Born at Tisbury, Wiltshire, 1569 (baptized April 16): died Dec. 8, 1626. An English poet. He was called to the bar in 1595, disbarred in 1598, and readmitted in 1601. In that year he was returned to Parliament for Corfe Castle. In 1603 he was made solicitor-general for Ireland, and in 1606 succeeded to the position of attorney-general for Ireland. In 1614 he was member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme. For the last ten years of his life he was a sergeant-at-law in England. He was made chief justice in 1626, but died before taking possession of the office. Among his works are “Orchestra” (on dancing, 1596), “Nosce Teipsum” (1599), “Hymns to Astræa” (1599), acrostics to Queen Elizabeth.

Personal

  Sir John Davis, the learned and well accomplisht father of a no less learned and accomplished daughter, the present Countess Dowager of Huntington: his poem “Nosce Teipsum” (besides which and his “Orchestra,” publisht together with it, both the products of his younger years, I remember to have seen from the hands of the Countess, a judicious metaphrase of several of David’s psalms) is said to have made him first known to Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards brought him in favor with King James, under whose auspices, addicting himself to the study of the Common Law of England, he was made the King’s first Serjeant, and afterwards his Attorney General in Ireland.

  Sometimes called of the Inner Temple, was a contemporary of Montagu, with a less brilliant, yet more singular career. He was a young fellow who was not only addicted to much hearing of the chimes at midnight, but who roused the slumbering students by riotous noises of his own and his boon companions, making night hideous in “the wee sma’ hours ayont the twal.” Davies was expelled for this irregular course of life, and immediately availed himself of the opportunity afforded him by this enforced leisure to compose, what no other expelled student had ever thought of doing, a poem on the immortality of the soul! It is a work which shows that, however much the author may have loved the ways that moral students should avoid, he had also rendered himself familiar with the better paths, and could walk therein with dignity. This poem saved him from ruin, and ultimately raised him to a fortune which culminated in the poet—now the able lawyer—being raised to the Chief Justiceship of the Court of King’s Bench. There, however, Sir John Davies never took his seat, for he was mortally stricken by apoplexy before he could be sworn in. This once riotous Templar of Montagu’s early days, 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.

Nosce Teipsum, 1599

  Davies’s “Nosce Teipsum” is an excellent poem, in opening the nature, faculties, and certain immortality of man’s soul.

  His poem on the “Immortality of the Soul” is a noble monument of his learning, acuteness, command of language, and facility of versification.

  Davies carried abstract reasoning into verse with an acuteness and felicity which have seldom been equalled. His reasons, undoubtedly, with too much labour, formality, and subtlety, to afford uniform poetical pleasure. The generality of his stanzas exhibit hard arguments interwoven with the pliant materials of fancy, so closely, that we may compare them to a texture of cloth and metallic threads, which is cold and stiff, while it is splendidly curious. There is this difference, however, between Davies and the commonly styled metaphysical poets, that he argues like a hard thinker, and they, for the most part, like madmen. If we conquer the drier parts of Davies’s poem, and bestow a little attention on thoughts which were meant, not to gratify the indolence, but to challenge the activity of the mind, we shall find in the entire essay fresh beauties at every perusal: for in the happier parts we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction.

  Perhaps no language can produce a poem, extending to so great a length, of more condensation of thought, or in which fewer languid verses will be found. Yet, according to some definitions, the “Nosce Teipsum” is wholly unpoetical, inasmuch as it shows no passion and little fancy. If it reaches the heart at all, it is through the reason. But, since strong argument in terse and correct style fails not to give us pleasure in prose, it seems strange that it should lose its effect when it gains the aid of regular metre to gratify the ear and assist the memory. Lines there are in Davies which far outweigh much of the descriptive and imaginative poetry of the last two centuries, whether we estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual vigor they display.

  It is a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means of imagination or poetic embodiment generally.

  Its stanzas of elegiac verse were so well packed with thought, always neatly contained within the limit of each stanza, that we shall afterwards have to trace back to this poem the adoption of its measure as, for a time, our “heroic stanza.”

