SOURCE: Pebworth, Ted-Larry. “Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political,” “A Brief Character of the Low-Countries,” and “The Poetry.” In Owen Felltham, pp. 26-35; 71-85; 86-126. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976.

[In the first excerpt below, Pebworth concentrates on the religious themes in Felltham's Resolves. In the second, he discusses the influence and themes of A Brief Character of the Low-Countries. In the third, he discusses Felltham's poems on religion, politics, and love.]

RESOLVES: DIVINE, MORAL, POLITICAL

In its totality, Resolves: Divine, Morall, Politicall is a collection of two hundred eighty-five short prose works of various kinds.¹ Subjects discussed in the book are almost as numerous as the essays themselves, and the pieces—each of which may be read independently of the others—are arranged in no thematic order. Resolves obviously is not a book to be read from beginning to end; instead, it is one “to be tasted.” In fact, since the essays are not grouped according to subject matter, several of the early editions have large “Alphabetical Tables,” or indices, attached to aid the systematic reader.

Even a very brief list of the titles shows something of the varied contents: “The Misery of being Old and ignorant” (S. 38), “Gouernment and Obedience the two causes of a Common Prosperitie” (S. 53), “A good Rule in wearing of Apparell” (S. 58), “To reuenge wrongs, what it sauours of” (S. 84), “Of the vncertainety of life” (L. 32), “Of Dreames” (L. 52), “Of the Soule” (L. 64), “Of Scandall” (L. 91), “Of the Salvation of the Heathen” (R. S. 19), “Of Distrust and Credulity” (R. S. 42), “Of the use of Pleasure” (R. S. 50), “Of Dancing” (R. S. 70). Yet despite the thirty-eight-year period covered in the composition, the independent nature of each essay, and the great variety of subject matter, Resolves: Divine, Morall, Politicall emerges as a unified work; it is held together by the didactic purpose inherent in all the essays and by the personality of its author.

Resolves is designed to aid Felltham and its readers in their quest for the good life. In “To the Reader,” prefaced to the 1661 edition, either the printer or Felltham himself (writing in the third person) echoes Michel de Montaigne (Essaies I.54) in indicating the audience toward which the pieces are directed: “… They were written to the middle sort of people. For the wisest, they are not high enough; nor yet so flat and low, as to be only fit for fools: whosoever pleaseth only these, is miserable.” Quoting Cicero, the writer of the preface concludes: “Too profound, or too shallow, he holds not proportionate to the Work.” Resolves was, then, designed neither for philosophers or theologians, nor for the unthinking mob, but for members of the great squirearchical and merchant classes: in short, the work was for people very much like Felltham himself. Although few of these persons were university educated, nearly all were vitally interested in the practical problems which confronted the Christian in seventeenth-century England.

The resolves, to a greater or lesser degree, concern the private virtues—the human being's proper attitude toward his God and toward himself—and the public ones—man's best approach to his fellows and to the world at large. As the complete title of his book indicates, Felltham writes on matters divine (spiritual questions and points of doctrine), moral (ethical problems which are more properly the province of philosophy than of theology), and political (the question of government in particular and all human intercourse in general). The approach and purpose of Resolves are clearly indicated in the engraved allegorical title pages of the book's seventeenth-century editions. One design, used only for the 1623 edition, combines representations of worldly commerce with the Stoic virtues of constancy and fortitude and the Christian aids of faith, the law, the evangelists, and the crucifixion; and the whole is focused on prudence, innocence, love, friends, and God. The motto, adapted appropriately from Horace's defense of his modest station and simple life (Satires, I. vi), is “His [sic] ego Commodius, quam tu præclare Senator millibus atque alijs viuo” (By these and a thousand others I live in more comfort than you, famous senator).

The other design, used in the second and subsequent editions of Resolves, has at its apex the ineffable name of God, toward which rises a winged heart. Beneath the heart, the arms of wisdom and truth support the universe in the form of a globe. Two women, representing worldly opinion and ignorance, pull the universe downward with ropes of vanity. The motto, “et sic demulceo Vitam” (and thus I smooth out life), reflects the Stoic Christian nature of the book. Beginning with the third edition of Resolves, this allegorical design is accompanied by Felltham's versified explanation of it, “The Face of the Book, Unmasked”:

          Here, th' Universe in Natures Frame,
          Sustain'd by Truth, and Wisdomes hand,
          Does, by Opinions empty Name,
          And Ignorance, distracted stand:
Who with strong Cords of vanity, conspire,
Tangling the Totall, with abstruse Desire.
          But then the Noble Heart infir'd,
          With Rayes, divinely from above,
          Mounts (though with wings moist and bemir'd)
          The great Gods glorious Light to prove,
Slighting the World: yet selfrenouncing, tries,
That where God draws not, there she sinks, and dies.

Felltham also makes clear the didactic purpose of Resolves in the prefatory remarks in various editions of the book. In the “Epistle Dedicatorie” of 1623, addressed to the Lady Dorothy Crane, he writes: “If euer Resolutions were needful, I thinke they be in this Age of loosenesse. …” In the note “To the Peruser” in the same edition, Felltham states his reason for writing his own body of resolutions: “What I aime at in it, I confesse, hath most respect to my selfe: That I might out of my owne Schoole take a lesson, should serue mee for my whole Pilgrimage: and if I should wander from these rests, that my owne Items might set me in heuens direct way againe.”

In a recent study of Resolves, McCrea Hazlett credits too much Felltham's assertion that he wrote the Short Century of Resolves entirely for his own private use.² A standard statement in all prefaces and epistles dedicatory to works written by gentlemen authors in the seventeenth century was a disavowal that the works then published were written for publication. Hardly anyone, however, takes these disavowals seriously. Felltham was a very young man, eighteen or nineteen years old, when Resolves was published in 1623; and he could have had at that time little literary reputation. If he had not actively solicited the publication of his first efforts at authorship, the book quite likely would not have been published so soon after its composition as it was. While it is true that Felltham seems in these early resolves to be writing primarily to himself, the implication is strong that he intends, or at least hopes, that others will follow his “Pilgrimage.” And one cannot deny the hortatory quality of the Long and Revised Short Centuries. Although Resolves is a didactic book, intended as a guide in the pursuit of the Christian life, it is certainly not a dull one. In his wise appreciation of Resolves, Douglas Bush succinctly characterizes Felltham's ability to be at the same time pious and interesting: “Although he seeks the via media in all things—except the love of God and hatred of evil—and although the commonplaces of religion and morals are his staple article, he can, more than most didactic essayists, make virtue sound exciting and moderation adventurous.”³

The various stages through which Resolves passed during Felltham's lifetime saw a shift in genre from the resolve formula of 1623 to the personal essay of 1661. The style also shifts from the Senecan aphorism of 1623 to the more nearly conversational prose of 1661. As the book developed, there were elaborations of content and changes in attitude; but, as a whole, Felltham's world view and his basic beliefs remained constant; and what emerges from an examination of all the stages of Resolves is the picture of an attractive and interesting human being who is very much a man of his own time.

Felltham's world view is conservative. Even though he began writing some years after the emergence of the New Science,⁴ he shows in Resolves a preference for the old order, the Ptolemaic universe as Christianized during the middle ages. The mutable, corruptible earth is at the center of the universe; encasing it, sphere within sphere, the immutable, incorruptible planets move in their appointed paths; and these planets are enclosed in turn by the fixed stars and governed in their movements by the primum mobile, that is, by God in the person of the “first mover.” This concept of the universe teaches Felltham that “order and degree” are of paramount importance in questions divine, moral, or political. Everyone and everything, from the angels to the lowest clods of earth, have their appointed places in the Chain of Being. One of man's chief tasks in life is to find his appropriate place and then, often a more difficult task, to make himself content with it. Sin is, basically, the revolt of man against God's order. Felltham's resolve, “The great Good of Good Order” (S. 81), is as concise a prose statement of the concepts of the Ptolemaic universe, the Chain of Being, and Order and Degree as can be found in seventeenth-century English literature.

This fervent desire for order in all things leads naturally, at least in Felltham's case, to a reliance on the monarch (God's order as it manifests itself in political affairs) and on the Established Church (God's order in religious matters). And it makes Felltham strive for order in his own life, manifesting itself in an emphasis on moderation. In “How hee must liue, that liues well” (L. 100), Felltham reflects the interdependence of order in the individual's life and in the affairs of state: “For our selues; wee need order; for our neighbour, Charity; and for our God, our Reuerence, and Humility: and these are so certainly linked one to another, as he that liues orderly, cannot but bee acceptable, both to God, and the world. Nothing iarres the worlds Harmony, like men that breake their rankes. One turbulent Spirit will dissentiate even the calmest kingdome. Wee may see the beauty of order, in nothing more, then in some princely Procession. …” And in “Of Puritans” (L. 5), he sees the Separatist as “a Church-Rebell, or one that would exclude order. …” In “How to establish a troubled Gouernment” (S. 15), Felltham compares himself to a state—the microcosm-macrocosm analogy so popular in the Renaissance—and argues for moderation, holding in check the bestial elements in himself: “My passions, and affections are the chiefe disturbers of my Ciuill State: What peace can I expect within mee, while these Rebels rest vnouercome? If they get a head, my Kingdome is diuided, so it cannot stand.” On a more mundane level, he warns himself to talk in moderation (S. 8, “Of Silence. Of Babbling”).

Though Felltham is a conservative in his world view, he is a liberal in theology. For him, the Church of England is the great via media, the moderate path between the extremes of Papacy and Puritanism. As is obvious from the frequency with which he indicates his personal relationship with God and Christ, Felltham feels no absolute need for a church which is an intercessor between man and the Divine: “'Tis a hard thing among men of inferiour ranke, to speake to an earthly Prince: no King keepes a Court so open, as to giue admittance to all commers. … Oh how happy, how priuiledged is then a Christian? who though he often liues heere in a slight esteeme, yet can he freely conferre with the King of Heauen, who not onely heares his intreaties, but delights in his requests, inuites him to come, and promiseth a happy welcome; which he shewes in fulfilling his desires, or better, fitter for him” (S. 9, “Of Prayer”).

Indeed, Felltham sees no absolute need for a church at all since God may be seen in nature and in the human conscience, as well as in the Bible: “GOD hath left three books to the world, in each of which hee may easily be found: The Booke of the Creatures, the book of Conscience, & his written Word. The first shewes his omnipotency. The second his Iustice: the third his mercy and goodnesse” (S. 68, “The three bookes, in which God may bee easily found”). Further, in “Of the Salvation of the Heathen” (R. S. 19), Felltham asserts that any good act and any real repentance after a sinful act are acceptable worship of God, whether or not the person performing the good act or repenting the sinful one has a knowledge of Christ and His Church. Felltham does, however, believe that a man more easily performs good acts and repents evil acts if he is a Christian.

