The Poems of Sidney Godolphin, ed. William Dighton, with a Preface by John Drinkwater; Clarendon Press, 1931
(Preface transcribed from a copy in the British Library. Two or three additional paragraph breaks have been inserted in the interest of screen readability.)
(Also in this file, following the Preface: transcriptions, from the same volume, of two poems by Godolphin: Psalm 141 (p.3), and the tribute to George Sandys in the latter's ®Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems¯ (p.64 of the Dighton volume).
[ Preface by John Drinkwater ]
First, a word as to my association with the present volume. Some six or seven years ago I bought from Mr Dobell a beautifully bound little manuscript book, the contents of which are described by Mr Dighton on pp.xxix and xxx of his Introduction. It was written out by the poet's nephew, William Godolphin, and presented by him to Elizabeth Countess of Burlington, the only daughter of Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. One of her daughters married Edward, second Earl of Sandwich, to whose father, the first Earl, William Godolphin was at one time Secretary, accompanying his chief to Madrid, where he himself subsequently became Ambassador. A portrait of Lady Burlington, formerly attributed to Lely, is at Hinchingbrooke.
My discovery of this manuscript sent me back to Professor Saintsbury's second volume of the Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, published in 1906, in which he had included Godolphin. Modern textual scholarship has had some hard things to say of this work, but the fact remains that it is an invaluable reassembling of forgotten things, that it was possible only to Professor's Saintsbury's poetic erudition, and that it is distinguished everywhere by his unfailing poetic judgement. Of all modern critics of poetry, there is none, I think, who over so large a field is so consistently right as he.
He can hardly be said to have rediscovered Godolphin, since before 1906 Godolphin had not really been discovered at all. No edition of his poems had ever been printed, and nothing was known of him or his work beyond three or four celebrated biographical allusions, and as many poems inserted in other men's books. When he appeared in Professor Saintsbury's collection he did so as a new poet, one rather `rich in tantalizing indications than fully revealing', and yet wearing `the Caroline rue with a more than sufficient difference'.
Professor Saintsbury's text, however, left some difficulties unsolved, and my manuscript had a little light to throw on these. Moreover, it added a few verses to Godolphin's slender account, and it confirmed his hitherto precarious claim to the lines "The Muse's fairest light in no darke time", which are, perhaps, the chief ornament of the Jonsonus Virbius, and certainly equal to Godolphin's best. In these circumstances I thought that a separate edition of his poems might reasonably be undertaken, and the suggestion was favourably received by the Clarendon Press; very properly, it may be said, in view of Clarendon's own esteem of Godolphin. Happily that learned body does not employ the importunities of other publishers, and the project was left to take its, or rather my, leisurely way.
I did a little collating and made a few references annually, when Professor Gordon wrote to say that a pupil of his proposed to take up the study of Godolphin for a doctorate thesis, and asking what I thought about it. As my wish was rather to see the work done than to do it, I gladly handed over my quite inadequate notes to Mr Dighton, and also placed the Burlington manuscript at his disposal. American industry under the guidance of Oxford scholarship has now produced an edition of Godolphin better in every respect than the one that probably I should never have produced at all. I take it as a courtesy to be asked by Mr Dighton and his learned body to let my name still be associated with it.
Of Godolphin the man three things remain in the memory, and in themselves they are almost sufficient: his very diminutive stature, his popularity among wits and poets, and his courage. It is not Sid whom we call to mind, but, inevitably, little Sid. Clarendon, Lucius Cary, Hobbes, Suckling, were his friends, and I will steal from Professor Saintsbury a perfect word, `to be praised by Clarendon ®and¯ Hobbes is indeed to have your name struck in double bronze'. We may, further, allow Mr Dighton his conclusion that Godolphin must have known Ben Jonson. He praised him nobly, as we have seen. And for the courage, we have the unforgettable figure of the man who could not face a rough wind when riding out with his friends and who yet when the time came forced himself to endure campaigning ardours without complaint, and gave his life in action `by a too forward engaging himself'.
He was thirty-two when he fell at Chagford fighting for the King in the skirmishing of 1643. A country gentleman of taste and leisure, making an inconspicuous appearance in Parliament, and writing occasional verses, he was a Royalist by family and habit. It is unlikely that when the war came there was any question for him of a choice of sides. A Cornish Godolphin of Godolphin was a predestined Cavalier, and it would have needed some very urgent or bitter experience to have brought him into revolt. That he was ever near to such experience there is no reason to believe. But in the little that we know of him there are indications of a man who could not have realized the full significance of the Puritan revolution without sympathy. His one recorded utterance in parliament reflects a mind troubled by misgivings, a thoughtful mind pleading for temperance. That was not the natural Cavalier mood, and, as Mr Dighton notes, there is corresponding gravity to be found in his poetry. By his early death he set himself in history beside Sir Bevil Greville, whose name is almost a Cavalier lyric in itself. But by a little turn of fortune, we fancy, he might easily have found himself at ease among such men as those great Johns, Hampden and Eliot and Milton.
No editorial piety can ever make Godolphin a popular poet, and even his two or three best pieces may never be popularly known. Since each of the available manuscript sources attributes to him roughly the same volume of work, and since it is likely that William Godolphin knew the extent of his uncle's production, we may assume that what remains to us is a fairly comprehensive body of his poetry. Which means that he wrote but little, not more than two or three poems a year. The work itself suggests that even this little was done with difficulty; is it seldom noted for sponteneity.
Although Godolphin died young, a poet at thirty-two cannot claim indulgence as an apprentice. We do not know how far the existing manuscripts represent his own final revisions, but over most of the poems as we have them there is an air of incompletion, as though he had not quite been able to bring it off this time, and had put his paper aside for further consideration on a to-morrow that had a habit of not turning up. I suspect, indeed, that this is what actually happened; that Godolphin's hold on poetry was a fastidious but not a very firm one. Apart from scattered cadences that clearly cannot have been the last choice of an ear usually sensitive, there is a general indecision about the art of a poet who knew very well what his art should be at. Godolphin was fully aware of the discipline of poetry, but a native indolence tempted him from bracing himself to it.
This, I think, is the explanation of Godolphin's failure to place himself among the masters of seventeenth-century lyric. For that there was potential mastery in him there can be little doubt. He rarely wrote his poetry through to completion, but he never wrote it badly. If his work is mostly indetermin- ate, it is the indeterminate expression of a mind finely made for numbers. There is nothing commonplace in his wit, nor affected in his gravity. While we could wish that his verse had been more freely exercised, we do so in the assurance that he was incapable of mere poetical exercises. There is matter and promise of style in everything he wrote, and in almost everything there is needed, we feel, but a touch more of energy to bring him to another victory. `Tantalizing', says Professor Saintsbury. And again he is right.
Nevertheless, although we may feel that here is a poet hidden rather than manifested, we know that poet he is, and Mr Dighton's pains have been well spent in giving all that is recoverable of him in compact and orderly form. From a great age of English lyric, here comes not a full voice, but the lisping of authority. With our wealth we are apt to be spoilt, and it is not good for us to think lightly of a man who came so near to doing the rarest thing supremely well.
No one who cares about poetry can read Godolphin without realizing himself to be with a spirit of high and exquisite grace. And just here and there he will come across something that in its achievement is an earnest of what might have been. The lines in honour of Ben Jonson have not a faltering word from first to last, and they have many of a fresh and lovely minting. It would be hard to find an example anywhere of complimentary verse that is more genuinely poetry. `No more unto ny thoughts appear' very nearly fulfils throughout more than twenty lines the promise of a superb opening; an unusual feat for Godolphin. The beauty of his anticipation and extension of the In Memoriam measure in `Cloris, it is not thy disdain', did not, it need hardly be said, escape Professor Saintsbury's attention.
Apollo, says Suckling in a doggerel passage of the Sessions of the Poets, calling `little Cid' `out of the throng', advised him `not to write so strong'. Unless the warning had some special allusion that now escapes us, Apollo could not have talked greater nonsense. Violence is the quality furthest removed from Godolphin's reserved and modest muse. A little access of vigour was what he most needed. Not vigour of conscience or invention, but of speech. He remained his own debtor for an occasional transport or vehemence that might have loosened up the whole current of his poetry. But even so, his constraint is a reproach against all the facile voluble verse-making that has disfigured the poetry of every age. His faults, his limitations, are those of a scrupulous mind. If the true emphasis was commonly beyond the scope of his vitality, at least he never gave any countenance to dissipated emotion. There is no contact between Godolphin and the poetasters who bask in their own mediocrity. He is, on the contrary, a very good example of a poet who is better than he seems to be. He has not provoked extravagent claims. But his admirers know that such as are advanced are well within the bounds of reason, and he himself would best of all understand how well.
JOHN DRINKWATER.
- Lord heare the Prayer thou doest inspire,
- O Lord, direct both my desire,
- and the successe; O may my cryes,
- Like thy comaunded Incense, rise
- in pretious sweetenesse; may my prayer
- bee purer than the common Aire:
- may itt bee like the offering,
- wch thankefull soules att evening bring, --
- when they unfaind Devotions, pay,
- for the past daungers of the day:
- Let nothing (henceforth) that is vaine,
- my consecrated lipps prophane.
- Hallow my hart, and guard the dore
- make me thy Temple, evermore;
- Let not the beawty of A synne,
- tempt me, to let such poyson in;
- nor let the erring multitude,
- for company, my soul delude;
- Let mee not perish, in their praise,
- but let the righteous, in thy wayes
- guide me, and may I thanke the hand,
- (although severe,) by wch I stand;
- But lett noe pretious Balmes be spilt,
- only to search not heale the guilte;
- give me the ballast of just feare;
- but doe not sink me, in despaire:
- graunt rather that I may extend,
- my prayers for others, that the end
- even of the wicked may prevent
- their everlasting punishment:
- They to my words will give accesse,
- when broken by their wickednesse,
- Falne from the heights they stood upon
- built in Imagination:
- Are wee not all, already dead?
- are wee not like bones, scattered
- before the graves mouth, spent and worne,
- seisd by A long Corruption?
- Lord, from this grave I turne myne Eye
- to thy blest immortality,
- O may the soule, thou didst create,
- praise thee in her eternall state,
- Guide mee through all the treachery,
- and snares of my Mortality;
- Let not my soule bee made their pray,
- who strew temptations in my way;
- but bee they cought in their owne nett,
- who these malitious daungers sett.
Included by Wm Dighton in his edition of Sidney Godolphin's Poems, from a printed copy of Sandys' Paraphrases.
(The latter contained `The Paraphrase of the Psalms, paraphrases upon Job, Ecclesiates, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the Songs collected out of the Old and New Testaments' - Julian, p.994a.) Occasional differences found in the `Drinkwater' MS (`D') are noted below the verses affected.
- These pure immortall Streames, these holy Streynes,
- To flow in which, th'Eternall Wisedome deignes,
- Had first their sacred Spring, in Iuda's Plaines.
- Borne in the East, their Soule of heavenly Race,
- They still preserve a more then Mortall Grace,
- Though through the Mortall pens of Men they passe.
- For purest Organs ever were design'd
- To this high Works, the most Etheriall Mind
- Was touch't, and did these holy Raptures finde.
- You Sir, who all these severall Springs have knowne,
- And have so large a Fountaine of your owne;
- Seeme Borne and Bred for what you now have done.
- Plac'd by just Thoughts, above all worldly Care,
- Such as for Heaven it selfe a Roome prepare,
- Such as alreadie more then Earthly are.
- Next you have known (besides all Arts) their Spring,
- The happie East; and from Iudea bring
- Part of that Power, with which her Ayres you Sing.
[ line 3, D: ... by which ... ]
- Lastly, what is above all Reach of Praise,
- Above Reward, of any fading Bayes,
- No Muse like Yours did ever Language raise.
- Devotion, Knowledge. Numbers, from your Pen
- Mixtly and sweetly flow; whilst listning Men
- Suspend their Cares, inamour'd of your Theme.
- They calme their Thoughts, and in their Bosoms own
- Better Desires, to them perhaps unknowne;
- Till by your Musicke to themselves brought Home.
[ line 3, D: ... by themselves ]
- Musicke, (the universall Language) sweyes
- In everie Minde; the World this Power obeyes,
- And Natures Selfe is charm'd by well-tun'd Layes.
- All disproportion'd, harsh, disorder'd Cares
- Vnequall Thoughts, vaine Hopes, and low Despaires,
- Fly the soft Breath of these harmonious Ayres
- Here is that Harp, whose Charms uncharm'd the brest
- Of troubled Saul, and that unquiet Guest,
- With which his Passions travel'd, disposses'd ...
- Iob, moves Amazement, David moves our Teares;
- His Royall Sonne, a sad Apparell weares
- Of Language, and perswades to Pious Feares.
- The Passions of the First rise great and high,
- But Salomon a lesse concerned Eye
- Casting on all the world, flowes equally.
- Not in that ardent course, as where He woes
- The Sacred Spouse, and her chast Love pursues,
- With brighter flames, and with a higher Muse.
- This Work had beene proportion'd to our Sight,
- Had you but knowne with some allay to Write,
- And not preserv'd your Authors Strength and Light
- But you so crush those Odors, so dispense
- Those rich perfumes, you make them too intense
- And such (alas) as too much please our Sense.
- We fitter are for sorrows, then such Love;
- Iosiah falls, and by his fall doth move
- Teares from the people, Mourning from above.
- Iudah, in her Iosiah's Death, doth dye,
- All Springs of griefe are opened to supply
- Streames to the torrent of this Elegy.
- Others break forth in everlasting Praise
- Having their wish, and wishing they might raise
- Some monument of Thanks to after-Dayes.
- These are the Pictures, which your happy Art
- Gives us, and which so well you doe impart,
- As if these passions sprung in your owne Heart.
- Others translate, but you the Beames collect
- Of your inspired Authors, and reflect
- Those heavenly Rai's with new and strong effect.
- Yet humane Language only can restore
- What humane Language had impair'd before,
- And when that once is done, can give no more.
[ line 3, D: ... can do no more ]
- Sir, I forbeare to adde to what is said,
- least to your burnisht Gold I bring my Lead,
- And with what is Imortall, mixe the Dead.
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(The Rejoice & Sing Enchiridion:edited by David Goodall; last amended 11/4/03)