Thomas Crashaw

“ The poems, of a high quality, are inspired with a devout piety which is often fantastically expressed and quaintly figured. His poetry is not so “metaphysical” as that of some others of his group; but neither does it rise to the great heights that they sometimes achieve.
(c) Richard Crashaw (1613–50) , the son of a clergyman, was born in London, and educated at the Charterhouse [171] and at Cambridge. During the Civil War, in which he was a strong Royalist, he was compelled to escape to France, where he became a Roman Catholic. ”

“ It is true that the bird on a free wing could avoid him with contemptuous ease, but along his own path he was a terrifying juggernaut. [216] Crashaw, thus circumscribed, was a power, a moving force.
But now he was seeking to crush, not some paralysed rabbit on the road, but an elusive spirit of swiftness which has no name, but may be figured as the genius of modernity. ”

“ Lawrence said one day to a group of Fifth Formers, friends of his, who had been disparaging “Pishaw, P—shaw,” which was their name for Edward. Go on! You’re jealous. Crashaw’s a bigger man than you’ve got, and you know it. There is n’t a near athlete in your whole form. You take it as a personal insult if anybody gets out and does things better than you can; you think then that he’s fresh.’’
“That is n’t why we think you’re fresh, Laurie,” retorted Tweed, one of the Fifth Formers.
“Before we’d let a new kid—a new kid that ought to have gone to St. ”

“ And Durant clapped him on the shoulder just as Blanchard had done.
Charles Crashaw paused to survey his men and the enemy. There was Jackson, dishevelled, dirty, panting, but in the full flush of his strength; opposite him stood Edward, with his face white and drawn, betraying exhaustion and suffering. Charles looked along the line. His jocular word to Blanchard before the game had come true. He had found St. Timothy’s weak spot.
There were only a few minutes left before time would be called. Charles began to drive every play against his brother. ”

“ There is so much gain, however, to the poet, that we have no disposition to take exception to the single string of Crashaw. The beauty of the Venus was made up from the charms of many models. So, in our libraries, as in life, we must be content with parcel-work, and take one man's wisdom and another's sentiment, looking out that we get something of each to enrich our multifarious life.
Crashaw's poetry is one musical echo and aspiration. He finds his theme and illustration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him: his lute is always by his side. ”

“ Crashaw is never quite so great as there; but he is often quite as small. His exasperating lack of self-criticism has sometimes led selectors to make a cento out of his poems—notably in the case of the exceedingly pretty "Wishes to His Unknown Mistress," beginning, "Whoe'er she be, That not impossible she, That shall command my heart and me"—a poem, let it be added, which excuses this dubious process much less than most, inasmuch as nothing in it is positively bad, though it is rather too long. ”

“ Master Crashaw is not the only man by many who in the past has been seduced into putting into words and verse the aspirations, on this subject, which filled his soul. It would probably be found, if anyone had the requisite patience to go through with it, that there has been scarcely a poet who has not thus given expression to his conception of an ideal woman and to his desire for her companionship. ”

“ Diffuseness and intricate conceit, which at times become grotesque, are the defects of Crashaw's poetry. His metrical effects, often magnificent, are very unequal. He has little of the simple tenderness of Herbert, whom he admired, and to whom he acknowledged his indebtedness. Marino, the Italian poet, encouraged his love of quaint conceit, although the gorgeous language of Crashaw in his rendering of Marino's ‘Sospetto d'Herode’ leaves his original far behind. ”

“ In many a lyric of flaming passion Crashaw expresses his love-longing for his God, and he describes in terms only matched by his spiritual descendant, Francis Thompson, the desire of God to win the human soul. ”

“ Crashaw represents the best and the worst of the Metaphysical poets. At his best he has an energy and triumphant rapture that, outside the poems of Shelley, are rarely equaled in English; at his worst he is shrill, frothy, and conceited. His style at its best is harmonious, precise, and nobly elevated; at its worst it is disfigured by obscurity, perversity, and unseemly images. His chief work is Steps to the Temple (1646) .
We quote an extract to show the exalted mood to which his poetry can ascend:
Live in these conquering leaves ”

