ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND POETRY OF CRASHAW.[2]
In our Memorial-Introduction (vol. i. p. xxvi.) we make two promises, which fall now to be redeemed:
(_a_) A STUDY OF THE LIFE AND POETRY OF RICHARD CRASHAW.
(_b_) A MEMOIR OF WILLIAM CRASHAW, B.D., HIS FATHER.
The latter is in so many ways elucidative and illuminative of the former, outwardly and inwardly, that I deem it well to give it first.
The late laborious and accurate Joseph Hunter, in his MS. collections yclept Chorus Vatum, which by rare good fortune are preserved in the British Museum (Addl. MSS. 24.487, pp. 34-39), thus begins, _s.n._
'I am here introducing a name which may be said to be hitherto unknown in the regions of Poetry, and which has been unaccountably passed over by biographical writers of every class; yet one who has just claims on our attention of his own as well as in being the father of Richard Crashaw, whose merits are admitted;' and he continues with a pleasant egotism that one can readily pardon, 'and he has particular claims upon me, as having been a native of the part of the kingdom from which I spring, and bearing a name which is that of a numerous family from whom I descend.'
We shall find onward, that the elder Crashaw had a unique gift of Poetry; but independent of that, a somewhat prolonged acquaintance with his numerous books enables us emphatically to ratify the 'claims' of '_his own_' otherwise--though in strong, even fierce, antagonism as Divine and Writer to his gentle-natured son's after-opinions.
Hitherto, in the brief and meagre notices of his son, and of the paternal Crashaw, it has simply been stated that he was a '_Yorkshireman_.' This is mentioned incidentally in various places. We are now enabled by the interest in our researches of local Antiquaries, together with aid from the Hunter and Cole MSS., to give for the first time family-details. Handsworth, sometimes spelled Hansworth, near Sheffield, one of the hamlets of England in the 'Black Country'--once couched among green fields and hedge-row 'lanes,' though now blighted and begrimed--was the 'nest' of the Crashaws; and there and in the neighbourhood the name is met with until comparatively recent times.[3] The Church-Register goes back to 1558, and under Baptisms, Aug. 24th, 1568, is this entry, 'Thomas, son of Richard Crawshaw, baptised;' and, alas, under the following 'November 14th,' 'Thomas, son of Richard Crawshaw, buried.' Next comes our Worthy: