Putting the two things together--(_a_) his recluse, shy, meditative life 'under Tertullian's roofe of angels,' and his prayers THERE in the night; (_b_) his pa.s.sionately sympathetic reading, as of Teresa, and going forth of his most spiritual yearnings after the 'sweet and subtle pain,' and Love's death 'mystical and high'--we get at the secret of the 'change' now being considered.
However led to it, Crashaw's reading lay among books that were as fuel to fire brought to a naturally mystical and supersensitive temperament; and however formed and nurtured, such self-evidently was his temperament. His innate mysticism drew him to such literature, and the literature fed what perchance demanded rather to be neutralised.[19] I feel satisfied one main element of the attraction of Roman Catholicism for him was the nutriment and nurture for his profoundest though most perilous spiritual experiences in its Writers. His great-brained, strong-thewed father would have dismissed such 'intolerable ioyes' as morbid sentimentalism; but the nervous, finely and highly-strung organisation of his son was as an aeolian harp under their touch. To all this must be added certain local influences, and ultimately the crash of the Ejection. The history of the University during the period of Crashaw's residence makes it plain that there was then, as later, a revival of what may be technically called Ritualism--as an intended help-meet to Faith--and that by some of the most cultured and gracious scholars of the Colleges. I am not vindicating, much less judging such, any more than would I 'sit in judgment' on the Ritualist revival of our own day, _i.e._ of its adherents. For myself, I find it a diviner and grander thing to 'walk by faith' rather than by 'sight,' and not 'bodied' but 'disembodied truth' the more spiritual. But to not a few--and to such as Crashaw--the sensible, the visible, the actually looked-at--sanctified with the h.o.a.r of centuries--light up and etherealise. Contemporary records show that the chapel of Peterhouse--Crashaw's college--which was built in 1632, and consecrated by Francis White, Bishop of Ely, was a 'handsome' one, having a beautiful ceiling and a n.o.ble east window--its gla.s.s 'hid away in the troublesome times.' Among the benefactors to its building were (afterwards bishops) Cosin and Wren, and also Shelford, whose 'Five learned Discourses' were graced with a noticeable 'commendatory poem'
by Crashaw (vol. ii. pp. 162-5). Before this chapel was built the society made use of the chancel of the adjacent church of Little St.
Mary's, into which there was a door from Peterhouse College. The reader may at this point turn to our poet's heart-broken 'pleadings' for the 'restoration' of his College, now made 'to speak English.' On all which, and the like, dear old Fuller, in his History of the University, thus speaks, under a somewhat later date (1642), but _the_ very turning-period with Crashaw: 'Now began the University to be much beautified in buildings; every college, after casting its skin with the snake, or renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts, or at least their fronts and gatehouse, repaired and adorned. But the greatest attention was in their chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of organs,' &c.
Contemporary records farther lead us to Peterhouse and Pembroke Colleges as specially 'visited' and 'spoiled' in the Commission from the Parliament in 1643 to remove crosses. We may read one 'report' out of many. 'Mr. Horscot: We went to Peterhouse, 1643, Dec. 21, with officers and soldiers, and [in] the presence [of] Mr. Wilson, of the president Mr. Francis, Mr. Maxy and other Fellows, Dec. 20 and 23, we pulled down two mighty great angells with wings, and divers other angells and the four Evangelists and Peter with his keies, over the Chappell Dore, and about a hundred cherubims and angells and divers superst.i.tious letters in gold; and at the upper end of the chancel these words were written as followeth: "Hic locus est Domini Dei, nil aliud et Porta cli."
Witness, Will. Dowsing, Geo. Long.' Farther: 'These words were written at Keie's Coll. and not at Peterhouse, but about the walls were written in Latin, "We prays thee ever;" and on some of the images was written "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus;" or other, "Gloria Dei et Gloria Patri,"
and "Non n.o.bis Domine;" and six angells in the windowes.' So at Pembroke, 'We brake and pulled down 80 superst.i.tious pictures;' and so at Little St. Mary's, 'We brake down 60 superst.i.tious pictures, some Popes and crucifixes and G.o.d the Father sitting in a chayer and holding a gla.s.s in his hand.' Looking on the since famous names of Peterhouse and Pembroke (Spenser's college)--Cosin, Wren, Shelford, Tournaye, Andrewes--they at once suggest ritualistic, if not Roman Catholic, proclivities.
