Mrs. A. T. Thomson

“ Throughout the whole of the winter, the condition of the navy was the incessant theme of Buckingham’s various official correspondents. “Many of the men,” writes Sir Henry Mervyn, “for want of clothes, are so exposed to the weather, that their toes and feet miserably rot away piecemeal.” Yet a fresh expedition was, so early as the twelfth of January, in contemplation; and, hearing this, the French prisoners, to whom an allowance of eightpence a-day was given, refused to go back, as they said there would soon be a fleet fitted out for La Rochelle. ”

“ It is, indeed, a question, and a very serious one,--how far any man is justified in spending, even on noble purposes, and certainly not in mere show, largely beyond his income, as Buckingham did; but his conduct is, at all events, more pardonable than the mere desire to collect a great fortune, from sources which he seems to have considered should be expended either in doing honour to his Sovereign abroad in his embassies--a notion paramount in those days, though out of date in ours--or by the encouragement of arts and sciences, and the duties of hospitality at home. ”

“ When, after the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, the thirst for controversy abated, the desire for cultivation, the love of poetry, and the taste for art remained, took another direction, and tended to the improvement and enlightenment of social life. The higher classes did much to exalt these dawning predilections, until the rebellion came; after that fearful convulsion, the diversions of the great were henceforth debased in character, and their minds in taste.
Mary Countess of Pembroke was one of the earliest and most admired of Ben Jonson’s friends. ”

“ Massinger had great qualities. He was religious, and of rare honesty and independence; yet his religion did not purify his thoughts, nor tend, consequently, to chasten his productions--and his circumstances wore away his real independence, as his dedications testify. His conceptions of what was noble, of what was virtuous, are beautifully expressed in those plays, which are yet so full of coarseness as to be unpresentable; and whilst he never loses any opportunity of exalting virtue, he seizes every occasion of depraving the taste, if not the mind. ”

“ Thus, taste, letters in every branch, the noblest works of architecture and sculpture, were the themes of a court where those who had left behind them the pedantry and vulgarity of King James arrived in the vigour of youth and intellect. Velasquez was painting a portrait of the King, and one also of the Infant, Don Fernando, when Charles and Buckingham arrived at Madrid, and interrupted, by their presence and the ceremonials of their reception, the completion of these pictures. ”

“ Nevertheless, whilst his moral character was sullied by many blemishes, it was free from the unblushing profligacy of some of his predecessors, and superior to the hypocritical sensuality of his contemporary, Richelieu. Happily for the age, the almost blameless early career of Charles enforced that virtue should be respected, and that vice, where it existed, should remain concealed. Buckingham probably owed to this necessity much of what, at all events, may be endowed with the praise of decorum. ”

“ At Hampton Court, a large picture on the staircase sometimes rivets attention, without conferring pleasure--for the taste for allegorical paintings has long since been extinct. It delineates Charles and his Queen as Apollo and Diana in the clouds; the Duke of Buckingham, as Mercury, is introducing them to the Arts and Sciences, whilst genii are driving away Envy and Malice. ”

“ Ben Jonson was a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the parts which reigned in him, a bragger of some good that he wanted, thinketh nothing well done but what either he himself or some of his friends have said or done. He is passionately kind or angry, careless either to gain or keep ”

“ Rubens painted, for three thousand pounds, the ceiling of the Banqueting House built by Inigo Jones--and depicting the “Apotheosis of King James;” a subject highly inconsistent for the purpose for which it is now most strangely appropriated as a chapel. Vandyck was to have adorned the sides with the history of the Garter; so that three great masters would have combined to form that noblest room in the world; but so grand a possession was not destined to be the work of former times, or the pride of our own. ”

“ Well might the Duchess, nevertheless, mourn at the departure of her husband. The plague was raging in the fort 29of La Rochelle with as much fury as in England.
At length, on the 27th of June, the Duke sailed from Portsmouth. If we could accept as sincere the good wishes which attended his departure, no man ever left England with greater assurances of devotion. “Secretary Conway was ready,” he declared, “to carry his hand all the world cries for the Duke’s service.” “The Duke’s good works,” he said, “came forth with a better grace than he ever observed in the acts of any other man. ”

“ A good antiquary, a judge of medals, a capital mechanist--cognizant of the art of printing--there existed not a gentleman of the three kingdoms that could compete with him in universality of knowledge. [149] He was as ready for war as for peace; could put a watch together, yet comprehend a fortification; understood guns, and the art of ship-building; but the dearest occupation of his leisure was the collection of sculptures and paintings.
The Crown was already in possession of some good pictures, when Charles commenced his undertaking. ”

“ The contrast, therefore, between a success so recent and the present odium into which he had fallen, was no doubt the cause of much chagrin to the harassed favourite, who seems, like most men of sensitive natures, to have valued popularity, and to have been fully aware that his political life depended upon it. He knew that no man could long resist the force of public opinion in this country. Even in those 9days, suppressed as it was by a fettered press, and by the gaunt spectre of injustice in Star-chambers, it had exploded into one burst of forcible indignation in the House of Commons. ”

“ Inigo Jones was a Roman Catholic, and, as such, was peculiarly obnoxious to the Parliament party. His very name, too, was mingled with associations of those arts and that magnificence, which, from being the cause of envy, were now the objects of detestation to certain of the people. “Painting had now,” says Walpole, “become idolatry; monuments were deemed carnal pride, and a venerable cathedral seemed equally contradictory to Magna Charta and the Bible.” Even the statue of Charles at Charing Cross was regarded as of ill-omen, and taken away lest it should bring back unpleasant recollections. ”

