[Sir] John Denham

Life
1615-1669, b. Dublin, son of Lord Chief Justice of King’s Bench in Ireland; English Surveyor-Gen. to Charles II; baron of the Exchequer in 1641; author of Coopers Hill (1642), a topographical [or loco-descriptive] poem based on the location of that name near London and filled with apt moralising; his tragedy The Sophy (1642), was said by Waller to have ‘broke[n] out like the Irish rebellion [...] when no one [...] in the least suspected it’ (Ãubrey’s Brief Lives);

Denham also wrote Cato Major (1669), based on Cicero, and The Famous Battle of the Catts in the Province of Ulster (1668), a verse-satire; also A True Presbyterian (London 1680), a verse satire; his lines on the Thames in Coopers Hill are paricularly renowned [see infra] and the topographical poem in which they occur is said to owe something to place-name lore [dinnsenchas] from his Irish experience; architect on Burlington House and Greenwich Hospital; bur. Westminster; lampooned by Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras. RR CAB ODNB PI JMC OCEL OCIL

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Works
Literary works (selection)
  • Coopers Hill: A Poeme (London: Printed for Tho. Walkley [...] 1642), 19pp. [see editions].
  • The prologue to His Majesty at the first play presented at the Cock-pit in Whitehall: being part of that noble entertainment which their Maiesties received Novemb. 19. from his Grace the Duke of Albemarle (London: Printed for G. Bedell and T. Collins, at the Middle-Temple Gate in Fleet-street, 1660), 1 sh., fol.
  • The Destruction of Troy: an essay upon the second book of Virgils Aeneis, Written in the year, 1636 (London: for H. Moseley 1656), 28pp.
  • A Panegyrick on His Excellency the Lord General George Monck, Commander in Chief of all the Forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: Printed for Richard Marriot 1659), [2], 5pp.
  • Directions to a Painter for Describing our Naval Business: in Imitation of Mr. Waller, Being the Last Works of Sir John Denham. Whereunto is annexed, Clarindons house-warming. By an unknown author ([London] [s.n.] 1667), [2], 45, [3]pp., 8o. [see “Answer” - as infra].
  • On Mr. Abraham Cowley: his death and burial amongst the ancient poets (London: printed for H. Herringman 1667), 4pp.), fol. [30 cm].
  • Cato Major of Old Age: A Poem ([London]: Printed for Henry Herringman 1669, edns. 1710 & 1975 [facs.]), 52pp. [17 cm].
Collected editions
  • Comedies and Tragedies ... never printed before, and now published by the authours originall copies [Beaumont, Fletcher & Denham, with a port. of Fletcher] (London: Humphrey Robinson & Humphrey Moseley 1647), [fol. vols. 75, 143, 165, 71, 172, 92, 50, 48.pp.].
  • Certain Verses Written by Severall of the Authors Friends [i.e., Denham; Sir Wm. Davenant, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham ... et al.]: to be re-printed with the second edition of Gondibert (London: [s.n.] 1653), 24pp. [Microfilm in Early English books, 1641-1700, 866:3].
  • Poems and Translations: with The Sophy, Written by the Honourable Sir John Denham (London: Printed for H. Herringman 1668) [see details].
  • The Poems of Sir John Denham [with “The Life of Sir John Denham by Dr. Johnson”] (London: Johnson 1810; 1822), and Do. [new edn.] as The Poetical Works of John Denham [Sharpe’s edition of the British Poets, No. 15] (Whittingham 1807), 143pp., ill. [1 lf. of pls.], 13 cm.
  • Theodore Howard Banks, ed. & intro., Poetical Works [of Sir John Denham] (New Haven & London 1928; rep. Archon Books 1969), xviii, 362pp.

See also The Book of Psalms: as translated, paraphrased, or imitated by some of the most eminent English poets [viz. Addison, Blacklock, Brady, Carter, Daniel, Denham, Doddridge, Merrick, Milton, Roscommon, Rowe, Sowden, Steele, Tate, Tollet, Watts ... and adapted to Christian worship (Bristol: Benj. Williams 1781), xii, [12], 513, [27]pp.

Miscellaneous
  • An exact copy of a letter sent to William Laud, late Arch-bishop of Canterbury, now prisoner in the Tower, November the 5, 1641: at which his Lordship taking exceptions, the author visited him in his owne person, and having admittance to him, had some private discourse with him concerning the cruelty in which he formerly raigned in his power: the substance whereof is truly composed by the author himselfe, wherein doth appeare a sign of complying with the times and some hopes of his repentance (London: Printed for H. W. and T. B. 1641), [8]pp., ill. [attrib. to Denham in Wrenn Cat.]; Edward Ward [1667-1731],
  • The Whigs unmask’d: being the secret history of the Calf’s-Head-Club. Shewing the rise and progress of that infamous society since the Grand Rebellion. [...] Adorn’d with cuts suitable to every particular design. To which are added, several characters by Sir John Denham, and other valuable authors. Also a Vindication of the royal martyr, King Charles the First; wherein are expos’d, the hellish mysteries of the old republican rebellion. By Mr. Butler [8th Edn.; with large adds.] (London: printed & sold by J. Morphew 1713), [16], vi, 224pp., pls., 8vo. [19 cm.]
 

See also Presbytery Dissected: or a true description and character of a Presbyterian. By Sir John Denham, Knight (Dublin: 1733), 8pp., 8o [an unlikely attribution].

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Bibliographical details
Cooper’s Hill: A Poeme (London: Printed for Tho. Walkley, and are to be to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Flying Horse between York-house and Britaines Burse, 1642), [2], 19, [1]pp., and num. other edns [1650, 1709 &c., e.g.]:

  1. Coopers Hill. A Poeme. The Second Edition with Additions (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1650). University of Toronto Library B-11 03457.
  2. Coopers-hill: A Poem Written by the Honourable Sir John Denham, Knight of the Bath (London: Printed and sold by H. Hills 1709), 16pp., 8o..
  3. [In Latin as] Coopers hill Latine redditum: ad nobilissimum d[omi]num Gulielmum d[omi]num Cavendish, honoratissimi Domini Gulielmi comitis Devoniæ filium unicum (Oxonii: E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1676), 21pp.

    Reprint editon: [Coopers Hill] Expans’d hieroglyphicks: A Critical Edition of Sir John Denham’s Cooper Hill [Single Works Ser.] (California UP 1969), xxix, 312pp., ill. [pl.], 24 cm.

The Answer of Mr. Wallers painter, to his many new advisors [a reply, in verse, to the answers to E. Waller’s “Instructions to a Painter for the Drawing of the Posture & Progress of His Ma[jest]ies Forces at Sea”] (London: A. Maxwell 1667), [q.p.], 4o. [Note ‘to the answers’, viz., those variously published as The Second Advice to a Painter, The Second, and Third advice to a Painter and Directions to a Painter, purporting to be by Sir J. Denham and sometimes attributed to Andrew Marvell: COPAC.]

Poems and Translations: with The Sophy, Written by the Honourable Sir John Denham, 2 vols. (London: Printed for H. Herringman 1668), 4, 186pp.; [4], 2, 97pp., 8o [17 cm] [special title-pages for “The destruction of Troy” & “The Sophy”, both 1667, the latter with sep. pag.; new edns. in 1671 [2nd imp.], 1684, 1703, 1769, 1719, 1751, 1771, &c.; also facs. of 1684 1 vol. edn. in Early English Books Ser./Harvard UL 1983].

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Criticism
Brendan Ó Hehir, Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham (California UP 1968), 288pp.; see also William Upcott, Bibliographical Account of Principal Works relating to English Topography [1818] (Wakefield: Simmons 1978); J. W. Foster, ‘Topographical Tradition in Anglo-Irish Poetry’ Colonial Consequences (1992), p.197ff. [infra]; ‘Encountering Traditions’, in Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History, ed. J. W. Foster and Helena C. G. Chesney, Dublin: Lilliput 1997; espec. pp.58-59. Also Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946) [see extract].

