Sir John Davies

“ I send forth this new edition of a great Poet assured that he has not yet gathered half his destined renown:—
"Ah! weak and foolish men are they Who lightly deem of Poet's lay, That turns e'en winter months to May, And makes the whole year warm: 'Tis this that brings back Paradise, Reveals its bowers by Art's device, Instructs the fool, delights the wise, And gives to Life its charm. ”

“ There is this difference, however, between Davies and the commonly-styled metaphysical poets, that he argues like a hard thinker, and they, for the most part, like madmen. If we conquer the drier parts of Davies' poem, and bestow a little attention on thoughts which were meant, not to gratify the indolence, but to challenge the activity of the mind, we shall find in the entire essay fresh beauties at every perusal: for in the happier parts we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. ”

“ Behold how my proud quill doth shed
Eternall nectar on her head;
The pompe of coronation
Hath not such power her fame to spread,
As this my admiration.
Respect my pen as free and franke
Expecting not reward nor thanke,
Great wonder onely moues it;
I never made it mercenary,
Nor should my Muse this burthen carrie
As hyr'd, but that she loues it. (p. 154.)
Then in "Orchestra" you are again and again reminded that, mere sport of wit though it be, "suddaine, rash, half-capreol of my wit," as he himself calls it to Martin (p. 159) , it is a man of rare genius who sports. ”

“ Attending nigh about her Court, the braine:
By them the formes of outward things she learnes,
For they returne into the fantasie,
What euer each of them abroad discernes,
And there inrole it for the Minde to see.
But when she sits to iudge the good and ill,
And to discerne betwixt the false and true;
She is not guided by the Senses' skill,
But doth each thing in her owne mirrour view.
Then she the Senses checks, which oft do erre,
And euen against their false reports decrees;
And oft she doth condemne what they preferre,
For with a power aboue the Sense, she sees. ”

“ Davies (along with Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke and Donne) simply as Thinker on the profoundest problems of nature and human nature, seems to me to stand out pre-eminently, and in saying this, I regard it as sheer nonsense to exalt the workmanship at the expense of the material—to ask me to recognize in a bit of tin ingeniously and painstakingly etched into a kind of miracle of execution something co-equal with a solid bar of gold as it gleams i' the face of the sun in its purged and massive simpleness ”

“ The 'hardness' is where it ought to be—in the thinking: but it is a hardness like the bough that is green with leafage and radiant with bloom and odorous with 'sweet scent' and pliant to every lightest touch of the breeze. The leaf and bloom start from the 'hard' bough rightly, fittingly 'hard' to its utmost twig. The alleged 'too much labour' is singularly uncharacteristic. As for the 'madness' I can but exclaim—Oh for more of such 'fine lunacy' as in Donne is condemned! ”

“ But here all the labyrinths and windings of the human frame are laid open: 'tis seen by what pullies and wheels the work is carried on, as plainly as if a window were opened in the breast: for it is the work of God alone to create a mind. ”

“ Or how could she the world's great shape contain,
And in our narrow brests containèd bee?
All bodies are confin'd within some place,
But she all place within her selfe confines;
All bodies haue their measure, and their space,
But who can draw the Soule's dimensiue lines?
No body can at once two formes admit,
Except the one the other doe deface;
But in the soule ten thousand formes do sit,
And none intrudes into her neighbour's place.
All bodies are with other bodies fild,
But she receiues both heauen and earth together ”

“ Cowley with pleasing softness and plenty of imagination: none ever uttered more divine thought than Mr. Herbert; none more philosophical than Sir John Davies. His thoughts are moulded into easy and significant words; his rhymes never mislead the sense, but are led and governed by it: so that in reading such useful performances, the wit of mankind may be refined from its dross, their memories furnished with the best notions, their judgments strengthened, and their conceptions enlarged: by which means the mind will be raised to the most perfect ideas it is capable of in this degenerate state. ”

“ For the poet takes care in every line to satisfy the understandings of mankind: he follows step by step the workings of the mind, from the first strokes of sense, then of fancy, afterwards of judgment, into the principles both of natural and supernatural motives: hereby the soul is made intelligible, which comprehends all things besides ”

“ Euen so Man's Soule which did God's image beare,
And was at first faire, good, and spotlesse pure;
Since with her sinnes her beauties blotted were,
Doth of all sights her owne sight least endure:
For euen at first reflection she espies,
Such strange chimeraes, and such monsters there;
Such toyes, such antikes, and such vanities,
As she retires, and shrinkes for shame and feare.
And as the man loues least at home to bee,
That hath a sluttish house haunted with spirits;
So she impatient her owne faults to see,
Turnes from her selfe and in strange things delites. ”

