Born, in Dublin, 1615. At school in London. Entered at Lincoln’s Inn, 28 April 1631; called to Bar, 1638. Matriculated Trinity Coll., Oxford, 18 Nov. 1631. Married Ann Cotton, 25 June 1634. Inherited family estates on father’s death, 1638. Took King’s side in Civil War, being High Sheriff of Surrey. Governor of Farnham Castle, 1642. Taken prisoner and sent to London. Lived at Oxford, 1643–47. In attendance on Charles I., Henrietta Maria, and Charles II., respectively, till 1651. Returned to England, winter of 1651. Forbidden to live in London, 1655; settled at Bury, Suffolk, 1658. Abroad with Earl of Pembroke, 1659. Surveyor-General of Works, June 1660. Arranged Coronation Ceremony for Charles II., 1661; created Knight of the Bath. Married Margaret Brooke, 25 May 1665. She died, 6 Jan. 1667. He died, in London, March 1669. Buried in Westminster Abbey. Works: “The Sophy” (anon.), 1642; “Cooper’s Hill” (anon.), 1642; a verse adaptation of Cicero’s “Cato Major,” 1648; “Anatomy of Play” (anon.), 1651; “The Destruction of Troy” (anon.; trans. from “Virgil’s Æneid,” Book II.), 1656; “Panegyrick on … Gen. George Monck” (anon., attrib. to Denham), 1659; “A Relation of a Quaker” (anon., attrib. to Denham), 1659; “Second and Third Advices to a Painter,” 1667 (another edn. same year); “The Famous Battel of the Catts” (anon.), 1668; “Poems and Translations,” 1668. Posthumous: “The Gaming Humour considered” (anon.), 1684; “A Version of the Psalms of David,” 1714.

Personal

  Sir John Denham was unpolished with the small-pox: otherwise a fine complexion…. He delighted much in bowles, and did bowle very well. He was of the tallest, but a little incurvetting at his shoulders, not very robust. His haire was but thin and flaxen, with a moist curle. His gate was slow, and was rather a stalking (he had long legges), which was wont to putt me in mind of Horace, De Arte Poetica:—

	“Hic, dum sublimes versus ructatur, et errat
	Si veluti merulis intentus decidit auceps
	In puteum foveamve.”—

His eie was a kind of light goose-gray, not big; but it had a strange piercingness, not as to shining and glory, but (like a Momus) when he conversed with you he look’t into your very thoughts. He was generally temperate as to drinking.

  But being looked upon as a slow and dreaming young man by his seniors and contemporaries, and given more to cards and dice, than his study, they could never then in the least imagine, that he could ever inrich the world with his fancy, or issue of his brain, as he afterwards did.

The Sophy, 1642

  At last, viz. 1640, his play of “The Sophy” came out, which did take extremely: Mr. Edmund Waller sayd then of him, that he broke-out like the Irish Rebellion—threescore thousand strong, before any body was aware.

  He has writ but one Play, but by that Specimen we may judge of his ability in Dramatick, as well as Epick Poesy; this Play being generally commended.

  “The Sophy” on its production met with extraordinary praise. Its celebrity is no doubt attributable in part to the impressive character of its versification…. The style of this production is rhetorical, but sustained; its value was overrated by Denham’s contemporaries, but it is certainly one of the best tragedies of its time, and had doubtless been produced under the inspiration of worthy models. In the political wisdom which it teaches in one of its most striking scenes, something nobler than party spirit reveals itself; and a lesson is enforced deserving the attention both of kings and of rebels who misuse religion as an instrument or as a pretext.

Cooper’s Hill, 1642

	… he whose Song rais’d “Cooper’s Hill” so high,
	As made its Glory with Parnassus vie;…

	Nor, Denham, must we e’er forget thy strains,
	While “Cooper’s Hill” commands the neighb’ring plains.

  Sir John Denham, in his “Cooper’s Hill,” (for none of his other poems merit attention), has a loftiness and vigour which had not before him been attained by any English poet who wrote in rhyme. The mechanical difficulties of that measure retarded its improvement. Shakspeare, whose tragic scenes are sometimes so wonderfully forcible and expressive, is a very indifferent poet when he attempts to rhyme. Precision and neatness are chiefly wanting in Denham.