Although Felltham frequently uses terms often associated with Calvinism—Election and Grace—his definitions are at odds with John Calvin's. According to the Calvinists (among whom most of the English Puritans numbered themselves), all men, through the sin of Adam, are deserving of damnation. Before mankind was even created, however, a prescient God decided to set aside some men for salvation: the Elect. They are saved not through their merits or beliefs but through God's arbitrary gift of Grace to them. Felltham regards the manifestation of Grace not as God's gift of salvation to the few but as the offer of salvation to all—an offer made manifest in Christ's sacrifice. The Elect are those people who have the advantage of the Church in their quest for everlasting life: all Christians, and not just a select few, are the beneficiaries of Grace. Since Felltham can see goodness in even the heathen and since his God offers salvation to all men, the Christianity of Resolves is a tolerant and attractive one.

In Resolves, Felltham shows himself very much aware of evil in the world. The fact that the good are often afflicted with poverty and with the contempt of humanity while the evil are rewarded with riches and the world's esteem particularly disturbs him: “I obserue none more lyable to the world's false censure, then the vpright nature, that is honest, and free” (S. 85, “Who is most subiect to Censure”). As a consequence of this uneasiness, Felltham turns to a religious philosophy which enjoyed some popularity in his time, Christian Stoicism. A revival of Stoic thought late in the sixteenth century was led on the Continent by Justus Lipsius who, with others, wedded the pagan Stoicism of such philosophers as Epictetus and Seneca to the Old Testament Stoicism of Ecclesiastes and Job and to such New Testament manifestations of the philosophy as the opening two chapters of St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. The result was to color much of European religious thinking for the next two centuries.

Christian Stoicism was popularized in England by Felltham's early mentor, Bishop Joseph Hall, often called the “English Senec.” Hall's Meditations and Vowes, Divine and Moral (1606, 1609) had a great influence on Felltham's Resolves. The basic idea of Christian Stoicism is that, since on earth good is punished and evil is rewarded, the good man should fortify himself against pains and insults of the world and be secure in the belief that all would be set right at the Last Judgment, when rewards and punishments would be dealt out appropriately. In “Of being the World's Favourite without Grace” (S. 18), Felltham writes: “He that gets heauen, hath plenty enough; though the earth scornes to allow him any thing: he that failes of that, is truely miserable; though shee giue him all shee hath. Heauen without earth is perfect. Earth without Heauen is but a little more cheerly hell.”

Felltham reflects his Christian Stoicism in two major ways. He quotes frequently, especially in the Long Century, the writings of Seneca and the books of Ecclesiastes and Job. And throughout all of Resolves, whole essays are often devoted to Stoic contemplations: “Humanitie and Miserie, are Parallels” (S. 19), “The vanitie and shortnesse of mans Life” (S. 57), “Of the vncertainety of life” (L. 32), “Of Preparing against Death” (R. S. 5). Although Resolves mirrors Felltham's Christian Stoicism, the book is by no means bleak. As Douglas Bush perceptively comments, “Felltham's harmony of Christianity and Stoicism is tempered and sweetened by a love of life and literature, by philosophic charity and undogmatic good sense.”⁵ These attractive aspects of Felltham's personality are everywhere present in Resolves. His love of life is reflected in the 1628 meditation “Of Puritans” (L. 5), in which he chides the overly pious for their constant seriousness by remarking that, within the bounds of moderation, man should enjoy this life as much as possible: “If mirth and recreations bee lawfull, sure such a one may lawfully vse it. If Wine were giuen to cheere the heart, why should I feare to vse it for that end? Surely, the merry soule is freer from intended mischiefe, then the thoughtfull man.”

This last remark, perhaps echoing Caesar's comment about Cassius (Julius Caesar, I, ii, 192-95), is followed by one of Felltham's best and most frequently quoted aphorisms: “A bounded mirth, is a Pattent adding time and happines to the crazed life of Man.” A key word in this statement is, of course, the adjective “bounded,” which reflects the ancient dictum of nothing in excess; nevertheless, the emphasis is on “mirth.” Illustrating pleasant aspects of life which the Christian may legitimately enjoy, Felltham, arguing from Biblical authority, expresses the concept of God as the perfect father:

God delights in nothing more, then in a cheerefull heart, carefull to performe him seruice. What Parent is it, that reioyceth not to see his Child pleasant, in the limits of a filiall duty? I know wee reade of Christs weeping, not of his laughter: yet wee see, hee graceth a Feast with his first Miracle; and that a Feast of ioy: And can we thinke that such a meeting could passe without the noise of laughter? What a lumpe of quickened care is the melancholike man? Change anger into mirth, and the Precept will hold good still: Bee merry, but sinne not.

Felltham then draws the portrait of what he considers an admirable and happy man: “A man that submits to reuerent Order, that sometimes vnbends himselfe in a moderate relaxation; and in all, labours to approue himselfe, in the serenenesse of a healthful Conscience. …” Certainly Felltham enjoyed dancing (R. S. 70, “Of Dancing”) and the theater (L. 20, “Of Preaching” and R. S. 61, “Of Improving by good Examples”) when each eschewed lewdness. And in the 1661 essay “Of the use of Pleasure” (R. S. 50), he defends all pleasures “legitimated by the bounty of Heaven” by remarking that “… God would never have instincted the appetition of pleasure, and the faculties of enjoying it, so strongly in the composure of Man, if he had not meant, that in decency he should make use of them. …”

Felltham found great pleasure in reading. The numerous quotations and allusions found in all three centuries of Resolves attest to the fact that he read widely and often liked what he read well enough to note passages for inclusion in his own essays. He also wrote perceptively about literature in “Of Idle Bookes” (S. 1 and R. S. 1), “A Rule in reading Authors” (S. 27), “Of Poets and Poetrie” (L. 70), and “Of reading Authors” (R. S. 27). Yet Felltham clearly “upholds wisdom and the amateur ideal of culture against mere knowledge and pedantry.”⁶ His good sense tells him that

you shall scarce find a more Foole, then sometimes a meere Scholler. He will speake Greeke to an Ostler, and Latine familiarly, to women that vnderstand it not. Knowledge is the treasure of the mind; But Discretion is the key: without which, it lyes dead, in the dulnesse of a fruitlesse rest. The practique part of Wisedome, is the best. A native ingenuity, is beyond the watchings of industrious study. … Men … conversing onely among bookes, are put into affectation, and pedantisme. … Company and Conversation are the best Instructors for a Noble behaviour. And this is not found in a melancholy study alone. … So farre I will honour Knowledge, as to thinke, this art of the braine, when it meetes with able Nature in the minde, then onely makes a man compleat.

(L. 44, “Of Wisdome and Science”)

Despite admonitions everywhere in Resolves to avoid evil men, Felltham stresses equally the necessity for charity toward those who have succumbed to the world's temptations. Possibly alluding to the case of Sir Francis Bacon, who in 1621 was convicted of bribery and removed from his position as Lord Chancellor, Felltham writes in the 1623 resolve “Of Libelling against them that are falne” (S. 56): “I wonder what spirit they are indued withall, that can basely libell at a man that is falne! … To inuenome a name by libells, that already is openly tainted, is to adde stripes with an Iron rod, to one that is flayed with whipping: and is sure in a mind well-tempered, thought inhumane, diabolicall.” When he revised this resolve thirty-eight years later, Felltham enlarged upon the subject of charity:

as 'tis hard, to find any man free from all that may merit reproof; so, 'tis as easie, in the best, to find something that we may reprehend. Yet, sure I am, Charity will rather abate the score, then inflame the reckoning. He that Libels transgresses against the common rule of Morality and Religion: he does not doe, as he would be done by. We ought rather to bemone the unfortunate, then unworthily to insult against him, … 'Tis a disposition quite unchristian, that we show in such bad actions, being wholly contrary to that intermutual amity and friendliness that should be in the world. … If men were heavenly, they would be enkindled with a warming fire of Love and Charity. …

(R. S. 51, “Of Libelling”)

And in “How hee must liue, that liues well” (L. 100), Felltham puts charity toward one's fellow man on the same level as reverence toward God.

Felltham's undogmatic good sense humanizes his religious zeal. In “To Perfection, what is most necessary” (S. 3), he warns that religion which does not make allowances for human nature “will seeme too hard,” and it will be “feared, but not loued.” In “That a wise man may gaine by any company” (L. 12), he asserts the independence of his good sense: “Hee that liues alwayes by Booke-rules, shall shew himselfe affected, and a Foole. I will doe that which I see comely, (so it bee not dishonest) rather then what a graue Philosopher commands mee to the contrarie. I will take, what I see is fitly good, from any; but I thinke there was neuer any one man, that liu'd to be a perfect guide of perfection.” If Felltham had been inclined to let his piety and his learning overrule his humanity, Resolves: Divine, Morall, Politicall would be a collection of precepts too idealistic to follow and too dry to read. But such an inclination seems not to have been in him; and Resolves—though didactic—unfolds as a warm human document, the reflection of an attractive personality.

.....

A BRIEF CHARACTER OF THE LOW-COUNTRIES.

After the introduction of the character genre into England early in the seventeenth century, it was put to a variety of uses and modified accordingly.⁷ Originally employed to describe only types of people, the form was very soon expanded to allow the treatment of places. For example, Thomas Dekker sketched prisons and prison life in characters added to the Overburian collection in 1616; and John Earle described “Paules-Walke” and “A Bowle-Alley” in Microcosmographie, published in 1628. An additional expansion of the genre, and one in which Felltham played an important role, allowed writers to characterize whole nations.

I. CHARACTERS OF NATIONS

Sir Anthony Weldon, an attendant in the household of King James I during the 1617 progress to Scotland, took what is probably the first step in developing the character of a nation. Disliking everything that he saw in the Northern kingdom, from food to morals, from architecture to personal hygiene, Weldon set down his observations in a brief, vitriolic sketch best known as A Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland. Imprudent circulation of the little work in manuscript caused Weldon's prompt dismissal from the royal household, and the sketch remained unpublished until 1647 when the Stuart monarchy no longer exerised control over the presses of England.⁸

Although not specifically labeled a “character,” Weldon's sketch, running to twenty-one pages in its duodecimo printing, exhibits two important elements of that genre: it generalizes its subject, and it disregards normal principles of organization. Unlike most of the travel literature of the period, Scotland presents a generalized impression of an entire country. Weldon constructs a composite picture of “the Scotsman” rather than a series of individual portraits. He belittles “Scottish food” with little reference to specific dishes. Furthermore, his observations on a single subject are not concentrated in a single place within the work; he builds descriptions by scattering the various details of any one topic throughout the sketch. Earlier character writers had found that such organization, though it might seem haphazard, was, in fact, an effective rhetorical device. It forced a careful reading, in one sitting, of the whole work; and it involved the reader in the process of the artistic creation.

Weldon also made significant contributions to the character genre in his Scotland. Besides attempting for the first time the characterization of a whole nation and its people, he introduced a style more robust and earthy than any employed by earlier character writers; for he relied in large part on strained, frequently bawdy, metaphor and comic overstatement. When he deplored, for example, the lack of cleanliness among Scottish women of gentle birth, he wrote that “The Ladies are of opinion, that Susanna could not be chast, because she bathed so often. Pride is a thing bred in their bones, and their flesh naturally abhors cleanliness; their breath commonly stinks of Pottage, their linen of Piss, their hands of Pigs turds, their body of sweat, and their splay-feet never offend in Socks. To be chained in marriage with one of them, were to be tied to a dead carkass, and cast into a stinking ditch; Formosity [beauty] and a dainty face, are things they dream not of.” All subsequent characterizers of nations employ this style.

Despite the historical importance of Weldon's Scotland, it did not serve as the ultimate model for the characters of nations which followed. That distinction belongs to Owen Felltham's A Brief Character of the Low-Countries under the States. Being three weeks observation of the Vices and Vertues of the Inhabitants. Like Weldon's Scotland, Felltham's Low-Countries was known to many Englishmen long before it appeared in print. It was occasioned by a trip to the continent which Felltham made between 1623 and 1628, and his work was probably written shortly thereafter.⁹ Truncated manuscript copies circulated widely, and at least one found its way to Egypt.¹⁰ In 1648 and again in 1652, the unscrupulous publisher William Ley published unauthorized, abbreviated editions of the work.¹¹ Later in 1652, Henry Seile, the publisher of Resolves, issued for the first time the complete text in an authoritative but anonymous edition. Seile reissued Low-Countries in 1659 and again in 1660; and Felltham publicly admitted its authorship in 1661, including it in the Lusoria section of the eighth edition of Resolves. In Low-Countries, Felltham followed Weldon's Scotland in approach, organization, and style; but he expanded and defined the form. Besides asserting the genre in the title of the work, he enlarged its dimensions to one hundred duodecimo pages and he introduced “Vertues” into the catalogue of “Vices” to give the impression—if not always the fact—of objectivity.

Four other characters of nations appeared after Low-Countries, and all show their authors' indebtedness to Felltham. In 1659, the London bookseller John Crooke published A Character of England which was supposedly written for a French noble by one of his countrymen but which was actually composed by the diarist John Evelyn. This work was quickly answered by A Character of France (1659), an anonymous publication that included an appendix, “Gallus Castratus,” which refuted many of the allegations made in England. Evelyn answered his critic in an appendix to the third edition of England (also 1659); and the bookseller Nathaniel Brooke, who had published France, issued in 1660 two additional anonymous characters of nations: The Character of Italy, supposedly written by “An English Chyrugion,” and The Character of Spain. In 1666, one other work appeared which claimed, in its title, to be of the genre, George Alsop's A Character of the Province of Mary-Land. Only one-fifth of the book, that chapter dealing with the Susquehanna Indians, is actually a true character; but Mary-Land owes much to Low-Countries.¹²

II. THE OCCASION AND NATURE OF FELLTHAM'S CHARACTER

In addition to Felltham's text, all authorized seventeenth-century editions of Low-Countries contain a brief, unsigned preface “To the Reader” which was undoubtedly written by Henry Seile. In it, after complaining of the “minc-dmeat” version issued by Ley, Seile explains the occasion of the book's composition and indicates its author's reluctance to publish the work:

long since travelling for companies-sake with a Friend into the Low-Countries, [the author] would needs for his own recreation write this Essay of them as he then found them: I am sure as far from ever thinking to have it publick, as he was from any private spleen to the Nation, or any person in it; for I have moved him often to print it, but could never get his consent, his modesty ever esteeming it among his puerilla, and (as he said) a Piece too light for a prudential man to publish: The truth is, it was meerly occasional in his Youth. …¹³

The motto of the book is “Non Seria semper,” and Felltham may well have had no bitter animosity toward the Dutch when he wrote Low-Countries; but the work is highly critical of them in many places. So long as England and Holland were on friendly terms, Seile honored Felltham's expressed wish not to publish the character. But the appearance of Ley's garbled piracies provided a strong argument for issuing a correct version; and in 1652, when war broke out between England and Holland, a good market for anti-Dutch books was created in London. Seile, a good businessman, may have run the risk of “exposing” Low-Countries to the book-buying public without its author's “warrant,” as he claims in the preface. But Felltham's reluctance to see the work in print was probably not very strong. It was customary for gentlemen authors to promote, in public, the fiction that they scorned publication. In any case, Seile's action seems not to have angered Felltham enough for him to change publishers. Furthermore, by including the character of Holland in the 1661 edition of Resolves, Felltham revealed a desire both to see it preserved, light though it might be, and to have it remembered as one of his compositions.

The text of Low-Countries is printed in the two parts: the first three-fifths are concerned primarily with the vices of the Dutch; the latter two-fifths are devoted ostensibly to their virtues. When Seile notes this division in his preface, he remarks that, “though the former part be joculary and sportive, yet the seriousness of the later part renders the Character no way injurious to the people.” Since his concern not to blacken the reputation of a people with whom the English are at war is no doubt itself “sportive,” his statement should not be taken very seriously. His categorizations of the two parts also need modification. The first section is, as he says, primarily descriptive and humorous and the latter is largely historical and reflective. But the first part is not exclusively devoted to vices treated in a witty manner; a few remarks on Dutch virtues are to be found in it, and some of the more serious vices are treated quite soberly. Some humor, likewise, enlivens the second part; and the national traits discussed in it are not wholly admirable. The work as a whole, moreover, is heavily weighted toward the uncomplimentary. Felltham includes only two admirable characteristics in his picture of the Dutch, their industriousness and their martial ability; but he points out numerous faults: gluttony, drunkenness, ostentation, querulousness, and nonconformity, to list but a few. Above all, he scorns their lack of order and degree. Though Low-Countries is in many respects quite unlike Resolves, the same intellectual and emotional attitudes underlie both works.

III. FELLTHAM ON HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH

Like any traveler in any age, Felltham was fascinated by the landscape, the housing, the food, the dress, the means of transportation, the language, the occupations, the government, the religion, and other institutions of his hosts, as well as by the traditional subjects of the character, the morality or immorality of the people. All these subjects are treated in Low-Countries. In his comments on the landscape and other externals, Felltham combines exaggeration, witty metaphor, and broad humor:

They are a general Sea-land: the great Bog of Europe. There is not such another Marsh in the world, that's flat. They are an universal Quagmire; Epitomiz'd, A green Cheese in pickle. There is in them an Aequilibrium of mud and water. …

The Soyl is all fat, though wanting the colour to shew it so; for indeed it is the Buttock of the world, full of veins and bloud, but no bones in't. Had S. Steven been condemn'd to suffer here, he might have been alive at this day. …

… there are Spiders as big as Shrimps, and I think as many. …

The elements are here at variance, the subtile overswaying the grosser; the Fire consumes the Earth, and the Air the Water: they burn Turfs, and drein their grounds with Wind-mills.

There is some praise of the Dutch countryside, but it is undercut in a comparison which suggests affectation: “The Land that they have, they keep as neatly as a Courtier does his Beard. …” And there are essentially neutral descriptions, such as the passage on the Dutchman's primary means of transporting goods, which Felltham casts in the form of a riddle: “Their ordinary Pack-horses are all of wood, carry their Bridles in their tails, and their burdens in their bellies. A strong Tyde and a stiff Gale are the spurs that make them speedy: when they travail they touch no ground, and when they stand still they ride, and are never in danger but when they drink up too much of their way.”

Felltham uses his description of Dutch houses to comment on two unattractive characteristics of the Dutchman—ostentation and self-satisfaction:

Though their Countrey be part of a main Land, yet every house almost stands in an Island: and that, though a Boor dwell in it, looks as smug as a Lady that hath newly lockt up her Colours, and laid by her Irons. …

When you are entred the house, the first thing you encounter is a Looking-glass: No question but a true Embleme of politick hospitality; for though it reflect your self in your own figure, 'tis yet no longer than while you are there before it: when you are gone once, it flatters the next comer, without the least remembrance that you e're were there.

The next are the Vessels of the house, marshalled about the room like Watchmen. …

He notices the small paintings hung everywhere, the pride of seventeenth-century Holland; but he dislikes them for one of the reasons that they are now so highly prized, the fact that they picture ordinary life:

Their houses, especially in their Cities are the best eye-beauties of their Countrey: for cost and sight they far exceed our English, but they want their magnificence. Their Lining is yet more rich than their out-side, not in Hangings but Pictures, which even the poorest are there furnisht with: Not a Cobler but has his toyes for ornament. Were the knacks of all their houses set together, there would not be such another Bartholomew-Fair in Europe.

Their Artists for these are as rare as thought, for they can paint you a fat Hen in her feathers. …

Any people who take pride in having their ordinary daily life memorialized in paintings must be exceedingly self-satisfied.

Felltham is certainly impressed with the Dutch trait of cleanliness and neatness, but he regards this characteristic as a fault because more important concerns are neglected in striving to maintain outward show: “Every door seems studded with Diamonds. The nails and hinges hold a constant brightnesse, as if rust there were not a quality incident to Iron. Their houses they keep cleaner than their bodies; their bodies than their souls. Go to one, you shall find the Andirons shut up in net-work. At a second, the Warming-pan muffled in Italian Cut-work. At a third the Sconce clad in Cambrick. …” Throughout this description of the Dutchman's house, Felltham makes quite explicit his value judgments, and most of them are negative.

As for the typical Dutchman, Felltham finds him to be an exact and therefore an unpleasant combination of what he eats: “His spirits are generated from the English Beer, and that makes him head-strong: His body is built of Pickled-Herring, and they render him testy: These with a little Butter, Onyons and Holland-Cheese, are the Ingredients of an ordinary Dutch-man; which a Voyage to the East-Indies, with the heat of the Aequinoctial, consolidates.” Felltham considers the time that Dutchmen sit at table to be excessive; but he judges the epithet “drunken”—applied to the Dutch for at least a hundred years prior to his visit to Holland—to be less deserved by them than by “your English Gallant.” The Dutch, he says, talk too much between drinks to become really drunk.

