works clearly show. His knowledge of heraldry was careful and exact, and it is from the fifth and posthumous edition of his Compleat Gentleman (1661), edited with additions by Thomas Blount, that Dr. Johnson took almost all of the definitions of heraldic terms in his Dictionary.' He had a great fondness for mathematics, being, as he affirms, "ever naturally addicted to those arts and sciences, which consist of proportion and number." He was not merely an artist with the pencil and the brush, but he attained much skill in the practice of engraving, though few of his productions in this kind are easy to obtain to-day. He learned music in Italy from the great master, Orazio Vecchi, and among his personal friends were numbered most of the leading musicians at home and abroad. Doctor Burney, who is a sound judge in such matters, asserts that Peacham's criticisms of these great men and their works are penetrating and for the most part just, than which no higher testimony to his musical ability can easily be adduced. Such a man as this was not in his right place in a school, where he must perforce give his attention to many who would not in the majority of cases be distinguished by supreme intellectual gifts. We can picture him seated in his chair at his desk, with his boys prattling around him in unholy but nevertheless delightful play. He himself, in the meantime, forgetful of the necessity of discipline, might be engaged in some fancy sketch, or perchance busied in turning an ode to some one of influence, whose patronage he hoped to secure. Boys have an unerring instinct of disciplinary weakness on the part of their elders, and they seldom fail to take advantage of absent-minded indulgence. But whatever might be Peacham's capacity or incapacity of scholastic control, he did not forget or lay aside his literary ambition. It was during this period of his life that he published in London, in 1606, his first work, under the comprehensive title of Graphice, or the most auncient and excellent Art of Drawing with the pen and Limning in Water Colours. This first edition was ushered into the world under the distinguished patronage of Sir Robert Cotton, and it became popular at once. With the changed title of the Gentleman's Exercise, and a huge sub-title, the little work went through various editions in 1607, 1612, and 1 Lowndes, sub "Peacham." * Compleat Gentleman, p. 102. 2 1634, the last of which was dedicated to Sir Edmund Ashfield, Deputy Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. It is in the 1612, or third, edition, that the author first tells the reader how to Prince Henry, son of James I., "he presented not long since his father's Basilikon Doron, which he had turned a little before into Latin verse; and emblems limned in lively colours, which he graciously accepted." The date of this publication was 1610, and it was his first attempt to secure the favourable notice of the king. It was directed to James's most vulnerable point, his literary vanity, and doubtless the Royal ears were agreeably tickled by the sound of the cantering in Mantuan verse of his somewhat prosaic Pegasus. The book, too, brought him to the notice of Prince Henry, who so long as he lived was one of Peacham's most efficient patrons. Whether our author continued to teach or no at this particular time, we have no means of deciding; but probability points to his willing abandonment of the chains of a slavery which had galled him sorely. There is, however, one indication that he had received recognition from the wits of London in 1610-11. When Tom Coryate3 desired the publication of his Crudities, he obtained from these mock-heroic commendations of his work, which by the famous names of their authors easily procured him a publisher. Amongst these appear a copy of Latin and a copy of English verses from the pen of Peacham, the former of which is preceded by a copper engraving of honest Tom's famous shoes wreathed in laurel, from his hand. This in itself seems to point to the fact that Peacham was not merely in London, but in high esteem with the circle over which Ben Jonson so arbitrarily presided, and in little less estimation with the publishers of the time. The foregoing piece of inferential evidence is slightly confirmed by the fact that in 1612 he was in London looking after the publication of one of the earliest collections of Emblems in our language. The title of this production is, Minerva Britanna; or a 1 Gentleman's Exercise, Dedication (1634). 3 Vide the unique copy of Coryate's Crudities in the Chetham Library, Manchester. The mock-testimonials, which precede the text, have no pagination; but Peacham's contribution will easily be found by the engraving. 2 Idem, p. 7. 