“ To Shakspeare’s joyous nature, and to the sanguine and then unbroken spirit of Ralegh, the sorrows of the past, the terrors of the future, might easily be forgotten, or suspended over a cup of rich 208Canary; or, as night drew on, after a beaker of sack-posset. But one may picture to oneself the diffident, yet proud Philip Massinger, in his black doublet and plain white linen collar, with shabby tassels hanging from it, feasting, perhaps, at another man’s expense--trying to shine in these "wit-combats"--trying to forget “the basket,” and to seem prosperous ”

“ Henceforth, the less public but more sure sway of an idolized wife would for ever interfere with his counsels. Infuriated against the French, yet madly in love with their Queen, Buckingham had only been deterred from returning to France as a private individual by a dread of assassination on the part of Richelieu, who had, it appears, entertained that design. Having persuaded Charles to send back, contrary to treaties, the Queen’s French attendants, he now drove the inexperienced and irritated Henrietta Maria to despair ”

“ The elegance and purity in the works of Sir Philip Sidney and Spenser were succeeded by coarseness in those of Massinger, Ford, and Ben Jonson. When Massinger ceased to write freely--and, in so doing, to indulge every fancy, fair or foul--he wrote feebly. Of this “The Roman Actor,” to play which he “held to be the most perfect birth of his Minerva,” affords an example. It is free from indelicacy, but presents few of Massinger’s striking excellencies. The plot is bad; the scene in which the character of Paris might have been so powerfully developed, when tempted by Domitian, is poor. ”

“ Whether Massinger ever acted or not, is as doubtful as every other incident of his early life. It was not until 1614 that a glimmering of his actual condition in life is seen through the darkness, and the disclosure is melancholy and discouraging. There is something touching, as well as dreary, in the gloom that one can only diversify with scenes of penury and imprisonment for debt. ”

“ Not contented with what they found might prove a bare declaration of the law, the Commons drew up a Remonstrance, addressed to the King, in order that the too great power of Buckingham might be diminished. The promotion of Papists, the protection of Arminians, under the patronage of Neal and Laud, were the chief subjects, and were calculated to arouse and inflame the passions of a fanatic, like Felton, and to have suggested the reasoning that was soon warped, by prejudice and hatred, into the form and conception of guilt. ”

“ True love is vehement--but it is delicate; and it would have elevated his thoughts, and purified his expressions. Massinger may have done justice to the intellect and companionship of his countrywomen, but he had no reverence for the most beautiful part of their nature; and in this, as in other respects, is far below Shakspeare.
The obscurity which overshadowed all Massinger’s career has rendered any communication, as we have seen, between him and Buckingham, doubtful ”

“ When we add to this that the Earl was no cold, haughty, and pompous host, but facetious, affable, generous, magnificent, as disinterested and independent with the rich and great as he was unaffected and courteous to the humble; when we remember what Wilton even then was--the pride of the nation; when we reflect what and who were the men who were welcomed to its hospitality--men, as Clarendon observes, “of the most pregnant parts and understanding;” when we think of Ben Jonson there--probably received as a guest--whilst Massinger was still only the son of a retainer ”

“ So strange was it to discover in the young soldier the characteristics attributable to a cloister rather than to a camp, that one turns to the mournful plea of insanity for explanation. But no defence of that nature, or on that ground, was ever attempted for Felton; unhappily, so much has lunacy increased in modern times, that it forms now one point in almost every case of unaccountable crime. ”

“ It was during the first years of King James’s reign that Jonson justified these classic allusions in his “Masque and Barriers,” at the nuptials of the Earl of Essex to the faithless bride, also married afterwards to Somerset. “Some,” he says, “may squeamishly cry out, that all endeavours of learning and sharpness in these transitory devises, where it steps beyond their little (or let me not wrong them) no brain at all, is superfluous. ”

“ We must not look for fairness in such a ferment. Even after the tomb had long been closed over his remains, it was scarcely safe, certainly scarcely prudent, to palliate the faults, or to place the virtues of Buckingham in a fair light. ”

“ His brother Giles was, says Anthony Wood, equally “beloved of the muses and the graces.” The Fletchers were, indeed, remarkable for their gifts. Benlowes, in his verses to Phineas, thus expresses his sense of their family attributes:--
“For ’twere a stain, Nature’s, not thy own;
For thou art poet born; who know thee know it;
Thy brother, sire--thy very name’s a poet.” The fame of Giles Fletcher rests chiefly on his poem called “Christ’s Victory,” which is printed with the “Purple Island” by his brother Phineas. ”

“ Originally a joiner, Jones was brought out of obscurity, according to many accounts, by the patron who first extended a hand to assist George Villiers in his struggles in life. William Earl of Pembroke was the friend alike of the young courtier and of the son of the clothworker--the immortal Inigo. Either by the Earl of Arundel or by Pembroke--it is not certain which--Inigo was sent to Italy to learn landscape-painting; but at Rome he soon discovered the inclination and bent of his genius. It is of no use to stop the pure and flowing stream, and thus to make it turbid. ”

“ Philip Massinger was the son of Arthur Massinger, a retainer in the household of the Earl of Pembroke. A retainer was often a gentleman of good birth but small means, and this was probably the condition of Arthur Massinger, who, from his carrying letters from his master, the Earl, to Queen Elizabeth, could not have been a man of low origin, else he would not have been admitted to the honour of conveying any dispatch to one who placed so much importance on lineage in those who entered her presence. ”