Of the clothing of his hosts, Felltham concludes: “Their apparel is civil enough and good enough, but very uncomely; and hath usually more stuff than shape.” In the 1620s, Englishmen were still using a starch that yellowed their white ruffs and other personal linens, and Felltham is quite obviously startled by the Dutchman's use of bluing in his wash: “Men and Women are there starched so blew, that if they once grow old, you would verily believe you saw Winter walking up to the neck in a Barrel of Indigo. …” The Dutch sailor wears “breeches yawning at the knees, as if they were about to swallow his legs unmercifully.” And, as for women's fashions, he finds them equally unattractive:

They are far there from going naked, for of a whole woman you can see but half a face. As for her hand, that shews her a sore Labourer; which you shall ever find as it were in recompence loaden with Rings to the cracking of her fingers. If you look lower, She's a Monkey chain'd about the middle, and had rather want it in dyet, than not have silver-links to hang her keyes in.

Their Gowns are fit to hide great Bellies, but they make them shew so unhandsome that men do not care for getting them. Marry this you shall find to their commendation, their smocks are ever whiter than their skin.

This criticism of the Dutch is somewhat relieved by the inclusion of two points in their favor, the modesty of their women and the cleanliness of their clothing; but each of these virtures is almost immediately compromised.

Among the Dutch institutions, Felltham finds the two most important ones, the church and the temporal state, worthy of scorn. He despises both a sanctioned proliferation of religious sects and a democratic form of government. Complaining that “all strange Religions throng thither,” he concludes:

'Tis an University of all Religions, which grow here confusedly (like stocks in a Nursery) without either order or pruning. If you be unsetled in your Religion, you may here try all, and take at last what you like best. If you fancy none, you have a pattern to follow of two that would be a Church by themselves.

'Tis the Fair of all the Sects, where all the Pedlers of Religion have leave to vent their toyes, their Ribbands, and Phanatick Rattles. And should it be true, it were a cruel brand which Romists stick upon them; for (say they) as the Chameleon changes into all colours but white, so they admit of all Religions but the true: For the Papist onely may not exercise his in publick; yet his restraint they plead is not in hatred but justice, because the Spaniard abridges the Protestant: and they had rather shew a little spleen, than not cry quit with their enemy. His act is their warrant, which they retaliate justly. …

Now albeit the Papist do them wrong herein, yet can it not excuse their boundless Toleration, which shews they place their Republick in a higher esteem than Heaven it self; and had rather cross upon God than it. For whosoever disturbs the Civil Government is lyable to punishment; but the Decrees of Heaven and Sanctions of the Deity, any one may break uncheck'd, by professing what false Religion he please.

Perhaps Felltham is overreacting to the freedom of worship in Holland; certainly the religious toleration expressed in Resolves is missing in this raillery. Yet it should be remembered that Felltham advocated a toleration of belief within a state church, not a multitude of independent sects. And, too, Holland opened its cities in the early seventeenth century to those Englishmen who were such rabid Separatists that they could not live in peace at home or allow their neighbors to do so. Felltham views religious divisiveness, therefore, as a potential cause of civil chaos.

The democratic Dutch state itself is subjected to the conservative young Royalist's abuse: “The Countreys government is a Democracy, and there had need be many to rule such a Rabble of rude ones. Tell them of a King, and they could cut your throat in earnest: the very name carries servitude in it, and they hate it more than a Jew doth Images, a woman old age, or a Non-conformist a Surplice.” This felicitous trio of comparisons is followed by an attack on those who have been elected to positions of authority in the government: “None among them hath Authority by inheritance, that were the way in time to parcel out their Countrey to Families. They are chosen all as our Kings chuse Sheriffs for the Counties; not for their sin of wit, but for the wealth they have to bear it out withall; which they so over-affect, that Myn Here shall walk the streets as Usurers go to Baudy-houses, all alone and melancholy. … A common voice hath given him preeminence, and he loses it by living as he did when he was but a Boor.”

Since this Dutch passion for democracy is carried into their homes, Felltham complains of the lack of authority and respect found in them:

In their Families they all are equals, and you have no way to know the Master and Mistress, but by taking them in bed together: It may be those are they; otherwise Malky [the servant girl] can prate as much, laugh as loud, be as bold, and sit as well as her Mistress.

Had Logicians lived here first, Father and Son had never passed so long for Relatives. They are here Individuals, for no Demonstrance of Duty or Authority can distinguish them, as if they were created together, and not born successively. …

Your man shall be saucy, and you must not strike; if you do, he shall complain to the Schout, and perhaps have recompence. 'Tis a dainty place to please boyes in: for your Father shall bargain with your School-master not to whip you: if he doth, he shall revenge it with his knife, and have Law for it.

Complete democracy, Felltham concludes, ultimately violates the principle of order and degree. By virtue of age, wisdom, or position, certain individuals should have the right to exercise more authority than others.

In addition to boorishness Felltham finds in the Dutch character querulousness and savagery, selfishness and love of gain. “You may sooner convert a Iew, than make an ordinary Dutch-man yield to Arguments that cross him. …” “For their condition they are Churlish as their breeder Neptune; and without doubt very ancient, for they were bred before Manners were in fashion.” “They should make good Justices, for they respect neither persons nor apparel. …” As might be expected, the Dutchman takes offence at anyone's pointing out his faults: “Nothing can quiet them but money and liberty, yet when they have them, they abuse both; but if you tell them so, you awake their fury, and you may sooner calm the Sea than conjure that into compass again. Their anger hath no eyes, and their judgement doth not flow so much from reason as passion and partiality.”

In war, they are extremely savage:

'Tis their own Chronicle business, which can tell you, that at the Siege of Leyden, a Fort being held by the Spanish, by the Dutch was after taken by Assault; the Defendants were put to the Sword, where one of the Dutch in the fury of the slaughter ript up the Captains body, and with a barbarous hand tore out the yet living heart, panting among the reeking bowels, then with his teeth rent it still warm with bloud into gobbets, which he spitted over the Battlements in defiance to the rest of the Army.

Oh Tigers breed! the Scythian Bear could ne're have been more savage: To be necessitated into cruelty, is a misfortune to the strongly tempted to it; but to let spleen rave and mad it in resistless bloud, shews nature steep'd i'th livid gall of passion, and beyond all brutishnesse displayes the un-noble tyranny of a prevailing Coward.

And Felltham remarks, concerning the Hollander's selfishness and passion for money, that “They love none but those that do for them, and when they leave off they neglect them.” “Their justice is strict if it cross not policy: but rather than hinder Traffique, tolerates any thing.”

Such are the vices that Felltham finds in the Dutch: self-satisfaction, ostentation, total independence in matters of religion and government, boorishness, querulousness, savagery, selfishness, and love of gain. The only characteristics shown to mitigate even slightly these faults are neatness, cleanliness, and modesty; and the areas in which these virtues are manifest often betray a misplaced sense of values.

Felltham organizes “a Fairer Object”—his consideration of Dutch virtues—around Proverbs 30:24-28, wherein “Solomon tells of four things that are small and full of wisdom, the Pismire, the Grass-hopper, the Coney, and the Spider.” The Dutch are compared in turn to each of these small creatures. Ants make provisions for the future by storing in the summer the food needed for the long winter that follows. The Dutch, who

have nothing but what grass affords them, are yet, for almost all provisions the Store-house of the whole of Christendom. What is it which there may not be found in plenty? they making by their industry all the fruits of the vast Earth their own. What Land can boast a privilege that they do not partake of? They have not of their own enough materials to compile one ship, yet how many Nations do they furnish? The remoter angles of the world do by their pains deliver them their sweets; and bring of themselves in want, their diligence hath made them both Indies nearer home.

They are frugal to the saving of Egge-shells, and maintain it for a Maxim, that a thing lasts longer mended than new.

Their Cities are their Mole-hills; their Schutes and Fly-boats creep and return with their store for Winter. Every one is busie, and carries his grain; as if every City were a several Hive, and the Bees not permitting a Drone to inhabit; for idle persons must find some other mansion. And lest necessity bereave men of means to set them on work, there are publick Banks, that (without use) lend upon pawns to all the poor that want.

The Dutchman's industry is not an unmixed blessing, however, since it breeds a provincial outlook and craftiness:

they look upon others too little, and upon themselves too much; And wheresoever they light in a pleasant or rich soyl, like suckers and lower plants, they rob from the root of that Tree which gives them shade and protection; so their wisdom is not indeed Heroick or Numinal, as courting an universal good; but rather narrow and restrictive, as being a wisdom but for themselves. Which, to speak plainly, is descending into Craft; and is but the sinister part of that which is really Noble and Coelestial.

The author of Proverbs praises the wisdom of the rabbit in making its home among the rocks, a place relatively safe from its enemies. Though their enemies, the Spanish, are all about them, the Dutch “rest secure in their own inescapable Berries. Where have you under Heaven, such impregnable Fortifications? Where Art beautifies Nature, and Nature makes Art invincible. …” Indeed, some of these great fortifications are still preserved in the cities of The Netherlands. Felltham draws one contrast between the Dutch and the animals they seem to have imitated: “The Conies find Rocks, and they make them.”

Locusts deserve praise, says the author of Proverbs, since, having no king, they recognize the necessity to go about in bands. In war, says Felltham, the Dutch “are Grasse-hoppers, and without a King, go forth in bands to conquer Kings. They have not only defended themselves at their own home, but have braved the Spaniard at his.” After giving examples of this latter statement—the taking of the Grand Canary Island in 1599 and the Dutch defeat of the Spanish fleet at Gibraltar in 1607—he concludes that

There hardly is upon earth such a school of Martiall Discipline. 'Tis the Christian worlds Academy for Arms; whither all the neighbour-Nations resort to be instructed; where they may observe how unresistible a blow many small grains of powder will make, being heaped together, which yet if you separate, can do nothing but sparkle and die.

Their recreation is the practise of Arms; And they learn to be souldiers sooner than men. Nay, as if they placed a Religion in Arms, every Sunday is concluded with the Train'd-Bands marching through their Cities.

Felltham certainly praises here the Dutchman's warlike spirit, which he had earlier decried. What he undoubtedly means is that when there is external danger, a bellicose spirit is admirable; but such a spirit is intolerable when men are at home and among friends.

In Proverbs, the spider is praised for making her home with her own hands; for the same reason Felltham admires the Dutch:

Even among us, they shame us with their industry, which makes them seem as if they had a faculty from the worlds Creation, out of water to make dry land appear. They win our drowned grounds which we cannot recover, and chase back Neptune to his own old Banks.

All that they do is by such labour as it seems extracted out of their own bowels. And in their wary thrift, they hang by such a slender sustenation of life, that one would think their own weight should be enough to crack it. Want of Idleness keeps them from want. And 'tis their Diligence makes them Rich.

No one in Holland—Dutchman or foreigner—is allowed to go in want. Work is provided for the unemployed, good hospitals for those unable to work, and decent asylums for the insane.

