SOURCE: Banks, Theodore Howard. “Introduction.” In The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham, edited by Theodore Howard Banks, second edition, pp. 1-57. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969.

[In the following essay, taken from the revised edition of a collection that was originally published in 1928, Banks provides a broad overview of Denham's life, works, and reputation. The critic characterizes Denham's work as “didactic”; the poet, he asserts, “has little imagination, little emotion, little beauty of phrase; his strength lies in his thought, in his neatly turned expressions of ethical and moral truisms.”]

A famous poet, a renowned wit, a prominent courtier in the eyes of his own and succeeding generations, Sir John Denham has become for us a curiously indistinct figure. We know the main outline of the events of his life, but little that brings his individuality before us. Few personal letters or manuscripts remain; his wit, save for one retort upon Wither, has perished; and he is known to us as a man chiefly through the gossip aroused by his unfortunate second marriage, his madness, and his wife's supposedly violent death.

As the husband of one of the Duke of York's mistresses, Denham certainly does not occupy a dignified position; as a man thought to have been driven mad by jealousy, his case is hardly better. He was, moreover, exposed to ridicule by not being fully qualified for the official position he held at court, that of Surveyor General. Evelyn did not think highly of his abilities as an architect, and Butler regarded him as not only incompetent but dishonest. He gambled inveterately. He is spoken of as vain and irreligious.

Yet it is Denham's misfortune that his weaknesses are so thrust upon our attention. The charge of gambling we must admit at once. The charge of vanity may or may not be true. With regard to religion, Johnson says, “As he appears, whenever any serious question comes before him, to have been a man of piety, he consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and made a metrical version of the psalms of David.”¹ To support Johnson we might adduce the tone of many of his serious poems, such as Cato Major (including the preface), Justice, Prudence, The Progress of Learning, and others of less bulk, and the fact that in his will he bequeathed £100 and all his fees as “Surveyor General for the rebuilding of St. Paul's” for the furtherance of “that noble and pious work.”²

Indeed, Denham has qualities, hardly mentioned by his contemporaries, that make him a figure worthy of some respect. His loyalty to the cause of the Stuarts throughout the whole period of the Civil War is admirable. Of his numerous estates, many were confiscated by Parliament, because of his support of his King. He was of active assistance during the period of open hostilities; was constantly engaged in the plotting of the Royalists during the Commonwealth; and though he was never among the foremost of Charles I's advisers, or of the exiles in the court of Charles II, yet he executed many less important missions with faithfulness and success. After the Restoration, Charles conferred upon him the honor of Knight of the Bath, and while we cannot but feel that this was partly because Denham had “diverted the evil hour of his banishment”³ with his poetry, yet we may well admit that the quality and amount of his services were such as to deserve reward.

From Aubrey we learn something of his physical appearance. “He was of the tallest, but a little incurvetting at his shoulders, not very robust. His haire was but thin and flaxen, with a moist curle. His gate was slow, and was rather a stalking (he had long legges) which was wont to putt me in mind of Horace, De Arte Poetica:—

Hic, dum sublimes versus ructatur et errat
Si veluti merulis intentus decidit auceps
In puteum foveamve.

His eie was a kind of light goose-gray, not big; but it had a strange piercingness, not as to shining and glory, but (like a Momus) when he conversed with you he look't into your very thoughts.”⁴ He was lame,⁵ and “unpolished with the small-pox; otherwise a fine complexion.”⁶ “He delighted much in bowles, and did bowle very well.”⁷

Of Denham's family comparatively little is known.⁸ They may have come originally from the west of England,⁹ but the line cannot be traced back with certainty beyond his grandfather, William Denham, a goldsmith of London. The poet's father was Sir John Denham, an eminent lawyer and judge, who at the time of the poet's birth was the Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland and one of the Lords Justices or Commissioners. His mother was Sir John's second wife, Eleanor Moore, the daughter of Sir Garret Moore, Baron Mellefont and Viscount Drogheda. When the poet was four years old, his mother died in giving birth to a child who died also.¹⁰

John Denham was born in Dublin in 1615; but in 1617, “before the Foggy Air of that Climate, could influence, or any way adulterate his Mind, he was brought from thence”¹¹ to England, where his father had been made one of the Barons of the Exchequer. Just where he went to school is uncertain, as both Wood and Aubrey are ignorant of this detail.¹² An examination of the extant records of the London schools then in existence does not reveal his name.

He was apparently early destined to follow his father in a legal career, for we find his name entered on the register of Lincoln's Inn on the twenty-sixth of April, 1631.¹³ With this provision made for his future, he went to Oxford, and became a gentleman commoner of Trinity College November 18, 1631.¹⁴ He continued at Oxford about three years, and in 1634 was “examined in the public schools for the degree of Bach. of Arts.”¹⁵ There is, however, no record of his taking a degree.

At Oxford his career was undistinguished. His life was that of the average undergraduate, more play than work, and he gave no indications of future ability. “Being looked upon as a slow and dreaming young man by his seniors and contemporaries, and given more to cards and dice than his study, they could never then in the least imagine that he could ever inrich the world with his fancy, or issue of his brain, as he afterward did.”¹⁶ Nor was he more prompt than the average undergraduate in paying his debts, if Aubrey's account may be trusted. “Sir John Denham had borrowed money of Mr. Whistler, the recorder, and, after a great while, the recorder askt him for it again. Mr. Denham laught at it, and told him he never intended that. The recorder acquainted the President, who at a lecture in the chapell, rattled him, and told him, ‘Thy father haz hanged many an honester man.’”¹⁷ At college, too, his love of gambling manifested itself. “I have heard Mr. Josias Howe say that he was the dreamingest young fellow; he never expected such things from him as he haz left the world. When he was there he would game extremely; when he had played away all his money, he would play away his father's wrought rich gold cappes.”¹⁸

On June 25, 1634, he married, at the church of St. Bride's, in Fleet Street, Anne Cotton of Whittington, County Gloucester.¹⁹ Of his wife's family little is known, save that they had held the manor of Whittington from the time of Henry VII. The male line failed soon after 1600, Anne being the last heir.²⁰ Denham's own family consisted of a son, who died in 1638,²¹ and two daughters. The elder, Ann, married Sir William Morley of Halnaker, County Sussex;²² the younger, Elizabeth,²³ married Sir Thomas Price, Bart., of Park Hall, County Warwick.²⁴ Elizabeth had no children, and of Ann's five children only one had a child, who died an infant.²⁵ The direct line of descent fails, therefore, in three generations. The date of the death of Denham's first wife is unknown. It is certain, however, that it falls within the period between 1643 and 1647.

From Oxford Denham went to Lincoln's Inn, where he applied himself seriously to the study of law, without, however, being able to discontinue his habits of gambling. Here too he seems to have been a normal young man, with his powers as a poet and a wit as yet undeveloped. “He was as good a student as any in the house. Was not suspected to be a witt.”²⁶ “Tho' he followed his study very close to the appearance of all persons, yet he would game much, and frequent the company of the unsanctified crew of gamesters, who rook'd him sometimes of all he could wrap or get.”²⁷ Once Denham indulged in an escapade that would do credit to a modern student. Aubrey tells the story amusingly. “He was generally temperate as to drinking; but one time … having been merry at the taverne with his camerades, late at night, a frolick came into his head, to gett a playsterer's brush and a pott of inke, and blott out all the signes between Temple-Barre and Charing-crosse, which made a strange confusion the next day, and 'twas in Terme time. But it happened that they were discovered, and it cost him and them some moneys. This I had from R. Estcott, esq. that carried the inke-pott.”²⁸

His father not unnaturally objected to Denham's gambling propensities, and John, to prove his reformation, and incidently to make sure of his patrimony, wrote The Anatomy of Play, a pamphlet which exposes with admirable lucidity the evils of gambling.

In August, 1638, his son died, and was buried in the church at Egham, County Surrey, on the twenty-eighth, and on January 6 of the following year his father died.²⁹

Denham inherited a considerable property: “2,000 or 1,500 li. in ready money, 2 houses well furnished, and much plate,”³⁰ and probably the numerous estates (exclusive of those held in right of his wife) that he possessed after the outbreak of hostilities. These were in Surrey, Essex, Bucks., and Suffolk. His favorite seat, and the one that he made his home, was that of Egham in Surrey. How sincere was the repentance that preserved this inheritance may be gathered from Aubrey's statement that “shortly after his father's death … the money was played away first, and next the plate was sold.”³¹

He was called to the bar on January 29, 1639.³² How much of a success he would have made of his legal career is, of course, a matter of speculation, but that he had strong literary leanings was evident. He had already written the Destruction of Troy, a translation in heroic couplets of the second book of the Aeneid, and perhaps a first draft of Cooper's Hill;³³ but he first came openly before the public in 1641 with his play of The Sophy, a tragic melodrama in blank verse. This “took extremely much, and was admired by all ingenious men, particularly by Edm. Waller of Beaconsfield, who then said of the author, that he broke out like the Irish Rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when no body was aware, or in the least suspected it.”³⁴

The outbreak of open war between Charles and the Parliament now interrupted Denham's pursuits, both legal and literary. He was, indeed, no extreme Royalist; of this we can find many indications in his poetry: (1) His elegy on Judge Crooke, one of the judges who opposed the sweeping claims of the King in the famous ship-money case, is perhaps indicative of Denham's attitude toward the royal prerogative; (2) in the 1642 edition of The Sophy there occurs a passage which is significantly omitted in the collected edition of 1668 (Act I, sc. ii, ll. 48 ff.). The Persian King, Abbas, wishes to raise additional supplies of money for his son who is at the wars. A Lord replies:

Sir, your treasures
Are quite exhausted; the exchequer's empty.

Abbas retorts:

Talke not to me of treasures or exchequers.
Send for five hundred of the wealthiest burgers—
Their shops and ships are my exchequer,

And Abdall, another courtier, remarks aside:

'Twere better you could say their hearts.

This is clearly a reference, and an unfriendly one, to Charles's high-handed policy in the matter of ship-money. Motives of prudence no doubt prompted Denham to cancel this passage in 1668. Charles II would not have relished the allusion. (3) The concluding passage of the 1642 edition of Cooper's Hill runs as follows:

Thus kings by grasping more then they could hold
First made their subjects by oppression bold.
And popular sway by forcing kings to give
More then was fit for subjects to receive
Ran to the same extreame, and one excesse
Made both by striving to be greater lesse;
Nor any way but seeking to have more
Makes either lose what each possest before.
Therefore their boundless power tell princes draw
Within the channell and the shores of law,
And may that law which teaches kings to sway
Their scepters, teach their subjects to obey.

(p. 87)

From these passages it is clear that Denham had no sympathy with the doctrine that the sovereign was above the law, or his acts above criticism. Moreover, when we notice the curious absence from his poems of an elegy to Charles I, we cannot but wonder how far Denham was influenced by motives of personal affection and loyalty to the King.

Yet the legal mind that could not approve arbitrary and tyrannical acts on the part of the King was still less able to sympathize with a rebellion against the constitutional office of kingship. In the 1642 text of Cooper's Hill we read:

For armed subjects can have no pretence
Against their princes but their just defence,
And whether then or no I leave to them
To justifie, who else themselves condemne.
Yet might the fact be just, if we may guesse
The justness of an action from successe.

(p. 84)

The actual murder of the King, an act plainly against the established order, fills him with horror. In his elegy on Henry, Lord Hastings, we find that the beheading was

                                                                                that impious stroke
That sullied earth, and did heaven's pity choke.

(p. 145)

Whatever Denham's attitude may have been toward previous royal acts, therefore, when open warfare began he did not hesitate to espouse the King's cause, and remained faithful to it until the end.

Appointed High Sheriff for Surrey, and Governor of Farnham Castle, Denham, with the Commissioners of Array for Surrey, collected about a hundred soldiers, and took possession of the castle.³⁵ The poet, George Wither, had a low opinion of this troop's fighting qualities. “I should almost have scorned,” he says, “to have desired the aid of above two squadrons of my troop to have scattered that despicable rout wherewith Sheriff Denham … and other such like leaders of the same countie first robbed my house and afterward seized the said castle, and victualled the same with my stores as I purposed to have done,”³⁶ Wither's estimate of the Royalists seems to have been correct, for, on December 1, Sir William Waller had little difficulty in forcing them to surrender. He had only a small number of horse and dragoons,³⁷ but “within the space of three houres forced their approach so neare the castle-gates that with a petard they blew open one of them, and most resolutely made forcible entrance thereinto. Whereupon the Cavaleers within threw their Armes over the wall, fell downe upon their knees, crying for Quarter, (not so much as having once offered or desired to treat of any honourable conditions, to depart like Souldiers, before the castle was entered) which Sir William gave them. There was taken in this castle, one Master Denham the new high Sheriffe of Surrey, Captaine Hudson, Captaine Brecknox, a Brewer in Southwarke, a most desperate Malignant against the Parliament, and divers other prisoners of quality, with about an hundred vulgar persons, together with all the Armes and Ammunition in the castle, and about 40000 pounds in money and plate, as was credibly informed; besides that the common Souldiers had good pillage for themselves to a good value.”³⁸ Although this is the enemy's version of the affair, Denham's part cannot be considered brilliant. He was sent prisoner to London, probably arriving there on December 3.³⁹ How long he remained in captivity we do not know, perhaps until after March 15, for on “this day Parson Keeley and some others of the Cavaliers that were taken at Farnham Castle were brought to the Lords House, but in regard of other weighty affairs of the kingdom they were ordered to come againe another day.”⁴⁰ Upon being released, he rejoined the King at Oxford.