  For the history of philosophy it is of great significance, as it enables the student to understand the psychology and philosophy which were current before the introduction of the philosophies of Descartes on the one hand and of Hobbes and Locke on the other. The versification is uncommonly successful. It may be regarded as a triumph of diction in the expression of subtle thought in concise and fluent verse. It is by no means free from the conceits which were current in all the versification of its time, but it is remarkable in the history of literature for the skill with which it conducts philosophical discussion in the forms, and with somewhat of the spirit of elevated poetry.

  It is vain indeed to make definitions of poetry which would deprive any poet of his well-won title. Whatever may be said as to what poetry should be, the fact remains that the author of “Nosce Teipsum” is a poet. In the kingdom of poetry, as has been said, are many mansions, and undoubtedly one of these belongs to Sir John Davies, however we may describe it, however we may censure its style and arrangement. Far be from us any such critical or scholastic formulæ as would prevent us from all due appreciation of such refined, imaginative thought and subtle, finished workmanship, as mark the first notable philosophical poem of our literature.

  With considerable appositeness of argument, and clearness of exposition, Sir John Davies sets forth his thoroughly spiritualistic psychology, and develops numerous considerations tending to establish the doctrine of the soul’s immortality, all founded on the best philosophy the world had produced, and pervaded by an obvious breath of sincere and independent conviction; this, too, in spite of the apparent over-confidence (and very mediocre poetry) of the concluding stanza…. The poem may stand as a document to prove what was the thoughtful faith of the best type of English gentlemen in his day.

  It is a strange performance, and is to be admired rather for the measure of victory it obtains over unfavourable conditions, than for any absolute poetical merits…. Expression of this high and tender quality is not to be looked for in “Nosce Teipsum.” The poem deals with an eternally poetic subject, the longings, griefs, and destiny of the soul, in such a way as to furnish one more illustration of the futility of “philosophical poetry,”—of the manner in which the attempt to combine poetry and science extracts all pathos and all influence from the most pathetic and the most potent of themes.

General

  Left behind Him more valuable Witnesses of his Merit, than all the Titles that Heraldry can invent, or Monarchs bestow: The joint Applauses of Cambden, Sir John Harington, Ben Johnson, Selden, Donn, Corbet, &c.! These are great, and unquestionable Authorities in Favour of this Author; and I shall only presume to add, That, in my humble Opinion, no Philosophical Writer, I have met with, ever explain’d their Ideas more clearly, or familiarly even in Prose; or any so beautifully or harmoniously in Verse. There is a peculiar Happiness in his Similies, being introduc’d to illustrate, more than adorn; which renders them as useful, as entertaining; and distinguishes his from those of every other Author.

  It is usual among critics, even such critics as Hallam and Campbell, to decide that the imaginative power of the poem on the “Immortality of the Soul” consists in the illustration of the arguments rather than in the perception of the premises. But the truth would seem to be that the author exhibits his imagination more in his insight than in his imagery. The poetic excellence of the work comes from the power of clear, steady beholding of spiritual facts with the spiritual eye,—of beholding them so clearly that the task of stating, illustrating, and reasoning from them is performed with masterly ease.

  This vivid, sprightly, and melodious Poem, [“Orchestra”] was Sir John’s earliest “venture” of any extent: and it is important to remember this, as spurious capital for blame, has been found in the supposition that it was his latest.

  The “Hymns to Astræa,”… may be ranked as one of the most readable and freely written expressions of that complex sentiment toward the Queen of which each considerable Elizabethan poet became in turn the mouthpiece.

  Founded as it [“Orchestra”] is on a mere conceit—the reduction of all natural phenomena to a grave and regulated motion which the author calls dancing—it is one of the very best poems of the school of Spenser, and in harmony of metre (the seven-lined stanza) and grace of illustration is sometimes not too far behind Spenser himself.

  Sir John Davies, whose philosophical poems were among the most original and beautiful literary productions of the close of Elizabeth’s reign…. He was eminently a writer before his time. His extremely ingenious “Orchestra,” a poem on dancing, has much in it that suggests the Fletchers on one side and Donne on the other, while his more celebrated magnum opus of the “Nosce Teipsum” is the general precursor of all the school of metaphysical ingenuity and argumentative imagination. In Davies there is hardly a trace of those qualities which we have sought to distinguish as specially Elizabethan, and we have difficulty in obliging ourselves to remember that his poems were given to the public during the course of the sixteenth century. To the exquisite novelty and sweetness of his “Hymns of Astræa,” critical justice has never yet been done.