When Felltham speculates about what occasioned the industriousness of these people, he thinks that their eagerness to work may be a response to “the nature of their Country, in which if they be not laborious they cannot live”; or it may be the result of “an Innate Genius of the people by a Superiour Providence.” In either case, the result has made the Dutch “in some sort Gods, for they set bounds to the Sea, and when they list let it pass them. Even their dwelling is a miracle; They live lower than the fishes in the very lap of the floods, and incircled in their watry Arms. They are the Israelites passing through the Red-Sea. The waters wall them in, and if they set open their sluces shall drown up their enemies.”

With Biblical parallels and comparisons drawn from natural history, Felltham praises the Dutch for their military accomplishments against England's old enemy:

They have strugled long with Spains Pharaoh, and they have at length inforced him to let them go. They are a Gideons Army upon the march again. They are the Indian Rat, gnawing the bowels of the Spanish Crocadile, to which they got when he gap'd to swallow them. They are a serpent wreathed about the legs of that Elephant. They are the little sword-fish pricking the bellies of the Whale. They are the wane of that Empire, which increas'd in Isabella, and in Charls the 5th. was at full.

Rulers who disregard the rights of their subjects, as the Spanish did in trying to force Roman Catholicism on the staunchly Protestant Dutch, should take note. The Dutch

are a glass wherein Kings may see, that though they be Soveraigns over lives and goods, yet when they usurp upon Gods part, and will be Kings over conscience too, they are sometimes punisht with losse of that which lawfully is their own. That Religion too fiercely urg'd, is to stretch a string till it not onely jars but cracks, and in the breaking whips (perhaps) the streiners eye out.

That an extreme Taxation is to take away the honey while the Bees keep the Hive; whereas he that would take that, should first either burn them or drive them out. That Tyrants in their Government, are the greatest Traitors to their own Estates. That a desire of being too absolute, is to walk upon Pinacles and the tops of Pyramides, where not onely the footing is full of hazard, but even the sharpness of that they tread on may run into their foot and wound them. That too much to regrate on the patience of but tickle Subjects, is to press a Thorn till it prick your finger. That nothing makes a more desperate Rebel than a Prerogative inforced too far.

This passage receives special attention in Benjamin Boyce's study of the polemic character. Noting that A Brief Character of the Low-Countries was first printed in 1652, the year in which England entered into open war with Holland, Boyce speculates that these sentiments concerning the limitation of kingship are not Felltham's but were “inserted by an Amsterdamnified publisher. …”¹⁴ William Ley's pirated version of the character, appearing four years before the war with Holland, has this particular passage; Seile, then, could hardly be the “Amsterdamnified publisher” responsible for it. On the other hand, Ley cannot seriously be considered as the author of the passage; for Felltham would not have allowed in the authorized edition of his character any materials plagiarized from a pirated one. It must be concluded, therefore, that Felltham wrote the passage himself.

Moreover, this warning to rulers who overstep their prerogative is easily reconciled with Felltham's often-expressed reverence for the crown: he is writing about the Spanish king, not the English one. Since the mid-sixteenth century, the English had looked on the Spanish monarch as second only to the Pope in evil intentions toward England and as greater than the Pope in the ability to carry out those intentions. Spain commanded large armies and, of greater threat to England's security, large navies. Quite naturally, then, Felltham takes this opportunity to praise the Dutch for resisting the Spanish and, especially, to warn this and future Spanish kings against trying to force Roman Catholicism upon unwilling peoples. That this warning to Spain's king, probably written before 1628, parallels somewhat the arguments used later by the English Puritans to justify the execution of their monarch Charles I is ironic rather than prophetic. The most tenable conclusion is that Felltham, while very much in favor of a monarchical form of government, was not a blind worshipper of kingship. He knows that individual kings, being merely men, are subject to human frailty; and he points out the faults of a bad king, not realizing that twenty years later his beloved Charles would be accused of the same faults.

Felltham notes one other Dutch virtue, an honesty in the manufacture and the sale of goods; and he discusses with some admiration their language (“as old as Babel”), their history (with liberal reliance on Tacitus), and their gross annual product (over twice that of England). He concludes Low-Countries with a play on the microcosm-macrocosm analogy so common in the Renaissance. The Dutch personality seems filled with contradictions, but

If any man wonder at these Contraries, let him look in his own body for as many several humours, in his own Brain for as many different fancies, in his own Heart for as various passions; and from all these he may learn, That

There is not in all the World such another Beast as MAN.

The author of Resolves concentrates on man's spiritual potential; the author of A Brief Character of the Low-Countries focuses on baser stuff. But the same concept of what man can and should be underlies both works, and each is in its own way moral and didactic.

While the tone of this little character book is considerably lighter than that of Resolves, permitting more extravagant—at times even outrageous—play with language, the elements of style evident here are much the same as those seen in the earlier two centuries of Resolves: a fondness for aphoristic statement, the metaphorical use of words, and the telling illustration and example. Certainly, too, the alternation between playfulness and seriousness in style suits the frequent shifting from trivial to serious matters. The lightness and humor present in so much of the work should not mislead the reader into thinking that Low-Countries is all youthful exuberance; much of it is concerned with one of Felltham's favorite serious themes: the Dutch are time and again criticized because they lack order, degree, and moderation in their private lives, their family relationships, their churches, and their state. Even when writing a sportive sketch in his youth, the moralizer of Resolves would not, or could not, completely ignore his most deeply felt convictions.

A Brief Character of the Low-Countries is interesting in and of itself; and it certainly deserves more attention than it has so far received. It merits study as a pioneer in a genre that provided much of the impetus for subsequent works written to characterize nations and peoples; as a social and historical document that gives valuable insight into what a conservative English tourist in the earlier seventeenth century thought of one of England's most important neighbors; and as a piece of playful literature that is a good example of some of the wilder flights of wit and humor that seventeenth-century prose could produce. Finally, as a part of Felltham's canon, Low-Countries is important in showing, more clearly than Resolves, that this grave moralist could be—when the occasion presented itself—as sportive and as provocative as anyone; and this varied capability rounds out the man and his work.

.....

THE POETRY

Owen Felltham, recognized by Anthony à Wood as one of the poets “which were the chiefest of the Nation” in the 1630s,¹⁵ is, ironically, represented quite sparingly in modern anthologies of seventeenth-century verse and is almost totally neglected by modern critics. It is to be hoped that a recent edition of his poems,¹⁶ the only complete collection ever attempted, may reawaken interest in Felltham as a poet. Fewer than fifty poems recognized as his survive, but this small canon is distinguished. In his thirty-one occasional pieces, Felltham provides some stimulating and frequently moving tributes, elegies, epitaphs, and reflective poems. In his lyrics, the author of Resolves offers some of the most charming love poems of the period; indeed, a few of them are among the best metaphysical poems on that subject after Donne's. …

POEMS ON POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS FIGURES AND SUBJECTS

Felltham's earliest poem that commemorates a political figure is probably “Elegie on Henry Earl of Oxford.” Henry de Vere, born in 1593, led a profligate youth; but he became a national hero in 1625 when he died of a fever while fighting for the Dutch. Felltham's poem contains an attack on “dull Holland,” which, having no worthy men herself, offers up to Fate this English nobleman, “Whose every Limb was worth more than thy state.” In lines which are metaphysical in their complex thought patterns and striking metaphor, the poet, still addressing Holland, laments Oxford's death:

I know the gods are pleas'd with't, but 'tis we
That feel the losse, not they, nor you, nor he.
Heaven joyes in his accesse, and he in that:
And you thought so much good might expiate
Your blackest sins: not thinking we should be,
Like low Orbes wanting Primum Mobile.

Comparing Oxford to Sir Philip Sidney, who had died in the Low Countries under similar circumstances almost forty years earlier, Felltham asserts that

Great Vertues have this Grant, they never dye,
But like Time live to kisse Eternity.
And now men doubt which Name can cite a tear,
Or make a Souldier first, Sidney or Vere.

The poem concludes with a warning to Holland not to let the Earl of Oxford's place of death be known,

                                                                                                              lest when men see
His worth, and come to know he dy'd for thee
They curse thee lower than thy staple, Fish;
Thy own Beer-drinkers, or the Spaniards wish.
But if by curious search it must be known,
Write by it thus, Here Belgia was undone.

The overstated hatred for the Dutch gives the poem unity and focus. This elegy, though obviously a youthful effort, is witty and sophisticated in its elaborate argument; but the exuberant praise of Vere—calling him metaphorically England's Primum Mobile, tutelar god, and Prometheus—strains the reader's credibility and dilutes the effect of the poem. The excesses of wit, complexity, and metaphor make Felltham's “Elegie on Henry Earl of Oxford” more of an interesting and virtuoso exercise-piece than a successful elegy.

Coming from the pen of one who twenty-one years later was to call the executed Charles I “Christ the Second,” Felltham's “On the Duke of Buckingham slain by Felton, the 23. Aug. 1628” is a remarkably cool and objective occasional poem. Buckingham, Charles's chief minister, badly bungled England's wars against Spain and France. Parliament threatened impeachment proceedings against him in June 1628, and probably would have carried them out had not the King dissolved that group. When a naval lieutenant two months later stabbed Buckingham to death at Portsmouth, the duke's assassination had both political and religious overtones. The King's Puritan antagonists saw the death as a blow against both political tyranny and what they considered the pro-Papal leanings of the Establishment. And even thoughtful members of Charles's government were relieved—though they did not admit it openly—that the impetuous minister was no longer there to force them into disaster. Felltham, a loyal supporter of Crown and Established Church, both admired and distrusted the duke; and, though he was startled by the assassination, he understood the joy with which it was greeted by Buckingham's many and diverse enemies. This complexity of thought and feeling, held in almost total suspension, gives Felltham's occasional poem a tension seldom found outside the lyric.

Felltham marvels at the inglorious way in which this great man died:

                                                                                                    Can a knife
Let out so many Titles and a life?
Now I'le mourn thee! Oh that so huge a pile
Of State should pash thus in so small a while!

For all the apparent greatness of the much honored Buckingham, he has fallen to a knife. Felltham is aware of the rejoicing of those Puritans and others in Parliament who feared that Buckingham was helping to lead England back to Rome: “Let the rude Genius of the giddy Train, / Brag in a fury that they have stabb'd Spain, / Austria, and the skipping French. …” Synthesizing the extremes of Buckingham's position of greatness and the great hatred which his detractors felt toward him and which has led to his fall, Felltham exclaims:

                                                                                          Thou art to me
The great Example of Mortality.
And when the times to come shall want a Name
To startle Greatnesse, here is BUCKINGHAM
Faln like a Meteor. …

Felltham, then, sees the death of Buckingham in terms very similar to the medieval concept of tragedy: the fall of a high-placed individual. Having presented in general terms the position of Buckingham's enemies, Felltham turns to the actual assassin, John Felton:

                                                                                                    'tis hard to say
Whether it was that went the stranger way,
Thou [Buckingham] or the hand that slew thee: thy Estate
Was high, and he was resolute above that.