This seems to have involved considerable sacrifices on his part. His estates had, of course, been confiscated by Parliament, that of Egham falling to the poet Wither; but it would appear that now, in addition, he was forced to leave his wife, who was with child, to the mercies of his enemies. On May 11, 1643, the House empowered the Committee for Sequestration “to deliver unto her [Anne Denham] childbed linen, and such other necessaries as they shall think fit,”⁴¹ and later approved her petition to return to Egham for her lying in. George Wither, the poet, complains bitterly of this: “I seized by the said order … some part of the goods and estates of … Master John Denham … The goods which were Master Denham's are by an order of some sequestrators taken out of my hands, and put into the possession of his wife, who (as do many other delinquents) findes much more favour then I, who have been ever faithful to the state. For when my wife and children had been cruelly driven out of their habitation, and robbed of all they had by her husband and his confederates, enemies to the Parliament, and when by virtue of the fore-mentioned order, I justly entred upon the house of the said Denham, purposing to harbour my said wife and children therein, Mistress Denham, having long before deserted the house, and left there only some tables, with such-like household stuffe, (though her husband sought, and yet seekes the destruction of the kingdome) was, upon false suggestions, put againe by order into possession of that house; because as her charitable petition alledged, shee was, forsooth, a gentlewoman, big with childe, and had a fancie to the place.”⁴² We know nothing further of the birth of this child, but it was probably Denham's eldest daughter, Ann.

The paths of the two poets crossed once more, when Wither was later captured by the Royalists, and Denham wittily interceded for his life. “It [happened] that G[eorge] W[ither] was taken prisoner, and was in danger of his life, having written severely against the king & c. Sir John Denham went to the king, and desired his majestie not to hang him, for that whilest G[eorge] W[ither] lived he should not be the worst poet in England.”⁴³

Denham's circumstances must now have been greatly reduced. Most of his estates were lost; and such of his goods as the Parliament could lay hold of were sold in London on June 19, 1644.⁴⁴ Yet during this period his poetical reputation was rapidly increasing, because an edition of Cooper's Hill, the poem upon which his fame chiefly rests, appeared in London in 1642, and the first of the many reprints at Oxford in 1643. Here too belong several of his satirical poems on the military and political events of the day.

Of Denham's part in the war from 1643 to 1646 we know nothing. Yet he was apparently of some influence and importance in the ranks of the Royalists, for we find in November, 1644, during the fruitless negotiations for a peace, that Parliament includes him in the group of persons they wish excluded from the King's counsels.⁴⁵ (He is also excluded in the proposals for the Treaty of Newport, 1648.)⁴⁶

Apparently during this period he was separated from his wife and family, for we find in a petition of Anne Denham to the Committee for Sequestrations of November 25, 1645, the statement that “she hath ever lived in the parliament quarters.”⁴⁷

In January, 1645/6, he was in Dartmouth during the siege and capture of that town, and, with the Earl of Newport, was instrumental in inducing the governor to surrender the castle after the city itself had been taken.⁴⁸ Newport and Denham were sent prisoners to London in the custody of Hugh Peters, where they arrived January 23.⁴⁹ On February 4 orders were issued by the House of Commons for Denham's exchange with Major Harris,⁵⁰ who was held prisoner by the Royalists at Exeter.⁵¹

He therefore went to this city, and remained there as a member of the garrison during the siege by Fairfax. After the surrender of Exeter on April 9, 1646, the Royalists were permitted to leave the country or to retire to their homes on condition of not engaging further in the war. Generous terms were offered to them if they wished to compound.

Denham, however, appears to have encountered difficulties. There were civil actions against him for debt, and he found himself again in London, a prisoner. On April 27 the Committee for Prisoners ordered his discharge, but Sir John Lenthall refused to permit it, believing that it was illegal. Denham, therefore, petitioned the Lords for a habeas corpus, and on May 4 this was issued.⁵² On the same day the Lords voted to approve the action of the Commons of February 4 in exchanging him for Major Harris. On May 11 he appeared before the Lords, was arrested by his creditors before he left the precincts of Parliament, and on the Lords' order was at once released.⁵³

In accordance with the terms of his surrender at Exeter, Denham left at once for France, where he joined Queen Henrietta Maria. Here he remained for nearly a year, until, at her command, he returned to England. He gave as his ostensible reason his wish to compound with Parliament for his delinquency, and for this purpose a pass was granted to him on March 24, 1646/7,⁵⁴ but his real motive was to join Sir Edward Ford in the attempt to intercede between the King and Parliament. His friendship with Mr. Hugh Peters, “a preacher and a powerful person in the army,”⁵⁵ which he had contracted when in prison the year before, was probably an inducement for the Queen to send him. Through the help of Peters, he gained his admission to the King. He was not, however, considered sufficiently influential for this mission, and Sir John Berkeley was sent after him, because it was “necessary to employ some to the Army, that might be supposed to have greater Trust both with the Queen in France, and with the King in England than either Sir Edward Ford or Mr. Denham had.”⁵⁶ In the negotiations that followed, Denham played but a small part, though he was once, with several others, called into consultation by the King.⁵⁷

For the next few months he was either in attendance on Charles or in London. In November the King escaped from his confinement at Hampton Court, and in this Denham may have had some share. He was suspected of being in the plot, as we learn from a letter describing the King's escape. “This day his Majesty … spent most part of this day in writing … After supper one of them knocking, his Majesty answered not … it seems his Majesty was gone through the garden and park and so away. … some gentlemen passed this night over Kingstom bridge, supposed to be his Majesty, with Sir Edward Ford, Sir John Bartlet [Berkeley?], Mr. Ashburnham and Mr. Denham.”⁵⁸ Moreover, when he says in the dedication of the 1668 edition, “at his [the King's] departure from Hampton Court he was pleased to command me to stay privately at London,” he seems to imply that he was present on that occasion.

Denham remained in London, and the following month petitioned Parliament to be allowed to compound for his delinquency, obtaining from Fairfax a certification of his presence in Exeter in order to take advantage of the terms of the articles of surrender of that city.⁵⁹ Under cover of this he busied himself in the Royalist ciphered correspondence and intrigues, as we know from his statement in the preface to the 1668 collected poems, and from references to him, in letters of January, February, 1647/8, and of April 1648.⁶⁰ On April 21 the Duke of York escaped from his confinement in St. James Palace. Just what part Denham had in this is uncertain. Wood says that “he conveyed or stole away James, Duke of York, … and carried him into France to the Prince and the Queen Mother.”⁶¹ Clarendon, on the other hand, does not mention him in this connection, and Denham himself says that he remained in London about nine months after the King's departure from Hampton Court, or until about July.⁶² it is probable that Denham's share in the Duke's escape was, at most, but a small one. it is indicated, perhaps, in the following: the Duke “stole away … alone, but was soone mett by some that stayed for him, the Chief whereof is thought to be Collonel Bamfield.”⁶³ In May the Prince of Wales writes to the Marquis of Hertford that Denham will relate the proceedings in England,⁶⁴ and in June the Prince instructs one Humfrey Boswell to report to Denham in London, and “proceed in all things by his advice.”⁶⁵ In July the Royalist correspondence was discovered “by their knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand,”⁶⁶ and Denham fled to France. At this time his wife was dead, and his children probably under the guardianship of Colonel Fielder.⁶⁷

For the next four years, 1648-1652, Denham lived abroad in attendance on Charles, and employed in various missions. In September, 1648, he was sent by the Prince to Scotland, to investigate the general condition of the country, and to determine the strength of the Stuart cause there. He was to remain in Scotland until recalled, but when this occurred we do not know.⁶⁸

In March, 1649, he left the court of Charles II at the Hague and went with the Duke of York into France to the Queen,⁶⁹ and in May returned with instructions from her.⁷⁰ Early in August, 1649, Charles appointed him and William Crofts ambassadors to Poland,⁷¹ to treat for supplies, and to raise money from the King's Scottish subjects in that country. He succeeded, he tells us, in collecting £10,000. He must have been absent on this mission until May or June 1651,⁷² when he undoubtedly returned to the court of Charles. To this period of his life we can assign the poems On my Lord Croft's and my Journey into Poland, On Mr. Tho. Killigrew's return from his Embassie from Venice, and Mr. William Murray's from Scotland, and perhaps one or two others.

On May 13, 1652, Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State to Charles, writes to Mr. Smith [Lord Hatton] from The Hague: “Mr. Denham hath here lately had very ill luck at play, which hath made him (I am told) in great want at present. He talks of going for England, but it is thought intends not to adventure it, more for fear what his creditors than the rebels there will do against him.”⁷³

Denham's affairs were indeed desperate. All his lands were lost, having been either sold by him or confiscated by Parliament. He owed large sums of money.⁷⁴ Yet early in 1653 he ventured back. Soon after his arrival, he was called up before a Parliamentary committee to be examined,⁷⁵ but appears to have escaped further molestation, even by his creditors. This is probably due to the fact that he returned under the protection of the Earl of Pembroke, who was a member of Cromwell's council of state for that year and a person of importance in the Commonwealth, and who may well have made himself responsible for Denham's good behavior.

By 1650 Denham's composition for his estate had been completed; one fifth was allowed him, which was to be paid to Colonel Fielder, member of Parliament for St. Ives Cornwall, the guardian of his children, and trustee of his estate, undoubtedly for the support of the children.⁷⁶

With Pembroke, Denham remained for about a year at the Earl's estate at Wilton, and in London. He had now presumably more ease and leisure than he had had for some years previously, and he evidently cultivated it in a more extensive writing of poetry, for to his period we can assign some translations of Virgil,⁷⁷ and in addition, perhaps, the revised version of Cooper's Hill, published in 1655. Yet if his material circumstances were now low, his poetical reputation was high. In a letter of intelligence to Thurloe from Paris of September 20, 1653, we read: “I have sent this enclosed song [a French drinking song] which if Englished by one Denham, I hear to be the state's poet, truly it will be much to the instruction of the youth of our country.”⁷⁸

We hear nothing of Denham for the next two years, save that he visited Evelyn on April 6, 1654;⁷⁹ but early in June, 1655, he was arrested in London, together with a number of other Royalists.⁸⁰ All of them except Denham were committed to the Tower or to the custody of the Serjeant at Arms, but in his case it was ordered that he “be confined to a place chosen by himself, not within 20 miles of London.”⁸¹ Where that was we do not know, nor do we know why he was treated with this special consideration. Perhaps it was again due to the Earl of Pembroke. Denham was at this time, as also, no doubt, during his whole stay in England, aiding the Royalist cause to the best of his ability by corresponding with the court of Charles, keeping him informed of conditions in England, and by conveying dispatches, instructions, etc., to the Stuart adherents in England.⁸² He went on such a mission to the Earl of Carbery in Wales some time in 1655.⁸³ By the beginning of 1656 he was back in England, for on January 5 he again visited Evelyn.⁸⁴

Our knowledge of his movements once more fails until June, 1657, when he appears in Brussels, cognizant of the Duke of Buckingham's movements, who was “believed to be in England, upon some desperate design, for a rising in the city or against the Protector's person.”⁸⁵ We do not know when Denham had left England, but he must have returned by March, 1658, for on the eleventh of that month a license was granted him by Cromwell to live in Bury, County Suffolk.⁸⁶ Whether he took advantage of this permission is not known.⁸⁷ His friend, John Pooley was living in the manor house of the family at Boxstead, some nine or ten miles from Bury. Denham may therefore have selected this locality in order to visit or to be near Pooley.

In September he again left England, this time with the official sanction of the Commonwealth. On the fourteenth, a pass was granted to William Lord Herbert, Mr. Denham and five servants to go beyond seas.⁸⁸ As Lord Herbert was the eighteen-year-old son and heir of the Earl of Pembroke, this indicates that Denham went abroad as guardian and companion of the boy, perhaps to make the grand tour, and suggests that the relations between Denham and the Earl of Pembroke were close. Unfortunately most of the family papers of the Herberts have been destroyed by fire, and those that remain contain no information about the poet.⁸⁹

In the stir and confusion preceding the Restoration, Denham's loyalty and services to the Royalist cause did not pass unnoticed. One Mr. Broderick writes to Hyde, who was now Lord Chancellor, on January 13, 1660: “Of Mr. Denham there is at this time an universal good opinion, and if your Lordship would engage him by a letter, or induce his Majesty to write, I know not anything absolutely in your own power so advantageous. The man I know full well, his former intrigues, dependencies, expectations, his present condition, temper and reputation; and though I have ever wished it might be achieved by your own dependents, I must now propose his adoption into that number as the last remedy (if I were to speak my last) I could upon the most sober thought I am capable of deliver to you. … Many objections I have made to myself, his familiarity with the Duke of Bucks. George Porter & c, but sure I am they will be as much strangers to his business as acquainted with his diversions.”⁹⁰ The value of this testimony is uncertain, since I have been able to discover nothing about the writer, but his chief point, that Denham would make a conscientious servant of the King, seems borne out by Denham's previous and subsequent conduct.