“ Besides these printed poems, Crashaw left a mass of verse in manuscript, only a part of which has been preserved. A volume in the Tanner MSS. at the Bodleian, in the handwriting of Archbishop Sancroft, includes, among many poems by other hands, ‘Mr. Crashaw's poems transcrib'd from his own copie before they were printed: amongst wch are some not printed.’ There are here some twenty pieces both in Latin and English by Crashaw, which were first printed in Dr. Grosart's edition in 1872. None add much to the poet's reputation, and most of the English poems appear to be early work. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the poet had then formally entered the Roman catholic church. He had just addressed letters in verse to his patroness, Susan Feilding, countess of Denbigh, sister of the great Duke of Buckingham, urging her to take a like step. Cowley introduced Crashaw to Queen Henrietta Maria, then in Paris, whom Crashaw had already addressed in complimentary poems published in university collections. She readily gave him introductions to Cardinal Palotta and other persons of influence at Rome, and according to Prynne a purse was made up for him by her and other ladies. ”

“ Mr. Forman bowed his head slightly with an air [184] of reverence, and nodded two or three times to express his perfect approval of the rector's sentiments.
"You think the child's mind is being perverted by his intercourse with the books in the library where he—he—'plays' was your word, I believe?"
"No, not altogether," replied Crashaw, drawing his eyebrows together. "We can hardly suppose that he is able at so tender an age to read, much less to understand, those works of philosophy and science which would produce an evil effect on his mind. ”

“ He was the son of a Protestant clergyman zealous even to controversy. By a not unnatural reaction Crashaw, by that time, it is said, a popular preacher, when expelled from Oxford in 1644 by the Puritan Parliament because of his refusal to sign their Covenant, became a Roman Catholic. He died about the age of thirty-four, a canon of the Church of Loretto. There is much in his verses of that sentimentalism which, I have already said in speaking of Southwell, is rife in modern Catholic poetry. I will give from Crashaw a specimen of the kind of it. ”

“ The custom of his age permitted the use of images and phrases which we now justly condemn as incongruous and unseemly, and the fervent fancy of Crashaw carried this licence to excess. At the same time his verse is studded with fiery beauties and sudden felicities of language, unsurpassed by any lyrist between his own time and Shelley’s. There is no religious poetry in English so full at once of gross and awkward images and imaginative touches of the most ethereal beauty. The temper of his intellect seems to have been delicate and weak, fiery and uncertain ”

“ We must see the boy, Challis. Personally I am, of course, satisfied, but we must not give Crashaw opportunity to raise endless questions, as he can and will. There is Mayor Purvis, the grocer, to be reckoned with, you must remember. He represents a powerful Nonconformist influence. Crashaw will get hold of him—and work him if we see Purvis first. Purvis always stiffens his neck against any breach of conventional procedure. ”

“ Our author receiving letters of recommendation from his Queen, he took a journey into Italy, and by virtue of those letters became a secretary to a Cardinal at Rome, and at length one of the canons or chaplains of the rich church of our lady of Loretto, some miles distant from thence, where he died in 1650.
This conduct of Crashaw can by no means be justified: when a man changes one religion for another, he ought to do it at a time when no motive of interest can well be supposed to have produced it ”

“ The very maddest and most methodless of the "Metaphysicals" cannot touch Crashaw in his tasteless use of conceits. When he, in The Weeper just above referred to, calls the tears of Magdalene "Wat'ry brothers," and "Simpering sons of those fair eyes," and when, in the most intolerable of all the poet's excesses, the same eyes are called "Two waking baths, two weeping motions, Portable and compendious oceans," which follow our Lord about the hills of Galilee, it is almost difficult to know whether to feel most contempt or indignation for a man who could so write. ”