Refusing to discuss Buckingham's character (“'Tis undue / To speak ill of the Dead though it be true”), Felltham acknowledges the slain Duke's former position of eminence:

                    even those that envy'd thee confesse,
Thou hadst a Mind, a flowing Noblenesse,
A Fortune, Friends, and such proportion,
As call for sorrow, to be thus undone.

Throughout, Felltham opposes Buckingham's greatness with his enemies' hatred for him and the duke's estate with his assassin's resolution. Finding in Buckingham a “great Example of Mortality,” Felltham sorrows at his fall not because the duke was a worthy man but because his fall was unworthy of his position. Fearing the extremism that can result in the fall of “so huge a pile / Of State” as Buckingham, Felltham pleads for moderation. Assuming the position of those who rejoice at the fall of the duke, Felltham can almost be convinced of the rightness of Felton's deed:

Yet should I speake the Vulgar, I should boast
Thy bold Assassinate, and wish almost
He were no Christian, that I up might stand,
To praise th'intent of his mis-guided hand.
And sure when all the Patriots in the shade
Shall rank, and their full musters there be made,
He shall sit next to Brutus, and receive
Such Bayes as Heath'nish ignorance can give.

But, to Felltham, doing evil to reach good ends is not the Christian way; hence the assassin cannot be considered a patriot. Since Felton is a Christian, there is nothing admirable about his bold deed. Even the most rabid opponents of Buckingham should realize that, “Though he did good, he did it the wrong way.” By using the common bonds of Christianity as the pivot in his argument, Felltham suggests a way to bring together the opposing groups. Both are Christian, and both must surely see that for a nation to survive there must be rule of law: “They oft decine into the worst of ill, / That act the Peoples wish without Laws will.”

This poem about the death of Buckingham is not an elegy, for Felltham uses the death of the spectacularly successful and passionately hated Buckingham to plead for moderation and the rule of law and to expose the power and danger of fanaticism. He concludes his poem, however, not by ranting against extremists, but by indicating the reconciliation implicit in the bonds of Christianity common to all Englishmen. The twenty-five-year-old Felltham is a thoughtful observer of the political situation, and his poem is no less than remarkable. The carefully structured tension between the great heights which Buckingham attained and the great hatred in which he was held, along with the powerful language of the poem, make these verses about Buckingham one of Felltham's most effective pieces.

In 1628, Felltham dedicated the Long Century of Resolves to Thomas, Lord Coventry. The young essayist was not at that time acquainted with the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, but he knew him by reputation, as the first sentence of the Epistle Dedicatory indicates: “Though I should not know your Person, I cannot bee a stranger to your Vertues.” Lord Coventry was almost unique among Charles I's courtiers in that his honesty was admitted by everyone—even by the Puritans who despised the bench at which he sat, the prerogative court of Star Chamber. When Coventry died in 1640, after fifteen years of service as Lord Keeper, Felltham composed a tribute to him, “On Thomas Lord Coventry, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.”

The poem, although long, has little to distinguish it. Coventry is praised for his honesty, a trait all too rare in the judges of the day: “Who can dispatch so much so well, so free / From Fear, from Favour, stain or Bribery?” There may have been more brilliant justices than Coventry, but, Felltham boasts, neither

                                                                                More's learned wit,
Nor Bacon's miracl'd Fancy e're can sit
Loftier in Fames high Tower, than what we see
Flows from his lasting Names integrity.

Moreover, Coventry's sittings were models of what such should be: “His were not Courts alone, but Readings; there / The Bar was throng'd rather to learn than hear.”

By far the most interesting element of the poem, however, is Felltham's ingenious application of the elegiac convention that has all nature weeping for the deceased:

'Tis not an Angle, Province, that or this
That weeps: The general Kingdom Mourner is.
Nor is't a Plank or prop that's lost by Fate,
But 'tis a Capital Column of the State.
Which here so summons grief, that all men good
Approach, and bring sad Tribute to the floud:
That now this Isle not onely seems to be
Inviron'd round with waves, but waves to be.
Our London is turn'd Venice, and our gay
Pallaces peer, as plac'd in a salt Bay.
Where Tydes of sorrow make us think we meet
Not men on Land, but Rowers in the street.

The poem's lack of excitement and sparkle is probably a result of its subject's lack of those qualities. Coventry did his job competently; but while he was a solid and honest man, he was also unexciting and unassuming. He had no dramatic reversals in his career, and he died peacefully. Felltham undoubtedly did as much as he could with the materials available to him.

In 1643, the Puritan dominated Parliament sat and passed legislation about Christmas Day that abolished by implication the celebration of what the Puritans considered a pagan festival. Felltham's reaction is expressed in the poem “Upon Abolishing the Feast of the Nativity of our blessed Saviour.” Felltham opens his protest by asking why, if “each petty Princes Birth” is celebrated, “the Lord of Life's blest day / Be thrown away?” In the second stanza, he opposes the fundamentalist argument that, since the exact date of Christ's birth is unknown, it is blasphemous to set arbitrarily a day for celebration of the event. To Felltham, “just power” commands him to set aside one day each year to commemorate the Birth; and December 25 “as well shall stand” as any. Felltham climaxes his poem by stating an argument completely abhorrent to the Puritans: since God, as king, has not expressly forbidden such a commemoration and since the Church, as viceroy of God on earth, has through tradition set a specific date, he will continue the celebration of Yule and “Will Christian dye.”

The poem, written in a ten-line stanza of mixed iambic tetrameter and dimeter, is not among Felltham's better efforts. It achieved, however, some attention among the Puritans; one of them published a broadside in which he set forth Felltham's poem and answered it with a similarly constructed one of his own.¹⁷ The thrust of this anonymous Puritan's argument is that God would have revealed the exact day of the Nativity “had he thought fit it should / Be keept as now some People would.” Moreover, to give the Church the arbitrary power of fixing the day of Christmas can lead straight to Rome:

If one, why not six, ten or more?
Or why not as well Fifeteen Score
As Papists have almost already
Dedicat to their Saints and Lady?

The ultimate argument against ecclesiastical tradition is, of course, the fundamentalist one: “To be no more than's Written wise / Shall me Suffice.” Unfortunately, both Felltham's poem and the Puritan poet's “full Refutation” of Felltham's argument now possess a merely historical interest, but a comparison of the two clearly shows Felltham's distinct superiority in the use of language.

By far the most controversial religious figure in the court of Charles I was William Laud, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. From the beginning of his ecclesiastical career, Laud antagonized the English Puritans by his insistence on uniformity and ritualism in the Church; and he infuriated the Scottish Kirk by urging the King to impose upon it a Prayer Book which would have led the Scots into Anglicanism. The Puritan controlled Long Parliament arrested Laud in 1640 and tried him for treason. Finding insufficient evidence to execute him through normal judicial channels, that body condemned him by legislative means in an act of attainder. Felltham marked Laud's execution and set forth his own attitude toward the Archbishop in a thirty-line Latin epitaph, “In Gulielmi Laud.”

Enjoining “Stupensce Viator! et Miranda Fati lege” (Traveler, learn of a fantastic calamity and stand amazed!), Felltham rehearses many points of the Archbishop's life: his lowly birth, his trouble with the Scots, his four-year imprisonment, his trial before Parliament, the extralegal fashion in which he was condemned, and the dignity with which he met his death. In Laud's execution, Parliament has, in Felltham's opinion, condemned England to a period of virtual chaos:

Quocum Majestas Principum, Procerum Tutela,
                                        Ecclesiæ Patrimonium,
                                                  Libertas Subjecti,
                    Et Britannici orbis immunitas,
                    Simul pro tempore Tumulantur.

(With him, the grandeur of the Kingdom, the defence of the Cavaliers, / The tradition of the Church, / The freedom of the subjects, / And the safety of the British sphere / Are, for a season, buried together.)

This poem is of considerable historical and biographical interest; and its formal and measured statement of personal outrage and grief exhibits Felltham's considerable skill in Latin composition.

The poem that Felltham's nineteenth-century admirers found most difficult to excuse is “An Epitaph to the Eternal Memory of Charles the First, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, &c. Inhumanely murthered by a perfidious Party of His prevalent Subjects, Jan. 30, 1648.” Despite Felltham's excess of zeal—what some have considered blasphemy in the last line—the poem is a highly successful exercise in rhetoric; it sweeps the reader along until he expects, and would be somehow disappointed without, the outrage of its climax. The epitaph is tightly constructed, and it consists entirely of clauses introduced by the adverb “when,” a word which in itself builds anticipation.

Beginning with only the exaggerations that one would expect from an impassioned supporter of the monarchy, Felltham argues Charles's right and ability to rule:

When He had shewn the world, that He was King
Of all those Vertues that can Honour bring;
And by His Princely Graces made it known,
That Rule was so inherently His Own,
That His great Parts might justly Him prefer
Not to two Isles, but the worlds Emperor.
When His large Soul in sufferings had out-shin'd
All Jobs vast Patience: and in His clear Mind
Had rivall'd Solomons Wisdom, but out-gone
His Temperance, in His most tempting Throne.

When Felltham joins to Charles's position as sovereign of the state his role as Supreme Governor of the Church, he still exaggerates Charles's abilities, but perhaps no more than might be expected from the author of Resolves:

When by a Noble Christian Fortitude,
He had serenely tryumph'd o're all rude
And barbarous Indignities that men
(Inspir'd from Hell) could act by hand or pen.
When He to save the Church had shed His blood,
And dy'd for being (onely) Wise and Good:
When His three Kingdoms in a well-weigh'd sense
He'd rather lose, than a good Conscience:
As knowing, 'twas a far more glorious thing
To dye a MARTYR, than to live a KING.

In the next few clauses, the poet begins to go beyond even the excess of praise allowed in a seventeenth-century commendatory poem, but the reader who has stayed with Felltham this far will hesitate to lay the poem aside as incredible; he is now enthralled by the power of the language and by the sweep of the emotion:

When He had copy'd out in every Line,
Our Saviours Passion (bating the Divine)
Nay, even His Prayers and Gospel, if we look
Impartially upon his peerlesse Book;
A Book so rarely good, we read in one
The Psalms and Proverbs, David-Solomon;
With all that high-born Charity, which shines
Quite through the great Apostles sacred lines:
That, spight of rage, next future Ages shall
Hold it (with Reverence stamp'd) Canonical.