Denham hardly needed this strong recommendation to the King, for Charles had already promised him the reversion of the post of Surveyor of the Works upon the death of Inigo Jones (which occurred in 1651), and on June 30, 1660, officially confirmed his promise.⁹¹

This appointment met with a protest from John Webb, the deputy of Jones, and his nephew, who petitioned the King for the place for himself, advancing the argument that “though Mr. Denham may, as most gentry, have some knowledge of the theory of architecture, he can have none of the practice, but must employ another.”⁹² Webb, although unsuccessful in dislodging Denham, secured the promise of the reversion of the post and became his assistant. Yet Christopher Wren, who was appointed sole deputy to Denham on March 6, 1669,⁹³ succeeded him on his death, which occurred shortly after. It is probable that Webb's estimate of Denham's architectural abilities was not far from correct; it was, at any rate, shared by Evelyn. “I went,” he says, “to London to visite my Lord of Bristoll, having been with Sir John Denham (his Ma^ties surveyor) to consult with him about the placing of his palace at Greenwich, which I would have had built between the river and the Queene's house, so as a large square cutt should have let in ye Thames like a bay; but Sir John was for setting it on piles at the very brink of the water, which I did not assent to, and so came away, knowing Sir John to be a better poet than architect, tho' he had Mr. Webb (Inigo Jones's man) to assist him.”⁹⁴ Samuel Butler also thought little of him as an architect, for he remarks,

For had the stones, like his [Amphion], charmed by your verse,
Built up themselves they could not have done worse;(95)

and, in addition, accuses him of cheating the King in a variety of ways. Yet Denham was active in his office, and we have a record of several important buildings put up under his supervision, among them Burlington House, and Greenwich Palace.⁹⁶ His offices and house (which he also built) were in Scotland Yard. During the great fire of 1666 these were “uncovered and defaced for preventing the further spreading thereof,” and were not repaired for nearly two years.⁹⁷

However good or bad he may have been as an architect, there is at least one substantial practical achievement to his credit, an improvement in the condition of the pavements of London. Evelyn, in dedicating his translation of Freart's treatise on architecture to Denham, speaks of this in glowing terms: “But neither here must I forget what is alone due to you, Sir, for the reformation of a thousand deformities in the streets, as by your introducing that incomparable form of paving, to an incredible advantage of the publick, when that which is begun in Holburn shall become universal, for the saving of wheels and carriages, the cure of noysom gutters, the deobstruction of encounters, the dispatch of business, the cleanness of the way, the beauty of the object, the ease of the infirme, and the preserving of both the mother and the babe; so many of the fair sex and their offspring having perished by mischances (as I am credibly inform'd) from the ruggedness of the unequal streets.”⁹⁸

Charles's honors to Denham did not stop with the granting of the surveyorship. At his coronation he made Denham a Knight of the Bath, and later bestowed other favors: the office of “Clerk of the Works in the Tower of London and in all his majesty's honors, castles etc. reserved for his abode”;⁹⁹ valuable grants of land and leases in London and Norfolk;¹⁰⁰ the authorization (together with the Marquis of Ormond and O'Neille, a groom of the bedchamber) “to prosecute any person who had injured the royal castles or parks during the commonwealth, and to keep three parts of the money collected for their own use”;¹⁰¹ and from time to time specific sums of money.¹⁰² Nor was he favored by the King alone, for on April 29, 1661, he was returned as member of Parliament for Old Sarum, County Wilts.¹⁰³ and on May 20, 1663, was elected a member of the Royal Society.¹⁰⁴

For the first five years after the Restoration, Denham is not conspicuous among the courtiers, and we hear little or nothing of him aside from the routine of official business. At the coronation, April, 1661, he superintended, doubtless ex-officio, the paving of Westminster, and the construction of a throne and other necessities.¹⁰⁵ On March 22, 1663, he and Waller are appointed censors for a certain play;¹⁰⁶ in the same year we find him performing a small act of charity.¹⁰⁷ To this period belongs a letter of introduction which he wrote to Sir George Lane, secretary to the Duke of Ormonde. It is of little interest in itself, but we may be justified in reproducing it, as it is the nearest approach to a personal letter of Denham's that has as yet been discovered. “The bearer herof,” he writes, “my kinsman, Dr. Denham, is the gentleman concerning whom I spoke to you at London, who, when you have some knowledge of him will recomend himselfe better to you then I can. What his pretentions are I know not, but whether they concerne the(y) body naturall, or the body politick, he is very capable of serving his Grace in either, and if for your favour to him I can make you a returne of any service here, I shall thinke myself very happy to have it in my power to do it, being most unfeinedly Sir, your most affectionate kinsman and most faithfull servant.”¹⁰⁸

On May 25, 1665, at Westminster Abbey he married for the second time, and at once became a prominent figure in the gossip and slander of the next three years. His wife was Margaret Brooke, third daughter of Sir William Brooke, K.B., by his second wife Penelope, daughter of Sir Moses Hill.¹⁰⁹ The match was unequal in many respects. Lady Denham was young (being only twenty-three) and beautiful, and soon became notorious as the mistress of the Duke of York; while Denham was fifty, and must have looked older, as Aubrey describes him as “ancient and limping,”¹¹⁰ and Grammont gives his age as seventy-nine.¹¹¹

A year later Denham became mad. This “first appeared,” says Aubrey, “when he went from London to see the famous free-stone quarries at Portland in Dorset, and when he came within a mile of it, turned back to London again, and did not see it. He went to Hownslowe and demanded rents of lands he had sold many yeares before; went to the king and told him he was the Holy Ghost.”¹¹² On March 3, 1666, the King, on Denham's behalf, summoned Valentine Greatrakes, “the Irish stroker,” but his efforts were ineffectual.¹¹³ Denham's final collapse seems to have been sudden. We find a record in Wood's journal for April 8, 1666, that he was dead, which was subsequently corrected to “not yet dead, but distracted.”¹¹⁴ On April 9, Sir Paul Neile writes to H. Slingesby: “Sir John Denham is very sick, if not dead, in Somersetshire. His wife went hence late on Saturday night to travel night and day to see him before he died if she could.—Thus far was written on Monday, and since then there is nothing new; for we hear nothing more of Sir John Denham, and therefore I hope he will scape the fit.”¹¹⁵ On April 14 Sir Stephen Fox writes to Sir George Lane: “Sir John Denham, that great master of wit and reason, is fallen quite mad, and he who despised religion, now in his distraction raves of nothing else.”¹¹⁶ On April 17, George Walsh writes to Henry Slingesby: “Sir John Denham is now stark mad, which is occasioned (as is said by some) by the rough striking of Greatrakes upon his limbs; for they say that formerely having taken the fluxing pills in Holland, and they not working, they rubbed his shins with mercury, but … they supposed it lodged in the nerves till the harsh strokes caused it to sublimate.”¹¹⁷ On April 24 Sir Paul Neile writes to Slingesby: “Sir John Denham did not die, but is fallen violently mad, and so is likely to continue: he is now at one Dr. Lentall's house at the Charter House. The doctor is one that pretends to cure those in this condition, and to him Dr. Fraiser and the rest sent him: what that means you can safely imagine. Hugh May execute[s] his place during his infirmity,¹¹⁸ and it is no hard thing to guess at the meaning of that neither.”¹¹⁹

How long his madness lasted we do not know, but that it could not have been of long duration is proved by the fact that in September, 1666, when Parliament reassembled, he is recorded as continuing his duties as a member of various committees and otherwise.¹²⁰ He remained in regular attendance during the sessions of 1666 and 1667.¹²¹

Yet, though not insane, he was still noticeably eccentric. Lord Lisle in a letter to Sir William Temple, dated September 26, 1667, says: “Poor Sir John Denham is fallen to the ladies also. He is at many of the meetings at dinners, talks more than ever he did, and is extremely pleased with those that seem willing to hear him; and from that obligation exceedingly praises the Duchess of Monmouth and my Lady Cavendish; if he had not the name of being mad, I believe in most companies he would be thought wittier than ever he was. He seems to have few extravagancies, besides that of telling stories of himself, which he is always inclined to. Some of his acquaintance say, that extreme vanity was a cause of his madness, as well as it is an effect.”¹²²

There is little doubt that his insanity was due to a form of paresis, arising from early excesses.¹²³ Yet the opinion seems to have been general that he went mad through jealousy of his wife's intrigue with the Duke of York, the coincidence in dates making this interpretation natural.¹²⁴ The affair was notorious. Many verses were printed referring derisively to Denham as a cuckold.¹²⁵ In a number of frank comments, Pepys indicates the progress of the affair. On June 10, 1666, he writes: “He [Pierce, the surgeon] tells me further how the Duke of Yorke is wholly given up to his new mistresse, my Lady Denham, going at noon-day with all his gentlemen with him to visit her in Scotland Yard; she declaring she will not be his mistresse as Mrs. Price, to go up and down the privy-stairs, but will be owned publicly; and so she is.”¹²⁶ On September 26, 1666: “Here [White-hall] I had the hap to see my Lady Denham … and the Duke of Yorke taking her aside and talking to her in the sight of all the world, all alone; which was strange, and what also I did not like. Here I met with good Mr. Evelyn, who cries out against it, and calls it bitchering, for the Duke of Yorke talks a little to her, and then she goes away, and then he follows her again like a dog.”¹²⁷

The scandal took a new turn in November, 1666, when Lady Denham fell ill, and the rumor at once became current that she was poisoned. Pepys remarks on November 10: “This afternoon … I hear that my Lady Denham is exceeding sick, even to death, and that she says and every body else discourses, that she is poysoned.”¹²⁸ On November 15, H. Muddiman writes to George Powell: “Lady Denham is recovering; some have raised strange discourses about the cause of her sickness, but the physicians affirm it to have been iliaca passio.”¹²⁹ Her improvement was but temporary. She continued sick for two months,¹³⁰ and died on January 6, 1667. On the seventh Pepys says: “… my Lady Denham is at last dead. Some suspect her poisoned, but it will be best known when her body is opened, which will be to-day, she dying yesterday morning. The Duke of Yorke is troubled for her; but hath declared he will never have another public mistress again.”¹³¹

The autopsy revealed no trace of poison,¹³² but the gossip continued unchecked. The number of people accused of administering the drug is remarkable. The very fact that the suspicion was so widely scattered proves better than anything else how unfounded it was, but the gossip is interesting for its own sake. On January 8, 1667, Lord Conway writes to Sir George Rawdon: “My Lady Denham died poisoned, as she said herself, in a cup of chocolate.”¹³³ Marvel makes several references to the affair:

What frosts to fruits, what arsnick to the rat,
What to fair Denham mortal chocolat,
What an account to Carteret, that and more
A Parliament is to the Chancellor.(134)

Again:

Express her [the Duchess of York] studying now, if china clay
Can, without breaking, venom'd juice convey:
Or how a mortal poison she may draw
Out of the cordial meal of the cacoa.(135)

The Duchess of York was also suspected of accomplishing her design by means of “powder of diamond.”¹³⁶ Aubrey states that she was “poysoned by the hands of Co. of Roc [hester] with chocolatte.”¹³⁷

Denham himself did not escape suspicion. Grammont has a picturesque but incredible version of his own: “Old Denham, naturally jealous, became more and more suspicious … he had no country house to which he could carry his unfortunate wife. This being the case, the old villain made her travel a much longer journey without stirring out of London … as no person entertained any doubt of his having poisoned her, the populace of his neighborhood had a design of tearing him in pieces, as soon as he should come abroad; but he shut himself up to bewail her death, until their fury was appeased by a magnificent funeral, at which he distributed four times more burnt wine than had ever been drunk at any burial in England.”¹³⁸

As a final touch we learn that the Duchess of York was soon afterward “troubled with the apparition of the Lady Denham, and through anxiety bit off a piece of her tongue.”¹³⁹

Denham profited by the remission of his disease sufficiently to write his eulogy of Cowley, one of his best poems. This, together with the translation of Mancinus, occupied the summer of 1668 when he was at Epsom. He had not, however, long to live. On March 6, 1669, Wren was appointed Deputy Surveyor “at the request of Sir John Denham … on account of his weakness.”¹⁴⁰ He died at his office on March 10, 1669,¹⁴¹ probably of apoplexy. There was apparently some hesitation as to the disposition of his body, for his friend Mr. Christopher Wase, in An Elegy upon S^rJohn Denham, Kn^tof y^eBath, Lately deceased, indignantly demands:

What means this silence, that may seeme to doome
Denham to have an undistinguished tombe?
Is it astonishment? or deep respect
To matchlesse witt? it cannot be neglect.
What e'er th' excuse, it must not be allow'd
In loathed oblivion so much worth to shrowd.(142)

Yet Wase's estimate of Denham's worth and abilities was shared by the authorities, and Denham received the highest honor that can fall to the lot of an English poet. He was buried, on March 23, in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

When we turn from his life to his poetry, we find that he has “become a name.” His reputation, which once made him one of the foremost English poets, has steadily declined, and he now does little more than share with Waller a paragraph in a History of Literature as the father of the Augustan closed couplet. I cannot say that the judgment of time is not in the main just. Nevertheless, his poetry deserves study, if only to throw light on the poetical tastes and tendencies of his day.

