Charles II in English Verse
Reading edition
I was talking to a man the other day about books that ought to have been written and have not been, when it occurred to me that somebody might publish a very amusing selection of panegyrics written on undeserving persons: say, the less immaculate of the English kings. I once thought of writing a life of Charles II, each chapter of which should be headed by an extract from some contemporary poem about him. The contrast between the character and private and public actions of this monarch and the descriptions of him by literary eulogists would have been illuminating. Gross flattery was the habit of the time. James the First was given, very unfairly as I think, the title of the British Solomon; and the Royal Martyr, who after all had some virtues very highly developed, was written of in terms which would have been extreme if applied to St. Francis of Assisi. But no one, not even his father, received such wholehearted praises as Charles II.
His career as a recipient of them began early. When he was a child Francis Quarles’s Divine Fancies were dedicated to him. The Dedication was headed: “To the Royal Bud of Majesty and Centre of our Hopes and Happiness, Charles,” and began: “Illustrious Infant, Give me leave to acknowledge myself thy servant, ere thou knowest thyself my Prince.” The hope is held out that the illustrious infant will become “a most incomparable Prince, the firm pillar of our happiness and the future object of the world’s wonder.” Addressing then the boy’s governess, Lady Dorset, Quarles becomes even more rhapsodical:
“Most excellent Lady,
“You are the Star which stands over the Place where the Babe lies. By whose directions’ light, I come from the East to present my Myrrh and Frankincense to the young child. Let not our Royal Joseph nor his princely Mary be afraid; there are no Herods here. We have all seen his Star in the East, and have rejoyced: our loyall hearts are full; for our eyes have seen him, in whom our Posterity shall be blessed.”
One could scarcely hope that Quarles’s successors would quite live up to that.
Dryden’s poem on Charles’s return to England is pitched a little lower. It certainly contains lines like
The winds that never moderation knew, Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew; Or out of breath with joy would not enlarge Their straightened lungs....
but that is a mere excess of avowed fancy. When he wrote his Threnodia Augustalis on Charles’s death, Dryden decidedly went one better. Perhaps it was that he had had twenty-five years of Charles’s reign in which to appreciate fully the King’s reverend qualities. He calls him
That all-forgiving King The type of Him above, That unexhausted spring Of clemency and love.
He apostrophizes the Muse of History:
Be true, O Clio, to thy hero’s name! But draw him strictly so That all who view the piece may know; He needs no trappings of fictitious fame, The load’s too weighty.
The anguished poet almost blasphemes against heaven for taking away so peerless a sovereign; until he remembers that “saints and angels” had been done out of Charles’s company for so long that their turn might fairly be considered to have come. And there is the further consolation that a James has succeeded a Charles:
Our Atlas fell indeed, but Hercules was near;
or, as the Earl of Halifax put it,
James is our Charles in all things else but name.
Which Charles himself at least knew to be untrue.
The Halifax extract comes out of another funeral poem On the Death of His Most Sacred Majesty. “Farewell,” he cries,
great Charles, monarch of blest renown, The best good man that ever fill’d a throne.
He sketches Charles’s career. He compares his exile to the banishment of David (an open crib from Astræ Redux) and says of England that, when he came back,
to his arms she fled And rested on his shoulders her fair bending head.
He “Us from our foes and from ourselves did save.” Only the almost inevitable comparison to the Almighty can do him justice:
In Charles so good a man and King we see A double image of the deity. Oh! had he more resembled it! Oh, why Was he not still more like, and could not die?
What did become of Charles is suggested by “the Lord R” in a poem which appears in Miscellany Poems:
Good kings are number’d with Immortal Gods When hence translated to the best Abodes, For Princes (truly great) can never die, They only lay aside Mortality.
After which we are told that the deceased is in Olympus passing the nectar round; an occupation that should have suited him very well.
Perhaps the suggestion will be adopted. Let some publisher with a series of anthologies get somebody to compile The Hundred Most Fulsome Poems in the English Language. It would be a more entertaining book than most. Very few examples, I think, would be drawn from the last hundred years. As respects the monarchs, Great Elizabeth, the Great Jameses, the Great Charleses, Great William, Great Anne, and the Great Georges all got their full share of adulation. The break comes, I think, with George IV; since whose accession we have lost the habit. Any one who should address his sovereign to-day in words like those addressed to Charles II by his subjects (e. g. Great George, the planets tremble at thy nod) would be suspected of pulling the sovereign’s leg.