4 Compleat Gentleman, p. 42, where the Minerva Britanna with one of its original devices is mentioned. Garden of Heroical Devices, furnished and adorned with Emblems and Impresa's of sundry Natures newly devised and moralised by Henry Peacham Mr. of Arts. This thin quarto, with its tedious title, was the natural predecessor of Quarles's Book of Emblems, than which it was more original both in matter and in manner.1 Towards the end of 1612 Prince Henry died, and with his death Peacham's principal hopes of advancement for a time at least faded away. Whether the noble-minded Prince was murdered or not by the machinations of Carr, is as yet a mystery; but in Peacham's elegy there is no trace of evidence to favour the common belief of his contemporaries. Near the beginning of 1613, Princess Elizabeth, James's eldest daughter, was married to that ill-fated Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, whose folly plunged Europe into the miseries of protracted warfare. To celebrate the national sorrow for the Prince's death and the general rejoicing over the subsequent marriage, Peacham produced a long, rambling, but in parts extremely beautiful set of poems in English and Latin, entitled The Period of Mourning in Memorie of the late Prince, disposed into sixe Visions, with Nuptial Hymnes in honour of the Marriage betwene Frederick Count Palatine of the Rhene, and Elizabeth daughter to our Soveraigne. James was like a child with a new toy, and would listen even to a tuneless instrument, if only it were untuned to his praise; and in this quaint and wandering series of poems there are occasional snatches of music well worthy the attention of wiser men than James. In his first address to the Muse the poet treats his reader to these pretty, if involved and not wholly perspicuous stanzas : "Go, Muse, that like Endymion didst but dream Ope thy dull eyes, and while that others weep, 1 Quarles took most, if not all, of his pictures from the emblems figured in the Pia Desideria of Hermann Hugo the Jesuit, and he was certainly indebted to the same source for some of the matter of his poems. The quotation cited in Note 2 proves that Peacham made some of his own designs; nay, his artistic and heraldic skill favours the possibility that all his emblems were his own. And yet hadst been, had not (Oh, brightest fair!) Else better far we had been silent still; It may here be remarked, in passing, that Cynthia refers to the Princess Elizabeth, in complimentary allusion to her great namesake, who was commonly celebrated under this name, and to whom she bore considerable resemblance. In spite of the difficulties of the foregoing stanzas, they echo with the ring of true poetry, and that too of a kind which does not deserve the malice of time and the failing memory of men. But the poet soars a more adventurous flight in his Elegiac Epitaph on Prince Henry, whose untimely death destroyed the hopes of the nation, and hastened on the later troubles. He sings thus: "But, certain soul, thou art but gone To thy new coronation; Thy presence heaven, thy state a throne, A palm; thy friends the Saints of God."* There is something touchingly simple yet almost sublime in this conception of the Prince's glorified kingdom, which takes the place of the one from which death had borne him away, and the simplicity of the verse matches well with the dignity of the sorrowful theme. There is, too, a rhythmical melody pervading most of the lines, which echoes in the mind with plaintive music. Many better-known poets have become famous for worse poems than this, and some of them are remembered, while Peacham is almost forgotten. But our bard was no weeping philosopher like Heraclitus of old; he could tune his harp to nuptial songs, and those, too, which would win him favour in two countries at one and the same time. James would duly appreciate and perhaps reward the panegyrist of his daughter, and the poet's cheerful rhymes would charm the empty-headed Elector, whose patronage was little more substantial than the Irishman's famous cheese. The English monarch Idem, Vision vi. 1 Period of Mourning, opening stanzas. could do something for the literary aspirant, whereas the favour of his son-in-law was little more substantial than the reflection of the moon in the water. A few lines from the first of the Nuptial Hymnes will suffice to illustrate the poet's brighter and gayer manner. "The huntress in her silver car The woods again surveyeth now, With rosemarine and verdant bay In Court a mourner shall be seen. Disports beguile the irksome night; There is an undeniable vigour about these merry lines, which distinguishes the whole of the poem, and which formed a fitting expression of the gladness of his people, when James for once had had the sense to bestow his daughter upon a Protestant prince. In addition to the vigorous lilt there are sweet snatches of woodland music, which cannot fail to attract the modern critic, who is wearied alike of the contemporary rhythmical anæmia and the fruitless and often filthy dissertations on the problems of sex. By this time Peacham had won some reputation for his literary talent, to which his latest poems contributed not a little, and he was now well known both to the Court and to the no less important corporation of booksellers. By the favour of the former, or the recognition of his great gifts, he attracted the attention of the first Earl of Arundel, to the second of whose sons he dedicated at a later date one, if not more, of the editions of his Compleat Gentleman. This nobleman, who was the celebrated art collector, made him the governor of his three elder sons during their travels on the Continent during much of the years 1613-1614. In this post he fared better than many 1Nuptial Hymnes, I. |