“Lord Dorset,” says Pope, “… and Lord Rochester should be considered as holiday-writers; as gentlemen that diverted themselves now and then with poetry, rather than as poets. … There is no one of our poets of that class, that was more judicious than Sir John Denham.”¹⁴³ Southey, after denying Denham's title to a reformer of the verse of his time, continues: “… but it was easy to avoid the more obvious faults of inferior authors; and in this he succeeded, just so far, as not to be included in ‘the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease’; nor consigned to oblivion with the ‘Persons of Quality’ who contributed their vapid effusions to the miscellanies of those days. His proper place is among those of his contemporaries and successors who called themselves Wits, and have since been entitled Poets by the courtesy of England.”¹⁴⁴ These two criticisms are the only ones I have come upon that attempt to fix Denham's place among his contemporaries. Pope considers him a holiday-writer, Southey a wit; but neither regards him as qualified for the high title of poet.

It is perfectly true that Denham was not a poet in Pope's sense of the word, a man who made the writing of verse the chief business of his life. Many of his poems, as he himself says in his dedication to Charles II, were written “to divert and put off the evil hours of our banishment.” He was a courtier and a wit. Yet when we subtract the numerous light and occasional verses from his work—and it is significant to observe that almost all of them fall within the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, when Denham was actively engaged in the Royalist cause—there remains a sufficient body of serious poetry to make both Pope's and Southey's classification misleading.

Essentially Denham's poetry is didactic. He has little imagination, little emotion, little beauty of phrase; his strength lies in his thought, in his neatly turned expressions of ethical and moral truisms. If his work is of the same class as Dorset's, Rochester's, and the rest of the wits, it is curious that he wrote no love poetry, or that he undertook anything so exacting as a paraphrase of the Psalms, or extended pieces of translation. His is a dignified position, and however far he may be from a great poet (and the distance is considerable), we must recognize that he took his calling more seriously than many of his contemporaries.¹⁴⁵ Johnson realized this when he said, “He appears when any serious question comes before him to have been a man of piety.”¹⁴⁶ Denham's muse is fundamentally a sober one.

The variety of his work is remarkable; he demands consideration as an original writer of both light and serious verse, as a translator, and as a playwright. Many of his serious poems are elegies or eulogies. While there is a noticeable Royalist bias to some of them, they are, as a whole, greatly superior to the mass of adulatory poetry of the time; they are more restrained, and in better taste. Very few are addressed to the nobility, and many are literary in theme.

Of his light verse, much is satire: political in A Western Wonder, A Second Western Wonder, To the Five Members, A Speech against Peace,¹⁴⁷ personal in a Dialogue between Sir John Pooley and Mr. Thomas Killigrew, Verses on the Cavaliers; religious in New from Colchester; poetical in his verses on Davenant's Gondibert, and his mock-laudatory address to Howard. The rest is merely occasional poetry. Of these productions Johnson says: “He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition of being upon proper occasions a merry fellow, and in common with most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham. He does not fail for want of efforts: he is familiar, he is gross; but he is never merry, unless the ‘Speech against peace in the Close Committee’ be excepted.”¹⁴⁸ It is true that many of these poems are without value, yet Johnson's sentence is a little too severe. The News from Colchester and the Dialogue between Sir John Pooley and Mr. Thomas Killigrew have a strain of humor that at least partly atones for their indecency, and one or two of his satires and parodies of Gondibert are excellent. “For grave burlesque … his imitation of Davenant shews him to have been well qualified.”¹⁴⁹ Love poetry is notably absent, the only exception being the poem To his Mistress.¹⁵⁰

Denham's reputation rested to a large extent on his style. Dryden and, following him, the eighteenth-century poets and critics praised him as being largely responsible (together with Waller) for the development of the closed couplet. Dryden says, “Even after Chaucer there was a Spencer, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appear'd.”¹⁵¹ Johnson says: “As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the observation of a man of judgment naturally right forsaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more confidence in himself. In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense ungracefully from verse to verse. … From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has perhaps been with rather too much constancy pursued.”¹⁵²

Denham certainly did not originate the school of classical heroic couplet in England, nor is it at all certain that this claim on Waller's behalf, fostered largely by Gosse, rests upon solid foundations. Before Waller were Drummond of Hawthornden and George Sandys, both directly exposed to French influence, notably that of Malherbe, and both writing, in their early couplets at least, in the strict classical manner.¹⁵³ Before them we find tendencies toward closed couplets in Beaumont and Fairfax, and Cartwright has, in the midst of metaphysical conceits, lines of the balance and polish typical of Pope. We might multiply examples, but these are enough to show that closed couplets were not the invention of any one man, but were simply the outcome of a gradual process of prosodical development.¹⁵⁴

Yet though not the first to write closed couplets, we may with confidence assert that Denham had great influence in increasing their popularity. In support of this we have not only the statements of Dryden and Johnson, but the evidence of his influence on the early poems of Pope, notably Windsor Forest, and the evidence of the numerous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century allusions to him, and imitations of him. This influence was undoubtedly due to the immense popularity of Cooper's Hill, a poem in which the couplets show a marked tendency toward Augustan conciseness. As Johnson points out, Denham shows a steady development in the use of the closed couplet, and in his late translations Of Prudence and Of Justice nearly every one is an independent unit. Many of his lines, moreover, have a balance and antithesis that point directly to Pope.

Anticipatory of Pope, too, is Denham's ability to turn a thought neatly, a trait which goes hand in hand with his didacticism. Dryden praises this in extravagant terms: “Sir George Mackensie … ask'd me why I did not imitate in my verses the turns of Mr. Waller and Sir John Denham, of which he repeated many to me. I had often read with pleasure, and with some profit those two fathers of our English poetry, but had not seriously enough consider'd those beauties which give the last perfection to their works.”¹⁵⁵ By a “turn” Dryden meant the musical repetition of a word or phrase. Of course neither Denham or Waller originated “turns,” but they do make frequent use of them. The opening lines of Cooper's Hill will serve as an example:

Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did tast the stream
Of Helicon, we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those.
And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,
So where the Muses and their train resort,
Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee
A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.

Yet though alike in this particular the styles of Denham and Waller are distinct; the former is weighty, the latter graceful; indeed, the strength of Denham is as common a phrase as the smoothness of Waller.

And praise the easy vigour of a line
Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.

Pope, Essay on Criticism, ll. 360-361

Hail mighty master of thy mother tongue,
More smooth than Waller or than Denham strong.

Henry Hall, To the Memory of John Dryden Esq. (Luctus Britannici, or the Tears of the British Muses, 1700, p. 19)

Were by soft Waller, manly Denham seen.

Buckingham House, (Three New Poems. Viz. I. Family Duty, … 1721, p. 20)

Again Johnson admirably sums up this characteristic of Denham's poetry: “The ‘strength of Denham’ which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.”¹⁵⁶ It is this quality in his work that accounts for the presence of so large a number of quotations from Denham that are to be found in subsequent books of extracts, quotations, etc., a number out of all proportion to the merit of the poems as a whole.

While it is not, strictly speaking, a characteristic of his poetry, we may here consider Denham's literary judgment. This appears to have been, on the whole, sound. Of his predecessors, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher are praised; of his contemporaries, Waller, Cowley, and Fanshawe (for his translation of Guarini). Howard's The British Princes and Davenant's Gondibert he satirized. His relations with Wither were personal rather than literary, and undoubtedly influenced his judgment of Wither's poetry, if indeed his remark to Charles I is to be taken seriously.¹⁵⁷

In connection with his literary judgment occurs one of the most interesting of all the anecdotes concerning him, that which makes him one of the first admirers of Milton's Paradise Lost. As the tradition is fairly well known it is, perhaps, necessary to examine it in some detail here. Its source was Jonathan Richardson's Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost, 1734, where we find it in the following form: “Sir George Hungerford, an ancient member of Parliament, told me, many years ago, that Sir John Denham came into the House one morning with a sheet, wet from the press, in his hand. What have you there, Sir John? Part of the noblest poem that ever was wrote in any language, or in any age. This was Paradise Lost. However, 'tis certain the book was unknown till about two years after, when the Earl of Dorset produced it. Dr. Tancred Robinson has given permission to use his name, and what I am going to relate he had from Fleet Shephard, at the Grecian Coffee-house, and who often told the story. My Lord was in Little Britain, beating about for books to his taste. There was Paradise Lost. He was surprised with some passages he struck upon dipping here and there, and bought it. The bookseller begged him to speak in its favour if he liked it, for that it lay on his hands as waste paper. (Jesus!) Shephard was present. My Lord took it home, read it, and sent it to Dryden, who in a short time returned it. ‘This man,’ says Dryden, ‘cuts us all out and the ancients too.’”¹⁵⁸

Edmund Malone was the first to attack this account, in 1800, in his Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of Dryden,¹⁵⁹ pointing out improbabilities and inconsistencies and reaching the conclusion that it was unworthy of credit.

The discussion is continued by Masson, in his Life of Milton, who, although meeting some of Malone's objections, reaches a similar conclusion, and rejects the tradition.¹⁶⁰

Yet there is no reason to deny Denham's claim to literary discernment. Let us examine once again the objections that have been made to his share in this tradition, ignoring the second part, that concerning Dryden, as irrelevant to our purpose. The objections are as follows: (1) Denham could not have seen a proof sheet; (2) he was mad at the time of the publication of Paradise Lost; (3) he was not a member of Parliament; (4) his public praise, celebrated poet though he was, had no stimulating effect on the sale. Passing over, for the moment, the first objection, let us consider the second. That Denham was mad at the time of the appearance of Paradise Lost Masson himself denies, and evidence supporting Masson has been added in these pages. Denham had resumed his official duties by September, 1666. The third objection is also groundless. He was returned a member for Old Sarum in 1661.¹⁶¹ The fourth is stressed by Masson, who, curiously enough, does not see that he at once answers his own objection. Masson says that as 1,300 of 1,500 copies had been sold, the bookseller, when he spoke of Paradise Lost as “waste paper,” must have meant merely that the copies in his own shop had not been sold. If we thus explain away the waste paper, we at the same time remove the objection that Denham's praise had no effect on the sale. We see that Paradise Lost had sold comparatively well, and that Denham might have contributed to this success.

Of the four objections, therefore, only one remains, that Denham could not have seen the proof sheets of the poem. In this connection it would be well to examine the original source once again: “Sir John Denham came into the House one morning with a sheet, wet from the press in his hand. What have you there Sir John? Part of the noblest poem that ever was wrote,” etc. It is true that the arguments against Denham's having seen a proof sheet are sound; but we observe at once that in the original proof sheet is nowhere mentioned, and that this meaning has been read into the passage by the commentators, who have not seen that it is capable of an entirely different and simple explanation. Denham might have had in his hand a freshly printed sheet of the first edition, yet unbound, which possibly had been hanging up in the book shop to dry when his excited discovery of it induced the bookseller to lend it to him. If we accept this conjecture, the difficulties vanish. There is no reason why Denham, in his right mind, and a member of the House, should not have brought into Parliament an unbound sheet of Paradise Lost “wet from the press,” and praised it; and as Sir John was a famous literary figure, there is no reason why his praise may not have been instrumental in assisting the sale of 1,300 copies of the poem within two years.

We should not overlook the fact, moreover, that Paradise Lost was a poem that would very naturally arouse Denham's enthusiasm, since its high moral theme was similar in character to his own literary didacticism. We must conclude, therefore, that there is no inconsistency in the tradition, and that it is probable that Denham recognized at once the greatness of Paradise Lost. This surely is not his least claim to the regard of posterity.

Of all his contemporaries, however, Denham has been most closely associated with Waller. As we have seen, since the time of Dryden, they have been regarded as the two forerunners of Augustan poetry. A study of the personal and literary relations between them becomes, therefore, of interest. There is a large amount of evidence, though most of it is indirect, that they knew one another personally, and there is direct evidence that Denham's early work was greatly influenced by Waller.

That they were closely associated after the Restoration is certain. Both were members of the House of Commons,¹⁶² both were courtiers; both were favorites. In 1663 they were appointed censors for a play of Killigrew's.¹⁶³ By that time, however, each had long established his technique, so that this association is of no special significance.

When they first met cannot be precisely determined, but it is possible that it was about 1635 or 1636.¹⁶⁴ At all events, Denham, by 1642, knew much of Waller's poetry in manuscript, and thought highly of it. In the first edition of Cooper's Hill of 1642, Denham, speaking of St. Paul's cathedral says:

Pauls, the late theme of such a muse whose flight
Has bravely reach't and soar'd above thy height:
Now shalt thou stand though sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings,
Preserved from ruine by the best of kings.

ll. 19-24

A marginal note reads, “Master Waller,” and the reference is to Waller's poem Upon his Majesty's repairing of Paul's. As none of Waller's poems¹⁶⁵ were published until 1645, Denham must have seen this poem in manuscript. The phrase “the best of poets” as applied to Waller's early work sounds somewhat like the complimentary exaggeration of personal friendship, though doubtless Waller's simplicity and directness appealed to Denham.

