Twenty years after the death of Chapman the long list of his dramatic works was completed by the publication of two tragedies in which, though there are but few qualities common to both, there are yet fewer traces of either the chief merits or the chief defects which distinguish and deform alike the poems and the tragic plays published during the life of the author. There is nothing in them of bombast, of barbarism, or of obscurity; there is assuredly no lack of incidents, and these, however crowded and violent in themselves, are conducted with such clearness and simplicity of exposition as to keep the attention and interest of the reader undistracted and unfatigued. The style in both is pure, lucid, and vigorous; equably sustained at an even height above the lowlands of prosaic realism and beneath the cloudland of winds and vapours; more forcible and direct in the first play, more florid and decorative in the second. On the other hand, these posthumous children have not the lofty stature, the kingly aspect, the gigantic sinews and the shining eyes which went far to redeem the halting gait and the irregular features of their elders. They want the breadth of brow, the weight of brain, the fullness of speech, and the fire of spirit which make amends for the harsh voice and stammering tongue that imperfectly deliver the message entrusted to them; the tumultuous eloquence which bears down and sweeps away all physical impediment of utterance, the fervid vitality which transfigures and atones for all clumsiness of gesture or deformity of limb.
No thought so ripe and sweet, no emotion so exalted and august, is here discernible as that which uplifts the contemplation and upholds the confidence of the highest in spirit and the deepest in thought among those earlier speakers who served as mouthpieces of the special genius of their high-minded and deep-souled creator. There is no trace of the ethical power which informs and moulds the meditation of Clermont or of Cato, no relic of the imaginative passion which expands and inflates the fancy of Bussy or of Biron. In Alphonsus there is more of Chapman’s quality at first perceptible than in Revenge for Honour; there is a certain hardness in the simplicity of tone, a certain rigidity in the sharp masculine lineaments of style and character, common to much of his work when free from the taint of crabbed or bombastic obscurity. The singular violation and confusion of history, which may be taken to mask the probable allusions to matters of more recent political interest, are ably explained and illustrated by Dr. Elze in the thoroughly efficient and sufficient introduction to his edition of this play; in which the student will observe, with gratitude for his help and admiration for his learning in all matters of social and historical illustration, that the German editor has kept well to such work as he was perfectly competent to discharge, and has never on this occasion exchanged the highest seat in the hall of scholarship for the lowest form in the school of criticism. By him as by others the actual merit of this most unhistoric of historical dramas has perhaps been somewhat underrated. Naked as it is of ornament, violent in most of its action and repulsive in several of its scenes, barren of beauty in language and poor in treasure of thought, it never fails in animation and interest; and the hardened student of our early stage who has once entered the shambles will hardly turn away in disgust or weariness from the fume and flow of monotonous bloodshed till his curiosity at least has been satisfied by the final evolution of the tangled web of slaughter. In this catastrophe especially there is a remarkable sense of strong material effect, with a notable capacity for vigorous theatrical manipulation of incident, which is as notably deficient in the earlier and loftier works of Chapman.
In the tragedy of Revenge for Honour I have already noticed the curious change of style which distinguishes it from all other works of Chapman: a change from rigidity to relaxation, from energy to fluency, from concentration to effusion of language. It has something of the manner and metre of Fletcher and his school, something of the softness and facility which lend a half-effeminate grace to the best scenes of Shirley: while in the fifth act at least I observe something too much of the merely conventional imagery and the overflow of easy verbosity which are the besetting sins of that poet’s style. Only in one image can I find anything of that quaint fondness for remote and eccentric illustration in which the verse of Chapman resembles the prose of Fuller: this is put into the mouth of the villain of the piece, who repudiates conscience as
a weak and fond remembrance
Which men should shun, as elephants clear springs,
Lest they behold their own deformities
And start at their grim shadows.
