Cleveland, JOHN

Cleveland, JOHN, cavalier poet, born at Loughborough in June 1613, the son of a clergyman ousted by the parliament from the living of Hinckley in 1644. In 1627-31 he was at Christ's College, Cambridge, and then migrated to St John's College, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1634, and lived nine years 'the delight and ornament of St John's society.' Here he studied both law and physic. Cleveland vigorously opposed Cromwell's election to the Long Parliament for Cambridge, and was for his loyalty ejected from his fellowship by the parliament in 1644. He betook himself to the king's army, was popular among the cavaliers, and was appointed 'judge-advocate' at Newark, but was obliged to surrender with the garrison. His indignation at the Scotch army for handing over the king to the parliamentarians he expressed in some stinging verses, which, however, are too violent to be really strong. Henceforward Cleveland lived upon the hospitality of his partisans, and was forced to keep his wit in check. In 1655 he was arrested at Norwich, but was soon released by command of Cromwell, whose magnanimous spirit could admire the courageous manliness of the poor poet's letter addressed to him. In 1656 he published a small volume containing thirty-six loyal poems, consisting of elegies upon Charles I., Strafford, Land, and Edward King, the subject of Milton's Lycidas, also some stinging satires. Cleveland now went to live at Gray's Inn, where he soon after died, April 29, 1658. In the year 1677 was published, with a short account of the author's life, Clevelandi Vindicie, or Cleveland's Genuine Poems, Oration, Epistles, &c. Cleveland undoubtedly exercised a strong influence upon the greater genius of Butler. Thomas Fuller commends him as 'a general artist, pure latinist, exquisite orator, and eminent poet. His epithets were pregnant with metaphysics, carrying in them a difficult plainness, difficult at the hearing, plain at the considering thereof.'