Also Biographia Hibernica: Biographical Dictionary of the Worthies of Ireland [... &c.] by Richard Ryan (1819-1822

Biographia Hibernica
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY
OF THE
WORTHIES OF IRELAND,
FROM THE
EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME.
WRITTEN AND COMPILED
BY RICHARD RYAN.

Vol. II
Ricorso copies in pdf and .docx formats attached.
 

Sir John Denham: A poet of some celebrity, was the only son of Sir John Denham, Knight, of Little Horsley, in Essex, (some time chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland, and one of the lords justices of that kingdom,) by Eleanor, daughter of Sir Garnet More, Knight, Baron of Mellefont, in Ireland, and was born in Dublin in the year 1615; but was brought over from thence, two years afterwards, on his father being  made one of the barons of the exchequer in England, and received his education in London. In 1631, he was entered a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, being then sixteen years of age; when, as Wood expresses it, “being looked upon as a slow and dreaming young man by his seniors and cotemporaries, and given more to cards and dice than his study, they could never then, in the least imagine, that he could ever enrich the world with his fancy, or issue of his brain, as he after-wards did.” He pursued his studies for three years at the university; and having undergone a public examina¬tion for bis degree of bachelor of arts, he entered himself at Lincoln’s Inn, with a view of studying the law. But notwithstanding his application to the object of his pursuit, he did not lose his propensity to cards and dice, and consequently became the dupe of the barpies tbat infest gaming tables. His father being informed of this, severely reproved him for his folly, and threatened to disinherit him if he did not reform. On this declaration be pro-fessed himself reclaimed, and, to testify the sincerity of his repentance, he wrote and published An Essay upon Gaming, which he presented to his father. But no sooner did his father die, than vice re-assumed her empire in his heart, and he returned to the gaming table loaded with several thousand pounds, which he was speedily un encumbered of.
 In 1641, he presented to the world his tragedy of the “Sophy,” which was greatly admired, and amongst others, by Waller, who took occasion to say of the author, that “he broke out like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when nobody was aware or in the least suspected it.” Soon after be was pricked high sheriff of Surrey, and made governor of Farnham castle for the king; but not being skilled in military affairs, he soon resigned his post, and went to bis majesty’s court at Oxford; when, in 1643, he published his most celebrated poem, “Cooper’s Hill”; “a work,” says Dr. Johnson, that confers upon him the, rank and dignity of an original author.” Dryden likewise praises Cooper’s Hill very highly, and says, “ it is a poem, which for majesty of style, is, and ever will be, the standard of good writing.” Pope has also celebrated this poem in his “Windsor Forest” and it is so universally thought so much superior to his other poems, that some have suspected him, (though without any just foundation) not to have been the author of it. And in the “Session of the Poets,” printed in Dryden’s Miscellanies, we have the following insinuation :—

“Then in came Denham, that limping old bard,
Whose fame on the Sophy and Cooper’s Hill stands;
And brought many stationers, who swore very hard,
That nothing sold better, except ’twere his lands.
But Apollo advis’d him to write something more,
To clear a suspicion which possessed the court,
That Cooper’s Hill, so much bragg’d on before,
Was writ by a vicar, who had forty pounds for’t.”

