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Quarles, Francis. (1592-1644)
Argalus and Parthenia the Argument of Ye History. Newly Perused Perfected and Written by Fra: Quarles.
London: Printed for Iohn Marriott in St Dunstons Church: yard fleetstreet, 1647. - The title page is engraved and signed: Thomas Cecill sculp. Includes "The minde of the Frontispiece" printed on verso of engraved title page. - 4to [8], 152, [2] pages. - Quite Rare.
Quarles wrote this long versed romance developed and based on a story in Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" (1554-1586). Pepys Diary dated Jan 31, 1660 indicates Pepys attended the debut theatre presentation of Argalus and Parthenia. - The work by which Quarles is best known, the Emblems, was originally published in 1635, with grotesque illustrations engraved by William Marshall and others. The forty-five prints in the last three books are borrowed from the Pia Desideria (Antwerp, 1624) of Herman Hugo. Each "emblem" consists of a paraphrase from a passage of Scripture, expressed in ornate and metaphorical language, followed by passages from the Christian Fathers, and concluding with an epigram of four lines.
- The Emblems was immensely popular with the vulgar, but the critics of the 17th and 18th centuries had no mercy on Quarles. Sir John Suckling in his Sessions of the Poets disrespectfully alluded to him as he "that makes God speak so big in's poetry." Pope in the Dunciad spoke of the Emblems, " Where the pictures for the page atone and Quarles is saved by beauties not his own."
Francis Quarles Works: - A Feast for Wormes. Set forth in a Poeme of the History of Jonah (1620), which contains other scriptural paraphrases, besides the one that furnishes the title;
- Hadassa; or the History of Queene Ester (1621);
- Job Militant, with Meditations Divine and Morall (1624);
- Sions Elegies, wept by Jeremie the Prophet (1624);
- Sions Sonets sung by Solomon the King (1624), a paraphrase of the Canticles;
- The Historie of Samson (1631);
- Alphabet of Elegies upon ... Dr Aylmer (1625);
- Argalus and Parthenia (1629), the subject of which is borrowed from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia;
- Four books of Divine Fancies digested into Epigrams, Meditations and Observations (1632);
- A reissue of his scriptural paraphrases and the Alphabet of Elegies as Divine Poems (1633);
- Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man (1638);
- Enchyridion, containing Institutions Divine and Moral (1640-41), a collection of four "centuries" of miscellaneous aphorisms;
- Observations concerning Princes and States upon Peace and Warre (1642),
- Boanerges and Barnabas - Wine and Oyle for ... afflicted Soules (1644-46), both of which are collections of miscellaneous reflections;
- Three violent Royalist tracts (1644); The Loyall Convert, The Whipper Whipt, and The New Distemper, reissued in one volume in 1645 with the title of The Profest Royalist; his quarrell with the Times, and some elegies.
- Solomon's Recantation ... (1645) contains a memoir by his widow.
- Other posthumous works are The Shepheards' Oracles (1646), a second part of Boanerges and Barnabas (1646), a broadside entitled A Direfull Anathema against Peace-haters (1647), and an interlude, The Virgin Widow (1649).
REFERENCES: Wing Q39; Horden, J. Quarles, VI, 8.
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