THE

LIFE OF RICHARD CRASHAW.

BY MR. CHALMERS.

RICHARD CRASHAW was the son of the rev. William Crashaw, a divine of some note in his day, and preacher at the Temple church, London. He published several volumes on points controverted between the Roman catholics and protestants, either original or translated; and in 1608, a translation of the Life of Galeacius Caracciolos, marquis of Vico, an Italian nobleman who was converted by the celebrated reformer, Peter Martyr, and forsook all that rank, family and wealth could yield, for the quiet enjoyment of the reformed religion. Mr. Crashaw also translated a supposed poem of St. Bernard's, entitled "The Complaint, or Dialogue between the Soule and the Bodie of a dainned man, 1616," and in the same year published a "Manual for true Catholics, or a handfull, or rather a heartfull of holy Meditations and Prayers". All these show him to have been a zealous protestant, but, like his son, somewhat tinctured with a love of mystic poetry and personification.

Our poet was born in London, but in what year is uncertain. In his infancy, sir Henry Yelverton and sir Randolph Crew undertook the charge of his education, and afterwards procured him to be placed in the Charterhouse on the foundation, where he improved in an extraordinary degree under Brooks, a very celebrated master. He was thence admitted of Pembroke Hall, March, 1632, and took his bachelor's degree in the same college, in 1634. He then removed to Peterhouse, of which he was a fellow in 1637, and took his master's degree in 1638. In 1634, he published a volume of Latin poems, mostly of the devotional kind, dedicated to Benjamin Lany, master of Pembroke Hall. This contained the well-known line, which has sometimes been ascribed to Dryden and others, on the miracle of turning water into wine:

Nympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit.

The modest water saw its God, and blushed.

› Cens. Lit. vol. 10, p. 105.

2 Cole's MSS. Athenæ in Brit. Mus. and Mr. Reed's MSS. notes to his copy of Crashaw, which I purchased at his sale. Some of Reed's dates appear to have been communicated by his friend Dr. Farmer. C.

In 1641, Mr. Wood informs us, he took degrees at Oxford. At what time he was admitted into holy orders is uncertain, but he soon became a popular preacher, full of energy and enthusiasm. In 1644, when the parliamentary army expelled those members of the university who refused to take the covenant, Crashaw was among the number; and being unable to contemplate, with resignation or indifference, the ruins of the church-establishment, went over to France, where his sufferings and their peculiar influence on his mind prepared him to embrace the Roman ca'holic religion. Before he left England, he appears to have practised many of the austerities of a mistaken piety, and the poems entitled Steps to the Temple were so called in allusion to his passing his time almost constantly in St. Mary's church, Cambridge. "There,” says the author of the preface to his poems, "he lodged under Tertullian's roof of angels: there he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow near the house of God; where like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night, than others usually offer in the day; there he penned these poems, Steps for happy Souls to climb Heaven by." The same writer informs us that he understood Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian and Spanish, and was skilled in poetry, music, drawing, painting and engraving, which last he represents as "recreations for vacant hours, not the grand business of his soul."

It is certain, however, that soon after his arrival in France, he embraced the religion of the country with a sincerity, which may be respected while it is pitied, but which has rather uncharitably been imputed to motives of interest. He seems to have thought, with Dr. Johnson, that "to be of no church was dangerous," and the church of England he had witnessed in ruins. If in this Crashaw did what was wrong, he did what was not uncommon in his time, and what perhaps may account for the otherwise extraordinary leaning of some eminent and pious men to the catholic religion of the continent, when that, and our own church, seemed in equal danger a few years ago.

In 1646, the poet Cowley found Crashaw in France in great distress, and introduced him to the patronage of Charles the First's queen, who gave him letters of recommendation to Italy. There he became secretary to one of the cardinals at Rome, and was made canon in the church of Loretto, where he died of a fever, soon after this last promotion, about the year 1650. Cowley's very elegant and affectionate lines may be seen in the works of that poet. Mr. Hayley remarks, that "fine as they are, Cowley has sometimes fallen into the principal defect of the poet whom he is praising. He now and then speaks of sacred things with a vulgar and ludicrous familiarity of language, by which (to use a happy expression of Dr. Johnson's), readers far short of sanctity, may be offended in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.' Let us add, that if the poetical character of Crashaw seem not to answer this glowing panegyrick; yet in his higher character of saint, he appears to have had the purest title to this affectionate eulogy3."

It appears by a passage in Selden's Table Talk, that Crashaw had at one time an intention of writing against the stage, and that Selden succeeded in diverting him

Life of Crashaw, in the Biog. Britannica, contributed by Mr. Hayley. C.