Thomas Wither

“ It usually lacks any genuine literary quality and often sinks into imbecile doggerel. Ceasing to be a poet, Wither became in middle life a garrulous and tedious preacher, in platitudinous prose and verse, of the political and religious creeds of the commonplace middle-class puritan. ”

“ Quarles thinks of his audience when he lectures; Wither soliloquises in company with a full heart.’ In an essay on ‘The Poetical Works of George Wither’ (published in Lamb's ‘Works’ in 1818) he expressed unbounded faith in his poetic greatness. It is now universally recognised that Wither was a poet of exquisite grace, although only for a short season in his long career. Had his last work been his ‘Faire Virtue,’ he would have figured in literary history in the single capacity of a fascinating lyric poet. ”

“ George Wither was born at Brentworth, 1588. He went to Magdalene College, Oxford. He led a troop of Royalist horse against the Covenanters, but three years later he became a Puritan and held command in Cromwell’s army. He was imprisoned during the Restoration for a time. He died in 1667. Wither wrote, besides his poems, a volume of church hymns, several satires, and a translation of the Psalms.
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair? ”

“ Although Wither lived until 2d May 1667, and was constantly active with his pen, his Hallelujah, 1641, another book of sacred verse, is the only production of his that has received or that deserves much praise. The last thirty years of his long life were eventful and unfortunate. After being a somewhat fervent Royalist, he suddenly changed his creed at the outbreak of the great rebellion, sold his estate to raise men for the Parliament, and was active in its cause with pen as well as with sword. ”

“ Meditations advancing the Glory of God, in the practise of pietie and virtue’ (London, 1641, 12mo) . ‘Halelujah’ is one of the scarcest of all Wither's publications; only four copies are known, of which one is in the British Museum, and a second belongs to Mr. Huth. At the same date Wither repeated his old warning of the nation's impending peril in ‘A Prophesie written long since for this year 1641,’ London, n.d., 8vo (a reprint of the eighth canto of ‘Britain's Remembrancer’ of 1628) .
In 1642 he sold such estate as he possessed and raised a troop of horse for the parliament. ”

“ To every song is added a new and easie Tune, and a short Prologue also’ (London, printed by T. S. 1621, 8vo; dedicated to the archbishop of Canterbury, Abbot) .
Wither's reputation was now assured. Secular and religious critics were equally enthusiastic in his praises, and in 1620 his popularity was paid a very equivocal compliment. A collection of his compositions was surreptitiously issued under the title: ‘The Workes of Master George Wither, of Lincolns-Inne, Gentleman, Containing Satyrs, Epigrammes, Eclogues, Sonnets and Poems. ”

“ If ever a man needed resuscitation in our antiquarian times it was George Wither. When most of the Jacobean poets sank into comfortable oblivion, which merely meant being laid with a piece of camphor in cotton-wool to keep fresh for us, Wither had the misfortune to be recollected. He became a byword of contempt, and the Age of Anne persistently called him Withers, a name, I believe, only possessed really by one distinguished person, Cleopatra Skewton's page-boy. Swift, in The Battle of the Books, brings in this poet as the meanest common trooper that he can mention in his modern army. ”

“ Wither's ‘Halelujah’ and ‘Hymnes and Songs of the Church,’ edited by Edward Farr, were reprinted in the ‘Library of Old Authors,’ 1857–8. The greater number of Wither's works were reprinted by the Spenser Society between 1870 and 1883 in twenty parts. A selection was edited by Professor Henry Morley in his ‘Companion Poets,’ 1891. ‘Fidelia’ and ‘Faire Virtue’ are included in Mr. ”

“ Miss Withers, however, has done very well for her publishers and for herself. She is one of those authoresses who, dying, would never wish to blot out a line they had written, simply because Heaven has gifted them with a [307] happy mental cecity that prevents them from discerning that nine-tenths of their works should never have been written at all. You may see Miss Withers any day in the British Museum Reading-room, vigorously compiling away at the desk marked “for ladies only.” She has piles of books around her ”