But Cooper's Hill furnishes still more evidence of familiarity with Waller's verse, as is shown by several parallel passages.¹⁶⁶

As the exact dates of the writing of all these poems is unknown, it is not impossible that Denham influenced Waller, but it seems far more probable that Denham, then at the beginning of his poetic career, echoed the various poems of the older poet with which he was familiar. In another poem of this period, Denham again echoes Waller's Upon his Majesty's repairing of Paul's:

Our nation's glory and our nation's crime

l. 4

In the Egerton MS. 2421 text of On the Earl of Strafford's Trial and Death Denham says:

Our nations glory and our nations hate

l. 20

It is certain, therefore, that by 1642 Denham was thoroughly acquainted with Waller's poetry, and it is probable that he knew Waller himself.

In any case, during the years 1648 to 1652 the two men must have been thrown together. In 1648 Waller removed from Rouen to Paris, where he remained, a member of the exiled English court, until his return to England in 1652.¹⁶⁷ In 1648 Denham fled from England, and joined Charles in Paris, with whom he stayed, except for occasional absences on various missions, until he too went back to England in 1653. As Waller and Denham were both favorites at court, and were now both famous poets, it is almost certain that by the time they were again in England they knew one another intimately.

In 1655 we find our next indication of personal relationship. In that year the greatly revised edition of Cooper's Hill appeared in which a passage which might have been construed as an unfriendly allusion to Waller was dropped.¹⁶⁸

Finally,¹⁶⁹ in 1658, we come to our last and most convincing evidence. In that year was published The Passion of Dido for Aeneas … Translated by Edmund Waller and Sidney Godolphin. Waller's portion of this joint work was later published separately in his collected editions, under the title Part of the Fourth Book of Virgil, Translated. It is a passage of 134 lines, running in the original from line 437 to line 583.

Denham also translated part of the fourth book of the Aeneid. It was first published in the collected edition of 1668, under the title of The Passion of Dido for Aeneas. This represents a revision, done about 1653 of a portion of a much earlier complete translation of books II-VI.¹⁷⁰ As in his other translations, he condenses greatly, but in this instance he omits altogether a passage of about 130 lines, save for a few scattered lines to bridge the gap. These lines omitted by Denham are precisely the lines translated by Waller.¹⁷¹

The coincidence is too striking to be accidental, and there can, I think, be but one explanation. Denham, having already translated the passage, omits it in revision because Waller has written his version in the meantime, and Denham does not wish to compete with his friend. This failure to make use of his own work seems otherwise unexplainable. On this occasion, therefore, direct relationship is nearly certainly established.¹⁷²

We see, then, that from 1635 on, Denham's life touched Waller's on numerous occasions, and that the two men were thrown together under circumstances that must have resulted in intimacy.¹⁷³ What conclusions in regard to their poetry are we to draw from these facts? Denham, in his most important and one of his earliest poems, Cooper's Hill, was clearly influenced by Waller, and it is probable that this was the outcome of personal friendship. There are no further echoes of Waller in Denham's later work, nor has Waller's ever any traces of Denham. Yet Denham, as we have seen, must have kept in touch with Waller's verse, and Waller could not have avoided knowing so famous a poem as Cooper's Hill.¹⁷⁴

Their styles are distinct. Yet each developed a similar technique of the heroic couplet; each, as he matured, wrote couplets more and more closely approaching Augustan cadence and polish. I do not believe that either consciously attempted a revolution in prosody, nor do I believe that either consciously imitated the other. Yet seeing that their personal and literary relationships were close, it is a reasonable assumption that their influence was interactive, and even if subconscious, none the less effective.

As a translator, Denham deserves more attention than we can at present give him. Over half the body of his work, excluding The Sophy, is translation, and he occupies a conspicuous position among the predecessors of Dryden and Pope, both of whom praise him.¹⁷⁵ He translated from the French, the Greek, and the Latin. His French work is the fifth act of Corneille's Horace, the first four being by Mrs. Phillips, and is in his late style of strictly closed couplets; his Greek is a short fragment from the Iliad. His Latin work is more important, and consists in its printed form of an epigram of Martial, two poems of Mancinus, part of the second and part of the fourth book of the Aeneid, and Cicero's Cato Major. It is of interest to note that Dryden clearly made use of the second Aeneid in his own translation, even taking over Denham's concluding line without a change.

There is in addition a MS. version of the Aeneid, books II-VI inclusive, which differs materially from the printed fragments.¹⁷⁶ The MS. must represent Denham's original translation, for it is in his earliest manner, abounding in run-on couplets, full stops within the line, and other irregularities. The title-page of The Destruction of Troy, 1656 (a portion of book II), states that it was written in 1636. I see no reason to doubt this, or the fact that it applies to the whole MS., since the style is the same throughout (that is, of course, in the parts I have seen).

In the printed form of books II and IV the verse is somewhat tightened and polished, indicating later work. Denham did not complete his revision, either because he had no time, or because he felt that it was not worth the effort. The date of the revision is in all probability about 1653, when he was with the Earl of Pembroke. We know that he then worked on Virgil.¹⁷⁷ As further evidence we have: 1) The relation, discussed above, between Denham's revision of book four and Waller's translation done about this time. 2) the following parallel:

No unexpected inundations [of the Thames] spoyl
The mowers hopes, nor mock the plowman's toyl.

Cooper's Hill, ll. 175-176

[The torrent]
Bears down th' opposing Oaks, the fields destroys
And mocks the Plough-mans toil

Destruction of Troy, ll. 294-295

The phrase in The Destruction of Troy being changed from its earlier form in the Hutchinson MS. of And all the oxens toyle, which is closer to Virgil. About 1653 would be a natural date for this change; Denham very probably then had the text of Cooper's Hill freshly in mind, as he published the revised edition in 1655. As this phrase was in the 1642 version of Cooper's Hill, I take it he transferred it to Virgil, consciously or unconsciously, when working on both poems at about the same time.

In the seventeenth century a very large number of translations from the classics were produced. In this field it is, of course, difficult to trace literary influence, and the relations between the various translators are ill defined. In general, however, we may say that the earlier attempts were largely word for word, and line for line. Later two other methods arose: more or less free paraphrase, and what was called “imitation.” Denham makes his own position clear in his praise of Fanshawe's translation of Guarini:

That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
Not the effects of Poetry, but pains;
Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at words.
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make Translations and Translators too.
They but preserve the Ashes, thou the Flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

To Sir Richard Fanshaw, ll. 15-25

This poem, Johnson says, “… contains a very spritely and judicious character of a good translator: [Quotes above lines] The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they contain was not at that time generally known.”¹⁷⁸ Denham treats this same thought more at length in his introduction to The Destruction of Troy. In theory, then, Denham is an “imitator,” but in practice he is more moderate, and departs no farther from his original than paraphrase. Indeed, his changes consist for the most part in condensing and focusing the thought, a characteristic of his original poems. It is this trait that made his mature translations, Cato Major, and Of Prudence, Of Justice, favorite fields for the compilers of books of quotations. Denham never goes so far as true “imitation,” a triumphant example of which is Pope's Epistle to Augustus.

Denham's translation of Virgil clearly illustrates this change toward greater freedom, his 1636 version being considerably closer to the Latin than the revised form of 1653. I might give many illustrations of this, but perhaps one will suffice, since it concerns the famous line,

… timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

In the Hutchinson MS. this reads:

The Grecians most when bringing guifts I feare.

In The Destruction of Troy:

Their swords less danger carry than their gifts.

l. 48

That Denham here is ready to sacrifice the full force of so famous a phrase for the sake of greater neatness and antithesis shows unmistakably that to render Virgil literally is no longer so important as to render him attractively.¹⁷⁹

Denham's translations are not very successful poetically, and are of less significance for the results he obtained than for the methods he followed. Here, as in his original poetry, he points the way toward Dryden and Pope.

Denham's metrical version of the Psalms was one of the hundreds of such versions made in the seventeenth century.¹⁸⁰ “In this attempt,” says Johnson, “he has failed; but in sacred poetry who has succeeded?”¹⁸¹ The task of writing good poetry that was at the same time fitted to church tunes proved too much even for Milton. This being the case, it seems unprofitable to attempt a detailed comparison of Denham's work with that of his rivals. We may content ourselves with one comparison taken at random, and set Denham's version of the twenty-third Psalm against Sternhold's, part of the popular version of Sternhold and Hopkins.

Sternhold:

My shepeheard is the living Lord
          Nothing therefore I need;
In pastures faire with waters calme
          He set me forth to feede.
He did convert and glad my soule
          And brought my mind in frame;
To walk in pathes of righteousnesse,
          For his most holy name.
Yea though I walke in vale of death,
          Yet will I feare none ill.
Thy rod and staffe doth comfort me,
          And thou art with me still.
And in the presence of my foes,
          My table thou shalt spread!
Thou shalt O Lord fill full my cup,
          And eke anoint my heade.
Through all my life thy favour is
          So franckly shewed to me:
That in thy house for evermore
          My dwelling place shal be.

Denham:

My Shepherd is the living Lord;
          To me my Food and Ease
The rich luxuriant Fields afford;
          The Streams my Thirst appease.
My Soul restor'd he'l gently lead
          Into the Paths of Peace;
To walk in Shades among the Dead,
          My Hopes, not Fears, increase.
His Rod and Staff are still my Guide,
          He stands before my Foes:
For me a feast he does provide,
          My sparkling Cup o'er-flows.
He with sweet Oil anoints my Head;
          His Mercy, Grace, and Praise,
Have me into his Temple led,
          Where I will end my Days.

The comparison seems to me greatly in Denham's favor.

As a playwright Denham need not detain us long. His only play is The Sophy, an early production, and one of no great importance. The story is founded upon historical fact, or at least upon travelers' tales. Herbert, in his Travels,¹⁸² recounts among many incidents of the cruelty of the then reigning Shah of Persia, the story of his relations with his son. The Shah, Abbas, having murdered his elder brother and his father in order to mount the throne, becomes jealous of the great fame of his son and heir, Mirza; accuses him of plotting rebellion; has him blinded and thrown into prison. Yet he retains the greatest affection for Mirza's seven-year-old daughter Fatyma. Mirza, enraged by his father's cruelty, obtains a terrible revenge by strangling Fatyma in order to deprive Abbas of the delight of her society. He then poisons himself. Not long after, Abbas dies, leaving Mirza's young son, Sophy, as his successor.

Upon this foundation Denham has built his play. He increases the dramatic value of the story by having the King's mind poisoned against his son by his trusted favorite, Haly, who is jealous of Mirza, and ambitious to set up a new dynasty which he can dominate. Denham, seeing the unfitness of the original for stage presentation, has Mirza tempted to kill Fatyma, but relent at the last moment and allow her to escape. He also departs from Herbert by having both the King and Mirza poisoned by Haly, who in turn falls when his confidant confesses under torture by Mirza's partisans.

Denham's play lacks sufficient complication of plot to make it effective, but it contains numerous well-phrased moral, philosophical and political maxims characteristic of his work, and exhibits a not altogether feeble power of psychological analysis. He seems to have been largely influenced by Shakespeare and the later Elizabethans. The theme is strongly reminiscent of Othello; Haly is a faint echo of Iago, who, after he has succeeded in ruining both the King and his son, goes smiling to his torture and death; he is even called “honest Haly.” There are a number of Shakesperian echoes in the verse, and the metaphorical style is characteristically Elizabethan. Prosodically it presents some interesting features. Aside from one passage of highly finished couplets¹⁸³ the play is in slipshod blank verse, which seems to be more an unskillful attempt to write in Shakespeare's late manner, or in Fletcher's, than anything else. The five-foot line is the standard, but the verse wavers sadly; six-foot and four-foot lines are common; feminine and double-feminine endings abound; the speeches almost always begin and end with half-lines that refuse to match; and from time to time the verse degenerates into prose pure and simple.¹⁸⁴

Denham does not appear to have been influenced by any of the other Eastern plays of the period, printed or acted, most of which seem to have been of slight importance. However, in 1632 Massinger's Emperor of the East, a Turkish play, and in 1637 Suckling's Aglaura, a Persian play, were both successful, and may have encouraged Denham to choose an Eastern theme.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about The Sophy is the fact of its success, for which we have Wood's testimony, and the evidence of the 1642 prologue that it was given at court. Produced in 1641, when the rights and privileges of kingship were topics of supreme importance, the play could easily have been interpreted by the spectators as more or less of an allegory of political England; it would not be difficult for them to see in the Persian king, Charles cut off from his people and surrounded by his “evil counsellors,” or in the contemptible Caliph, those clergy against whom the “root and branch” bill was aimed, specifically, perhaps, Archbishop Laud. It is further evidence of his interest in fundamental ethical and moral problems that the passage upon which Denham has obviously bestowed most care, attacks the abuses of the ministerial office, both the pride that makes religion the “spur” rather than the “curb” of tyranny, and the improper boldness that unites the cause of religion to popular discontent with kingship.¹⁸⁵

There remains for our consideration Cooper's Hill, incomparably the most important of Denham's writings. “He seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection, or incidental meditation.”¹⁸⁶ This is best seen by summarizing the poem.

After an invocation to Cooper's Hill, the poet looks from its “auspicious height” and sees London and St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance. He admires the vastness of the Cathedral and reflects on the life in a city, contrasting its tumult with the serenity of private life. Then, looking nearer, he sees Windsor Castle, which moves him to give an account of some of the famous kings of whom Windsor can boast, Edward III, the Black Prince, etc., ending with a compliment to Charles I and Henrietta Maria. Next to Windsor a ruined abbey, Chertsey, provokes a sharp satire on Henry VIII, and a condemnation of both religious lethargy and religious zeal. The poet then turns to the Thames itself, but gives not so much a physical description as a discussion of its beneficial effects on agriculture, its commerce, etc. Next he describes in general terms the valley's scenery, whose mixture of stream, wood, mountain, and meadow gives delight. Through the meadow Charles I often passes toward the hunt. This leads the poet to a spirited description of a stag hunt in which the quarry falls beneath the King's shaft. The scene of this hunt, Runnymede, was also the scene of another more weighty struggle, which resulted in the yielding of arbitrary power by the signing of Magna Charta. Finally, the poet discusses the privileges and responsibilities of kingship, and the relations between the King and his people with which the poem ends.

It is evident that the nature description is relatively unimportant, being to a large extent conventional or vaguely general, and serving merely as a peg on which to hang ethical and philosophical reflections. The stag hunt is, perhaps, an exception to this rule; it is more spirited and its movement is less impeded by reflective passages than the rest of the poem, but a stag hunt is, after all, hardly nature description.

There are, of course, earlier poems about local scenery: Drayton's Polyolbion, Jonson's Penshurst, and others; but all of these lack the didactic element that is characteristic of Cooper's Hill, and that marks it as the original of a distinctive type. It has also been stated that Cooper's Hill is “obviously after the model of the Mosella of Ausonius,”¹⁸⁷ but the same objection holds; Ausonius, unlike Denham, gives the physical descriptions merely for their own sake.

In Denham's day the originality of the poem was attacked from a somewhat different angle; he was accused of not being the author, and of having bought the poem from another. Samuel Butler says:

And now expect far greater matters of ye
Than the bought Cooper's-Hill or borrow'd Sophy,(188)

and the anonymous author of The Session of the Poets:¹⁸⁹

Then in came Denham, that limping old Bard,
Whose fame on the Sophy and Cooper's Hill stands;
And brought many Stationers who swore very hard,
That nothing sold better, except 'twere his Lands.
But Apollo advis'd him to write something more,
To clear a suspicion which possess'd the Court,
That Cooper's Hill, so much bragg'd on before,
Was writ by a Vicar who had forty pound for't.(190)

This is all the charge amounts to, and it cannot be said to weaken Denham's claim to the authorship. Johnson dismisses it by remarking that the poem “had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which envy degrades excellence.”¹⁹¹ Denham's place in literature as the originator of a type of poetry which was long popular remains secure.

On the question of the style, there is little to be added here to what has already been said of Denham's style in general. It has obvious characteristics and the obvious criticisms have been well made. Its prosody is important, since the poem's popularity affected not only the subject matter, but the manner of versification, of subsequent poetry, and contributed largely toward the development of the couplet into its Augustan form. The couplets show a marked tendency to break up into units, or at least pairs; there are almost no full stops within the line; and many of the couplets have a conciseness and antithesis that point toward Pope.¹⁹² In this respect Cooper's Hill is strikingly different from the earlier Destruction of Troy, with its overflow. This change may be due to the influence of Waller, who at that time was associated with Denham's cousin, George Morley, as we have seen. At all events, it is important to see that Denham's development had proceeded so far as to throw the weight of Cooper's Hill on the side of the closed rather than the open couplet.

Cooper's Hill is of interest to us in another respect. It offers us our chief opportunity of estimating how far Denham may be considered a conscious artist, though on a smaller scale we may do so in his poem On the Earl of Strafford's Tryal, and one or two others. This leads us to consideration of the various texts.

These present a difficult problem, which was convincingly solved by Professor O Hehir.¹⁹³ His conclusions can only be summarized here. Copies are extant of editions of 1642, 1643, and 1650. The texts of all three, except for obvious printer's errors and the inevitable differences in spelling, are identical. In 1655 another edition appeared. In the preface J. B. says: “You have seen this Poem often and yet never: for, though there have been Five Impressions, this now in your hand is the onely true Copie. Those former were all but meer Repetitions of the same false Transcript …” If we assume that the 1655 text was one of these five impressions, then there were four earlier ones. Three have been accounted for above. The fourth was probably another 1650 edition which has disappeared.¹⁹⁴ The impression given by J. B. that the 1655 edition is more authentic than the earlier ones is false. Denham was responsible for all of them, but the 1655 edition was so radical a revision that he was anxious to have the previous texts superseded. It differs in only a few minor details from the 1668 text, which is the final form except for six additional ms. lines.¹⁹⁵

In addition to these printed texts there are two manuscripts in the British Museum, MS. Harley 367, which lacks the first sixty-five lines, and MS. Harley 837. These are practically identical, and represent a state of the text very similar to that of 1642. In only two significant instances do the mss. differ. These will be discussed later.

The text of the mss. differs both from the 1642 (1643, 1650) text, and from the 1655 (1668) text and represents a version intermediate between them. This would account for their only differences; MS. Harley 837 inserts a couplet found nowhere else, and MS. Harley 367 expands a four-line simile to eight lines. Both of these are manuscript experiments that were later canceled.

The chief variations of the mss. text from that of 1642 are as follows.

1. A passage of the 1642 edition is dropped in MS. Harley 837 (MS. Harley 367 being defective) and does not reappear in 1655. This is an allusion to men making and unmaking plots, and there is some reason to suppose that Denham canceled it on the discovery of Waller's plot in 1643, The passage would therefore not occur in any subsequent text based on his ms., but would continue to appear in reprints of the 1642 edition.
2. A four-line comparison of the river Thames to a lover forsaking his mistress is expanded in MS. Harley 367 to eight lines. Denham had sufficient taste to reject both versions of the simile altogether in the 1655 edition.
3. In both mss. a six-line simile between a stag at bay and a sinking ship is introduced, which does not appear in 1642, and which recurs in a condensed and improved form in 1655.

The long variant (9-30) in MS. Harley 837 consists almost entirely of transposition of lines.

When we turn to the 1655 edition, we find that Denham has made many changes from the earlier text. [It is] perhaps unnecessary to analyse these in detail. In general they are for the better: passages are condensed and given added conciseness; various weak couplets, one or two political passages, and several poor similes are omitted. These revisions, which won Pope's praise,¹⁹⁶ show that Denham's artistic sense was sufficiently acute to enable him to improve his work.

The most important of all these differences is the first appearance in the 1655 text of the famous apostrophe to the Thames, upon which Denham's fame now chiefly rests:

Oh could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full.

These lines are his finest achievement, and many attempts have been made to find a source for them.¹⁹⁷ A passage of one of Roger Ascham's letters is produced: “Est enim in verbis deligendis tam peritus … suavis ubique sine fastidio, gravis semper sine molestia: sic fluens ut nunquam redundet, sic sonans ut nunquam perstrepat, sic plenus ut nunquam turgescat; sic omnibus perfectus numeris, ut nec addi ei aliquid, nec demi quicquid, mea opinione, possit.”¹⁹⁸ Yet the parallel, while interesting, is by no means conclusive.

A far more probable source is indicated by William Oldys¹⁹⁹ in a marginal note in a volume in the British Museum:²⁰⁰ “Denham's fine lines to the Thames from Cartwright or Randolph, or both, or Fletcher.”

In Cartwright we find:

But thou still putst true passion on; dost write
With the same courage that try'd captaines fight;
Giv'st the right blush and colour unto things;
Low without creeping, high without losse of wings;
Smooth, yet not weake, and by a thorough care,
Bigge without swelling, without painting faire.

In Memory of the most worthy Benjamin Johnson

This poem first appeared in Jonsonus Verbius, 1638, a collection of elegies on Jonson, and was reprinted in Cartwright's collected works in 1651.²⁰¹

And in Randolph we find:

I meane the stile, being pure and strong and round,
Not long but Pythy: being short breath'd, but sound.
Such as the grave, acute, wise, Seneca sings
That best of Tutours to the worst of Kings.
Not long and empty; lofty but not proud;
Subtle but sweet, high but without a cloud.

To Mr. Feltham on his booke of Resolves

This was first printed in Randolph's collected poems in 1638.²⁰² Since these two poems appeared in the same year, it is clearly impossible to determine whether one author influenced the other. It is reasonable to suppose that their common source is Fletcher, since Oldys is not likely to have been wrong in finding a similarity there. However, I could discover no appropriate passage in any of the four possible Fletchers: Giles the elder, Giles the younger, Phineas, or John. I can only assume that I have overlooked it. As to Denham, as Oldys remarked, he may be indebted to any one of the earlier writers for the phrasing and movement of the verse in his famous lines. Yet his essential originality is not seriously weakened. His verses are metrically superior to the others', and the objects compared in the simile are different, which, of course, changes the whole thought, and makes Denham's a far more poetical one. Moreover, Denham had already expressed the underlying thought in 1642. There we read:

O could my verse freely and smoothly flow
As thy [Thames] pure flood, heaven should no longer know
Her old Eridanus; thy purer streame
Should bathe the gods, and be the poet's theme.

In MSS. Harley 367 and 837 this had become

O could my lines fully and smoothly flow, etc.,

where the change from freely to fully brings us one step nearer the final form, and may have suggested the rhyme word full. In addition, the distinguishing features of Denham's couplets, the beauty of the comparison of the flow of the verse to the flow of the stream, and the simultaneous illustration of the simile in the skillful onomatopoeia, stamp the lines as his alone. There can be no serious doubt, therefore, of his originality in writing the quatrain, that admits him on this one occasion to the ranks of authentic poets, and that “must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must arise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.”²⁰³

The quatrain became immensely famous. Yet, fine as it is, its reputation was not due solely to its intrinsic merits. In the dedication of his translation of the Aeneid, in 1697, Dryden offers it as a test of poetical insight. “I am sure,” he says, “there are few who make verses have observ'd the sweetness of these two lines in Cooper's Hill [quotes last two lines]. And there are yet fewer who can find the reason of that sweetness.”²⁰⁴ Thus challenged, the critics set themselves to solve the riddle, an effort which resulted in such long analyses as those of Lord Monboddo, Hughes, Say, Johnson, etc., and in an increased fame for the poem. Following Dryden there began a steady stream of quotations, imitations, and allusions to these lines that has continued almost to the present, the latest reference that I have come upon being in Meredith's Diana of the Crossways.²⁰⁵

Dryden's belief that no one before him had called attention to these lines is probably correct. In 1657 Poole²⁰⁶ includes five quotations from Cooper's Hill, but omits the quatrain; in 1666 an anonymous poem appeared, entitled St. Leonard's Hill.²⁰⁷ This is a close imitation of the general plan of Cooper's Hill, and has several long passages which are hardly more than rewritings of Denham's verse, but these lines to the Thames are unnoticed.

Yet the fame of Cooper's Hill did not depend entirely on this single passage. Its blend of description and reflection was new; its didacticism appealed to the minds of Denham's contemporaries and successors; the movement of its verse appealed to their ears. As we have seen, it at once became popular. First printed in 1642, it went through four editions before 1655; it found its way into a book of quotations by 1657; an imitation of it appeared by 1666. For more than a century it was one of the most famous poems in the language. From 1642 to 1826 it was published twenty-four times (including two editions of a Latin translation), separately or in collections, and was of course included in the collected editions of Denham's poems, of which there were nineteen up to 1857. There are, in addition, indications of several more editions that have disappeared. Vaughn, Herrick, Swift, Addison, Goldsmith, as well as other lesser writers, refer to it; Pope was largely influenced by it.

The fame of Cooper's Hill endured until late in the eighteenth century. In 1766 appeared COOPER'S HILL. / A / POEM. / ADDRESS'D TO / Sir WATKIN WILLIAMS WYNNE, Bart. / LONDON: / Printed for W. WOOD, in WARWICK-LANE, / AND / M. HINGESTON, near TEMPLE BAR. / (Price TWO SHILLINGS and SIX-PENCE.);²⁰⁸ aside from the title, this poem is evidently influenced by Denham's Cooper's Hill, as it has several passages in imitation of it. In 1767 appeared COOPER'S WELL. / (Quotation. Horace.) / A / FRAGMENT, / WRITTEN BY THE HONOURABLE / Sir JOHN DENHAM, Knight of the BATH, / AND / AUTHOR of the Celebrated Poem of COOPER'S HILL, / found amongst the Papers of a late Noble LORD. Dated / in the Year 1667. / LONDON: / Printed for the AUTHOR; / And Sold by C. MORAN, in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden. / MDCCLXVII.²⁰⁹ This is a close and highly indecent parody of Denham's poem. In 1785 John Scott²¹⁰ published a long critical analysis of the original, and, in attacking it, speaks of it as a poem which everyone has been taught to admire for its beautiful descriptions, interesting histories, and rational sentiments.

