Thomas Stanley

“ Brown-haired, hazel-eyed, fresh-cheeked, serene rather than gay, he seems the very incarnation of the ideal for which many others, less fortunate, hungered in that vexed England: the man ‘innocent and quiet,’ whose ‘mind to him a [xix] kingdom is,’ whose ‘treasure is in Minerva’s tower,’ and ‘who in the region of himself remains.’ Through the Civil struggle, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, he had followed a way of peace, without blame, and he is almost the only poet of the stormy time who is absolutely unaffected by it. ”

“ The pleasure they can still give is inexhaustible, for unconscious genius like theirs, however narrow, is a deeper well than Goethe’s. Cast aside, and contemned, and left in the darkness long ago, the greater number of these English Alexandrians are as alive as the lamp in Tullia’s tomb; and of these Stanley, as a craftsman, is almost first. ”

“ Perhaps, after all, that is one of our blunders; for every hour, nowadays, we are busy breaking a backward path through the historic underbrush, in order to speak with those singing gentlemen of ‘the Warres,’ whose art and statecraft and religion some of us (who have seen the end of so much else) , find incredibly attractive to our own. Their lawless [xvi] vision, like that of children, and the mysterious trick of music in all their speech, are things we love instinctively, and never can regain. ”

“ To name his familiar associates is to call up a bright and thoughtful pageant, for they include, besides Lovelace and Suckling and Sherburne, the Bromes; James Shirley; John Davies of Kidwelly; John Hall of Durham, better remembered now as the friend of Hobbes than as the prodigy his generation thought him; and the genial Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton. Though Stanley knew how to protest manfully when the profits of his mental labours were in danger of being withdrawn from him, yet he sought none of the usual awards of life, and never increased his patrimony. ”

“ Hardly any poet of his poetic day, to be discovered hereafter, can be appraised on a more intimate understanding, or can awaken a more endearing interest. Yet we know that save for one or two of his pieces extant here or there in anthologies; save for a private reprint in 1814 by that tireless scholar and ‘great mouser,’ Sir Egerton Brydges; save for Mr. A. H. Bullen’s valued reproduction of the Anacreontea, in 1893, Thomas Stanley’s name is utterly unknown to the modern world.
We have indeed travelled far from the ideals of the seventeenth century. ”

“ Stanley’s exemption did not pass unnoticed; and William Fairfax (‘no man fitter!’) is careful to instruct us that Doris, Celinda, and Chariessa were ‘various rays’ of ‘one orient sun,’ and further, that ‘no coy ambitious names may here imagine earthly flames,’ because the poet’s professional and deliberate [xviii] homage was really paid to inward beauty, and never to ‘roses of the cheek’ alone. Here we run up against a sweet and famous moral of Carew’s, which not Carew, but Stanley, bears out as the better symbolist of the two. ”

“ Stanley’s fastidious strength, his wayward but concentrated grace, his spirit of liberty and scorn in writing of love (which was one of the novel characteristic notes of Wither’s generation, and of Robert Jones’s before him) ; the sunny, fearless mental motion, like that of a bird flying not far, but high, seem to our plodding scientific wits as unnatural as a Sibyllic [xvii] intoxication. He strikes few notes; he recognises his limits and controls his range ”

“ Thy growing worth know age, though not decay,
Till thou pay back thy theft, and live to climb
As many years as thou hast snatch’d from Time.
On Sir J [ohn] S [uckling] his Picture and Poems [1646] . [14:1] [22]
Suckling, whose numbers could invite
Alike to wonder and delight,
And with new spirit did inspire
The Thespian scene, and Delphic lyre,
Is thus express’d in either part,5
Above the humble reach of Art.
Drawn by the pencil, here you find
His form; by his own pen, his mind.
Answer [to “The Union,” Poem addressed to Stanley by his Friend and Tutor, William Fairfax] . ”

“ My heart thou may’st without a rival own, [10:1] 30
While such as willingly themselves beguile,
And sell away their freedoms for a smile,
Blush to confess our joys as far above
Their hopes, as friendship’s longer-liv’d than love.
On Mr. Shirley’s Poems [1646] . [11:1]
When, dearest Friend, thy verse doth re-inspire
Love’s pale decaying torch with brighter fire,
Whilst everywhere thou dost dilate thy flame,
And to the world spread thy Odelia’s name,
The justice of all ages must remit5
To her the prize of beauty, thee of wit. ”

“ Choosing the contemplative life, Stanley, [xiii] like William Habington and Drummond of Hawthornden, was shut in with his mental activities, while many others whom they knew and whom we know, poor gay sparks of Parnassus, were dimming and blunting themselves on bloody fields. Like Habington and Drummond also in this, he was, though a passive Royalist, Royalist to the core. ”

