66 seated at dinner at the Barristers' Table. Davies pulling a bastinado or cudgel from under his gown, went up to his insulter and struck him repeatedly over the head. The chastisement must have been given with a will; for the bastinado was shivered to pieces-arguing either its softness or the head's asinine thickness. Having avenged" himself, Davies returned to the bottom of the Hall, drew one of the swords belonging to his attendants, and flourished it repeatedly over his head, turning his face towards Martin, and then hurrying down the water-steps of the Temple, threw himself into a boat. This extraordinary occurrence happened at the close of 1597 or January of 1598. In 1595 he had been called to the bar; but in February 1598 Davies was expelled by a unanimous sentence; "disbarred" and deprived for ever of all authority to speak or consult in law." These " outbreaks and expulsions were familiar incidents; and make us exclaim with Othello : “O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil "—"O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their Lord Stowell wrote an elaborate Paper on the whole matter, and the restoration of Davies. It appeared in "Archæologia," Vol. XXI. propose to write the narrative in extenso in my fuller Life, as before. 6 Lord Stowell, as before. brains! that we should with joy, pleasure, revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts" (ii. 3). This is the all-too-plain solution of these "high jinks." It was a disaster of the most ominous kind. Nevertheless the dark cloud that thus fell across the noon of the fulland-hot-blooded young Barrister folded in it a "bright light:" or—if we may fetch an illustration from Holy Scripture, as Moses the great Lawgiver of ancient Israel through the slaying of the Egyptian was compelled to be a fugitive in the wilderness and therein to master his native impulsiveness and passion, so was the "offender" in the Hall of the Middle Temple through the disgrace and penalties incurred forced into retirement and introspection. It was a costly price to pay. But it is to be doubted whether if the enforced return to Oxford and the self-scrutiny and penitence that calm reflection wrought there had not arrested him, he ever would have given our literature "Nosce Teipsum." His great poem bears witness to very poignant self-accusation and humiliation. Towards the close you seem to catch the echo of sobs and the glistening of tears; nor is it "preaching" to recognize a diviner element still-his unrest and burden alike laid on Him Who alone can sustain and help a "wounded spirit" in its trouble. Besides the hazardous as disastrous incident with Martin, his "Epigrams" by their abandon and general allusiveness reveal that he was the associate of the "young gallants" of the city and lived "fast ;" and so give significance and interpretation to his later passionate regrets, self-accusations and self-rebuke. How abased and yet in touches how noble is this! 66 O ignorant poor man! what dost thou beare What iewels and what riches hast thou there! Looke in thy soule, and thou shalt beauties find, Thinke of her worth, and think that God did meane, Kill not her quickning powers with surfettings, Cast not her serious wit on idle things: And when thou think'st of her eternitie, Thinke not that death against her nature is, Take heed of over-weening, and compare Thy peacock's feet with thy gay peacock's traine; But of thyselfe an humble thought retaine.”7 Expelled" and "disbarred," he retired to Oxford and there "followed his studies, although he wore a cloak." (Wood's Athena, as before, ii. 401). To lighten severer studies he now leisurely composed that "Nosce Teipsum" from which has just been quoted the remarkable close. His vein must have been 66 a flowing" one; for it was published within a year of his disgrace, viz. in 1599.8 It was dedicated to the "great Queen;" without 7 Vol. I., pp. 115-116, "Nosce Teipsum." 8 See Vol. I., pp. 9-11. The date 1592, sometimes (modernly) appended to the dedication of " Nosce Teipsum," has no authority, and is in contradiction with all the known facts and circumstances. Equally erroneous and misleading is the ultra-rhetorically given chronology in " Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne," (2 Vols., 8vo., 1864), which bears the name of the present Duke of Manchester, as thus:-"This Templar. ... who wrote a noble work on the immortality of the soul in the very hey-day of his young blood, who afterwards became famous for his gravity as a judge, his wisdom as a politician, and his soundness as a statesman, terminated his literary career as the author of a poem in praise of dancing," (Vol. I., p. 289). This is precisely the reverse of the fact. In his earlier hot-blooded days he threw off his gay and self-named "light" verses. In an interval of penitent selfinspection and worthier aspiration, he wrote "Nosce Teipsum," and the all-too-common contemporary hyperbole of laudation, yet showing the strange magnetism of her influence to win allegiance from the greatest, even in her old age:— "Loadstone to hearts and loadstone to all eyes." The Carte "Notes" (as before) thus tell the whole story and ratify Anthony-a-Wood:-" Vpon a quarrell between him and Mr. Martin before ye Judges, where he strooke Mr. Martin hee was confined and made a prisoner after wch in discontentment he retired to ye countrye, and writt yt excellent poeme of his Nosce Teipsum, wch was so well aprooved of by the Lord Mountioy after Lord Deputy of Ireland and Earle of Devonshire, that by his aduise he publisht it and dedicated it to Queen Elizabeth, to whom hee presented it, being introduced by ye aforesaide Lord his pattron, and ye first essay of his pen was so well relisht yt ye Queen encouraged him in his studdys, promising him prefer he followed this up by ever-deepened grave, wise and weighty (prose) books. It is a pity (perhaps) to spoil your brilliant bits of antithetic scandal; and more pity that they should be hazarded for inevitable spoiling. Or put it in another way: it is too bad to have your cook serving up the Roast Beef of Old England as if it were strawberries (and cream). One need not use severer terms, knowing the ducal editorship is a blind. Campbell in his "Specimens," preceded in the blundering. |