Yet the importance of Cooper's Hill is measured not only by the number of editions, references, etc., but also by the great number of poems that sprang up in imitation of it: the earliest was, as we have seen, St. Leonard's Hill in 1666, and following this came Pope's Windsor Forest, Waller's St. James Park, Garth's Claremont, Dyer's Grongar Hill and many others. Havens cites forty-six “hill” poems up to 1821,²¹¹ and we cannot doubt that most of them were inspired directly or indirectly by Cooper's Hill. Johnson says that the smaller poets, following Denham, “have left scarce a corner of the island not dignified either by rhyme, or blank verse,”²¹² and “The Gentlemen's Magazine complained in 1788 that ‘readers have been used to see the Muses labouring up … many hills since Cooper's and Grongar, and some gentle Bard reclining on almost every mole-hill.’”²¹³

Cooper's Hill is Denham's chief title to fame. Most of his occasional poetry is of no permanent value; his only play is an amateurish example of an outworn mode; his translations are of significance only as serving as models for Dryden and Pope. But in writing Cooper's Hill he attained a lasting place in the history of English literature. By this poem he established a new and long popular type of descriptive poetry in which he surpassed all his imitators, and established himself as one of the famous poets of England for more than a hundred years; by it he influenced the development of the heroic couplet, aiding largely in its evolution into the closed Augustan form. Finally, in Cooper's Hill he was visited with the gift of tongues, and for four lines attained that finished utterance that is the goal of all who write.

Notes

1. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 87-88.

2. Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 57 Penn.

3. See Epistle Dedicatory.

4. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 220.

5. William Oldys's note in the British Museum copy of Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatic Poets, p. 125. Butler, Samuel, A Panegyric Upon Sir John Denham's Recovery from his Madness, l. 29.

6. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 216.

7. Ibid., I, 220.

8. For genealogy see Appendix C. For account of family arms, monumental inscriptions, etc., at Egham, see Surrey Archaeological Collections, XXX, 1; XXXIII, 6.

9. “Sir John told me his family was originally westerne.” Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 221.

10. Wood, Anthony, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 422. Manning, Rev. Owen, History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, 1804, III, 259.

11. Langbaine, Gerard, English Dramatic Poets, 1691, p. 126.

12. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 422. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 217.

13. Records of the Society of Lincoln's Inn. Admissions, 1896, I, 213. This date is erroneously given as the twenty-eighth of April by Sir Sidney Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography.

14. Foster, Joseph, Alumni Oxoniensis.

15. Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, 1721, II, 422.

16. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 422.

17. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), II, 18. It might be well to state that Aubrey's gossipy remarks are, in general, to be received with caution.

18. Ibid., I, 217.

19. Marriage Register of St. Bride's.

20. Atkyns, Sir Robert, The Ancient and Present State of Glocestershire, 1768, p. 428.

21. Parish register of Egham.

22. For a short account of Sir William, see Sussex Archaeological Collections, XXXI, 5, n. 3.

23. I have determined the relative ages of the daughters as follows: Elizabeth was “about 21” in 1675. Cokayne, G. E., Complete Baronetage, 1903, III, 19. This would make the year of her birth about 1654, but we know from other evidence that this date is too late. Denham in 1647 refers to an estate of his “late wife,” so that Elizabeth must have been born in or before that year. State Papers, Domestic, LXXX, 171. There is no direct mention of Ann's age, but as we know that her mother was confined in 1643 it is permissible to infer that Ann was born in that year.

24. For a short account of Sir Thomas, see Cokayne, G. E., Complete Baronetage, 1903, III, 19.

25. Berry, William, County Genealogies, Pedigrees of the Families of the County of Sussex, 1830, p. 76.

26. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 217.

27. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 422.

28. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 220.

29. Parish Register of Egham.

30. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 217-218.

31. Ibid.

32. Records of the Society of Lincoln's Inn. The Black Books, 1898, II, 350.

33. There is strong reason to believe that he had made a complete translation of Books II to VI, inclusive.

34. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 423.

35. Rushworth, J., Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, 1721, V, 81-82.

36. Wither, George, Se Defendendo, p. 10.

37. A Perfect Diurnall of the Passages in Parliament (printed for I. Okes and F. Leach), No. 25.

38. Vicars, John, Jehovah-Jireh … Englands Parliamentarie Chronicle, 1644, p. 223.

39. A Perfect Diurnall of the Passages in Parliament (printed for I. Okes and F. Leach), No. 25.

40. Ibid. (printed for Cook and Wood), No. 41.

41. Journals of the Commons.

42. Wither, Se Defendendo, pp. 13-14.

43. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 221.

44. Mercurius Aulicus, the 26th Weeke, ending June 29, 1644, p. 1050.

45. Journal of the Lords, Nov. 8, 1644.

46. Ibid., Oct. 17, 1648.

47. State Papers, Interregnum, B, 11.

48. For a full account of the capture of Dartmouth, see Sir Thomas Fairfax's Letter to Both Houses more exactly and fully relating the storming and taking of Dartmouth.

49. Journal of the Commons, Jan. 23, 1645/6.

50. Ibid., Feb. 4, 1645/6.

51. Journal of the Lords, May 4, 1646.

52. Journal of the Lords, May 4, 1646. Historical MSS. Commission, Report 6, p. 115.

53. Journal of the Lords, May 11, 1646.

54. Ibid., March 24, 1646/7.

55. Berkeley, Sir John, Memoirs of Sir John Berkeley, 1699, p. 4.

56. Ibid., p. 5.

57. Berkeley, Sir John, Memoirs of Sir John Berkeley, 1699, p. 37.

58. A letter from Edward Helaw to Commons, Nov. 11, 1647. The kings Majesties most gratious message, with a perfect narrative of the manner of his Majesties going from Hampton Court, 1647.

59. Calendar of the Committee for Compounding, p. 1790.

60. Carte, Tho., A Collection of Original Letters, 1739, II, 351-352. Camden Society Publications, Hamilton Papers, pp. 148, 153.

61. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 423.

62. Epistle Dedicatory.

63. Sydney Papers, consisting of … original letters of Algernon Sydney, 1825 (ed. Blencowe), pp. 33-34.

64. Historical MSS. Commission, Pepys MS., p. 279.

65. Ibid., p. 211.

66. Epistle Dedicatory, p. 60.

67. Colonel Fielder was, at any rate, their guardian in 1650. Calendar of the Committee for Compounding, p. 1790.

68. Historical MSS. Commission, Pepys MS., p. 227.

69. Ibid., Popham MS., p. 10.

70. Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, 1857 (ed. M. A. E. Green), p. 361.

71. Perfect occurrences of Every Daies journall in Parliament, Aug. 3-10, 1649.

72. On my Lord Croft's and my Journey into Poland, p. 107.

73. Camden Society Publications, Nicholas Papers, I, 300.

74. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 218. Journals of the Commons, July 1, 1651. Acts & Ordinances of the Interregnum, II, 545. Calendar for Committee on Compounding, I-III, passim.

75. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1652-1653, p. 193.

76. Calendar of the proceedings of the Committee for Compounding, p. 1790.

77. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 423. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 218.

78. Thurloe, John, A Collection of State Papers, 1742, I, 471.

79. Evelyn, Diary.

80. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1655, p. 204. (See Verses on the Cavaliers, p. 135.)

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid., pp. 193, 212.

83. Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, 1872, III, 58.

84. Evelyn, Diary.

85. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1657-1658, p. 6. Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, III, 307. The “desperate design” was to marry the daughter of Fairfax, in which he succeeded.

86. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1657-1658, p. 552.

87. A few miles from Bury there is the village of Denham, but I have been able to find no connection between the family who lived there and the poet's. In any case the manor passed out of their possession in the fourteenth century.

88. Ibid., 1658-1659, p. 580.

89. A letter of the Earl of Pembroke to me.

90. Clarendon, State Papers Collected by Edward, Earl of, 1786, III, 644-645.

91. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1660-1661, p. 72.

92. Ibid., 1660-1661, p. 76.

93. Ibid., 1668-1669, pp. 224, 227.

94. Evelyn, Diary, Oct. 19, 1661.

95. Butler, Samuel, A Panegyric upon Sir John Denham's Recovery from his Madness, ll. 45-46.

96. Pepys, Diary, Sept. 28, 1668.

97. Calendar Treasury Books, 1667-1668, p. 598.

98. Freart, Roland, A Parallel of the Antient Architecture with the Modern, 1664, Dedication.

99. Calendar Treasury Books, 1660-1667, p. 375.

100. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, passim.

101. Egerton MS. 2551, p. 137.

102. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1660-1661, p. 452: 1667, p. 116: 1667-1668, p. 176. Calendar Treasury Books, 1667-1668, p. 161.

103. Parliament, 1878. House of Commons Accounts & Papers, vol. 62, part I, p. 531. Old Sarum was one of the most notorious of the “rotten boroughs.” I have not been able to discover who had the gift of the seat at this time.

104. The Record of the Royal Society. Chronological Register of Fellows.

105. Calendar Treasury Books, 1660-1667, p. 232. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1663-1664, p. 238.

106. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1663-1664, p. 83.

107. Ibid., p. 423.

108. Historical MSS. Commission, Ormonde MS., New Series (1904), III, 19-20. I have not been able to establish the kinship of either Dr. Denham or Sir George Lane.

109. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1721, II, 423. Chester, J. L., Marriage, Baptism & Burial Register of Westminster, 1876, p. 4.

110. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 219.

111. Grammont, Memoirs (ed. Sir Walter Scott), p. 185. A poem of Waller's on the marriage, referring to the disparity of ages and Denham's lameness, is printed by G. Thorn-Drury in A Little Ark, containing Seventeenth Century Verse, 1921, p. 33.

112. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 219.

113. Calendar State Papers, Ireland, 1666-1669, p. 52.

     For an account of the man and his remarkable cures, see the Dictionary of National Biography.

114. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, 1892 (ed. A. Clark), II, p. 75.

115. Historical MSS. Commission, Report 6, p. 339.

116. Ibid., Ormonde MS., New Series (1904), III, 217.

117. Ibid., Report 6, p. 339.

118. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1665-1666, p. 354.

119. Historical MSS. Commission, Report 6, p. 339.

120. Journal of the Commons, September 21, 22, 24.

121. See T. W. Baldwin, Sir John Denham and Paradise Lost, Modern Language Notes, December, 1927, p. 508.

122. Temple, Sir William, Works, 1814, I, 459.

123. Pepys, Diary, Aug. 15, 1664.

124. So Wood and Aubrey.

125. Thorn-Drury, G., A Little Ark, containing Seventeenth Century Verse, 1921, p. 33. Historical MSS. Commission, Report 6, p. 458. Marvel, Last Instructions to a Painter, ll. 151-154.

126. Pepys, Diary, June 10, 1666.

127. Pepys, Diary, Sept. 26, 1666. See also Oct. 8, 13, 15, 1666.

128. Ibid., Nov. 10, 1666.

129. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1666-1667, pp. 262-263.

130. Pepys, Diary, Dec. 12, 1666.

131. Ibid., Jan. 7, 1667.

132. Boyle, Roger, First Earl of Orrery, A Collection of the State Letters of, 1742, p. 219.

133. Bramhall, John, The Rawdon Papers, consisting of Letters … to and from Dr. John Bramhall, 1819, p. 227.

134. Marvel, Last Instructions to a Painter, ll. 341-344. See also Clarendon's House Warming, stanza 7.

135. Marvel, Last Instructions to a Painter, ll. 65-68.

136. A Key to Grammont's Memoirs, annexed to 1719 edition, note on “old D—m.”

137. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 219.

138. Grammont, Memoirs (ed. Sir Walter Scott), pp. 207-208.

139. Sir Sidney Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography gives this as “according to Henry Newcome.” I have been unable to trace or verify this reference.

140. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1668-1669, p. 227.

141. Blount, Sir T. P., De Re Poetica, Characters & Censures, 1694, p. 66.

142. State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, vol. 270, p. 182. For Wase, see note 173.

143. Spence, Joseph, Anecdotes, 1820, pp. 281-283.

144. Southey, Robert, The Life and Works of William Cowper, 1836, II, 130-131.

145. 'Twas certainly mysterious that the name
     Of Prophets and of Poets is the same;

     Progress of Learning, ll. 77-78.

146. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 87.

147. This work is hardly important enough to warrant classing him with Cleveland, Marvel, Butler, and the lesser “party” satirists of the day. Directions to a Painter I regard as spurious. See Appendix B.

148. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 89.

149. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 89.

150. See p. 121.

151. Dryden, The Poetical Works of (Cambridge ed.), Preface to the Fables, p. 744.

152. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 93-94.

153. See Henry Wood, The Beginnings of the Classical Heroic Couplet in England, 1890.

154. See the Writers of the Couplet, Cambridge History of English Literature, VII, chap. 3.

155. Dryden, The Poetical Works of (Cambridge ed.), p. 319.

156. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 92. Johnson illustrates by quoting: Cooper's Hill, ll. 165-168. See p. 751. On Mr. Abraham Cowley, ll. 29-38. See p. 150. On the Earl of Strafford's Tryal, ll. 7-18. See p. 153.