In 1647; the distresses of the royal family obliged him to relinquish the study of poetry, and engage in a more dangerous employment. He was entrusted by the queen with a message to the king, who was then in the hands of the army, and to whom he got admittance by the assistance of his acquaintance Hugh Peters, “ which trust,” says he, in the dedication of his poems to Charles II. “I performed with great safety to the persons with whom we corresponded; but, about nine months after, being discovered by their knowledge of Mr. Cowley’s hand, I happily escaped both for myself and them.”
He was, however, engaged in a greater undertaking, as, according to the authority of Wood, he conveyed away James Duke of York into France, in April 1648; but Clarendon declares to the contrary, and assures us, that the duke went off with Colonel Bamfield only, who contrived the means of escape. This year (1648) he published his translation of Cato Major.  Not long after, he was sent ambassador from Charles II. to the king of Poland, and William, (afterwards) Lord Crofts, was joined in the embassy with him. Among his poems is a ballad, entitled, “On my Lord Crofts’s and my Journey into Poland, from whence we brought 10,000£ for his Majesty, by the decimation (or tithing) of his Scottish subjects there.” About 1652, he returned to England, and the remnant pf his estate that the wars and the gamesters had left him, was sold by order of the parliament, and he was hospitably entertained by Lord Pembroke, at Wilton; but how he employed or supported himself till the Restoration, does not appear. After that event, he obtained the office of surveyor of the king’s buildings; and at the coronation of his majesty, was dignified with the order of Knight of the Bath. Wood pretends, that Charles I had granted our poet the reversion of that place after the decease of Inigo Jones, who held it; but Sir John himself, in the dedication of his poems, assures us, King Charles II. at his departure from St. Germains to Jersey, was pleased, freely, without his asking it, to confer it upon him. After the Restoration he composed his poem on Prudence and Justice; but shortly after he abandoned the study of poetry, and “made it his business,” he says, “ to draw such others as might be more serviceable to bis majesty, and, he hoped, more lasting.” It might be reasonably imagined that the favour of his sovereign and the esteem of the public, would now render him happy; but alas!  human felicity is short and uncertain. A second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, that he had the misfortune to be deprived of his reason; and Dr. Johnson asserts, that when our poet was thus afflicted, Butler lampooned him for his lunacy, for which the doctor has inflicted on him a well-merited castigation. This malady was of short continuance, nor does his mind appear to have been impaired by it; as he wrote immediately after his recovery, his fine verses on the death of Cowley.
But poets themselves must fall like those they sing and he soon followed to the grave the subject of his panegyric, dying at his office (which an accurate biographer informs us had been built by himself, near Whitehall, on the 10th of March, 1688, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer, Spencer [sic], and Cowley, sharing the honours of their sepulchre, if not of their immortality.
 His works have been several times printed together in one volume, under the title of “Poems and Translations, with the Sophy, a tragedy”. Most of the occasional serious poems of Denham possess the merit of some ingenious thoughts and emphatical expressions, but cannot be mentioned as first-rate compositions.

Available in a separate window.

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Commentary
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), cites The Sophy (acted Blackfriars, 1641; printed 1642); founded on Herbert’s Travels [i.e., Thomas A. Herbert, Travels in Persia, 1627-29], it in no way relates to Ireland; as Charles II’s surveyor of His Majesty’s buildings Denham succeeded Inigo Jones and had Christopher Wren as his deputy; also cites Langbaine on Sir John Denham: ‘before the foggy air of that climate could influence, or in any way adulerate his Mind, he was brought from thence’ (Dramatic Poets); Aubrey agrees with Langbaine in calling him ‘the dreamingst young fellow’ who, at college, ‘would game extremely’ and ‘was rooked by gamesters’; Aubrey also tells how he when he was a student a Lincoln’s Inn, he went out at night to ‘blott out all the signes betweeen Temple-barre and Charing-cross, which made great confusion the next day ...’ (Brief Lives, Vol. i, p.220; Kavanagh, p.27).

J. W. Foster, Colonial Consequences (Dublin: Lilliput 1992), remarks on the significance of his being a Surveyor General, more widely of the pre-eminence of that profession in Settlement Ireland; expresses reservations on Denham as original of ‘Topographical Tradition in Anglo-Irish Poetry’ [197], The English tradition begins with Sir John Denham, who happens to be Irish but ‘it would be unhealthy to [treat] “Cooper’s Hill” as an Irish poem’.