“ His light bright best, his viridaria, have borne victoriously the lava-drift of nearly three centuries. An amorist of even temper and of malice prepense, a railer with a sound heart, an untyrannic master of his Muse, Stanley sings low to his small jocund lyre, and need not be too curiously questioned about his sincerity. How can it matter? He gives delight; he deserves the bays.
This little book is the first complete reprint of Stanley ever published: it is his original and inclusive output. The text is a new text, inasmuch as it represents the Editor’s choice of readings, among many variants ”

“ It will be noticed that there is one sad devotional poem in this book, ‘The lazy hours move slow’; and as it appears only in John Gamble’s book, 1657, it may fairly be inferred that it was written later than the other lyrics. In 1657 Stanley was two-and-thirty, and his singing-time, so far as we know, was over. He had discharged it well. He fails where any true artist may ever be expected to fail, in verses occasional and complimentary. ”

“ This is most probably Dorothy Spencer, born Sidney, Countess of Sunderland, Waller’s ‘Saccharissa,’ then a widow: a woman entirely worthy of Stanley’s admiration, and within his circle of personal friends. The Holy Court, a practical and devotional treatise by Nicolas Caussin, S.J., was first translated into English by Sir Thomas Hawkins, and published in London in 1626. There was a fine five-volume edition printed in 1650. A copy of this may, very likely, have been Stanley’s gift. ”

“ Alban’s Court, Nonington, near Canterbury. Following the almost unbroken law of the heredity of genius, Stanley derived his chief mental qualities from his mother; and through her he was nearly related to the poets George Sandys, William Hammond, Sir John Marsham the chronologer, Richard Lovelace and his less famous brother; as, through his father, to a fellow-poet perhaps dearer to him than any of these, Sir Edward Sherburne.
His tutor, at home, not at College, was William Fairfax, son of the translator of Tasso. ”

“ The earlier issue is rare; it figures in the British Museum Music Catalogues, but not in those of the Bodleian Library. There is at Oxford, however, a copy of the later edition, and on this the present editor bases the readings common both to 1656 and 1657. As a general thing these readings of the Gamble Stanley are particularly satisfying, and besides having all the advantages in point of time, may have profited by the author’s careful revision. John Gamble’s music-book is devoted wholly to Stanley’s poems. ”

“ I acknowledge it a bold Undertaking to compose your Words, (which are so pure Harmonie in themselves,) into any other Musick. But it was not in my ambition or hope to mend the least Accent or Emphasis wch they received from your own numerous Soul, but to essay how neer a whole life spent in the study of Musical Compositions could imitate the flowing and naturall Graces which you have created by your Fancie. ”

“ But, to balance this, he is often exceptionally happy when translating.
His portrait, in middle age, by Faithorne after Lely, commends him to us all as quite worthy of the affection and applause which surrounded him from his youth, and never spoiled him. ”

“ He returned to England in the full fury of the great Civil contest (his family having emigrated to France, meanwhile) , and settled down to work, not forensic, but literary, in the Middle Temple. There he fell to editing Æschylus, turning Anacreon into English, and planning the beginnings of his History of Philosophy. ”

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“ The second ‘hearts’ in the closing line reads ‘they’ in all editions [94] of Stanley. It is possible that this word ‘they’ has been caught from the line just before, after a fashion only too familiar to copyists and printers. Even so, it would mean not ‘lovers’ but ‘hearts.’ The word ‘hearts,’ one is tempted to think, may be the right word.
34:1. To Chariessa: Beholding herself, etc. (p. 41) .
The edition of 1651 omits ‘To Chariessa.’ The Editor regrets having included it, by an oversight, in this section. ”

“ Form and method, therefore, [xxi] are both, after a fashion, novel, but not without their good inherent justification, nor without fullest obedience of spirit to the author’s individual genius and its posthumous dues. The spelling has been modernised, and particular pains have been taken with the punctuation. This reprint is a deferent attempt to set forth Thomas Stanley as a little latter-day classic, in his old rich singing-coat, made strong and whole by means of coloured strands of his own weaving.
L. I. G.
Oxford, August 31, 1905. ”

“ The elision of the relative pronoun between lines 3 and 4 of the present text, and again in the course of line 5, is an irritating mannerism of the time, nowhere more frequent than in Stanley.
23:2. P. 31, line 9. 1657: ‘hope.’
23:3. P. ” line 10. 1647: ‘hopes as cold’; 1657: ‘thoughts that’s cold.’
23:4. P. 31, line 14. 1647:
‘When death and cold despair inhabit near?’
And 1657:
‘When death and old despair inhabit here?’
23:5. ”

“ John Gamble.
In this collection of Stanley’s verse, 1656, 1657, the lyrics have no titles of any sort, but are numbered.
12. Psalterium Carolinum: the Devotions of His Sacred Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings rendred in Verse [from the Eikon Basilike by T. Stanley] . Set to Musick for 3 Voices and an Organ or Theorbo by John Wilson, Dr. and Music Professor of Oxford, London. Printed for John Martin and James Allestrey, and are to be sold at the Bell in St. Pauls Church-yard. 1657. Folio. ”

“ A LIST OF EDITIONS OF THOMAS STANLEY’S POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS
[Note.—The present ‘List’ may be looked upon as an apology for a Stanley Bibliography, which, on the present occasion, is an impossibility to the compiler, who has, to some extent, had to satisfy himself with the sparse details of the ordinary bibliographical works; in addition, he has been aided by the Editor of the present edition of Stanley’s Poems.—J. R. Tutin.]
1. [Anonymous lines [*] to Sir John Suckling occurring beneath Marshall’s portrait of him in edd. ”

“ Song: ‘Celinda, by what potent art?’ (p. 45) .
38:1. P. 45, line 9. ‘Friend’: 1647, 1651.
The Tomb (p. 46) .
39:1. P. 47, lines 19-20. In the version of 1647, these lines read:
‘And (thou in this flame sacrific’d to me) ,
We might each other’s mutual martyr be.’
The whole third stanza is reproduced from 1647; it figures neither in 1651 nor in 1657.
39:2. [95] P. 47, line 30. ‘Love’: 1647; a manifest befogging duplication of the ‘love’ in the preceding line. ‘Kill’ seems to be called for, or perhaps ‘slay,’ a word less in favour with Stanley. ”

“ Nor longer at my destiny repine.20
Counsel and choice are things below thy state:
Fortune relieves the cruelties of Fate.
[9]
III. LYRICS PRINTED ONLY IN THE EDITION OF 1657 [JOHN GAMBLE’S AYRES AND DIALOGUES] HAVING NO TITLES.
On this Swelling Bank. ”

“ The Editor’s best acknowledgements are due to Mr. W. Bailey Kempling, for his painstaking copy, from the 1651 edition of Stanley in the British Museum, of a large number of the poems collated in this book.
[1]
LYRICS: THOMAS STANLEY I. LYRICS PRINTED ONLY IN THE EDITION OF 1647.
The Dream.
That I might ever dream thus! that some power
To my eternal sleep would join this hour!
So, willingly deceiv’d, I might possess
In seeming joys a real happiness.
Haste not away: O do not dissipate5
A pleasure thou so lately didst create! ”

“ On Mr. Sherburne’s Translation, etc. (p. 20) .
In Stanley, 1647, entitled: ‘To Mr. E. S. on his Translation of Medea, with the other Tragedies of Seneca the philosopher, and vindication of the Author.’ Sherburne was not knighted until 1682, four years after Stanley’s death.
12:2. P. 20, line 20. 1647: ‘author.’
13:1. On Mr. Hall’s Essays (p. 21) .
In Stanley, 1647: ‘To Mr. I. H. on his Essays.’
13:2. P. 21, line 4. Here ends the prologue-like poem, in the edition of 1647. Then, as a separate piece on another page, under a new title, ‘To Mr. I. H.,’ follow these lines:
‘I’ll not commend thee ”

“ The rest as in the present edition. ‘Full,’ in the third line just quoted, is certainly a misprint, crept up from the line below.
13:3. P. 21, line 13. 1647 has:
‘The pride of others’ autumns poor appears.’
John Hall of Durham was but nineteen years old in 1646.
14:1. On Sir John Suckling, etc. (p. 22) .
Fragmenta Aurea, the posthumous collection of Suckling’s poetry, came out in 1646, with a fine portrait engraving by Marshall.
15:1. Answer.
The verses by Stanley’s tutor and friend are reproduced in the editions both of 1647 and of 1651. ”

“ Song: ‘Faith, ’tis not worth your pains’ (p. 31) .
24:1. P. 31, lines 2-3. 1657, blunderingly:
‘To seek t’inspire
A heart so pure as mine.’
24:2. P. ” line 12. 1647: ‘you’ll.’
Expectation (p. 32) .
25:1. P. 32, line 5. 1647: ‘or.’
The Breath (p. 33) . [92]
26:1. P. 33, line 8. Sic in 1647 and 1657. ‘He back receives’: 1651.
26:2. P. ” line 11. 1647 and 1657 have: ‘Which, while he sportively.’
Gamble evidently had the 1647 copy of this song before him, as he follows it throughout, slighting Stanley’s corrections of 1651. ”