  This poem, by Denham, though it may have been exceeded by later attempts in description, yet deserves the highest applause, as it far surpasses all that went before it: the concluding part, though a little too much crowded is very masterly.

  “Cooper’s Hill” if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and the sentiments sometimes such as will not bear a rigorous enquiry…. It has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must arise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.

  The plan is original, as far as our poetry is concerned; and I do not recollect any exception in other languages. Placing himself upon an eminence not distant from Windsor, he takes a survey of the scene; he finds the tower of St. Paul’s on its farthest horizon, the Castle much nearer, and the Thames at his feet. These, with the ruins of an abbey, supply, in turn, materials for a reflecting rather than imaginative mind, and, with a stag-hunt, which he has very well described, fill up the canvas of a poem of no great length, but once of no trifling reputation. The epithet, majestic Denham, conferred by Pope, conveys rather too much; but “Cooper’s Hill” is no ordinary poem. It is nearly the first instance of vigorous and rhythmical couplets; for Denham is incomparably less feeble than Browne, and less prosaic than Beaumont. Close in thought, and nervous in language like Davies, he is less hard and less monotonous; his cadences are animated and various, perhaps a little beyond the regularity that metre demands; they have been the guide to the finer ear of Dryden. Those who cannot endure the philosophic poetry must ever be dissatisfied with “Cooper’s Hill;” no personification, no ardent words, few metaphors beyond the common use of speech, nothing that warms or melts or fascinates the heart. It is rare to find lines of eminent beauty in Denham; and equally so to be struck by any one as feeble or low. His language is always well chosen and perspicuous, free from those strange turns of expression, frequent in our older poets, where the reader is apt to suspect some error of the press, so irreconcilable do they seem with grammar or meaning.

  “Cooper’s Hill” may be considered as belonging in point of composition to the same school with Sir John Davies’s “Nosce Teipsum;” and, if it has not all the concentration of that poem, it is equally pointed, correct, and stately, with, partly owing to the subject, a warmer tone of imagination and feeling, and a fuller swell of verse. The spirit of the same classical style pervades both; and they are the two greatest poems in that style which had been produced down to the date at which we are now arrived.

  Gratification is united with solidity; the author of “Cooper’s Hill” knows how to please as well as to impress. His poem is like a king’s park, dignified and level without doubt, but arranged for the pleasure of the sight, and full of choice prospects. It leads us by easy digressions across a multitude of varied thoughts.

  “Cooper’s Hill” remains his only really noteworthy production.

General

	… I confess, ’tis somewhat to do well
	In our high art, although we can’t excel
	Like thee, or dare the buskins to unloose
	Of thy brave, bold, and sweet Maronian muse.
	But since I’m call’d, rare Denham, to be gone,
	Take from thy Herrick this conclusion:
	’Tis dignity in others, if they be
	Crown’d poets, yet live princes under thee;
	The while their wreaths and purple robes do shine
	Less by their own gems than those beams of thine.

  Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry…. He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition of being upon proper occasions a merry fellow, and, in common with most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from it. Nothing less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham: he does not fail for want of efforts; he is familiar, he is gross, but he is never merry, unless the “Speech against Peace in the close Committee” be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant shows him to have been well qualified…. He is one of the writers that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought therefore to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left much to do.

  Denham was the first writer to adopt the precise manner of versification introduced by Waller. His relation to that poet resembles that taken a century later by Mason with respect to Gray, but Denham is a more original writer than Mason. The names of Waller and Denham were first associated by Dryden, and the critics of the next sixty years were unanimous in eulogizing the sweetness of the one, and the strength of the other. It is quite true that the versification of Denham is vigorous; it proceeds with greater volume than that of Waller, and produces a stronger impression. But he is a very unequal and irregular writer, and not unfrequently descends to doggerel, and very dull doggerel too. His literary taste was superior to his genius; he knew what effect he desired to produce, and strove to conquer the difficulties of antithesis, but the result of his effort was rarely classic. He takes the same place in English poetry as is taken in French by Chapelain and other hard versifiers of the beginning of the seventeenth century, who had lost the romantic fervour and had not yet gained the classic grace. But, like those poets, he has his fine flashes of style.

  Denham’s satires are crude doggerel, and show more bad taste than ability.