“ Mrs. Stott refused to face the village. She knew that the place was all agape, eager to stare at what they considered some "new kind of idiot." Let them wait, was Ellen Mary's attitude. Her pride was a later development. In those early weeks she feared criticism.
But she granted Crashaw's request to see the child, and after the interview (the term is precise) the rector gave way on the question of a private ceremony, though he had indignantly opposed the scheme when it was first mooted. ”

“ Crashaw's style may have been influenced by Marino as well as Donne. His conceits are frequently of the physical and luscious character, to which the Italian tended always, the English poet never. He translated the first canto of the Strage degli Innocenti, frequently intensifying the imaginative effect, at other times making the conceit more pointed and witty, occasionally going further in the direction of confectionery even than Marino. The latter does not describe hell as a "shop of woes," nor say that the Wise Men went—
"Westward to find the world's true Orient" ”

“ Mr. Crashaw seems to have been a very delicate and chaste writer; his language is pure, his thoughts natural, and his manner of writing tender.
* * * * *
WILLIAM ROWLEY. An author who lived in the reign of Charles I. and was some time a member of Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge. There are no particulars on record concerning this poet. He was beloved, says Langbaine, by Shakespear, Johnson, and Fletcher, and writ with the former the British Merlin, besides what he joined in writing with poets of the third class, as Heywood, Middleton, Day, and Webster. ”

“ It was something, at any rate, that she was out of the Chapel, away from Mr. Crashaw's piercing eyes, Mr. Thurston's rasping voice, Mr. Warlock's reproachful melancholy. She felt this evening as though by struggling with all her strength she could shut the gates upon new experiences that were fighting to enter into her soul, but must, at all costs to her own happiness, be defeated. No such thing as ghosts, no such thing as a God, be He kind, tender, cruel or loving—nothing but what one can see, can touch, can confront with one's physical strength. ”

“ Crashaw was a good scholar, an eloquent preacher, and a strong protestant. His principal works are: 1. ‘Romish Forgeries and Falsifications, together with Catholike Restitutions,’ London, 1606, 4to. 2. ‘Newes from Italy, of a second Moses, or the life of Galeacius Caracciolus, the noble Marquesse of Vico,’ translated, London, 1608, 4to. Other editions appeared, some of which are entitled ‘The Italian Convert’ (Brydges, Censura Literaria, ed. 1809, x. 105) . 3. ‘The Sermon preached at the Crosse, Feb. ”

“ It is seldom possible to wander far among the lily-beds of English sacred lyrics without meeting traces of Crashaw, the ever-fragrant; and in Lionel Johnson the affinity is quite manifest. Indeed, many of his Catholic
poems are altogether worthy of a place beside the master's. ”

“ Jocelyn Thew replied. "I understand that he has asked specially to be allowed to remain where he is. There would of course be not the slightest chance of saving his life. The doctor who is with him—Gant, I think his name is—told us that anything in the shape of a rough sea, even, would mean the end of him. He quite understands this himself." Crawshay assented gravely.
"It seems a little brutal but it is common sense," he declared. "In times of great stress, too, one becomes primitive, and the primitive instinct is for the strong to save himself. ”

“ There was a peculiar glitter in Crawshay's deep-set eyes. For a single moment a new-born strength seemed to deepen the lines in his face—a transforming change.
"You needn't worry, Captain," he remarked coolly. "I am not taking too many chances, and if our friend Mr. Jocelyn Thew should turn out to be the man I believe him to be, I would rather tackle him alone."
"Why," Mr. Dix demanded, "should anything in the shape of violence take place? The ship can be searched, every article of baggage ransacked, and every passenger made to run the gauntlet." ”

“ Fifteen years of Stoke had brought about a reaction. Nature had made him a feeble fanatic, and he was now as ardent an opponent of science as he had once been a defender. In his little mind he believed that his early reading had enabled him to understand all the weaknesses of the scientific position. His name was Percy Crashaw.
Mrs. Stott could not deny her rector the right of entry, and he insisted on seeing the infant, who was not yet baptised—a shameful neglect, according to [94] Crashaw, for the child was nearly six weeks old. Nor had Mrs. Stott been "churched." ”