Phineas Fletcher: poet, born in England in 1582; entered Cambridge University in 1600, and became rector of Hilgay, Norfolk, in 1621. He wrote various poems—“The Locustœ, or Apollyonists,” a satire against the Jesuits (1627), rare; “Sicelides, a Dramatic Piece” (1631); “Joy in Tribulation” (1632); “The Purple Island, or The Isle of Man,” together with “Piscatoric Eclogues and other Poetical Miscellanies” (1633), etc. Died at Hilgay in 1650. He was a cousin of Fletcher, the dramatist, and a brother of Giles Fletcher (1588–1623), a clergyman, and author of the fine poem “Christ’s Victory and Triumph.”

Personal

  Phineas was what honest Walton would have called “a true brother of the nangle,” and his master-passion betrays itself in the most unexpected places. It appears even in the characters and subject of his only dramatic work, which he describes on the title-page as “A Piscatory.”

  Our little life-Story is well-nigh told. I regret that after search and research utterly disproportionate to the result, the circumstances and date of his death remain uncertain. My predecessors have given—Archdeacon Todd in his Milton “1649” and George Ellis in his “Specimens,” and most “1650” for his death: but no evidence is adduced, and I do not see that it can be accurate. There is no entry of his death and interment at Hilgay: no memorial whatever of his having either died or been buried there; while the last “record” by him in the Register is in “1648.” I fear the conclusion is inevitable that he was among the fugitives and a “Sufferer” of the Church (of England), though Walker who has [mis] chronicled so many other worthless names, names not him.

Purple Island, 1633

  THE | PURPLE | ISLAND, | or | The Isle of Man: | together with | Piscatorie Eclogs, | and other | Poeticall Miscellanies. | By P. F. | Hinc lucem et pocula sacra. | Alma mater. | Printed by the Printers to the Universitie | of Cambridge. 1633. (40).

  He that would learn Theologie, must first studio Autologie. The way to God is by ourselves. It is a blinde and dirty way. It hath many windings, and is easie to be lost. This Poem will make thee understand that way: and therefore my desire is, that thou maist understand this Poem. Peruse it as thou shouldst thyself, from thy first sheet to thy last. The first view, perchance, may runne thy judgement in debt; the second will promise payment; and the third will perform promise. Thou shalt finde here Philosophie and Moralitie, two curious handmaids, dressing the King’s daughter, whose garments “smell of Myrrhe and Cassia,” and being “wrought with needlework and gold,” shall make thee take pleasure in her beautie. Here are no blocks for the purblinde, no snares for the timerous, no dangers for the bold. I invite all sorts to be readers, all readers to be understanders, all understanders to be happie.

  I much thank you for your visits, and other fair respects you shew me; ’specially that you have enlarg’d my quarters ’mong these melancholy walks by sending me a whole Isle to walk in, I mean that delicate purple Island I receiv’d from you, where I meet with Apollo himself and all his daughters, with other excellent society. I stumble also there often upon myself, and grow better acquainted with what I have within me and without me: Insomuch that you could not make choice of a fitter ground for a Prisoner, as I am, to pass over, than of that purple Isle, that Isle of Man you sent me; which, as the Ingenious Author hath made it, is a far more dainty soil than that Scarlet Island which lies near the Baltic Sea.

  Amid such profusion of images many are distinguished by a boldness of outline, a majesty of manner, a brilliancy of colouring, a distinctness and propriety of attribute, and an air of life, that we look for in vain in modern productions, and that rival, if not surpass, what we meet with of the kind even in Spencer, from whom our author caught his inspiration.

  The conclusion of the “Purple Island” sinks into such absurdity and adulation, that we could gladly wish the poet back again to allegorizing the bladder and kidneys.

  From its nature, it is insuperably wearisome; yet his language is often very poetical, his versification harmonious, his invention fertile. But that perpetual monotony of allegorical persons, which sometimes displeases us even in Spenser, is seldom relieved in Fletcher; the understanding revolts at the confused crowd of inconceivable beings in a philosophical poem; and the justness of analogy, which had given us some pleasure in the anatomical cantos, is lost in tedious descriptions of all possible moral qualities, each of them personified, which can never co-exist in the Purple Island of one individual.

  “The Purple Island” of the younger brother, Phineas, is the nearest thing we have to an imitation of Spenser; but it is hardly worthy of its fame. It is an undisguised and wearisome allegory, symbolizing all parts and functions both of man’s body and of his mind; and it is redeemed only by the poetical spirit of some of the passages.

  About the sixth canto,—where the poet passes from technical anatomy and physiology into what may be called the psychology of his subject, and begins to enumerate and marshall the faculties, habits, and passions of man, each under a separate personification, with a view to the great battle of the virtuous powers of the list under their leader Eclecta, or Choice, against the vices,—then the genius of the poet, already more than indicated even in the former cantos, takes wing into a freer element, which it fills, in the remaining six cantos, with beauty and sublimity in ill-devised profusion. Some of the personifications, in the latter part of the “Purple Island,” are not surpassed in Spenser; and, on the whole, the poetry, though still wearisome from the unflagging strain of the abominable allegory, is richer than in his brother’s shorter production, if not so serenely solemn.