Thus from all sides came potent influences of personal friends.h.i.+p--of his friends and a.s.sociates more onward--to give impulse and _momentum_ to Crashaw's mystical Roman-Catholic sympathies. The 'Ejection' of 1644 found Crashaw in the very heart of these influences, not swayed simply, but mastered by them. To one so secluded and unworldly, a crisis in which the pillars of the throne were shattered, and in which not the many for the one, but the one rather than the many, must be sacrificed, was a dazing bewilderment, and terror, and agony. All was chaos and weltering confusion; no resting-place in England for his dove-feet: dissonance, blasphemy as he weened, came to his shuddering heart: he saw the lifting-up of anchors never before lifted, and the Church drifting, drifting away aimlessly and helplessly (as he misjudged). Moses-like, he looked this way and that way, and saw no man--saw not The Man--and failed, I fear, to look UP, because of his very agony of looking down and in. And so, in his tremor and sorrow and weariness, he pa.s.sed over to Roman Catholicism as the 'ideal' of his reading, and as the 'home' of the sainted ones whose words were as manna to his spirit. Not a strong, defiant, masterful soul, by any means--frail, timorous, shrinking, rather--he would 'fly away,' even if out to the wilderness, to be 'at rest.' The very 'inner life' of G.o.d was in his soft gentle heart, and that he carried with him through after-years, as Cowley bore brave witness by his magnanimous t.i.tle of 'Saint.' Conscience too--ill-instructed possibly, yet true to its light, if true also to feelings that ought to have been wrestled with, not succ.u.mbed to--went with him: and what of G.o.d's grace is in a man keeps him, wherever ecclesiastically he may abide.
Such is our solution of the 'change' of Crashaw from Protestantism to Catholicism. It is sheer fanaticism to rave against the 'change,' and to burrow for ign.o.ble motives. Gross ignorance of the facts of the period is betrayed by any one who harshly 'judges' that the humble 'ejected Fellow' made a worldly 'gain' by his 'change.' Nay verily, it was no 'gain,' in that paltry sense, for an Englishman then to become a Roman Catholic. It was to invite obloquy, misconstruction, 'evil-speaking.' In Crashaw's case he had wealthy uncles and aunts, and other relatives, who should have amply provided for him, and 'sheltered' him through the 'troublous times.' Prynne's 'Legenda Lignea, with an Answer to Mr.
Birchley's Moderator (pleading for a Toleration of Popery) and a Character of some hopeful saints revolted to the Church of Rome' (1653), is brutal as it is inaccurate; but it must be adduced as an example of what 'Revolters' (so called) had to endure, albeit Crashaw was gone into the silences whither no clamour reaches, when the bitter book came forth. 'Master Richard Crashaw (son to the London divine, and sometime Fellow of St. Peterhouse in Cambridge) is another slip of the times that is transplanted to Rome. This peavish sillie seeker glided away from his principles in a poetical vein of fancy and impertinent curiosity, and finding that verses and measured flattery took and much pleased some female wits, Crashaw crept by degrees into favour and acquaintance with some court ladies, and with the gross commendations of their parts and beauties (burnished and varnished with some other agreeable adulations) he got first the estimation of an innocent, harmless convert; and a purse being made by some deluded, vain-glorious ladies and their friends, the poet was despatched on a pilgrimage to Rome, where, if he had found in the see Pope Urban the Eighth instead of Pope Innocent, he might possibly have received a greater quant.i.ty and a better number of benedictions; for Urban was as much a pretender to be prince and c.u.menical patron of poets as head of the Church; but Innocent being more harsh and dry, the poor small poet Crashaw met with none of the generation and kindred of Mecaenas, nor any great blessing from his Holiness; which misfortune puts the pitiful wier-drawer to a humour of admiring his own raptures; and in this fancy (like Narcissus) he is fallen in love with his own shadow, conversing with himself in verse, and admiring the birth of his own brains; he is only laughed at, or at most but pitied, by his few patrons, who, conceiving him unworthy of any preferment in their Church, have given him leave to live (like a lean swine almost ready to starve) in a poor mendicant quality; and that favour is granted only because Crashaw can rail as satirically and bitterly at true religion in verse as others of his grain and complexion can in prose and loose discourses: this fickle shuttlec.o.c.k, so tost with every changeable puff and blast, is rather to be laughed at and scorned for his ridiculous levity than imitated in his sinful and notorious apostacy and revolt' (cx.x.xviii.).
