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Crashaw's Reputation in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Austin Warren*
Affiliation:
Boston University

Extract

The Romantic Period has generally been regarded as one of enthusiasm for the pre-Augustan poets as well as for the writers of Jacobean and Caroline prose. We recall the ardors of Charles Lamb for the Elizabethan dramatists, and of Lamb and Coleridge for Browne, Burton, and Taylor; we recall, too, the interest of Scott in the ballads, and of Keats in Spenser and Milton.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 1936 , pp. 769 - 785
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 Cf. “Crashaw's Reputation in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” SP, xxxi (1934), 385–407.

2 Cf. Walter Graham, English Literary Periodicals (1930), pp. 248–251.

3 Retrospective Review, i, 225.

4 Collected Works, ed. Waller and Glover, viii, 49–50.

5 Idem, v, 311, and viii, 53.

6 Works of Charles Lamb, ed. W. Macdonald (1903), x, 183.

7 Introduction … (1839 ed.), iii, 493.

8 Retrospective Review, i, 226.

9 Idem, pp. 228, 230.

10 Idem, p. 241.

11 Indicator (May 17, 1820), 250–252.

12 Notes and Queries, Second Series, v, 518.

13 Idem, v, 449.—For L. C. Martin on Crashaw and Shelley, cf. MLR, xi, 217, and Poems of Crashaw, ed. Martin, p. xxxviii.

14 Conversations, pp. 258–260.

15 Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1899), i, 335–336.—In “The Book of the Poets,” Life, Letters and Essays (New York, 1877), ii, 69, Mrs. Browning mentions appreciatively “Crashaw's fine rapture, holy as a summer sense of silence …”

16 Sara Coleridge, Memoir and Letters (1873), ii, 130–131. The letter quoted was written in 1847.

17 Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge (London, 1836), i, 194–196.

18 Poems, ed. E. H. Coleridge (1921), pp. 213, 215.

19 Gems of Sacred Poetry (1841), p. 200, and Robert Chambers, Cychpædia of English Literature (1843), i, 149–150.

20 Nethercot, SP, xxii, 130.

21 Its only predecessor, to the best of my knowledge, was the Reverend John Mitford's Sacred Specimens from the Early English Poets … (London, 1827), which proffered no criticism but did include two of Crashaw's poems.

22 The D.N.B. assigns the Gems as “probably” the work of Richard Cattermole, doubtless on the grounds that he had already published Sacred Poetry of the Seventeenth Century and that the parallel Gems of Sacred Prose Literature, which appeared in the same year and in the same format, carries his initials at the conclusion of the preface. The real editor, however, was Edward Farr, who prints after his name on the title page of a subsequent collection of his, Select Poetry Chiefly Sacred of the Reign of King James the First (1847, published by J. W. Parker, who brought out the Gems), his earlier record: “Editor of ‘Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth’; ‘Gems of Sacred Poetry,‘ etc.”

23 Sacred Poetry of the Seventeenth Century, p. 329.—The Reverend Robert Aris Willmott, who published in 1834 his Lives of the Sacred Poets (notably, from the seventeenth century, Giles Fletcher, Crashaw, Wither, Quarles, Herbert, and Milton), deserves credit for attempting the first extended biography of Crashaw, and for adding, especially through his use of Cole's MS collection, to the scant stock of our knowledge. His criticism, however, has little value, even historically. He quotes Pope's oft-quoted characterization, and, wavering between two loyalties, refutes as much of it as he can without discrediting Pope. Much later, Wilmott contributed many really able translations of Crashaw's Latin poems to Dr. Grosart's edition (1872).

24 Cyclopædia of English Literature, i, 149–150.

25 Craik, ii, 18.

26 The Poetical Works of Richard Crashaw. …, viii and xii–xiii.

27 Idem, ii, lxx.

28 Complete Works of Richard Crashaw …, x.

29 Complete Works of Richard Crashaw … (ed. Grosart), ii, lxxiv, lxiii, lxix.

30 Idem, ii, lxx.

31 Idem, pp. lxxiv, xlv, lxxviii, lxxxiii, lxxvii.

32 Idem, p. lxxxix.

33 Poems of Richard Crashaw … (1887), p. viii.

34 “Muses' Library” Crashaw, p. xlviii.

35 Seventeenth Century Studies (1883), p. 155.

36 Life and Letters of J. H. Shorthouse (1905), i, 194—a letter to Gosse.

37 Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 153.

38 Swinburne, “Ford,” Essays and Studies (1875), p. 296.

39 Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 162.—For “A Song in Season,” cf. Poems and Ballads, Second Series. Crashaw's poem is headed “Out of the Italian—A Song,” and opens with the lines “To thy Lover, dear, discover.”

40 Letters of A. C. Swinburne, ed. Gosse (London, 1918), ii, 131.

41 “Théophile,” Bonchurch Edition of Swinburne, ed. Gosse and Wise, xiii, 405–406.

42 Secentismo e Marinismo … (1925), p. 261, n.

43 Ward's English Poets, i, xxxvi.

44 Brooke, Primer …, p. 100; cf. also English Literature (1896), p. 158.

45 English Poets, ii, 195, 197.

46 For a catalogue of Alcott's library, cf. Clara E. Sears, Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands, pp. 177–185.

47 Journals, x, 400.

48 Parnassus, p. vi.

49 Grosart's Crashaw, i, xxiv.

50 B. Champneys, Memoirs and Correspondence of Patmore (1900), ii, 253.

51 Select Specimens …, p. 80.

52 Viola Meynell, Alice Meynell, A Memoir (New York, 1929), p. 207.

53 The Flower of the Mind, pp. 336–337.

54 “Mr. F. Thompson, A New Poet,” Fortnightly, N.S., lv. 20.

55 G. Bliss, “Francis Thompson and Richard Crashaw,” The Month, cxi (1908), 1–12; R. L. Megroz, Francis Thompson (1927), pp. 108–124.

56 F. Thompson, Works (1913), iii, 175–176.

57 Idem, iii, 176–177.

58 Idem, iii, 21–22, 24.

59 The “Muses Library” Crashaw (1905); Williamson, The Donne Tradition (1930); Praz, Secentismo e Marinismo in Inghilterra (1925); Eliot, “A Note on Richard Crashaw,” For Lancelot Andrewes (1928).