An English poet of some reputation in his day, was born at Northway, near Tewkesbury, September, 1611. He studied at Oxford, and having taken orders, became a preacher of note in the university—one of his sermons finding a place, as a specimen of university preaching, in a volume of Five Sermons in Five several Styles or Ways of Preaching. In 1642 he received an appointment to an office in the church of Salisbury, and was in the same year made one of the Oxford council of war, appointed to provide for the king’s troops stationed in the town. In 1643 he was chosen junior proctor in the university, and reader in metaphysics; but he did not long hold these offices, for he died in December of the same year. He had attained very great reputation, and was spoken of in terms of the highest commendation by Ben Jonson and others of his time. His works are now scarcely remembered. His “Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, and other Poems,” appeared in 1647, and again in 1651. Wood praises his scholarship, and mentions that he wrote “Poemata Græca et Latina.”

Personal

  ’Tis not to be forgott that king Charles 1st dropt a teare at the newes of his death. William Cartwright was buried in the south aisle in Christ Church, Oxon. Pitty ’tis so famous a bard should lye without an inscription.

  A Person as Eminent for Loyalty and Learning, (his years consider’d) as any this Age has produc’d. One, whose Character has been written by several Pens; and therefore has afforded me, (who fetch my knowledge from Books, more than verbal Information) the larger subject to expatiate on…. He was extremely remarkable both for his outward, and inward Endowments; his Body being as handsome as his Soul. He was an expert Linguist, understanding not only Greek and Latine, but French and Italian, as perfectly as his Mother-tongue. He was an excellent Orator, and yet an admirable Poet, a Quality which Cicero with all his pains could not attain to. Nor was Aristotle less known to him than Cicero and Virgil: and those who heard his Metaphysical Lectures, gave him the Preference to all his Predecessors, the present Bishop of Lincoln excepted. His Sermons were as much admired as his other Composures, and One fitly applied to our Author, that Saying of Aristotle concerning Æschron the Poet, that He could not tell what Æschron could not do. In a word he was of so sweet a disposition, and so replete with all Virtues, that he was beloved by all Learned Men that knew him, and admired by all Strangers.

  He was another Tully and Virgil, as being most excellent for oratory and poetry, in which faculties, as also in the Greek tongue, he was so full and absolute, that those that best knew him, knew not in which he most excelled…. If the wits read his poems, divines his sermons, and philosophers his lectures on Aristotle’s metaphysics, they would scarce believe that he died at a little above thirty years of age.

  William Cartwright not only wrote some of the best poems and plays of his time, and preached some of the best sermons, but as reader of metaphysics in his University he earned especial praise. King Charles wore black on the day of his funeral, and fifty wits and poets of the time supplied their tributary verses to the volume, first published in 1651, of “Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with other Poems, by Mr. William Cartwright, late Student of Christ Church in Oxford, and Proctor of the University. The Airs and Songs set by Mr. Henry Lawes.” There is in this book a touching portrait of young Cartwright, evidently a true likeness, with two rows of books over his head, and his elbow upon the open volume of Aristotle’s metaphysics. He rests on his hand a young head, in which the full under-lip and downy beard are harmonized to a face made spiritual by intensity of thought. Cartwright died, in his thirty-second year, of a camp fever that killed many in Oxford.

General

  To have the same person cast his net and catch souls as well in the pulpit as on the stage!… A miracle of industry and wit, sitting sixteen hours a day at all manner of knowledge, an excellent preacher in whom hallowed fancies and reason grew visions and holy passions, raptures and extasies, and all this at thirty years of age!

  In noticing the catalogue of poets ranged under the title of “Amatory and Miscellaneous,” it is impossible not to be struck with the mutability of popular applause. Cowley and Cartwright were the favourites of their times, were considered as the first of poets, celebrated by their literary contemporaries in loud and repeated panegyrics, and their names familiar in every class of society. What is now their fate? To be utterly neglected, and, except to those who justly think it necessary to be intimate with every stage of our literature, nearly unknown. Have they deserved this? Let the patient reader wade through their numerous works, and he will probably answer, Yes.

  Perhaps there is no instance in the annals of English literature of an author more admired by his contemporaries of distinction than Cartwright appears to have been. Indeed, he is now better known by the praises of others than by his own works. These, with the exception of his plays, which are now entirely neglected, consist principally of political addresses to distinguished characters of the day.

  The specific gravity of the poems, so to speak, is far greater than that of any of his contemporaries; everywhere is thought, fancy, force, varied learning. He is never weak or dull; though he fails often enough, is often enough wrongheaded, fantastical, affected, and has never laid bare the deeper arteries of humanity, for good or for evil. Neither is he altogether an original thinker; as one would expect he has over-read himself; but then he has done so to good purpose. If he imitates, be generally equals. The table of fare in “The Ordinary” smacks of Rabelais or Aristophanes, but then it is worthy of either; and if one cannot help suspecting that, “The Ordinary” never would have been written had not Ben Jonson written “The Alchemist,” one confesses that Ben Jonson need not have been ashamed to have written the play himself: although the plot, as all Cartwright’s are, is somewhat confused and inconsequent…. The “Royal Slave,” too, is a gallant play, right-hearted and lofty from beginning to end, though enacted in an impossible court-cloud world akin to that in which the classic heroes and heroines of Corneille and Racine call each other Monsieur and Madame…. The “Royal Slave” seems to have been considered, both by the Court and by his contemporaries, his masterpiece. And justly so…. The songs are excellent, as are all Cartwright’s; for grace, simplicity, and sweetness, equal to any (save Shakspeare’s) which the seventeenth century produced: but, curiously enough, his lyric faculty seems to have exhausted itself in these half-dozen songs. His minor poems are utterly worthless, out-Cowleying Cowley in frigid and fantastic conceits; and his various addresses to the king and queen are as bombastic, and stupid, and artificial, as any thing which disgraced the reigns of Charles II. or his brother.

  It was of William Cartwright Ben Jonson said, “My son Cartwright writes like a man.” He has not left much behind to justify this eulogium; but his minor poems exhibit evidences of taste and scholarship which sufficiently explain the esteem and respect in which he was held by his contemporaries.

  Cartwright, whom his academical and literary contemporaries regarded as a phenomenon, is to us chiefly interesting as a type. If it be allowable to regard as extravagant the tendencies represented by him in both his life and his poetry, he may justly be remembered by a sufficiently prominent title among English poets—that of the typically extravagant Oxford resident of his period…. He possessed a real rhetorical inventiveness, and an extraordinary felicity of expression. These gifts he was able to display on occasions of the most opposite and diverse character, great and small, public and private,—from the occurrence of an unexampled frost to the publication of a treatise on the art of vaulting. Yet even with a panegyrical poet of the Fantastic School the relations between his theme and his own tastes and sentiments are of the highest importance.

  He was a man of learning as well as of zeal; and his admirable English style was well fitted to add to the favour with which his writings were received.

  Nothing in the writings that he has left justify the warm admiration that his personality seems to have evoked. He is a facile verse writer, especially of panegyric addresses, and a few of his shorter poems are pleasant enough of their kind—academic exercises in amorous verse such as the minor poets of the age were accustomed to produce.