Charles Lamb - The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

The Mistress of Philarete is in substance a panegyric protracted through several thousand lines in the mouth of a single speaker, but diversified, so as to produce an almost dramatic effect, by the artful introduction of some ladies, who are rather auditors than interlocutors in the scene; and of a boy, whose singing furnishes pretence for an occasional change of metre: though the seven syllable line, in which the main part of it is written, is that in which Wither has shown himself so great a master, that I do not know that I am always thankful to him for the exchange.

Wither has chosen to bestow upon the lady whom he commends, the name of Arete, or Virtue; and, assuming to himself the character of Philarete, or Lover of Virtue, there is a sort of propriety in that heaped measure of perfections, which he attributes to this partly real, partly allegorical, personage. Drayton before him had shadowed his mistress under the name of Idea, or Perfect Pattern, and some of the old Italian love-strains are couched in such religious terms as to make it doubtful, whether it be a mistress, or Divine Grace, which the poet is addressing.

In this poem (full of beauties) there are two passages of pre-eminent merit. The first is where the lover, after a flight of rapturous commendation, expresses his wonder why all men that are about his mistress, even to her very servants, do not view her with the same eyes that he does.

Sometime I do admire,

All men burn not with desire;

Nay I muse her servants are not

Pleading love; but O! they dare not.

And I therefore wonder, why

They do not grow sick and die.

Sure they would do so, but that,

By the ordinance of fate,

There is some concealed thing

So each gazer limiting,

He can see no more of merit

Than beseems his worth and spirit,

For in her a grace there shines,

That o'er-daring thoughts confines;

Making worthless men despair

To be lov'd of one so fair.

Yea the destinies agree,

Some good judgments blind should be, And not gain the power of knowing Those rare beauties in her growing. Reason doth as much imply: For if every judging eye, Which beholdeth her, should there Find what excellencies are; All, o'ercome by those perfections, Would be captive to affections. So in happiness unblest, She for lovers should not rest.

The other is, where he has been comparing her beauties to gold, and stars, and the most excellent things in nature; and, fearing to be accused of hyperbole, the common charge against poets, vindicates himself by boldly taking upon him, that these comparisons are no hyperboles; but that the best things in nature do, in a lover's eye, fall short of those excellencies which he adores in her.

What pearls, what rubies can

Seem so lovely fair to man,

As her lips whom he doth love,

When in sweet discourse they move,

Or her lovelier teeth, the while

She doth bless him with a smile?

Stars indeed fair creatures be;

Yet amongst us where is he

Joys not more the whilst he lies

Sunning in his mistress' eyes.

Than in all the glimmering light

Of a starry winter's night?

Note the beauty of an eye—

And if aught you praise it by

Leave such passion in your mind,

Let my reason's eye be blind.

Mark if ever red or white

Any where gave such delight,

As when they have taken place

In a worthy woman's face.

I must praise her as I may,

Which I do mine own rude way;

Sometime setting forth her glories

By unheard of allegories—&c.

To the measure in which these lines are written, the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may shew, that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements of passion. So true it is, which Drayton seems to have felt, that it is the poet who modifies the metre, not the metre the poet; in his own words, that

It's possible to climb;

To kindle, or to slake;

Altho' in Skelton's rhime. [35]

[35]"A long line is a line we are long repeating. In the Shepherds Hunting take the following—

"If thy verse doth bravely tower,

As she makes wing, she gets power ; Yet the higher she doth soar, She's affronted still the more, 'Till she to the high'st hath past, Then she rests with fame at last.

what longer measure can go beyond the majesty of this! what Alexandrine is half so long in pronouncing or expresses labor slowly but strongly surmounting difficulty with the life with which it is done in the second of these lines? or what metre could go beyond these, from Philarete —

"Her true beauty leaves behind

Apprehensions in my mind

Of more sweetness, than all art

Or inventions can impart.

Thoughts too deep to be express'd, And too strong to be suppress'd."

Table of Contents

I.—MRS. GOULD (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON"

II.—MISS KELLY AT BATH

III.—RICHARD BROME'S "JOVIAL CREW"

IV.—ISAAC BICKERSTAFF'S "HYPOCRITE"

V.—NEW PIECES AT THE LYCEUM

Table of Contents

Olympic Theatre

(1818)

This Theatre, fitted up with new and tasteful decorations, opened on Monday with a burletta founded upon a pleasant extravagance recorded of Wilmot the "mad Lord" of Rochester. The house, in its renovated condition, is just what play-houses should be, and once were, from its size admirably adapted for seeing and hearing, and only perhaps rather too well lit up. Light is a good thing, but to preserve the eyes is still better. Elliston and Mrs. Edwin personated a reigning wit and beauty of the Court of Charles the Second to the life. But the charm of the evening to us, we confess, was the acting of Mrs. T. Gould (late Miss Burrell) in the burlesque Don Giovanni which followed. This admirable piece of foolery takes up our hero just where the legitimate drama leaves him, on the "burning marl." We are presented with a fair map of Tartarus, the triple-headed cur, the Furies, the Tormentors, and the Don, prostrate, thunder-smitten. But there is an elasticity in the original make of this strange man , as Richardson would have called him. He is not one of those who change with the change of climate. He brings with him to his new habitation ardours as glowing and constant as any which he finds there. No sooner is he recovered from his first surprise, than he falls to his old trade, is caught "ogling Proserpine ," and coquets with two she devils at once, till he makes the house too hot to hold him ; and Pluto (in whom a wise jealousy seems to produce the effects of kindness) turns him neck and heels out of his dominions—much to the satisfaction of Giovanni , who stealing a boat from Charon, and a pair of light heels from Mercury , or (as he familiarly terms him) Murky , sets off with flying colours, conveying to the world above the souls of three damsels, just eloped from Styx, to comfort his tender and new-born spiritualities on the journey. Arrived upon earth (with a new body, we are to suppose, but his old habits) he lights a-propos upon a tavern in London, at the door of which three merry weavers, widowers, are trouling a catch in triumph over their deceased spouses—

They lie in yonder church-yard

At rest—and so are we.

Their departed partners prove to be the identical lady ghosts who have accompanied the Don in his flight, whom he now delivers up in perfect health and good plight, not a jot the worse for their journey, to the infinite surprise, and consternation ill-dissembled, of their ill-fated, twice-yoked mates. The gallantries of the Don in his second state of probation, his meeting with Leporello , with Donna Anna , and a countless host of injured virgins besides, doing penance in the humble occupation of apple-women, fishwives and sausage-fryers, in the purlieus of Billinsgate and Covent-garden, down to the period of his complete reformation, and being made an honest man of, by marrying into a sober English citizen's family, although infinitely pleasant in the exhibition, would be somewhat tedious in the recital: but something must be said of his representative.