  The “Purple Island” is rather a production of the same species with Dr. Darwin’s “Botanic Garden;” but, forced and false enough as Darwin’s style is in many respects, it would be doing an injustice to his poem to compare it with Phineas Fletcher’s, either in regard to the degree in which nature and propriety are violated in the principle and manner of the composition, or in regard to the spirit and general success of the execution. Of course, there is a good deal of ingenuity shown in Fletcher’s poem; and it is not unimpregnated by poetic feeling, nor without some passages of considerable merit. But in many other parts it is quite grotesque; and, on the whole, it is fantastic, puerile, and wearisome.

  Of all the strange poems in existence, surely this is the strangest…. And yet the poem is full of poetry. He triumphs over his difficulties partly by audacity, partly by seriousness, partly by the enchantment of song. But the poem will never be read through except by students of English literature. It is a whole; its members are well-fitted; it is full of beauties—in parts they swarm like fireflies; and yet it is not a good poem. It is like a well-shaped house, built of mud, and stuck full of precious stones…. Never was there a more incongruous dragon of allegory.

  Starting with Headley, and reaching to Campbell in his “Specimens” … it is vulgarly imagined that Phineas Fletcher is a simple imitator if not copyist, of Spenser. Never was there more ignorant and egregious representation. Like Giles he had a splendid faculty of Impersonation, and by the requirements of the ground-idea of his “Purple Island” these play a frequent and controlling part in his great Poem: but unless you are to make Spenser the inventor of Impersonation and Allegory, and ignore his translating into English of the classic mythology and of Ariosto and of other predecessors, you must allow that the selection of Impersonation and Allegory by our Fletchers, as the vehicle for the expression of their thick-coming thoughts and fancies, in nowise involves Spenserian or other “imitation.”

  A poem which reminds us of the “Faery Queen” by the supreme tediousness of its allegory, but in nothing else.

  Fletcher’s allegory is overloaded with detail, and as a whole is clumsy and intricate. His diction is, however, singularly rich, and his versification melodious. Incidental descriptions of rural scenes with which he was well acquainted are charmingly simple, and there is a majesty in his personification of some vices and virtues which suggest Milton, who knew Fletcher’s works well.

General

  It is to his honour that Milton read and imitated him, as every attentive reader of both poets must soon discover. He is eminently entitled to a very high rank among our old English classics.

  The “Piscatory Eclogues,” to novelty of scenery, add many passages of genuine and delightful poetry, and the music of the verse is often highly gratifying to the ear; but many of the same faults are discernible in these pieces, which we remarked in the “Purple Island;” pedantry and forced conceits occasionally intrude, and, though the poet has not injured the effect of his delineations by coarseness, or rusticity of expression, he has sometimes forgotten the simple elegance which should designate the pastoral muse.

  From the handful of books that usually lay strewn about wherever we two sat, I took up one he had lately got, with no small pains I was sure, and had had bound in its own proper colour, and presented it to me—“The Purple Island” and “Sicelides” of Phineas Fletcher. People seldom read this wise, tender, and sweet-voiced old fellow now; so I will even copy the verses I found for John to read.

  The so-called “Piscatory Eclogues” of Phineas Fletcher differ from Spenserian pastorals only in this, that the occupations of Thyrsilis, Thelgon, Dorus, Thomalin, and the rest, are those of fishermen rather than shepherds. Otherwise the fiction is the same; and, following his simple fisher-lads down the Cam, or the Thames, or the Medway, or out at sea in their skiffs along the rocky coasts, the poet, just as in the other case, but with more of watery than of sylvan circumstance, expresses his own feelings and makes his own plaint.

  He may without injustice to his brother Giles be said to be the most distinguished Spenserian in our seventeenth-century literature…. Of characterisation this pastoral [“Sicelides”] contains as little as other examples of the species; the charm of its diction, however, is not only great, but remarkably varied. A poem is assuredly worth study, which is made beautiful by descriptive passages of the sweetest simplicity, and of a rare contemplative stillness; by a dialogue at times instinct with the fire and the dolours of the passion of love; by truly dramatic narratives; by bursts of lyric emotion; as well as by single lines or couplets of pregnant force or enshrining figures of irresistible charm.

  The relation of Phineas Fletcher to Spenser is very close, but the former possesses a distinct individuality. He is enamoured to excess of the art of personification, and the allegorical figures he creates in so great abundance are distinct and coherent, with, as a rule, more of Sackville than of Spenser in the evolution of their types. In his eclogues he imitates Sannazaro, but not without a reminiscence of “The Shepherd’s Calendar.” Nevertheless, Spenser is the very head and fount of his being, and the source of some of his worst mistakes, for so bound is Phineas to the Spenserian tradition that he clings to it even where it is manifestly unfitted to the subject he has in hand.