There is left for the poet in such a situation only one possible direction in which to advance his subject any further—higher than canonization of his book, there is canonization of the man himself, and after that the ultimate:

When Herod, Judas, Pilate, and the Jews,
Scots, Cromwell, Bradshaw, and the shag-haird Mews
Had quite out-acted, and by their damn'd Cry
Of injur'd Justice, lessened Crucifie:
When He had prov'd, that since the world began,
So many Tears were never shed for Man:
Since so belov'd he fell, that with pure grief
His Subjects dy'd, 'cause he was reft of Life:
When to convince the Heretick worlds base thought,
His Royal Bloud true miracles had wrought:
When it appear'd, He to this world was sent,
The Glory of KINGS, but Shame of PARLIAMENT:
The stain of th'English, that can never dye;
The Protestants perpetual Infamy:
When He had rose thus, Truths great Sacrifice,
Here CHARLES the First, and CHRIST the second lyes.

The poem progresses, then, from divine right to divinity.

Impartial historians, more knowledgeable about the machinations of Charles's government than Felltham and having a broader perspective than the poet, disagree almost totally with Felltham's view of that unfortunate monarch's wisdom, abilities, and motivations. They even dispute Charles's authorship of that “peerlesse Book” Eikon Basilike, which the King supposedly wrote while awaiting execution. But such matters are irrelevant in a discussion of the poem's merit, because Felltham is writing not so much about the historical Charles as he is about the ideal Charles. A king should be divinely called to his throne; he should be wise, patient, and just; he should promote unity in state and Church; he should oppose a factious and extreme Parliament; he should devote his last days to the composition of a devotional book. The martyred monarch of Felltham's poem is all that a king ideally should be, and in this context his deification is less outrageous than it is just.

Taken in its historical context, Felltham's comments on Charles are no more excessive than are many of the statements made by the Parliamentarian side. The poem is an exaggeration, certainly, but it is overstatement in the direction of idealism. In it is a real feeling of outrage and righteous indignation, and the tone is a rich mixture of bitterness and Stoic trustfulness in a final retribution. Felltham's greatest achievement in the poem, however, is the careful progression of metaphors building subtly and inevitably toward its conclusion; this epitaph on Charles is a moving poem precisely because of the masterful rhetoric that everywhere controls its statement.

Felltham's poems on religious and political topics are not—with the exception of the poems about Buckingham and about Charles—among his best occasional verse. The complexity of attitude found in the Buckingham poem and the impassioned, yet controlled statement of the epitaph for the executed king make these two poems among the most significant of Felltham's literary works. …

LOVE LYRICS

Of the sixteen love lyrics in Felltham's Lusoria, some are ingenious exercises written to an imaginary, scornful young lady; others are moving and personal statements. The simplest and least personal of Felltham's lyrics are in the Petrarchan tradition, but the more complex and emotionally moving poems reflect the influence of John Donne and the Metaphysicals as well as that of Jonson and the Cavaliers. Taken as a whole, Felltham's small group of love poems exemplifies the most important characteristics of seventeenth-century secular poetry.

The most earnestly Petrarchan of Felltham's poems is “The Amazement,” in which the beauty of the speaker's mistress is effectively cataloged in conventional Petrarchan terms:

                    See the Roses being blown,
                    Shed their leaves and fall alone,
As shamed by a purer red of hers.
                    See the Clowds that cast their snow,
                    Which melts as soon as 'tis below,
When but a whiter white of her appears.
                    See the Silk-worme how she weaves
                    Her self to death among her leaves,
As broke with envy of her finer hairs.

In “The Sun and Wind,” the young lady is typically scornful of the would-be lover. The sun of the title represents her beauty; the wind, her “coy disdain.” The final stanza, though conventional, presents an interesting paradox:

So though thy Sun heats my desire,
          Yet know thy coy disdain
Falls like a storm on that young fire,
          So blowes me cool again.

Another poem, “The Appeal,” begs Cupid to set the lover free since the “Tyrant” boy has caused him to “love a rock.” “On a Jewel given at parting” employs the same image; the lover, having given his “freshly bleeding” heart to his mistress, receives a gift from her:

You in requital gave a stone,
          Not easie to be broken;
An Embleme sure that of your own
          Hearts hardnesse was a token.

The lady of “Song: Go, Cruel Maid” is described as unattainable in the characteristic Petrarchan fashion. Typical also is her “heart of Ice,” which threatens the death of the lover.

The designation of these lyrics as conventional and as typically Petrarchan does not imply that they are inferior poems. All contain lively images, and each is a small but delightful comment about one or another aspect of unrequited love. But none of them succeeds in making the reader completely believe in the speaker's plight; all seem to be written as exercises on the theme of the cruel-fair. In one of the poems written at least in part in the Petrarchan mode, however, Felltham strikes a note of sincerity. In “Song: Now (as I live) I love thee much,” the speaker expresses the fear that if he causes the lady to love him, she may later be disappointed because of his shortcomings. After arguing against the possibility of their relationship, the speaker concludes by paradoxically protesting his love for the lady: “Were't not a love beyond excesse, / It might be more.” The situation is closely akin to that of the stereotyped Petrarchan lover, but it is somewhat more complex. The speaker is concerned not that the lady will scorn him but that she will love him and be disappointed because he cannot provide her with all she deserves. He also is fearful lest he create a situation in which he himself may be hurt.

Felltham also gained freshness of expression in some Petrarchan lyrics by the addition of that peculiar cleverness which characterized seventeenth-century wit. Describing Cupid and Venus as “A Boy and a common Tit,” the poet employs wit in the service of humor in “Song: Cupid and Venus” when he proves “That Vulcan onely is the god of Love.” Felltham also complains wittily of the faithlessness of women in his song “Upon a breach of Promise” in which the poet is “confirm'd” in his belief that “No Woman hath a soul.” Employing alchemical imagery, reminiscent of Donne's, the poem concludes that,

So though they seem to cheer, and speak
          Those things we most implore.
They do but flame us up to break,
          Then never mind us more.

Through the use of wit in “The Spring in the Rock,” Felltham points a carpe diem lesson so popular with the Cavalier poets of the mid-seventeenth century: seize each day for life is short. The lover begins the poem by telling his lady a fable about a coy mistress who was turned into a rock, and the moral of the fable warns the “Harsh Maid” to “… take heed then, repent and know / They that chang'd her can alter you.” The carpe diem theme is explicitly stated in “To Phryne,” for the speaker tells Phryne that, when her youth and beauty are gone, “Then wilt thou sighing lye, / Repent and smart, and so by two deaths dye.”

In these last few poems Felltham's attitude toward love has moved some distance from that of the ever worshipful, ever rejected Petrarchan. As did most poets of the seventeenth century, Felltham believed that a fulfilling relationship between men and women had to be reciprocal and, while love might be idealistic, that idealism had to have its foundation in actuality. The revolt against the artificial and unrealistic Italianate tradition was led by two men of widely differing personalities and talents, Ben Jonson and John Donne. Despite their differences, which were considerable, both poets saw that the lyric, to continue as a meaningful genre, had to convey rational, highly personal explorations of that unity underlying the bewildering diversity of human experience. Although both handled the many aspects of love thoroughly and frankly, their forms of expression differed. Jonson wrote clear and restrained verse of a high polish; Donne's is often complex and passionate, and his poetry avoids the easy smoothness of Elizabethan versification. Felltham was influenced, as were many other poets of the 1630s and 1640s, by both the Classical and Metaphysical models.¹⁸ From his friend Ben Jonson he borrowed clarity of statement and a concern for beauty of expression. From the Dean of St. Paul's he took the metaphysical attitude and the passionate paradoxical metaphor. With these borrowed characteristics, he produced six highly polished metaphysical love lyrics.

A Neoplatonic view of love underlies all six: desire begins with the admiration of physical beauty, it progresses to a contemplation of spiritual worth, and it culminates in the union of the souls of the lover and his beloved.¹⁹ Felltham traces these stages of love and explores the various trials that beset lovers as they seek to achieve a perfect mingling of their souls; and his poems “The Cause,” “The Vow-breach,” “The Sympathy,” “The Reconcilement,” and “A Farewell” together form a narrative reflecting these common Neoplatonic attitudes. The speaker of “The Cause” asserts that his and Clarissa's relationship involves a mingling of their souls. Clarissa, in the enigmatic “The Vow-breach,” confesses a lapse which she implores her lover not to specify. It becomes clear in “The Sympathy” that the lady's breach is her doubt, her “heretick thoughts” about their love; but the lover proves by his example of the sympathetic lutes that he and his lady are “Two souls Coanimate.” In “The Reconcilement,” the speaker declares that Clarissa's “loose and wandring fears” have been purged and that she is thus created anew; and he invites her to join him in “close united Extasie.” The series is concluded by “A Farewell,” in which the lover declares that, when separated from her, he is “but as scatter'd dew / Till re-exhal'd again to Vertue; You.” With the possible exception of “The Vow-breach,” each of these poems can, of course, be read without reference to the other poems in the narrative; but all gain by their context.

“The Cause” begins by denying physical attraction as the sole object of desire: “Think not, Clarissa, I love thee / For thy meer outside, though it be / A Heaven more clear than that men cloudless see.” The greater attraction is that of his lady's soul: “we may mix there / Like two Perfumes in the soft air, / And as chast Incense play above the sphere.” The spiritual love shared by the two leads them upward “To clearer heights” until they “centre Jove.” This double reference to Jupiter as both a planet and a god leads naturally to the metaphysical image which concludes the poem: “For when two souls shall towre so high, / Without their flesh their rayes shall flye, / Like Emanations from a Deity.” “The Cause” is one of Felltham's finest poems, for this celebration of spiritual love is perfectly unified in imagery and beautifully simple in statement. The theme of the poem and its images are reminiscent of those found in Donne's “The Canonization,” “The Anniversarie,” and “The Relique”; but Felltham creates of them a wholly convincing personal statement.

In “The Vow-breach,” one of the most elusive of Felltham's love poems, Clarissa has somehow broken trust; but she implores that her lapse not be revealed:

                                                                                          if thou then
Call back remembrance with her light agen
Know thou art cruel: For those rayes to me
(Like flashes wherewithall the Damned see
Their plagues) become another Hell.

A strong tension results from the juxtaposition of unusual metaphors: darkness is good, light is evil; the former is the charity of silence, the latter the cruelty of gossip. And the almost Dantean lightning of remembrance is extended to provide the vehicle of the curse in the closing lines:

For my whole Sex, when they shall find their shame
Told in my Vow-breach by thy fatal name;
Their spleen shal all in one eye pointed be,
And then like Lightning darted all on thee.

Despite the elusiveness of the actual offense, which is not made clear until “The Sympathy,” “The Vow-breach” is an effective poem; the feeling objectified in its images gives every impression of being strong and sincere.

“The Sympathy,” which is much more complex in verse form than “The Cause” or “The Vow-breach,” is carefully and sensitively designed to purge Clarissa's “heretick thoughts” by proving that the lovers are “Two souls Co-animate.” The central image of the poem is clever in the metaphysical manner, yet wholly appropriate:

                                                                                Two Lutes are strung,
And on a Table tun'd alike for song;
          Strike one, and that which none did touch,
          Shall sympathizing sound as much
                    As that which toucht you see.
          Think then this world (which Heaven inroules)
          Is but a Table round, and souls
                    More apprehensive be.