Even here the fall of the verse is not that of Chapman, and the tone of the verses which immediately follow is so utterly alien from the prevailing tone of his that the authenticity of the scene, as indeed of the whole play, can only be vindicated by a supposition that in his last years he may for once have taken the whim and had the power to change his style and turn his hand to the new fashion of the youngest writers then prospering on the stage. Only the silliest and shallowest of pedants and of sciolists can imagine that a question as to the date or the authorship of any poem can be determined by mere considerations of measure and mechanical computation of numbers; as though the language of a poem were divisible from the thought or (to borrow a phrase from the Miltonic theology) the effluence were separable from the essence of a man’s genius. It should be superfluous and impertinent to explain that the expression is not to be considered apart from the substance; but while men who do not know this are suffered to utter as with the authority of a pedagogue or a pulpiteer the verdict of the gerund grinders and metre mongers on the finest and most intricate questions of the subtlest and most sublime of arts, it is but too evident that the explanation of even so simple and radical a truth can be neither impertinent nor superfluous. It is not because a particular pronoun or conjunction is used in this play some fifty times oftener than it occurs in any other work of its author, a point on which I profess myself neither competent nor careful to pronounce, that I am prepared to decide on the question of its authenticity or its age. That question indeed I am diffident enough to regard as one impossible to resolve. That it is the work of Chapman I see no definite reason to disbelieve, and not a little reason to suppose that it may be. The selection and treatment of the subject recall the trick of his fancy and the habit of his hand ; the process of the story is in parts quaint and bloody, galvanic and abrupt; but the movement on the whole is certainly smoother, the evolution more regular, the arrangement more dramatic than of old. Accepting it as the last tragic effort of the author whose first extant attempt in that line was Bussy d’Ambois, we shall find perhaps in the general workmanship almost as much of likeness as of unlikeness. Considered apart and judged by its own merits, we shall certainly find it, like Alphonsus, animated and amusing, noticeable for a close and clear sequence of varying incident and interest, and for a quick light touch in the sketching of superficial character. These being its chief qualities, we may fairly pronounce that whether or not it be the work of Chapman it belongs less to his school than to the school of Shirley; yet being as it is altogether too robust and masculine for a work of the latter school, it seems most reasonable to admit it as the child of an older father, the last-born of a more vigorous generation, with less of strength and sap than its brothers, but with something in return of the younger and lighter graces of its fellows in age. The hero and his father are figures well invented and well sustained; the villains are not distorted or overdrawn, and the action is full of change and vivacity.
Of the poems published by Chapman after the first of his plays was given to the press, we may say generally that they show some signs of advance and none of retrogression from the standard of his earlier work. Out of many lovely lines embedded in much thick and turbid matter I choose one couplet from The Tears of Peace as an example of their best beauties:-
Free sufferance for the truth makes sorrow sing,
And mourning far mote sweet than banqueting.
In this poem, with much wearisome confusion and iteration of thought and imagery, reprobation and complaint, there are sever
al noble interludes of gnomic and symbolic verse. The allegory is of course clouded and confounded by all manner of perversities and obscurities worth no man’s while to elucidate or to rectify; the verse hoarse and stiff, the style dense and convulsive, inaccurate and violent; yet ever and anon the sense becomes clear, the style pure, the imagery luminous and tender, the verse gracious and majestic; transformed for a moment and redeemed by great brief touches of high and profound harmony; of which better mood let us take in proof a single instance, and that the most sustained and exquisite we shall find:-
Before her flew Affliction, girt in storms,
Gash’d all with gushing wounds, and all the forms
Of bane and misery frowning in her face;
Whom Tyranny and Injustice had in chase;
Grim Persecution, Poverty, and Shame;
Detraction, Envy, foul Mishap and lame
Scruple of conscience; Fear, Deceit, Despair
Slander and Clamour, that rent all the air;
Hate, War, and Massacre; uncrowned Toil
And Sickness, t’all the rest the base and foil,
Crept after; and his deadly weight trod down
Wealth, Beauty, and the glory of a crown.
These usher’d her far off; as figures given
To show, these crosses borne make peace with heaven.