Further [J. W. Foster]: “Cooper’s Hill” and Pope’s “Windsor Castle” are constantly cited in the tradition as the important antecedents; the topographical poem is of course akin with the profession of surveyors [and] Denham was one; Irish surveyors of the period included Robert Gibson, A Treatise of Practical Surveying (1752; 2nd ed. Dublin 1763); Peter Callan’s A Dissertation on the Practice of Land Surveying in Ireland (Drog. 1758); Benjamin Noble’s Geodaesia Hibernica (Dublin 1763). [15] Foster further remarks that the number of surveyors and their works is undoubted ‘connected with the outrageous land situation and with the incidence of confiscation, forfeiture, and reapportionment.’ [15] Bibl., Brendan O’Hehir, critical ed. of Cooper’s Hill as Expans’d Hieroglyphics (Berkeley: California UP 1969)

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Quotations

Cooper’s Hill by Sir John Denham

Cooper’s Hill:  

Who having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own.
 And yet this act, to varnish o’er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion’s name.
No crime so bold, but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming good;
Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils;
But princes’ swords are sharper than their styles.
And thus to th’ ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did religion in a lazy cell,
In empty aery contemplation dwell;
And, like the block, unmoved lay; but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temperate region can be known,

Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure,
But to be cast into a calenture?
Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance?
And rather in the dark to grope our way,
Than, led by a false guide, to err by day?
Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand,
What barbarous invader sacked the land?
But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring
This desolation, but a Christian king;
When nothing, but the name of zeal, appears
’Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs,
What does he think our sacrilege would spare,
When such th’ effects of our devotion are?  
 

(ll.123-56.)

Further:  

Where Thames amongst the wanton vallies strays.
Thames, the most lov'd of all the Oceans sons,
By his old Sire to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the Sea,
Like mortal life to meet Eternity.
Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,

Whose foam is Amber, and their Gravel Gold;
His genuine, and less guilty wealth t'explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore;
Ore which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for th'ensuing Spring. 
       
 

 (ll.160-65)

[The poem is available in full at Jack Lynch"s poetry website [online]; also at Toronto U. Library [online].


Note: Edmund Burke quotes the following line from ’Cooper’s Hill in Reflections on the French Revolution (1790): ‘But wealth is crime enough to him that’s poor.’ The passage proceed (as indicated by editorial notes to the Gutenberg Project sources edition):

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References
Dictionary of National Biography, refers to his father (1559-1639); Lord Chief Justice of King’s Bench in Ireland, 1612, and baron of the English exchequer [not the Irish]; author of brief opinion in Hampden’s favour and Cooper’s Hill, the first strictly descriptive poem in English; The Sophy, a verse trag., set in Turkey, taken from Sir Thomas Herbert’s Travels (1634). Note that no Irish connection is asserted here not any mention of Battle of the Catts and True Presbyterian.

Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78), calls his mother a dg. of Sir Garrett More, baron of Mellefont; cites his tragedy The Sophy (1641) of which Waller said, ‘he broke out like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when nobody was aware or in the least suspected it’ [also in John Aubrey’s Brief Lives]; also in Thomas Campbell, Philosophical Survey, 1778]. Of Cooper’s Hill (1643), written at Eghem and is so noticed in Camden’s Britannia; Dryden called it ‘a poem which for majesty of style is, and ever will be, the standard of good writing’. Reade singles out Poem on the Death of Cowley, and quotes Dr. Johnson, ‘Denham is justly considered one of the fathers of English poetry ... improved our taste and advanced our language’; Pope speaks of ‘Denham’s strength and Waller’s sweetness’ in Essay on Criticism; works include Version of the Book of Psalms [DIW err. The famous battle of the Catts in the Province of Ulster, 1688 (sic)].

COPAC lists 386 editions [i.e., copies of sundry titles incl. literary works and others relating to law and government (mostly pamphlets).

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Notes
Bit o’ strife: Denham’s second wife, Margaret Brookes, became acknowledged mistress of the Duke of York, an event which caused Denham’s temporary madness. In Memoir of [Antoine de] Grammont he is accused of poisoning her. John Aubrey says ‘she was poisoned by means of with chocolate - viz, ‘the fatal chocolate’. handed to her by the Countess of Rochester.

W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1984) remarks: among the earliest translations of the classics in the 17th century were Sir John Denham’s, Aeneid 2 (1656) and his rendering of Sarpedon’s speech in Iliad, [Bk] 12, praised by Pope in his note on Iliad, 12.2. [q.p.].

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