Note 321 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 3)

D’Avenant commenced his poem during his exile at Paris. The preface is dated from the Louvre; the postscript from Cowes Castle, in the Isle of Wight, where he was then confined, expecting his immediate execution. The poem, in the first edition, 1651, is therefore abruptly concluded. There is something very affecting and great in his style on this occasion. “I am here arrived at the middle of the third book. But it is high time to strike sail and cast anchor, though I have run but half my course, when at the helm I am threatened with death; who, though he can visit us but once, seems troublesome; and even in the innocent may beget such a gravity, as diverts the music of verse. Even in a worthy design, I shall ask leave to desist, when I am interrupted by so great an experiment as dying;—and ’tis an experiment to the most experienced; for no man (though his mortifications may be much greater than mine) can say he has already died.”—D’Avenant is said to have written a letter to Hobbes about this time, giving some account of his progress in the third book. “But why (said he) should I trouble you or myself with these thoughts, when I am pretty certain I shall be hanged next week?”—A stroke of the gaiety of temper of a very thoughtful mind; for D’Avenant, with all his wit and fancy, has made the profoundest reflections on human life.

The reader may be interested to know, that after D’Avenant’s removal from Cowes to the Tower, to be tried, his life was saved by the gratitude of two aldermen of York, whom he had obliged. It is delightful to believe the story told by Bishop Newton, that D’Avenant owed his life to Milton; Wood, indeed, attributes our poet’s escape to both; at the Restoration D’Avenant interposed, and saved Milton. Poets, after all, envious as they are to a brother, are the most generously-tempered of men: they libel, but they never hang; they will indeed throw out a sarcasm on the man whom they saved from being hanged. “Please your Majesty,” said Sir John Denham, “do not hang George Withers—that it may not be said I am the worst poet alive.”