157. See p. 10.

158. Richardson, Jonathan, Explanatory Notes, 1734, CXX.

159. Vol. I, part 1, p. 112. His arguments may be summarized as follows: (1) It is very unlikely that Denham should have had a proof sheet of Paradise Lost; these are seen only by the author, or his intimate friends, and there is no evidence of any personal connection between Denham and Milton; (2) when Paradise Lost was going through the press, Denham was mad; (3) Denham was never in Parliament; (4) Richardson tells us that Denham's praise had no stimulating effect on the sale of the book, since, two years after, it was “waste paper”; yet we can prove that by that time most of the edition had been sold. According to his agreement with his publisher, Milton was to receive a second five pounds when 1,300 of the 1,500 copies of the first edition had been sold. He had already received this sum before the date of the Earl of Dorset's visit to the bookshop. This fact cannot be reconciled with Richardson's previous statement that the edition was “waste paper.” The whole account, therefore, concludes Malone, should be rejected.

160. VI, 628 ff. Masson begins by quoting Richardson, and continues by analyzing Malone's arguments. Malone, he says, is somewhat too critical; that while it is true that Denham was never in Parliament, still, as he had recovered from his madness by August, 1667, when Paradise Lost appeared, Malone's objection on the ground of Denham's insanity loses its force. Masson continues: “But for the rest one must agree with Malone, and suppose that there was some confusion of memory on the part of the old Parliament man, Sir George Hungerford when he told the story of Denham to Richardson, or on Richardson's part in recollecting what Sir George had said. Even if we waive the question of the place … How can we account for his [Denham's] being before all the rest of the world in having access privately to the proof sheets of a forthcoming book by such a political recluse as Milton? And how was his remark so ineffective, the celebrated Sir John Denham though he was, that the book received no benefit from his vast admiration, and its merits had to be re-discovered and re-proclaimed two years afterward? In short the first part of the tradition given by Richardson will not cohere with the second part.” Masson then discusses this second part, concerning the Earl of Dorset and Dryden, and succeeds in giving a plausible explanation for the difficulties found there. His conclusion is, therefore, that since the two parts do not agree, and since the second can be better established than the first, the first must be given up and the story of Denham's early recognition of the greatness of Paradise Lost rejected. And there the matter has rested until now.

161. Mr. T. W. Baldwin, in Modern Language Notes, December, 1927, p. 508, cites the Journals of the Commons to prove his membership in 1667, and brings forward additional and welcome evidence to support this theory.

162. Thorn-Drury, The Poems of Edmund Waller, LXIII. See p. 20.

163. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1663-1664, p. 83.

164. Denham went to Oxford, as we have seen in 1631. There he must have become acquainted with his first cousin, George Morley, later Bishop of Winchester [see Appendix C], if, indeed, he did not already know him, as seems very probable. Morley had remained at Oxford after his graduation in 1618, and in 1633, when Lucius Carey, second Lord Falkland, retired to his estate at Burford near Oxford, became one of the brilliant group that gathered about that nobleman. To this circle Morley introduced Waller about 1635, with whom he contracted a warm friendship, apparently living with Waller for a time and directing his studies at Waller's house at Beaconsfield [Thorn-Drury, The Poems of Edmund Waller, XXII].

     It is evident, then, that Morley might well have brought Denham and Waller together, either at Beaconsfield, but a short distance from London, where Denham was then studying law at Lincoln's Inn, at London itself, or at Denham's place at Egham, only twelve or fifteen miles from Beaconsfield.

165. With three exceptions: To the King on his Return from Scotland, in Rex Redux, 1633; To Mr. George Sandys, in Sandys' Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems, 1638; and Upon Ben. Johnson, the most excellent of comick poets, in Jonsonus Verbius, 1638.

166. 1. Not to look back so far, to whom this isle
     Owes the first glory of so brave a pile [Windsor].

     Cooper's Hill, ll. 65-66

     When the first monarch of this happy isle
     Moved with the ruin of so brave a pile,

     Waller, Upon his Majesty's repairing of Paul's. ll. 5-6

     2. Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
     Like mothers which their infants overlay;

     Cooper's Hill, ll. 171-172

     As careless dames whom wine and sleep betray
     To frantic dreams their infants overlay:

     Waller, The Battle of the Summer Islands, Canto II: 21-22

     3. And thither all the horned hoast resorts
     To graze the ranker mead, that noble heard
     On whose sublime and shady fronts is rear'd
     Nature's great master-piece; to show how soon
     Great things are made, but sooner are undone.

     Cooper's Hill, ll. 236-240

     So we some antique hero's strength
     Learn by his lance's weight and length;
     As these vast beams express the beast
     Whose shady brows alive they dressed.
               …
     O fertile head! which every year
     Could such a crop of wonder bear!
     The teeming earth did never bring
     So soon, so hard, so huge a thing;

     Waller, On the Head of a Stag, ll. 1-14

     4. Wearied, forsaken, and pursu'd, at last [the stag]
     All safety in despair of safety plac'd,
     Courage he thence resumes, resolv'd to bear
     All their assaults, since 't is in vain to fear.
     And now too late he wishes for the fight
     That strength he wasted in ignoble flight;
     But when he sees the eager chase renew'd,
     Himself by dogs, the dogs by men pursu'd,
     He straight revokes his bold resolve, and more
     Repents his courage, than his fear before;

     Cooper's Hill, ll. 289-298. (See also ll. 247-280)

     So the tall stag, upon the brink
     Of some smooth stream about to drink,
     Surveying there his armed head
     With shame remembers that he fled
     The scorned dogs, resolves to try
     The combat next; but if their cry
     Invades again his trembling ear,
     He straight resumes his wonted care,
     Leaves the untasted spring behind,
     And, winged with fear, outflies the wind.

     Waller, Of Love, ll. 45-54

167. Thorn-Drury, The Poems of Edmund Waller, LIX ff.

168. This occurs between lines 36 and 37. In the 1642 text, the poet, speaking of the confusion and tumult of life in London, continued:

     Some study plots, and some those plots t'undoe,
     Others to make 'em, and undoe 'em too,
     False to their hopes, afraid to be secure,
     Those mischiefs only which they make, endure,
     Blinded with light, and sick of being well,
     In tumults seek their peace, their heaven in hell.

     Certainly these lines apply very well to Waller's plot, his attempt to seize London on behalf of the King, and his subsequent confessions and exposures before the bar of the House of Commons. Whether or not the realization of this unintentional aptness caused Denham's ears to tingle and his hair to stand on end, as Gosse dramatically suggests [Gosse, Edmund, From Shakespeare to Pope, p. 90], the lines were dropped in 1655. There is no prosodical reason for this; indeed, the lines are technically good, better than many that he retained. Yet as there must have been some reason for canceling them, it seems a permissible inference that it was a personal one; that he became dissatisfied with them since they could be taken to allude to an episode discreditable to his friend.

169. Another, though less important, link between the two during the period after their return to England is the fact that they had a common friend in Christopher Wase. In 1652 Waller wrote, highly recommending Wase as a tutor, and in 1654 his poem To my Worthy Friend Mr. Wase appeared in Wase's translation of the Cynegeticon of Gratius Faliscus. Wase dedicated the book to Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, to whom he was tutor [Thorn-Drury, The Poems of Edmund Waller, II, 197, note]. As Denham was at this time living with the Earl, Wase came to know him there. [We learn this from an anecdote supplied to Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 218.]

170. For a discussion of the original translation and the revision see below.

171. Waller begins fifteen lines before Denham breaks off. Waller translates 437 to 583; Denham omits 452 to 583.

172. Why Waller translated no more, or why Denham's translation was not printed with Waller's instead of Godolphin's, I do not know. Godolphin's portion shows no trace of Denham's influence, nor does Waller's of Denham's original version.

173. There is one other possible link between them. In 1650 we find that a Colonel John Fielder is the guardian of Denham's children and trustee of his estate; now Fielder was elected to the Long Parliament as member for St. Ives, Cornwall, when that seat became vacant through the expulsion of Waller! The coincidence is certainly curious, but I have been unable to determine its significance.

174. There is one possible, though by no means certain, echo of Cooper's Hill in Waller's On the Duke of Monmouth's expedition, 1679:

     … his [the mountain's] curled brows
     Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
     While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat:
     The common fate of all that's high or great.

     Cooper's Hill, ll. 219-222

     But seeing envy, like the sun, does beat
     With scorching rays, on all that's high and great,
     This, ill-requited Monmouth! is the bough
     The Muses send to shade thy conquering brow.

     On the Duke, ll. 33-36

175. Dryden, Preface to Ovid's Epistles, pp. 91 ff., Dedication of the Aeneid (Cambridge ed.), p. 514. Pope, see p. 179.

176. In a letter to the London Times Literary Supplement of July 7, 1927, the Rev. Francis E. Hutchinson, of Trinity College, Oxford, England, called attention to this hitherto unknown material, which he has in his possession, and which is contained in a MS. commonplace book of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, where it is ascribed to Denham. In this letter, and in subsequent letters to me, the Rev. Hutchinson has kindly furnished me with his reasons for considering the ascription correct. They may be summarized as follows: (1) Mrs. Hutchinson's attributions of other poems in the collection are in all cases correct; (2) she was a contemporary of Denham, and intimate with the literary circle of the day; (3) a collation of the MS. with the versions of books II and IV printed in the 1668 edition, shows that the texts are too close to be the work of someone else, and must be Denham's.

     Mr. Hutchinson, though quite properly reserving to himself the right of later editing of this MS., has kindly transcribed for me the MS. versions of Denham's published portions of books II and IV as well as a portion of book VI. A collation of these texts convinces me that the Hutchinson MS. represents Denham's work.

177. “Here he translated the … booke of Virgil's Aeneis, and also burlesqu't it. He also burlesqued Virgil, and burnt it, saying that 'twas not fitt that the best poet should be so abused.”—From Mr. Christopher Wase. Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. A. Clark), I, 218.

178. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 90.

179. Permission to print the foregoing extracts from the Hutchinson MS. has been kindly given by the Rev. F. E. Hutchinson, acting for the actual owner of the MS., the Rev. Charles A. Hutchinson, West Monkton Rectory, Somerset.

180. Between 1600 and 1653 there were 206 complete metrical versions. Studley, M. H., Milton and his Paraphrases of the Psalms, Philological Quarterly, October, 1925, p. 265.

181. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 88.

182. Herbert, Thomas, Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, … 1638, pp. 174 ff. The first edition was in 1634.

183. Act IV, ll. 16-66.

184. This same story upon which The Sophy is founded was employed later by Robert Baron in his Mirza, published about 1647. Baron states that he was ignorant of Denham's work until he had completed three acts of his own play, which was modeled on Jonson's Catiline, and that he continued because he found the two plays very different. An examination of Baron's play, of extreme length and never acted, confirms his statement. Baron follows Herbert without change in the main story, and, moreover, has a far more complicated plot than Denham. I can find no definite verbal parallels, the plays having only such general similarities as are due to their common source.

185. The Sophy, Act IV, ll. 16-66.

186. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 90.

187. Courthope, W. J., A History of English Poetry, 1903, III, 282.

188. A Panegyric upon Sir John Denham's Recovery from his Madness, l. 16.

189. This is not to be confused with Suckling's A Session of the Poets.

190. Poems on Affairs of State, from the Time of Oliver Cromwell to the Abdication of King James the Second, 1697, I, 210.

191. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 85.

192. See Cooper's Hill, ll. 127-130; 165-168; 333-334.

193. O Hehir, Brendan P., John Denham's “Cooper's Hill,” PMLA., vol. LXXIX (June, 1964), pp. 242-253.

194. An edition dated 1660 is probably a “ghost,” 1660 being a misprint for 1650.

195. See Denham's Ms. Addenda.

196. Spence, Joseph, Anecdotes, 1820, pp. 281-283.

197. Gosse insinuates that Waller may be the author, but admits that there is no evidence to support such a suggestion. Ward, T. H., The English Poets, 1880, II, 280.

198. Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, XII, p. 493.

199. Oldys (1696-1761) was an antiquary and the author of the Harleian Miscellany.

200. Langbaine, Gerard, An Account of the English Dramatic Poets, 1691.

201. Comedies, Tragi-Comedies with other poems. See also Goffin, R. C., The Life and Poems of William Cartwright, 1918, p. 198n.

202. Poems; with the Muses Looking-glasse. See also Thorn-Drury, G., The Poems of Thomas Randolph, 1929, p. 77, and p. 202n.

203. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 92.

204. Dryden, The Poetical Works of (Cambridge ed.), p. 512.

205. These unquestionably represent only a small fraction of the allusions actually made. That they must have been numerous is shown by Swift's allusion. I ignore such books as general histories of English literature, or works of modern scholarship such as Goffin, mentioned elsewhere.

206. Poole, Joshua, The English Parnassus: or a Helpe to English Poesie.

207. St. LEONARD'S / HILL. / A POEM. / Written by R. F. Gent. / Licensed, May the 14th. 1666 / Roger L'Estrange. / (Device) / LONDON, Printed for John Simms, at the / Cross-keyes in Cornhill, near the Royal / Exchange. 1666.

208. My authority for the date of publication is Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica. I can find no other evidence, internal or otherwise, to support this. The only copy of the poem I have seen is in my possession.

209. For a discussion of the authorship of Cooper's Well, see under Denham in the printed catalogue of the Wrenn Library, Texas University.

210. Critical Essays on some of the poems of several English poets.

211. Havens, R. D., The Influence of Milton on English Poetry, 1922, Appendix C.

212. Johnson, Lives of the Poets (ed. Waugh), I, 91.

213. Havens, R. D., The Influence of Milton on English Poetry, 1922, p. 248.