The short and crus.h.i.+ng answer to all this Billingsgate is: The poems of Crashaw are now fully before the reader, and he will not find, from the first page to the last, one line answering to Prynne's jaundiced representations: 'flatteries,' 'adulations,' 'railings,' you look for in vain. The wistfulness of persuasion of the Verse-Letter to the Countess of Denbigh would have been trampled on as a blind man or a boor tramples on a bed of pansies, by the grim lawyer-Puritan. Then, the very lowliness and (alleged) mendicancy of his post in the Church of Rome might have suggested a grain of charity, seeing that worldly advancement could not be motive to an all-but friendless scholar. As to the 'birth of his own brains,' and 'conversing with himself in verse,' would that we had more such 'births' and 'conversings'! Other accusations are malignant gossip, where they are not nonsense. Far different is the spirit of Dr. John Bargrave; whose MS. has at last been worthily edited and published for the Camden Society.[20] His notice of Crashaw at Rome is as follows: 'When I went first of my four times to Rome, there were there four revolters to the Roman Church that had been Fellows of Peterhouse in Cambridge with myself. The name of one of them was Mr. R.
Crashaw, who was one of the _Seguita_ (as their term is): that is, an attendant or of the followers of this Cardinal, for which he had a salary of crowns by the month (as the custom is), but no diet. Mr.
Crashaw infinitely commended his Cardinal, but complained extremely of the wickedness of those of his retinue; of which he, having the Cardinal's ear, complained to him. Upon which the Italians fell so far out with him that the Cardinal, to secure his life, was fain to put him from his service, and procuring him some small employ at the Lady's of Loretto; whither he went on pilgrimage in summer time, and, overheating himself, died in four weeks after he came thither, and it was doubtful whether he was not poisoned' (p. 37). That brings before us a true, white-souled Man 'of G.o.d,' resolute to 'speak out,' whoever sinned in his sight; and it is blind sectarianism to deny that, from the n.o.ble and holy Loyola to our own Faber and Spencer and the living Newman, the Church of Rome has never been without dauntless preachers of the very righteousness of G.o.d, or unhesitant rebukers of the wickedness, immoralities, and frivolities of their co-religionists. The suspicion of 'poyson' I am unwilling to accept. Onward I shall give our recovered record of his death. Summarily, then, the 'change' of Crashaw from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism had its root and carries its solution in his 'mystical' dreamy temperament and yearnings, as these were over-encouraged instead of controlled; and as formative influences there were--(_a_) his reading in Teresa and kindred literature, until not 'hands,' but brain and heart, imagination and fancy, grew into the elements wherein they wrought--as one finds sprays of once-green moss and delicate-carven ferns changed by the dripping limestone into limestone: (_b_) the ritualistic revival being in the hands of those most loved and trusted, and from whom he fetched whatever of spiritual life and peace and joy and hope was in him--these too being of stronger will, and decisive in opinion and action--his vague 'feeling-after' rest was centred in the Rest of ideal Roman Catholicism: (_c_) the confusions and strifes of the transition-period of the Commonwealth terrified and wounded him; he mistook the crash of falling scaffolding, whose end was served, for the falling of the everlasting skies; saw not their serene s.h.i.+ning beyond the pa.s.sing clouds, lightning-charged for divine clarifying; and a 'quiet retreat,' which Imagination beckoned him to, won him to 'hide' there his weeping and dismay. Nothing sordid or expedient, or facing-both-ways, or unworthy, moved him to 'change.'
Every one who has self-respect based on self-knowledge, and who thus has experienced the mystery of his deepest beliefs, will make all gentlest allowances, hold all tenderest sympathies with him, and feel the coa.r.s.e abuse of Prynne and later as a personal wrong. Richard Crashaw was a true 'man of G.o.d,' and acted, I believe, in sensitive allegiance to his conscience as it spake to him. 'Change,' even fundamental change, in such a man is to be accepted without reserve as 'honest' and righteous and G.o.d-fearing. He dared not sign the 'Solemn League and Covenant,'
however 'solemn' it might be to others; and so he went out.[21] I pa.s.s to--
II. _His friends and a.s.sociates, as celebrated in his writings._ I use the word 'Writings' here rather than 'Poems,' because in his Epistles, _e.g._ to the 'Epigrammata' and those printed by us for the first time, as well as in his Poetry, names are found over which one pauses instinctively. Commencing with his school-days at the Charterhouse, there is Robert Brooke, 'Master' ('Preceptor') from 1628 to 1643.[22]
Very little has come down to us concerning him, and the present head of the renowned School has been unable to add to Alexander Chalmers'
testimony, 'A very celebrated Master.' All the more have I pleasure in inviting attention to the new 'Epistola' and related poems addressed to him, and which must be studied along with the previous poem, 'Ornatissimo viro praeceptori suo colendissimo, Magistro Brook' (vol. ii.
pp. 319); and perhaps the humorous and genial serio-comic celebration of 'Priscia.n.u.s' grew from some school-incident (vol. ii. pp. 308, 315) having in the latter year, like Crashaw, been 'ejected' from the Charterhouse for not taking the 'Solemn League and Covenant.' He had been usher from 1626 to 1628. An apartment in the building is still called from him Brooke Hall ('Chronicles,' pp. 129, 159).