“ If it reaches the heart at all, it is through the reason. But since strong argument in terse and correct style fails not to give us pleasure in prose, it seems strange that it should lose its effect when it gains the aid of regular metre to gratify the ear and assist the memory. Lines there are in Davies which far out-weigh much of the descriptive and imaginative poetry of the last two centuries, whether we estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual vigour they display. ”

“ At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions: power shades off into feeling ”

“ Sith all God's creature's mortall and diuine,
Sith God Himselfe, is her eternall food.
Bodies are fed with things of mortall kind,
And so are subiect to mortalitie;
But Truth which is eternall, feeds the mind;
The Tree of life, which will not let her die.
[Pg 98]
Violence cannot destroy her.
Yet violence, perhaps the Soule destroyes:
As lightning, or the sun-beames dim the sight;
Or as a thunder-clap, or cannons' noyse,
The power of hearing doth astonish quite.
But high perfection to the Soule it brings,
T' encounter things most excellent and high ”

“ The similarly alleged "little fancy" is one of manifold proofs that the critic was the most superficial of all imaginable readers with so much pretention. "Nosce Teipsum" is radiant as the dew-bedabbled grass with delicacies of fancy, not a few of the "fancies" being as exquisitely touched as divine work. ”

“ Every quatrain is a pointed expression of a separate thought, like one of Rochefoucault's maxims; each thought being, by great skill and painstaking in the packing, made exactly to fit and to fill the same case. It may be doubted, however, whether Davies would not have produced a still better poem if he had chosen a measure which would have allowed him greater freedom and real variety ”

“ Springs not from Sense, nor humors, well agreeing;
Her nature is peculiar, and her owne:
She is a substance, and a perfect being.
That the Soule is a Spirit.
But though this substance be the root of Sense,
Sense knowes her not, which doth but bodies know;
Shee is a spirit, and heauenly influence,
Which from the fountaine of God's Spirit doth flow.
Shee is a Spirit, yet not like ayre, or winde,
Nor like the spirits about the heart or braine;
Nor like those spirits which alchymists do find,
When they in euery thing seeke gold in vaine.
For shee all natures vnder heauen doth passe ”

“ The 'scruple' must be 'light' indeed that has to decide whether the 'reasoning' of "Nosce Teipsum" be or be not 'poetry.' It is astounding that at this time o' day any should attempt to exclude the highest region of the intellect and its noblest occupation from poetry. Poetry I must hold absolutely is poetry, whatever be its matter and form if the thinking be glorified by imagination or tremulous with emotion. ”

“ The 'coldness' of 'cloth and metallic threads' which the critic applies to the 'hard arguments' of Nosce Teipsum is a mere imagination. But besides, the 'metallic threads' are not for warmth but for splendour. The lining of the 'splendidly curious' garment is to be looked for for warmth. ”

“ For all things else, which Nature makes to bee,
Their being to preserue, are chiefly taught;
And though some things desire a change to see,
Yet neuer thing did long to turne to naught.
If then by death the soule were quenchèd quite,
She could not thus against her nature runne;
[Pg 91] Since euery senselesse thing, by Nature's light,
Doth preservation seeke, destruction shunne.
Nor could the World's best spirits so much erre,
If death tooke all—that they should all agree,
Before this life, their honour to preferre;
For what is praise to things that nothing bee? ”

“ Nor can her selfe discourse or iudge of ought,
But what the Sense collects and home doth bring;
And yet the power of her discoursing thought,
From these collections, is a diuers thing.
For though our eyes can nought but colours see,
Yet colours giue them not their powre of sight;
So, though these fruits of Sense her obiects bee,
Yet she discernes them by her proper light.
The workman on his stuffe his skill doth show,
And yet the stuffe giues not the man his skill;
Kings their affaires do by their seruants know,
But order them by their owne royall will. ”

“ You look for the eagle when you have climbed [Pg xciii] Shehallion and other Highland mountain fastnesses; but suppose it were to flap out upon you as you paced into your semi-suburban villa. So in "Nosce Teipsum," as seen, deep thought perfectly worked is what knowing the Poet you look for therein; but even in "Hymnes to Astræa" and "Orchestra" you very soon discover that it is still the Poet of "Nosce Teipsum" who sings. The moods of thought are airier and more vivacious substantively, but the thinking and shaping and colouring of imagination is the same ”

“ Which all the world doth seek, with endlesse paynes.
[Pg 13]
Yet can you never fixe yr thoughts on these,
These cannot with your heavenly mind agree;
These momentary objects cannot please,
Your wingèd spirit, which more aloft doth flee.
It only longs to learne and know the truth,
The truth of every thing, which never dies;
The nectar which præserves the soule in youth;
The manna which doth minds immortalize. ”

