John Davies

“ 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. ”

“ Here unquestionably Sir John Davies far excels Lord Brooke and Donne, and later, Sir William Davenant in "Gondibert." The two former are occasionally (it must be granted) semi-inarticulate, and the last is very often monotonous and trying. "Nosce Teipsum" is throughout articulate and unmistakeable, and never flags. You have a fear o' times that a metaphor will prove grotesque or mean: or a vein of thought pinch and go out from ore to bare limestone. ”

“ Or smooth my rimes with Delia's servant's file."
(Vol. I. p. 212) . It is a pleasure to be able to vindicate Sir John Davies from abuse of so genuine a Poet-contemporary as Daniel, and Daniel from so weighty an adverse judgment, had it really been Davies's. To the same good friend who has so helped me elsewhere—Dr. Brinsley Nicholson—I owe thanks for these too-long-delayed corrections.
V. Marston and 'Orchestra.' But if Harrington and Davies of Hereford praised, there were others who had their jeers at Orchestra, e.g. ”

“ I know no more noble story than the Work of Sir John Davies in and for Ireland. Our collection of his Prose Works, wherein his State Papers and Correspondence will appear in extenso—from H. M. Public Record Office and other sources—will make it clear as day that beyond all comparison he was the foremost man in the Government. ”

“ I pronounce it a hallucination to write "Sir John Davies' poem on the immortality of the Soul is chiefly taken from Nemesius." Not one line was taken from Nemesius.
Before passing on it may be well to illustrate here from the "contents" of two chapters (representative of the whole) in Wither's Nemesius, the merely super [Pg lxiv] ficial agreement between them and "Nosce Teipsum." In the Poem under "The Soule of Man and the Immortalitie thereof" various opinions of its 'nature' are thus summarized:
"One thinks the Soule is aire ”

“ There is more than dexterity, there is consummate art—the art of a conscious master—in the inter-weaving of the lines and stanzas of "Nosce Teipsum." Professor Craik recognised the difficulty and the triumph, but fails by ultra-ingenuity in accounting for either the [Pg lxxxi] selection of the measure or the miracle of its continuous success. His criticism is worth recalling, thus:—"A remarkable poem of this age ... is the 'Nosce Teipsum' of Sir John Davies ... a philosophical poem, the earliest of the kind in the language. ”

“ The only element in common is that necessarily Nemesius adduces and discusses the opinions of the Heathen Philosophers on the many matters handled by him, and Sir John Davies does the same with equal inevitableness. But to base a charge of plagiarism against "Nosce Teipsum" on this, is to reason on the connection between Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands (if the well-worn folly be a permissible reference) . The following is the title-page of the quaint old tome and as it is by no means scarce, any reader can cross-question our witness: "The Nature of Man. ”

“ The above saying is well-known all over Wales, but in the northern part of the Principality people say, “Esmwyth y cwsg potes faip.” What is known as “Cawl erfin” in South Wales, is known in North Wales as “potes faip.”
Another similar saying which I have heard many a time is “Esmwyth cwsg cawl dwr”—easily sleeps water broth.
Mr. John Davies, of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, in the “Cambrian Notes and Queries,” says: “‘Esmwyth cwsg cawl dwr’ is an old saying in Cardiganshire, especially in the parish of Llandyssul. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Title-page—Dedicn pp 2—Of Humane Knowledge pp 1-8—Of the Soule of Man and the Immortalitie thereof pp 9-81. Hymnes pp 20 [unpaged] —Orchestra pp 47 [unpaged] .
In my first edition of Sir John Davies' Poems in the Fuller Worthies' Library, I printed, perhaps with too hasty decision, at the bottom of each page, certain slight MS. notes written by the famous Bp. Hacket, in his copy of Nosce Teipsum (1599) . When it was too late to stop progress, the mere curiosity of the jottings was perceived. I do not [Pg 6] deem it expedient to reproduce them here ”

“ Davies’s shop is kept nowadays by a Covent Garden salesman. Instead of being lined with books, it is filled with baskets of fruit and sacks of potatoes, and the parlour wall and that glass-panelled parlour door are thrown down, and parlour and shop are all one. But the upper part of the house remains practically unaltered, and with a little imagining you can restore the lower to what it was when these walls held the gruff rumbling of the Doctor’s voice, and looked down on the humiliation of Boswell under the roguish eyes of Davies and his pretty wife. ”

“ And bound it fast in chaines of restlesse loue:
Requires it out of bondage to depart,
Yet is she sure from her it cannot moue.
Draw backe (said she) your helpeless loue from me,
Your worth requires a farre more worthy place:
Vnto your suite though I cannot agree,
Full many will it louingly embrace.
It may be so (my deere) but as the Sunne,
When it appeares doth make the starres to vanish!
[Pg 106] So when your selfe into my thoughts do runne,
All others quite out of my heart you banish.
The beames of your perfections shine so bright,
That straight-way they dispell all other light. ”

