William Habington, poet, was born at Hindlip, Worcestershire, 4th November 1605. His family was Catholic; his uncle was executed, and his father, the antiquary, Thomas Habington (1560–1647), lay six years in the Tower for complicity in Babington’s plot. He was educated at St. Omer, but declined to become a Jesuit, and was next sent to Paris. He married Lucy Herbert, daughter of the first Lord Powis, and has immortalised her in his “Castara” (1634), a collection of lyrical poems, some of rare beauty and sweetness, and stamped with a purity then unusual. He died 30th November 1654. Other works were “The Historie of Edward the Fourth” (1640); “The Queene of Aragon, a Tragi-comedie” (1640); and “Observations upon Historie” (1641).

Personal

	“And when I’m lost in death’s cold night,
	Who will remember now I write?”

So wrote William Habington, nearly two centuries and a half ago, foreboding, perhaps, the neglect which was so soon to settle on his name. His was not a genius of that robust and cheerful temper which calmly forestalls the verdict of posterity and usurps immortality as its birthright, the royal purple of the sovereigns of song. His premonition, if such it were, had speedy fulfilment. So popular during his lifetime that no less than three editions of his poems were called for in the short space of five years, he seems, upon his death, to have dropped out of notice as quietly and quickly as a pebble tossed into a stream. So far as we can learn, not even a single bubble of elegy—and a prodigious quantity of such “airy nothings” the drowning poets of his day were wont to set afloat, to show for a little where they had sunk in the Lethean river—marked his exit.

  Habington devotes as many of his poems to his wife, as to his mistress, and in them reaches a higher level of poetic accomplishment than he elsewhere attains. It is pleasant to contemplate the happy course of this pure and honourable affection, and it is impossible not to feel a kind of liking for so constant a wooer, so good a friend, and so upright a man. We must not complain if, like Evelyn, Habington seems to have gone through the Civil War without taking a decided part one way or the other. The man was no hero, nor born to shine in public life. What political sympathies his writings reveal were strongly Royalist; he himself came of an old Catholic stock, and was educated at St. Omer; and we may be sure that as far as he took any side at all, he took part against those whom he would regard as rebels and schismatics. Habington—as revealed to us by his own verses—was something of a dreamer, something of an ascetic, something even of a bigot. His was just the sort of life and character which could live through, as not of them, the din and turmoil and passion of those stirring years. He was not of those who are great among the sons of men; nevertheless the interest that his work arouses is likely rather to increase than diminish, for though narrow in scope it is intense in feeling, and though in parts feeble and one-sided, it is as a whole made vital by the impress of a distinct and original personality.

Castara, 1635

  If not too indulgent to what is my owne, I think even these verses will have that proportion in the world’s opinion that heaven hath allotted me in fortune; not so high as to be wondered at, nor so low as to be contemned.

  The author of poems which came forth above twenty years since under title of “Castara,” the feigned name, no doubt, of that humane goddess who inspired them; but better known by the history of the Reign of King (Edward) the Fourth, in which he hath a style sufficiently florid, and perhaps better becoming a poet than historian…. In respect of his poems they are almost forgotten. He may be ranked, in my opinion, with those who deserve neither the highest nor lowest seat in the Theatre of Fame.

  They possess much elegance, much poetical fancy; and are almost everywhere tinged with a deep moral cast, which ought to have made their fame permanent. Indeed I cannot easily account for the neglect of them.

  One of the most elegant monuments ever raised by genius to conjugal affection, was Habington’s “Castara.”

  The poetry of Habington is that of a pure and amiable mind, turned to versification by the custom of the age, during a real passion for a lady of birth and virtue, the Castara whom he afterwards married; but it displays no great original power, nor is it by any means exempt from the ordinary blemishes of hyperbolical compliment and far-fetched imagery.

  Faith and purity go hand-in-hand. If “Castara” were studied in this age it might almost make chastity fashionable among men. This virtue of Sir Galahad was not common in Habington’s time, and it has always required much courage in a man of the world to proclaim that he possesses a quality which is generally regarded as the crowning attribute of womanhood. To this poet, who dared to dedicate, in a licentious age, his work to the woman who was to him as the church to Christ, we owe honor; it was his Catholic faith and practice that made him so noble among the men of his time. Habington ought to be studied by all young Catholics. Americans have inherited his poems along with that language which was forced on the ancestors of some of us, but which is none the less our own. His faults of technique, so glaringly apparent in this day of almost perfect technique in poetry, offer lessons in themselves. No man can read “Castara” without feeling better and purer; and of how many poets can this be said? Since Pope taught the critics to place execution above conception Habington has found no place. It remains for the rising generation of young Catholics who read and think to give him a niche that will not be unworthy of the poet of that chaste love which was born from Christianity.