“ It is sheer folly to refuse to the Poet any material within the compass of the universe. Especially deplorable is it to have to argue for possibilities of poetry in the greatest of all thinking, viz., metaphysics, in the face of such actualities of achievement as in Davies and Lord Brooke and Donne.
[Pg lxxx]
A second characteristic of "Nosce Teipsum" that calls for notice is its perfection of workmanship shown in the mastery of an extremely difficult stanza, as well as its solidity of material. ”

“ His and compeers' 'madness' is worth cart-loads of most men's sanity.
In our own day Dr. George Macdonald has spoken more wisely if still somewhat superficially of "Nosce Teipsum" in his charming "England's Antiphon." Having explained that by "Immortality of the Soul" is intended "the spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence," he proceeds:—"It [Nosce Teipsum] is a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means of imaginative or poetic embodiment generally. ”

“ When Heauen and Earth shall like a shadow passe.
Perhaps some thing repugnant to her kind,
By strong antipathy, the Soule may kill;
But what can be contrary to the minde,
Which holds all contraries in concord still?
She lodgeth heat, and cold, and moist, and dry,
And life, and death, and peace, and war together;
Ten thousand fighting things in her doe lye,
Yet neither troubleth, or disturbeth either.
Shee cannot Die for want of Food.
Perhaps for want of food the soule may pine ”

“ Thou leau'st Thy print in other works of Thine,
But Thy whole image Thou in Man hast writ;
There cannot be a creature more diuine,
Except (like Thee) it should be infinit.
[Pg 82]
But it exceeds man's thought, to thinke how hie
God hath raisd Man, since God a man became;
The angels doe admire this Misterie,
And are astonisht when they view the same.
That the Soule is Immortal, and cannot Die.
Nor hath He giuen these blessings for a day,
Nor made them on the bodie's life depend;
The Soule though made in time, suruives for aye,
And though it hath beginning, sees no end. ”

“ It demands robustness of brain and sensibilities of spirit to appreciate adequately Sir John Davies as a Poet; but if, in all humility of receptiveness and open-eyedness, these volumes be read, no one competent can go away unimpressed. Whether as Thinker or Singer he must be placed among the rare few who have enriched our highest Literature. ”

“ As soone as they are borne, the world they view,
And with their mouthes, the nurses'-milke receiue.
So, when the Soule is borne (for Death is nought
But the Soule's birth, and so we should it call)
Ten thousand things she sees beyond her thought,
And in an vnknowne manner knowes them all.
Then doth she see by spectacles no more,
She heares not by report of double spies;
Her selfe in instants doth all things explore,
For each thing present, and before her, lies. ”

“ Are ignorant both what shee is, and where.
One thinks the Soule is aire; another, fire;
Another blood, diffus'd about the heart;
Another saith, the elements conspire,
And to her essence each doth giue a part.
Musicians thinke our Soules are harmonies,
Phisicians hold that they complexions bee;
Epicures make them swarmes of atomies,
Which doe by chance into our bodies flee.
[Pg 27]
Some thinke one generall Soule fils euery braine,
As the bright sunne sheds light in euery starre;
And others thinke the name of Soule is vaine,
And that we onely well-mixt bodies are. ”

“ Again in the Poem, after a subtle and very remarkable 'confutation' of the notion that the Soul is a thing of 'Sense' only, there comes proof "That the Soule is more than the Temperature of the humours of the Body;" and nowhere does Davies show a more cunning hand than in his statement of the 'false opinion.' Turning once more to Nemesius c. ”

“ Since Nature failes vs in no needfull thing,
Why want I meanes my inward selfe to see?
Which sight the knowledg of my self might bring,
Which to true wisdome is the first degree.
That Power which gaue me eyes the World to view,
To see my selfe infus'd an inward light;
Whereby my Soule, as by a mirror true,
Of her owne forme may take a perfect sight,
[Pg 26]
But as the sharpest eye discerneth nought,
Except the sunne-beames in the ayre doe shine;
So the best Soule [87] with her reflecting thought,
Sees not her selfe without some light diuine. ”

“ Cast not her serious [164] wit on idle things:
Make not her free-will, slaue to vanitie.
And when thou think'st of her eternitie,
Thinke not that Death against her nature is,
Thinke it a birth; and when thou goest to die,
Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to blisse. [165]
[Pg 116]
And if thou, like a child, didst feare before,
Being in the darke, where thou didst nothing see;
Now I haue broght thee torch-light, feare no more;
Now when thou diest, thou canst not hud-winkt be.
And thou my Soule, which turn'st thy curious eye,
To view the beames of thine owne forme diuine ”