“ Among the Carte Papers in the Bodleian are rough jottings by the Historian for a Memoir of our Sir John Davies, wherein it is stated that the family came originally from South Wales to Tisbury, Wiltshire. The words are: "His family had continued several generations in ye place, though descended from a family of that name in South Wales: but planted heere in England Temp. Hen. 7: accompanying at that time ye Earle of Pembrooke out of Wales. [2]
The 'estate' of the Davieses at Tisbury was named Chicksgrove (sometimes spelled Chisgrove.) ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is written in rhyme, in the common heroic ten-syllable verse, but disposed in quatrains, like the early play of Misogonus, already mentioned, and other poetry of the same era, or like Sir Thomas Overbury's poem of 'The Wife,' the 'Gondibert' of Sir William Davenant, and the 'Annus Mirabilis' of Dryden, at a later period. No one of these writers has managed this difficult stanza so successfully as Davies: it has the disadvantage of requiring the sense to be in general closed at certain regularly and quickly-recurring turns, which yet are very ill adapted for an effective pause ”

“ This makes him to esteeme his foes soe light,
And in his hart to say, I cannot fall,
Nor can misfortune light on mee at all:
His mouth is full of execrat [i] ons vile;
Under his tongue doth sit ungodly guile;
[Pg 138] Close in the corners of the waies he lies,
And lurkes, and waits, the simple to surprize:
Euen as a lyon lurkinge in his den,
To assault and murther innocent poore men;
Gainst whom his eyes maliciously are sett,
To catch them when they fall into his nett.
Himselfe hee humbles, bowes, and crouchinge stands
Till poore men fall into his powerfull hands ”

“ DAVIES (Davisius) , JOHN (1679–1732) , English classical scholar and critic, was born in London on the 22nd of April 1679. He was educated at Charterhouse and Queens’ College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow (July 7th, 1701) . He subsequently became rector of Fen Ditton, prebendary of Ely, and president of his college. He died on the 7th of March 1731–1732, and was buried in the college chapel. Davies was considered one of the best commentators on Cicero, his attention being chiefly devoted to the philosophical works of that author. ”

“ Set them in slipperie wayes, and darke withall,
And let God's Angell smite them as they fall;
For they have spred a nett and dig'd a pitt,
Euen without cause to catch my soule in it:
But in that pitt let them fall vnawares,
And bee entangled in their proper snares;
But thou my soule, whom God [215] thus guides from ill,
Rejoyce in Him, and His saluation still;
My bones shall say, Lord who is like to Thee?
Who poore weake men from their strong foe dost free:
False witnesses arose with oathes untrue,
And chargèd mee with things I neuer knew ”

“ As it is against the nature of an Angell to be circumscribed in Place, so it is against the nature of Place to haue the motion of an Angell. I must stay forsaken and desolate. You may goe with maiestie, joy, and glory. My only suyte, before you goe, is that you will pardon the close imprisonment [Pg 256] which you haue suffred euer since your comminge, imputinge it not to mee, but St. Swythen, who of late hath raysed soe many stormes, as I was faine to prouide this Anchor, [290] for you, when I did vnderstand you would put into this creeke. ”

“ 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. ”

“ John, on whose steps we were sitting, felt the need of speech.
"I have often wondered," he said, turning to Miss Davies, "how your brother ever got into such a nice family as yours. How do you keep so cheerful with it always about?"
"One gets used to it in time," said Miss Davies.
"I suppose so," said John. "After all, we have the same sort of family disaster in Alan, but we manage to bear up."
Davies rose.
"You and I don't seem popular here," he said to me. "Will you conduct me to the billiard-room or the smoking-room? I am in need of a wash." ”

“ Hee doth not euer chide, and never linne, [244]
Nor keepes displeasure alwayes in His minde,
Nor after our misdeedes doth Hee vs charge;
Nor takes Hee of our faults a strict account,
But as the space from earth to heauen is large,
So farr His mercy doth our sinnes surmount.
As east from west is distant farr away,
Soe farr doth Hee from us our sinnes remoue:
As fathers, kindnes to their sonnes bewray,
Soe God to them that feare Him, showes His loue.
For Hee that made vs and knowes all, doth know
The matter whereof man was made of old ”

“ 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. ”

“ Miss Davies sighed heavily.
"If you two are going to sit here thinking of clever remarks to make about each other I shall go home. For goodness' sake let's pretend we are enjoying ourselves."
"I am enjoying myself," said John plaintively; "I've been wanting to say what I really think of your brother for years."
"Well, don't do it now. Things are miserable enough without having discussions on Arthur. Let's all have a game at something, shall we?"
"Splendid idea," said her brother. "What about tennis?" ”

“ 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 ”

“ Sir Egerton favours their Donne authorship simply because "they seem rather to partake of the conceits of Donne than of the simple vigour of Davies" but he forgot the 'Hymnes to Astræa' and 'Orchestra'; which are in the same vein. It is to be regretted that Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas modernized the text in his reprint of the 'Rhapsody': (2 vols. crown 8vo. 1826, Pickering) : and perhaps equally so, that Mr. Collier in his careful and beautiful private one, has selected the first incomplete edition. ”

“ These tales are brought into connexion with the present day in more ways than one, for besides the various accounts of the bwganod or bogies of Corwrion frightening people when out late at night, Mr. D. E. Davies knows a man, who is still living, and who [67] well remembers the time when the sound of working used to be heard in the pool, and the voices of children crying somewhere in its depths, but that when people rushed there to see what the matter was, all was found profoundly quiet and still. ”