  “Castara” is a real instance of what some foreign critics very unjustly charge on English literature as a whole—a foolish and almost canting prudery. The poet dins the chastity of his mistress into his readers’ heads until the readers in self-defence are driven to say, “Sir, did any one doubt it?” He protests the freedom of his own passion from any admixture of fleshly influence, till half a suspicion of hypocrisy and more than half a feeling of contempt force themselves on the hearer.

  Habington claims credit in his preface for the purity of his muse. “In all those flames,” he writes, “in which I burned I never felt a wanton heate, nor was my invention ever sinister from the straite way of chastity.” He also dwells upon Castara’s chastity with wearisome iteration. Though they are wanting in ardour, the love-verses are elegantly written; and the elegies on his kinsman Talbot are tender and sincere.

  William Habbington, who sings to us with such monotonous sweetness of Castara’s innocent joys, surpasses Lodge alike in the charm of his descriptions and in the extravagance of his follies. In reading him we are sharply reminded of Klopstock’s warning, that “a man should speak of his wife as seldom and with as much modesty as of himself;” for Habbington, who glories in the fairness and the chastity of his spouse, becomes unduly boastful now and then in vaunting these perfections to the world. He, at least, being safely married to Castara, feels none of that haunting insecurity which disturbs his fellow-poets.

	“All her vows religious be,
	And her love she vows to me,”

he says complacently, and then stops to assure us in plain prose that she is “so unvitiated by conversation with the world that the subtle-minded of her sex would deem it ignorance.” Even to her husband-lover she is “thrifty of a kiss,” and in the marble coldness and purity of her breast his glowing roses find a chilly sepulchre. Cupid, perishing, it would seem, from a mere description of her merits, or, as Habbington singularly expresses it,—

	“But if you, when this you hear,
	Fall down murdered through your ear,”

is, by way of compensation, decently interred in the dimpled cheek which has so often been his lurking-place.

  “They meet but with unwholesome springs.” Habington, who sang long and loud of the “Chaste Castara” in an age when ladies of her icy temperament were not so much in the fashion as they have become of later years, devotes this not very convincing poem to the praise of women; but the song contains a couplet which is perhaps more absolutely poetical, in design and form, than any two lines written in this or the following reign—

	“They hear but when the mermaid sings,
	And only see the falling star.”

  The religious verses included in the collection are devout expressions of religious feeling, and those in praise of the virtues of Castara are pleasing and sincere, never sinking below but seldom rising above mediocrity.

General

  By many [“Edward IV”] esteemed to have a stile sufficiently florid, and better becoming a poetical, than historical, subject.

  Some of his pieces deserve being revived.

  There is no very ardent sensibility in his lyrics, but they denote a mind of elegant and chaste sentiments. He is free as any of the minor poets of his age from the impurities which were then considered as wit. He is indeed rather ostentatiously platonic, but his love language is far from being so elaborate as the complimentary gallantry of the preceding age. A respectable gravity of thought, and succinct fluency of expression, are observable in the poems of his later life.

  A kind of sweet, modest punctiliosity is the virtue he strives to paint and inculcate in his ideal woman.

  His religion is a further reason why to Catholic readers he should be better known than he is. Habington is, in all respects, a Catholic poet, not only like Lodge, a Catholic, who chanced to be a poet, or like Pope, a poet who chanced to be a Catholic, but rather like Aubrey de Vere, one in whom faith and genius are so interfused and blended that he seems to be a poet because he is a Catholic, and a Catholic because he is a poet. In a man of Habington’s nature, his religion is not a social form or a sentimental fancy, but a deep and pervading influence in his life and work.

  Many pleasing thoughts and lines. His purity is worthy of the highest praise.

  From a purely literary point of view, Habington only rarely reaches high water mark in poetry. There are no glaring faults in his verse, and few conceits. The mass of his work is fluent, ingenious, tolerable poetry. It does not often attain to the inner music which can only proceed from a born singer, or to the flawless expression of a noble thought. Perfect literary tact Habington does not possess; he will follow up a fine stanza with a lame and halting one, apparently without sense of the incongruity. It takes a strong furor poeticus to uplift him wholly, and keep him at a high level throughout an entire poem, however short…. His inadequate sense of poetic form does not allow him often to attain to a perfect whole. He is too fond of awkward elisions, and endeavours to force more into a line than it will fairly hold. His sonnets, one or two of which rank among the best efforts, are, formally speaking, not sonnets at all, but strings of seven rhyming couplets. He does not sufficiently know, he has not sufficiently laboured at, the technical business of his art.

  If not born a singer, was yet so near the divine voice as to catch some exquisite echoes.