“ Wither's publications in the reprint of the Spenser Society, especially the Schollers Purgatory, 1625, and Ecchoes from the Sixth Trumpet, 1666. Some further biographical particulars may be gleaned from the following tracts, in which incidents in Wither's political and literary career are adversely criticised: A letter to George Wither, touching his soi-disant Military Exploits in Kent, Surrey, Gloucester, and Middlesex. ”

“ He insinuates that Chronomastix, under whom he intended to represent Wither, employed one of these presses. Thus, upon the entrance of the Mutes,—
"Fame. What are this pair?
Eyes. The ragged rascals?
Fame. Yes.
Eyes. These rogues; you'd think them rogues,
But they are friends;
One is his printer in disguise, and keeps
His press in a hollow tree."
From this extract it should seem that Wither not only composed the poem at case (the printer's phrase) , but worked it off at press with his own hands.
J.M.G.
Worcester.
"Preached as a dying Man to dying Men" (Vol. i., p. 415.; Vol. ii., p. 28.) ”

“ Death’s to him a strange surprise.’
P. 130, No. cx.—I have detached these two stanzas from a longer poem of which they constitute the only valuable portion. George Wither (‘a most profuse pourer forth of English rhyme’ Phillips calls him) was indeed so intolerable a proser in verse, so overlaid his good with indifferent or bad, that one may easily forget how real a gift he possessed, and sometimes showed that he possessed. ”

“ Mr. Livingston says that there is another copy of this work, in New York. "It is in four volumes, with the title, 'Selections from the Juvenilia and Other Poems of George Wither, with a prefatory Essay by John Matthew Gutch, F.S.A., and His Life, by Robert Aris Wilmott, Esq., Vol. I. [etc.] Typ. Felix Farley: Bristol.' In addition, the first volume has another title-page, 'Poems by George Wither, in four volumes. Vol. I. London: 1839.' On the verso of this is the following Preface:—
"These Poems were many years ago edited and printed at Bristol by Mr. ”

“ Dan Withers came out to the little sagging wooden porch and lit his pipe. Judging from his physique he might have managed the tillable acres of his Swamp Farm with one hand. Also he was not the caricatured work-driven, grasping type of farmer, bent and wooden-jointed and prematurely old, as a result of his struggle to wrest a living from the elements. He had the build of an athlete without the bearing—a laziness of movement and a slouch of the shoulders that was almost insolent, except when he walked before a crowd. He could command a military spine the instant it seemed worth the effort. ”

“ If Silence Withers got the land claim, there'd be a pile, sure enough. Myrtle Hazard ought to have it. If the girl had only inherited that property—whew? She'd have been a match for any fellow. That old Silence Withers would do just as her minister told her,—even chance whether she gives it to the Parson-factory, or marries Bellamy Stoker, and gives it to him after his wife's dead. He'd take it if he had to take her with it. Earn his money, hey, Master Gridley? ”

“ Withers, was instituted in the privacy of a garden; sub rosa, as it were. Civilization flaunts it in the glare of day. The dull marry the poor; the rich the effete; and so our New Jerusalem is peopled with naturals, plain and coloured, at either end. I detest folly; I detest still more (if I must be frank, dear Arthur) mere cleverness. Mankind has simply become a tailless host of uninstinctive animals. We should never have taken to Evolution, Mr. Withers. ”

“ She simply hemmed me defencelessly in with a cloud of men that held me impotent, and yet one and all refused to administer to my poor flustered old king a merciful coup de grâce.
"There," she said, as the clock struck ten—"a drawn game, Withers. We are very evenly matched. A very creditable defence, Withers. You know your room. There's supper on a tray in the dining-room. Don't let the creature over-eat himself. The gong will sound three-quarters of an hour before a punctual breakfast." She held out her cheek to Seaton, and he kissed it with obvious perfunctoriness. ”

“ There was a letter for Withers, slipped sideways into its envelope, on the kitchen table, and mechanically she opened and read it by the bluish flame of the burner. She had always suspected Withers of having a young man, and here was proof of it. But that he should be Mr. Hopkins of the fish-shop!
There is known to medical science a pleasant device known as a counter-irritant. ”

“ Nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo’ (London, printed for John Marriott, 1621, 8vo) , which at once reached a second edition and achieved an extraordinary popularity. There is an engraved frontispiece with a whole-length figure of the author looking towards heaven. Wither, who confusingly dates its first appearance in 1618, says that about thirty thousand copies were printed and published within a few months (Fragmenta Prophetica, p. 47) . It is a fluent series of egotistical reflections on the conduct of life, intermingled with some spirited sarcasm at the expense of the mean and vicious. ”

“ The poems of G. Wither are distinguished by a hearty homeliness of manner, and a plain moral speaking. He seems to have passed his life in one continued act of an innocent self-pleasing. That which he calls his Motto is a continued self-eulogy of two thousand lines, yet we read it to the end without any feeling of distaste, almost without a consciousness that we have been listening all the while to a man praising himself. There are none of the cold particles in it, the hardness and self-ends which render vanity and egotism hateful. He seems to be praising another person, under the mask of self ”

“ Later.—I am unspeakably delighted with the urbanity (on the whole) with which I have been cross-examined. For, to my wonderment, Witherington, Q.C., commenced with displaying a respectful and sympathetic interest in my career, &c., which rendered me completely at my ease, and though on occasions he did suddenly manifest inquisitorial severity, I soon discovered that his anger was mere wind from a tea-pot, and that he was in secret highly gratified by the nature of my replies. ”

“ Live folks are only dead folks warmed over. I can see 'em all in that girl's face, Handsome Judith, to begin with. And that queer woman, the Deacon's mother,—there 's where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and the black-eyed woman with the Indian blood in her,—look out for that,—look out for that. And—and—my son, do you remember Major Gideon Withers?” [Ob. 1780.]
“Why no, father, I can't say that I remember the Major; but I know the picture very well. Does she remind you of him?”
He paused again, until the thoughts came slowly straggling, up to the point where the question left him. ”

“ Withers was a charming person to contemplate from a safe distance,—Simon, who never lent himself to idle detraction. She remembered, too, that she had often reproached herself for her irrational prejudice against the man,—that she was forever finding something false and sinister in the face that every one else said was eminently handsome, and ugly dissonance in the voice that all Hendrik praised for its music. Was he on both sides of that card?—Ah, well! it might be just nothing, after all; the poor lady might be ill, or vexed past endurance at home ”

“ Mrs. Withers was twenty-five. She married Withers, George S. Withers, of Atlanta, Georgia, when she was twenty-one. But, when Miss Fulton had to come here for her health, Mrs. Withers agreed to come, too, and look after her. Withers isn't wealthy. He's a lawyer in Atlanta, but he hasn't a big income."
"How old is Miss Fulton?" asked Bristow.
"Twenty-three."
"Do you know whether Mrs. Withers had any valuable jewelry—rings, stuff of that kind?"
Morley was for a moment visibly disturbed. ”

“ An' you forgive me, Hinry darlin', you forgive me?”
“I've nothing to forgive,” said Henry Withers.
A smile lighted the blanched face of the dying man. “Give me love to the boy—to Peter Macnamara!” he said, and fell back with a smile on his face.
“I'd do it again. Wot's a lie so long as it does good?” said Henry Withers afterwards to Holgate the engineer. “But tell ’er, tell Kitty! no fear! I ain't no bloomin' fool. 'E's 'appy—that's enough. ”

“ What slow movements could Alexandrines express more than these? "As she makes wing, she gets power." One makes a foot of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this species of verse.
[Pg 483]
There is, however, enough genuine un-negatived Lamb (as he would say) remaining to make this edition of Wither a very desirable possession of all collectors of Lamb.
What is even more surprising than Lamb's silence on the subject—which may easily be accounted for by the incomplete state of his correspondence—is the silence of Gutch himself. ”

“ Milton.
Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty, Wither never seems to have abated a jot of that free spirit, which sets its mark upon his writings, as much as a predominant feature of independence impresses every page of our late glorious Burns; but the elder poet wraps his proof-armour closer about him, the other wears his too much outwards; he is thinking too much of annoying the foe, to be quite easy within ”