The next prominent name is that of Benjamin Lany--sometimes Laney, as in Ma.s.son's Milton (i. 97)--afterwards successively Bishop of Peterborough and Lincoln and Ely. We have already noted his marked Protestantism in the verse-eulogy of the elder Crashaw, so that probably it was as his father's son, Lany, then Master of Pembroke, received our Worthy there.
Lany was of the 'ejected' in 1644. The present Bishop of Ely, with all willingness to help us, found no MSS. or biographic materials in his custody. When may we hope each bishopric will find a qualified historian-biographer? A portrait of Lany is in the Master's Lodge at the Charterhouse ('Chronicles,' 1847, p. 140).
Crashaw's tutor at Pembroke was 'Master Tournay,' to whose praise and friends.h.i.+p he dedicates a Latin poem (vol. ii. pp. 371 et sqq.). Dr.
Ward, Master of Sidney College, writes to Archbishop Usher thus of him: 'We have had some doings here of late about one of Pembroke Hall, who, preaching in St. Mary's, about the beginning of Lent, upon that text, James ii. 22, seemed to avouch the insufficiency of faith to justification, and to impugn the doctrine of our 11th Article, of Justification by faith only; for which he was convented by the Vice-Chancellor, who was willing to accept of an easy acknowledgment; but the same party preaching his Latin sermon, _pro Gradu_, the last week, upon Rom. iii. 28, he said he came not _palinodiam canere, sed eandem cantilenam canere_; which moved our Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Love, to call for his sermon, which he refused to deliver. Whereupon, upon Wednesday last, being Barnaby Day, the day appointed for the admission of the Bachelors of Divinity, which must answer _Die Comitiorum_, he was stayed by the major part of the suffrages of the Doctors of the faculty.... The truth is, there are some Heads among us that are great abettors of M. Tournay, the party above mentioned, who, no doubt, are backed by others' (June 14, 1643. Life of Parr, p. 470: Willmott, 1st series, pp. 302-3). In relation to Tournay's heresy on 'Justification,'
it is profoundly interesting, biographically, to remember Crashaw's most striking Latin poems--so carelessly overlooked, if not impudently suppressed, by Turnbull--first published by Crashaw in the volume of 1648, viz. 'Fides, quae sola justificat, non est sine spe et dilectione,'
and 'Baptismus non tollit futura peccata.' The student will do well to turn to these two poems in their places (vol. ii. pp. 209, 216).[23]
Robert Shelford, 'of Ringsfield in Suffolk, Priest,' was another '_suspect_:' as in Huntley's [= Prynne] _Breviate_ (3d ed. 1637, p.
308) we read, 'Master Shelford hath of late affirmed in print, that the Pope was never yet defined to be the Antichrist by any Synods.' More vehemently writes Usher to Dr. Ward (Sept. 15, 1635): 'But while we strive here to maintain the purity of our ancient truth, how cometh it to pa.s.s that you at Cambridge do cast such stumbling-blocks in our way, by publis.h.i.+ng unto the world such rotten stuff as Shelford hath vented in his Five Discourses; wherein he hath so carried himself _ut famosi Perni amanuensem possis agnoscere_. The Jesuits of England sent over the book hither to a.s.sure them that we are now coming home to them as fast as we can. I pray G.o.d this sin be not deeply laid to their charge, who give an occasion to our blind thus to stumble' (as before). It was to these 'Five Discourses' our Poet furnished a 'commendatory' poem--given by us unmutilated from the volume (vol. i. pp. 162-5). Shelford, like his friend, was of Peterhouse. Another college-friend was William Herrys (or Herries or Harris), who was of Ess.e.x. He died in October 1631. He was of Pembroke and Christ's. The poems and 'Epitaph' consecrated to his memory are in various ways remarkable. But beyond a few college-dates, I have failed to recover notices of him. He seems to have been to Crashaw what young King was to Milton and his fellow-students (vol. i. pp.
220-30; vol. ii. pp. 378 et sqq.).[24] So with James Stanninow (or Staninough), 'fellow of Queene's Colledge'--the poem on whose death was first printed by us (vol. i. pp. 290-92). He has a Latin poem prefixed to Isaacson's 'Chronology' (our vol. i. pp. 246-49).[25] So too with 'Master Chambers,' of the fine pathetic hitherto anonymous poem 'Vpon the death of a Gentleman' (vol. i. pp. 218-19). Neither have I been able to add one syllable to the name and heading: 'An Epitaph vpon Mr.