But now, made free from them, next her before,
Peaceful and young, Herculean silence bore
His craggy club; which up aloft he hild;
With which and his fore-finger’s charm he still’d
All sounds in air; and left so free mine ears,
That I might hear the music of the spheres,
And all the angels singing out of heaven;
Whose tunes were solemn, as to passion given
For now, that Justice was the happiness there
For all the wrongs to Right inflicted here.
Such was the passion that Peace now put on;
And on all went; when suddenly was gone
All light of heaven before us; from a wood,
Whose sight foreseen now lost, amazed we stood,
The sun still gracing us; when now, the air
Inflamed with meteors, we discover’d fair
The skipping goat; the horse’s flaming mane;
Bearded and trained comets; stars in wane;
The burning sword; the firebrand-flying snake;
The lance; the torch; the licking fire; the drake
And all else meteors that did ill abode
The thunder chid; the lightning leapt abroad;
And yet when Peace came in all heaven was clear;
And then did all the horrid wood appear,
Where mortal dangers more than leaves did grow;
In which we could not one free step bestow,
For treading on some murder’d passenger
Who thither was by witchcraft forced to err:
Whose face the bird hid that loves humans best,
That hath the bugle eyes and rosy breast,
And is the yellow autumn’s nightingale.
This is Chapman at his best; and few then can better him. The language hardly holds lovelier lines, of more perfect colour and more happy cadence, than some few of these which I have given to show how this poet could speak when for a change he was content to empty his mouth of pebbles and clear his forehead of fog. The vision of Home which serves as overture to this poem is not the only other noble feature which relieves a landscape in too great part made up of rocks and brambles, of mire and morass; and for the sake of these hidden green places and sunny moments some yet may care to risk an hour or so of toil along the muddy and thorny lanes that run between.
From the opening verses of The Tears of Peace we get one of the few glimpses allowed us into the poet’s personal life, his birthplace, the manner and the spirit of his work, and his hopes in his ‘retired age’ for ‘heaven’s blessing in a free and harmless life’; the passage has beauty as well as interest far beyond those too frequent utterances of querulous anger at the neglect and poverty to which he could not resign himself without resentment. It would have been well for himself as for us, who cannot now read such reiterated complaints without a sense of weariness and irritation, if he had really laid once for all to heart the noble verses in which he supposes himself to be admonished by the ‘spirit Elysian’ of his divine patron Homer, who told him, as he says, ‘that he was angel to me, star, and fate.’
Thou must not undervalue what thou hast,
In weighing it with that which more is graced
The word that weigheth inward should not long
For outward prices. This should make thee strong
In thy close value; Nought so good can be
As that which lasts good between God and thee.
Remember thine own verse-Should Heaven turn Hell
For deeds well done, I would do ever well.
The dignity and serenity of spirit here inculcated are not compatible with the tone of fierce remonstrance and repining defiance which alternates with such higher tones of meditation and self-reliance as constantly exalt and dignify the praises of those patrons to whom he appeals for recognition as for a right not to be withheld without discredit to them and danger of future loss of that glory which he had to give. In all dedicatory verse known to me I find nothing that resembles the high self-respect and haughty gratitude of a poet who never forgets that for every benefit of patronage conferred he gives fully as much as he may receive. Men usually hurry over the dedications of poet to patron with a keen angry sense of shame and sorrow, of pity and repulsion and regret; but it may be justly claimed for Chapman that his verses of dedication can give no reader such pain as those of others. His first and best patron in the court of James was that youth on whose coffin so many crowns of mourning verse were showered, and who does by all report seem to have well deserved that other than official regrets should go with him to his grave. A boy dying at eighteen after three years’ proof of interest in the higher culture of his time, three years during which he had shown himself as far as we can see sincere and ardent in his love of noble things only, and only of noble men, of poetry and of heroes-champion of Raleigh in his prison and patron of Chapman in his need-must certainly have been one worthy of notice in higher places than a court; one who, even if born in a loftier atmosphere and likelier to bring forth seed of enduring honour, would assuredly have earned remark and remembrance as a most exceptional figure, of truly rare and admirable promise. The inscription of Chapman’s Iliad to Prince Henry is one of his highest and purest examples of moral verse: the august praise and grave exaltation of his own great art give dignity to the words of admonition as much as of appeal with which he commends it to the acceptance and reverence of kings.
We may well believe that the prince’s death gave to the high heart of his old Homeric teacher and counsellor of royal and heroic things a sharper pain than the mere sense of a patron lost and of personal as well as of national hopes cut off. Yet in his special case there was good reason for special regret. The latter instalments of his lofty labour on the translation of Homer were inscribed to the ignoblest among the minions, as the former had been inscribed to the noblest among the children of the king. An austere and stately moralist like Chapman could hardly have sought a stranger patron than Carr; and when we find him officiating as paranymph at those nuptials which recall the darkest and foulest history in all the annals of that reign, the poisonous and adulterous secrets of blood and shame in whose darkness nothing is discernible but the two masked and muffled figures of treachery and murder, we cannot but remember and apply the parallel drawn by Macaulay from the court of Nero; nor can it be with simple surprise that we listen to the sermon or the song composed by Seneca or by Lucan for the epithalamium of Sporus and Locusta.
The celebration of that monstrous marriage in ethic and allegoric verse brought nothing to Chapman but disquiet and discredit. Neither Andromeda Lady Essex nor Perseus Earl of
Somerset had reason to thank or to reward the solitary singer whose voice was raised to call down blessings on the bridal bed which gave such a Julia to the arms of such a Manlius. The enormous absurdity of Chapman’s ever unfortunate allegory was on this auspicious occasion so much more than absurd that Carr himself would seem to have taken such offence as his luckless panegyrist had undoubtedly no suspicion that he might give. And yet this innocence of intention affords one of the oddest instances on record of the marvellous want of common sense and common tact which has sometimes been so notable in men of genius. It is hardly credible that a grave poetic moralist of fifty-five should have written without afterthought this thrice unhappy poem of Andromeda Liberata. Its appearance did for once succeed in attracting attention; but the comment it drew down was of such a nature as at once to elicit from the author ‘a free and offenceless justification of a lately published and most maliciously misinterpreted poem’; a defence almost as amazing as the offence, and decidedly more amusing.
The poet could never imagine till now so far-fetched a thought in malice (‘such was my simplicity,’ he adds with some reason) as would induce any reader to regard as otherwise than ‘harmlessly and gracefully applicable to the occasion’-these are his actual words-the representation of ‘an innocent and spotless virgin [sic] rescued from the polluted throat of a monster, which I in this place applied to the savage multitude.’ Such is the perversity of man, that on perusing this most apt and judicious allegory ‘the base, ignoble, barbarous, giddy multitude’ of readers actually thought fit to inquire from what ‘barren rock’ the new Perseus might be said to have unbound his fettered virgin; and in answer to this not unnatural inquiry Chapman had the audacious innocence to affirm-and I doubt not in all truth and simplicity- that the inevitable application of this happy and appropriate symbol had never so much as crossed his innocent mind. As if, he exclaims indignantly, the word ‘barren’ could be applied to a man!-was it ever said a man was barren? or was the burden of bearing fruit ever laid on man? Whether this vindication was likely under the circumstances to mend matters much ‘the prejudicate and peremptory reader’ will judge for himself. One rumour, however, the poet repudiates in passing with some violence of language; to the effect, we may gather, that he had been waylaid and assaulted as was Dryden by Rochester’s ruffians, but at whose instigation we can only conjecture. He will omit, he says, ‘as struck dumb with the disdain of it, their most unmanly lie both of my baffling and wounding, saying “Take this for your Andromeda “; not being so much as touched, I witness God, nor one syllable suffering.’
The Complete Poetical Works of George Chapman Page 235