The poem concludes by reminding Clarissa that, even in physical union, spiritual love can mix entwined hearts, thus allowing lovers to boast that no absence can affect their love:

          Judge hence then our estate,
Since when we lov'd there was not put
Two earthen hearts in one brest, but
          Two souls Co-animate.

This celebration of spiritual love is again similar to passages by Donne and other seventeenth-century poets. Yet Felltham's poem is not merely derivative; it is certainly worthy of being admitted to the canon of frequently anthologized Metaphysical poetry.

Coming immediately after “The Sympathy,” “The Reconcilement” even more forcefully knits the lovers' souls together. Clarissa's “loose and wandring fears” have been purged by “penitential tears,” and she is “new created.” The lover concludes with an invitation to join him in a sensuous mingling of their souls:

Come then, and let us like two streams swell'd high,
Meet, and with soft and gentle struglings try,
How like their curling waves we mingle may,
Till both be made one floud; then who can say
Which this way flow'd, which that: For there will be
Still water; close united Extasie.
That when we next shall but of motion dream,
We both shall slide one way, both make one stream.

“The Reconcilement,” with its marvelous joining of religious and erotic metaphors, beautifully records the reunion of lovers.

Calling to mind yet another famous poem of Donne's, Felltham's “A Farewell” explores the problem inherent in the physical separations that lovers frequently must undergo:

When by sad fate from hence I summon'd am,
Call it not Absence, that's too mild a name.
Believe it, dearest Soul, I cannot part,
…
No; say I am dissolv'd: for as a Cloud
By the Suns vigour melted is, and strow'd
On the Earths face, to be exhal'd again
To the same beams that turn'd it into rain.
So absent think me but as scatter'd dew.
Till re-exhal'd again to Vertue; You.

This poem, metaphysical in its surprising and unexpectedly apt metaphor, is simply stated, tender in its sense of restrained drama.

Only one of Felltham's poems, the love lyric “When, Dearest, I but think on thee,” has enjoyed any wide audience; and, ironically, it has done so in part because its authorship has so persistently been attributed to Sir John Suckling. The lyric seems to have been circulated widely in manuscript, and a copy found among Suckling's papers after his death was published in that Cavalier's Last Remains.²⁰ Felltham called attention to the mistaken attribution in a headnote to the poem in the 1661 Lusoria, but few critics and anthologists seem to have noticed it. Despite frequent notes on the poem's authorship published during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,²¹ some editors still assign the poem to Suckling²²; and ironically, some critics have considered the poem to be one of Suckling's finest.²³

“When, Dearest, I but think on thee” does indeed deserve praise. The dramatic situation is a common one, the physical separation of lovers. Felltham, however, treats the old theme with freshness and restrained vitality:

When, Dearest, I but think on thee,
Methinks all things that lovely be
                    Are present, and my soul delighted:
For beauties that from worth arise,
Are like the grace of Deities,
                    Still present with us, though unsighted.
Thus while I sit and sigh the day,
With all his spreading lights away,
                    Till nights black wings do overtake me:
Thinking on thee, thy beauties then,
As sudden lights do sleeping men,
                    So they by their bright rayes awake me.
Thus absence dyes, and dying proves
No absence can consist with Loves
                    That do partake of fair perfection:
Since in the darkest night they may
By their quick motion find a way
                    To see each other by reflection.
The waving Sea can with such floud,
Bath some high Palace that hath stood
                    Far from the Main up in the River:
Oh think not then but love can do
As much, for that's an Ocean too,
                    That flows not every day, but ever.

“When, Dearest, I but think on thee” represents the best blending possible of the techniques of Donne and Jonson. The divine quality of true love, the impossibility of any real absence, and the ingenious comparisons are elements the poet inherited from Donne; the urbane restraint, quiet confidence, melodic diction, and a regular, “singable” form are part of Jonson's legacy. “When, Dearest, I but think on thee” is one of the most beautiful minor poems of the period.

Considering the fact that Felltham wrote relatively few poems, his range is particularly noteworthy. His poems include a distinguished collection of love lyrics and a body of occasional poetry in which are represented almost all the subgenres popular in the earlier seventeenth century—from the epitaph and elegy to the “instructions to the painter” poem. Although not uniformly successful, most of these poems share a highly developed sense of dramatic tension, a tendency toward Baroque virtuosity, and a talent for the strikingly beautiful phrase. Felltham's sense of dramatic tension is best seen in his juxtaposition of contradictory attitudes held simultaneously, as in the poem on Buckingham; his personification of abstractions, as in the presentation of Death gently embracing Lady Venetia Digby; and his sense of restrained vitality in the more tender love lyrics. Felltham's tendency toward the Baroque is evident, for example, in the overstatement in the poem on Lord Coventry, the elegy on King Charles, and the lines on the Gentlewoman whose nose was pitted with smallpox. His penchant for the arrestingly beautiful phrase is exemplified throughout the poems.

Felltham, admittedly a minor writer, reveals in his poetry the richness of milieu which produced some of the greatest occasional and lyric poets in the English language. Felltham's measure as a poet is not his originality but his ability to make fresh and personal poems which derive from so fertile a milieu. His may not be a totally distinctive voice, but it is a fine one nevertheless. Poems such as “When, Dearest, I but think on thee,” “The Cause,” “The Sympathy,” “On the Duke of Buckingham …,” “To the Memory of immortal Ben,” and others merit for Felltham more recognition as a poet than he has heretofore received. He has no claim to status beyond that of minor poet, but such a ranking in a period as rich in poetry as the seventeenth century is hardly one to be despised.

Notes

1. All quotations from the Short Century of Resolves follow the text of the first edition (1623), with the titles of the individual pieces supplied from the third edition (1628B); quotations from the Long Century follow the text of the second edition (1628A); and quotations from the Revised Short Century follow the text of the eighth edition (1661). The two allegorical designs used for the engraved title pages of the seventeenth-century editions of Resolves are illustrated in Ted-Larry Pebworth, “An Annotated Bibliography of Owen Felltham,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 79 (1976), 212-13.

2. McCrea Hazlett, “‘New Frame and Various Composition’; Development in the Form of Owen Felltham's Resolves,” Modern Philology 51 (1953), 96.

3. Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, 1600-1660, 2nd ed. rev. (Oxford, 1962). p. 202.

4. For a valuable discussion of the impact of science on the age, see C. M. Coffin, John Donne and the New Philosophy (New York, 1937).

5. Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, p. 202.

6. Ibid., p. 201.

7. For a discussion of the character as a genre and for the modifications of it in English, see Chapter 2, Section II above. In addition to Benjamin Boyce's The Theophrastan Character in England to 1642, cited in Chapter 2, that same author's The Polemic Character: 1640-1661 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1955) is of particular relevance here.

8. A corrupt text was printed, without attribution, in 1647 as Terrible Nevves from Scotland; a better text, bearing the more common title appeared in 1649 (erroneously attributed to James Howell on the title page) and in 1659 (without attribution). Printed and bound up with pirated editions of Felltham's Low-Countries (which appears under the title Batavia: Or The Hollander displayed), Scotland was reissued frequently after the Restoration. Sir Walter Scott, in his Secret History of the Court of James the First (London, 1811), II, 73-89, was the first editor to attribute Scotland to Weldon. For a denial of Howell's authorship of the work, see William Harvey Vann, Notes on the Writings of James Howell (Waco, Texas, 1924), pp. 66-67.

9. For Henry Seile's testimony concerning the date of composition, presumably recording Felltham's own statement on the subject, see Section II of this chapter below. No evidence of a Dutch journey appears in the Short Century of Resolves (1623), whereas the excogitations of the Long Century (1628) contain several allusions indicating firsthand knowledge of Holland and its inhabitants. The freshness of detail in Low-Countries supports the conclusion that it was written during or shortly after the trip itself.

10. Copies in British Museum MS Harleian 5111 and Huntington Library MS 14201 are prefaced by identical letters dated “Egipt this 22: Jannar:” and signed “J. S.”; see Jean Robertson, “Felltham's Character of the Low Countries,” Modern Language Notes 58 (1943), 385-88, for the text of the letter.

11. The 1648 edition and the first state of the 1652 edition are erroneously designated Three Moneths Obseruations of the Low-Countries; the second state of the 1652 edition gives the title as A true and exact Character of the Low-Countreyes.

12. See Ted-Larry Pebworth, “The ‘Character’ in George Alsop's Mary-Land,” Seventeenth-Century News 34 (1976), in press.

13. All quotations from Low-Countries follow the text of the first authoritative edition (London: for Henry Seile, 1652).

14. Boyce, The Polemic Character, p. 45.

15. Anthony à Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Philip Bliss, 4 vols. (London, 1813-1820), IV, 222. This assessment, made between 1680 and 1690, lists the other important poets of the 1630s as Drayton, Randolph, Jonson, and Heywood.

16. Pebworth and Summers, eds., The Poems of Owen Felltham. All quotations from Felltham's poetry are from this edition; the translations are editorial.

17. Reproduced in Pebworth and Summers, eds., The Poems of Owen Felltham, Appendix B, pp. 82-83.

18. One of the best analyses of Jonson's technique is Ralph S. Walker's “Ben Jonson's Lyric Poetry,” Criterion 13 (1933-1934), 430-48. The classic study of Donne's technique is Pierre Legouis' Donne the Craftsman (Paris, 1928). For an illuminating discussion of the complementary influences of Jonson and Donne on the poetry of the earlier seventeenth century, see the first chapter of J. B. Leishman's The Monarch of Wit (London, 1951; reprinted New York, 1966).

19. For the sources of this concept, see A. J. Smith, “The Metaphysics of Love,” Review of English Studies, New Series, 9 (1958), 362-75.

20. The Last Remains of S^r. John Suckling (London, 1659), pp. 32-33.

21. For example, in Cumming's second edition of Resolves (London, 1820), pp. 452-53; G. Thorn-Drury, “Sir John Suckling,” Notes and Queries, Eleventh Series, 1 (1910), 281; and Robert Pierpoint, “‘When, Dearest, I But Think of Thee’: Song by Suckling or by Felltham,” Notes and Queries, Eleventh Series, 6 (1912), 346.

22. For example, A. Hamilton Thompson, ed., The Works of Sir John Suckling (London, 1910; reprinted New York, 1964), pp. 67-68 of both printings; A. J. M. Smith, ed., Seven Centuries of Verse, 2nd ed. rev. and enlarged (New York, 1957), pp. 196-97.

23. For example, S. Austin Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1891), II, 2298.