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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a4af03 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #64823 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64823) diff --git a/old/64823-0.txt b/old/64823-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f71b6cf..0000000 --- a/old/64823-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,21111 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. -05 (of 12), by William Hazlitt - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 05 (of 12) - -Author: William Hazlitt - -Editor: A. R. Waller - Arnold Glover - -Release Date: March 15, 2021 [eBook #64823] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM -HAZLITT, VOL. 05 (OF 12) *** - - - - - THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT IN TWELVE VOLUMES - - - VOLUME FIVE - - - - - _All rights reserved_ - - -[Illustration: - - _William Hazlitt._ - - _From a miniature by John Hazlitt, executed about 1808._ -] - - - - - THE COLLECTED WORKS OF - WILLIAM HAZLITT - - - EDITED BY A. R. WALLER AND ARNOLD GLOVER - - WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY - W. E. HENLEY - - ❦ - - Lectures on the English Poets and on the Dramatic Literature of the Age - of Elizabeth Etc. - - ❦ - - 1902 - LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. - McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK - - - - - Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS ix - - LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 169 - - PREFACE AND CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS FROM SELECT BRITISH POETS 365 - - NOTES 381 - - - - - LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS - - - - - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE - - -The _Lectures on The English Poets._ _Delivered at the Surrey -Institution. By William Hazlitt_, were published in 8vo. (8¾ × 5¼), in -the year of their delivery, 1818; a second edition was published in -1819, of which the present issue is a reprint. The imprint reads, -‘London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 93, Fleet Street. 1819,’ and the -volume was printed by ‘T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street, Cheapside.’ -Behind the half-title appears the following advertisement: ‘This day is -published, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, by William Hazlitt. Second -Edition, 8vo. price 10s. 6d. boards.’ A four-page advertisement of -‘Books just published by Taylor and Hessey’ ends the volume, with -‘Characters of Shakspeare’s Plays’ at the top, and a notice of it from -the _Edinburgh Review_. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - LECTURE I. - - PAGE - Introductory.—On Poetry in General 1 - - - LECTURE II. - - On Chaucer and Spenser 19 - - - LECTURE III. - - On Shakspeare and Milton 44 - - - LECTURE IV. - - On Dryden and Pope 68 - - - LECTURE V. - - On Thomson and Cowper 85 - - - LECTURE VI. - - On Swift, Young, Gray, Collins, etc. 104 - - - LECTURE VII. - - On Burns, and the Old English Ballads 123 - - - LECTURE VIII. - - On the Living Poets 143 - - - - - LECTURES ON - THE ENGLISH POETS - - - - - LECTURE I.—INTRODUCTORY - ON POETRY IN GENERAL - - -The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the -natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness exciting an -involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and producing, by -sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, or sounds, expressing it. - -In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-matter of it, -next of the forms of expression to which it gives birth, and afterwards -of its connection with harmony of sound. - -Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It relates -to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. It comes -home to the bosoms and businesses of men; for nothing but what so comes -home to them in the most general and intelligible shape, can be a -subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart -holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot -have much respect for himself, or for any thing else. It is not a mere -frivolous accomplishment, (as some persons have been led to imagine) the -trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours—it has been -the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that -poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten -syllables, with like endings: but wherever there is a sense of beauty, -or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the -growth of a flower that ‘spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and -dedicates its beauty to the sun,’—_there_ is poetry, in its birth. If -history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver: its -materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for the most -part, of the cumbrous and unwieldly masses of things, the empty cases in -which the affairs of the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue -or war, in different states, and from century to century: but there is -no thought or feeling that can have entered into the mind of man, which -he would be eager to communicate to others, or which they would listen -to with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a -branch of authorship: it is ‘the stuff of which our life is made.’ The -rest is ‘mere oblivion,’ a dead letter: for all that is worth -remembering in life, is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is -poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, -admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. Poetry is -that fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines, raises -our whole being: without it ‘man’s life is poor as beast’s.’ Man is a -poetical animal: and those of us who do not study the principles of -poetry, act upon them all our lives, like Molière’s _Bourgeois -Gentilhomme_, who had always spoken prose without knowing it. The child -is a poet in fact, when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats the -story of Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a poet, when he -first crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers; the countryman, -when he stops to look at the rainbow; the city-apprentice, when he gazes -after the Lord-Mayor’s show; the miser, when he hugs his gold; the -courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who paints his -idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant, who -fancies himself a god;—the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric -man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the -poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of their own making; -and the poet does no more than describe what all the others think and -act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and madness at second -hand. ‘There is warrant for it.’ Poets alone have not ‘such seething -brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cooler reason’ -can. - - ‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet - Are of imagination all compact. - One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; - The madman. While the lover, all as frantic, - Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. - The poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling, - Doth glance from heav’n to earth, from earth to heav’n; - And as imagination bodies forth - The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen - Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing - A local habitation and a name. - Such tricks hath strong imagination.’ - -If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. If it is a -fiction, made up of what we wish things to be, and fancy that they are, -because we wish them so, there is no other nor better reality. Ariosto -has described the loves of Angelica and Medoro: but was not Medoro, who -carved the name of his mistress on the barks of trees, as much enamoured -of her charms as he? Homer has celebrated the anger of Achilles: but was -not the hero as mad as the poet? Plato banished the poets from his -Commonwealth lest their descriptions of the natural man should spoil his -mathematical man, who was to be without passions and affections, who was -neither to laugh nor weep, to feel sorrow nor anger, to be cast down nor -elated by any thing. This was a chimera, however, which never existed -but in the brain of the inventor; and Homer’s poetical world has -outlived Plato’s philosophical Republic. - -Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagination and the -passions are a part of man’s nature. We shape things according to our -wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most emphatical -language that can be found for those creations of the mind ‘which -ecstacy is very cunning in.’ Neither a mere description of natural -objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however distinct or -forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry, without the -heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is not only a -direct but also a reflected light, that while it shews us the object, -throws a sparkling radiance on all around it: the flame of the passions, -communicated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with a flash of -lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates our whole -being. Poetry represents forms chiefly as they suggest other forms; -feelings, as they suggest forms or other feelings. Poetry puts a spirit -of life and motion into the universe. It describes the flowing, not the -fixed. It does not define the limits of sense, or analyze the -distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the -imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or -feeling. The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite -sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is -impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link -itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine -itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the -aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner, and by -the most striking examples of the same quality in other instances. -Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this reason, ‘has something divine -in it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity, by -conforming the shows of things to the desires of the soul, instead of -subjecting the soul to external things, as reason and history do.’ It is -strictly the language of the imagination; and the imagination is that -faculty which represents objects, not as they are in themselves, but as -they are moulded by other thoughts and feelings, into an infinite -variety of shapes and combinations of power. This language is not the -less true to nature, because it is false in point of fact; but so much -the more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object -under the influence of passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for -instance, be presented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear—and -the imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into -the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. ‘Our eyes -are made the fools’ of our other faculties. This is the universal law of -the imagination, - - ‘That if it would but apprehend some joy, - It comprehends some bringer of that joy: - Or in the night imagining some fear, - How easy is each bush suppos’d a bear!’ - -When Iachimo says of Imogen, - - ‘——The flame o’ th’ taper - Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids - To see the enclosed lights’— - -this passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame to accord with -the speaker’s own feelings, is true poetry. The lover, equally with the -poet, speaks of the auburn tresses of his mistress as locks of shining -gold, because the least tinge of yellow in the hair has, from novelty -and a sense of personal beauty, a more lustrous effect to the -imagination than the purest gold. We compare a man of gigantic stature -to a tower: not that he is any thing like so large, but because the -excess of his size beyond what we are accustomed to expect, or the usual -size of things of the same class, produces by contrast a greater feeling -of magnitude and ponderous strength than another object of ten times the -same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling makes up for the -disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to the imagination, which -have the power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror, -admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls upon the heavens to avenge -his cause, ‘for they are old like him,’ there is nothing extravagant or -impious in this sublime identification of his age with theirs; for there -is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his -wrongs and his despair! - -Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling. As in -describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impressions with the -forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain, by -blending them with the strongest movements of passion, and the most -striking forms of nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most impassioned -species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost point of -sublimity or pathos, by all the force of comparison or contrast; loses -the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it; -exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it; grapples -with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint; throws us -back upon the past, forward into the future; brings every moment of our -being or object of nature in startling review before us; and in the -rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to the highest -contemplations on human life. When Lear says of Edgar, ‘Nothing but his -unkind daughters could have brought him to this;’ what a bewildered -amazement, what a wrench of the imagination, that cannot be brought to -conceive of any other cause of misery than that which has bowed it down, -and absorbs all other sorrow in its own! His sorrow, like a flood, -supplies the sources of all other sorrow. Again, when he exclaims in the -mad scene, ‘The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, -they bark at me!’ it is passion lending occasion to imagination to make -every creature in league against him, conjuring up ingratitude and -insult in their least looked-for and most galling shapes, searching -every thread and fibre of his heart, and finding out the last remaining -image of respect or attachment in the bottom of his breast, only to -torture and kill it! In like manner, the ‘So I am’ of Cordelia gushes -from her heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a weight of love -and of supposed ingratitude, which had pressed upon it for years. What a -fine return of the passion upon itself is that in Othello—with what a -mingled agony of regret and despair he clings to the last traces of -departed happiness—when he exclaims, - - ——‘Oh now, for ever - Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content; - Farewel the plumed troops and the big war, - That make ambition virtue! Oh farewel! - Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, - The spirit-stirring drum, th’ ear-piercing fife, - The royal banner, and all quality, - Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war: - And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats - Th’ immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit, - Farewel! Othello’s occupation’s gone!’ - -How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide in its -sounding course, when in answer to the doubts expressed of his returning -love, he says, - - ‘Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea, - Whose icy current and compulsive course - Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on - To the Propontic and the Hellespont: - Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, - Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love, - Till that a capable and wide revenge - Swallow them up.’— - -The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desdemona is at that -line, - - ‘But there where I had garner’d up my heart, - To be discarded thence!”— - -One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites our -sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion as it -sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment, it strengthens the -desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by making -us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of passion lays bare -and shews us the rich depths of the human soul: the whole of our -existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits, of that which we -desire and that which we dread, is brought before us by contrast; the -action and re-action are equal; the keenness of immediate suffering only -gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more intimate -participation with the antagonist world of good; makes us drink deeper -of the cup of human life; tugs at the heart-strings; loosens the -pressure about them; and calls the springs of thought and feeling into -play with tenfold force. - -Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part of -our nature, as well as of the sensitive—of the desire to know, the will -to act, and the power to feel; and ought to appeal to these different -parts of our constitution, in order to be perfect. The domestic or prose -tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural, is in this sense the -least so, because it appeals almost exclusively to one of these -faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and Lillo, for this -reason, however affecting at the time, oppress and lie like a dead -weight upon the mind, a load of misery which it is unable to throw off: -the tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, stirs our inmost -affections; abstracts evil from itself by combining it with all the -forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings of the heart, and -rouses the whole man within us. - -The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry, is not any thing -peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is not -an anomaly of the imagination. It has its source and ground-work in the -common love of strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, people flock to -see a tragedy; but if there were a public execution in the next street, -the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not then the difference -between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty. Children are -satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain prose: nor do -the hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of murders and -executions about the streets, find it necessary to have them turned into -penny ballads, before they can dispose of these interesting and -authentic documents. The grave politician drives a thriving trade of -abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom he makes his enemies -for no other end than that he may live by them. The popular preacher -makes less frequent mention of heaven than of hell. Oaths and nicknames -are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or rhetoric. We are as fond of -indulging our violent passions as of reading a description of those of -others. We are as prone to make a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate -in our hopes of good. If it be asked, Why we do so? the best answer will -be, Because we cannot help it. The sense of power is as strong a -principle in the mind as the love of pleasure. Objects of terror and -pity exercise the same despotic control over it as those of love or -beauty. It is as natural to hate as to love, to despise as to admire, to -express our hatred or contempt, as our love or admiration. - - ‘Masterless passion sways us to the mood - Of what it likes or loathes.’ - -Not that we like what we loathe; but we like to indulge our hatred and -scorn of it; to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it by every -refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration; to make it a -bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour of -deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by name, to -grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect, to arm -our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend with, and to -contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest eloquence of -passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our -conception of any thing, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or -dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of -the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot -get rid in any other way, that gives an instant ‘satisfaction to the -thought.’ This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and -tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When Pope says of the Lord Mayor’s -shew,— - - ‘Now night descending, the proud scene is o’er, - But lives in Settle’s numbers one day more!’ - -—when Collins makes Danger, ‘with limbs of giant mould,’ - - ——‘Throw him on the steep - Of some loose hanging rock asleep:’ - -when Lear calls out in extreme anguish, - - ‘Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, - How much more hideous shew’st in a child - Than the sea-monster!’ - -—the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the other, and of -indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing -ourselves, and shew it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in -spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination, by -thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to the -indistinct and importunate cravings of the will.—We do not wish the -thing to be so; but we wish it to appear such as it is. For knowledge is -conscious power; and the mind is no longer, in this case, the dupe, -though it may be the victim of vice or folly. - -Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and the -passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd than -the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic -critics, for reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common -sense and reason: for the end and use of poetry, ‘both at the first and -now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature,’ seen through the -medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium by means -of literal truth or abstract reason. The painter of history might as -well be required to represent the face of a person who has just trod -upon a serpent with the still-life expression of a common portrait, as -the poet to describe the most striking and vivid impressions which -things can be supposed to make upon the mind, in the language of common -conversation. Let who will strip nature of the colours and the shapes of -fancy, the poet is not bound to do so; the impressions of common sense -and strong imagination, that is, of passion and indifference, cannot be -the same, and they must have a separate language to do justice to -either. Objects must strike differently upon the mind, independently of -what they are in themselves, as long as we have a different interest in -them, as we see them in a different point of view, nearer or at a -greater distance (morally or physically speaking) from novelty, from old -acquaintance, from our ignorance of them, from our fear of their -consequences, from contrast, from unexpected likeness. We can no more -take away the faculty of the imagination, than we can see all objects -without light or shade. Some things must dazzle us by their -preternatural light; others must hold us in suspense, and tempt our -curiosity to explore their obscurity. Those who would dispel these -various illusions, to give us their drab-coloured creation in their -stead, are not very wise. Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the -glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning -nothing but a little grey worm; let the poet or the lover of poetry -visit it at evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn and the crescent -moon it has built itself a palace of emerald light. This is also one -part of nature, one appearance which the glow-worm presents, and that -not the least interesting; so poetry is one part of the history of the -human mind, though it is neither science nor philosophy. It cannot be -concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and refinement has a -tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip the -wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally -visionary, the unknown and undefined: the understanding restores things -to their natural boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful -pretensions. Hence the history of religious and poetical enthusiasm is -much the same and both have received a sensible shock from the progress -of experimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives -birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what we do not -know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with -what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and -drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about us, we make -gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the -wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears. - - ‘And visions, as poetic eyes avow, - Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.’ - -There can never be another Jacob’s dream. Since that time, the heavens -have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse -to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the squares of the -distances, or on Doctor Chalmers’s Discourses. Rembrandt’s picture -brings the matter nearer to us.—It is not only the progress of -mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of civilization that -are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not only stand in less awe -of the preternatural world, but we can calculate more surely, and look -with more indifference, upon the regular routine of this. The heroes of -the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters and giants. At present we -are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or evil, to the incursions -of wild beasts or ‘bandit fierce,’ or to the unmitigated fury of the -elements. The time has been that ‘our fell of hair would at a dismal -treatise rouse and stir as life were in it.’ But the police spoils all; -and we now hardly so much as dream of a midnight murder. Macbeth is only -tolerated in this country for the sake of the music; and in the United -States of America, where the philosophical principles of government are -carried still farther in theory and practice, we find that the Beggar’s -Opera is hooted from the stage. Society, by degrees, is constructed into -a machine that carries us safely and insipidly from one end of life to -the other, in a very comfortable prose style. - - ‘Obscurity her curtain round them drew, - And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung.’ - -The remarks which have been here made, would, in some measure, lead to a -solution of the question of the comparative merits of painting and -poetry. I do not mean to give any preference, but it should seem that -the argument which has been sometimes set up, that painting must affect -the imagination more strongly, because it represents the image more -distinctly, is not well founded. We may assume without much temerity, -that poetry is more poetical than painting. When artists or connoisseurs -talk on stilts about the poetry of painting, they shew that they know -little about poetry, and have little love for the art. Painting gives -the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a -thing contains in itself: poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any -manner connected with it. But this last is the proper province of the -imagination. Again, as it relates to passion, painting gives the event, -poetry the progress of events: but it is during the progress, in the -interval of expectation and suspense, while our hopes and fears are -strained to the highest pitch of breathless agony, that the pinch of the -interest lies. - - ‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing - And the first motion, all the interim is - Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. - The mortal instruments are then in council; - And the state of man, like to a little kingdom, - Suffers then the nature of an insurrection.’ - -But by the time that the picture is painted, all is over. Faces are the -best part of a picture; but even faces are not what we chiefly remember -in what interests us most.—But it may be asked then, Is there anything -better than Claude Lorraine’s landscapes, than Titian’s portraits, than -Raphael’s cartoons, or the Greek statues? Of the two first I shall say -nothing, as they are evidently picturesque, rather than imaginative. -Raphael’s cartoons are certainly the finest comments that ever were made -on the Scriptures. Would their effect be the same, if we were not -acquainted with the text? But the New Testament existed before the -cartoons. There is one subject of which there is no cartoon, Christ -washing the feet of the disciples the night before his death. But that -chapter does not need a commentary! It is for want of some such resting -place for the imagination that the Greek statues are little else than -specious forms. They are marble to the touch and to the heart. They have -not an informing principle within them. In their faultless excellence -they appear sufficient to themselves. By their beauty they are raised -above the frailties of passion or suffering. By their beauty they are -deified. But they are not objects of religious faith to us, and their -forms are a reproach to common humanity. They seem to have no sympathy -with us, and not to want our admiration. - -Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feeling, combined -with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the -ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a question of -long standing, in what the essence of poetry consists; or what it is -that determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, -another in verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in a single -line— - - ‘Thoughts that voluntary move - Harmonious numbers.’ - -As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song -and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that -lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, and change ‘the -words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo.’ There is a striking instance -of this adaptation of the movement of sound and rhythm to the subject, -in Spenser’s description of the Satyrs accompanying Una to the cave of -Sylvanus. - - ‘So from the ground she fearless doth arise - And walketh forth without suspect of crime. - They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime, - Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round, - Shouting and singing all a shepherd’s rhyme; - And with green branches strewing all the ground, - Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown’d. - And all the way their merry pipes they sound, - That all the woods and doubled echoes ring; - And with their horned feet do wear the ground, - Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring; - So towards old Sylvanus they her bring, - Who with the noise awaked, cometh out.’ - _Faery Queen_, b. i. c. vi. - -On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural in the -ordinary construction of language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary -and conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, which are the -voluntary signs of certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrangements -in common speech, is there any principle of natural imitation, or -correspondence to the individual ideas, or to the tone of feeling with -which they are conveyed to others. The jerks, the breaks, the -inequalities, and harshnesses of prose, are fatal to the flow of a -poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs -the reverie of an absent man. But poetry makes these odds all even. It -is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind, untying as -it were ‘the secret soul of harmony.’ Wherever any object takes such a -hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting -the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment of -enthusiasm;—wherever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed -on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to -bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same -movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, or gradually varied -according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it—this is poetry. -The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in -thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near connection -between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As often as -articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry begins. -Where one idea gives a tone and colour to others, where one feeling -melts others into it, there can be no reason why the same principle -should not be extended to the sounds by which the voice utters these -emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and lines into each other. It -is to supply the inherent defect of harmony in the customary mechanism -of language, to make the sound an echo to the sense, when the sense -becomes a sort of echo to itself—to mingle the tide of verse, ‘the -golden cadences of poetry,’ with the tide of feeling, flowing and -murmuring as it flows—in short, to take the language of the imagination -from off the ground, and enable it to spread its wings where it may -indulge its own impulses— - - ‘Sailing with supreme dominion - Through the azure deep of air—’ - -without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses and -petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry -was invented. It is to common language, what springs are to a carriage, -or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by -the modulations of the voice: in poetry the same thing is done -systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been well -observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a -subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose. The -merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way ‘sounding always the -increase of his winning.’ Every prose-writer has more or less of -rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when deprived of the regular -mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of modulation left in -their writings. - -An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It is but fair -that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail -itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of -syllables, that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of -images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory; and a man of wit -and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four good lines of -poetry are the well-known ones which tell the number of days in the -months of the year. - - ‘Thirty days hath September,’ &c. - -But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken -the fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers’ ends, -besides the contents of the almanac.—Pope’s versification is tiresome, -from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare’s blank verse is -the perfection of dramatic dialogue. - -All is not poetry that passes for such: nor does verse make the whole -difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease to be -poetry in a literal translation; and Addison’s Campaign has been very -properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from -poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, -and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the -imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the -understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements -either of the imagination or the passions. - -I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as possible -without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson -Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated -some of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the power of -poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit above the earth, -which draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is -poetry in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being -‘married to immortal verse.’ If it is of the essence of poetry to strike -and fix the imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye of -childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never thought of -afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe may be -permitted to pass for poets in their way. The mixture of fancy and -reality in the Pilgrim’s Progress was never equalled in any allegory. -His pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet are on it. What zeal, what -beauty, what truth of fiction! What deep feeling in the description of -Christian’s swimming across the water at last, and in the picture of the -Shining Ones within the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on -their heads, who are to wipe all tears from his eyes! The writer’s -genius, though not ‘dipped in dews of Castalie,’ was baptised with the -Holy Spirit and with fire. The prints in this book are no small part of -it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a -subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall we -say to Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the Greek hero on -leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it with the -reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place of -confinement. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for ever -cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls -its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings of his -heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him. Thus he -says, - - ‘As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country, - the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a - sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, - the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked - up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited - wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest - composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and - make me wring my hands, and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take - me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and - sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this - was still worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent myself - in words, it would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself would - abate.’ P. 50. - -The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the Odyssey, it -is true; but the relator had the true genius of a poet. It has been made -a question whether Richardson’s romances are poetry; and the answer -perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because they are not romance. The -interest is worked up to an inconceivable height; but it is by an -infinite number of little things, by incessant labour and calls upon the -attention, by a repetition of blows that have no rebound in them. The -sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is -unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The -story does not ‘give an echo to the seat where love is throned.’ The -heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does -not run on before the writer with breathless expectation, but is dragged -along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those with which -the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace.—Sir -Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would he cut, -translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles? Clarissa, the -divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting in her -ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles—she is -interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, however intensely -they may be brought home to us, are not conductors to the imagination. -There is infinite truth and feeling in Richardson; but it is extracted -from a _caput mortuum_ of circumstances: it does not evaporate of -itself. His poetical genius is like Ariel confined in a pine-tree, and -requires an artificial process to let it out. Shakspeare says— - - ‘Our poesy is as a gum - Which issues whence ’tis nourished, our gentle flame - Provokes itself, and like the current flies - Each bound it chafes.’[1] - -I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of the -principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods of -history—Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add, Ossian. In Homer, the -principle of action or life is predominant; in the Bible, the principle -of faith and the idea of Providence; Dante is a personification of blind -will; and in Ossian we see the decay of life, and the lag end of the -world. Homer’s poetry is the heroic: it is full of life and action: it -is bright as the day, strong as a river. In the vigour of his intellect, -he grapples with all the objects of nature, and enters into all the -relations of social life. He saw many countries, and the manners of many -men; and he has brought them all together in his poem. He describes his -heroes going to battle with a prodigality of life, arising from an -exuberance of animal spirits: we see them before us, their number, and -their order of battle, poured out upon the plain ‘all plumed like -estriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young -bulls, youthful as May, and gorgeous as the sun at midsummer,’ covered -with glittering armour, with dust and blood; while the Gods quaff their -nectar in golden cups, or mingle in the fray; and the old men assembled -on the walls of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen passes by them. The -multitude of things in Homer is wonderful; their splendour, their truth, -their force, and variety. His poetry is, like his religion, the poetry -of number and form: he describes the bodies as well as the souls of men. - -The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of faith: it is -abstract and disembodied: it is not the poetry of form, but of power; -not of multitude, but of immensity. It does not divide into many, but -aggrandizes into one. Its ideas of nature are like its ideas of God. It -is not the poetry of social life, but of solitude: each man seems alone -in the world, with the original forms of nature, the rocks, the earth, -and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or heroic enterprise, but of -faith in a supreme Providence, and resignation to the power that governs -the universe. As the idea of God was removed farther from humanity, and -a scattered polytheism, it became more profound and intense, as it -became more universal, for the Infinite is present to every thing: ‘If -we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there also; if we -turn to the east or the west, we cannot escape from it.’ Man is thus -aggrandised in the image of his Maker. The history of the patriarchs is -of this kind; they are founders of a chosen race of people, the -inheritors of the earth; they exist in the generations which are to come -after them. Their poetry, like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, -obscure, and infinite; a vision is upon it—an invisible hand is -suspended over it. The spirit of the Christian religion consists in the -glory hereafter to be revealed; but in the Hebrew dispensation, -Providence took an immediate share in the affairs of this life. Jacob’s -dream arose out of this intimate communion between heaven and earth: it -was this that let down, in the sight of the youthful patriarch, a golden -ladder from the sky to the earth, with angels ascending and descending -upon it, and shed a light upon the lonely place, which can never pass -away. The story of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth of natural -affection in the human race was involved in her breast. There are -descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal of imagery, more intense -in passion, than any thing in Homer, as that of the state of his -prosperity, and of the vision that came upon him by night. The metaphors -in the Old Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were collected -more into masses, and gave a greater _momentum_ to the imagination. - -Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim a -place in this connection. His poem is the first great step from Gothic -darkness and barbarism; and the struggle of thought in it to burst the -thraldom in which the human mind had been so long held, is felt in every -page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore which -separates the ancient and the modern world; and saw the glories of -antiquity dawning through the abyss of time, while revelation opened its -passage to the other world. He was lost in wonder at what had been done -before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems to have been -indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for -the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry; but he is -utterly unlike Homer. His genius is not a sparkling flame, but the -sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, passion, self-will personified. -In all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he -bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or who have come after -him; but there is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies -like a dead weight upon the mind; a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, -from the intensity of the impression; a terrible obscurity, like that -which oppresses us in dreams; an identity of interest, which moulds -every object to its own purposes, and clothes all things with the -passions and imaginations of the human soul,—that make amends for all -other deficiencies. The immediate objects he presents to the mind are -not much in themselves, they want grandeur, beauty, and order; but they -become every thing by the force of the character he impresses upon them. -His mind lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates, -instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the -nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the -shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest of -all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to the -flowery and glittering; who relies most on his own power, and the sense -of it in others, and who leaves most room to the imagination of his -readers. Dante’s only endeavour is to interest; and he interests by -exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is himself possessed. -He does not place before us the objects by which that emotion has been -created; but he seizes on the attention, by shewing us the effect they -produce on his feelings; and his poetry accordingly gives the same -thrilling and overwhelming sensation, which is caught by gazing on the -face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability -of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are -excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness -of the author’s mind. Dante’s great power is in combining internal -feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that -withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and -consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of -mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and -individual with the greatest wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the -obscure and shadowy regions of the lower world, a tomb suddenly rises up -with the inscription, ‘I am the tomb of Pope Anastasius the Sixth’: and -half the personages whom he has crowded into the Inferno are his own -acquaintance. All this, perhaps, tends to heighten the effect by the -bold intermixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to the -individual knowledge and experience of the reader. He affords few -subjects for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of Count -Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and which Sir Joshua -Reynolds ought not to have painted. - -Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot persuade -myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is Ossian. He is a -feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in the minds of his -readers. As Homer is the first vigour and lustihed, Ossian is the decay -and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection and regret of -the past. There is one impression which he conveys more entirely than -all other poets, namely, the sense of privation, the loss of all things, -of friends, of good name, of country—he is even without God in the -world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed; with the -motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre -on his head; the fox peeps out of the ruined tower; the thistle waves -its beard to the wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as -the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh -and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter’s wind! The feeling of -cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of -the annihilation of the substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all -things as in a mock-embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the -lamentation of Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it -were indeed possible to shew that this writer was nothing, it would only -be another instance of mutability, another blank made, another void left -in the heart, another confirmation of that feeling which makes him so -often complain, ‘Roll on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your -wing to Ossian!’ - - - - - LECTURE II - ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER - - -Having, in the former Lecture, given some account of the nature of -poetry in general, I shall proceed, in the next place, to a more -particular consideration of the genius and history of English poetry. I -shall take, as the subject of the present lecture, Chaucer and Spenser, -two out of four of the greatest names in poetry, which this country has -to boast. Both of them, however, were much indebted to the early poets -of Italy, and may be considered as belonging, in a certain degree, to -the same school. The freedom and copiousness with which our most -original writers, in former periods, availed themselves of the -productions of their predecessors, frequently transcribing whole -passages, without scruple or acknowledgment, may appear contrary to the -etiquette of modern literature, when the whole stock of poetical -common-places has become public property, and no one is compelled to -trade upon any particular author. But it is not so much a subject of -wonder, at a time when to read and write was of itself an honorary -distinction, when learning was almost as great a rarity as genius, and -when in fact those who first transplanted the beauties of other -languages into their own, might be considered as public benefactors, and -the founders of a national literature.—There are poets older than -Chaucer, and in the interval between him and Spenser; but their genius -was not such as to place them in any point of comparison with either of -these celebrated men; and an inquiry into their particular merits or -defects might seem rather to belong to the province of the antiquary, -than be thought generally interesting to the lovers of poetry in the -present day. - -Chaucer (who has been very properly considered as the father of English -poetry) preceded Spenser by two centuries. He is supposed to have been -born in London, in the year 1328, during the reign of Edward III. and to -have died in 1400, at the age of seventy-two. He received a learned -education at one, or at both of the universities, and travelled early -into Italy, where he became thoroughly imbued with the spirit and -excellences of the great Italian poets and prose-writers, Dante, -Petrarch, and Boccace; and is said to have had a personal interview with -one of these, Petrarch. He was connected, by marriage, with the famous -John of Gaunt, through whose interest he was introduced into several -public employments. Chaucer was an active partisan, a religious -reformer, and from the share he took in some disturbances, on one -occasion, he was obliged to fly the country. On his return, he was -imprisoned, and made his peace with government, as it is said, by a -discovery of his associates. Fortitude does not appear, at any time, to -have been the distinguishing virtue of poets.—There is, however, an -obvious similarity between the practical turn of Chaucer’s mind and -restless impatience of his character, and the tone of his writings. Yet -it would be too much to attribute the one to the other as cause and -effect: for Spenser, whose poetical temperament was as effeminate as -Chaucer’s was stern and masculine, was equally engaged in public -affairs, and had mixed equally in the great world. So much does native -disposition predominate over accidental circumstances, moulding them to -its previous bent and purposes! For while Chaucer’s intercourse with the -busy world, and collision with the actual passions and conflicting -interests of others, seemed to brace the sinews of his understanding, -and gave to his writings the air of a man who describes persons and -things that he had known and been intimately concerned in; the same -opportunities, operating on a differently constituted frame, only served -to alienate Spenser’s mind the more from the ‘close-pent up’ scenes of -ordinary life, and to make him ‘rive their concealing continents,’ to -give himself up to the unrestrained indulgence of ‘flowery tenderness.’ - -It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this -respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer, in severe -activity of mind. As Spenser was the most romantic and visionary, -Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the most a man of -business and the world. His poetry reads like history. Every thing has a -downright reality; at least in the relator’s mind. A simile, or a -sentiment, is as if it were given in upon evidence. Thus he describes -Cressid’s first avowal of her love. - - ‘And as the new abashed nightingale, - That stinteth first when she beginneth sing, - When that she heareth any herde’s tale, - Or in the hedges any wight stirring, - And after, sicker, doth her voice outring; - Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent - Open’d her heart, and told him her intent.’ - -This is so true and natural, and beautifully simple, that the two things -seem identified with each other. Again, it is said in the Knight’s Tale— - - ‘Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day, - Till it felle ones in a morwe of May, - That Emelie that fayrer was to sene - Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene; - And fresher than the May with floures newe, - For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe: - I n’ot which was the finer of hem two.’ - -This scrupulousness about the literal preference, as if some question of -matter of fact was at issue, is remarkable. I might mention that other, -where he compares the meeting between Palamon and Arcite to a hunter -waiting for a lion in a gap;— - - ‘That stondeth at a gap with a spere, - Whan hunted is the lion or the bere, - And hereth him come rushing in the greves, - And breking both the boughes and the leves:’— - -or that still finer one of Constance, when she is condemned to death:— - - ‘Have ye not seen somtime a pale face - (Among a prees) of him that hath been lad - Toward his deth, wheras he geteth no grace, - And swiche a colour in his face hath had, - Men mighten know him that was so bestad, - Amonges all the faces in that route; - So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute.’ - -The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to be of the poet’s seeking, -but a part of the necessary texture of the fable. He speaks of what he -wishes to describe with the accuracy, the discrimination of one who -relates what has happened to himself, or has had the best information -from those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The strokes of his pencil -always tell. He dwells only on the essential, on that which would be -interesting to the persons really concerned: yet as he never omits any -material circumstance, he is prolix from the number of points on which -he touches, without being diffuse on any one; and is sometimes tedious -from the fidelity with which he adheres to his subject, as other writers -are from the frequency of their digressions from it. The chain of his -story is composed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, -and rivetted by a single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness -which he introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of -Palamon when left alone in his cell: - - ‘Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour - Resouned of his yelling and clamour: - The pure fetters on his shinnes grete - Were of his bitter salte teres wete.’ - -The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the -instructions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to -leave out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace and -beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object, with -little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not for -ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things themselves. He -does not affect to shew his power over the reader’s mind, but the power -which his subject has over his own. The readers of Chaucer’s poetry feel -more nearly what the persons he describes must have felt, than perhaps -those of any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions of -the poet’s fancy, but founded on the natural impulses and habitual -prejudices of the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy -of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, -in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but -a strict parsimony of the poet’s materials, like the rude simplicity of -the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing -from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no -‘babbling gossip of the air,’ fluent and redundant; but, like a -stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, -crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and -fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the -objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of -poetic diction in our author’s time, no reflected lights of fancy, no -borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to -look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of -morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions -have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the -effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of -nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw -gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. The -picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and -hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external -appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment. -There is a meaning in what he sees; and it is this which catches his eye -by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims—of -the Knight-the Squire—the Oxford Scholar—the Gap-toothed Wife of Bath, -and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or two of these at -random: - - ‘There was also a nonne, a Prioresse, - That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy; - Hire gretest othe n’as but by seint Eloy: - And she was cleped Madame Eglentine. - Ful wel she sange the service divine - Entuned in hire nose ful swetely; - And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, - After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, - For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. - At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle; - She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, - Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. - - · · · · · - - And sikerly she was of great disport, - And ful plesant, and amiable of port, - And peined hire to contrefeten chere - Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, - And to ben holden digne of reverence. - But for to speken of hire conscience, - She was so charitable and so pitous, - She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous - Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. - Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde - With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede. - But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, - Or if men smote it with a yerde smert: - And all was conscience and tendre herte. - Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was; - Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas; - Hire mouth ful smale; and therto soft and red; - But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed. - It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe. - - A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, - An out-rider, that loved venerie: - A manly man, to ben an abbot able. - Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable: - And whan he rode, men mighte his bridel here, - Gingeling in a whistling wind as clere, - And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle, - Ther as this lord was keper of the celle. - The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, - Because that it was olde and somdele streit, - This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace, - And held after the newe world the trace. - He yave not of the text a pulled hen, - That saith, that hunters ben not holy men;— - Therfore he was a prickasoure a right: - Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight: - Of pricking and of hunting for the hare - Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare. - - I saw his sleves purfiled at the hond - With gris, and that the finest of the lond. - And for to fasten his hood under his chinne, - He had of gold ywrought a curious pinne: - A love-knotte in the greter end ther was. - His bed was balled, and shone as any glas, - And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint. - He was a lord ful fat and in good point. - His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed, - That stemed as a forneis of a led. - His botes souple, his hors in gret estat, - Now certainly he was a fayre prelat. - He was not pale as a forpined gost. - A fat swan loved he best of any rost. - His palfrey was as broune as is a bery.’ - -The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as Lawyer Dowling -in Tom Jones, who wished to divide himself into a hundred pieces, to be -in a hundred places at once. - - ‘No wher so besy a man as he ther n’as, - And yet he semed besier than he was.’ - -The Frankelein, in ‘whose hous it snewed of mete and drinke’; the -Shipman, ‘who rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe’; the Doctour of -Phisike, ‘whose studie was but litel of the Bible’; the Wif of Bath, in - - ‘All whose parish ther was non, - That to the offring before hire shulde gon, - And if ther did, certain so wroth was she, - That she was out of alle charitee;’ - -—the poure Persone of a toun, ‘whose parish was wide, and houses fer -asonder’; the Miller, and the Reve, ‘a slendre colerike man,’ are all of -the same stamp. They are every one samples of a kind; abstract -definitions of a species. Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the -classes of men, as Linnæus numbered the plants. Most of them remain to -this day: others that are obsolete, and may well be dispensed with, -still live in his descriptions of them. Such is the Sompnoure: - - ‘A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place, - That hadde a fire-red cherubinnes face, - For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe, - As hote he was, and likerous as a sparwe, - With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd: - Of his visage children were sore aferd. - Ther n’as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston, - Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non, - Ne oinement that wolde clense or bite, - That him might helpen of his whelkes white, - Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes. - Wel loved he garlike, onions, and lekes, - And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood. - Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood. - And whan that he wel dronken had the win, - Than wold he speken no word but Latin. - A fewe termes coude he, two or three, - That he had lerned out of som decree; - No wonder is, he heard it all the day.— - In danger hadde he at his owen gise - The yonge girles of the diocise, - And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede. - A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede - As gret as it were for an alestake: - A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake. - With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere— - That hadde a vois as smale as hath a gote.’ - -It would be a curious speculation (at least for those who think that the -characters of men never change, though manners, opinions, and -institutions may) to know what has become of this character of the -Sompnoure in the present day; whether or not it has any technical -representative in existing professions; into what channels and conduits -it has withdrawn itself, where it lurks unseen in cunning obscurity, or -else shews its face boldly, pampered into all the insolence of office, -in some other shape, as it is deterred or encouraged by circumstances. -_Chaucer’s characters modernised_, upon this principle of historic -derivation, would be an useful addition to our knowledge of human -nature. But who is there to undertake it? - -The descriptions of the equipage, and accoutrements of the two kings of -Thrace and Inde, in the Knight’s Tale, are as striking and grand, as the -others are lively and natural: - - ‘Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon - Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace: - Blake was his berd, and manly was his face. - The cercles of his eyen in his hed - They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red, - And like a griffon loked he about, - With kemped heres on his browes stout; - His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge, - His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe. - And as the guise was in his contree, - Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he, - With foure white bolles in the trais. - Instede of cote-armure on his harnais, - With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold, - He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old. - His longe here was kempt behind his bak, - As any ravenes fether it shone for blake. - A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight, - Upon his hed sate full of stones bright, - Of fine rubins and of diamants. - About his char ther wenten white alauns, - Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere, - To hunten at the leon or the dere, - And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound.— - With Arcita, in stories as men find, - The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde, - Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele, - Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele, - Came riding like the god of armes Mars. - His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars, - Couched with perles, white, and round and grete. - His sadel was of brent gold new ybete; - A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging - Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling. - His crispe here like ringes was yronne, - And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne. - His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin, - His lippes round, his colour was sanguin, - A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint, - Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint, - And as a leon he his loking caste. - Of five and twenty yere his age I caste. - His berd was wel begonnen for to spring; - His vois was as a trompe thondering. - Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene - A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene. - Upon his hond he bare for his deduit - An egle tame, as any lily whit.— - About this king ther ran on every part - Ful many a tame leon and leopart.’ - -What a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this description! -The imagination of a poet brings such objects before us, as when we look -at wild beasts in a menagerie; their claws are pared, their eyes glitter -like harmless lightning; but we gaze at them with a pleasing awe, -clothed in beauty, formidable in the sense of abstract power. - -Chaucer’s descriptions of natural scenery possess the same sort of -characteristic excellence, or what might be termed _gusto_. They have a -local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the air, the -coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are thus made to -have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story; and render back the -sentiment of the speaker’s mind. One of the finest parts of Chaucer is -of this mixed kind. It is the beginning of the Flower and the Leaf, -where he describes the delight of that young beauty, shrowded in her -bower, and listening, in the morning of the year, to the singing of the -nightingale; while her joy rises with the rising song, and gushes out -afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the full tide of -pleasure, and still increases and repeats, and prolongs itself, and -knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour, its retirement, the early time -of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the neighbouring -bushes, the eager delight with which they devour and rend the opening -buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling, which make the -whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene: - - ‘Which as me thought was right a pleasing sight, - And eke the briddes song for to here, - Would haue rejoyced any earthly wight, - And I that couth not yet in no manere - Heare the nightingale of all the yeare, - Ful busily herkened with herte and with eare, - If I her voice perceiue coud any where. - - And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie, - Thought sodainly I felt so sweet an aire - Of the eglentere, that certainely - There is no herte I deme in such dispaire, - Ne with thoughts froward and contraire, - So ouerlaid, but it should soone haue bote, - If it had ones felt this savour sote. - - And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, - I was ware of the fairest medler tree - That ever yet in all my life I sie - As full of blossomes as it might be, - Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile - Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet - Here and there of buds and floures sweet. - - And to the herber side was joyning - This faire tree, of which I haue you told, - And at the last the brid began to sing, - Whan he had eaten what he eat wold, - So passing sweetly, that by manifold - It was more pleasaunt than I coud deuise, - And whan his song was ended in this wise, - - The nightingale with so merry a note - Answered him, that all the wood rong - So sodainly, that as it were a sote, - I stood astonied, so was I with the song - Thorow rauished, that till late and long, - I ne wist in what place I was, ne where, - And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere. - - Wherefore I waited about busily - On euery side, if I her might see, - And at the last I gan full well aspie - Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, - On the further side euen right by me, - That gaue so passing a delicious smell, - According to the eglentere full well. - - Whereof I had so inly great pleasure, - That as me thought I surely rauished was - Into Paradice, where my desire - Was for to be, and no ferther passe - As for that day, and on the sote grasse, - I sat me downe, for as for mine entent, - The birds song was more conuenient, - - And more pleasaunt to me by manifold, - Than meat or drinke, or any other thing, - Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, - The wholesome sauours eke so comforting, - That as I demed, sith the beginning - Of the world was neur seene or than - So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man. - - And as I sat the birds harkening thus, - Me thought that I heard voices sodainly, - The most sweetest and most delicious - That euer any wight I trow truly - Heard in their life, for the armony - And sweet accord was in so good musike, - That the uoice to angels was most like.’ - -There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment: the whole is an -ebullition of natural delight ‘welling out of the heart,’ like water -from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of art: there is a strength as -well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on nature, -that nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in nature, and -reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe the grief and -patience of Griselda; the faith of Constance; and the heroic -perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through the -streets of Jewry, - - ‘Oh _Alma Redemptoris mater_, loudly sung,’ - -and who after his death still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more of -this deep, internal, sustained sentiment, than any other writer, except -Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, and intensity of conception, never -swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes near him, not -even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed to give one or two -instances of what I mean. I will take the following from the Knight’s -Tale. The distress of Arcite, in consequence of his banishment from his -love, is thus described: - - ‘Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was, - Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas, - For sene his lady shall be never mo. - And shortly to concluden all his wo, - So mochel sorwe hadde never creature, - That is or shall be, while the world may dure. - His slepe, his mete, his drinke is him byraft. - That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft. - His eyen holwe, and grisly to behold, - His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold, - And solitary he was, and ever alone, - And wailing all the night, making his mone. - And if he herde song or instrument, - Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent. - So feble were his spirites, and so low, - And changed so, that no man coude know - His speche ne his vois, though men it herd.’ - -This picture of the sinking of the heart, of the wasting away of the -body and mind, of the gradual failure of all the faculties under the -contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be surpassed. Of the same kind is -his farewel to his mistress, after he has gained her hand and lost his -life in the combat: - - ‘Alas the wo! alas the peines stronge, - That I for you have suffered, and so longe! - Alas the deth! alas min Emilie! - Alas departing of our compagnie: - Alas min hertes quene! alas my wif! - Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif! - What is this world? what axen men to have? - Now with his love, now in his colde grave - Alone withouten any compagnie.’ - -The death of Arcite is the more affecting, as it comes after triumph and -victory, after the pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of prayer, the -celebration of the gorgeous rites of chivalry. The descriptions of the -three temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments and -ceremonies used in each, with the reception given to the offerings of -the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much of which is lost in -Dryden’s version. For instance, such lines as the following are not -rendered with their true feeling. - - ‘Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all - The purtreiture that was upon the wall - Within the temple of mighty Mars the rede— - That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace - In thilke colde and frosty region, - Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion. - First on the wall was peinted a forest, - In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best, - With knotty knarry barrein trees old - Of stubbes sharpe and hideous to behold; - In which ther ran a romble and a swough, - As though a storme shuld bresten every bough.’ - -And again, among innumerable terrific images of death and slaughter -painted on the wall, is this one: - - ‘The statue of Mars upon a carte stood - Armed, and looked grim as he were wood. - A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete - With eyen red, and of a man he ete.’ - -The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio; but the Clerk of Oxenforde, who -tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch. This story has -gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb. In spite of the -barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the sentiment -remains unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind, ‘that heaves no -sigh, that sheds no tear’; but it hangs upon the beatings of the heart; -it is a part of the very being; it is as inseparable from it as the -breath we draw. It is still and calm as the face of death. Nothing can -touch it in its ethereal purity: tender as the yielding flower, it is -fixed as the marble firmament. The only remonstrance she makes, the only -complaint she utters against all the ill-treatment she receives, is that -single line where, when turned back naked to her father’s house, she -says, - - ‘Let me not like a worm go by the way.’ - -The first outline given of the character is inimitable: - - ‘Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable, - Wher as this markis shope his mariage, - Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable, - In which that poure folk of that village - Hadden hir bestes and her herbergage, - And of hir labour toke hir sustenance, - After that the earthe yave hem habundance. - - Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man, - Which that was holden pourest of hem all: - But highe God sometime senden can - His grace unto a litel oxes stall: - Janicola men of that thorpe him call. - A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight, - And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight. - - But for to speke of vertuous beautee, - Than was she on the fairest under Sonne: - Ful pourely yfostred up was she: - No likerous lust was in hire herte yronne; - Ful ofter of the well than of the tonne - She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese, - She knew wel labour, but non idel ese. - - But though this mayden tendre were of age, - Yet in the brest of hire virginitee - Ther was enclosed sad and ripe corage: - And in gret reverence and charitee - Hire olde poure fader fostred she: - A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept, - She wolde not ben idel til she slept. - - And whan she homward came she wolde bring - Wortes and other herbes times oft, - The which she shred and sethe for hire living, - And made hire bed ful hard, and nothing soft: - And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft - With every obeisance and diligence, - That child may don to fadres reverence, - - Upon Grisilde, this poure creature, - Ful often sithe this markis sette his sye, - As he on hunting rode paraventure: - And whan it fell that he might hire espie, - He not with wanton loking of folie - His eyen cast on hire, but in sad wise - Upon hire chere he wold him oft avise, - - Commending in his herte hire womanhede, - And eke hire vertue, passing any wight - Of so yong age, as wel in chere as dede. - For though the people have no gret insight - In vertue, he considered ful right - Hire bountee, and disposed that he wold - Wedde hire only, if ever he wedden shold. - - Grisilde of this (God wot) ful innocent, - That for hire shapen was all this array, - To fetchen water at a welle is went, - And cometh home as sone as ever she may. - For wel she had herd say, that thilke day - The markis shulde wedde, and, if she might, - She wolde fayn han seen som of that sight. - - She thought, “I wol with other maidens stond, - That ben my felawes, in our dore, and see - The markisesse, and therto wol I fond - To don at home, as sone as it may be, - The labour which longeth unto me, - And than I may at leiser hire behold, - If she this way unto the castel hold.” - - And she wolde over the threswold gon, - The markis came and gan hire for to call, - And she set doun her water-pot anon - Beside the threswold in an oxes stall, - And doun upon hire knees she gan to fall. - And with sad countenance kneleth still, - Till she had herd what was the lordes will.’ - -The story of the little child slain in Jewry, (which is told by the -Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was ‘all conscience and -tender heart,’) is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is simple -and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious -sanctity about it, connected with the manners and superstitions of the -age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom. - -It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of comic -humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. In this too -Chaucer resembled Boccaccio that he excelled in both styles, and could -pass at will ‘from grave to gay, from lively to severe’; but he never -confounded the two styles together (except from that involuntary and -unconscious mixture of the pathetic and humorous, which is almost always -to be found in nature,) and was exclusively taken up with what he set -about, whether it was jest or earnest. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue -(which Pope has very admirably modernised) is, perhaps, unequalled as a -comic story. The Cock and the Fox is also excellent for lively strokes -of character and satire. January and May is not so good as some of the -others. Chaucer’s versification, considering the time at which he wrote, -and that versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is not -one of his least merits. It has considerable strength and harmony, and -its apparent deficiency in the latter respect arises chiefly from the -alterations which have since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of -accenting the words of the language. The best general rule for reading -him is to pronounce the final _e_, as in reading Italian. - -It was observed in the last Lecture that painting describes what the -object is in itself, poetry what it implies or suggests. Chaucer’s -poetry is not, in general, the best confirmation of the truth of this -distinction, for his poetry is more picturesque and historical than -almost any other. But there is one instance in point which I cannot help -giving in this place. It is the story of the three thieves who go in -search of Death to kill him, and who meeting with him, are entangled in -their fate by his words, without knowing him. In the printed catalogue -to Mr. West’s (in some respects very admirable) picture of Death on the -Pale Horse, it is observed, that ‘In poetry the same effect is produced -by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of description, touching, as it were -with fire, the features and edges of a general mass of awful obscurity; -but in painting, such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that -the artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. -Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its -moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of -Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance -of super-human strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost -force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure.’—One might -suppose from this, that the way to represent a shadow was to make it as -substantial as possible. Oh, no! Painting has its prerogatives, (and -high ones they are) but they lie in representing the visible, not the -invisible. The moral attributes of Death are powers and effects of an -infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or physical -form can possibly represent, but by a courtesy of speech, or by a -distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially visionary; -its reality is in the mind’s eye. Words are here the only _things_; and -things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the understanding. The -less definite, the less bodily the conception, the more vast, unformed, -and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of -that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which -every where, and at some time or other, exerts its power over all -things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or Time. He -is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, or to sit for -his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not see him. He -stalks on before us, and we do not mind him: he follows us close behind, -and we do not turn to look back at him. We do not see him making faces -at us in our life-time, nor perceive him afterwards sitting in -mock-majesty, a twin-skeleton, beside us, tickling our bare ribs, and -staring into our hollow eye-balls! Chaucer knew this. He makes three -riotous companions go in search of Death to kill him, they meet with an -old man whom they reproach with his age, and ask why he does not die, to -which he answers thus: - - ‘Ne Deth, alas! he will not han my lif. - Thus walke I like a restless caitiff, - And on the ground, which is my modres gate, - I knocke with my staf, erlich and late, - And say to hire, “Leve mother, let me in. - Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin, - Alas! when shall my bones ben at reste? - Mother, with you wolde I changen my cheste, - That in my chambre longe time hath be, - Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me.” - But yet to me she will not don that grace, - For which ful pale and welked is my face.’ - -They then ask the old man where they shall find out Death to kill him, -and he sends them on an errand which ends in the death of all three. We -hear no more of him, but it is Death that they have encountered! - -The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary. There is -nothing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve, ‘ancient Gower,’ -Lydgate, Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville. Spenser flourished in the reign of -Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John Davies into Ireland, of -which he has left behind him some tender recollections in his -description of the bog of Allan, and a record in an ably written paper, -containing observations on the state of that country and the means of -improving it, which remain in full force to the present day. Spenser -died at an obscure inn in London, it is supposed in distressed -circumstances. The treatment he received from Burleigh is well known. -Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was engaged in active life; but the genius -of his poetry was not active: it is inspired by the love of ease, and -relaxation from all the cares and business of life. Of all the poets, he -is the most poetical. Though much later than Chaucer, his obligations to -preceding writers were less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of -his poem (as a number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto; but he has -engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness -of sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Farther, -Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is an -originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and -fictions, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology. -If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser’s poetry -is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in a company, -gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In Spenser, we wander in another -world, among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a -lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills and -fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but as we expected -to find it; and fulfils the delightful promise of our youth. He waves -his wand of enchantment—and at once embodies airy beings, and throws a -delicious veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of -fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, -seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of -abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask -of Cupid he makes the God of Love ‘clap on high his coloured winges -_twain_‘: and it is said of Gluttony, in the Procession of the Passions, - - ‘In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad.’ - -At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty; as -where he compares Prince Arthur’s crest to the appearance of the almond -tree: - - ‘Upon the top of all his lofty crest, - A bunch of hairs discolour’d diversely - With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest - Did shake and seem’d to daunce for jollity; - Like to an almond tree ymounted high - On top of green Selenis all alone, - With blossoms brave bedecked daintily; - Her tender locks do tremble every one - At every little breath that under heav’n is blown.’ - -The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle -of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule -but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally -in scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a hermit’s -cell—in the extremes of sensuality or refinement. - -In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by a -wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind, a -damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs; and -all of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers -burning, amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song, -‘and mask, and antique pageantry.’ What can be more solitary, more shut -up in itself, than his description of the house of Sleep, to which -Archimago sends for a dream: - - ‘And more to lull him in his slumber soft - A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down, - And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, - Mix’d with a murmuring wind, much like the sound - Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound. - No other noise, nor people’s troublous cries. - That still are wont t’ annoy the walled town - Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies - Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies.’ - -It is as if ‘the honey-heavy dew of slumber’ had settled on his pen in -writing these lines. How different in the subject (and yet how like in -beauty) is the following description of the Bower of Bliss: - - ‘Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound - Of all that mote delight a dainty ear; - Such as at once might not on living ground, - Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere: - Right hard it was for wight which did it hear, - To tell what manner musicke that mote be; - For all that pleasing is to living eare - Was there consorted in one harmonee: - Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree. - - The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade - Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet: - The angelical soft trembling voices made - To th’ instruments divine respondence meet. - The silver sounding instruments did meet - With the base murmur of the water’s fall; - The water’s fall with difference discreet, - Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; - The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.’ - -The remainder of the passage has all that voluptuous pathos, and languid -brilliancy of fancy, in which this writer excelled: - - ‘The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay; - Ah! see, whoso fayre thing dost thou fain to see, - In springing flower the image of thy day! - Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly she - Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty, - That fairer seems the less ye see her may! - Lo! see soon after, how more bold and free - Her bared bosom she doth broad display; - Lo! see soon after, how she fades and falls away! - - So passeth in the passing of a day - Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower; - Ne more doth flourish after first decay, - That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower - Of many a lady and many a paramour! - Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime, - For soon comes age that will her pride deflower; - Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time, - Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.[2] - - He ceased; and then gan all the quire of birds - Their divers notes to attune unto his lay, - As in approvance of his pleasing wordes. - The constant pair heard all that he did say, - Yet swerved not, but kept their forward way - Through many covert groves and thickets close, - In which they creeping did at last display[3] - That wanton lady with her lover loose, - Whose sleepy head she in her lap did soft dispose. - - Upon a bed of roses she was laid - As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin; - And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, - All in a veil of silk and silver thin, - That hid no whit her alabaster skin, - But rather shewed more white, if more might be: - More subtle web Arachne cannot spin; - Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see - Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee. - - Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil - Of hungry eyes which n’ ote therewith be fill’d, - And yet through languor of her late sweet toil - Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill’d, - That like pure Orient perles adown it trill’d; - And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight - Moisten’d their fiery beams, with which she thrill’d - Frail hearts, yet quenched not; like starry light, - Which sparkling on the silent waves does seem more bright.’ - -The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una, in the first -book; the House of Pride; the Cave of Mammon, and the Cave of Despair; -the account of Memory, of whom it is said, among other things, - - ‘The wars he well remember’d of King Nine, - Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine’; - -the description of Belphœbe; the story of Florimel and the Witch’s son; -the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of Cupid; and -Colin Clout’s vision, in the last book. But some people will say that -all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account -of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it -would bite them: they look at it as a child looks at a painted dragon, -and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. -If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle -with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a -pike-staff. It might as well be pretended that, we cannot see Poussin’s -pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory prevents us from -understanding Spenser. For instance, when Britomart, seated amidst the -young warriors, lets fall her hair and discovers her sex, is it -necessary to know the part she plays in the allegory, to understand the -beauty of the following stanza? - - ‘And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest - Was for like need enforc’d to disarray. - Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest, - Her golden locks that were in trammels gay - Upbounden, did themselves adown display, - And raught unto her heels like sunny beams - That in a cloud their light did long time stay; - Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams, - And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams.’ - -Or is there any mystery in what is said of Belphœbe, that her hair was -sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which had been entangled in it as -she fled through the woods? Or is it necessary to have a more distinct -idea of Proteus, than that which is given of him in his boat, with the -frighted Florimel at his feet, while - - ‘——the cold icicles from his rough beard - Dropped adown upon her snowy breast!’ - -Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the sea-gods that pass by -them, to say— - - ‘That was Arion crowned:— - So went he playing on the watery plain.’ - -Or to take the Procession of the Passions that draw the coach of Pride, -in which the figures of Idleness, of Gluttony, of Lechery, of Avarice, -of Envy, and of Wrath speak, one should think, plain enough for -themselves; such as this of Gluttony: - - ‘And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony, - Deformed creature, on a filthy swine; - His belly was up blown with luxury; - And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne; - And like a crane his neck was long and fine, - With which he swallowed up excessive feast, - For want whereof poor people oft did pine. - - In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad; - For other clothes he could not wear for heat: - And on his head an ivy garland had, - From under which fast trickled down the sweat: - Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat. - And in his hand did bear a bouzing can, - Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat - His drunken corse he scarce upholden can; - In shape and size more like a monster than a man.’ - -Or this of Lechery: - - ‘And next to him rode lustfull Lechery - Upon a bearded goat, whose rugged hair - And whaly eyes (the sign of jealousy) - Was like the person’s self whom he did bear: - Who rough and black, and filthy did appear. - Unseemly man to please fair lady’s eye: - Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear, - When fairer faces were bid standen by: - O! who does know the bent of woman’s fantasy? - - In a green gown he clothed was full fair, - Which underneath did hide his filthiness; - And in his hand a burning heart he bare, - Full of vain follies and new fangleness; - For he was false and fraught with fickleness; - And learned had to love with secret looks; - And well could dance; and sing with ruefulness; - And fortunes tell; and read in loving books; - And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks. - - Inconstant man that loved all he saw, - And lusted after all that he did love; - Ne would his looser life be tied to law; - But joyed weak women’s hearts to tempt and prove, - If from their loyal loves he might them move.’ - -This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser: - - ‘——Yet not more sweet - Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise; - High priest of all the Muses’ mysteries!’ - -On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries which do not -strictly belong to the Muses. - -Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions, as little obscure, -and still more beautiful, is the Mask of Cupid, with his train of -votaries: - - ‘The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy - Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer; - - His garment neither was of silk nor say, - But painted plumes in goodly order dight, - Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array - Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight: - As those same plumes so seem’d he vain and light, - That by his gait might easily appear; - For still he far’d as dancing in delight, - And in his hand a windy fan did bear - That in the idle air he mov’d still here and there. - - And him beside march’d amorous Desire, - Who seem’d of riper years than the other swain, - Yet was that other swain this elder’s sire, - And gave him being, common to them twain: - His garment was disguised very vain, - And his embroidered bonnet sat awry; - Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain, - Which still he blew, and kindled busily, - That soon they life conceiv’d and forth in flames did fly. - - Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad - In a discolour’d coat of strange disguise, - That at his back a broad capuccio had, - And sleeves dependant _Albanese-wise_; - He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes, - And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way, - Or that the floor to shrink he did avise; - And on a broken reed he still did stay - His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay. - - With him went Daunger, cloth’d in ragged weed, - Made of bear’s skin, that him more dreadful made; - Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need - Strange horror to deform his grisly shade; - A net in th’ one hand, and a rusty blade - In th’ other was; this Mischiefe, that Mishap; - With th’ one his foes he threat’ned to invade, - With th’ other he his friends meant to enwrap; - For whom he could not kill he practiz’d to entrap. - - Next him was Fear, all arm’d from top to toe, - Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby, - But fear’d each shadow moving to and fro; - And his own arms when glittering he did spy - Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly, - As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel’d; - And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye, - ’Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield, - Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield. - - With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid, - Of chearfull look and lovely to behold; - In silken samite she was light array’d, - And her fair locks were woven up in gold; - She always smil’d, and in her hand did hold - An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew, - With which she sprinkled favours manifold - On whom she list, and did great liking shew, - Great liking unto many, but true love to few. - - Next after them, the winged God himself - Came riding on a lion ravenous, - Taught to obey the menage of that elfe - That man and beast with power imperious - Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous: - His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind, - That his proud spoil of that same dolorous - Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind; - Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind. - - Of which full proud, himself uprearing high, - He looked round about with stern disdain, - And did survey his goodly company: - And marshalling the evil-ordered train, - With that the darts which his right hand did strain, - Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake, - And clapt on high his colour’d winges twain, - That all his many it afraid did make: - Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take.’ - -The description of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one -of the most beautiful in Spenser: and the triumph of Cupid at the -mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In -reading these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of -Rubens’s allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming the -lion’s whelps and lugging the bear’s cubs along in his arms while yet an -infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to ‘go seek some other -play-fellows,’ has even more of this high picturesque character. Nobody -but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser; and he could not -have given the sentiment, the airy dream that hovers over it! - -With all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. The only jest in -his poem is an allegorical play upon words, where he describes Malbecco -as escaping in the herd of goats, ‘by the help of his fayre hornes on -hight.’ But he has been unjustly charged with a want of passion and of -strength. He has both in an immense degree. He has not indeed the pathos -of immediate action or suffering, which is more properly the dramatic; -but he has all the pathos of sentiment and romance—all that belongs to -distant objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His -strength, in like manner, is not strength of will or action, of bone and -muscle, nor is it coarse and palpable—but it assumes a character of -vastness and sublimity seen through the same visionary medium, and -blended with the appalling associations of preternatural agency. We need -only turn, in proof of this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of -Mammon, or to the account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The -following stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly -house of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the -forms, the splendid chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror. - - ‘That house’s form within was rude and strong, - Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, - From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung, - Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift, - And with rich metal loaded every rift, - That heavy ruin they did seem to threat: - And over them Arachne high did lift - Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, - Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet. - - Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold, - But overgrown with dust and old decay,[4] - And hid in darkness that none could behold - The hue thereof: for view of cheerful day - Did never in that house itself display, - But a faint shadow of uncertain light; - Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away; - Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night - Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright. - - · · · · · - - And over all sad Horror with grim hue - Did always soar, beating his iron wings; - And after him owls and night-ravens flew, - The hateful messengers of heavy things, - Of death and dolour telling sad tidings; - Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift, - A song of bitter bale and sorrow sings, - That heart of flint asunder could have rift; - Which having ended, after him she flieth swift.’ - -The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess and power of -fancy; and the fine moral declamation of the owner of it, on the evils -of life, almost makes one in love with death. In the story of Malbecco, -who is haunted by jealousy, and in vain strives to run away from his own -thoughts— - - ‘High over hill and over dale he flies’— - -the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending are equally -striking.—It is not fair to compare Spenser with Shakspeare, in point of -interest. A fairer comparison would be with Comus; and the result would -not be unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one work of the same -allegorical kind, which has more interest than Spenser (with scarcely -less imagination): and that is the Pilgrim’s Progress. The three first -books of the Faery Queen are very superior to the three last. One would -think that Pope, who used to ask if any one had ever read the Faery -Queen through, had only dipped into these last. The only things in them -equal to the former, are the account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the -delightful episode of Pastorella. - -The language of Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing: it is less -pure and idiomatic than Chaucer’s, and is enriched and adorned with -phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both ancient -and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of -expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his complicated -rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native language. This -stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring rhymes, is borrowed from -the Italians. It was peculiarly fitted to their language, which abounds -in similar vowel terminations, and is as little adapted to ours, from -the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance which the consonant endings of -the northern languages make to this sort of endless sing-song.—Not that -I would, on that account, part with the stanza of Spenser. We are, -perhaps, indebted to this very necessity of finding out new forms of -expression, and to the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical -language rich and varied and magnificent beyond all former, and almost -all later example. His versification is, at once, the most smooth and -the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, -‘in many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out’—that would -cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved -and enchanted by their continued variety of modulation—dwelling on the -pauses of the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide of harmony with the -movement of the sentiment. It has not the bold dramatic transitions of -Shakspeare’s blank verse, nor the high-raised tone of Milton’s; but it -is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the soul in pleasure, -or holding it captive in the chains of suspense. Spenser was the poet of -our waking dreams; and he has invented not only a language, but a music -of his own for them. The undulations are infinite, like those of the -waves of the sea: but the effect is still the same, lulling the senses -into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises of the world, from which we -have no wish to be ever recalled. - - - - - LECTURE III - ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON - - -In looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we are -sometimes disposed to wonder at the little progress which has since been -made in poetry, and in the arts of imitation in general. But this is -perhaps a foolish wonder. Nothing can be more contrary to the fact, than -the supposition that in what we understand by the _fine arts_, as -painting, and poetry, relative perfection is only the result of repeated -efforts in successive periods, and that what has been once well done, -constantly leads to something better. What is mechanical, reducible to -rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and admits of gradual -improvement: what is not mechanical, or definite, but depends on -feeling, taste, and genius, very soon becomes stationary, or retrograde, -and loses more than it gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is a -vulgar error, which has grown up, like many others, from transferring an -analogy of one kind to something quite distinct, without taking into the -account the difference in the nature of the things, or attending to the -difference of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful -advances have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in -mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c. _i.e._ in things depending on -mere inquiry and experiment, or on absolute demonstration, have been led -hastily to conclude, that there was a general tendency in the efforts of -the human intellect to improve by repetition, and, in all other arts and -institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time. We look back upon the -theological creed of our ancestors, and their discoveries in natural -philosophy, with a smile of pity: science, and the arts connected with -it, have all had their infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem to -contain in them no principle of limitation or decay: and, inquiring no -farther about the matter, we infer, in the intoxication of our pride, -and the height of our self-congratulation, that the same progress has -been made, and will continue to be made, in all other things which are -the work of man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face, -that one would think the smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and -over-turn our sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators, -the best painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw, -appeared soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a state of -society which was, in other respects, comparatively barbarous. Those -arts, which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power, have -always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn -of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in -general declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction and -privilege of each, of science and of art:—of the one, never to attain -its utmost limit of perfection; and of the other, to arrive at it almost -at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto, -(Milton alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it)—Raphael, -Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek -sculptors and tragedians,—all lived near the beginning of their -arts—perfected, and all but created them. These giant-sons of genius -stand indeed upon the earth, but they tower above their fellows; and the -long line of their successors, in different ages, does not interpose any -object to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength -and stature they are unrivalled; in grace and beauty they have not been -surpassed. In after-ages, and more refined periods, (as they are called) -great men have arisen, one by one, as it were by throes and at -intervals; though in general the best of these cultivated and artificial -minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso and Pope, among poets; Guido -and Vandyke, among painters. But in the earlier stages of the arts, as -soon as the first mechanical difficulties had been got over, and the -language was sufficiently acquired, they rose by clusters, and in -constellations, never so to rise again! - -The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of thought -within us, and with the world of sense around us—with what we know, and -see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred shrine of our own -breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of nature. But the pulse of -the passions assuredly beat as high, the depths and soundings of the -human heart were as well understood three thousand, or three hundred -years ago, as they are at present: the face of nature, and ‘the human -face divine’ shone as bright then as they have ever done. But it is -_their_ light, reflected by true genius on art, that marks out its path -before it, and sheds a glory round the Muses’ feet, like that which - - ‘Circled Una’s angel face, - And made a sunshine in the shady place.’ - -The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first we -come to—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are no others -that can really be put in competition with these. The two last have had -justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their names are blazoned -in the very firmament of reputation; while the two first (though ‘the -fault has been more in their stars than in themselves that they are -underlings’) either never emerged far above the horizon, or were too -soon involved in the obscurity of time. The three first of these are -excluded from Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (Shakspeare indeed is so -from the dramatic form of his compositions): and the fourth, Milton, is -admitted with a reluctant and churlish welcome. - -In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that Chaucer -excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser, as the poet of -romance; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the largest use of the -term); and Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer most frequently -describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish them to be; -Shakspeare, as they would be; and Milton as they ought to be. As poets, -and as great poets, imagination, that is, the power of feigning things -according to nature, was common to them all: but the principle or moving -power, to which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was habit, -or inveterate prejudice; in Spenser, novelty, and the love of the -marvellous; in Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with -every variety of possible circumstances; and in Milton, only with the -highest. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, -remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakspeare, every thing.—It has -been said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the -other dramatic writers of his day only by his wit; that they had all his -other qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as -much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the same -depth of passion, and another as great a power of language. This -statement is not true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, even -if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his -own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare’s genius was its -virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age, and not -his differing from them in one accidental particular. But to have done -with such minute and literal trifling. - -The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare’s mind was its generic quality, -its power of communication with all other minds—so that it contained a -universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar -bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any -other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an -egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he -was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in -himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them -by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, -through every change of fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of -thought. He had ‘a mind reflecting ages past,’ and present:—all the -people that ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons with -him. His genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise -and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar: ‘All corners of the earth, -kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the -grave,’ are hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius -of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing -with our purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his -amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as -they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, -virtues, actions, and motives—as well those that they knew, as those -which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of -childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy -beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding. Harmless fairies -‘nodded to him, and did him curtesies’: and the night-hag bestrode the -blast at the command of ‘his so potent art.’ The world of spirits lay -open to him, like the world of real men and women: and there is the same -truth in his delineations of the one as of the other; for if the -preternatural characters he describes, could be supposed to exist, they -would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them. He had only to think -of any thing in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances -belonging to it. When he conceived of a character, whether real or -imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but -seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to be -surrounded with all the same objects, ‘subject to the same skyey -influences,’ the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which -would occur in reality. Thus the character of Caliban not only stands -before us with a language and manners of its own, but the scenery and -situation of the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the -place, its strange noises, its hidden recesses, ‘his frequent haunts and -ancient neighbourhood,’ are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and -with all the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole ‘coheres -semblably together’ in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this -author, you do not merely learn what his characters say,—you see their -persons. By something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to -decypher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the -grouping, the bye-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an -epithet paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the -history of the person represented. So (as it has been ingeniously -remarked) when Prospero describes himself as left alone in the boat with -his daughter, the epithet which he applies to her, ‘Me and thy _crying_ -self,’ flings the imagination instantly back from the grown woman to the -helpless condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying -scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that he must have suffered -in the interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to -the reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm—‘What! man, ne’er -pull your hat upon your brows!’ Again, Hamlet, in the scene with -Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes his fine -soliloquy on life by saying, ‘Man delights not me, nor woman neither, -though by your smiling you seem to say so.’ Which is explained by their -answer—‘My lord, we had no such stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled to -think, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players -shall receive from you, whom we met on the way’:—as if while Hamlet was -making this speech, his two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been -really standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea -of the players crossing their minds. It is not ‘a combination and a -form’ of words, a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a -character, that will do this: but all the persons concerned must have -been present in the poet’s imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and -whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have -been observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the -reader.—I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best -directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus to take one -example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet; and as Ophelia -had seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken against that -of any modern authority. - - ‘_Ophelia._ My lord, as I was reading in my closet, - Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d, - No hat upon his head, his stockings loose, - Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle, - Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, - And with a look so piteous, - As if he had been sent from hell - To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me. - - _Polonius._ Mad for thy love! - - _Oph._ My lord, I do not know, - But truly I do fear it. - - _Pol._ What said he? - - _Oph._ He took me by the wrist, and held me hard - Then goes he to the length of all his arm; - And with his other hand thus o’er his brow, - He falls to such perusal of my face, - As he would draw it: long staid he so; - At last, a little shaking of my arm, - And thrice his head thus waving up and down, - He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound, - As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, - And end his being. That done, he lets me go, - And with his head over his shoulder turn’d, - He seem’d to find his way without his eyes; - For out of doors he went without their help, - And to the last bended their light on me.’ - _Act. II. Scene 1._ - -How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered -melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with -strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is -difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the -prompter’s cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia’s -death begins thus: - - ‘There is a willow hanging o’er a brook, - That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.’— - -Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which is -as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact, -white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear ‘hoary’ -in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the -same faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present or -absent, before the mind’s eye, is observable in the speech of Cleopatra, -when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his -absence:—‘He’s speaking now, or murmuring, where’s my serpent of old -Nile?’ How fine to make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own -character, and to make her feel that it is this for which Antony is in -love with her! She says, after the battle of Actium, when Antony has -resolved to risk another fight, ‘It is my birth-day; I had thought to -have held it poor: but since my lord is Antony again, I will be -Cleopatra.’ What other poet would have thought of such a casual resource -of the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it? The -thing happens in the play as it might have happened in fact.—That which, -perhaps, more than any thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions -of Shakspeare from all others, is this wonderful truth and individuality -of conception. Each of his characters is as much itself, and as -absolutely independent of the rest, as well as of the author, as if they -were living persons, not fictions of the mind. The poet may be said, for -the time, to identify himself with the character he wishes to represent, -and to pass from one to another, like the same soul successively -animating different bodies. By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he -throws his imagination out of himself, and makes every word appear to -proceed from the mouth of the person in whose name it is given. His -plays alone are properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions -of them. His characters are real beings of flesh and blood; they speak -like men, not like authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at -the time, and overheard what passed. As in our dreams we hold -conversations with ourselves, make remarks, or communicate intelligence, -and have no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and which we -ourselves make, till we hear it: so the dialogues in Shakspeare are -carried on without any consciousness of what is to follow, without any -appearance of preparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come -and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by -formal inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis: all comes, or -seems to come, immediately from nature. Each object and circumstance -exists in his mind, as it would have existed in reality: each several -train of thought and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or -effort. In the world of his imagination, every thing has a life, a -place, and being of its own! - -Chaucer’s characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but -they are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical -propositions. They are consistent, but uniform; we get no new idea of -them from first to last; they are not placed in different lights, nor -are their subordinate _traits_ brought out in new situations; they are -like portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing -features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that -preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare’s are -historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where -every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with -all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light -and shade. Chaucer’s characters are narrative, Shakspeare’s dramatic, -Milton’s epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much of his story as he -pleased, as was required for a particular purpose. He answered for his -characters himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced upon the stage, -are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced to answer -for themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of character. In -Shakspeare there is a continual composition and decomposition of its -elements, a fermentation of every particle in the whole mass, by its -alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles which are brought in -contact with it. Till the experiment is tried, we do not know the -result, the turn which the character will take in its new circumstances. -Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and raised them -to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from every base -alloy. His imagination, ‘nigh sphered in Heaven,’ claimed kindred only -with what he saw from that height, and could raise to the same elevation -with itself. He sat retired and kept his state alone, ‘playing with -wisdom’; while Shakspeare mingled with the crowd, and played the host, -‘to make society the sweeter welcome.’ - -The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation of -character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment preying upon -itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to itself; it is -passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings to which the -individual is liable, and to which others are liable with him; subject -to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident; calling into play all -the resources of the understanding and all the energies of the will; -irritated by obstacles or yielding to them; rising from small beginnings -to its utmost height; now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now -sunk in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging like a -torrent. The human soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey of -adversity: it is stretched on the wheel of destiny, in restless ecstacy. -The passions are in a state of projection. Years are melted down to -moments, and every instant teems with fate. We know the results, we see -the process. Thus after Iago has been boasting to himself of the effect -of his poisonous suggestions on the mind of Othello, ‘which, with a -little act upon the blood, will work like mines of sulphur,’ he adds— - - ‘Look where he comes! not poppy, nor mandragora, - Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, - Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep - Which thou ow’dst yesterday.’— - -And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with his -wrongs and raging for revenge! The whole depends upon the turn of a -thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame; and -the explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The dialogues in -Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all those -in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, -afford examples of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest in -Chaucer is quite different; it is like the course of a river, strong, -and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, it is like the -sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed by furious storms; -while in the still pauses of the blast, we distinguish only the cries of -despair, or the silence of death! Milton, on the other hand, takes the -imaginative part of passion—that which remains after the event, which -the mind reposes on when all is over, which looks upon circumstances -from the remotest elevation of thought and fancy, and abstracts them -from the world of action to that of contemplation. The objects of -dramatic poetry affect us by sympathy, by their nearness to ourselves, -as they take us by surprise, or force us upon action, ‘while rage with -rage doth sympathise’; the objects of epic poetry affect us through the -medium of the imagination, by magnitude and distance, by their -permanence and universality. The one fill us with terror and pity, the -other with admiration and delight. There are certain objects that strike -the imagination, and inspire awe in the very idea of them, independently -of any dramatic interest, that is, of any connection with the -vicissitudes of human life. For instance, we cannot think of the -pyramids of Egypt, of a Gothic ruin, or an old Roman encampment, without -a certain emotion, a sense of power and sublimity coming over the mind. -The heavenly bodies that hung over our heads wherever we go, and ‘in -their untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust, and all -our cares forgotten,’ affect us in the same way. Thus Satan’s address to -the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic interest; for though the second -person in the dialogue makes no answer and feels no concern, yet the eye -that vast luminary is upon him, like the eye of heaven, and seems -conscious of what he says, like an universal presence. Dramatic poetry -and epic, in their perfection, indeed, approximate to and strengthen one -another. Dramatic poetry borrows aid from the dignity of persons and -things, as the heroic does from human passion, but in theory they are -distinct.—When Richard II. calls for the looking-glass to contemplate -his faded majesty in it, and bursts into that affecting exclamation: -‘Oh, that I were a mockery-king of snow, to melt away before the sun of -Bolingbroke,’ we have here the utmost force of human passion, combined -with the ideas of regal splendour and fallen power. When Milton says of -Satan: - - ‘——His form had not yet lost - All her original brightness, nor appear’d - Less than archangel ruin’d, and th’ excess - Of glory obscur’d;’— - -the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense of -irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect. - -The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an -experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; -or what is worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human -passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and -devouring egotism of the writers’ own minds. Milton and Shakspeare did -not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both -to nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one -and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of their own -Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to their having had a -deeper sense than others of what was grand in the objects of nature, or -affecting in the events of human life. But to the men I speak of there -is nothing interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the -fall of gods or of great men is the same. They do not enter into the -feeling. They cannot understand the terms. They are even debarred from -the last poor, paltry consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen -greatness; for their minds reject, with a convulsive effort and -intolerable loathing, the very idea that there ever was, or was thought -to be, any thing superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the -attention or admiration of the world, they look upon with the most -perfect indifference; and they are surprised to find that the world -repays their indifference with scorn. ‘With what measure they mete, it -has been meted to them again.’— - -Shakespeare’s imagination is of the same plastic kind as his conception -of character or passion. ‘It glances from heaven to earth, from earth to -heaven.’ Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites the most opposite -extremes: or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats, ‘puts a girdle -round about the earth in forty minutes.’ He seems always hurrying from -his subject, even while describing it; but the stroke, like the -lightning’s, is sure as it is sudden. He takes the widest possible -range, but from that very range he has his choice of the greatest -variety and aptitude of materials. He brings together images the most -alike, but placed at the greatest distance from each other; that is, -found in circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude. From the -remoteness of his combinations, and the celerity with which they are -effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly together. The more the -thoughts are strangers to each other, and the longer they have been kept -asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to become. Their -felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is made more dazzling -by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy prisoner in the same -instant. I will mention one or two which are very striking, and not much -known, out of Troilus and Cressida. Æneas says to Agamemnon, - - ‘I ask that I may waken reverence, - And on the cheek be ready with a blush - Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes - The youthful Phœbus.’ - -Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says— - - ‘No man is the lord of anything, - Till he communicate his parts to others: - Nor doth he of himself know them for aught, - Till he behold them formed in the applause, - Where they’re extended! which like an arch reverberates - The voice again, or like a gate of steel, - Fronting the sun, receives and renders back - Its figure and its heat.’ - -Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice. - - ‘Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid - Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, - And like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane - Be shook to air.’ - -Shakspeare’s language and versification are like the rest of him. He has -a magic power over words: they come winged at his bidding; and seem to -know their places. They are struck out at a heat, on the spur of the -occasion, and have all the truth and vividness which arise from an -actual impression of the objects. His epithets and single phrases are -like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by the whirling -rapidity of its own motion. His language is hieroglyphical. It -translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds in sudden -transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of his mixed -metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech. These, however, -give no pain from long custom. They have, in fact, become idioms in the -language. They are the building, and not the scaffolding to thought. We -take the meaning and effect of a well-known passage entire, and no more -stop to scan and spell out the particular words and phrases, than the -syllables of which they are composed. In trying to recollect any other -author, one sometimes stumbles, in case of failure, on a word as good. -In Shakspeare, any other word but the true one, is sure to be wrong. If -any body, for instance, could not recollect the words of the following -description, - - ‘——Light thickens, - And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,’ - -he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them equally -expressive of the feeling. These remarks, however, are strictly -applicable only to the impassioned parts of Shakspeare’s language, which -flowed from the warmth and originality of his imagination, and were his -own. The language used for prose conversation and ordinary business is -sometimes technical, and involved in the affectation of the time. -Compare, for example, Othello’s apology to the senate, relating ‘his -whole course of love,’ with some of the preceding parts relating to his -appointment, and the official dispatches from Cyprus. In this respect, -‘the business of the state does him offence.’ His versification is no -less powerful, sweet, and varied. It has every occasional excellence, of -sullen intricacy, crabbed and perplexed, or of the smoothest and -loftiest expansion—from the ease and familiarity of measured -conversation to the lyrical sounds - - ‘——Of ditties highly penned, - Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower, - With ravishing division to her lute.’ - -It is the only blank verse in the language, except Milton’s, that for -itself is readable. It is not stately and uniformly swelling like his, -but varied and broken by the inequalities of the ground it has to pass -over in its uncertain course, - - ‘And so by many winding nooks it strays, - With willing sport to the wild ocean.’ - -It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They are not so many or -so great as they have been represented; what there are, are chiefly -owing to the following causes:—The universality of his genius was, -perhaps, a disadvantage to his single works; the variety of his -resources, sometimes diverting him from applying them to the most -effectual purposes. He might be said to combine the powers of Æschylus -and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind. If he had been -only half what he was, he would perhaps have appeared greater. The -natural ease and indifference of his temper made him sometimes less -scrupulous than he might have been. He is relaxed and careless in -critical places; he is in earnest throughout only in Timon, Macbeth, and -Lear. Again, he had no models of acknowledged excellence constantly in -view to stimulate his efforts, and by all that appears, no love of fame. -He wrote for the ‘great vulgar and the small,’ in his time, not for -posterity. If Queen Elizabeth and the maids of honour laughed heartily -at his worst jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were silent at his -best passages, he went home satisfied, and slept the next night well. He -did not trouble himself about Voltaire’s criticisms. He was willing to -take advantage of the ignorance of the age in many things; and if his -plays pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His very -facility of production would make him set less value on his own -excellences, and not care to distinguish nicely between what he did well -or ill. His blunders in chronology and geography do not amount to above -half a dozen, and they are offences against chronology and geography, -not against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in setting them at -defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so great a man. His -barbarisms were those of his age. His genius was his own. He had no -objection to float down with the stream of common taste and opinion: he -rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which he could not -keep under, in spite of himself or others, and ‘his delights did shew -most dolphin-like.’ - -He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies are -better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy. His -female characters, which have been found fault with as insipid, are the -finest in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a coxcomb of -any one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman. - -Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and an -indifference to personal reputation; he had none of the bigotry of his -age, and his political prejudices were not very strong. In these -respects, as well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to -Milton. Milton’s works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a hymn -to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation of -the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth; and he seized the -pen with a hand just warm from the touch of the ark of faith. His -religious zeal infused its character into his imagination; so that he -devotes himself with the same sense of duty to the cultivation of his -genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or the good of his country. -The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the prophet, vied with each -other in his breast. His mind appears to have held equal communion with -the inspired writers, and with the bards and sages of ancient Greece and -Rome;— - - ‘Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides, - And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old.’ - -He had a high standard, with which he was always comparing himself, -nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition. He thought of -nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about him. He lived -apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully excluding from his -mind whatever might distract its purposes or alloy its purity, or damp -its zeal. ‘With darkness and with dangers compassed round,’ he had the -mighty models of antiquity always present to his thoughts, and -determined to raise a monument of equal height and glory, ‘piling up -every stone of lustre from the brook,’ for the delight and wonder of -posterity. He had girded himself up, and as it were, sanctified his -genius to this service from his youth. ‘For after,’ he says, ‘I had from -my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been -exercised to the tongues, and some sciences as my age could suffer, by -sundry masters and teachers, it was found that whether aught was imposed -upon me by them, or betaken to of my own choice, the style by certain -vital signs it had, was likely to live; but much latelier, in the -private academies of Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I had in -memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout, met with acceptance -above what was looked for; I began thus far to assent both to them and -divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting -which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study (which I -take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity -of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times as -they should not willingly let it die. The accomplishment of these -intentions, which have lived within me ever since I could conceive -myself anything worth to my country, lies not but in a power above man’s -to promise; but that none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and -with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of -myself, as far as life and free leisure will extend. Neither do I think -it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years -yet, I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now -indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the -vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some -vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be -obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but -by devout prayer to that eternal spirit who can enrich with all -utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed -fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases: to -this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, -and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Although it -nothing content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand; but that I -trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to -interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and -pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to -embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, from beholding -the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful -studies.’ - -So that of Spenser: - - ‘The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought, - And is with child of glorious great intent, - Can never rest until it forth have brought - The eternal brood of glory excellent.’ - -Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a severe -examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave nothing -undone which it was in his power to do. He always labours, and almost -always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things in the world, -and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his subject to the utmost: -he surrounds it with every possible association of beauty or grandeur, -whether moral, intellectual, or physical. He refines on his descriptions -of beauty; loading sweets on sweets, till the sense aches at them; and -raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, that ‘makes Ossa -like a wart.’ In Milton, there is always an appearance of effort: in -Shakespeare, scarcely any. - -Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every -source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct -from every other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet in -originality scarcely inferior to Homer. The power of his mind is stamped -on every line. The fervour of his imagination melts down and renders -malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory materials. In reading -his works, we feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, -that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes more distinct from -them. The quantity of art in him shews the strength of his genius: the -weight of his intellectual obligations would have oppressed any other -writer. Milton’s learning has the effect of intuition. He describes -objects, of which he could only have read in books, with the vividness -of actual observation. His imagination has the force of nature. He makes -words tell as pictures. - - ‘Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat - Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks - Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.’ - -The word _lucid_ here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the -most perfect landscape. - -And again: - - ‘As when a vulture on Imaus bred, - Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, - Dislodging from a region scarce of prey, - To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids - On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs - Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams; - But in his way lights on the barren plains - Of Sericana, where Chineses drive - With sails and wind their cany waggons light.’ - -If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he could not have -described this scenery and mode of life better. Such passages are like -demonstrations of natural history. Instances might be multiplied without -end. - -We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with which he -describes visible objects, was owing to their having acquired an unusual -degree of strength in his mind, after the privation of his sight; but we -find the same palpableness and truth in the descriptions which occur in -his early poems. In Lycidas he speaks of ‘the great vision of the -guarded mount,’ with that preternatural weight of impression with which -it would present itself suddenly to ‘the pilot of some small -night-foundered skiff’: and the lines in the Penseroso, describing ‘the -wandering moon,’ - - ‘Riding near her highest noon, - Like one that had been led astray - Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,’ - -are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her. There is also -the same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all -the different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells—the same -absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. It -has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of criticism, -that his ideas were musical rather than picturesque, as if because they -were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to keep the sage -critical balance even, and to allow no one man to possess two qualities -at the same time) proportionably deficient in other respects. But -Milton’s poetry is not cast in any such narrow, common-place mould; it -is not so barren of resources. His worship of the Muse was not so simple -or confined. A sound arises ‘like a steam of rich distilled perfumes’; -we hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars is also there, -and the statues of the gods are ranged around! The ear indeed -predominates over the eye, because it is more immediately affected, and -because the language of music blends more immediately with, and forms a -more natural accompaniment to, the variable and indefinite associations -of ideas conveyed by words. But where the associations of the -imagination are not the principal thing, the individual object is given -by Milton with equal force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of -this, as a characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of -Adam and Eve, of Satan, &c. are always accompanied, in our imagination, -with the grandeur of the naked figure; they convey to us the ideas of -sculpture. As an instance, take the following: - - ‘——He soon - Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, - The same whom John saw also in the sun: - His back was turned, but not his brightness hid; - Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar - Circled his head, nor less his locks behind - Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings - Lay waving round; on some great charge employ’d - He seem’d, or fix’d in cogitation deep. - Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope - To find who might direct his wand’ring flight - To Paradise, the happy seat of man, - His journey’s end, and our beginning woe. - But first he casts to change his proper shape, - Which else might work him danger or delay - And now a stripling cherub he appears, - Not of the prime, yet such as in his face - Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb - Suitable grace diffus’d, so well he feign’d: - Under a coronet his flowing hair - In curls on either cheek play’d; wings he wore - Of many a colour’d plume sprinkled with gold, - His habit fit for speed succinct, and held - Before his decent steps a silver wand.’ - -The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a -Greek statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and -musical as the strings of Memnon’s harp! - -Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait of Beelzebub: - - ‘With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear - The weight of mightiest monarchies:’ - -Or the comparison of Satan, as he ‘lay floating many a rood,’ to ‘that -sea beast,’ - - ‘Leviathan, which God of all his works - Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream!’ - -What a force of imagination is there in this last expression! What an -idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it -shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as -a very little thing? Force of style is one of Milton’s greatest -excellences. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and -less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners, is to -take down the book and read it. - -Milton’s blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except -Shakspeare’s) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who had -modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of Pope, -condemns the Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not pretend to -say that this is not sometimes the case; for where a degree of -excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted, the poet -must sometimes fail. But I imagine that there are more perfect examples -in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and -movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage, than in all our -other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put together, (with the -exception already mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our -stanza writers, as Dryden is the most sounding and varied of our -rhymists. But in neither is there any thing like the same ear for music, -the same power of approximating the varieties of poetical to those of -musical rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet. The sound of his -lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the -very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite -art, but without the least trick or affectation, as the occasion seems -to require. - -The following are some of the finest instances: - - ‘——His hand was known - In Heaven by many a tower’d structure high;— - Nor was his name unheard or unador’d - In ancient Greece: and in the Ausonian land - Men called him Mulciber: and how he fell - From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove - Sheer o’er the chrystal battlements; from morn - To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, - A summer’s day; and with the setting sun - Dropt from the zenith like a falling star - On Lemnos, the Ægean isle: thus they relate, - Erring.’— - - ‘——But chief the spacious hall - Thick swarm’d, both on the ground and in the air, - Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees - In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, - Pour forth their populous youth about the hive - In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow’rs - Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank, - The suburb of their straw-built citadel, - New rubb’d with balm, expatiate and confer - Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd - Swarm’d and were straiten’d; till the signal giv’n, - Behold a wonder! They but now who seem’d - In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons, - Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room - Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race - Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, - Whose midnight revels by a forest side - Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, - Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon - Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth - Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance - Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; - At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’ - -I can only give another instance, though I have some difficulty in -leaving off. - - ‘Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood - So high above the circling canopy - Of night’s extended shade) from th’ eastern point - Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears - Andromeda far off Atlantic seas - Beyond the horizon: then from pole to pole - He views in breadth, and without longer pause - Down right into the world’s first region throws - His flight precipitant, and winds with ease - Through the pure marble air his oblique way - Amongst innumerable stars that shone - Stars distant, but nigh hand seem’d other worlds; - Or other worlds they seem’d or happy isles,’ &c. - -The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down as -if it had itself wings. Milton has himself given us the theory of his -versification— - - ‘Such as the meeting soul may pierce - In notes with many a winding bout - Of linked sweetness long drawn out.’ - -Dr. Johnson and Pope would, have converted his vaulting Pegasus into a -rocking-horse. Read any other blank verse but Milton’s,—Thomson’s, -Young’s, Cowper’s, Wordsworth’s,—and it will be found, from the want of -the same insight into ‘the hidden soul of harmony,’ to be mere lumbering -prose. - -To proceed to a consideration of the merits of Paradise Lost, in the -most essential point of view, I mean as to the poetry of character and -passion. I shall say nothing of the fable, or of other technical -objections or excellences; but I shall try to explain at once the -foundation of the interest belonging to the poem. I am ready to give up -the dialogues in Heaven, where, as Pope justly observes, ‘God the Father -turns a school-divine’; nor do I consider the battle of the angels as -the climax of sublimity, or the most successful effort of Milton’s pen. -In a word, the interest of the poem arises from the daring ambition and -fierce passions of Satan, and from the account of the paradisaical -happiness, and the loss of it by our first parents. Three-fourths of the -work are taken up with these characters, and nearly all that relates to -them is unmixed sublimity and beauty. The two first books alone are like -two massy pillars of solid gold. - -Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem; and -the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the first of -created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the highest, and -to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to -hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the universe; his means, -myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part of the heavens, whom he -lured after him with his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent -in arms. His ambition was the greatest, and his punishment was the -greatest; but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his -sufferings. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body; -the vastness of his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible -determination with which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and -final loss of all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal. -He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest -will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He -stood like a tower; or - - ‘—— —— ——As when Heaven’s fire - Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines.’ - -He was still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, who -own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sympathises as -he views them round, far as the eye can reach; though he keeps aloof -from them in his own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own -breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and -Death are at his heels, and mankind are his easy prey. - - ‘All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will, - And study of revenge, immortal hate, - And courage never to submit or yield, - And what else is not to be overcome,’ - -are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude -of it; the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made -innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride; the loss of infinite -happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of -inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle of -malignity, or of the abstract love of evil—but of the abstract love of -power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which last principle all -other good and evil, and even his own, are subordinate. From this -principle he never once flinches. His love of power and contempt for -suffering are never once relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity. -His thoughts burn like a hell within him; but the power of thought holds -dominion in his mind over every other consideration. The consciousness -of a determined purpose, of ‘that intellectual being, those thoughts -that wander through eternity,’ though accompanied with endless pain, he -prefers to nonentity, to ‘being swallowed up and lost in the wide womb -of uncreated night.’ He expresses the sum and substance of all ambition -in one line. ‘Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or -suffering!’ After such a conflict as his, and such a defeat, to retreat -in order, to rally, to make terms, to exist at all, is something; but he -does more than this—he founds a new empire in hell, and from it conquers -this new world, whither he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way -through nether and surrounding fires. The poet has not in all this given -us a mere shadowy outline; the strength is equal to the magnitude of the -conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more distinct; the Titans were -not more vast; Prometheus chained to his rock was not a more terrific -example of suffering and of crime. Wherever the figure of Satan is -introduced, whether he walks or flies, ‘rising aloft incumbent on the -dusky air,’ it is illustrated with the most striking and appropriate -images: so that we see it always before us, gigantic, irregular, -portentous, uneasy, and disturbed—but dazzling in its faded splendour, -the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in the -depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite our loathing -or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, poor emblems of the -unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton -was too magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argument by -the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot; to bring into the fair field -of controversy the good old catholic prejudices of which Tasso and Dante -have availed themselves, and which the mystic German critics would -restore. He relied on the justice of his cause, and did not scruple to -give the devil his due. Some persons may think that he has carried his -liberality too far, and injured the cause he professed to espouse by -making him the chief person in his poem. Considering the nature of his -subject, he would be equally in danger of running into this fault, from -his faith in religion, and his love of rebellion; and perhaps each of -these motives had its full share in determining the choice of his -subject. - -Not only the figure of Satan, but his speeches in council, his -soliloquies, his address to Eve, his share in the war in heaven, or in -the fall of man, shew the same decided superiority of character. To give -only one instance, almost the first speech he makes: - - ‘Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, - Said then the lost archangel, this the seat - That we must change for Heaven; this mournful gloom - For that celestial light? Be it so, since he - Who now is sov’rain can dispose and bid - What shall be right: farthest from him is best, - Whom reason hath equal’d, force hath made supreme - Above his equals. Farewel happy fields, - Where joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail - Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell, - Receive thy new possessor: one who brings - A mind not to be chang’d by place or time. - The mind is its own place, and in itself - Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. - What matter where, if I be still the same, - And what I should be, all but less than he - Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least - We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built - Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: - Here we may reign secure, and in my choice - To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: - Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.’ - -The whole of the speeches and debates in Pandemonium are well worthy of -the place and the occasion—with Gods for speakers, and angels and -archangels for hearers. There is a decided manly tone in the arguments -and sentiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each person spoke from -thorough conviction; an excellence which Milton probably borrowed from -his spirit of partisanship, or else his spirit of partisanship from the -natural firmness and vigour of his mind. In this respect Milton -resembles Dante, (the only modern writer with whom he has any thing in -common) and it is remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was a -political partisan. That approximation to the severity of impassioned -prose which has been made an objection to Milton’s poetry, and which is -chiefly to be met with in these bitter invectives, is one of its great -excellences. The author might here turn his philippics against Salmasius -to good account. The rout in Heaven is like the fall of some mighty -structure, nodding to its base, ‘with hideous ruin and combustion down.’ -But, perhaps, of all the passages in Paradise Lost, the description of -the employments of the angels during the absence of Satan, some of whom -‘retreated in a silent valley, sing with notes angelical to many a harp -their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by doom of battle,’ is the most -perfect example of mingled pathos and sublimity.—What proves the truth -of this noble picture in every part, and that the frequent complaint of -want of interest in it is the fault of the reader, not of the poet, is -that when any interest of a practical kind takes a shape that can be at -all turned into this, (and there is little doubt that Milton had some -such in his eye in writing it,) each party converts it to its own -purposes, feels the absolute identity of these abstracted and high -speculations; and that, in fact, a noted political writer of the present -day has exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan in the Paradise -Lost, by applying it to a character whom he considered as after the -devil, (though I do not know whether he would make even that exception) -the greatest enemy of the human race. This may serve to shew that -Milton’s Satan is not a very insipid personage. - -Of Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary reader can feel -little interest in them, because they have none of the passions, -pursuits, or even relations of human life, except that of man and wife, -the least interesting of all others, if not to the parties concerned, at -least to the by-standers. The preference has on this account been given -to Homer, who, it is said, has left very vivid and infinitely -diversified pictures of all the passions and affections, public and -private, incident to human nature—the relations of son, of brother, -parent, friend, citizen, and many others. Longinus preferred the Iliad -to the Odyssey, on account of the greater number of battles it contains; -but I can neither agree to his criticism, nor assent to the present -objection. It is true, there is little action in this part of Milton’s -poem; but there is much repose, and more enjoyment. There are none of -the every-day occurrences, contentions, disputes, wars, fightings, -feuds, jealousies, trades, professions, liveries, and common handicrafts -of life; ‘no kind of traffic; letters are not known; no use of service, -of riches, poverty, contract, succession, bourne, bound of land, tilth, -vineyard none; no occupation, no treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, -gun, nor need of any engine.’ So much the better; thank Heaven, all -these were yet to come. But still the die was cast, and in them our doom -was sealed. In them - - ‘The generations were prepared; the pangs, - The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife - Of poor humanity’s afflicted will, - Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ - -In their first false step we trace all our future woe, with loss of -Eden. But there was a short and precious interval between, like the -first blush of morning before the day is overcast with tempest, the dawn -of the world, the birth of nature from ‘the unapparent deep,’ with its -first dews and freshness on its cheek, breathing odours. Theirs was the -first delicious taste of life, and on them depended all that was to come -of it. In them hung trembling all our hopes and fears. They were as yet -alone in the world, in the eye of nature, wondering at their new being, -full of enjoyment and enraptured with one another, with the voice of -their Maker walking in the garden, and ministering angels attendant on -their steps, winged messengers from heaven like rosy clouds descending -in their sight. Nature played around them her virgin fancies wild; and -spread for them a repast where no crude surfeit reigned. Was there -nothing in this scene, which God and nature alone witnessed, to interest -a modern critic? What need was there of action, where the heart was full -of bliss and innocence without it! They had nothing to do but feel their -own happiness, and ‘know to know no more.’ ‘They toiled not, neither did -they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of -these.’ All things seem to acquire fresh sweetness, and to be clothed -with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted as it were for themselves -and us, of all that there ever was pure in human bliss. ‘In them the -burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this -unintelligible world, is lightened.’ They stood awhile perfect, but they -afterwards fell, and were driven out of Paradise, tasting the first -fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss. But their pangs were -such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight—their tears ‘such as -angels weep.’ The pathos is of that mild contemplative kind which arises -from regret for the loss of unspeakable happiness, and resignation to -inevitable fate. There is none of the fierceness of intemperate passion, -none of the agony of mind and turbulence of action, which is the result -of the habitual struggles of the will with circumstances, irritated by -repeated disappointment, and constantly setting its desires most eagerly -on that which there is an impossibility of attaining. This would have -destroyed the beauty of the whole picture. They had received their -unlooked-for happiness as a free gift from their Creator’s hands, and -they submitted to its loss, not without sorrow, but without impious and -stubborn repining. - - ‘In either hand the hast’ning angel caught - Our ling’ring parents, and to th’ eastern gate - Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast - To the subjected plain; then disappear’d. - They looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld - Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, - Wav’d over by that flaming brand, the gate - With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms: - Some natural tears they dropt, but wip’d them soon; - The world was all before them, where to choose - Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.’ - - - - - LECTURE IV - ON DRYDEN AND POPE - - -Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry -in our language, as the poets of whom I have already treated, Chaucer, -Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, were of the natural; and though this -artificial style is generally and very justly acknowledged to be -inferior to the other, yet those who stand at the head of that class, -ought, perhaps, to rank higher than those who occupy an inferior place -in a superior class. They have a clear and independent claim upon our -gratitude, as having produced a kind and degree of excellence which -existed equally nowhere else. What has been done well by some later -writers of the highest style of poetry, is included in, and obscured by -a greater degree of power and genius in those before them: what has been -done best by poets of an entirely distinct turn of mind, stands by -itself, and tells for its whole amount. Young, for instance, Gray, or -Akenside, only follow in the train of Milton and Shakspeare: Pope and -Dryden walk by their side, though of an unequal stature, and are -entitled to a first place in the lists of fame. This seems to be not -only the reason of the thing, but the common sense of mankind, who, -without any regular process of reflection, judge of the merit of a work, -not more by its inherent and absolute worth, than by its originality and -capacity of gratifying a different faculty of the mind, or a different -class of readers; for it should be recollected, that there may be -readers (as well as poets) not of the highest class, though very good -sort of people, and not altogether to be despised. - -The question, whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and -is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great poet, he must have -been a great prose-writer, that is, he was a great writer of some sort. -He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most refined taste; and -as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of poetry) as the -vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed for a poet, and a -good one. If, indeed, by a great poet, we mean one who gives the utmost -grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to the -passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great poet; for the -bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay the clean contrary way; -namely, in representing things as they appear to the indifferent -observer, stripped of prejudice and passion, as in his Critical Essays; -or in representing them in the most contemptible and insignificant point -of view, as in his Satires; or in clothing the little with mock-dignity, -as in his poems of Fancy; or in adorning the trivial incidents and -familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of expression, and -all the flattering illusions of friendship or self-love, as in his -Epistles. He was not then distinguished as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, -of strong imagination, with a passionate sense of the beauties of -nature, or a deep insight into the workings of the heart; but he was a -wit, and a critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the world, with a -keen relish for the elegances of art, or of nature when embellished by -art, a quick tact for propriety of thought and manners as established by -the forms and customs of society, a refined sympathy with the sentiments -and habitudes of human life, as he felt them within the little circle of -his family and friends. He was, in a word, the poet, not of nature, but -of art; and the distinction between the two, as well as I can make it -out, is this—The poet of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, -of power, and of passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is -beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, -in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all -men; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony of -his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of nature; to -be identified with and to foreknow and to record the feelings of all men -at all times and places, as they are liable to the same impressions; and -to exert the same power over the minds of his readers, that nature does. -He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are; he -feels them in their universal interest, for he feels them as they affect -the first principles of his and our common nature. Such was Homer, such -was Shakspeare, whose works will last as long as nature, because they -are a copy of the indestructible forms and everlasting impulses of -nature, welling out from the bosom as from a perennial spring, or -stamped upon the senses by the hand of their maker. The power of the -imagination in them, is the representative power of all nature. It has -its centre in the human soul, and makes the circuit of the universe. - -Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of it. -He saw nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion; he -sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings -of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shakspeare had an intuitive -and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter into the heart of man in -all possible circumstances: Pope had an exact knowledge of all that he -himself loved or hated, wished or wanted. Milton has winged his daring -flight from heaven to earth, through Chaos and old Night. Pope’s Muse -never wandered with safety, but from his library to his grotto, or from -his grotto into his library back again. His mind dwelt with greater -pleasure on his own garden, than on the garden of Eden; he could -describe the faultless whole-length mirror that reflected his own -person, better than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the -face of heaven—a piece of cut glass or a pair of paste buckles with more -brilliance and effect, than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. -He would be more delighted with a patent lamp, than with ‘the pale -reflex of Cynthia’s brow,’ that fills the skies with its soft silent -lustre, that trembles through the cottage window, and cheers the -watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of -personality and of polished life. That which was nearest to him, was the -greatest; the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind over the -immutable laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to the natural in -external objects, because he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the -self-love of the maker or proprietor of a gewgaw, than admiration of -that which was interesting to all mankind. He preferred the artificial -to the natural in passion, because the involuntary and uncalculating -impulses of the one hurried him away with a force and vehemence with -which he could not grapple; while he could trifle with the conventional -and superficial modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or -admire, put them on or off like a masquerade-dress, make much or little -of them, indulge them for a longer or a shorter time, as he pleased; and -because while they amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they -never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His mind -was the antithesis of strength and grandeur; its power was the power of -indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry; he was in poetry -what the sceptic is in religion. - -It cannot be denied, that his chief excellence lay more in diminishing, -than in aggrandizing objects; in checking, not in encouraging our -enthusiasm; in sneering at the extravagances of fancy or passion, -instead of giving a loose to them; in describing a row of pins and -needles, rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans; in -penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in praising Martha Blount. - -Shakspeare says, - - ‘—— ——In Fortune’s ray and brightness - The herd hath more annoyance by the brize - Than by the tyger: but when the splitting wind - Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, - And flies fled under shade, why then - The thing of courage, - As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise; - And with an accent tuned in the self-same key, - Replies to chiding Fortune.’ - -There is none of this rough work in Pope. His Muse was on a -peace-establishment, and grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and -indulgence. He lived in the smiles of fortune, and basked in the favour -of the great. In his smooth and polished verse we meet with no prodigies -of nature, but with miracles of wit; the thunders of his pen are -whispered flatteries; its forked lightnings pointed sarcasms; for ‘the -gnarled oak,’ he gives us ‘the soft myrtle’: for rocks, and seas, and -mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling rills; for -earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or the fall of a -china jar; for the tug and war of the elements, or the deadly strife of -the passions, we have - - ‘Calm contemplation and poetic ease.’ - -Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and that how -exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, -what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what pampered -refinement of sentiment! It is like looking at the world through a -microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new -consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and -slightest shades of difference; where the little becomes gigantic, the -deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the -magnifier is, to be sure, held to every thing, but still the exhibition -is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most pleased or -surprised. Such, at least, is the best account I am able to give of this -extraordinary man, without doing injustice to him or others. It is time -to refer to particular instances in his works.—The Rape of the Lock is -the best or most ingenious of these. It is the most exquisite specimen -of _fillagree_ work ever invented. It is admirable in proportion as it -is made of nothing. - - ‘More subtle web Arachne cannot spin, - Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see - Of scorched dew, do not in th’ air more lightly flee.’ - -It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most glittering appearance -is given to every thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and patches. -Airs, languid airs, breathe around;—the atmosphere is perfumed with -affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar -raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is -given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion -of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest -things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, -is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is -made great, and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or -weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and -folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic! I will give only the two -following passages in illustration of these remarks. Can any thing be -more elegant and graceful than the description of Belinda, in the -beginning of the second canto? - - ‘Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain, - The sun first rises o’er the purpled main, - Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams - Launch’d on the bosom of the silver Thames. - Fair nymphs, and well-drest youths around her shone, - But ev’ry eye was fix’d on her alone. - On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, - Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. - Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, - Quick as her eyes, and as unfix’d as those: - Favours to none, to all she smiles extends; - Oft she rejects, but never once offends. - Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike; - And like the sun, they shine on all alike. - Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, - Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: - If to her share some female errors fall, - Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all. - - This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, - Nourish’d two locks, which graceful hung behind - In equal curls, and well conspir’d to deck - With shining ringlets the smooth iv’ry neck.’ - -The following is the introduction to the account of Belinda’s assault -upon the baron bold, who had dissevered one of these locks ‘from her -fair head for ever and for ever.’ - - ‘Now meet thy fate, incens’d Belinda cry’d, - And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. - (The same his ancient personage to deck, - Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck, - In three seal-rings; which after, melted down, - Form’d a vast buckle for his widow’s gown: - Her infant grandame’s whistle next it grew, - The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew; - Then in a bodkin grac’d her mother’s hairs, - Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears).’ - -I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original idea, or the -delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin of Boileau. - -The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as -the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought and -observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote -it, is wonderful: unless we adopt the supposition, that most men of -genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they -themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of -the expression are equally remarkable. Thus in reasoning on the variety -of men’s opinion, he says— - - ‘’Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none - Go just alike, yet each believes his own.’ - -Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and -illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules laid down are too much -those of a school, and of a confined one. There is one passage in the -Essay on Criticism in which the author speaks with that eloquent -enthusiasm of the fame of ancient writers, which those will always feel -who have themselves any hope or chance of immortality. I have quoted the -passage elsewhere, but I will repeat it here. - - ‘Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, - Above the reach of sacrilegious hands; - Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage, - Destructive war, and all-involving age. - Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, - Immortal heirs of universal praise! - Whose honours with increase of ages grow, - As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow.’ - -These lines come with double force and beauty on the reader, as they -were dictated by the writer’s despair of ever attaining that lasting -glory which he celebrates with such disinterested enthusiasm in others, -from the lateness of the age in which he lived, and from his writing in -a tongue, not understood by other nations, and that grows obsolete and -unintelligible to ourselves at the end of every second century. But he -needed not have thus antedated his own poetical doom—the loss and entire -oblivion of that which can never die. If he had known, he might have -boasted that ‘his little bark’ wafted down the stream of time, - - ‘—— ——With _theirs_ should sail, - Pursue the triumph and partake the gale’— - -if those who know how to set a due value on the blessing, were not the -last to decide confidently on their own pretensions to it. - -There is a cant in the present day about genius, as every thing in -poetry: there was a cant in the time of Pope about sense, as performing -all sorts of wonders. It was a kind of watchword, the shibboleth of a -critical party of the day. As a proof of the exclusive attention which -it occupied in their minds, it is remarkable that in the Essay on -Criticism (not a very long poem) there are no less than half a score -successive couplets rhyming to the word _sense_. This appears almost -incredible without giving the instances, and no less so when they are -given. - - ‘But of the two, less dangerous is the offence, - To tire our patience than mislead our sense.’—_lines 3, 4._ - - ‘In search of wit these lose their common sense, - And then turn critics in their own defence.’—_l. 28, 29._ - - ‘Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, - And fills up all the mighty void of sense.’—_l. 209, 10._ - - ‘Some by old words to fame have made pretence, - Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.’—_l. 324, 5._ - - ‘’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence; - The sound must seem an echo to the sense.’—_l. 364, 5._ - - ‘At every trifle scorn to take offence; - That always shews great pride, or little sense.’—_l. 386, 7._ - - ‘Be silent always, when you doubt your sense, - And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.’—_l. 366, 7._ - - ‘Be niggards of advice on no pretence, - For the worst avarice is that of sense.’—_l. 578, 9._ - - ‘Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense, - And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.’—_l. 608, 9._ - - ‘Horace still charms with graceful negligence, - And without method talks us into sense.’—_l. 653, 4._ - -I have mentioned this the more for the sake of those critics who are -bigotted idolisers of our author, chiefly on the score of his -correctness. These persons seem to be of opinion that ‘there is but one -perfect writer, even Pope.’ This is, however, a mistake: his excellence -is by no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is full of -little errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and imperfect. -In the Abelard and Eloise, he says— - - ‘There died the best of passions, Love and Fame.’ - -This is not a legitimate ellipsis. Fame is not a passion, though love -is: but his ear was evidently confused by the meeting of the sounds -‘love and fame,’ as if they of themselves immediately implied ‘love, and -love of fame.’ Pope’s rhymes are constantly-defective, being rhymes to -the eye instead of the ear; and this to a greater degree, not only than -in later, but than in preceding writers. The praise of his versification -must be confined to its uniform smoothness and harmony. In the -translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece -in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same -sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of -technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But -to have done with this. - -The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I can think of, -to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks; and I should be -disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The foundation -is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as -impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem: it is -finer as a piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman could be supposed -to write a better love-letter in verse. Besides the richness of the -historical materials, the high _gusto_ of the original sentiments which -Pope had to work upon, there were perhaps circumstances in his own -situation which made him enter into the subject with even more than a -poet’s feeling. The tears shed are drops gushing from the heart: the -words are burning sighs breathed from the soul of love. Perhaps the poem -to which it bears the greatest similarity in our language, is Dryden’s -Tancred and Sigismunda, taken from Boccaccio. Pope’s Eloise will bear -this comparison; and after such a test, with Boccaccio for the original -author, and Dryden for the translator, it need shrink from no other. -There is something exceedingly tender and beautiful in the sound of the -concluding lines: - - ‘If ever chance two wandering lovers brings - To Paraclete’s white walls and silver springs,’ &c. - -The Essay on Man is not Pope’s best work. It is a theory which -Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, and which he expanded into -verse. But ‘he spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple -of his argument.’ All that he says, ‘the very words, and to the -self-same tune,’ would prove just as well that whatever is, is wrong, as -that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad has splendid passages, but in -general it is dull, heavy, and mechanical. The sarcasm already quoted on -Settle, the Lord Mayor’s poet, (for at that time there was a city as -well as a court poet) - - ‘Now night descending, the proud scene is o’er, - But lives in Settle’s numbers one day more’— - -is the finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is even better -than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, the triumphant -bards of antiquity! - -The finest burst of severe moral invective in all Pope, is the -prophetical conclusion of the epilogue to the Satires: - - ‘Virtue may chuse the high or low degree, - ’Tis just alike to virtue, and to me; - Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king, - She’s still the same belov’d, contented thing. - Vice is undone if she forgets her birth, - And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth. - But ’tis the Fall degrades her to a whore: - Let Greatness own her, and she’s mean no more. - Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess, - Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless; - In golden chains the willing world she draws, - And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws; - Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head, - And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead. - Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal car, - Old England’s Genius, rough with many a scar, - Dragg’d in the dust! his arms hang idly round, - His flag inverted trains along the ground! - Our youth, all livery’d o’er with foreign gold, - Before her dance; behind her, crawl the old! - See thronging millions to the Pagod run, - And offer country, parent, wife, or son! - Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim, - That _not to be corrupted is the shame_. - In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in pow’r, - ’Tis av’rice all, ambition is no more! - See all our nobles begging to be slaves! - See all our fools aspiring to be knaves! - The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore, - Are what ten thousand envy and adore: - All, all look up with reverential awe, - At crimes that ‘scape or triumph o’er the law; - While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry: - Nothing is sacred now but villainy. - Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain) - Show there was one who held it in disdain.’ - -His Satires are not in general so good as his Epistles. His enmity is -effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his friendship was -tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his -character of Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often -borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes others fastidious. But -his compliments are divine; they are equal in value to a house or an -estate. Take the following. In addressing Lord Mansfield, he speaks of -the grave as a scene, - - ‘Where Murray, long enough his country’s pride, - Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde.’ - -To Bolingbroke he says— - - ‘Why rail they then if but one wreath of mine, - Oh all-accomplish’d St. John, deck thy shrine?’ - -Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord Cornbury— - - ‘Despise low thoughts, low gains: - Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains; - Be virtuous and be happy for your pains.’ - -One would think (though there is no knowing) that a descendant of this -nobleman, if there be such a person living, could hardly be guilty of a -mean or paltry action. - -The finest piece of personal satire in Pope (perhaps in the world) is -his character of Addison; and this, it may be observed, is of a mixed -kind, made up of his respect for the man, and a cutting sense of his -failings. The other finest one is that of Buckingham, and the best part -of that is the pleasurable. - - ‘——Alas! how changed from him, - That life of pleasure and that soul of whim: - Gallant and gay, in Cliveden’s proud alcove, - The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love!’ - -Among his happiest and most inimitable effusions are the Epistles to -Arbuthnot, and to Jervas the painter; amiable patterns of the delightful -unconcerned life, blending ease with dignity, which poets and painters -then led. Thus he says to Arbuthnot— - - ‘Why did I write? What sin to me unknown - Dipp’d me in ink, my parents’ or my own? - As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, - I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. - I left no calling for this idle trade, - No duty broke, no father disobey’d: - The muse but serv’d to ease some friend, not wife; - To help me through this long disease, my life, - To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care, - And teach the being you preserv’d to bear. - - But why then publish? Granville the polite, - And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; - Well-natur’d Garth inflam’d with early praise, - And Congreve lov’d, and Swift endur’d my lays; - The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read; - E’en mitred Rochester would nod the head; - And St. John’s self (great Dryden’s friend before) - With open arms receiv’d one poet more. - Happy my studies, when by these approv’d! - Happier their author, when by these belov’d! - From these the world will judge of men and books, - Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.’ - -I cannot help giving also the conclusion of the Epistle to Jervas. - - ‘Oh, lasting as those colours may they shine, - Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line; - New graces yearly like thy works display, - Soft without weakness, without glaring gay; - Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains; - And finish’d more through happiness than pains. - The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire, - One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre. - Yet should the Graces all thy figures place, - And breathe an air divine on ev’ry face; - Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll - Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul; - With Zeuxis’ Helen thy Bridgewater vie, - And these be sung till Granville’s Myra die: - Alas! how little from the grave we claim! - Thou but preserv’st a face, and I a name.’ - -And shall we cut ourselves off from beauties like these with a theory? -Shall we shut up our books, and seal up our senses, to please the dull -spite and inordinate vanity of those ‘who have eyes, but they see -not—ears, but they hear not—and understandings, but they understand -not,’—and go about asking our blind guides, whether Pope was a poet or -not? It will never do. Such persons, when you point out to them a fine -passage in Pope, turn it off to something of the same sort in some other -writer. Thus they say that the line, ‘I lisp’d in numbers, for the -numbers came,’ is pretty, but taken from that of Ovid—_Et quum conabar -scribere, versus erat_. They are safe in this mode of criticism: there -is no danger of any one’s tracing their writings to the classics. - -Pope’s letters and prose writings neither take away from, nor add to his -poetical reputation. There is, occasionally, a littleness of manner, and -an unnecessary degree of caution. He appears anxious to say a good thing -in every word, as well as every sentence. They, however, give a very -favourable idea of his moral character in all respects; and his letters -to Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do equal honour to both. If I -had to choose, there are one or two persons, and but one or two, that I -should like to have been better than Pope! - -Dryden was a better prose-writer, and a bolder and more varied versifier -than Pope. He was a more vigorous thinker, a more correct and logical -declaimer, and had more of what may be called strength of mind than -Pope; but he had not the same refinement and delicacy of feeling. -Dryden’s eloquence and spirit were possessed in a higher degree by -others, and in nearly the same degree by Pope himself; but that by which -Pope was distinguished, was an essence which he alone possessed, and of -incomparable value on that sole account. Dryden’s Epistles are -excellent, but inferior to Pope’s, though they appear (particularly the -admirable one to Congreve) to have been the model on which the latter -formed his. His Satires are better than Pope’s. His Absalom and -Achitophel is superior, both in force of invective and discrimination of -character, to any thing of Pope’s in the same way. The character of -Achitophel is very fine; and breathes, if not a sincere love for virtue, -a strong spirit of indignation against vice. - -Mac Flecknoe is the origin of the idea of the Dunciad; but it is less -elaborately constructed, less feeble, and less heavy. The difference -between Pope’s satirical portraits and Dryden’s, appears to be this in a -good measure, that Dryden seems to grapple with his antagonists, and to -describe real persons; Pope seems to refine upon them in his own mind, -and to make them out just what he pleases, till they are not real -characters, but the mere driveling effusions of his spleen and malice. -Pope describes the thing, and then goes on describing his own -description till he loses himself in verbal repetitions. Dryden recurs -to the object often, takes fresh sittings of nature, and gives us new -strokes of character as well as of his pencil. The Hind and Panther is -an allegory as well as a satire; and so far it tells less home; the -battery is not so point-blank. But otherwise it has more genius, -vehemence, and strength of description than any other of Dryden’s works, -not excepting the Absalom and Achitophel. It also contains the finest -examples of varied and sounding versification. I will quote the -following as an instance of what I mean. He is complaining of the -treatment which the Papists, under James II. received from the church of -England. - - ‘Besides these jolly birds, whose corpse impure - Repaid their commons with their salt manure, - Another farm he had behind his house, - Not overstocked, but barely for his use; - Wherein his poor domestic poultry fed, - And from his pious hand ‘received their bread.’ - Our pampered pigeons, with malignant eyes, - Beheld these inmates, and their nurseries; - Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn, - (A cruise of water, and an ear of corn,) - Yet still they grudged that _modicum_, and thought - A sheaf in every single grain was brought. - Fain would they filch that little food away, - While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey; - And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall, - The bird that warned St. Peter of his fall; - That he should raise his mitred crest on high, - And clap his wings, and call his family - To sacred rites; and vex the ethereal powers - With midnight mattins at uncivil hours; - Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest, - Just in the sweetness of their morning rest. - Beast of a bird! supinely when he might - Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light! - What if his dull forefathers us’d that cry, - Could he not let a bad example die? - The world was fallen into an easier way: - This age knew better than to fast and pray. - Good sense in sacred worship would appear, - So to begin as they might end the year. - Such feats in former times had wrought the falls - Of crowing chanticleers in cloister’d walls. - Expell’d for this, and for their lands they fled; - And sister Partlet with her hooded head - Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed.’ - -There is a magnanimity of abuse in some of these epithets, a fearless -choice of topics of invective, which may be considered as the heroical -in satire. - -The _Annus Mirabilis_ is a tedious performance; it is a tissue of -far-fetched, heavy, lumbering conceits, and in the worst style of what -has been denominated metaphysical poetry. His Odes in general are of the -same stamp; they are the hard-strained offspring of a meagre, -meretricious fancy. The famous Ode on St. Cecilia deserves its -reputation; for, as piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or -recited in alternate strophe and antistrophe, with classical allusions, -and flowing verse, nothing can be better. It is equally fit to be said -or sung; it is not equally good to read. It is lyrical, without being -epic or dramatic. For instance, the description of Bacchus, - - ‘The jolly god in triumph comes, - Sound the trumpets, beat the drums; - Flush’d with a purple grace, - He shews his honest face’— - -does not answer, as it ought, to our idea of the God, returning from the -conquest of India, with satyrs and wild beasts, that he had tamed, -following in his train; crowned with vine leaves, and riding in a -chariot drawn by leopards—such as we have seen him painted by Titian or -Rubens! Lyrical poetry, of all others, bears the nearest resemblance to -painting: it deals in hieroglyphics and passing figures, which depend -for effect, not on the working out, but on the selection. It is the -dance and pantomime of poetry. In variety and rapidity of movement, the -Alexander’s Feast has all that can be required in this respect; it only -wants loftiness and truth of character. - -Dryden’s plays are better than Pope could have written; for though he -does not go out of himself by the force of imagination, he goes out of -himself by the force of common-places and rhetorical dialogue. On the -other hand, they are not so good as Shakspeare’s; but he has left the -best character of Shakspeare that has ever been written.[5] - -His alterations from Chaucer and Boccaccio shew a greater knowledge of -the taste of his readers and power of pleasing them, than acquaintance -with the genius of his authors. He ekes out the lameness of the verse in -the former, and breaks the force of the passion in both. The Tancred and -Sigismunda is the only general exception, in which, I think, he has -fully retained, if not improved upon, the impassioned declamation of the -original. The Honoria has none of the bewildered, dreary, preternatural -effect of Boccaccio’s story. Nor has the Flower and the Leaf anything of -the enchanting simplicity and concentrated feeling of Chaucer’s romantic -fiction. Dryden, however, sometimes seemed to indulge himself as well as -his readers, as in keeping entire that noble line in Palamon’s address -to Venus: - - ‘Thou gladder of the mount of Cithæron!’ - -His Tales have been, upon the whole, the most popular of his works; and -I should think that a translation of some of the other serious tales in -Boccaccio and Chaucer, as that of Isabella, the Falcon, of Constance, -the Prioress’s Tale, and others, if executed with taste and spirit, -could not fail to succeed in the present day. - -It should appear, in tracing the history of our literature, that poetry -had, at the period of which we are speaking, in general declined, by -successive gradations, from the poetry of imagination, in the time of -Elizabeth, to the poetry of fancy (to adopt a modern distinction) in the -time of Charles I.; and again from the poetry of fancy to that of wit, -as in the reign of Charles II. and Queen Anne. It degenerated into the -poetry of mere common places, both in style and thought, in the -succeeding reigns: as in the latter part of the last century, it was -transformed, by means of the French Revolution, into the poetry of -paradox. - -Of Donne I know nothing but some beautiful verses to his wife, -dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad, and some -quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel. - -Waller still lives in the name of Sacharissa; and his lines on the death -of Oliver Cromwell shew that he was a man not without genius and -strength of thought. - -Marvel is a writer of nearly the same period, and worthy of a better -age. Some of his verses are harsh, as the words of Mercury; others -musical, as is Apollo’s lute. Of the latter kind are his boat-song, his -description of a fawn, and his lines to Lady Vere. His lines prefixed to -Paradise Lost are by no means the most favourable specimen of his -powers. - -Butler’s Hudibras is a poem of more wit than any other in the language. -The rhymes have as much genius in them as the thoughts; but there is no -story in it, and but little humour. Humour is the making others act or -talk absurdly and unconsciously: wit is the pointing out and ridiculing -that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature. The fault -of Butler’s poem is not that it has too much wit, but that it has not an -equal quantity of other things. One would suppose that the starched -manners and sanctified grimace of the times in which he lived, would of -themselves have been sufficiently rich in ludicrous incidents and -characters; but they seem rather to have irritated his spleen, than to -have drawn forth his powers of picturesque imitation. Certainly if we -compare Hudibras with Don Quixote in this respect, it seems rather a -meagre and unsatisfactory performance. - -Rochester’s poetry is the poetry of wit combined with the love of -pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless -levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in it; his contempt for every -thing that others respect, almost amounts to sublimity. His poem upon -Nothing is itself no trifling work. His epigrams were the bitterest, the -least laboured, and the truest, that ever were written. - -Sir John Suckling was of the same mercurial stamp, but with a greater -fund of animal spirits; as witty, but less malicious. His Ballad on a -Wedding is perfect in its kind, and has a spirit of high enjoyment in -it, of sportive fancy, a liveliness of description, and a truth of -nature, that never were surpassed. It is superior to either Gay or -Prior; for with all their _naïveté_ and terseness, it has a Shakspearian -grace and luxuriance about it, which they could not have reached. - -Denham and Cowley belong to the same period, but were quite distinct -from each other: the one was grave and prosing, the other melancholy and -fantastical. There are a number of good lines and good thoughts in the -Cooper’s Hill. And in Cowley there is an inexhaustible fund of sense and -ingenuity, buried in inextricable conceits, and entangled in the cobwebs -of the schools. He was a great man, not a great poet. But I shall say no -more on this subject. I never wish to meddle with names that are sacred, -unless when they stand in the way of things that are more sacred. - -Withers is a name now almost forgotten, and his works seldom read; but -his poetry is not unfrequently distinguished by a tender and pastoral -turn of thought; and there is one passage of exquisite feeling, -describing the consolations of poetry in the following terms: - - ‘She doth tell me where to borrow - Comfort in the midst of sorrow; - Makes the desolatest place[6] - To her presence be a grace; - And the blackest discontents - Be her fairest ornaments. - In my former days of bliss - Her divine skill taught me this, - That from every thing I saw, - I could some invention draw; - And raise pleasure to her height, - Through the meanest object’s sight, - By the murmur of a spring, - Or the least bough’s rusteling, - By a daisy whose leaves spread - Shut when Titan goes to bed; - Or a shady bush or tree, - She could more infuse in me, - Than all Nature’s beauties can, - In some other wiser man. - By her help I also now - Make this churlish place allow - Some things that may sweeten gladness - In the very gall of sadness. - The dull loneness, the black shade, - That these hanging vaults have made, - The strange music of the waves, - Beating on these hollow caves, - This black den which rocks emboss, - Overgrown with eldest moss, - The rude portals that give light - More to terror than delight, - This my chamber of neglect, - Wall’d about with disrespect, - From all these and this dull air, - A fit object for despair, - She hath taught me by her might - To draw comfort and delight. - Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, - I will cherish thee for this. - Poesie; thou sweet’st content - That ere Heav’n to mortals lent: - Though they as a trifle leave thee, - Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee, - Though thou be to them a scorn, - That to nought but earth are born: - Let my life no longer be - Than I am in love with thee. - Though our wise ones call thee madness, - Let me never taste of sadness, - If I love not thy maddest fits, - Above all their greatest wits. - And though some too seeming holy, - Do account thy raptures folly, - Thou dost teach me to contemn - What makes knaves and fools of them.’ - - - - - LECTURE V - ON THOMSON AND COWPER - - -Thomson, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of mortals and -of poets. But he was also one of the best both of mortals and of poets. -Dr. Johnson makes it his praise that he wrote ‘no line which dying he -would wish to blot.’ Perhaps a better proof of his honest simplicity, -and inoffensive goodness of disposition, would be that he wrote no line -which any other person living would wish that he should blot. Indeed, he -himself wished, on his death-bed, formally to expunge his dedication of -one of the Seasons to that finished courtier, and candid biographer of -his own life, Bub Doddington. As critics, however, not as moralists, we -might say on the other hand—‘Would he had blotted a thousand!’—The same -suavity of temper and sanguine warmth of feeling which threw such a -natural grace and genial spirit of enthusiasm over his poetry, was also -the cause of its inherent vices and defects. He is affected through -carelessness: pompous from unsuspecting simplicity of character. He is -frequently pedantic and ostentatious in his style, because he had no -consciousness of these vices in himself. He mounts upon stilts, not out -of vanity, but indolence. He seldom writes a good line, but he makes up -for it by a bad one. He takes advantage of all the most trite and -mechanical common-places of imagery and diction as a kindly relief to -his Muse, and as if he thought them quite as good, and likely to be -quite as acceptable to the reader, as his own poetry. He did not think -the difference worth putting himself to the trouble of accomplishing. He -had too little art to conceal his art: or did not even seem to know that -there was any occasion for it. His art is as naked and undisguised as -his nature; the one is as pure and genuine as the other is gross, gaudy, -and meretricious.—All that is admirable in the Seasons, is the emanation -of a fine natural genius, and sincere love of his subject, unforced, -unstudied, that comes uncalled for, and departs unbidden. But he takes -no pains, uses no self-correction; or if he seems to labour, it is worse -than labour lost. His genius ‘cannot be constrained by mastery.’ The -feeling of nature, of the changes of the seasons, was in his mind; and -he could not help conveying this feeling to the reader, by the mere -force of spontaneous expression; but if the expression did not come of -itself, he left the whole business to chance; or, willing to evade -instead of encountering the difficulties of his subject, fills up the -intervals of true inspiration with the most vapid and worthless -materials, pieces out a beautiful half line with a bombastic allusion, -or overloads an exquisitely natural sentiment or image with a cloud of -painted, pompous, cumbrous phrases, like the shower of roses, in which -he represents the Spring, his own lovely, fresh, and innocent Spring, as -descending to the earth. - - ‘Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come, - And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, - While music wakes around, veil’d in a shower - Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.’ - -Who, from such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as this, -would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions of -natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion -through this and the following cantos? For instance, the very next -passage is crowded with a set of striking images. - - ‘And see where surly Winter passes off - Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts: - His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill, - The shatter’d forest, and the ravag’d vale; - While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch - Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost, - The mountains lift their green heads to the sky. - As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed, - And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze, - Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets - Deform the day delightless; so that scarce - The bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht - To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore - The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath, - And sing their wild notes to the list’ning waste.’ - -Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets: for he gives most of the -poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal to him, or -have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the picturesque part of -his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious details of -objects;—no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum total of their -effects, their varying influences on the mind. He does not go into the -_minutiæ_ of a landscape, but describes the vivid impression which the -whole makes upon his own imagination; and thus transfers the same -unbroken, unimpaired impression to the imagination of his readers. The -colours with which he paints seem yet wet and breathing, like those of -the living statue in the Winter’s Tale. Nature in his descriptions is -seen growing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect -of the atmosphere, its humidity or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow -of summer, the gloom of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the -full overshadowing foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of -autumn. He transports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, or -plunges us into the chilling horrors and desolation of the frozen zone. -We hear the snow drifting against the broken casement without, and see -the fire blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops of a -vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads, or the coming storm -resounds through the leafless groves. In a word, he describes not to the -eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the whole man. He puts his -heart into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanises whatever he -touches. He makes all his descriptions teem with life and vivifying -soul. His faults were those of his style—of the author and the man; but -the original genius of the poet, the pith and marrow of his imagination, -the fine natural mould in which his feelings were bedded, were too much -for him to counteract by neglect, or affectation, or false ornaments. It -is for this reason that he is, perhaps, the most popular of all our -poets, treating of a subject that all can understand, and in a way that -is interesting to all alike, to the ignorant or the refined, because he -gives back the impression which the things themselves make upon us in -nature. ‘That,’ said a man of genius, seeing a little shabby soiled copy -of Thomson’s Seasons lying on the window-seat of an obscure country -alehouse—‘That is true fame!’ - -It has been supposed by some, that the Castle of Indolence is Thomson’s -best poem; but that is not the case. He has in it, indeed, poured out -the whole soul of indolence, diffuse, relaxed, supine, dissolved into a -voluptuous dream; and surrounded himself with a set of objects and -companions, in entire unison with the listlessness of his own temper. -Nothing can well go beyond the descriptions of these inmates of the -place, and their luxurious pampered way of life—of him who came among -them like ‘a burnished fly in month of June,’ but soon left them on his -heedless way; and him, - - ‘For whom the merry bells had rung, I ween, - If in this nook of quiet, bells had ever been.’ - -The in-door quiet and cushioned ease, where ‘all was one full-swelling -bed’; the out-of-door stillness, broken only by ‘the stock-dove’s plaint -amid the forest deep,’ - - ‘That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale’— - -are in the most perfect and delightful keeping. But still there are no -passages in this exquisite little production of sportive ease and fancy, -equal to the best of those in the Seasons. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, -was the first to point out and do justice to some of these; for -instance, to the description of the effects of the contagion among our -ships at Carthagena—‘of the frequent corse heard nightly plunged amid -the sullen waves,’ and to the description of the pilgrims lost in the -deserts of Arabia. This last passage, profound and striking as it is, is -not free from those faults of style which I have already noticed. - - ‘—— ——Breath’d hot - From all the boundless furnace of the sky, - And the wide-glitt’ring waste of burning sand, - A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites - With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, - Son of the desert, ev’n the camel feels - Shot through his wither’d heart the fiery blast. - Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad, - Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands, - Commov’d around, in gath’ring eddies play; - Nearer and nearer still they dark’ning come, - Till with the gen’ral all-involving storm - Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise, - And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown, - Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, - Beneath descending hills the caravan - Is buried deep. In Cairo’s crowded streets, - Th’ impatient merchant, wond’ring, waits in vain; - And Mecca saddens at the long delay.’ - -There are other passages of equal beauty with these; such as that of the -hunted stag, followed by ‘the inhuman rout,’ - - ‘——That from the shady depth - Expel him, circling through his ev’ry shift. - He sweeps the forest oft, and sobbing sees - The glades mild op’ning to the golden day, - Where in kind contest with his butting friends - He wont to struggle, or his loves enjoy.’ - -The whole of the description of the frozen zone, in the Winter, is -perhaps even finer and more thoroughly felt, as being done from early -associations, than that of the torrid zone in his Summer. Any thing more -beautiful than the following account of the Siberian exiles is, I think, -hardly to be found in the whole range of poetry. - - ‘There through the prison of unbounded wilds, - Barr’d by the hand of nature from escape, - Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around - Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow, - And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods, - That stretch athwart the solitary vast - Their icy horrors to the frozen main; - And cheerless towns far distant, never bless’d, - Save when its annual course the caravan - Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay, - With news of human kind.’ - -The feeling of loneliness, of distance, of lingering, slow-revolving -years of pining expectation, of desolation within and without the heart, -was never more finely expressed than it is here. - -The account which follows of the employments of the Polar night—of the -journeys of the natives by moonlight, drawn by rein-deer, and of the -return of spring in Lapland— - - ‘Where pure Niemi’s fairy mountains rise, - And fring’d with roses Tenglio rolls his stream,’ - -is equally picturesque and striking in a different way. The traveller -lost in the snow, is a well-known and admirable dramatic episode. I -prefer, however, giving one example of our author’s skill in painting -common domestic scenery, as it will bear a more immediate comparison -with the style of some later writers on such subjects. It is of little -consequence what passage we take. The following description of the first -setting in of winter is, perhaps, as pleasing as any. - - ‘Through the hush’d air the whitening shower descends, - At first thin wav’ring, till at last the flakes - Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day - With a continual flow. The cherish’d fields - Put on their winter-robe of purest white: - ’Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts - Along the mazy current. Low the woods - Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid Sun, - Faint, from the West emits his ev’ning ray, - Earth’s universal face, deep hid, and chill, - Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide - The works of man. Drooping, the lab’rer-ox - Stands cover’d o’er with snow, and then demands - The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav’n, - Tam’d by the cruel season, crowd around - The winnowing store, and claim the little boon - Which Providence assigns them. One alone, - The red-breast, sacred to the household Gods, - Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, - In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves - His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man - His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first - Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights - On the warm hearth; then hopping o’er the floor, - Eyes all the smiling family askance, - And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is: - Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs - Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds - Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, - Though timorous of heart, and hard beset - By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, - And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, - Urg’d on by fearless want. The bleating kind - Eye the bleak heav’n, and next, the glist’ning earth, - With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispers’d, - Dig for the wither’d herb through heaps of snow.’ - -It is thus that Thomson always gives a _moral sense_ to nature. - -Thomson’s blank verse is not harsh, or utterly untuneable; but it is -heavy and monotonous; it seems always labouring up-hill. The selections -which have been made from his works in Enfield’s Speaker, and other -books of extracts, do not convey the most favourable idea of his genius -or taste; such as Palemon and Lavinia, Damon and Musidora, Celadon and -Amelia. Those parts of any author which are most liable to be stitched -in worsted, and framed and glazed, are not by any means always the best. -The moral descriptions and reflections in the Seasons are in an -admirable spirit, and written with great force and fervour. - -His poem on Liberty is not equally good: his Muse was too easy and -good-natured for the subject, which required as much indignation against -unjust and arbitrary power, as complacency in the constitutional -monarchy, under which, just after the expulsion of the Stuarts and the -establishment of the House of Hanover, in contempt of the claims of -hereditary pretenders to the throne, Thomson lived. Thomson was but an -indifferent hater; and the most indispensable part of the love of -liberty has unfortunately hitherto been the hatred of tyranny. Spleen is -the soul of patriotism, and of public good: but you would not expect a -man who has been seen eating peaches off a tree with both hands in his -waistcoat pockets, to be ‘overrun with the spleen,’ or to heat himself -needlessly about an abstract proposition. - -His plays are liable to the same objection. They are never acted, and -seldom read. The author could not, or would not, put himself out of his -way, to enter into the situations and passions of others, particularly -of a tragic kind. The subject of Tancred and Sigismunda, which is taken -from a serious episode in Gil Blas, is an admirable one, but poorly -handled: the ground may be considered as still unoccupied. - -Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this connection, lived at a -considerable distance of time after Thomson; and had some advantages -over him, particularly in simplicity of style, in a certain precision -and minuteness of graphical description, and in a more careful and -leisurely choice of such topics only as his genius and peculiar habits -of mind prompted him to treat of. The Task has fewer blemishes than the -Seasons; but it has not the same capital excellence, the ‘unbought -grace’ of poetry, the power of moving and infusing the warmth of the -author’s mind into that of the reader. If Cowper had a more polished -taste, Thomson had, beyond comparison, a more fertile genius, more -impulsive force, a more entire forgetfulness of himself in his subject. -If in Thomson you are sometimes offended with the slovenliness of the -author by profession, determined to get through his task at all events; -in Cowper you are no less dissatisfied with the finicalness of the -private gentleman, who does not care whether he completes his work or -not; and in whatever he does, is evidently more solicitous to please -himself than the public. There is an effeminacy about him, which shrinks -from and repels common and hearty sympathy. With all his boasted -simplicity and love of the country, he seldom launches out into general -descriptions of nature: he looks at her over his clipped hedges, and -from his well-swept garden-walks; or if he makes a bolder experiment now -and then, it is with an air of precaution, as if he were afraid of being -caught in a shower of rain, or of not being able, in case of any -untoward accident, to make good his retreat home. He shakes hands with -nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on, and leads ‘his Vashti’ -forth to public view with a look of consciousness and attention to -etiquette, as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a minuet. He is -delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, after a romantic -adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies or a little child on a -common, to the drawing room and the ladies again, to the sofa and the -tea-kettle—No, I beg his pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured -tea-kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing urn. His walks and -arbours are kept clear of worms and snails, with as much an appearance -of _petit-maitreship_ as of humanity. He has some of the sickly -sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope; but then Pope prided -himself in them: whereas, Cowper affects to be all simplicity and -plainness. He had neither Thomson’s love of the unadorned beauties of -nature, nor Pope’s exquisite sense of the elegances of art. He was, in -fact, a nervous man, afraid of trusting himself to the seductions of the -one, and ashamed of putting forward his pretensions to an intimacy with -the other: but to be a coward, is not the way to succeed either in -poetry, in war, or in love! Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all -his reputation. His worst vices are amiable weaknesses, elegant -trifling. Though there is a frequent dryness, timidity, and jejuneness -in his manner, he has left a number of pictures of domestic comfort and -social refinement, as well as of natural imagery and feeling, which can -hardly be forgotten but with the language itself. Such, among others, -are his memorable description of the post coming in, that of the -preparations for tea in a winter’s evening in the country, of the -unexpected fall of snow, of the frosty morning (with the fine satirical -transition to the Empress of Russia’s palace of ice), and most of all, -the winter’s walk at noon. Every one of these may be considered as -distinct studies, or highly finished cabinet-pieces, arranged without -order or coherence. I shall be excused for giving the last of them, as -what has always appeared to me one of the most feeling, elegant, and -perfect specimens of this writer’s manner. - - ‘The night was winter in his roughest mood; - The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon - Upon the southern side of the slant hills, - And where the woods fence off the northern blast, - The season smiles, resigning all its rage, - And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue, - Without a cloud, and white without a speck - The dazzling splendour of the scene below. - Again the harmony comes o’er the vale; - And through the trees I view th’ embattled tow’r, - Whence all the music. I again perceive - The soothing influence of the wafted strains, - And settle in soft musings as I tread - The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, - Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. - The roof, though moveable through all its length, - As the wind sways it, has yet well suffic’d, - And, intercepting in their silent fall - The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. - No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. - The redbreast warbles still, but is content - With slender notes, and more than half suppress’d. - Pleas’d with his solitude, and flitting light - From spray to spray, where’er he rests he shakes - From many a twig the pendent drop of ice, - That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below. - Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, - Charms more than silence. Meditation here - May think down hours to moments. Here the heart - May give a useful lesson to the head, - And Learning wiser grow without his books. - Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one, - Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells - In heads replete with thoughts of other men; - Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. - Books are not seldom talismans and spells, - By which the magic art of shrewder wits - Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall’d. - Some to the fascination of a name - Surrender judgment hood-wink’d. Some the style - Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds - Of error leads them, by a tune entranc’d, - While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear - The insupportable fatigue of thought, - And swallowing therefore without pause or choice - The total grist unsifted, husks and all. - But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course - Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, - And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, - And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time - Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, - Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, - Not shy, as in the world, and to be won - By slow solicitation, seize at once - The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.’ - -His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the -polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the -virtuous man. His religious poetry, except where it takes a tincture of -controversial heat, wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not a -seraph’s wing. I might refer, in illustration of this opinion, to the -laboured anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth book. He -could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any modern poet: but he -could not describe the New Jerusalem so well as John Bunyan;—nor are his -verses on Alexander Selkirk so good as Robinson Crusoe. The one is not -so much like a vision, nor is the other so much like the reality. - -The first volume of Cowper’s poems has, however, been less read than it -deserved. The comparison in these poems of the proud and humble believer -to the peacock and the pheasant, and the parallel between Voltaire and -the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of eloquence and poetry, -particularly the last. - - ‘Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door, - Pillow and bobbins all her little store; - Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, - Shuffling her threads about the live-long day, - Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night, - Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light; - She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, - Has little understanding, and no wit, - Receives no praise; but, though her lot be such, - (Toilsome and indigent) she renders much; - Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true— - A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew; - And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes - Her title to a treasure in the skies. - - O happy peasant! Oh unhappy bard! - His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward; - He prais’d, perhaps, for ages yet to come, - She never heard of half a mile from home: - He lost in errors his vain heart prefers, - She safe in the simplicity of hers.’ - -His character of Whitfield, in the poem on Hope, is one of his most -spirited and striking things. It is written _con amore_. - - ‘But if, unblameable in word and thought, - A man arise, a man whom God has taught, - With all Elijah’s dignity of tone, - And all the love of the beloved John, - To storm the citadels they build in air, - To smite the untemper’d wall (’tis death to spare,) - To sweep away all refuges of lies, - And place, instead of quirks, themselves devise, - Lama Sabachthani before their eyes; - To show that without Christ all gain is loss, - All hope despair that stands not on his cross; - Except a few his God may have impressed, - A tenfold phrensy seizes all the rest.’ - -These lines were quoted, soon after their appearance, by the Monthly -Reviewers, to shew that Cowper was no poet, though they afterwards took -credit to themselves for having been the first to introduce his verses -to the notice of the public. It is not a little remarkable that these -same critics regularly damned, at its first coming out, every work which -has since acquired a standard reputation with the public.—Cowper’s -verses on his mother’s picture, and his lines to Mary, are some of the -most pathetic that ever were written. His stanzas on the loss of the -Royal George have a masculine strength and feeling beyond what was usual -with him. The story of John Gilpin has perhaps given as much pleasure to -as many people as any thing of the same length that ever was written. - -His life was an unhappy one. It was embittered by a morbid affection, -and by his religious sentiments. Nor are we to wonder at this, or bring -it as a charge against religion; for it is the nature of the poetical -temperament to carry every thing to excess, whether it be love, -religion, pleasure, or pain, as we may see in the case of Cowper and of -Burns, and to find torment or rapture in that in which others merely -find a resource from _ennui_, or a relaxation from common occupation. - -There are two poets still living who belong to the same class of -excellence, and of whom I shall here say a few words; I mean Crabbe, and -Robert Bloomfield, the author of the Farmer’s Boy. As a painter of -simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the country, few -writers have more undeniable and unassuming pretensions than the -ingenious and self-taught poet, last-mentioned. Among the sketches of -this sort I would mention, as equally distinguished for delicacy, -faithfulness, and _naïveté_, his description of lambs racing, of the -pigs going out an acorning, of the boy sent to feed his sheep before the -break of day in winter; and I might add the innocently told story of the -poor bird-boy, who in vain through the live-long day expects his -promised companions at his hut, to share his feast of roasted sloes with -him, as an example of that humble pathos, in which this author excels. -The fault indeed of his genius is that it is too humble: his Muse has -something not only rustic, but menial in her aspect. He seems afraid of -elevating nature, lest she should be ashamed of him. Bloomfield very -beautifully describes the lambs in springtime as racing round the -hillocks of green turf: Thomson, in describing the same image, makes the -mound of earth the remains of an old Roman encampment. Bloomfield never -gets beyond his own experience; and that is somewhat confined. He gives -the simple appearance of nature, but he gives it naked, shivering, and -unclothed with the drapery of a moral imagination. His poetry has much -the effect of the first approach of spring, ‘while yet the year is -unconfirmed,’ where a few tender buds venture forth here and there, but -are chilled by the early frosts and nipping breath of poverty.—It should -seem from this and other instances that have occurred within the last -century, that we cannot expect from original genius alone, without -education, in modern and more artificial periods, the same bold and -independent results as in former periods. And one reason appears to be, -that though such persons, from whom we might at first expect a -restoration of the good old times of poetry, are not encumbered and -enfeebled by the trammels of custom, and the dull weight of other men’s -ideas; yet they are oppressed by the consciousness of a want of the -common advantages which others have; are looking at the tinsel finery of -the age, while they neglect the rich unexplored mine in their own -breasts; and instead of setting an example for the world to follow, -spend their lives in aping, or in the despair of aping, the hackneyed -accomplishments of their inferiors. Another cause may be, that original -genius alone is not sufficient to produce the highest excellence, -without a corresponding state of manners, passions, and religious -belief: that no single mind can move in direct opposition to the vast -machine of the world around it; that the poet can do no more than stamp -the mind of his age upon his works; and that all that the ambition of -the highest genius can hope to arrive at, after the lapse of one or two -generations, is the perfection of that more refined and effeminate style -of studied elegance and adventitious ornament, which is the result, not -of nature, but of art. In fact, no other style of poetry has succeeded, -or seems likely to succeed, in the present day. The public taste hangs -like a millstone round the neck of all original genius that does not -conform to established and exclusive models. The writer is not only -without popular sympathy, but without a rich and varied mass of -materials for his mind to work upon and assimilate unconsciously to -itself; his attempts at originality are looked upon as affectation, and -in the end, degenerate into it from the natural spirit of contradiction, -and the constant uneasy sense of disappointment and undeserved ridicule. -But to return. - -Crabbe is, if not the most natural, the most literal of our descriptive -poets. He exhibits the smallest circumstances of the smallest things. He -gives the very costume of meanness; the nonessentials of every trifling -incident. He is his own landscape-painter, and engraver too. His -pastoral scenes seem pricked on paper in little dotted lines. He -describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain -for rent. He has an eye to the number of arms in an old worm-eaten -chair, and takes care to inform himself and the reader whether a -joint-stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by the -fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance as a tottering -world; and he records the rent in a ragged counterpane as an event in -history. He is equally curious in his back-grounds and in his figures. -You know the christian and surnames of every one of his heroes,—the -dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a Monday,—their -place of birth and burial, the colour of their clothes, and of their -hair, and whether they squinted or not. He takes an inventory of the -human heart exactly in the same manner as of the furniture of a sick -room: his sentiments have very much the air of fixtures; he gives you -the petrifaction of a sigh, and carves a tear, to the life, in stone. -Almost all his characters are tired of their lives, and you heartily -wish them dead. They remind one of anatomical preservations; or may be -said to bear the same relation to actual life that a stuffed cat in a -glass-case does to the real one purring on the hearth: the skin is the -same, but the life and the sense of heat is gone. Crabbe’s poetry is -like a museum, or curiosity-shop: every thing has the same posthumous -appearance, the same inanimateness and identity of character. If -Bloomfield is too much of the Farmer’s Boy, Crabbe is too much of the -parish beadle, an overseer of the country poor. He has no delight beyond -the walls of a workhouse, and his officious zeal would convert the world -into a vast infirmary. He is a kind of Ordinary, not of Newgate, but of -nature. His poetical morality is taken from Burn’s Justice, or the -Statutes against Vagrants. He sets his own imagination in the stocks, -and his Muse, like Malvolio, ‘wears cruel garters.’ He collects all the -petty vices of the human heart, and superintends, as in a panopticon, a -select circle of rural malefactors. He makes out the poor to be as bad -as the rich—a sort of vermin for the others to hunt down and trample -upon, and this he thinks a good piece of work. With him there are but -two moral categories, riches and poverty, authority and dependence. His -parish apprentice, Richard Monday, and his wealthy baronet, Sir Richard -Monday, of Monday-place, are the same individual—the extremes of the -same character, and of his whole system. ‘The latter end of his -Commonwealth does not forget the beginning.’ But his parish ethics are -the very worst model for a state: any thing more degrading and helpless -cannot well be imagined. He exhibits just the contrary view of human -life to that which Gay has done in his Beggar’s Opera. In a word, Crabbe -is the only poet who has attempted and succeeded in the _still life_ of -tragedy: who gives the stagnation of hope and fear—the deformity of vice -without the temptation—the pain of sympathy without the interest—and who -seems to rely, for the delight he is to convey to his reader, on the -truth and accuracy with which he describes only what is disagreeable. - -The best descriptive poetry is not, after all, to be found in our -descriptive poets. There are set descriptions of the flowers, for -instance, in Thomson, Cowper, and others; but none equal to those in -Milton’s Lycidas, and in the Winter’s Tale. - -We have few good pastorals in the language. Our manners are not -Arcadian; our climate is not an eternal spring; our age is not the age -of gold. We have no pastoral-writers equal to Theocritus, nor any -landscapes like those of Claude Lorraine. The best parts of Spenser’s -Shepherd’s Calendar are two fables, Mother Hubberd’s Tale, and the Oak -and the Briar; which last is as splendid a piece of oratory as any to be -found in the records of the eloquence of the British senate! Browne, who -came after Spenser, and Withers, have left some pleasing allegorical -poems of this kind. Pope’s are as full of senseless finery and trite -affectation, as if a peer of the realm were to sit for his picture with -a crook and cocked hat on, smiling with an insipid air of no-meaning, -between nature and fashion. Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia is a lasting -monument of perverted power; where an image of extreme beauty, as that -of ‘the shepherd boy piping as though he should never be old,’ peeps out -once in a hundred folio pages, amidst heaps of intricate sophistry and -scholastic quaintness. It is not at all like Nicholas Poussin’s picture, -in which he represents some shepherds wandering out in a morning of the -spring, and coming to a tomb with this inscription—‘I also was an -Arcadian!’ Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, -Walton’s Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic -interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the -description of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of -the author’s mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius’s Piscatory -Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the -river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air: we walk with him along -the dusty road-side, or repose on the banks of the river under a shady -tree; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully -calls ‘the patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.’ We -accompany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but -delicious fare; while Maud, the pretty milk-maid, at her mother’s -desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow; ‘Come live with -me, and be my love.’ Good cheer is not neglected in this work, any more -than in Homer, or any other history that sets a proper value on the good -things of this life. The prints in the Complete Angler give an -additional reality and interest to the scenes it describes. While -Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy work, amiable and happy old -man, shall last!—It is in the notes to it that we find that character of -‘a fair and happy milkmaid,’ by Sir Thomas Overbury, which may vie in -beauty and feeling with Chaucer’s character of Griselda. - - ‘A fair and happy milk-maid is a country wench that is so far from - making herself beautiful by art, that one look of her’s is able to put - all face-physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a - dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her - excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her - without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is - far better than outsides of tissue; for though she be not arrayed in - the spoil of the silkworm, she is decked in innocency, a far better - wearing. She doth not, with lying long in bed, spoil both her - complexion and conditions. Nature hath taught her, too immoderate - sleep is rust to the soul: she rises therefore with chanticleer, her - dame’s cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. Her breath is her - own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made haycock. - She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity; and - when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings - a defiance to the giddy wheel of Fortune. She doth all things with so - sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being - her mind is to do well. She bestows her year’s wages at next fair; and - in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. - The garden and bee-hive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she - lives the longer for’t. She dares go alone, and unfold sheep in the - night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say - the truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old - songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have - their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle - cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste, that she dare tell - them; only a Friday’s dream is all her superstition; that she conceals - for fear of anger. Thus lives she; and all her care is she may die in - the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her - winding-sheet.’ - -The love of the country has been sung by poets, and echoed by -philosophers; but the first have not attempted, and the last have been -greatly puzzled to account for it. I do not know that any one has ever -explained, satisfactorily, the true source of this feeling, or of that -soothing emotion which the sight of the country, or a lively description -of rural objects hardly ever fails to infuse into the mind. Some have -ascribed this feeling to the natural beauty of the objects themselves; -others to the freedom from care, the silence and tranquillity which -scenes of retirement afford; others to the healthy and innocent -employments of a country life; others to the simplicity of country -manners, and others to a variety of different causes; but none to the -right one. All these, indeed, have their effect; but there is another -principal one which has not been touched upon, or only slightly glanced -at. I will not, however, imitate Mr. Horne Tooke, who after enumerating -seventeen different definitions of the verb, and laughing at them all as -deficient and nugatory, at the end of two quarto volumes does not tell -us what the verb really is, and has left posterity to pluck out ‘the -heart of his mystery.’ I will say at once what it is that distinguishes -this interest from others, and that is its _abstractedness_. The -interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, and confined to the -individual; the interest we feel in external nature is common, and -transferable from one object to all others of the same class. Thus. - -Rousseau in his Confessions relates, that when he took possession of his -room at Annecy, he found that he could see ‘a little spot of green’ from -his window, which endeared his situation the more to him, because, he -says, it was the first time he had had this object constantly before him -since he left Boissy, the place where he was at school when a child.[7] -Some such feeling as that here described will be found lurking at the -bottom of all our attachments of this sort. Were it not for the -recollections habitually associated with them, natural objects could not -interest the mind in the manner they do. No doubt, the sky is beautiful, -the clouds sail majestically along its bosom; the sun is cheering; there -is something exquisitely graceful in the manner in which a plant or tree -puts forth its branches; the motion with which they bend and tremble in -the evening breeze is soft and lovely; there is music in the babbling of -a brook; the view from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur; nor -can we behold the ocean with indifference. Or, as the Minstrel sweetly -sings, - - ‘Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store - Of charms which Nature to her votary yields! - The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, - The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields; - All that the genial ray of morning gilds, - And all that echoes to the song of even, - All that the mountain’s sheltering bosom shields, - And all the dread magnificence of heaven, - Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven!’ - -It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we admire -in Nature; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often found -connected with the strongest emotions; we become attached to the most -common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom we have long -known, and from whom we have received many benefits. It is because -natural objects have been associated with the sports of our childhood, -with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind -takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest interest -to whatever strikes its attention; with change of place, the pursuit of -new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends; it is because they have -surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in -pleasure and in pain; because they have been one chief source and -nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love them -as we do ourselves. - -There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of Nature -as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of ideas. But -this is not all. That which distinguishes this attachment from others is -the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to physical -objects; the associations connected with any one object extending to the -whole class. Our having been attached to any particular person does not -make us feel the same attachment to the next person we may chance to -meet; but, if we have once associated strong feelings of delight with -the objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes indissoluble, and we -shall ever after feel the same attachment to other objects of the same -sort. I remember when I was abroad, the trees, and grass, and wet -leaves, rustling in the walks of the Thuilleries, seemed to be as much -English, to be as much the same trees and grass, that I had always been -used to, as the sun shining over my head was the same sun which I saw in -England; the faces only were foreign to me. Whence comes this -difference? It arises from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea -of the individual with man, and only the idea of the class with natural -objects. In the one case, the external appearance or physical structure -is the least thing to be attended to; in the other, it is every thing. -The springs that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to -me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and -ideas, contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in -which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself, governed -by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can, therefore, make -no inference from one individual to another; nor can my habitual -sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond himself to -others. A crowd of people presents a disjointed, confused, and -unsatisfactory appearance to the eye, because there is nothing to -connect the motley assemblage into one continuous or general impression, -unless when there is some common object of interest to fix their -attention, as in the case of a full pit at the play-house. The same -principle will also account for that feeling of littleness, vacuity, and -perplexity, which a stranger feels on entering the streets of a populous -city. Every individual he meets is a blow to his personal identity. -Every new face is a teazing, unanswered riddle. He feels the same -wearisome sensation in walking from Oxford Street to Temple Bar, as a -person would do who should be compelled to read through the first leaf -of all the volumes in a library. But it is otherwise with respect to -nature. A flock of sheep is not a contemptible, but a beautiful sight. -The greatest number and variety of physical objects do not puzzle the -will, or distract the attention, but are massed together under one -uniform and harmonious feeling. The heart reposes in greater security on -the immensity of Nature’s works, ‘expatiates freely there,’ and finds -elbow room and breathing space. We are always at home with Nature. There -is neither hypocrisy, caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours. -Our intercourse with her is not liable to accident or change, suspicion -or disappointment: she smiles on us still the same. A rose is always -sweet, a lily is always beautiful: we do not hate the one, nor envy the -other. If we have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled -into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its foot, we are -sure that wherever we can find a shady stream, we can enjoy the same -pleasure again; so that when we imagine these objects, we can easily -form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, -Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence -the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the same kind being -the same, not only in their appearance, but in their practical uses, we -habitually confound them together under the same general idea; and -whatever fondness we may have conceived for one, is immediately placed -to the common account. The most opposite kinds and remote trains of -feeling gradually go to enrich the same sentiment; and in our love of -nature, there is all the force of individual attachment, combined with -the most airy abstraction. It is this circumstance which gives that -refinement, expansion, and wild interest, to feelings of this sort, when -strongly excited, which every one must have experienced who is a true -lover of nature. - -It is the same setting sun that we see and remember year after year, -through summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. The moon that shines -above our heads, or plays through the checquered shade, is the same moon -that we used to read of in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances. We see no -difference in the trees first covered with leaves in the spring. The dry -reeds rustling on the side of a stream—the woods swept by the loud -blast—the dark massy foliage of autumn—the grey trunks and naked -branches of the trees in winter—the sequestered copse, and wide-extended -heath—the glittering sunny showers, and December snows—are still the -same, or accompanied with the same thoughts and feelings: there is no -object, however trifling or rude, that does not in some mood or other -find its way into the heart, as a link in the chain of our living being; -and this it is that makes good that saying of the poet— - - ‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give - Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’ - -Thus nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it presents to -us an old acquaintance with unaltered looks; for there is that consent -and mutual harmony among all her works, one undivided spirit pervading -them throughout, that to him who has well acquainted himself with them, -they speak always the same well-known language, striking on the heart, -amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the world, like the music of -one’s native tongue heard in some far-off country. - - ‘My heart leaps up when I behold - A rainbow in the sky: - So was it when my life began, - So is it now I am a man, - So shall it be when I grow old and die. - The child’s the father of the man, - And I would have my years to be - Linked each to each by natural piety.’ - -The daisy that first strikes the child’s eye in trying to leap over his -own shadow, is the same flower that with timid upward glance implores -the grown man not to tread upon it. Rousseau, in one of his botanical -excursions, meeting with the periwinkle, fell upon his knees, crying -out—_Ah! voila de la pervenche!_ It was because he had thirty years -before brought home the same flower with him in one of his rambles with -Madame de Warens, near Chambery. It struck him as the same identical -little blue flower that he remembered so well; and thirty years of -sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his memory. That, or a -thousand other flowers of the same name, were the same to him, to the -heart, and to the eye; but there was but one Madame Warens in the world, -whose image was never absent from his thoughts; with whom flowers and -verdure sprung up beneath his feet, and without whom all was cold and -barren in nature and in his own breast. The cuckoo, ‘that wandering -voice,’ that comes and goes with the spring, mocks our ears with one -note from youth to age; and the lapwing, screaming round the traveller’s -path, repeats for ever the same sad story of Tereus and Philomel! - - - - - LECTURE VI - ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, &C. - - -I shall in the present Lecture go back to the age of Queen Anne, and -endeavour to give a cursory account of the most eminent of our poets, of -whom I have not already spoken, from that period to the present. - -The three principal poets among the wits of Queen Anne’s reign, next to -Pope, were Prior, Swift, and Gay. Parnell, though a good-natured, easy -man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself little more than -an occasional versifier; and Arbuthnot, who had as much wit as the best -of them, chose to shew it in prose, and not in verse. He had a very -notable share in the immortal History of John Bull, and the inimitable -and praise-worthy Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. There has been a great -deal said and written about the plagiarisms of Sterne; but the only real -plagiarism he has been guilty of (if such theft were a crime), is in -taking Tristram Shandy’s father from Martin’s, the elder Scriblerus. The -original idea of the character, that is, of the opinionated, captious -old gentleman, who is pedantic, not from profession, but choice, belongs -to Arbuthnot.—Arbuthnot’s style is distinguished from that of his -contemporaries, even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness. -He leaves out every superfluous word; is sparing of connecting -particles, and introductory phrases; uses always the simplest forms of -construction; and is more a master of the idiomatic peculiarities and -internal resources of the language than almost any other writer. There -is a research in the choice of a plain, as well as of an ornamented or -learned style; and, in fact, a great deal more. Among common English -words, there may be ten expressing the same thing with different degrees -of force and propriety, and only one of them the very word we want, -because it is the only one that answers exactly with the idea we have in -our minds. Each word in familiar use has a different set of associations -and shades of meaning attached to it, and distinguished from each other -by inveterate custom; and it is in having the whole of these at our -command, and in knowing which to choose, as they are called for by the -occasion, that the perfection of a pure conversational prose-style -consists. But in writing a florid and artificial style, neither the same -range of invention, nor the same quick sense of propriety—nothing but -learning is required. If you know the words, and their general meaning, -it is sufficient: it is impossible you should know the nicer inflections -of signification, depending on an endless variety of application, in -expressions borrowed from a foreign or dead language. They all impose -upon the ear alike, because they are not familiar to it; the only -distinction left is between the pompous and the plain; the -_sesquipedalia verba_ have this advantage, that they are all of one -length; and any words are equally fit for a learned style, so that we -have never heard them before. Themistocles thought that the same -sounding epithets could not suit all subjects, as the same dress does -not fit all persons. The style of our modern prose writers is very fine -in itself; but it wants variety of inflection and adaptation; it hinders -us from seeing the differences of the things it undertakes to describe. - -What I have here insisted on will be found to be the leading distinction -between the style of Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, and the other writers of -the age of Queen Anne, and the style of Dr. Johnson, which succeeded to -it. The one is English, and the other is not. The writers first -mentioned, in order to express their thoughts, looked about them for the -properest word to convey any idea, that the language which they spoke, -and which their countrymen understood, afforded: Dr. Johnson takes the -first English word that offers, and by translating it at a venture into -the first Greek or Latin word he can think of, only retaining the -English termination, produces an extraordinary effect upon the reader, -by much the same sort of mechanical process that Trim converted the old -jack-boots into a pair of new mortars. - -Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man, who liked to think and talk, better -than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often -by rote. His long compound Latin phrases required less thought, and took -up more room than others. What shews the facilities afforded by this -style of imposing generalization, is, that it was instantly adopted with -success by all those who were writers by profession, or who were not; -and that at present, we cannot see a lottery puff or a quack -advertisement pasted against a wall, that is not perfectly Johnsonian in -style. Formerly, the learned had the privilege of translating their -notions into Latin; and a great privilege it was, as it confined the -reputation and emoluments of learning to themselves. Dr. Johnson may be -said to have naturalised this privilege, by inventing a sort of jargon -translated half-way out of one language into the other, which raised the -Doctor’s reputation, and confounded all ranks in literature. - -In the short period above alluded to, authors professed to write as -other men spoke; every body now affects to speak as authors write; and -any one who retains the use of his mother tongue, either in writing or -conversation, is looked upon as a very illiterate character. - -Prior and Gay belong, in the characteristic excellences of their style, -to the same class of writers with Suckling, Rochester, and Sedley: the -former imbibed most of the licentious levity of the age of Charles II. -and carried it on beyond the Revolution under King William. Prior has -left no single work equal to Gay’s Fables, or the Beggar’s Opera. But in -his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has shown even more genius, more -playfulness, more mischievous gaiety. No one has exceeded him in the -laughing grace with which he glances at a subject that will not bear -examining, with which he gently hints at what cannot be directly -insisted on, with which he half conceals, and half draws aside the veil -from some of the Muses’ nicest mysteries. His Muse is, in fact, a giddy -wanton flirt, who spends her time in playing at snap-dragon and -blind-man’s buff, who tells what she should not, and knows more than she -tells. She laughs at the tricks she shews us, and blushes, or would be -thought to do so, at what she keeps concealed. Prior has translated -several of Fontaine’s Tales from the French; and they have lost nothing -in the translation, either of their wit or malice. I need not name them: -but the one I like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus’s -doves. No one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose -moral, with such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he -gained new self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and -confusion into which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to -seize on all the ticklish parts of his subject, from their involuntarily -shrinking under his grasp. Some of his imitations of Boileau’s servile -addresses to Louis XIV. which he has applied with a happy mixture of wit -and patriotic enthusiasm to King William, or as he familiarly calls him, -to - - ‘Little Will, the scourge of France, - No Godhead, but the first of men,’ - -are excellent, and shew the same talent for _double-entendre_ and the -same gallantry of spirit, whether in the softer lyric, or the more -lively heroic. Some of Prior’s _bon mots_ are the best that are -recorded.—His serious poetry, as his _Solomon_, is as heavy as his -familiar style was light and agreeable. His moral Muse is a Magdalen, -and should not have obtruded herself on public view. Henry and Emma is a -paraphrase of the old ballad of the Nut-brown Maid, and not so good as -the original. In short, as we often see in other cases, where men thwart -their own genius, Prior’s sentimental and romantic productions are mere -affectation, the result not of powerful impulse or real feeling, but of -a consciousness of his deficiencies, and a wish to supply their place by -labour and art. - -Gay was sometimes grosser than Prior, not systematically, but -inadvertently—from not being so well aware of what he was about; nor was -there the same necessity for caution, for his grossness is by no means -so seductive or inviting. - -Gay’s Fables are certainly a work of great merit, both as to the -quantity of invention implied, and as to the elegance and facility of -the execution. They are, however, spun out too long; the descriptions -and narrative are too diffuse and desultory; and the moral is sometimes -without point. They are more like Tales than Fables. The best are, -perhaps, the Hare with Many Friends, the Monkeys, and the Fox at the -Point of Death. His Pastorals are pleasing and poetical. But his capital -work is his Beggar’s Opera. It is indeed a masterpiece of wit and -genius, not to say of morality. In composing it, he chose a very -unpromising ground to work upon, and he has prided himself in adorning -it with all the graces, the precision, and brilliancy of style. It is a -vulgar error to call this a vulgar play. So far from it, that I do not -scruple to say that it appears to me one of the most refined productions -in the language. The elegance of the composition is in exact proportion -to the coarseness of the materials: by ‘happy alchemy of mind,’ the -author has extracted an essence of refinement from the dregs of human -life, and turns its very dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and -incidents are, in themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind: -but, by the sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of -highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has -converted this motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, -satirists and philosophers. He has also effected this transformation -without once violating probability, or ‘o’erstepping the modesty of -nature.’ In fact, Gay has turned the tables on the critics; and by the -assumed licence of the mock-heroic style, has enabled himself to _do -justice to nature_, that is, to give all the force, truth, and locality -of real feeling to the thoughts and expressions, without being called to -the bar of false taste and affected delicacy. The extreme beauty and -feeling of the song, ‘Woman is like the fair flower in its lustre,’ are -only equalled by its characteristic propriety and _naïveté_. _Polly_ -describes her lover going to the gallows, with the same touching -simplicity, and with all the natural fondness of a young girl in her -circumstances, who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing but the -misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the object of her -affections. ‘I see him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand; the -admiring crowd lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely -end:—even butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather than -consent to tie the fatal knot.’ The preservation of the character and -costume is complete. It has been said by a great authority—‘There is -some soul of goodness in things evil’:—and the _Beggar’s Opera_ is a -good-natured but instructive comment on this text. The poet has thrown -all the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all the intoxication of -pleasure, and the vanity of despair, round the short-lived existence of -his heroes; while _Peachum_ and _Lockitt_ are seen in the back-ground, -parcelling out their months and weeks between them. The general view -exhibited of human life is of the most subtle and abstracted kind. The -author has, with great felicity, brought out the good qualities and -interesting emotions almost inseparable from the lowest conditions; and -with the same penetrating glance, has detected the disguises which rank -and circumstances lend to exalted vice. Every line in this sterling -comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The -very wit, however, takes off from the offensiveness of the satire; and I -have seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying the -joke, laughing most immoderately at the compliments paid to them as not -much worse than pickpockets and cut-throats in a different line of life, -and pleased, as it were, to see themselves humanised by some sort of -fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said that the moral of the -piece _is to shew the vulgarity of vice_; or that the same violations of -integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in palliating their -want of principle, are common to the great and powerful, with the -meanest and most contemptible of the species. What can be more -convincing than the arguments used by these would-be politicians, to -shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they do not come up -to many of their betters? The exclamation of _Mrs. Peachum_, when her -daughter marries _Macheath_, ‘Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and -as much neglected, as if you had married a lord,’ is worth all Miss -Hannah More’s laboured invectives on the laxity of the manners of high -life! - -I shall conclude this account of Gay with his verses on Sir Richard -Blackmore, which may serve at once as a specimen of his own manner, and -as a character of a voluminous contemporary poet, who was admired by Mr. -Locke, and knighted by King William III. - - ‘See who ne’er was nor will be half-read, - Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred; - Praised great Eliza in God’s anger, - Till all true Englishmen cried, ‘Hang her!’— - Maul’d human wit in one thick satire; - Next in three books spoil’d human nature: - Undid Creation at a jerk, - And of Redemption made damn’d work. - Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her - Full in the middle of the Scripture. - What wonders there the man, grown old, did? - Sternhold himself he out Sternholded. - Made David seem so mad and freakish, - All thought him just what thought King Achish. - No mortal read his Solomon - But judg’d Re’boam his own son. - Moses he serv’d as Moses Pharaoh, - And Deborah as she Siserah; - Made Jeremy full sore to cry, - And Job himself curse God and die. - What punishment all this must follow? - Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo? - Shall David as Uriah slay him? - Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him? - No!—none of these! Heaven spare his life! - But send him, honest Job, thy wife!’ - -Gay’s Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, is as pleasant as walking -the streets must have been at the time when it was written. His ballad -of Black Eyed Susan is one of the most delightful that can be imagined; -nor do I see that it is a bit the worse for Mr. Jekyll’s parody on it. - -Swift’s reputation as a poet has been in a manner obscured by the -greater splendour, by the natural force and inventive genius of his -prose writings; but if he had never written either the Tale of a Tub or -Gulliver’s Travels, his name merely as a poet would have come down to -us, and have gone down to posterity with well-earned honours. His -Imitations of Horace, and still more his Verses on his own Death, place -him in the first rank of agreeable moralists in verse. There is not only -a dry humour, an exquisite tone of irony, in these productions of his -pen; but there is a touching, unpretending pathos, mixed up with the -most whimsical and eccentric strokes of pleasantry and satire. His -Description of the Morning in London, and of a City Shower, which were -first published in the Tatler, are among the most delightful of the -contents of that very delightful work. Swift shone as one of the most -sensible of the poets; he is also distinguished as one of the most -nonsensical of them. No man has written so many lack-a-daisical, -slip-shod, tedious, trifling, foolish, fantastical verses as he, which -are so little an imputation on the wisdom of the writer; and which, in -fact, only shew his readiness to oblige others, and to forget himself. -He has gone so far as to invent a new stanza of fourteen and sixteen -syllable lines for Mary the cookmaid to vent her budget of nothings, and -for Mrs. Harris to gossip with the deaf old housekeeper. Oh, when shall -we have such another Rector of Laracor!—The Tale of a Tub is one of the -most masterly compositions in the language, whether for thought, wit, or -style. It is so capital and undeniable a proof of the author’s talents, -that Dr. Johnson, who did not like Swift, would not allow that he wrote -it. It is hard that the same performance should stand in the way of a -man’s promotion to a bishopric, as wanting gravity, and at the same time -be denied to be his, as having too much wit. It is a pity the Doctor did -not find out some graver author, for whom he felt a critical kindness, -on whom to father this splendid but unacknowledged production. Dr. -Johnson could not deny that Gulliver’s Travels were his; he therefore -disputed their merits, and said that after the first idea of them was -conceived, they were easy to execute; all the rest followed -mechanically. I do not know how that may be; but the mechanism employed -is something very different from any that the author of Rasselas was in -the habit of bringing to bear on such occasions. There is nothing more -futile, as well as invidious, than this mode of criticising a work of -original genius. Its greatest merit is supposed to be in the invention; -and you say, very wisely, that it is not _in the execution_. You might -as well take away the merit of the invention of the telescope, by saying -that, after its uses were explained and understood, any ordinary -eyesight could look through it. Whether the excellence of Gulliver’s -Travels is in the conception or the execution, is of little consequence; -the power is somewhere, and it is a power that has moved the world. The -power is not that of big words and vaunting common places. Swift left -these to those who wanted them; and has done what his acuteness and -intensity of mind alone could enable any one to conceive or to perform. -His object was to strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air -which external circumstances throw around them; and for this purpose he -has cheated the imagination of the illusions which the prejudices of -sense and of the world put upon it, by reducing every thing to the -abstract predicament of size. He enlarges or diminishes the scale, as he -wishes to shew the insignificance or the grossness of our overweening -self-love. That he has done this with mathematical precision, with -complete presence of mind and perfect keeping, in a manner that comes -equally home to the understanding of the man and of the child, does not -take away from the merit of the work or the genius of the author. He has -taken a new view of human nature, such as a being of a higher sphere -might take of it; he has torn the scales from off his moral vision; he -has tried an experiment upon human life, and sifted its pretensions from -the alloy of circumstances; he has measured it with a rule, has weighed -it in a balance, and found it, for the most part, wanting and -worthless—in substance and in shew. Nothing solid, nothing valuable is -left in his system but virtue and wisdom. What a libel is this upon -mankind! What a convincing proof of misanthropy! What presumption and -what _malice prepense_, to shew men what they are, and to teach them -what they ought to be! What a mortifying stroke aimed at national glory, -is that unlucky incident of Gulliver’s wading across the channel and -carrying off the whole fleet of Blefuscu! After that, we have only to -consider which of the contending parties was in the right. What a shock -to personal vanity is given in the account of Gulliver’s nurse -Glumdalclitch! Still, notwithstanding the disparagement to her personal -charms, her good-nature remains the same amiable quality as before. I -cannot see the harm, the misanthropy, the immoral and degrading tendency -of this. The moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is -amusing. It is an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the -world; and nothing but imposture has a right to complain of it. It is, -indeed, the way with our quacks in morality to preach up the dignity of -human nature, to pamper pride and hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of -the virtues they pretend to, and which they have not: but it was not -Swift’s way to cant morality, or any thing else; nor did his genius -prompt him to write unmeaning panegyrics on mankind! - -I do not, therefore, agree with the estimate of Swift’s moral or -intellectual character, given by an eminent critic, who does not seem to -have forgotten the party politics of Swift. I do not carry my political -resentments so far back: I can at this time of day forgive Swift for -having been a Tory. I feel little disturbance (whatever I might think of -them) at his political sentiments, which died with him, considering how -much else he has left behind him of a more solid and imperishable -nature! If he had, indeed, (like some others) merely left behind him the -lasting infamy of a destroyer of his country, or the shining example of -an apostate from liberty, I might have thought the case altered. - -The determination with which Swift persisted in a preconcerted theory, -savoured of the morbid affection of which he died. There is nothing more -likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea -of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, -constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable. Swift was not a -Frenchman. In this respect he differed from Rabelais and Voltaire. They -have been accounted the three greatest wits in modern times; but their -wit was of a peculiar kind in each. They are little beholden to each -other; there is some resemblance between Lord Peter in the Tale of a -Tub, and Rabelais’ Friar John; but in general they are all three authors -of a substantive character in themselves. Swift’s wit (particularly in -his chief prose works) was serious, saturnine, and practical; Rabelais’ -was fantastical and joyous; Voltaire’s was light, sportive, and verbal. -Swift’s wit was the wit of sense; Rabelais’, the wit of nonsense; -Voltaire’s, of indifference to both. The ludicrous in Swift arises out -of his keen sense of impropriety, his soreness and impatience of the -least absurdity. He separates, with a severe and caustic air, truth from -falsehood, folly from wisdom, ‘shews vice her own image, scorn her own -feature’; and it is the force, the precision, and the honest abruptness -with which the separation is made, that excites our surprise, our -admiration, and laughter. He sets a mark of reprobation on that which -offends good sense and good manners, which cannot be mistaken, and which -holds it up to our ridicule and contempt ever after. His occasional -disposition to trifling (already noticed) was a relaxation from the -excessive earnestness of his mind. _Indignatio facit versus._ His better -genius was his spleen. It was the biting acrimony of his temper that -sharpened his other faculties. The truth of his perceptions produced the -pointed coruscations of his wit; his playful irony was the result of -inward bitterness of thought; his imagination was the product of the -literal, dry, incorrigible tenaciousness of his understanding. He -endeavoured to escape from the persecution of realities into the regions -of fancy, and invented his Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians, Yahoos, and -Houynhyms, as a diversion to the more painful knowledge of the world -around him: _they_ only made him laugh, while men and women made him -angry. His feverish impatience made him view the infirmities of that -great baby the world, with the same scrutinizing glance and jealous -irritability that a parent regards the failings of its offspring; but, -as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on this account been -supposed to have more affection for other people’s children than their -own. In other respects, and except from the sparkling effervescence of -his gall, Swift’s brain was as ‘dry as the remainder biscuit after a -voyage.’ He hated absurdity—Rabelais loved it, exaggerated it with -supreme satisfaction, luxuriated in its endless varieties, rioted in -nonsense, ‘reigned there and revelled.’ He dwelt on the absurd and -ludicrous for the pleasure they gave him, not for the pain. He lived -upon laughter, and died laughing. He indulged his vein, and took his -full swing of folly. He did not baulk his fancy or his readers. His wit -was to him ‘as riches fineless’; he saw no end of his wealth in that -way, and set no limits to his extravagance: he was communicative, -prodigal, boundless, and inexhaustible. His were the Saturnalia of wit, -the riches and the royalty, the health and long life. He is intoxicated -with gaiety, mad with folly. His animal spirits drown him in a flood of -mirth: his blood courses up and down his veins like wine. His thirst of -enjoyment is as great as his thirst of drink: his appetite for good -things of all sorts is unsatisfied, and there is a never-ending supply. -_Discourse is dry_; so they moisten their words in their cups, and -relish their dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats’ tongues. -It is like Camacho’s wedding in Don Quixote, where Sancho ladled out -whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-kettles at a pull. The flagons -are set a running, their tongues wag at the same time, and their mirth -flows as a river. How Friar John roars and lays about him in the -vineyard! How Panurge whines in the storm, and how dexterously he -contrives to throw the sheep overboard! How much Pantagruel behaves like -a wise king! How Gargantua mewls, and pules, and slabbers his nurse, and -demeans himself most like a royal infant! what provinces he devours! -what seas he drinks up! How he eats, drinks, and sleeps—sleeps, eats, -and drinks! The style of Rabelais is no less prodigious than his matter. -His words are of marrow, unctuous, dropping fatness. He was a mad wag, -the king of good fellows, and prince of practical philosophers! - -Rabelais was a Frenchman of the old school—Voltaire of the new. The wit -of the one arose from an exuberance of enjoyment—of the other, from an -excess of indifference, real or assumed. Voltaire had no enthusiasm for -one thing or another: he made light of every thing. In his hands all -things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver money in the -Arabian Nights were changed by the hands of the enchanter into little -dry crumbling leaves! He is a Parisian. He never exaggerates, is never -violent: he treats things with the most provoking _sang froid_; and -expresses his contempt by the most indirect hints, and in the fewest -words, as if he hardly thought them worth even his contempt. He retains -complete possession of himself and of his subject. He does not effect -his purpose by the eagerness of his blows, but by the delicacy of his -tact. The poisoned wound he inflicted was so fine, as scarcely to be -felt till it rankled and festered in its ‘mortal consequences.’ His -callousness was an excellent foil for the antagonists he had mostly to -deal with. He took knaves and fools on his shield well. He stole away -its cloak from grave imposture. If he reduced other things below their -true value, making them seem worthless and hollow, he did not degrade -the pretensions of tyranny and superstition below their true value, by -making them seem utterly worthless and hollow, as contemptible as they -were odious. This was the service he rendered to truth and mankind! His -_Candide_ is a masterpiece of wit. It has been called ‘the dull product -of a scoffer’s pen’; it is indeed the ‘product of a scoffer’s pen’; but -after reading the Excursion, few people will think it _dull_. It is in -the most perfect keeping, and without any appearance of effort. Every -sentence tells, and the whole reads like one sentence. There is -something sublime in Martin’s sceptical indifference to moral good and -evil. It is the repose of the grave. It is better to suffer this living -death, than a living martyrdom. ‘Nothing can touch him further.’ The -moral of Candide (such as it is) is the same as that of Rasselas: the -execution is different. Voltaire says, ‘A great book is a great evil.’ -Dr. Johnson would have laboured this short apophthegm into a voluminous -common-place. Voltaire’s traveller (in another work) being asked -‘whether he likes black or white mutton best,’ replies that ‘he is -indifferent, provided it is tender.’ Dr. Johnson did not get at a -conclusion by so short a way as this. If Voltaire’s licentiousness is -objected to me, I say, let it be placed to its true account, the manners -of the age and court in which he lived. The lords and ladies of the -bedchamber in the reign of Louis XV. found no fault with the immoral -tendency of his writings. Why then should our modern _purists_ quarrel -with them?—But to return. - -Young is a gloomy epigrammatist. He has abused great powers both of -thought and language. His moral reflections are sometimes excellent; but -he spoils their beauty by overloading them with a religious horror, and -at the same time giving them all the smart turns and quaint expression -of an enigma or repartee in verse. The well-known lines on -Procrastination are in his best manner: - - ‘Be wise to-day; ’tis madness to defer; - Next day the fatal precedent will plead; - Thus on, till wisdom is push’d out of life. - Procrastination is the thief of time; - Year after year it steals, till all are fled, - And to the mercies of a moment leaves - The vast concerns of an eternal scene. - - Of man’s miraculous mistakes, this bears - The palm, “That all men are about to live,” - For ever on the brink of being born. - All pay themselves the compliment to think - They, one day, shall not drivel; and their pride - On this reversion takes up ready praise; - At least, their own; their future selves applauds; - How excellent that life they ne’er will lead! - Time lodg’d in their own hands is Folly’s vails: - That lodg’d in Fate’s, to Wisdom they consign; - The thing they can’t but purpose, they postpone. - ’Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool; - And scarce in human Wisdom to do more. - All Promise is poor dilatory man, - And that through every stage. When young, indeed, - In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest, - Un-anxious for ourselves; and only wish, - As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. - At thirty man suspects himself a fool; - Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; - At fifty chides his infamous delay - Pushes his prudent purpose to Resolve; - In all the magnanimity of thought - Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same. - - And why? Because he thinks himself immortal. - All men think all men mortal, but themselves; - Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate - Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread; - But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, - Soon close; where past the shaft, no trace is found. - As from the wing no scar the sky retains; - The parted wave no furrow from the keel; - So dies in human hearts the thought of death. - Ev’n with the tender tear which nature sheds - O’er those we love, we drop it in their grave.’ - -His Universal Passion is a keen and powerful satire; but the effort -takes from the effect, and oppresses attention by perpetual and violent -demands upon it. His tragedy of the Revenge is monkish and scholastic. -Zanga is a vulgar caricature of Iago. The finest lines in it are the -burst of triumph at the end, when his revenge is completed: - - ‘Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep, - Let Afric on her hundred thrones rejoice,’ &c. - -Collins is a writer of a very different stamp, who had perhaps less -general power of mind than Young; but he had that true _vivida vis_, -that genuine inspiration, which alone can give birth to the highest -efforts of poetry. He leaves stings in the minds of his readers, certain -traces of thought and feelings which never wear out, because nature had -left them in his own mind. He is the only one of the minor poets of -whom, if he had lived, it cannot be said that he might not have done the -greatest things. The germ is there. He is sometimes affected, unmeaning, -and obscure; but he also catches rich glimpses of the bowers of -Paradise, and has lofty aspirations after the highest seats of the -Muses. With a great deal of tinsel and splendid patch-work, he has not -been able to hide the solid sterling ore of genius. In his best works -there is an attic simplicity, a pathos, and fervour of imagination, -which make us the more lament that the efforts of his mind were at first -depressed by neglect and pecuniary embarrassment, and at length buried -in the gloom of an unconquerable and fatal malady. How many poets have -gone through all the horrors of poverty and contempt, and ended their -days in moping melancholy or moody madness! - - ‘We poets in our youth begin in gladness, - But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.’ - -Is this the fault of themselves, of nature in tempering them of too fine -a clay, or of the world, that spurner of living, and patron of dead -merit? Read the account of Collins—with hopes frustrated, with faculties -blighted, at last, when it was too late for himself or others, receiving -the deceitful favours of relenting Fortune, which served only to throw -their sunshine on his decay, and to light him to an early grave. He was -found sitting with every spark of imagination extinguished, and with -only the faint traces of memory and reason left—with only one book in -his room, the Bible; ‘but that,’ he said, ‘was the best.’ A melancholy -damp hung like an unwholesome mildew upon his faculties—a canker had -consumed the flower of his life. He produced works of genius, and the -public regarded them with scorn: he aimed at excellence that should be -his own, and his friends treated his efforts as the wanderings of -fatuity. The proofs of his capacity are, his Ode on Evening, his Ode on -the Passions (particularly the fine personification of Hope), his Ode to -Fear, the Dirge in Cymbeline, the Lines on Thomson’s Grave, and his -Eclogues, parts of which are admirable. But perhaps his Ode on the -Poetical Character is the best of all. A rich distilled perfume emanates -from it like the breath of genius; a golden cloud envelopes it; a -honeyed paste of poetic diction encrusts it, like the candied coat of -the auricula. His Ode to Evening shews equal genius in the images and -versification. The sounds steal slowly over the ear, like the gradual -coming on of evening itself: - - ‘If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song - May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, - Like thy own solemn springs, - Thy springs and dying gales, - - O nymph reserv’d, while now the bright-haired sun - Sits on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts - With brede ethereal wove, - O’erhang his wavy bed: - - Now air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d bat, - With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, - Or where the beetle winds - His small but sullen horn, - - As oft he rises midst the twilight path, - Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum. - Now teach me, maid compos’d, - To breathe some soften’d strain, - - Whose numbers stealing through thy darkling vale - May not unseemly with its stillness suit, - As musing slow, I hail - Thy genial, lov’d return! - - For when thy folding star arising shews - His paly circlet, at his warning lamp - The fragrant Hours and Elves - Who slept in flow’rs the day, - - And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, - And sheds the fresh’ning dew, and lovelier still, - The pensive Pleasures sweet - Prepare thy shadowy car; - - Then lead, calm Votress, where some sheety lake - Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow’d pile, - Or upland fallows grey - Reflect its last cool gleam. - - But when chill blust’ring winds, or driving rain, - Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut, - That from the mountain’s side - Views wilds and swelling floods, - - And hamlets brown, and dim discover’d spires, - And hears their simple bell, and marks o’er all - Thy dewy fingers draw - The gradual dusky veil. - - While Spring shall pour his show’rs, as oft he wont, - And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! - While Summer loves to sport - Beneath thy lingering light; - - While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves; - Or Winter yelling through the troublous air, - Affrights thy shrinking train, - And rudely rends thy robes; - - So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed, - Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp’d Health, - Thy gentlest influence own, - And hymn thy favourite name.’ - -Hammond, whose poems are bound up with Collins’s, in Bell’s pocket -edition, was a young gentleman, who appears to have fallen in love about -the year 1740, and who translated Tibullus into English verse, to let -his mistress and the public know of it. - -I should conceive that Collins had a much greater poetical genius than -Gray: he had more of that fine madness which is inseparable from it, of -its turbid effervescence, of all that pushes it to the verge of agony or -rapture. Gray’s Pindaric Odes are, I believe, generally given up at -present: they are stately and pedantic, a kind of methodical borrowed -phrenzy. But I cannot so easily give up, nor will the world be in any -haste to part with his Elegy in a Country Church-yard: it is one of the -most classical productions that ever was penned by a refined and -thoughtful mind, moralising on human life. Mr. Coleridge (in his -Literary Life) says, that his friend Mr. Wordsworth had undertaken to -shew that the language of the Elegy is unintelligible: it has, however, -been understood! The Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is more -mechanical and common-place; but it touches on certain strings about the -heart, that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever -passes by Windsor’s ‘stately heights,’ or sees the distant spires of -Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves that we should -think of him; for he thought of others, and turned a trembling, -ever-watchful ear to ‘the still sad music of humanity.’—His Letters are -inimitably fine. If his poems are sometimes finical and pedantic, his -prose is quite free from affectation. He pours his thoughts out upon -paper as they arise in his mind; and they arise in his mind without -pretence, or constraint, from the pure impulse of learned leisure and -contemplative indolence. He is not here on stilts or in buckram; but -smiles in his easy chair, as he moralises through the loopholes of -retreat, on the bustle and raree-show of the world, or on ‘those -reverend bedlams, colleges and schools!’ He had nothing to do but to -read and to think, and to tell his friends what he read and thought. His -life was a luxurious, thoughtful dream. ‘Be mine,’ he says in one of his -Letters, ‘to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon.’ And -in another, to shew his contempt for action and the turmoils of -ambition, he says to some one, ‘Don’t you remember Lords —— and ——, who -are now great statesmen, little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my -part, I do not feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then.’ -What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young! What -a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life, -by being never any thing more than a looker-on! - -How different from Shenstone, who only wanted to be looked at: who -withdrew from the world to be followed by the crowd, and courted -popularity by affecting privacy! His Letters shew him to have lived in a -continual fever of petty vanity, and to have been a finished literary -coquet. He seems always to say, ‘You will find nothing in the world so -amiable as Nature and me: come, and admire us.’ His poems are -indifferent and tasteless, except his Pastoral Ballad, his Lines on -Jemmy Dawson, and his School-mistress, which last is a perfect piece of -writing. - -Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, but he was hardly a great -poet. He improved his Pleasures of the Imagination in the subsequent -editions, by pruning away a great many redundances of style and -ornament. Armstrong is better, though he has not chosen a very -exhilarating subject—The Art of Preserving Health. Churchill’s Satires -on the Scotch, and Characters of the Players, are as good as the -subjects deserved—they are strong, coarse, and full of an air of -hardened assurance. I ought not to pass over without mention Green’s -Poem on the Spleen, or Dyer’s Grongar Hill. - -The principal name of the period we are now come to is that of -Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher or fairer in the annals of -modern literature. One should have his own pen to describe him as he -ought to be described—amiable, various, and bland, with careless -inimitable grace touching on every kind of excellence—with manners -unstudied, but a gentle heart—performing miracles of skill from pure -happiness of nature, and whose greatest fault was ignorance of his own -worth. As a poet, he is the most flowing and elegant of our versifiers -since Pope, with traits of artless nature which Pope had not, and with a -peculiar felicity in his turns upon words, which he constantly repeated -with delightful effect: such as— - - ‘——His lot, though small, - He sees that little lot, the lot of all.’ - - · · · · · - - ‘And turn’d and look’d, and turn’d to look again.’ - -As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe. What -reader is there in the civilised world, who is not the better for the -story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished so -deliberately with the poker—for the knowledge of the guinea which the -Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets—the adventure of the -picture of the Vicar’s family, which could not be got into the house—and -that of the Flamborough family, all painted with oranges in their -hands—or for the story of the case of shagreen spectacles and the -cosmogony? - -As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers from Mr. -Liston’s face. That alone is praise enough for it. Poor Goldsmith! how -happy he has made others! how unhappy he was in himself! He never had -the pleasure of reading his own works! He had only the satisfaction of -good-naturedly relieving the necessities of others, and the consolation -of being harassed to death with his own! He is the most amusing and -interesting person, in one of the most amusing and interesting books in -the world, Boswell’s Life of Johnson. His peach-coloured coat shall -always bloom in Boswell’s writings, and his fame survive in his own!—His -genius was a mixture of originality and imitation: he could do nothing -without some model before him, and he could copy nothing that he did not -adorn with the graces of his own mind. Almost all the latter part of the -Vicar of Wakefield, and a great deal of the former, is taken from Joseph -Andrews; but the circumstances I have mentioned above are not. - -The finest things he has left behind him in verse are his character of a -country school-master, and that prophetic description of Burke in the -Retaliation. His moral Essays in the Citizen of the World, are as -agreeable chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of didactic -discourses. - -Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious with ease, learned without -affectation. He had a happiness which some have been prouder of than he, -who deserved it less—he was poet-laureat. - - ‘And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead, - That laurel garland crown’d his living head.’ - -But he bore his honours meekly, and performed his half-yearly task -regularly. I should not have mentioned him for this distinction alone -(the highest which a poet can receive from the state), but for another -circumstance; I mean his being the author of some of the finest sonnets -in the language—at least so they appear to me; and as this species of -composition has the necessary advantage of being short (though it is -also sometimes both ‘tedious and brief’), I will here repeat two or -three of them, as treating pleasing subjects in a pleasing and -philosophical way. - - _Written in a blank leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon_ - - ‘Deem not, devoid of elegance, the sage, - By Fancy’s genuine feelings unbeguil’d, - Of painful pedantry the poring child; - Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, - Now sunk by Time, and Henry’s fiercer rage. - Think’st thou the warbling Muses never smil’d - On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage - His thoughts, on themes unclassic falsely styl’d, - Intent. While cloister’d piety displays - Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores - New manners, and the pomp of elder days, - Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur’d stores. - Not rough nor barren are the winding ways - Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers.’ - - _Sonnet. Written at Stonehenge._ - - ‘Thou noblest monument of Albion’s isle, - Whether, by Merlin’s aid, from Scythia’s shore - To Amber’s fatal plain Pendragon bore, - Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile, - T’ entomb his Britons slain by Hengist’s guile: - Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore, - Taught mid thy massy maze their mystic lore: - Or Danish chiefs, enrich’d with savage spoil, - To victory’s idol vast, an unhewn shrine, - Rear’d the rude heap, or in thy hallow’d ground - Repose the kings of Brutus’ genuine line; - Or here those kings in solemn state were crown’d; - Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, - We muse on many an ancient tale renown’d.’ - -Nothing can be more admirable than the learning here displayed, or the -inference from it, that it is of no use but as it leads to interesting -thought and reflection. - -That written after seeing Wilton House is in the same style, but I -prefer concluding with that to the river Lodon, which has a personal as -well as poetical interest about it. - - ‘Ah! what a weary race my feet have run, - Since first I trod thy banks with alders crown’d, - And thought my way was all through fairy ground, - Beneath the azure sky and golden sun: - When first my Muse to lisp her notes begun! - While pensive memory traces back the round - Which fills the varied interval between; - Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene.— - Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure - No more return, to cheer my evening road! - Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure - Nor useless, all my vacant days have flow’d - From youth’s gay dawn to manhood’s prime mature, - Nor with the Muse’s laurel unbestow’d.’ - -I have thus gone through all the names of this period I could think of, -but I find that there are others still waiting behind that I had never -thought of. Here is a list of some of them—Pattison, Tickell, Hill, -Somerville, Browne, Pitt, Wilkie, Dodsley, Shaw, Smart, Langhorne, -Bruce, Greame, Glover, Lovibond, Penrose, Mickle, Jago, Scott, -Whitehead, Jenyns, Logan, Cotton, Cunningham, and Blacklock.—I think it -will be best to let them pass and say nothing about them. It will be -hard to persuade so many respectable persons that they are dull writers, -and if we give them any praise, they will send others. - -But here comes one whose claims cannot be so easily set aside: they have -been sanctioned by learning, hailed by genius, and hallowed by -misfortune—I mean Chatterton. Yet I must say what I think of him, and -that is not what is generally thought. I pass over the disputes between -the learned antiquaries, Dr. Mills, Herbert Croft, and Dr. Knox, whether -he was to be placed after Shakspeare and Dryden, or to come after -Shakspeare alone. A living poet has borne a better testimony to him— - - ‘I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, - The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; - And him[8] who walked in glory and in joy - Beside his plough along the mountain side.’ - -I am loth to put asunder whom so great an authority has joined together; -but I cannot find in Chatterton’s works any thing so extraordinary as -the age at which they were written. They have a facility, vigour, and -knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would -not have been so in a man of twenty. He did not shew extraordinary -powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. Nor do I believe he would -have written better, had he lived. He knew this himself, or he would -have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of -to kill themselves; for their mind to them also ‘a kingdom is.’ With an -unaccountable power coming over him at an unusual age, and with the -youthful confidence it inspired, he performed wonders, and was willing -to set a seal on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. He had done his -best; and, like another Empedocles, threw himself into Ætna, to ensure -immortality. The brazen slippers alone remain!— - - - - - LECTURE VII - ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS - - -I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture -respecting Chatterton, should have given dissatisfaction to some -persons, with whom I would willingly agree on all such matters. What I -meant was less to call in question Chatterton’s genius, than to object -to the common mode of estimating its magnitude by its prematureness. The -lists of fame are not filled with the dates of births or deaths; and the -side-mark of the age at which they were done, wears out in works -destined for immortality. Had Chatterton really done more, we should -have thought less of him, for our attention would then have been fixed -on the excellence of the works themselves, instead of the singularity of -the circumstances in which they were produced. But because he attained -to the full powers of manhood at an early age, I do not see that he -would have attained to more than those powers, had he lived to be a man. -He was a prodigy, because in him the ordinary march of nature was -violently precipitated; and it is therefore inferred, that he would have -continued to hold on his course, ‘unslacked of motion.’ On the contrary, -who knows but he might have lived to be poet-laureat? It is much better -to let him remain as he was. Of his actual productions, any one may -think as highly as he pleases; I would only guard against adding to the -account of his _quantum meruit_, those possible productions by which the -learned rhapodists of his time raised his gigantic pretensions to an -equality with those of Homer and Shakspeare. It is amusing to read some -of these exaggerated descriptions, each rising above the other in -extravagance. In Anderson’s Life, we find that Mr. Warton speaks of him -‘as a prodigy of genius,’ as ‘a singular instance of prematurity of -abilities’: that may be true enough, and Warton was at any rate a -competent judge; but Mr. Malone ‘believes him to have been the greatest -genius that England has produced since the days of Shakspeare.’ Dr. -Gregory says, ‘he must rank, as a universal genius, above Dryden, and -perhaps only second to Shakspeare.’ Mr. Herbert Croft is still more -unqualified in his praises; he asserts, that ‘no such being, at any -period of life, has ever been known, or possibly ever will be known.’ He -runs a parallel between Chatterton and Milton; and asserts, that ‘an -army of Macedonian and Swedish mad butchers fly before him,’ meaning, I -suppose, that Alexander the Great and Charles the Twelfth were nothing -to him; ‘nor,’ he adds, ‘does my memory supply me with any human being, -who at such an age, with such advantages, has produced such -compositions. Under the heathen mythology, superstition and admiration -would have explained all, by bringing Apollo on earth; nor would the God -ever have descended with more credit to himself.’—Chatterton’s -physiognomy would at least have enabled him to pass _incognito_. It is -quite different from the look of timid wonder and delight with which -Annibal Caracci has painted a young Apollo listening to the first sounds -he draws from a Pan’s pipe, under the tutelage of the old Silenus! If -Mr. Croft is sublime on the occasion, Dr. Knox is no less pathetic. ‘The -testimony of Dr. Knox,’ says Dr. Anderson, (Essays, p. 144), ‘does equal -credit to the classical taste and amiable benevolence of the writer, and -the genius and reputation of Chatterton.’ ‘When I read,’ says the -Doctor, ‘the researches of those learned antiquaries who have -endeavoured to prove that the poems attributed to Rowley were really -written by him, I observe many ingenious remarks in confirmation of -their opinion, which it would be tedious, if not difficult, to -controvert.’ - -Now this is so far from the mark, that the whole controversy might have -been settled by any one but the learned antiquaries themselves, who had -the smallest share of their learning, from this single circumstance, -that the poems read as smooth as any modern poems, if you read them as -modern compositions; and that you cannot read them, or make verse of -them at all, if you pronounce or accent the words as they were spoken at -the time when the poems were pretended to have been written. The whole -secret of the imposture, which nothing but a deal of learned dust, -raised by collecting and removing a great deal of learned rubbish, could -have prevented our laborious critics from seeing through, lies on the -face of it (to say nothing of the burlesque air which is scarcely -disguised throughout) in the repetition of a few obsolete words, and in -the mis-spelling of common ones. - -‘No sooner,’ proceeds the Doctor, ‘do I turn to the poems, than the -labour of the antiquaries appears only waste of time; and I am -involuntarily forced to join in placing that laurel, which he seems so -well to have deserved, on the brow of Chatterton. The poems bear so many -marks of superior genius, that they have deservedly excited the general -attention of polite scholars, and are considered as the most remarkable -productions in modern poetry. We have many instances of poetical -eminence at an early age; but neither Cowley, Milton, nor Pope, ever -produced any thing while they were boys, which can justly be compared to -the poems of Chatterton. The learned antiquaries do not indeed dispute -their excellence. They extol it in the highest terms of applause. They -raise their favourite Rowley to a rivalry with Homer: but they make the -very merits of the works an argument against their real author. Is it -possible, say they, that a boy should produce compositions so beautiful -and masterly? That a common boy should produce them is not possible,’ -rejoins the Doctor; ‘but that they should be produced by a boy of an -extraordinary genius, such as was that of Homer or Shakspeare, though a -prodigy, is such a one as by no means exceeds the bounds of rational -credibility.’ - -Now it does not appear that Shakspeare or Homer were such early -prodigies; so that by this reasoning he must take precedence of them -too, as well as of Milton, Cowley, and Pope. The reverend and classical -writer then breaks out into the following melancholy raptures:— - -‘Unfortunate boy! short and evil were thy days, but thy fame shall be -immortal. Hadst thou been known to the munificent patrons of genius.... - -‘Unfortunate boy! poorly wast thou accommodated during thy short -sojourning here among us;—rudely wast thou treated—sorely did thy -feelings suffer from the scorn of the unworthy; and there are at last -those who wish to rob thee of thy only meed, thy posthumous glory. -Severe too are the censures of thy morals. In the gloomy moments of -despondency, I fear thou hast uttered impious and blasphemous thoughts. -But let thy more rigid censors reflect, that thou wast literally and -strictly but a boy. Let many of thy bitterest enemies reflect what were -their own religious principles, and whether they had any at the age of -fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. Surely it is a severe and unjust surmise -that thou wouldst probably have ended thy life as a victim to the laws, -if thou hadst not ended it as thou didst.’ - -Enough, enough, of the learned antiquaries, and of the classical and -benevolent testimony of Dr. Knox. Chatterton was, indeed, badly enough -off; but he was at least saved from the pain and shame of reading this -woful lamentation over fallen genius, which circulates splendidly bound -in the fourteenth edition, while he is a prey to worms. As to those who -are really capable of admiring Chatterton’s genius, or of feeling an -interest in his fate, I would only say, that I never heard any one speak -of any one of his works as if it were an old well-known favourite, and -had become a faith and a religion in his mind. It is his name, his -youth, and what he might have lived to have done, that excite our wonder -and admiration. He has the same sort of posthumous fame that an actor of -the last age has—an abstracted reputation which is independent of any -thing we know of his works. The admirers of Collins never think of him -without recalling to their minds his Ode on Evening, or on the Poetical -Character. Gray’s Elegy, and his poetical popularity, are identified -together, and inseparable even in imagination. It is the same with -respect to Burns: when you speak of him as a poet, you mean his works, -his Tam o’ Shanter, or his Cotter’s Saturday Night. But the enthusiasts -for Chatterton, if you ask for the proofs of his extraordinary genius, -are obliged to turn to the volume, and perhaps find there what they -seek; but it is not in their minds; and it is of _that_ I spoke. - -The Minstrel’s song in Ælla is I think the best. - - ‘O! synge untoe my roundelaie, - O! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee, - Daunce ne moe atte hallie daie, - Lycke a rennynge ryver bee. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree. - - Black hys cryne as the wyntere nyght, - Whyte hys rode as the sommer snowe, - Rodde hys face as the mornynge lyghte, - Cale he lyes ynne the grave belowe. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree. - - Swote hys tongue as the throstles note, - Quycke ynne daunce as thought cann bee, - Defte his taboure, codgelle stote, - O! hee lys bie the wyllowe-tree. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree. - - Harke! the ravenne flappes hys wynge, - In the briered dell belowe; - Harke! the dethe-owle loude dothe synge, - To the nygthe-mares as theie goe. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gone to hys deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree. - - See! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie; - Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude; - Whyterre yanne the mornynge skie, - Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree, - - Heere, upon mie true loves grave, - Schalle the baren fleurs be layde, - Ne one hallie seyncte to save - Al the celness of a mayde. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gonne to his deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree. - - Wythe mie hondes I’ll dent the brieres - Rounde hys hallie corse to gre, - Ouphante fairies, lyghte your fyres, - Heere mie boddie stille schalle bee. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree. - - Comme, wythe acorne-coppe and thorne, - Drayne my hartys blodde awaie; - Lyfe and all yttes goode I scorne, - Daunce bie nete, or feaste by daie. - Mie love ys dedde, - Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, - Al under the wyllowe-tree. - - Water wytches, crownede wythe reytes, - Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde. - I die; I comme; mie true love waytes. - Thos the damselle spake, and dyed.’ - -To proceed to the more immediate subject of the present Lecture, the -character and writings of Burns.—Shakspeare says of some one, that ‘he -was like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.’ Burns, the poet, -was not such a man. He had a strong mind, and a strong body, the fellow -to it. He had a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his bosom—you -can almost hear it throb. Some one said, that if you had shaken hands -with him, his hand would have burnt yours. The Gods, indeed, ‘made him -poetical’; but nature had a hand in him first. His heart was in the -right place. He did not ‘create a soul under the ribs of death,’ by -tinkling siren sounds, or by piling up centos of poetic diction; but for -the artificial flowers of poetry, he plucked the mountain-daisy under -his feet; and a field-mouse, hurrying from its ruined dwelling, could -inspire him with the sentiments of terror and pity. He held the plough -or the pen with the same firm, manly grasp; nor did he cut out poetry as -we cut out watch-papers, with finical dexterity, nor from the same -flimsy materials. Burns was not like Shakspeare in the range of his -genius; but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness, and -unaffected character about him. He was not a sickly sentimentalist, a -namby-pamby poet, a mincing metre ballad-monger, any more than -Shakspeare. He would as soon hear ‘a brazen candlestick tuned, or a dry -wheel grate on the axletree.’ He was as much of a man—not a twentieth -part as much of a poet as Shakspeare. With but little of his imagination -or inventive power, he had the same life of mind: within the narrow -circle of personal feeling or domestic incidents, the pulse of his -poetry flows as healthily and vigorously. He had an eye to see; a heart -to feel:—no more. His pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of -quaint humour, are equal to any thing; they come up to nature, and they -cannot go beyond it. The sly jest collected in his laughing eye at the -sight of the grotesque and ludicrous in manners—the large tear rolled -down his manly cheek at the sight of another’s distress. He has made us -as well acquainted with himself as it is possible to be; has let out the -honest impulses of his native disposition, the unequal conflict of the -passions in his breast, with the same frankness and truth of -description. His strength is not greater than his weakness: his virtues -were greater than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius: his -vices to his situation, which did not correspond to his genius. - -It has been usual to attack Burns’s moral character, and the moral -tendency of his writings at the same time; and Mr. Wordsworth, in a -letter to Mr. Gray, Master of the High School at Edinburgh, in -attempting to defend, has only laid him open to a more serious and -unheard-of responsibility. Mr. Gray might very well have sent him back, -in return for his epistle, the answer of Holofernes in Love’s Labour’s -Lost:—‘_Via_ goodman Dull, thou hast spoken no word all this while.’ The -author of this performance, which is as weak in effect as it is pompous -in pretension, shews a great dislike of Robespierre, Buonaparte, and of -Mr. Jeffrey, whom he, by some unaccountable fatality, classes together -as the three most formidable enemies of the human race that have -appeared in his (Mr. Wordsworth’s) remembrance; but he betrays very -little liking to Burns. He is, indeed, anxious to get him out of the -unhallowed clutches of the Edinburgh Reviewers (as a mere matter of -poetical privilege), only to bring him before a graver and higher -tribunal, which is his own; and after repeating and insinuating -ponderous charges against him, shakes his head, and declines giving any -opinion in so tremendous a case; so that though the judgment of the -former critic is set aside, poor Burns remains just where he was, and -nobody gains any thing by the cause but Mr. Wordsworth, in an increasing -opinion of his own wisdom and purity. ‘Out upon this half-faced -fellowship!’ The author of the Lyrical Ballads has thus missed a fine -opportunity of doing Burns justice and himself honour. He might have -shewn himself a philosophical prose-writer, as well as a philosophical -poet. He might have offered as amiable and as gallant a defence of the -Muses, as my uncle Toby, in the honest simplicity of his heart, did of -the army. He might have said at once, instead of making a parcel of wry -faces over the matter, that Burns had written Tam o’ Shanter, and that -that alone was enough; that he could hardly have described the excesses -of mad, hairbrained, roaring mirth and convivial indulgence, which are -the soul of it, if he himself had not ‘drunk full ofter of the ton than -of the well’—unless ‘the act and practique part of life had been the -mistress of his theorique.’ Mr. Wordsworth might have quoted such lines -as— - - ‘The landlady and Tam grew gracious, - Wi’ favours secret, sweet, and precious’;— - -or, - - ‘Care, mad to see a man so happy, - E’en drown’d himself among the nappy’; - -and fairly confessed that he could not have written such lines from a -want of proper habits and previous sympathy; and that till some great -puritanical genius should arise to do these things equally well without -any knowledge of them, the world might forgive Burns the injuries he had -done his health and fortune in his poetical apprenticeship to -experience, for the pleasure he had afforded them. Instead of this, Mr. -Wordsworth hints, that with different personal habits and greater -strength of mind, Burns would have written differently, and almost as -well as _he_ does. He might have taken that line of Gay’s, - - ‘The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,’— - -and applied it in all its force and pathos to the poetical character. He -might have argued that poets are men of genius, and that a man of genius -is not a machine; that they live in a state of intellectual -intoxication, and that it is too much to expect them to be distinguished -by peculiar _sang froid_, circumspection, and sobriety. Poets are by -nature men of stronger imagination and keener sensibilities than others; -and it is a contradiction to suppose them at the same time governed only -by the cool, dry, calculating dictates of reason and foresight. Mr. -Wordsworth might have ascertained the boundaries that part the provinces -of reason and imagination:—that it is the business of the understanding -to exhibit things in their relative proportions and ultimate -consequences—of the imagination to insist on their immediate -impressions, and to indulge their strongest impulses; but it is the -poet’s office to pamper the imagination of his readers and his own with -the extremes of present ecstacy or agony, to snatch the swift-winged -golden minutes, the torturing hour, and to banish the dull, prosaic, -monotonous realities of life, both from his thoughts and from his -practice. Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn how it is that all men of -genius, or of originality and independence of mind, are liable to -practical errors, from the very confidence their superiority inspires, -which makes them fly in the face of custom and prejudice, always rashly, -sometimes unjustly; for, after all, custom and prejudice are not without -foundation in truth and reason, and no one individual is a match for the -world in power, very few in knowledge. The world may altogether be set -down as older and wiser than any single person in it. - -Again, our philosophical letter-writer might have enlarged on the -temptations to which Burns was exposed from his struggles with fortune -and the uncertainty of his fate. He might have shewn how a poet, not -born to wealth or title, was kept in a constant state of feverish -anxiety with respect to his fame and the means of a precarious -livelihood: that ‘from being chilled with poverty, steeped in contempt, -he had passed into the sunshine of fortune, and was lifted to the very -pinnacle of public favour’; yet even there could not count on the -continuance of success, but was, ‘like the giddy sailor on the mast, -ready with every blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the -deep!’ He might have traced his habit of ale-house tippling to the last -long precious draught of his favourite usquebaugh, which he took in the -prospect of bidding farewel for ever to his native land; and his -conjugal infidelities to his first disappointment in love, which would -not have happened to him, if he had been born to a small estate in land, -or bred up behind a counter! - -Lastly, Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn the incompatibility between the -Muses and the Excise, which never agreed well together, or met in one -seat, till they were unaccountably reconciled on Rydal Mount. He must -know (no man better) the distraction created by the opposite calls of -business and of fancy, the torment of extents, the plague of receipts -laid in order or mislaid, the disagreeableness of exacting penalties or -paying the forfeiture; and how all this (together with the broaching of -casks and the splashing of beer-barrels) must have preyed upon a mind -like Burns, with more than his natural sensibility and none of his -acquired firmness. - -Mr. Coleridge, alluding to this circumstance of the promotion of the -Scottish Bard to be ‘a gauger of ale-firkins,’ in a poetical epistle to -his friend Charles Lamb, calls upon him in a burst of heartfelt -indignation, to gather a wreath of henbane, nettles, and nightshade, - - ‘——To twine - The illustrious brow of Scotch nobility.’ - -If, indeed, Mr. Lamb had undertaken to write a letter in defence of -Burns, how different would it have been from this of Mr. Wordsworth’s! -How much better than I can even imagine it to have been done! - -It is hardly reasonable to look for a hearty or genuine defence of Burns -from the pen of Mr. Wordsworth; for there is no common link of sympathy -between them. Nothing can be more different or hostile than the spirit -of their poetry. Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry is the poetry of mere sentiment -and pensive contemplation: Burns’s is a very highly sublimated essence -of animal existence. With Burns, ‘self-love and social are the same’— - - ‘And we’ll tak a cup of kindness yet, - For auld lang syne.’ - -Mr. Wordsworth is ‘himself alone,’ a recluse philosopher, or a reluctant -spectator of the scenes of many-coloured life; moralising on them, not -describing, not entering into them. Robert Burns has exerted all the -vigour of his mind, all the happiness of his nature, in exalting the -pleasures of wine, of love, and good fellowship: but in Mr. Wordsworth -there is a total disunion and divorce of the faculties of the mind from -those of the body; the banns are forbid, or a separation is austerely -pronounced from bed and board—_a mensâ et thoro_. From the Lyrical -Ballads, it does not appear that men eat or drink, marry or are given in -marriage. If we lived by every sentiment that proceeded out of mouths, -and not by bread or wine, or if the species were continued like trees -(to borrow an expression from the great Sir Thomas Brown), Mr. -Wordsworth’s poetry would be just as good as ever. It is not so with -Burns: he is ‘famous for the keeping of it up,’ and in his verse is ever -fresh and gay. For this, it seems, he has fallen under the displeasure -of the Edinburgh Reviewers, and the still more formidable patronage of -Mr. Wordsworth’s pen. - - ‘This, this was the unkindest cut of all.’ - -I was going to give some extracts out of this composition in support of -what I have said, but I find them too tedious. Indeed (if I may be -allowed to speak my whole mind, under correction) Mr. Wordsworth could -not be in any way expected to tolerate or give a favourable -interpretation to Burns’s constitutional foibles—even his best virtues -are not good enough for him. He is repelled and driven back into -himself, not less by the worth than by the faults of others. His taste -is as exclusive and repugnant as his genius. It is because so few things -give him pleasure, that he gives pleasure to so few people. It is not -every one who can perceive the sublimity of a daisy, or the pathos to be -extracted from a withered thorn! - -To proceed from Burns’s patrons to his poetry, than which no two things -can be more different. His ‘Twa Dogs’ is a very spirited piece of -description, both as it respects the animal and human creation, and -conveys a very vivid idea of the manners both of high and low life. The -burlesque panegyric of the first dog, - - ‘His locked, lettered, braw brass collar - Shew’d him the gentleman and scholar’— - -reminds one of Launce’s account of his dog Crabbe, where he is said, as -an instance of his being in the way of promotion, ‘to have got among -three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke’s table.’ The -‘Halloween’ is the most striking and picturesque description of local -customs and scenery. The Brigs of Ayr, the Address to a Haggis, Scotch -Drink, and innumerable others are, however, full of the same kind of -characteristic and comic painting. But his master-piece in this way is -his Tam o’ Shanter. I shall give the beginning of it, but I am afraid I -shall hardly know when to leave off. - - ‘When chapman billies leave the street, - And drouthy neebors, neebors meet, - As market-days are wearing late, - And folk begin to tak the gate; - While we sit bousing at the nappy, - And getting fou and unco happy, - We think na on the lang Scots miles, - The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles, - That lie between us and our hame, - Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, - Gathering her brows like gathering storm, - Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. - - This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter, - As he frae Ayr ae night did canter; - (Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses, - For honest men and bonny lasses.) - - O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise, - As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice! - She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, - A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum; - That frae November till October - Ae market-day thou was na sober; - That ilka melder, wi’ the miller, - Thou sat as lang as thou had siller; - That ev’ry naig was ca’d a shoe on, - The smith and thee gat roaring fou on; - That at the Lord’s house, ev’n on Sunday, - Thou drank wi’ Kirton Jean till Monday— - She prophesy’d, that late or soon, - Thou wad be found deep drown’d in Doon; - Or catcht wi’ warlocks in the mirk, - By Alloway’s auld haunted kirk. - - Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet, - To think how mony counsels sweet, - How mony lengthen’d, sage advices, - The husband frae the wife despises! - - But to our tale: Ae market night, - Tam had got planted unco right - Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, - Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely; - And at his elbow, Souter Johnny, - His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony; - Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither; - They had been fou for weeks thegither. - The night drave on wi’ sangs an clatter, - And aye the ale was growing better: - The landlady and Tam grew gracious - Wi’ favours secret, sweet, and precious: - The Souter tauld his queerest stories; - The landlord’s laugh was ready chorus: - The storm without might rair and rustle, - Tam did na mind the storm a whistle. - - Care, mad to see a man sae happy, - E’en drown’d himsel amang the nappy; - As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure, - The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure: - Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, - O’er a’ the ills of life victorious! - - But pleasures are like poppies spread, - You seize the flow’r—its bloom is shed; - Or like the snow, falls in the river, - A moment white—then melts for ever; - Or like the Borealis race, - That flit ere you can point their place; - Or like the rainbow’s lovely form, - Evanishing amid the storm.— - Nae man can tether time or tide, - The hour approaches, Tam maun ride; - That hour o’ night’s black arch the key-stane, - That dreary hour he mounts his beast in, - And sic a night he taks the road in, - As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in. - - The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last; - The rattling showers rose on the blast, - The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d, - Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d: - That night a child might understand, - The Deil had business on his hand. - - Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg, - A better never lifted leg, - Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire, - Despising wind, and rain, and fire; - Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet; - Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet; - Whiles glowring round wi’ prudent cares, - Lest bogles catch him unawares; - Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, - Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.— - - By this time Tam was cross the ford, - Whare in the snaw, the chapman smoor’d; - And past the birks and meikle stane, - Whare drunken Charlie brak ‘s neck-bane; - And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn, - Where hunters fand the murder’d bairn; - And near the thorn, aboon the well, - Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel.— - Before him Doon pours all his floods; - The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods; - The lightnings flash from pole to pole; - Near and more near the thunders roll: - Whan, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees, - Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze; - Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing; - And loud resounded mirth and dancing. - - Inspiring bold John Barleycorn! - What dangers thou canst make us scorn! - Wi’ Tippenny, we fear nae evil, - Wi’ Usqueba, we’ll face the devil! - The swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle, - Fair play, he car’d na de’ils a boddle. - But Maggie stood right sair astonish’d, - Till by the heel and hand admonish’d, - She ventur’d forward on the light, - And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight! - Warlocks and witches in a dance, - Nae light cotillion new frae France, - But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, - Put life and mettle in their heels. - As winnock-bunker, in the east, - There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast; - A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large, - To gie them music was his charge; - He screw’d the pipes, and gart them skirl, - Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl— - Coffins stood round like open presses, - That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses; - And, by some devilish cantrip slight, - Each in its cauld hand held a light— - By which heroic Tam was able - To note upon the haly table, - A murderer’s banes in gibbet-airns; - Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen’d bairns; - A thief, new cutted frae a rape, - Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape; - Five tomahawks, wi’ bluid red rusted; - Five scimitars, wi’ murder crusted; - A garter, which a babe had strangled; - A knife, a father’s throat had mangled, - Whom his ain son o’ life bereft, - The grey hairs yet stack to the heft; - Wi’ mair, o’ horrible and awfu’, - Which e’en to name wad be unlawfu’. - - As Tammie glowr’d amaz’d, and curious, - The mirth and fun grew fast and furious: - The Piper loud and louder blew; - The dancers quick and quicker flew; - They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit, - Till ilka Carlin swat and reekit, - And coost her duddies to the wark, - And linket at it in her sark! - - Now Tam, O Tam! had they been queans - A’ plump and strapping in their teens; - Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flannen, - Been snaw-white seventeen hundred linen! - Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair, - That ance were plush, o’ guid blue hair, - I wad hae gi’en them aff my hurdies, - For ae blink o’ the bonnie burdies! - But wither’d beldams, auld and droll, - Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, - Louping and flinging on a crummock, - I wonder did na turn thy stomach. - - But Tam ken’d what was what fu’ brawly, - There was ae winsome wench and waly, - That night enlisted in the core, - (Lang after ken’d on Carrick shore; - For mony a beast to dead she shot, - And perish’d mony a bonnie boat, - And shook baith meikle corn and bear, - And kept the country-side in fear—) - Her cutty sark o’ Paisley harn, - That while a lassie she had worn, - In longitude tho’ sorely scanty, - It was her best, and she was vaunty.— - Ah! little ken’d thy reverend grannie, - That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, - Wi’ twa pund Scots (’twas a’ her riches), - Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches! - - But here my Muse her wing maun cour; - Sic flights are far beyond her power: - To sing how Nannie lap and flang, - (A souple jade she was, and strang) - And how Tam stood like ane bewitch’d, - And thought his very een enrich’d; - Ev’n Satan glowr’d and fidg’d fu’ fain, - And hotch’t, and blew wi’ might and main; - Till first ae caper, syne anither, - Tam tint his reason a’ thegither, - And roars out, ‘Weel done, Cutty Sark!’ - And in an instant all was dark; - And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, - When out the hellish legion sallied. - - As bees biz out wi’ angry fyke - When plundering herds assail their byke; - As open pussie’s mortal foes, - When, pop! she starts before their nose; - As eager rins the market-crowd, - When ‘Catch the thief!’ resounds aloud; - So Maggie rins—the witches follow, - Wi’ mony an eldritch skreech and hollow, - - Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou ‘ll get thy fairin’! - In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin’! - In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin’! - Kate soon will be a waefu’ woman! - Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, - And win the key-stane o’ the brig; - There, at them thou thy tail may toss, - A running stream they dare na cross; - But ere the key-stane she could make, - The fient a tail she had to shake! - For Nannie, far before the rest, - Hard upon noble Maggie prest, - And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle; - But little wist she Maggie’s mettle— - Ae spring brought off her master hale, - But left behind, her ain grey tail: - The Carlin claught her by the rump, - And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. - - Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read, - Ilk man and mother’s son tak heed: - Whane’er to drink you are inclin’d, - Or Cutty Sarks rin in your mind, - Think, ye may buy the joys owre dear; - Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare.’ - -Burns has given the extremes of licentious eccentricity and convivial -enjoyment, in the story of this scape-grace, and of patriarchal -simplicity and gravity in describing the old national character of the -Scottish peasantry. The Cotter’s Saturday Night is a noble and pathetic -picture of human manners, mingled with a fine religious awe. It comes -over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of music. The soul of the -poet aspires from this scene of low-thoughted care, and reposes, in -trembling hope, on ‘the bosom of its Father and its God.’ Hardly any -thing can be more touching than the following stanzas, for instance, -whether as they describe human interests, or breathe a lofty devotional -spirit. - - ‘The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes, - This night his weekly moil is at an end, - Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, - Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, - And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend. - - At length his lonely cot appears in view, - Beneath the shelter of an aged tree; - Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through - To meet their dad, wi’ flichterin noise and glee. - His wee-bit ingle, blinkin bonilie, - His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie’s smile, - The lisping infant, prattling on his knee, - Does a’ his weary carking cares beguile, - And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil. - - Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, - At service out, amang the farmers roun’, - Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin - A cannie errand to a neebor town; - Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, - In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e, - Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, - Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, - To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. - - Wi’ joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet, - An’ each for other’s welfare kindly spiers; - The social hours, swift-winged, unnotic’d fleet; - Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears: - The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; - Anticipation forward points the view; - The mither, wi’ her needle an’ her shears, - Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new; - The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due. - - · · · · · - - But, hark! a rap comes gently to the door; - Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same, - Tells how a neebor lad cam o’er the moor, - To do some errands, and convoy her hame. - The wily mother sees the conscious flame - Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek; - With heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name, - While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak; - Weel pleas’d the mother hears it’s nae wild, worthless rake. - - Wi’ kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben; - A strappan youth; he taks the mother’s eye; - Blithe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill ta’en; - The father craks of horses, pleughs, and kye. - The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy, - But blate an’ laithfu’, scarce can weel behave; - The mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy - What makes the youth sae bashfu’ an’ sae grave; - Weel-pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave. - - But now the supper crowns their simple board, - The halesome parritch, chief o’ Scotia’s food: - The soupe their only hawkie does afford, - That ‘yont the hallan snugly chows her cood: - The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, - To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck, fell, - An’ aft he’s prest, an’ aft he ca’s it guid; - The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, - How ’twas a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell. - - The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face, - They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; - The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace, - The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride: - His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside, - His lyart haffets wearing thin an’ bare; - Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, - He wales a portion wi’ judicious care; - And ‘Let us worship God!’ he says, with solemn air. - - They chant their artless notes in simple guise; - They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: - Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise, - Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name; - Or noble Elgin beets the heav’n-ward flame, - The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays: - Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame; - The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise; - Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.’— - -Burns’s poetical epistles to his friends are admirable, whether for the -touches of satire, the painting of character, or the sincerity of -friendship they display. Those to Captain Grose, and to Davie, a brother -poet, are among the best:—they are ‘the true pathos and sublime of human -life.’ His prose-letters are sometimes tinctured with affectation. They -seem written by a man who has been admired for his wit, and is expected -on all occasions to shine. Those in which he expresses his ideas of -natural beauty in reference to Alison’s Essay on Taste, and advocates -the keeping up the remembrances of old customs and seasons, are the most -powerfully written. His English serious odes and moral stanzas are, in -general, failures, such as the The Lament, Man was made to Mourn, &c. -nor do I much admire his ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.’ In this -strain of didactic or sentimental moralising, the lines to Glencairn are -the most happy, and impressive. His imitations of the old humorous -ballad style of Ferguson’s songs are no whit inferior to the admirable -originals, such as ‘John Anderson, my Joe,’ and many more. But of all -his productions, the pathetic and serious love-songs which he has left -behind him, in the manner of the old ballads, are perhaps those which -take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind. Such are the lines -to Mary Morison, and those entitled Jessy. - - ‘Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear— - Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear— - Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, - And soft as their parting tear—Jessy! - - Altho’ thou maun never be mine, - Altho’ even hope is denied; - ’Tis sweeter for thee despairing, - Than aught in the world beside—Jessy!’ - -The conclusion of the other is as follows. - - ‘Yestreen, when to the trembling string - The dance gaed through the lighted ha’, - To thee my fancy took its wing, - I sat, but neither heard nor saw. - Tho’ this was fair, and that was bra’, - And yon the toast of a’ the town, - I sighed and said among them a’, - Ye are na’ Mary Morison.’ - -That beginning, ‘Oh gin my love were a bonny red rose,’ is a piece of -rich and fantastic description. One would think that nothing could -surpass these in beauty of expression, and in true pathos: and nothing -does or can, but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves. There is in -them a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery—the -thistle’s glittering down, the gilliflower on the old garden-wall, the -horseman’s silver bells, the hawk on its perch—a closer intimacy with -nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which the -mind has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater -strength of affection, hopes longer cherished and longer deferred, sighs -that the heart dare hardly heave, and ‘thoughts that often lie too deep -for tears.’ We seem to feel that those who wrote and sung them (the -early minstrels) lived in the open air, wandering on from place to place -with restless feet and thoughts, and lending an ever-open ear to the -fearful accidents of war or love, floating on the breath of old -tradition or common fame, and moving the strings of their harp with -sounds that sank into a nation’s heart. How fine an illustration of this -is that passage in Don Quixote, where the knight and Sancho, going in -search of Dulcinea, inquire their way of the countryman, who was driving -his mules to plough before break of day, ‘singing the ancient ballad of -Roncesvalles.’ Sir Thomas Overbury describes his country girl as still -accompanied with fragments of old songs. One of the best and most -striking descriptions of the effects of this mixture of national poetry -and music is to be found in one of the letters of Archbishop Herring, -giving an account of a confirmation-tour in the mountains of Wales. - - ‘That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to - mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of - stone. I submitted to this, which they told me was but a taste of the - country, and to prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse - things did not come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our - own wallets; and though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful - solitude, and the best formed for the habitation of monks (who once - possessed it) in the world, yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty - of the thing gave me spirits, and the air gave me appetite much keener - than the knife I ate with. We had our music too; for there came in a - harper, who soon drew about us a group of figures that Hogarth would - have given any price for. The harper was in his true place and - attitude; a man and woman stood before him, singing to his instrument - wildly, but not disagreeably; a little dirty child was playing with - the bottom of the harp; a woman in a sick night-cap hanging over the - stairs; a boy with crutches fixed in a staring attention, and a girl - carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet, - interrupted in her business by the charms of the music; all ragged and - dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most - entertaining picture, and would please you or any man of observation; - and one reflection gave me a particular comfort, that the assembly - before us demonstrated, that even here, the influential sun warmed - poor mortals, and inspired them with love and music.’ - -I could wish that Mr. Wilkie had been recommended to take this group as -the subject of his admirable pencil; he has painted a picture of -Bathsheba, instead. - -In speaking of the old Scotch ballads, I need do no more than mention -the name of Auld Robin Gray. The effect of reading this old ballad is as -if all our hopes and fears hung upon the last fibre of the heart, and we -felt that giving way. What silence, what loneliness, what leisure for -grief and despair! - - ‘My father pressed me sair, - Though my mother did na’ speak; - But she looked in my face - Till my heart was like to break.’ - -The irksomeness of the situations, the sense of painful dependence, is -excessive; and yet the sentiment of deep-rooted, patient affection -triumphs over all, and is the only impression that remains. Lady Ann -Bothwell’s Lament is not, I think, quite equal to the lines beginning— - - ‘O waly, waly, up the bank, - And waly, waly, down the brae, - And waly, waly, yon burn side, - Where I and my love wont to gae. - I leant my back unto an aik, - I thought it was a trusty tree; - But first it bow’d, and syne it brak, - Sae my true-love’s forsaken me. - - O waly, waly, love is bonny, - A little time while it is new; - But when its auld, it waxeth cauld, - And fades awa’ like the morning dew. - When cockle-shells turn siller bells, - And muscles grow on every tree, - Whan frost and snaw sall warm us aw, - Then sall my love prove true to me. - - Now Arthur seat sall be my bed, - The sheets sall ne’er be fyld by me: - Saint Anton’s well sall be my drink, - Since my true-love’s forsaken me. - Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw, - And shake the green leaves aff the tree? - O gentle death, whan wilt thou cum, - And tak’ a life that wearies me! - - ’Tis not the frost that freezes sae, - Nor blawing snaw’s inclemencie, - ’Tis not sic cauld, that makes me cry, - But my love’s heart grown cauld to me. - Whan we came in by Glasgow town, - We were a comely sight to see, - My love was clad in black velvet, - And I myself in cramasie. - - But had I wist before I kist, - That love had been sae hard to win; - I’d lockt my heart in case of gowd, - And pinn’d it with a siller pin. - And oh! if my poor babe were born, - And set upon the nurse’s knee, - And I mysel in the cold grave! - Since my true-love’s forsaken me.’ - -The finest modern imitation of this style is the Braes of Yarrow; and -perhaps the finest subject for a story of the same kind in any modern -book, is that told in Turner’s History of England, of a Mahometan woman, -who having fallen in love with an English merchant, the father of Thomas -à Becket, followed him all the way to England, knowing only the word -London, and the name of her lover, Gilbert. - -But to have done with this, which is rather too serious a subject.—The -old English ballads are of a gayer and more lively turn. They are -adventurous and romantic; but they relate chiefly to good living and -good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes. Robin Hood is the chief -of these, and he still, in imagination, haunts Sherwood Forest. The -archers green glimmer under the waving branches; the print on the grass -remains where they have just finished their noon-tide meal under the -green-wood tree; and the echo of their bugle-horn and twanging bows -resounds through the tangled mazes of the forest, as the tall slim deer -glances startled by. - - ‘The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good; - The grass beneath them now is dimly green: - Are they deserted all? Is no young mien, - With loose-slung bugle, met within the wood? - - No arrow found—foil’d of its antler’d food— - Struck in the oak’s rude side?—Is there nought seen - To mark the revelries which there have been, - In the sweet days of merry Robin Hood? - - Go there with summer, and with evening—go - In the soft shadows, like some wand’ring man— - And thou shalt far amid the forest know - The archer-men in green, with belt and bow, - Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl and swan, - With Robin at their head, and Marian.’[9] - - - - - LECTURE VIII - ON THE LIVING POETS - - ‘No more of talk where God or Angel guest - With man, as with his friend, familiar us’d - To sit indulgent.’—— - - -Genius is the heir of fame; but the hard condition on which the bright -reversion must be earned is the loss of life. Fame is the recompense not -of the living, but of the dead. The temple of fame stands upon the -grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of -great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not begot till the breath -of genius is extinguished. For fame is not popularity, the shout of the -multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the soothing -flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is the spirit of a man -surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men, undying and -imperishable. It is the power which the intellect exercises over the -intellect, and the lasting homage which is paid to it, as such, -independently of time and circumstances, purified from partiality and -evil-speaking. Fame is the sound which the stream of high thoughts, -carried down to future ages, makes as it flows—deep, distant, murmuring -evermore like the waters of the mighty ocean. He who has ears truly -touched to this music, is in a manner deaf to the voice of -popularity.—The love of fame differs from mere vanity in this, that the -one is immediate and personal, the other ideal and abstracted. It is not -the direct and gross homage paid to himself, that the lover of true fame -seeks or is proud of; but the indirect and pure homage paid to the -eternal forms of truth and beauty as they are reflected in his mind, -that gives him confidence and hope. The love of nature is the first -thing in the mind of the true poet: the admiration of himself the last. -A man of genius cannot well be a coxcomb; for his mind is too full of -other things to be much occupied with his own person. He who is -conscious of great powers in himself, has also a high standard of -excellence with which to compare his efforts: he appeals also to a test -and judge of merit, which is the highest, but which is too remote, -grave, and impartial, to flatter his self-love extravagantly, or puff -him up with intolerable and vain conceit. This, indeed, is one test of -genius and of real greatness of mind, whether a man can wait patiently -and calmly for the award of posterity, satisfied with the unwearied -exercise of his faculties, retired within the sanctuary of his own -thoughts; or whether he is eager to forestal his own immortality, and -mortgage it for a newspaper puff. He who thinks much of himself, will be -in danger of being forgotten by the rest of the world: he who is always -trying to lay violent hands on reputation, will not secure the best and -most lasting. If the restless candidate for praise takes no pleasure, no -sincere and heartfelt delight in his works, but as they are admired and -applauded by others, what should others see in them to admire or -applaud? They cannot be expected to admire them because they are _his_; -but for the truth and nature contained in them, which must first be inly -felt and copied with severe delight, from the love of truth and nature, -before it can ever appear there. Was Raphael, think you, when he painted -his pictures of the Virgin and Child in all their inconceivable truth -and beauty of expression, thinking most of his subject or of himself? Do -you suppose that Titian, when he painted a landscape, was pluming -himself on being thought the finest colourist in the world, or making -himself so by looking at nature? Do you imagine that Shakspeare, when he -wrote Lear or Othello, was thinking of any thing but Lear and Othello? -Or that Mr. Kean, when he plays these characters, is thinking of the -audience?—No: he who would be great in the eyes of others, must first -learn to be nothing in his own. The love of fame, as it enters at times -into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is -the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest -authority—that of time. - -Those minds, then, which are the most entitled to expect it, can best -put up with the postponement of their claims to lasting fame. They can -afford to wait. They are not afraid that truth and nature will ever wear -out; will lose their gloss with novelty, or their effect with fashion. -If their works have the seeds of immortality in them, they will live; if -they have not, they care little about them as theirs. They do not -complain of the start which others have got of them in the race of -everlasting renown, or of the impossibility of attaining the honours -which time alone can give, during the term of their natural lives. They -know that no applause, however loud and violent, can anticipate or -over-rule the judgment of posterity; that the opinion of no one -individual, nor of any one generation, can have the weight, the -authority (to say nothing of the force of sympathy and prejudice), which -must belong to that of successive generations. The brightest living -reputation cannot be equally imposing to the imagination, with that -which is covered and rendered venerable with the hoar of innumerable -ages. No modern production can have the same atmosphere of sentiment -around it, as the remains of classical antiquity. But then our moderns -may console themselves with the reflection, that they will be old in -their turn, and will either be remembered with still increasing honours, -or quite forgotten! - -I would speak of the living poets as I have spoken of the dead (for I -think highly of many of them); but I cannot speak of them with the same -reverence, because I do not feel it; with the same confidence, because I -cannot have the same authority to sanction my opinion. I cannot be -absolutely certain that any body, twenty years hence, will think any -thing about any of them; but we may be pretty sure that Milton and -Shakspeare will be remembered twenty years hence. We are, therefore, not -without excuse if we husband our enthusiasm a little, and do not -prematurely lay out our whole stock in untried ventures, and what may -turn out to be false bottoms. I have myself out-lived one generation of -favourite poets, the Darwins, the Hayleys, the Sewards. Who reads them -now?—If, however, I have not the verdict of posterity to bear me out in -bestowing the most unqualified praises on their immediate successors, it -is also to be remembered, that neither does it warrant me in condemning -them. Indeed, it was not my wish to go into this ungrateful part of the -subject; but something of the sort is expected from me, and I must run -the gauntlet as well as I can. Another circumstance that adds to the -difficulty of doing justice to all parties is, that I happen to have had -a personal acquaintance with some of these jealous votaries of the -Muses; and that is not the likeliest way to imbibe a high opinion of the -rest. Poets do not praise one another in the language of hyperbole. I am -afraid, therefore, that I labour under a degree of prejudice against -some of the most popular poets of the day, from an early habit of -deference to the critical opinions of some of the least popular. I -cannot say that I ever learnt much about Shakspeare or Milton, Spenser -or Chaucer, from these professed guides; for I never heard them say much -about them. They were always talking of themselves and one another. Nor -am I certain that this sort of personal intercourse with living authors, -while it takes away all real relish or freedom of opinion with regard to -their contemporaries, greatly enhances our respect for themselves. Poets -are not ideal beings; but have their prose-sides, like the commonest of -the people. We often hear persons say, What they would have given to -have seen Shakspeare! For my part, I would give a great deal not to have -seen him; at least, if he was at all like any body else that I have ever -seen. But why should he; for his works are not! This is, doubtless, one -great advantage which the dead have over the living. It is always -fortunate for ourselves and others, when we are prevented from -exchanging admiration for knowledge. The splendid vision that in youth -haunts our idea of the poetical character, fades, upon acquaintance, -into the light of common day; as the azure tints that deck the -mountain’s brow are lost on a nearer approach to them. It is well, -according to the moral of one of the Lyrical Ballads,—‘To leave Yarrow -unvisited.’ But to leave this ‘face-making,’ and begin.— - -I am a great admirer of the female writers of the present day; they -appear to me like so many modern Muses. I could be in love with Mrs. -Inchbald, romantic with Mrs. Radcliffe, and sarcastic with Madame -D’Arblay: but they are novel-writers, and, like Audrey, may ‘thank the -Gods for not having made them poetical.’ Did any one here ever read Mrs. -Leicester’s School? If they have not, I wish they would; there will be -just time before the next three volumes of the Tales of My Landlord come -out. That is not a school of affectation, but of humanity. No one can -think too highly of the work, or highly enough of the author. - -The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with whose works I -became acquainted before those of any other author, male or female, when -I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her story-books for -children. I became acquainted with her poetical works long after in -Enfield’s Speaker; and remember being much divided in my opinion at that -time, between her Ode to Spring and Collins’s Ode to Evening. I wish I -could repay my childish debt of gratitude in terms of appropriate -praise. She is a very pretty poetess; and, to my fancy, strews the -flowers of poetry most agreeably round the borders of religious -controversy. She is a neat and pointed prose-writer. Her ‘Thoughts on -the Inconsistency of Human Expectations,’ is one of the most ingenious -and sensible essays in the language. There is the same idea in one of -Barrow’s Sermons. - -Mrs. Hannah More is another celebrated modern poetess, and I believe -still living. She has written a great deal which I have never read. - -Miss Baillie must make up this trio of female poets. Her tragedies and -comedies, one of each to illustrate each of the passions, separately -from the rest, are heresies in the dramatic art. She is a Unitarian in -poetry. With her the passions are, like the French republic, one and -indivisible: they are not so in nature, or in Shakspeare. Mr. Southey -has, I believe, somewhere expressed an opinion, that the Basil of Miss -Baillie is superior to Romeo and Juliet. I shall not stay to contradict -him. On the other hand, I prefer her De Montfort, which was condemned on -the stage, to some later tragedies, which have been more fortunate—to -the Remorse, Bertram, and lastly, Fazio. There is in the chief character -of that play a nerve, a continued unity of interest, a setness of -purpose and precision of outline which John Kemble alone was capable of -giving; and there is all the grace which women have in writing. In -saying that De Montfort was a character which just suited Mr. Kemble, I -mean to pay a compliment to both. He was not ‘a man of no mark or -likelihood’: and what he could be supposed to do particularly well, must -have a meaning in it. As to the other tragedies just mentioned, there is -no reason why any common actor should not ‘make mouths in them at the -invisible event,’—one as well as another. Having thus expressed my sense -of the merits of the authoress, I must add, that her comedy of the -Election, performed last summer at the Lyceum with indifferent success, -appears to me the perfection of baby-house theatricals. Every thing in -it has such a _do-me-good_ air, is so insipid and amiable. Virtue seems -such a pretty playing at make-believe, and vice is such a naughty word. -It is a theory of some French author, that little girls ought not to be -suffered to have dolls to play with, to call them _pretty dears_, to -admire their black eyes and cherry cheeks, to lament and bewail over -them if they fall down and hurt their faces, to praise them when they -are good, and scold them when they are naughty. It is a school of -affectation: Miss Baillie has profited of it. She treats her grown men -and women as little girls treat their dolls—makes moral puppets of them, -pulls the wires, and they talk virtue and act vice, according to their -cue and the title prefixed to each comedy or tragedy, not from any real -passions of their own, or love either of virtue or vice. - -The transition from these to Mr. Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory, is not -far: he is a very lady-like poet. He is an elegant, but feeble writer. -He wraps up obvious thoughts in a glittering cover of fine words; is -full of enigmas with no meaning to them; is studiously inverted, and -scrupulously far-fetched; and his verses are poetry, chiefly because no -particle, line, or syllable of them reads like prose. He differs from -Milton in this respect, who is accused of having inserted a number of -prosaic lines in Paradise Lost. This kind of poetry, which is a more -minute and inoffensive species of the Della Cruscan, is like the game of -asking what one’s thoughts are like. It is a tortuous, tottering, -wriggling, fidgetty translation of every thing from the vulgar tongue, -into all the tantalizing, teasing, tripping, lisping _mimminee-pimminee_ -of the highest brilliancy and fashion of poetical diction. You have -nothing like truth of nature or simplicity of expression. The fastidious -and languid reader is never shocked by meeting, from the rarest chance -in the world, with a single homely phrase or intelligible idea. You -cannot see the thought for the ambiguity of the language, the figure for -the finery, the picture for the varnish. The whole is refined, and -frittered away into an appearance of the most evanescent brilliancy and -tremulous imbecility.—There is no other fault to be found with the -Pleasures of Memory, than a want of taste and genius. The sentiments are -amiable, and the notes at the end highly interesting, particularly the -one relating to the Countess Pillar (as it is called) between Appleby -and Penrith, erected (as the inscription tells the thoughtful traveller) -by Anne Countess of Pembroke, in the year 1648, in memory of her last -parting with her good and pious mother in the same place in the year -1616. - - ‘To shew that power of love, how great - Beyond all human estimate.’ - -This story is also told in the poem, but with so many artful innuendos -and tinsel words, that it is hardly intelligible; and still less does it -reach the heart. - -Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope is of the same school, in which a painful -attention is paid to the expression in proportion as there is little to -express, and the decomposition of prose is substituted for the -composition of poetry. How much the sense and keeping in the ideas are -sacrificed to a jingle of words and epigrammatic turn of expression, may -be seen in such lines as the following:—one of the characters, an old -invalid, wishes to end his days under - - ‘Some hamlet shade, to yield his sickly form - Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm.’ - -Now the antithesis here totally fails: for it is the breeze, and not the -tree, or as it is quaintly expressed, _hamlet shade_, that affords -health, though it is the tree that affords shelter in or from the storm. -Instances of the same sort of _curiosa infelicitas_ are not rare in this -author. His verses on the Battle of Hohenlinden have considerable spirit -and animation. His Gertrude of Wyoming is his principal performance. It -is a kind of historical paraphrase of Mr. Wordsworth’s poem of Ruth. It -shews little power, or power enervated by extreme fastidiousness. It is - - ‘——Of outward show - Elaborate; of inward less exact.’ - -There are painters who trust more to the setting of their pictures than -to the truth of the likeness. Mr. Campbell always seems to me to be -thinking how his poetry will look when it comes to be hot-pressed on -superfine wove paper, to have a disproportionate eye to points and -commas, and dread of errors of the press. He is so afraid of doing -wrong, of making the smallest mistake, that he does little or nothing. -Lest he should wander irretrievably from the right path, he stands -still. He writes according to established etiquette. He offers the Muses -no violence. If he lights upon a good thought, he immediately drops it -for fear of spoiling a good thing. When he launches a sentiment that you -think will float him triumphantly for once to the bottom of the stanza, -he stops short at the end of the first or second line, and stands -shivering on the brink of beauty, afraid to trust himself to the -fathomless abyss. _Tutus nimium, timidusque procellarum._ His very -circumspection betrays him. The poet, as well as the woman, that -deliberates, is undone. He is much like a man whose heart fails him just -as he is going up in a balloon, and who breaks his neck by flinging -himself out of it when it is too late. Mr. Campbell too often maims and -mangles his ideas before they are full formed, to fit them to the -Procrustes’ bed of criticism; or strangles his intellectual offspring in -the birth, lest they should come to an untimely end in the Edinburgh -Review. He plays the hypercritic on himself, and starves his genius to -death from a needless apprehension of a plethora. No writer who thinks -habitually of the critics, either to tremble at their censures or set -them at defiance, can write well. It is the business of reviewers to -watch poets, not of poets to watch reviewers.—There is one admirable -simile in this poem, of the European child brought by the sooty Indian -in his hand, ‘like morning brought by night.’ The love-scenes in -Gertrude of Wyoming breathe a balmy voluptuousness of sentiment; but -they are generally broken off in the middle; they are like the scent of -a bank of violets, faint and rich, which the gale suddenly conveys in a -different direction. Mr. Campbell is careful of his own reputation, and -economical of the pleasures of his readers. He treats them as the fox in -the fable treated his guest the stork; or, to use his own expression, -his fine things are - - ‘Like angels’ visits, few, and far between.’[10] - -There is another fault in this poem, which is the mechanical structure -of the fable. The most striking events occur in the shape of antitheses. -The story is cut into the form of a parallelogram. There is the same -systematic alternation of good and evil, of violence and repose, that -there is of light and shade in a picture. The Indian, who is the chief -agent in the interest of the poem, vanishes and returns after long -intervals, like the periodical revolutions of the planets. He -unexpectedly appears just in the nick of time, after years of absence, -and without any known reason but the convenience of the author and the -astonishment of the reader; as if nature were a machine constructed on a -principle of complete contrast, to produce a theatrical effect. _Nec -Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus._ Mr. Campbell’s savage never -appears but upon great occasions, and then his punctuality is -preternatural and alarming. He is the most wonderful instance on record -of poetical _reliability_. The most dreadful mischiefs happen at the -most mortifying moments; and when your expectations are wound up to the -highest pitch, you are sure to have them knocked on the head by a -premeditated and remorseless stroke of the poet’s pen. This is done so -often for the convenience of the author, that in the end it ceases to be -for the satisfaction of the reader. - -Tom Moore is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heedless, gay, -and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, -and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. Moore’s Muse is -another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a -spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, -glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his -poetry, while over all love waves his purple light. His thoughts are as -restless, as many, and as bright as the insects that people the sun’s -beam. ‘So work the honey-bees,’ extracting liquid sweets from opening -buds; so the butterfly expands its wings to the idle air; so the -thistle’s silver down is wafted over summer seas. An airy voyager on -life’s stream, his mind inhales the fragrance of a thousand shores, and -drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. Wherever his footsteps -tend over the enamelled ground of fairy fiction— - - ‘Around him the bees in play flutter and cluster, - And gaudy butterflies frolic around.’ - -The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power. His -facility of production lessens the effect of, and hangs as a dead weight -upon, what he produces. His levity at last oppresses. The infinite -delight he takes in such an infinite number of things, creates -indifference in minds less susceptible of pleasure than his own. He -exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys; his -rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with which -he lends himself to every subject, the genial spirit with which he -indulges in every sentiment, prevents him from giving their full force -to the masses of things, from connecting them into a whole. He wants -intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not brood over the -great and permanent; it glances over the surfaces, the first impressions -of things, instead of grappling with the deep-rooted prejudices of the -mind, its inveterate habits, and that ‘perilous stuff that weighs upon -the heart.’ His pen, as it is rapid and fanciful, wants momentum and -passion. It requires the same principle to make us thoroughly like -poetry, that makes us like ourselves so well, the feeling of continued -identity. The impressions of Mr. Moore’s poetry are detached, desultory, -and physical. Its gorgeous colours brighten and fade like the rainbow’s. -Its sweetness evaporates like the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers! -His gay laughing style, which relates to the immediate pleasures of love -or wine, is better than his sentimental and romantic vein. His Irish -melodies are not free from affectation and a certain sickliness of -pretension. His serious descriptions are apt to run into flowery -tenderness. His pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or -crystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, and -glittering hardness of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of -the first quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best: it is -first-rate. His Twopenny Post-Bag is a perfect ‘nest of spicery’; where -the Cayenne is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet’s pen. -In this too, our bard resembles the bee—he has its honey and its sting. - -Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three thousand -guineas. His fame is worth more than that. He should have minded the -advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure, so much as an -evasion and a consequent disappointment of public expectation. He should -have left it to others to break conventions with nations, and faith with -the world. He should, at any rate, have kept his with the public. Lalla -Rookh is not what people wanted to see whether Mr. Moore could do; -namely, whether he could write a long epic poem. It is four short tales. -The interest, however, is often high-wrought and tragic, but the -execution still turns to the effeminate and voluptuous side. Fortitude -of mind is the first requisite of a tragic or epic writer. Happiness of -nature and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of the -bard of Erin. If he is not perfectly contented with what he is, all the -world beside is. He had no temptation to risk any thing in adding to the -love and admiration of his age, and more than one country. - - ‘Therefore to be possessed with double pomp, - To guard a title that was rich before, - To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, - To throw a perfume on the violet, - To smooth the ice, or add another hue - Unto the rainbow, or with taper light - To seek the beauteous eye of heav’n to garnish, - Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.’ - -The same might be said of Mr. Moore’s seeking to bind an epic crown, or -the shadow of one, round his other laurels. - -If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough personally, Lord Byron (judging -from the tone of his writings) might be thought to have suffered too -much to be a truly great poet. If Mr. Moore lays himself too open to all -the various impulses of things, the outward shews of earth and sky, to -every breath that blows, to every stray sentiment that crosses his -fancy; Lord Byron shuts himself up too much in the impenetrable gloom of -his own thoughts, and buries the natural light of things in ‘nook -monastic.’ The Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harold, are all the same -person, and they are apparently all himself. The everlasting repetition -of one subject, the same dark ground of fiction, with the darker colours -of the poet’s mind spread over it, the unceasing accumulation of horrors -on horror’s head, steels the mind against the sense of pain, as -inevitably as the unwearied Siren sounds and luxurious monotony of Mr. -Moore’s poetry make it inaccessible to pleasure. Lord Byron’s poetry is -as morbid as Mr. Moore’s is careless and dissipated. He has more depth -of passion, more force and impetuosity, but the passion is always of the -same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and -gloomy. It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or -the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, and -disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things. There is nothing -less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. There is -nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption of all the -interests of others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling passion -and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would make itself the -centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cherishing but its -intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer, eating into the heart of -poetry. But still there is power; and power rivets attention and forces -admiration. ‘He hath a demon:’ and that is the next thing to being full -of the God. His brow collects the scattered gloom: his eye flashes livid -fire that withers and consumes. But still we watch the progress of the -scathing bolt with interest, and mark the ruin it leaves behind with -awe. Within the contracted range of his imagination, he has great unity -and truth of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his -mind, the dark and glittering ocean, the frail bark hurrying before the -storm, pirates and men that ‘house on the wild sea with wild usages.’ He -gives the tumultuous eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of -thought. In vigour of style and force of conception, he in one sense -surpasses every writer of the present day. His indignant apothegms are -like oracles of misanthropy. He who wishes for ‘a curse to kill with,’ -may find it in Lord Byron’s writings. Yet he has beauty lurking -underneath his strength, tenderness sometimes joined with the phrenzy of -despair. A flash of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his -pencil, like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom -over charnel-houses and the grave! - -There is one subject on which Lord Byron is fond of writing, on which I -wish he would not write—Buonaparte. Not that I quarrel with his writing -for him, or against him, but with his writing both for him and against -him. What right has he to do this? Buonaparte’s character, be it what -else it may, does not change every hour according to his Lordship’s -varying humour. He is not a pipe for Fortune’s finger, or for his -Lordship’s Muse, to play what stop she pleases on. Why should Lord Byron -now laud him to the skies in the hour of his success, and then peevishly -wreak his disappointment on the God of his idolatry? The man he writes -of does not rise or fall with circumstances: but ‘looks on tempests and -is never shaken.’ Besides, he is a subject for history, and not for -poetry. - - ‘Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread, - But as the marigold at the sun’s eye, - And in themselves their pride lies buried; - For at a frown they in their glory die. - The painful warrior, famoused for fight, - After a thousand victories once foil’d, - Is from the book of honour razed quite, - And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.’ - -If Lord Byron will write any thing more on this hazardous theme, let him -take these lines of Shakspeare for his guide, and finish them in the -spirit of the original—they will then be worthy of the subject. - -Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, -and deservedly so. He describes that which is most easily and generally -understood with more vivacity and effect than any body else. He has no -excellences, either of a lofty or recondite kind, which lie beyond the -reach of the most ordinary capacity to find out; but he has all the good -qualities which all the world agree to understand. His style is clear, -flowing, and transparent: his sentiments, of which his style is an easy -and natural medium, are common to him with his readers. He has none of -Mr. Wordsworth’s _idiosyncracy_. He differs from his readers only in a -greater range of knowledge and facility of expression. His poetry -belongs to the class of _improvisatori_ poetry. It has neither depth, -height, nor breadth in it; neither uncommon strength, nor uncommon -refinement of thought, sentiment, or language. It has no originality. -But if this author has no research, no moving power in his own breast, -he relies with the greater safety and success on the force of his -subject. He selects a story such as is sure to please, full of -incidents, characters, peculiar manners, costume, and scenery; and he -tells it in a way that can offend no one. He never wearies or -disappoints you. He is communicative and garrulous; but he is not his -own hero. He never obtrudes himself on your notice to prevent your -seeing the subject. What passes in the poem, passes much as it would -have done in reality. The author has little or nothing to do with it. -Mr. Scott has great intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil -in placing external objects and events before the eye. The force of his -mind is picturesque, rather than _moral_. He gives more of the features -of nature than the soul of passion. He conveys the distinct outlines and -visible changes in outward objects, rather than ‘their mortal -consequences.’ He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to -Moore in delightful fancy, to Mr. Wordsworth in profound sentiment: but -he has more picturesque power than any of them; that is, he places the -objects themselves, about which _they_ might feel and think, in a much -more striking point of view, with greater variety of dress and attitude, -and with more local truth of colouring. His imagery is Gothic and -grotesque. The manners and actions have the interest and curiosity -belonging to a wild country and a distant period of time. Few -descriptions have a more complete reality, a more striking appearance of -life and motion, than that of the warriors in the Lady of the Lake, who -start up at the command of Rhoderic Dhu, from their concealment under -the fern, and disappear again in an instant. The Lay of the Last -Minstrel and Marmion are the first, and perhaps the best of his works. -The Goblin Page, in the first of these, is a very interesting and -inscrutable little personage. In reading these poems, I confess I am a -little disconcerted, in turning over the page, to find Mr. Westall’s -pictures, which always seem _fac-similes_ of the persons represented, -with ancient costume and a theatrical air. This may be a compliment to -Mr. Westall, but it is not one to Walter Scott. The truth is, there is a -modern air in the midst of the antiquarian research of Mr. Scott’s -poetry. It is history or tradition in masquerade. Not only the crust of -old words and images is worn off with time,—the substance is grown -comparatively light and worthless. The forms are old and uncouth; but -the spirit is effeminate and frivolous. This is a deduction from the -praise I have given to his pencil for extreme fidelity, though it has -been no obstacle to its drawing-room success. He has just hit the town -between the romantic and the fashionable; and between the two, secured -all classes of readers on his side. In a word, I conceive that he is to -the great poet, what an excellent mimic is to a great actor. There is no -determinate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry. It has no -results. The reader rises up from the perusal with new images and -associations, but he remains the same man that he was before. A great -mind is one that moulds the minds of others. Mr. Scott has put the -Border Minstrelsy and scattered traditions of the country into easy, -animated verse. But the Notes to his poems are just as entertaining as -the poems themselves, and his poems are only entertaining. - -Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. He is the reverse -of Walter Scott in his defects and excellences. He has nearly all that -the other wants, and wants all that the other possesses. His poetry is -not external, but internal; it does not depend upon tradition, or story, -or old song; he furnishes it from his own mind, and is his own subject. -He is the poet of mere sentiment. Of many of the Lyrical Ballads, it is -not possible to speak in terms of too high praise, such as Hart-leap -Well, the Banks of the Wye, Poor Susan, parts of the Leech-gatherer, the -lines to a Cuckoo, to a Daisy, the Complaint, several of the Sonnets, -and a hundred others of inconceivable beauty, of perfect originality and -pathos. They open a finer and deeper vein of thought and feeling than -any poet in modern times has done, or attempted. He has produced a -deeper impression, and on a smaller circle, than any other of his -contemporaries. His powers have been mistaken by the age, nor does he -exactly understand them himself. He cannot form a whole. He has not the -constructive faculty. He can give only the fine tones of thought, drawn -from his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds drawn from the -Æolian harp by the wandering gale.—He is totally deficient in all the -machinery of poetry. His _Excursion_, taken as a whole, notwithstanding -the noble materials thrown away in it, is a proof of this. The line -labours, the sentiment moves slow, but the poem stands stock-still. The -reader makes no way from the first line to the last. It is more than any -thing in the world like Robinson Crusoe’s boat, which would have been an -excellent good boat, and would have carried him to the other side of the -globe, but that he could not get it out of the sand where it stuck fast. -I did what little I could to help to launch it at the time, but it would -not do. I am not, however, one of those who laugh at the attempts or -failures of men of genius. It is not my way to cry ‘Long life to the -conqueror.’ Success and desert are not with me synonymous terms; and the -less Mr. Wordsworth’s general merits have been understood, the more -necessary is it to insist upon them. This is not the place to repeat -what I have already said on the subject. The reader may turn to it in -the Round Table. I do not think, however, there is any thing in the -larger poem equal to many of the detached pieces in the Lyrical Ballads. -As Mr. Wordsworth’s poems have been little known to the public, or -chiefly through garbled extracts from them, I will here give an entire -poem (one that has always been a favourite with me), that the reader may -know what it is that the admirers of this author find to be delighted -with in his poetry. Those who do not feel the beauty and the force of -it, may save themselves the trouble of inquiring farther. - - HART-LEAP WELL - - ‘The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor - With the slow motion of a summer’s cloud; - He turned aside towards a vassal’s door, - And, “Bring another horse!” he cried aloud. - - “Another horse!”—That shout the vassal heard, - And saddled his best steed, a comely gray; - Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third - Which he had mounted on that glorious day. - - Joy sparkled in the prancing courser’s eyes: - The horse and horseman are a happy pair; - But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies, - There is a doleful silence in the air. - - A rout this morning left Sir Walter’s hall, - That as they galloped made the echoes roar; - But horse and man are vanished, one and all; - Such race, I think, was never seen before. - - Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind, - Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain: - Brach, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind, - Follow, and up the weary mountain strain. - - The knight hallooed, he chid and cheered them on - With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern; - But breath and eye-sight fail; and, one by one, - The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern. - - Where is the throng, the tumult of the race? - The bugles that so joyfully were blown? - —This chase it looks not like an earthly chase; - Sir Walter and the hart are left alone. - - The poor hart toils along the mountain side; - I will not stop to tell how far he fled, - Nor will I mention by what death he died; - But now the knight beholds him lying dead. - - Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn; - He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy: - He neither smacked his whip, nor blew his horn, - But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy. - - Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned, - Stood his dumb partner in this glorious act; - Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned; - And foaming like a mountain cataract. - - Upon his side the hart was lying stretched: - His nose half-touched a spring beneath a hill, - And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched - The waters of the spring were trembling still. - - And now, too happy for repose or rest, - (Was never man in such a joyful case!) - Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west, - And gazed, and gazed upon that darling place. - - And climbing up the hill—(it was at least - Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found, - Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast - Had left imprinted on the verdant ground. - - Sir Walter wiped his face and cried, “Till now - Such sight was never seen by living eyes: - Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow, - Down to the very fountain where he lies. - - I’ll build a pleasure-house upon this spot, - And a small arbour, made for rural joy; - ‘Twill be the traveller’s shed, the pilgrim’s cot, - A place of love for damsels that are coy. - - A cunning artist will I have to frame - A bason for that fountain in the dell; - And they, who do make mention of the same - From this day forth, shall call it HART-LEAP WELL. - - And, gallant brute! to make thy praises known, - Another monument shall here be raised; - Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone, - And planted where thy hoofs the turf have grazed. - - And, in the summer-time when days are long, - I will come hither with my paramour; - And with the dancers, and the minstrel’s song, - We will make merry in that pleasant bower. - - Till the foundations of the mountains fail, - My mansion with its arbour shall endure;— - The joy of them who till the fields of Swale, - And them who dwell among the woods of Ure!” - - Then home he went, and left the hart, stone-dead, - With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring. - —Soon did the knight perform what he had said, - And far and wide the fame thereof did ring. - - Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered, - A cup of stone received the living well; - Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared, - And built a house of pleasure in the dell. - - And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall - With trailing plants and trees were intertwined,— - Which soon composed a little sylvan hall, - A leafy shelter from the sun and wind. - - And thither, when the summer-days were long, - Sir Walter journeyed with his paramour; - And with the dancers and the minstrel’s song - Made merriment within that pleasant bower. - - The knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time, - And his bones lie in his paternal vale.— - But there is matter for a second rhyme, - And I to this would add another tale.’ - - - PART SECOND - - ‘The moving accident is not my trade: - To freeze the blood I have no ready arts: - ’Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, - To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts. - - As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair, - It chanced that I saw standing in a dell - Three aspens at three corners of a square, - And one, not four yards distant, near a well. - - What this imported I could ill divine: - And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop, - I saw three pillars standing in a line, - The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top. - - The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head; - Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green; - So that you just might say, as then I said, - “Here in old time the hand of man hath been.” - - I looked upon the hill both far and near, - More doleful place did never eye survey; - It seemed as if the spring-time came not here, - And Nature here were willing to decay. - - I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost, - When one, who was in shepherd’s garb attired, - Came up the hollow:—Him did I accost, - And what this place might be I then inquired. - - The shepherd stopped, and that same story told - Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed. - “A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old! - But something ails it now; the spot is curst. - - You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood— - Some say that they are beeches, others elms— - These were the bower; and here a mansion stood, - The finest palace of a hundred realms! - - The arbour does its own condition tell; - You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream; - But as to the great lodge! you might as well - Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. - - There’s neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep, - Will wet his lips within that cup of stone; - And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep, - This water doth send forth a dolorous groan. - - Some say that here a murder has been done, - And blood cries out for blood: but, for my part, - I’ve guessed, when I’ve been sitting in the sun, - That it was all for that unhappy hart. - - What thoughts must through the creature’s brain have passed! - Even from the top-most stone, upon the steep, - Are but three bounds—and look, Sir, at this last— - —O Master! it has been a cruel leap. - - For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race; - And in my simple mind we cannot tell - What cause the hart might have to love this place, - And come and make his death-bed near the well. - - Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank, - Lulled by this fountain in the summer-tide; - This water was perhaps the first he drank - When he had wandered from his mother’s side. - - In April here beneath the scented thorn - He heard the birds their morning carols sing; - And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born - Not half a furlong from that self-same spring. - - But now here’s neither grass nor pleasant shade; - The sun on drearier hollow never shone; - So will it be, as I have often said, - Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.’ - - ‘Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; - Small difference lies between thy creed and mine: - This beast not unobserved by Nature fell; - His death was mourned by sympathy divine. - - The Being, that is in the clouds and air, - That is in the green leaves among the groves, - Maintains a deep, and reverential care - For the unoffending creatures whom he loves. - - The pleasure-house is dust:—behind, before, - This is no common waste, no common gloom; - But Nature, in due course of time, once more - Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. - - She leaves these objects to a slow decay, - That what we are, and have been, may be known; - But at the coming of the milder day, - These monuments shall all be overgrown. - - One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, - Taught both by what she shews, and what conceals, - Never to blend our pleasure or our pride - With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.’ - -Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that which has been denominated the -Lake school of poetry; a school which, with all my respect for it, I do -not think sacred from criticism or exempt from faults, of some of which -faults I shall speak with becoming frankness; for I do not see that the -liberty of the press ought to be shackled, or freedom of speech -curtailed, to screen either its revolutionary or renegado extravagances. -This school of poetry had its origin in the French revolution, or rather -in those sentiments and opinions which produced that revolution; and -which sentiments and opinions were indirectly imported into this country -in translations from the German about that period. Our poetical -literature had, towards the close of the last century, degenerated into -the most trite, insipid, and mechanical of all things, in the hands of -the followers of Pope and the old French school of poetry. It wanted -something to stir it up, and it found that something in the principles -and events of the French revolution. From the impulse it thus received, -it rose at once from the most servile imitation and tamest common-place, -to the utmost pitch of singularity and paradox. The change in the -belles-lettres was as complete, and to many persons as startling, as the -change in politics, with which it went hand in hand. There was a mighty -ferment in the heads of statesmen and poets, kings and people. According -to the prevailing notions, all was to be natural and new. Nothing that -was established was to be tolerated. All the common-place figures of -poetry, tropes, allegories, personifications, with the whole heathen -mythology, were instantly discarded; a classical allusion was considered -as a piece of antiquated foppery; capital letters were no more allowed -in print, than letters-patent of nobility were permitted in real life; -kings and queens were dethroned from their rank and station in -legitimate tragedy or epic poetry, as they were decapitated elsewhere; -rhyme was looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular metre -was abolished along with regular government. Authority and fashion, -elegance or arrangement, were hooted out of countenance, as pedantry and -prejudice. Every one did that which was good in his own eyes. The object -was to reduce all things to an absolute level; and a singularly affected -and outrageous simplicity prevailed in dress and manners, in style and -sentiment. A striking effect produced where it was least expected, -something new and original, no matter whether good, bad, or indifferent, -whether mean or lofty, extravagant or childish, was all that was aimed -at, or considered as compatible with sound philosophy and an age of -reason. The licentiousness grew extreme: Coryate’s Crudities were -nothing to it. The world was to be turned topsy-turvy; and poetry, by -the good will of our Adam-wits, was to share its fate and begin _de -novo_. It was a time of promise, a renewal of the world and of letters; -and the Deucalions, who were to perform this feat of regeneration, were -the present poet-laureat and the two authors of the Lyrical Ballads. The -Germans, who made heroes of robbers, and honest women of cast-off -mistresses, had already exhausted the extravagant and marvellous in -sentiment and situation: our native writers adopted a wonderful -simplicity of style and matter. The paradox they set out with was, that -all things are by nature equally fit subjects for poetry; or that if -there is any preference to be given, those that are the meanest and most -unpromising are the best, as they leave the greatest scope for the -unbounded stores of thought and fancy in the writer’s own mind. Poetry -had with them ‘neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its -pendant bed and procreant cradle.’ It was not ‘born so high: its aiery -buildeth in the cedar’s top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns the -sun.’ It grew like a mushroom out of the ground; or was hidden in it -like a truffle, which it required a particular sagacity and industry to -find out and dig up. They founded the new school on a principle of sheer -humanity, on pure nature void of art. It could not be said of these -sweeping reformers and dictators in the republic of letters, that ‘in -their train walked crowns and crownets; that realms and islands, like -plates, dropt from their pockets’: but they were surrounded, in company -with the Muses, by a mixed rabble of idle apprentices and Botany Bay -convicts, female vagrants, gipsies, meek daughters in the family of -Christ, of ideot boys and mad mothers, and after them ‘owls and -night-ravens flew.’ They scorned ‘degrees, priority, and place, -insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office, and custom in all -line of order’:—the distinctions of birth, the vicissitudes of fortune, -did not enter into their abstracted, lofty, and levelling calculation of -human nature. He who was more than man, with them was none. They claimed -kindred only with the commonest of the people: peasants, pedlars, and -village-barbers were their oracles and bosom friends. Their poetry, in -the extreme to which it professedly tended, and was in effect carried, -levels all distinctions of nature and society; has ‘no figures nor no -fantasies,’ which the prejudices of superstition or the customs of the -world draw in the brains of men; ‘no trivial fond records’ of all that -has existed in the history of past ages; it has no adventitious pride, -pomp, or circumstance, to set it off; ‘the marshal’s truncheon, nor the -judge’s robe’; neither tradition, reverence, nor ceremony, ‘that to -great ones ‘longs’: it breaks in pieces the golden images of poetry, and -defaces its armorial bearings, to melt them down in the mould of common -humanity or of its own upstart self-sufficiency. They took the same -method in their new-fangled ‘metre ballad-mongering’ scheme, which -Rousseau did in his prose paradoxes—of exciting attention by reversing -the established standards of opinion and estimation in the world. They -were for bringing poetry back to its primitive simplicity and state of -nature, as he was for bringing society back to the savage state: so that -the only thing remarkable left in the world by this change, would be the -persons who had produced it. A thorough adept in this school of poetry -and philanthropy is jealous of all excellence but his own. He does not -even like to share his reputation with his subject; for he would have it -all proceed from his own power and originality of mind. Such a one is -slow to admire any thing that is admirable; feels no interest in what is -most interesting to others, no grandeur in any thing grand, no beauty in -anything beautiful. He tolerates only what he himself creates; he -sympathizes only with what can enter into no competition with him, with -‘the bare trees and mountains bare, and grass in the green field.’ He -sees nothing but himself and the universe. He hates all greatness and -all pretensions to it, whether well or ill-founded. His egotism is in -some respects a madness; for he scorns even the admiration of himself, -thinking it a presumption in any one to suppose that he has taste or -sense enough to understand him. He hates all science and all art; he -hates chemistry, he hates conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates Sir -Isaac Newton; he hates wisdom; he hates wit; he hates metaphysics, which -he says are unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand -them; he hates prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the -dialogues in Shakespeare; he hates music, dancing, and painting; he -hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates Titian; he -hates Vandyke; he hates the antique; he hates the Apollo Belvidere; he -hates the Venus of Medicis. This is the reason that so few people take -an interest in his writings, because he takes an interest in nothing -that others do!—The effect has been perceived as something odd; but the -cause or principle has never been distinctly traced to its source -before, as far as I know. The proofs are to be found every where—in Mr. -Southey’s Botany Bay Eclogues, in his book of Songs and Sonnets, his -Odes and Inscriptions, so well parodied in the Anti-Jacobin Review, in -his Joan of Arc, and last, though not least, in his Wat Tyler: - - ‘When Adam delved, and Eve span, - Where was then the gentleman?’ - -(—or the poet laureat either, we may ask?)—In Mr. Coleridge’s Ode to an -Ass’s Foal, in his Lines to Sarah, his Religious Musings; and in his and -Mr. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, _passim_. - -Of Mr. Southey’s larger epics, I have but a faint recollection at this -distance of time, but all that I remember of them is mechanical and -extravagant, heavy and superficial. His affected, disjointed style is -well imitated in the Rejected Addresses. The difference between him and -Sir Richard Blackmore seems to be, that the one is heavy and the other -light, the one solemn and the other pragmatical, the one phlegmatic and -the other flippant; and that there is no Gay in the present time to give -a Catalogue Raisonné of the performances of the living undertaker of -epics. Kehama is a loose sprawling figure, such as we see cut out of -wood or paper, and pulled or jerked with wire or thread, to make sudden -and surprising motions, without meaning, grace, or nature in them. By -far the best of his works are some of his shorter personal compositions, -in which there is an ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, such as -his lines on a picture of Gaspar Poussin, the fine tale of Gualberto, -his Description of a Pig, and the Holly-tree, which is an affecting, -beautiful, and modest retrospect on his own character. May the -aspiration with which it concludes be fulfilled![11]—But the little he -has done of true and sterling excellence, is overloaded by the quantity -of indifferent matter which he turns out every year, ‘prosing or -versing,’ with equally mechanical and irresistible facility. His Essays, -or political and moral disquisitions, are not so full of original matter -as Montaigne’s. They are second or third rate compositions in that -class. - -It remains that I should say a few words of Mr. Coleridge; and there is -no one who has a better right to say what he thinks of him than I have. -‘Is there here any dear friend of Cæsar? To him I say, that Brutus’s -love to Cæsar was no less than his.’ But no matter.—His Ancient Mariner -is his most remarkable performance, and the only one that I could point -out to any one as giving an adequate idea of his great natural powers. -It is high German, however, and in it he seems to ‘conceive of poetry -but as a drunken dream, reckless, careless, and heedless, of past, -present, and to come.’ His tragedies (for he has written two) are not -answerable to it; they are, except a few poetical passages, drawling -sentiment and metaphysical jargon. He has no genuine dramatic talent. -There is one fine passage in his Christabel, that which contains the -description of the quarrel between Sir Leoline and Sir Roland de Vaux of -Tryermaine, who had been friends in youth. - - ‘Alas! they had been friends in youth, - But whispering tongues can poison truth; - And constancy lives in realms above; - And life is thorny; and youth is vain; - And to be wroth with one we love, - Doth work like madness in the brain: - And thus it chanc’d as I divine, - With Roland and Sir Leoline. - Each spake words of high disdain - And insult to his heart’s best brother, - And parted ne’er to meet again! - But neither ever found another - To free the hollow heart from paining— - - They stood aloof, the scars remaining, - Like cliffs which had been rent asunder: - A dreary sea now flows between, - But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, - Shall wholly do away I ween - The marks of that which once hath been. - - Sir Leoline a moment’s space - Stood gazing on the damsel’s face; - And the youthful lord of Tryermaine - Came back upon his heart again.’ - -It might seem insidious if I were to praise his ode entitled Fire, -Famine, and Slaughter, as an effusion of high poetical enthusiasm, and -strong political feeling. His Sonnet to Schiller conveys a fine -compliment to the author of the Robbers, and an equally fine idea of the -state of youthful enthusiasm in which he composed it. - - ‘Schiller! that hour I would have wish’d to die, - If through the shudd’ring midnight I had sent - From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, - That fearful voice, a famish’d father’s cry— - - That in no after moment aught less vast - Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout - Black Horror scream’d, and all her goblin rout - From the more with’ring scene diminish’d pass’d. - - Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity! - Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood, - Wand’ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye, - Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood! - Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood, - Then weep aloud in a wild ecstacy!’— - -His _Conciones ad Populum_, Watchman, &c. are dreary trash. Of his -Friend, I have spoken the truth elsewhere. But I may say of him here, -that he is the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man -of genius. He is the only person from whom I ever learnt any thing. -There is only one thing he could learn from me in return, but _that_ he -has not. He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that time had -angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever; and you wished -him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour -and effort; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings -of his imagination lifted him from off his feet. His voice rolled on the -ear like the pealing organ, and its sound alone was the music of -thought. His mind was clothed with wings; and raised on them, he lifted -philosophy to heaven. In his descriptions, you then saw the progress of -human happiness and liberty in bright and never-ending succession, like -the steps of Jacob’s ladder, with airy shapes ascending and descending, -and with the voice of God at the top of the ladder. And shall I, who -heard him then, listen to him now? Not I!... That spell is broke; that -time is gone for ever; that voice is heard no more: but still the -recollection comes rushing by with thoughts of long-past years, and -rings in my ears with never-dying sound. - - ‘What though the radiance which was once so bright, - Be now for ever taken from my sight, - Though nothing can bring back the hour - Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow’r; - I do not grieve, but rather find - Strength in what remains behind; - In the primal sympathy, - Which having been, must ever be; - In the soothing thoughts that spring - Out of human suffering; - In years that bring the philosophic mind!’— - -I have thus gone through the task I intended, and have come at last to -the level ground. I have felt my subject gradually sinking from under me -as I advanced, and have been afraid of ending in nothing. The interest -has unavoidably decreased at almost every successive step of the -progress, like a play that has its catastrophe in the first or second -act. This, however, I could not help. I have done as well as I could. - - - End of LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS - - - - - LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH - - - - - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE - - -_The Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth; -Delivered at the Surrey Institution_, _By William Hazlitt_, were -published in 8vo (8¾ × 5¼), in the year of their delivery, 1820, and -they were reviewed in the same year in _The Edinburgh Review_. A second -edition was published in 1821, of which the present issue is a reprint. -The half-title reads simply ‘Hazlitt’s Lectures,’ and the imprint is -‘London: John Warren, Old Bond-Street, MDCCCXXI.’ An ‘Erratum,’ behind -the Advertisement, ‘Page 18, l. 20, _for_ “wildnesses,” _read_ -wildernesses,’ has been corrected in the present text. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - LECTURE I. - - PAGE - Introductory.—General view of the Subject 175 - - - LECTURE II. - - On the Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shakespear, Lyly, 192 - Marlow, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley - - - LECTURE III. - - On Marston, Chapman, Deckar, and Webster 223 - - - LECTURE IV. - - On Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Ford, and Massinger 248 - - - LECTURE V. - - On single Plays, Poems, &c., the Four P’s, the Return from 274 - Parnassus, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, and other Works - - - LECTURE VI. - - On Miscellaneous Poems, F. Beaumont, P. Fletcher, Drayton, Daniel, 295 - &c., Sir P. Sidney’s Arcadia, and Sonnets - - - LECTURE VII. - - Character of Lord Bacon’s Work—compared as to style with Sir 326 - Thomas Brown and Jeremy Taylor - - - LECTURE VIII. - - On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature—on the German 345 - Drama, contrasted with that of the Age of Elizabeth - - - - - ADVERTISEMENT - - -By the Age of Elizabeth (as it relates to the History of our Literature) -I would be understood to mean the time from the Reformation, to the end -of Charles I. including the Writers of a certain School or style of -Poetry or Prose, who flourished together or immediately succeeded one -another within this period. I have, in the following pages, said little -of two of the greatest Writers of that Age, Shakespear and Spenser, -because I had treated of them separately in former Publications. - - - - - LECTURES ON - THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, &c. - - - - - LECTURE I.—INTRODUCTORY - GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT - - -The age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, any other in -our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and -whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours; statesmen, -warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers, Raleigh, Drake, -Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more -frequent in our mouths, Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, -Beaumont and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternised in her long and -lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of -their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of -different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling: what -they did, had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the -genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery), -never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at -this period. Our writers and great men had something in them that -savoured of the soil from which they grew: they were not French, they -were not Dutch, or German, or Greek, or Latin; they were truly English. -They did not look out of themselves to see what they should be; they -sought for truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There was no -tinsel, and but little art; they were not the spoiled children of -affectation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of -thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with none but natural -grace, and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not at all -sophisticated. The mind of their country was great in them, and it -prevailed. With their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did not -forget that they were men: with all their endeavours after excellence, -they did not lay aside the strong original bent and character of their -minds. What they performed was chiefly nature’s handy-work; and time has -claimed it for his own.—To these, however, might be added others not -less learned, nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less fortunate in -the event, who, though as renowned in their day, have sunk into ‘mere -oblivion,’ and of whom the only record (but that the noblest) is to be -found in their works. Their works and their names, ‘poor, poor dumb -names,’ are all that remains of such men as Webster, Deckar, Marston, -Marlow, Chapman, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley! ‘How lov’d, how -honour’d once, avails them not:’ though they were the friends and -fellow-labourers of Shakespear, sharing his fame and fortunes with him, -the rivals of Jonson, and the masters of Beaumont and Fletcher’s -well-sung woes! They went out one by one unnoticed, like evening lights; -or were swallowed up in the headlong torrent of puritanic zeal which -succeeded, and swept away every thing in its unsparing course, throwing -up the wrecks of taste and genius at random, and at long fitful -intervals, amidst the painted gew-gaws and foreign frippery of the reign -of Charles II. and from which we are only now recovering the scattered -fragments and broken images to erect a temple to true Fame! How long, -before it will be completed? - -If I can do any thing to rescue some of these writers from hopeless -obscurity, and to do them right, without prejudice to well-deserved -reputation, I shall have succeeded in what I chiefly propose. I shall -not attempt, indeed, to adjust the spelling, or restore the pointing, as -if the genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press, but leaving -these weightier matters of criticism to those who are more able and -willing to bear the burden, try to bring out their real beauties to the -eager sight, ‘draw the curtain of Time, and shew the picture of Genius,’ -restraining my own admiration within reasonable bounds! - -There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way of thought, than that which -would confine all excellence, or arrogate its final accomplishment to -the present, or modern times. We ordinarily speak and think of those who -had the misfortune to write or live before us, as labouring under very -singular privations and disadvantages in not having the benefit of those -improvements which we have made, as buried in the grossest ignorance, or -the slaves ‘of poring pedantry’; and we make a cheap and infallible -estimate of their progress in civilization upon a graduated scale of -perfectibility, calculated from the meridian of our own times. If we -have pretty well got rid of the narrow bigotry that would limit all -sense or virtue to our own country, and have fraternized, like true -cosmopolites, with our neighbours and contemporaries, we have made our -self-love amends by letting the generation we live in engross nearly all -our admiration and by pronouncing a sweeping sentence of barbarism and -ignorance on our ancestry backwards, from the commencement (as near as -can be) of the nineteenth, or the latter end of the eighteenth century. -From thence we date a new era, the dawn of our own intellect and that of -the world, like ‘the sacred influence of light’ glimmering on the -confines of Chaos and old night; new manners rise, and all the cumbrous -‘pomp of elder days’ vanishes, and is lost in worse than Gothic -darkness. Pavilioned in the glittering pride of our superficial -accomplishments and upstart pretensions, we fancy that every thing -beyond that magic circle is prejudice and error; and all, before the -present enlightened period, but a dull and useless blank in the great -map of time. We are so dazzled with the gloss and novelty of modern -discoveries, that we cannot take into our mind’s eye the vast expanse, -the lengthened perspective of human intellect, and a cloud hangs over -and conceals its loftiest monuments, if they are removed to a little -distance from us—the cloud of our own vanity and shortsightedness. The -modern sciolist _stultifies_ all understanding but his own, and that -which he conceives like his own. We think, in this age of reason and -consummation of philosophy, because we knew nothing twenty or thirty -years ago, and began to think then for the first time in our lives, that -the rest of mankind were in the same predicament, and never knew any -thing till we did; that the world had grown old in sloth and ignorance, -had dreamt out its long minority of five thousand years in a dozing -state, and that it first began to wake out of sleep, to rouse itself, -and look about it, startled by the light of our unexpected discoveries, -and the noise we made about them. Strange error of our infatuated -self-love! Because the clothes we remember to have seen worn when we -were children, are now out of fashion, and our grandmothers were then -old women, we conceive with magnanimous continuity of reasoning, that it -must have been much worse three hundred years before, and that grace, -youth, and beauty are things of modern date—as if nature had ever been -old, or the sun had first shone on our folly and presumption. Because, -in a word, the last generation, when tottering off the stage, were not -so active, so sprightly, and so promising as we were, we begin to -imagine, that people formerly must have crawled about in a feeble, -torpid state, like flies in winter, in a sort of dim twilight of the -understanding; ‘nor can we think what thoughts they could conceive,’ in -the absence of all those topics that so agreeably enliven and diversify -our conversation and literature, mistaking the imperfection of our -knowledge for the defect of their organs, as if it was necessary for us -to have a register and certificate of their thoughts, or as if, because -they did not see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and understand with -our understandings, they could hear, see, and understand nothing. A -falser inference could not be drawn, nor one more contrary to the maxims -and cautions of a wise humanity. ‘Think,’ says Shakespear, the prompter -of good and true feelings, ‘there’s livers out of Britain.’ So there -have been thinkers, and great and sound ones, before our time. They had -the same capacities that we have, sometimes greater motives for their -exertion, and, for the most part, the same subject-matter to work upon. -What we learn from nature, we may hope to do as well as they; what we -learn from them, we may in general expect to do worse.—What is, I think, -as likely as any thing to cure us of this overweening admiration of the -present, and unmingled contempt for past times, is the looking at the -finest old pictures; at Raphael’s heads, at Titian’s faces, at Claude’s -landscapes. We have there the evidence of the senses, without the -alterations of opinion or disguise of language. We there see the blood -circulate through the veins (long before it was known that it did so), -the same red and white ‘by nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on,’ -the same thoughts passing through the mind and seated on the lips, the -same blue sky, and glittering sunny vales, ‘where Pan, knit with the -Graces and the Hours in dance, leads on the eternal spring.’ And we -begin to feel, that nature and the mind of man are not a thing of -yesterday, as we had been led to suppose; and that ‘there are more -things between heaven and earth, than were ever dreamt of in our -philosophy.’—Or grant that we improve, in some respects, in a uniformly -progressive ratio, and build, Babel-high, on the foundation of other -men’s knowledge, as in matters of science and speculative inquiry, where -by going often over the same general ground, certain general conclusions -have been arrived at, and in the number of persons reasoning on a given -subject, truth has at last been hit upon, and long-established error -exploded; yet this does not apply to cases of individual power and -knowledge, to a million of things beside, in which we are still to seek -as much as ever, and in which we can only hope to find, by going to the -fountain-head of thought and experience. We are quite wrong in supposing -(as we are apt to do), that we can plead an exclusive title to wit and -wisdom, to taste and genius, as the net produce and clear reversion of -the age we live in, and that all we have to do to be great, is to -despise those who have gone before us as nothing. - -Or even if we admit a saving clause in this sweeping proscription, and -do not make the rule absolute, the very nature of the exceptions shews -the spirit in which they are made. We single out one or two striking -instances, say Shakespear or Lord Bacon, which we would fain treat as -prodigies, and as a marked contrast to the rudeness and barbarism that -surrounded them. These we delight to dwell upon and magnify; the praise -and wonder we heap upon their shrines, are at the expence of the time in -which they lived, and would leave it poor indeed. We make them out -something more than human, ‘matchless, divine, what we will,’ so to make -them no rule for their age, and no infringement of the abstract claim to -superiority which we set up. Instead of letting them reflect any lustre, -or add any credit to the period of history to which they rightfully -belong, we only make use of their example to insult and degrade it still -more beneath our own level. - -It is the present fashion to speak with veneration of old English -literature; but the homage we pay to it is more akin to the rites of -superstition, than the worship of true religion. Our faith is doubtful; -our love cold; our knowledge little or none. We now and then repeat the -names of some of the old writers by rote; but we are shy of looking into -their works. Though we seem disposed to think highly of them, and to -give them every credit for a masculine and original vein of thought, as -a matter of literary courtesy and enlargement of taste, we are afraid of -coming to the proof, as too great a trial of our candour and patience. -We regard the enthusiastic admiration of these obsolete authors, or a -desire to make proselytes to a belief in their extraordinary merits, as -an amiable weakness, a pleasing delusion; and prepare to listen to some -favourite passage, that may be referred to in support of this singular -taste, with an incredulous smile; and are in no small pain for the -result of the hazardous experiment; feeling much the same awkward -condescending disposition to patronise these first crude attempts at -poetry and lispings of the Muse, as when a fond parent brings forward a -bashful child to make a display of its wit or learning. We hope the -best, put a good face on the matter, but are sadly afraid the thing -cannot answer.—Dr. Johnson said of these writers generally, that ‘they -were sought after because they were scarce, and would not have been -scarce, had they been much esteemed.’ His decision is neither true -history nor sound criticism. They were esteemed, and they deserved to be -so. - -One cause that might be pointed out here, as having contributed to the -long-continued neglect of our earlier writers, lies in the very nature -of our academic institutions, which unavoidably neutralizes a taste for -the productions of native genius, estranges the mind from the history of -our own literature, and makes it in each successive age like a book -sealed. The Greek and Roman classics are a sort of privileged -text-books, the standing order of the day, in a University education, -and leave little leisure for a competent acquaintance with, or due -admiration of, a whole host of able writers of our own, who are suffered -to moulder in obscurity on the shelves of our libraries, with a decent -reservation of one or two top-names, that are cried up for form’s sake, -and to save the national character. Thus we keep a few of these always -ready in capitals, and strike off the rest, to prevent the tendency to a -superfluous population in the republic of letters; in other words, to -prevent the writers from becoming more numerous than the readers. The -ancients are become effete in this respect, they no longer increase and -multiply; or if they have imitators among us, no one is expected to -read, and still less to admire them. It is not possible that the learned -professors and the reading public should clash in this way, or necessary -for them to use any precautions against each other. But it is not the -same with the living languages, where there is danger of being -overwhelmed by the crowd of competitors; and pedantry has combined with -ignorance to cancel their unsatisfied claims. - -We affect to wonder at Shakespear, and one or two more of that period, -as solitary instances upon record; whereas it is our own dearth of -information that makes the waste; for there is no time more populous of -intellect, or more prolific of intellectual wealth, than the one we are -speaking of. Shakespear did not look upon himself in this light, as a -sort of monster of poetical genius, or on his contemporaries as ‘less -than smallest dwarfs,’ when he speaks with true, not false modesty, of -himself and them, and of his wayward thoughts, ‘desiring this man’s art, -and that man’s scope.’ We fancy that there were no such men, that could -either add to or take any thing away from him, but such there were. He -indeed overlooks and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does -it from the _tableland_ of the age in which he lived. He towered above -his fellows, ‘in shape and gesture proudly eminent’; but he was one of a -race of giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful, and -beautiful of them; but it was a common and a noble brood. He was not -something sacred and aloof from the vulgar herd of men, but shook hands -with nature and the circumstances of the time, and is distinguished from -his immediate contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree and greater -variety of excellence. He did not form a class or species by himself, -but belonged to a class or species. His age was necessary to him; nor -could he have been wrenched from his place in the edifice of which he -was so conspicuous a part, without equal injury to himself and it. Mr. -Wordsworth says of Milton, ‘that his soul was like a star, and dwelt -apart.’ This cannot be said with any propriety of Shakespear, who -certainly moved in a constellation of bright luminaries, and ‘drew after -him a third part of the heavens.’ If we allow, for argument’s sake (or -for truth’s, which is better), that he was in himself equal to all his -competitors put together; yet there was more dramatic excellence in that -age than in the whole of the period that has elapsed since. If his -contemporaries, with their united strength, would hardly make one -Shakespear, certain it is that all his successors would not make half a -one. With the exception of a single writer, Otway, and of a single play -of his (Venice Preserved), there is nobody in tragedy and dramatic -poetry (I do not here speak of comedy) to be compared to the great men -of the age of Shakespear, and immediately after. They are a mighty -phalanx of kindred spirits closing him round, moving in the same orbit, -and impelled by the same causes in their whirling and eccentric career. -They had the same faults and the same excellences; the same strength and -depth and richness, the same truth of character, passion, imagination, -thought and language, thrown, heaped, massed together without careful -polishing or exact method, but poured out in unconcerned profusion from -the lap of nature and genius in boundless and unrivalled magnificence. -The sweetness of Deckar, the thought of Marston, the gravity of Chapman, -the grace of Fletcher and his young-eyed wit, Jonson’s learned sock, the -flowing vein of Middleton, Heywood’s ease, the pathos of Webster, and -Marlow’s deep designs, add a double lustre to the sweetness, thought, -gravity, grace, wit, artless nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, and -sublime conceptions of Shakespear’s Muse. They are indeed the scale by -which we can best ascend to the true knowledge and love of him. Our -admiration of them does not lessen our relish for him: but, on the -contrary, increases and confirms it.—For such an extraordinary -combination and development of fancy and genius many causes may be -assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in -politics, in the circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of -letters, in local situation, and in the character of the men who adorned -that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed -within their reach. - -I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and of -the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the poetry of the -country at the period of which I have to treat; independently of -incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting, but -which, after all, have often the greatest share in determining the most -important results. - -The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, -was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a -mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and -agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The -effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this -country. It toppled down the full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries -at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigotted faith and -slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from -their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, -and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten -fear, and gave the watch-word; but England joined the shout, and echoed -it back with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy -shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius of -Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There -was a mighty fermentation: the waters were out; public opinion was in a -state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to think and speak the -truth. Men’s brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts -full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the -greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know -the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow which had -been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy, loosened their -tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, -with which she had beguiled her followers and committed abominations -with the people, fall harmless from their necks. - -The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It -threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and -morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the -visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers -(such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. It gave them a -common interest in the common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as -they read. It gave a _mind_ to the people, by giving them common -subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character -and sentiment: it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. -They found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in the -magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost -eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring intrepidity in -maintaining it. Religious controversy sharpens the understanding by the -subtlety and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and braces the will -by their infinite importance. We perceive in the history of this period -a nervous masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, no -indifference; or if there were, it is a relaxation from the intense -activity which gives a tone to its general character. But there is a -gravity approaching to piety; a seriousness of impression, a -conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervour and enthusiasm -in their mode of handling almost every subject. The debates of the -schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough; but they wanted interest and -grandeur, and were besides confined to a few: they did not affect the -general mass of the community. But the Bible was thrown open to all -ranks and conditions ‘to run and read,’ with its wonderful table of -contents from Genesis to the Revelations. Every village in England would -present the scene so well described in Burns’s Cotter’s Saturday Night. -I cannot think that all this variety and weight of knowledge could be -thrown in all at once upon the mind of a people, and not make some -impressions upon it, the traces of which might be discerned in the -manners and literature of the age. For to leave more disputable points, -and take only the historical parts of the Old Testament, or the moral -sentiments of the New, there is nothing like them in the power of -exciting awe and admiration, or of rivetting sympathy. We see what -Milton has made of the account of the Creation, from the manner in which -he has treated it, imbued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of -which we speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic interest and -patriarchal simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and rouses -it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) equal to the -story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachael and Laban, of Jacob’s -Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the descriptions in the book of Job, the -deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their captivity -and return from Babylon? There is in all these parts of the Scripture, -and numberless more of the same kind, to pass over the Orphic hymns of -David, the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of -Ezekiel, an originality, a vastness of conception, a depth and -tenderness of feeling, and a touching simplicity in the mode of -narration, which he who does not feel, need be made of no ‘penetrable -stuff.’ There is something in the character of Christ too (leaving -religious faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness and -majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man, by the -contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history, -whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime humanity, -such as was never seen on earth before, nor since. This shone manifestly -both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing the Disciples’ -feet the night before his death, that unspeakable instance of humility -and love, above all art, all meanness, and all pride, and in the leave -he took of them on that occasion, ‘My peace I give unto you, that peace -which the world cannot give, give I unto you’; and in his last -commandment, that ‘they should love one another.’ Who can read the -account of his behaviour on the cross, when turning to his mother he -said, ‘Woman, behold thy son,’ and to the Disciple John, ‘Behold thy -mother,’ and ‘from that hour that Disciple took her to his own home,’ -without having his heart smote within him! We see it in his treatment of -the woman taken in adultery, and in his excuse for the woman who poured -precious ointment on his garment as an offering of devotion and love, -which is here all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart. We -see it in his discourse with the Disciples as they walked together -towards Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them; in his sermon from -the Mount, in his parable of the good Samaritan, and in that of the -Prodigal Son—in every act and word of his life, a grace, a mildness, a -dignity and love, a patience and wisdom worthy of the Son of God. His -whole life and being were imbued, steeped in this word, _charity_; it -was the spring, the well-head from which every thought and feeling -gushed into act; and it was this that breathed a mild glory from his -face in that last agony upon the cross, ‘when the meek Saviour bowed his -head and died,’ praying for his enemies. He was the first true teacher -of morality; for he alone conceived the idea of a pure humanity. He -redeemed man from the worship of that idol, self, and instructed him by -precept and example to love his neighbour as himself, to forgive our -enemies, to do good to those that curse us and despitefully use us. He -taught the love of good for the sake of good, without regard to personal -or sinister views, and made the affections of the heart the sole seat of -morality, instead of the pride of the understanding or the sternness of -the will. In answering the question, ‘who is our neighbour?’ as one who -stands in need of our assistance, and whose wounds we can bind up, he -has done more to humanize the thoughts and tame the unruly passions, -than all who have tried to reform and benefit mankind. The very idea of -abstract benevolence, of the desire to do good because another wants our -services, and of regarding the human race as one family, the offspring -of one common parent, is hardly to be found in any other code or system. -It was ‘to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.’ -The Greeks and Romans never thought of considering others, but as they -were Greeks or Romans, as they were bound to them by certain positive -ties, or, on the other hand, as separated from them by fiercer -antipathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines, their -vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain with -obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in the Christian -religion, ‘we perceive a softness coming over the heart of a nation, and -the iron scales that fence and harden it, melt and drop off.’ It becomes -malleable, capable of pity, of forgiveness, of relaxing in its claims, -and remitting its power. We strike it, and it does not hurt us: it is -not steel or marble, but flesh and blood, clay tempered with tears, and -‘soft as sinews of the new-born babe.’ The gospel was first preached to -the poor, for it consulted their wants and interests, not its own pride -and arrogance. It first promulgated the equality of mankind in the -community of duties and benefits. It denounced the iniquities of the -chief Priests and Pharisees, and declared itself at variance with -principalities and powers, for it sympathizes not with the oppressor, -but the oppressed. It first abolished slavery, for it did not consider -the power of the will to inflict injury, as clothing it with a right to -do so. Its law is good, not power. It at the same time tended to wean -the mind from the grossness of sense, and a particle of its divine flame -was lent to brighten and purify the lamp of love! - -There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the divine mission of -Christ, have taken an unaccountable prejudice to his doctrines, and have -been disposed to deny the merit of his character; but this was not the -feeling of the great men in the age of Elizabeth (whatever might be -their belief) one of whom says of him, with a boldness equal to its -piety: - - ‘The best of men - That e’er wore earth about him, was a sufferer; - A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; - The first true gentleman that ever breathed.’ - -This was old honest Deckar, and the lines ought to embalm his memory to -every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, or -humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help thinking, that we may discern -the traces of the influence exerted by religious faith in the spirit of -the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of exciting terror and -pity, in the delineation of the passions of grief, remorse, love, -sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the longings after -immortality, in the heaven of hope, and the abyss of despair it lays -open to us.[12] - -The literature of this age then, I would say, was strongly influenced -(among other causes), first by the spirit of Christianity, and secondly -by the spirit of Protestantism. - -The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy may be seen in -the writings and history of the next and of the following ages. They are -still at work, and will continue to be so. The effects on the poetry of -the time were chiefly confined to the moulding of the character, and -giving a powerful impulse to the intellect of the country. The immediate -use or application that was made of religion to subjects of imagination -and fiction was not (from an obvious ground of separation) so direct or -frequent, as that which was made of the classical and romantic -literature. - -For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of the -Greek and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain and -Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown open in -translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. This last circumstance -could hardly have afforded so much advantage to the poets of that day, -who were themselves, in fact, the translators, as it shews the general -curiosity and increasing interest in such subjects, as a prevailing -feature of the times. There were translations of Tasso by Fairfax, and -of Ariosto by Harrington, of Homer and Hesiod by Chapman, and of Virgil -long before, and Ovid soon after; there was Sir Thomas North’s -translation of Plutarch, of which Shakespear has made such admirable use -in his Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar: and Ben Jonson’s tragedies of -Catiline and Sejanus may themselves be considered as almost literal -translations into verse, of Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero’s Orations in -his consulship. Boccacio, the divine Boccacio, Petrarch, Dante, the -satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione, and others, were familiar to -our writers, and they make occasional mention of some few French -authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas; for the French literature had not at -this stage arrived at its Augustan period, and it was the imitation of -their literature a century afterwards, when it had arrived at its -greatest height (itself copied from the Greek and Latin), that enfeebled -and impoverished our own. But of the time that we are considering, it -might be said, without much extravagance, that every breath that blew, -that every wave that rolled to our shores, brought with it some -accession to our knowledge, which was engrafted on the national genius. -In fact, all the disposable materials that had been accumulating for a -long period of time, either in our own, or in foreign countries, were -now brought together, and required nothing more than to be wrought up, -polished, or arranged in striking forms, for ornament and use. To this -every inducement prompted, the novelty of the acquisition of knowledge -in many cases, the emulation of foreign wits, and of immortal works, the -want and the expectation of such works among ourselves, the opportunity -and encouragement afforded for their production by leisure and -affluence; and, above all, the insatiable desire of the mind to beget -its own image, and to construct out of itself, and for the delight and -admiration of the world and posterity, that excellence of which the idea -exists hitherto only in its own breast, and the impression of which it -would make as universal as the eye of heaven, the benefit as common as -the air we breathe. The first impulse of genius is to create what never -existed before: the contemplation of that, which is so created, is -sufficient to satisfy the demands of taste; and it is the habitual study -and imitation of the original models that takes away the power, and even -wish to do the like. Taste limps after genius, and from copying the -artificial models, we lose sight of the living principle of nature. It -is the effort we make, and the impulse we acquire, in overcoming the -first obstacles, that projects us forward; it is the necessity for -exertion that makes us conscious of our strength; but this necessity and -this impulse once removed, the tide of fancy and enthusiasm, which is at -first a running stream, soon settles and crusts into the standing pool -of dulness, criticism, and _virtù_. - -What also gave an unusual _impetus_ to the mind of man at this period, -was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and -travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by -enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the -cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy land -was realised in new and unknown worlds. ‘Fortunate fields and groves and -flowery vales, thrice happy isles,’ were found floating ‘like those -Hesperian gardens famed of old,’ beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt from the -zenith. The people, the soil, the clime, everything gave unlimited scope -to the curiosity of the traveller and reader. Other manners might be -said to enlarge the bounds of knowledge, and new mines of wealth were -tumbled at our feet. It is from a voyage to the Straits of Magellan that -Shakespear has taken the hint of Prospero’s Enchanted Island, and of the -savage Caliban with his god Setebos.[13] Spenser seems to have had the -same feeling in his mind in the production of his Faery Queen, and -vindicates his poetic fiction on this very ground of analogy. - - ‘Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign, - That all this famous antique history - Of some the abundance of an idle brain - Will judged be, and painted forgery, - Rather than matter of just memory: - Since none that breatheth living air, doth know - Where is that happy land of faery - Which I so much do vaunt, but no where show, - But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know. - - But let that man with better sense avise, - That of the world least part to us is read: - And daily how through hardy enterprize - Many great regions are discovered, - Which to late age were never mentioned. - Who ever heard of th’ Indian Peru? - Or who in venturous vessel measured - The Amazons’ huge river, now found true? - Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view? - - Yet all these were when no man did them know, - Yet have from wisest ages hidden been: - And later times things more unknown shall show. - Why then should witless man so much misween - That nothing is but that which he hath seen? - What if within the moon’s fair shining sphere, - What if in every other star unseen, - Of other worlds he happily should hear, - He wonder would much more; yet such to some appear.’ - -Fancy’s air-drawn pictures after history’s waking dream shewed like -clouds over mountains; and from the romance of real life to the idlest -fiction, the transition seemed easy.—Shakespear, as well as others of -his time, availed himself of the old Chronicles, and of the traditions -or fabulous inventions contained in them in such ample measure, and -which had not yet been appropriated to the purposes of poetry or the -drama. The stage was a new thing; and those who had to supply its -demands laid their hands upon whatever came within their reach: they -were not particular as to the means, so that they gained the end. Lear -is founded upon an old ballad; Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a -Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition: one of which is to be found -in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and -the Witches in each, are authenticated in the old Gothic history. There -was also this connecting link between the poetry of this age and the -supernatural traditions of a former one, that the belief in them was -still extant, and in full force and visible operation among the vulgar -(to say no more) in the time of our authors. The appalling and wild -chimeras of superstition and ignorance, ‘those bodiless creations that -ecstacy is very cunning in,’ were inwoven with existing manners and -opinions, and all their effects on the passions of terror or pity might -be gathered from common and actual observation—might be discerned in the -workings of the face, the expressions of the tongue, the writhings of a -troubled conscience. ‘Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men may -read strange matters.’ Midnight and secret murders too, from the -imperfect state of the police, were more common; and the ferocious and -brutal manners that would stamp the brow of the hardened ruffian or -hired assassin, more incorrigible and undisguised. The portraits of -Tyrrel and Forrest were, no doubt, done from the life. We find that the -ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of fire, the poisoned -chalice, lean famine, the serpent’s mortal sting, and the fury of wild -beasts, were the common topics of their poetry, as they were common -occurrences in more remote periods of history. They were the strong -ingredients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, to make it ‘thick and -slab.’ Man’s life was (as it appears to me) more full of traps and -pit-falls; of hair-breadth accidents by flood and field; more way-laid -by sudden and startling evils; it trod on the brink of hope and fear; -stumbled upon fate unawares; while the imagination, close behind it, -caught at and clung to the shape of danger, or ‘snatched a wild and -fearful joy’ from its escape. The accidents of nature were less provided -against; the excesses of the passions and of lawless power were less -regulated, and produced more strange and desperate catastrophes. The -tales of Boccacio are founded on the great pestilence of Florence, -Fletcher the poet died of the plague, and Marlow was stabbed in a tavern -quarrel. The strict authority of parents, the inequality of ranks, or -the hereditary feuds between different families, made more unhappy loves -or matches. - - ‘The course of true love never did run even.’ - -Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our elder -writers, was yet in considerable activity in the reign of Elizabeth. -‘The age of chivalry was not then quite gone, nor the glory of Europe -extinguished for ever.’ Jousts and tournaments were still common with -the nobility in England and in foreign countries: Sir Philip Sidney was -particularly distinguished for his proficiency in these exercises (and -indeed fell a martyr to his ambition as a soldier)—and the gentle Surrey -was still more famous, on the same account, just before him. It is true, -the general use of firearms gradually superseded the necessity of skill -in the sword, or bravery in the person: and as a symptom of the rapid -degeneracy in this respect, we find Sir John Suckling soon after -boasting of himself as one— - - ‘Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit - At bowls, above all the trophies of wit.’ - -It was comparatively an age of peace, - - ‘Like strength reposing on his own right arm;’ - -but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the distance, the -spear glittered to the eye of memory, or the clashing of armour struck -on the imagination of the ardent and the young. They were borderers on -the savage state, on the times of war and bigotry, though in the lap of -arts, of luxury, and knowledge. They stood on the shore and saw the -billows rolling after the storm: ‘they heard the tumult, and were -still.’ The manners and out-of-door amusements were more tinctured with -a spirit of adventure and romance. The war with wild beasts, &c. was -more strenuously kept up in country sports. I do not think we could get -from sedentary poets, who had never mingled in the vicissitudes, the -dangers, or excitements of the chase, such descriptions of hunting and -other athletic games, as are to be found in Shakespear’s Midsummer -Night’s Dream, or Fletcher’s Noble Kinsmen. - -With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living of those times, I -cannot agree with an ingenious and agreeable writer of the present day, -that it was general or frequent. The very stress laid upon certain -holidays and festivals, shews that they did not keep up the same -Saturnalian licence and open house all the year round. They reserved -themselves for great occasions, and made the best amends they could, for -a year of abstinence and toil by a week of merriment and convivial -indulgence. Persons in middle life at this day, who can afford a good -dinner every day, do not look forward to it as any particular subject of -exultation: the poor peasant, who can only contrive to treat himself to -a joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it as an event in the week. So, -in the old Cambridge comedy of the Returne from Parnassus, we find this -indignant description of the progress of luxury in those days, put into -the mouth of one of the speakers. - - ‘Why is ‘t not strange to see a ragged clerke, - Some stammell weaver, or some butcher’s sonne, - That scrubb’d a late within a sleeveless gowne, - When the commencement, like a morrice dance, - Hath put a bell or two about his legges, - Created him a sweet cleane gentleman: - How then he ‘gins to follow fashions. - He whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe, - Must take tobacco, and must wear a locke. - His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle, - But his sweet self is served in silver plate. - His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges - For one good Christmas meal on new year’s day, - But his mawe must be capon cramm’d each day.’ - _Act III. Scene 2._ - -This does not look as if in those days ‘it snowed of meat and drink’ as -a matter of course throughout the year!—The distinctions of dress, the -badges of different professions, the very signs of the shops, which we -have set aside for written inscriptions over the doors, were, as Mr. -Lamb observes, a sort of visible language to the imagination, and hints -for thought. Like the costume of different foreign nations, they had an -immediate striking and picturesque effect, giving scope to the fancy. -The surface of society was embossed with hieroglyphics, and poetry -existed ‘in act and complement extern.’ The poetry of former times might -be directly taken from real life, as our poetry is taken from the poetry -of former times. Finally, the face of nature, which was the same -glorious object then that it is now, was open to them; and coming first, -they gathered her fairest flowers to live for ever in their verse:—the -movements of the human heart were not hid from them, for they had the -same passions as we, only less disguised, and less subject to controul. -Deckar has given an admirable description of a mad-house in one of his -plays. But it might be perhaps objected, that it was only a literal -account taken from Bedlam at that time: and it might be answered, that -the old poets took the same method of describing the passions and -fancies of men whom they met at large, which forms the point of -communion between us: for the title of the old play, ‘A Mad World, my -Masters,’ is hardly yet obsolete; and we are pretty much the same Bedlam -still, perhaps a little better managed, like the real one, and with more -care and humanity shewn to the patients! - -Lastly, to conclude this account; what gave a unity and common direction -to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country, which was -strong in these writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation -of islanders, and we cannot help it; nor mend ourselves if we would. We -are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and -painting are not our _forte_: for what we have done in that way has been -little, and that borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may -boast of our poets and philosophers. That’s something. We have had -strong heads and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, -and left to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for -truth and freedom. That is our natural style; and it were to be wished -we had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a -certain cast of thought and character; and our liberty has enabled us to -make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into every -fashion, with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are slow to think, and -therefore impressions do not work upon us till they act in masses. We -are not forward to express our feelings, and therefore they do not come -from us till they force their way in the most impetuous eloquence. Our -language is, as it were, to begin anew, and we make use of the most -singular and boldest combinations to explain ourselves. Our wit comes -from us, ‘like birdlime, brains and all.’ We pay too little attention to -form and method, leave our works in an unfinished state, but still the -materials we work in are solid and of nature’s mint; we do not deal in -counterfeits. We both under and over-do, but we keep an eye to the -prominent features, the main chance. We are more for weight than show; -care only about what interests ourselves, instead of trying to impose -upon others by plausible appearances, and are obstinate and intractable -in not conforming to common rules, by which many arrive at their ends -with half the real waste of thought and trouble. We neglect all but the -principal object, gather our force to make a great blow, bring it down, -and relapse into sluggishness and indifference again. _Materiam -superabat opus_, cannot be said of us. We may be accused of grossness, -but not of flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of want -of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our -literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal and irregular; -not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but of great -weight in the whole, and of incomparable value in the best parts. It -aims at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very -good indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This character applies in -particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, which is its best -period, before the introduction of a rage for French rules and French -models; for whatever may be the value of our own original style of -composition, there can be neither offence nor presumption in saying, -that it is at least better than our second-hand imitations of others. -Our understanding (such as it is, and must remain to be good for any -thing) is not a thoroughfare for common places, smooth as the palm of -one’s hand, but full of knotty points and jutting excrescences, rough, -uneven, overgrown with brambles; and I like this aspect of the mind (as -some one said of the country), where nature keeps a good deal of the -soil in her own hands. Perhaps the genius of our poetry has more of Pan -than of Apollo; ‘but Pan is a God, Apollo is no more!’ - - - - - LECTURE II - ON THE DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKESPEAR, LYLY, MARLOW, - HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, AND ROWLEY - - -The period of which I shall have to treat (from the Reformation to the -middle of Charles I.) was prolific in dramatic excellence, even more -than in any other. In approaching it, we seem to be approaching the RICH -STROND described in Spenser, where treasures of all kinds lay scattered, -or rather crowded together on the shore in inexhaustible but unregarded -profusion, ‘rich as the oozy bottom of the deep in sunken wrack and -sumless treasuries.’ We are confounded with the variety, and dazzled -with the dusky splendour of names sacred in their obscurity, and works -gorgeous in their decay, ‘majestic, though in ruin,’ like Guyon when he -entered the Cave of Mammon, and was shewn the massy pillars and huge -unwieldy fragments of gold, covered with dust and cobwebs, and ‘shedding -a faint shadow of uncertain light, - - ‘Such as a lamp whose light doth fade away, - Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night - Doth shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.’ - -The dramatic literature of this period only wants exploring, to fill the -enquiring mind with wonder and delight, and to convince us that we have -been wrong in lavishing all our praise on ‘new-born gauds, though they -are made and moulded of things past;’ and in ‘giving to dust, that is a -little gilded, more laud than gilt o’er-dusted.’ In short, the discovery -of such an unsuspected and forgotten mine of wealth will be found amply -to repay the labour of the search, and it will be hard, if in most cases -curiosity does not end in admiration, and modesty teach us wisdom. A few -of the most singular productions of these times remain unclaimed; of -others the authors are uncertain; many of them are joint productions of -different pens; but of the best the writers’ names are in general known, -and obviously stamped on the productions themselves. The names of Ben -Jonson, for instance, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, are almost, -though not quite, as familiar to us, as that of Shakespear; and their -works still keep regular possession of the stage. Another set of writers -included in the same general period (the end of the sixteenth and the -beginning of the seventeenth century), who are next, or equal, or -sometimes superior to these in power, but whose names are now little -known, and their writings nearly obsolete, are Lyly, Marlow, Marston, -Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley, Heywood, Webster, Deckar, and Ford. I -shall devote the present and two following Lectures to the best account -I can give of these, and shall begin with some of the least known. - -The earliest tragedy of which I shall take notice (I believe the -earliest that we have) is that of Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc (as it -has been generally called), the production of Thomas Sackville, Lord -Buckhurst, afterwards created Earl of Dorset, assisted by one Thomas -Norton. This was first acted with applause before the Queen in 1561, the -noble author being then quite a young man. This tragedy being considered -as the first in our language, is certainly a curiosity, and in other -respects it is also remarkable; though, perhaps, enough has been said -about it. As a work of genius, it may be set down as nothing, for it -contains hardly a memorable line or passage; as a work of art, and the -first of its kind attempted in the language, it may be considered as a -monument of the taste and skill of the authors. Its merit is confined to -the regularity of the plot and metre, to its general good sense, and -strict attention to common decorum. If the poet has not stamped the -peculiar genius of his age upon this first attempt, it is no -inconsiderable proof of strength of mind and conception sustained by its -own sense of propriety alone, to have so far anticipated the taste of -succeeding times, as to have avoided any glaring offence against rules -and models, which had no existence in his day. Or perhaps a truer -solution might be, that there were as yet no examples of a more -ambiguous and irregular kind to tempt him to err, and as he had not the -impulse or resources within himself to strike out a new path, he merely -adhered with modesty and caution to the classical models with which, as -a scholar, he was well acquainted. The language of the dialogue is -clear, unaffected, and intelligible without the smallest difficulty, -even to this day; it has ‘no figures nor no fantasies,’ to which the -most fastidious critic can object, but the dramatic power is nearly none -at all. It is written expressly to set forth the dangers and mischiefs -that arise from the division of sovereign power; and the several -speakers dilate upon the different views of the subject in turn, like -clever schoolboys set to compose a thesis, or declaim upon the fatal -consequences of ambition, and the uncertainty of human affairs. The -author, in the end, declares for the doctrine of passive obedience and -non-resistance; a doctrine which indeed was seldom questioned at that -time of day. Eubulus, one of the old king’s counsellors, thus gives his -opinion— - - ‘Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees, - That no cause serves, whereby the subject may - Call to account the doings of his prince; - Much less in blood by sword to work revenge: - No more than may the hand cut off the head. - In act nor speech, no nor in secret thought, - The subject may rebel against his lord, - Or judge of him that sits in Cæsar’s seat, - With grudging mind to damn those he mislikes. - Though kings forget to govern as they ought, - Yet subjects must obey as they are bound.’ - -Yet how little he was borne out in this inference by the unbiassed -dictates of his own mind, may appear from the freedom and unguarded -boldness of such lines as the following, addressed by a favourite to a -prince, as courtly advice. - - ‘Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law: - The Gods do bear and well allow in kings - The things that they abhor in rascal routs. - When kings on slender quarrels run to wars, - And then in cruel and unkindly wise - Command thefts, rapes, murder of innocents, - The spoil of towns, ruins of mighty realms; - Think you such princes do suppose themselves - Subject to laws of kind and fear of Gods? - Murders and violent thefts in private men - Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach; - Yet none offence, but deck’d with noble name - Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings.’ - -The principal characters make as many invocations to the names of their -children, their country, and their friends, as Cicero in his Orations, -and all the topics insisted upon are open, direct, urged in the face of -day, with no more attention to time or place, to an enemy who overhears, -or an accomplice to whom they are addressed; in a word, with no more -dramatic insinuation or byeplay than the pleadings in a court of law. -Almost the only passage that I can instance, as rising above this -didactic tone of mediocrity into the pathos of poetry, is one where -Marcella laments the untimely death of her lover, Ferrex. - - ‘Ah! noble prince, how oft have I beheld - Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed, - Shining in armour bright before the tilt; - And with thy mistress’ sleeve tied on thy helm, - And charge thy staff to please thy lady’s eye, - That bowed the head-piece of thy friendly foe! - How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace, - How oft in arms on foot to break the sword, - Which never now these eyes may see again!’ - -There seems a reference to Chaucer in the wording of the following -lines— - - ‘Then saw I how he smiled with slaying knife - Wrapp’d under cloke, then saw I deep deceit - Lurk in his face, and death prepared for me.’[14] - -Sir Philip Sidney says of this tragedy: ‘Gorboduc is full of stately -speeches, and well sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca -his style, and as full of notable morality; which it doth most -delightfully teach, and thereby obtain the very end of poetry.’ And Mr. -Pope, whose taste in such matters was very different from Sir Philip -Sidney’s, says in still stronger terms: ‘That the writers of the -succeeding age might have improved as much in other respects, by copying -from him a propriety in the sentiments, an unaffected perspicuity of -style, and an easy flow in the numbers. In a word, that chastity, -correctness, and gravity of style, which are so essential to tragedy, -and which all the tragic poets who followed, not excepting Shakespear -himself, either little understood, or perpetually neglected.’ It was -well for us and them that they did so! - -The Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates does his Muse more credit. -It sometimes reminds one of Chaucer, and at others seems like an -anticipation, in some degree, both of the measure and manner of Spenser. -The following stanzas may give the reader an idea of the merit of this -old poem, which was published in 1563. - - ‘By him lay heauie Sleepe cosin of Death - Flat on the ground, and still as any stone, - A very corps, saue yeelding forth a breath. - Small keepe tooke he whom Fortune frowned on, - Or whom she lifted vp into the throne - Of high renowne, but as a liuing death, - So dead aliue, of life he drew the breath. - - The bodies rest, the quiet of the hart, - The trauailes ease, the still nights feere was he. - And of our life in earth the better part, - Reuer of sight, and yet in whom we see - Things oft that tide, and oft that neuer bee. - Without respect esteeming equally - King _Crœsus_ pompe, and _Irus_ pouertie. - - And next in order sad Old Age we found, - His beard all hoare, his eyes hollow and blind, - With drouping cheere still poring on the ground, - As on the place where nature him assign’d - To rest, when that the sisters had vntwin’d - His vitall thred, and ended with their knife - The fleeting course of fast declining life. - - There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint - Rew with himselfe his end approaching fast, - And all for naught his wretched mind torment, - With sweete remembrance of his pleasures past, - And fresh delites of lustic youth forewast. - Recounting which, how would he sob and shreek? - And to be yong again of _Ioue_ beseeke. - - But and the cruell fates so fixed be, - That time forepast cannot returne againe, - This one request of Ioue yet prayed he: - That in such withred plight, and wretched paine, - As _eld_ (accompanied with lothsome traine) - Had brought on him, all were it woe and griefe, - He might a while yet linger forth his life, - - And not so soone descend into the pit: - Where Death, when he the mortall corps hath slaine, - With wretchlesse hand in graue doth couer it, - Thereafter neuer to enioy againe - The gladsome light, but in the ground ylaine, - In depth of darknesse waste and weare to nought, - As he had nere into the world been brought. - - But who had seene him, sobbing how he stood - Vnto himselfe, and how he would bemone - His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good - To talke of youth, all were his youth foregone, - He would haue musde and maruail’d much whereon - This wretched Age should life desire so faine, - And knowes ful wel life doth but length his paine. - - Crookebackt he was, toothshaken, and blere eyde, - Went on three feete, and sometime crept on foure, - With old lame bones, that ratled by his side, - His scalpe all pil’d, and he with eld forelore: - His withred fist still knocking at Deaths dore, - Fumbling and driueling as he drawes his breath, - For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death.’ - -John Lyly (born in the Weold of Kent about the year 1553), was the -author of Midas and Endymion, of Alexander and Campaspe, and of the -comedy of Mother Bombie. Of the last it may be said, that it is very -much what its name would import, old, quaint, and vulgar.—I may here -observe, once for all, that I would not be understood to say, that the -age of Elizabeth was all of gold without any alloy. There was both gold -and lead in it, and often in one and the same writer. In our impatience -to form an opinion, we conclude, when we first meet with a good thing, -that it is owing to the age; or, if we meet with a bad one, it is -characteristic of the age, when, in fact, it is neither; for there are -good and bad in almost all ages, and one age excels in one thing, -another in another:—only one age may excel more and in higher things -than another, but none can excel equally and completely in all. The -writers of Elizabeth, as poets, soared to the height they did, by -indulging their own unrestrained enthusiasm: as comic writers, they -chiefly copied the manners of the age, which did not give them the same -advantage over their successors. Lyly’s comedy, for instance, is ‘poor, -unfledged, has never winged from view o’ th’ nest,’ and tries in vain to -rise above the ground with crude conceits and clumsy levity. Lydia, the -heroine of the piece, is silly enough, if the rest were but as witty. -But the author has shewn no partiality in the distribution of his gifts. -To say truth, it was a very common fault of the old comedy, that its -humours were too low, and the weaknesses exposed too great to be -credible, or an object of ridicule, even if they were. The affectation -of their courtiers is passable, and diverting as a contrast to present -manners; but the eccentricities of their clowns are ‘very tolerable, and -not to be endured.’ Any kind of activity of mind might seem to the -writers better than none: any nonsense served to amuse their hearers; -any cant phrase, any coarse allusion, any pompous absurdity, was taken -for wit and drollery. Nothing could be too mean, too foolish, too -improbable, or too offensive, to be a proper subject for laughter. Any -one (looking hastily at this side of the question only) might be tempted -to suppose the youngest children of Thespis a very callow brood, -chirping their slender notes, or silly swains ‘grating their lean and -flashy jests on scrannel pipes of wretched straw.’ The genius of comedy -looked too often like a lean and hectic pantaloon; love was a slip-shod -shepherdess; wit a parti-coloured fool like Harlequin, and the plot came -hobbling, like a clown, after all. A string of impertinent and farcical -jests (or rather blunders), was with great formality ushered into the -world as ‘a right pleasant and conceited comedy.’ Comedy could not -descend lower than it sometimes did, without glancing at physical -imperfections and deformity. The two young persons in the play before -us, on whom the event of the plot chiefly hinges, do in fact turn out to -be no better than changelings and natural idiots. This is carrying -innocence and simplicity too far. So again, the character of Sir Tophas -in Endymion, an affected, blustering, talkative, cowardly pretender, -treads too near upon blank stupidity and downright want of common sense, -to be admissible as a butt for satire. Shakespear has contrived to -clothe the lamentable nakedness of the same sort of character with a -motley garb from the wardrobe of his imagination, and has redeemed it -from insipidity by a certain plausibility of speech, and playful -extravagance of humour. But the undertaking was nearly desperate. Ben -Jonson tried to overcome the difficulty by the force of learning and -study: and thought to gain his end by persisting in error; but he only -made matters worse; for his clowns and coxcombs (if we except Bobadil), -are the most incorrigible and insufferable of all others.—The story of -Mother Bombie is little else than a tissue of absurd mistakes, arising -from the confusion of the different characters one with another, like -another Comedy of Errors, and ends in their being (most of them), -married in a game at cross-purposes to the persons they particularly -dislike. - -To leave this, and proceed to something pleasanter, Midas and Endymion, -which are worthy of their names and of the subject. The story in both is -classical, and the execution is for the most part elegant and simple. -There is often something that reminds one of the graceful -communicativeness of Lucian or of Apuleius, from whom one of the stories -is borrowed. Lyly made a more attractive picture of Grecian manners at -second-hand, than of English characters from his own observation. The -poet (which is the great merit of a poet in such a subject) has -transported himself to the scene of action, to ancient Greece or Asia -Minor; the manners, the images, the traditions are preserved with truth -and delicacy, and the dialogue (to my fancy) glides and sparkles like a -clear stream from the Muses’ spring. I know few things more perfect in -characteristic painting, than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, -who, afraid of betraying the secret of Midas’s ears, fancy that ‘the -very reeds bow down, as though they listened to their talk’; nor more -affecting in sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his friend -Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from his long sleep, ‘Behold the twig -to which thou laidest down thy head, is now become a tree.’ The -narrative is sometimes a little wandering and desultory; but if it had -been ten times as tedious, this thought would have redeemed it; for I -cannot conceive of any thing more beautiful, more simple or touching, -than this exquisitely chosen image and dumb proof of the manner in which -he had passed his life, from youth to old age, in a dream, a dream of -love. Happy Endymion! Faithful Eumenides! Divine Cynthia! Who would not -wish to pass his life in such a sleep, a long, long sleep, dreaming of -some fair heavenly Goddess, with the moon shining upon his face, and the -trees growing silently over his head!—There is something in this story -which has taken a strange hold of my fancy, perhaps ‘out of my weakness -and my melancholy’; but for the satisfaction of the reader, I will quote -the whole passage: ‘it is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of -love, like the old age.’ - - ‘_Cynthia._ Well, let us to Endymion. I will not be so stately (good - Endymion) not to stoop to do thee good; and if thy liberty consist in - a kiss from me, thou shalt have it. And although my mouth hath been - heretofore as untouched as my thoughts, yet now to recover thy life - (though to restore thy youth it be impossible) I will do that to - Endymion, which yet never mortal man could boast of heretofore, nor - shall ever hope for hereafter. (_She kisses him_). - - _Eumenides._ Madam, he beginneth to stir. - - _Cynthia._ Soft, Eumenides, stand still. - - _Eumenides._ Ah! I see his eyes almost open. - - _Cynthia._ I command thee once again, stir not: I will stand behind - him. - - _Panelion._ What do I see? Endymion almost awake? - - _Eumenides._ Endymion, Endymion, art thou deaf or dumb? Or hath this - long sleep taken away thy memory? Ah! my sweet Endymion, seest thou - not Eumenides, thy faithful friend, thy faithful Eumenides, who for - thy sake hath been careless of his own content? Speak, Endymion! - Endymion! Endymion! - - _Endymion._ Endymion! I call to mind such a name. - - _Eumenides._ Hast thou forgotten thyself, Endymion? Then do I not - marvel thou rememberest not thy friend. I tell thee thou art Endymion, - and I Eumenides. Behold also Cynthia, by whose favour thou art awaked, - and by whose virtue thou shalt continue thy natural course. - - _Cynthia._ Endymion! Speak, sweet Endymion! Knowest thou not Cynthia? - - _Endymion._ Oh, heavens! whom do I behold? Fair Cynthia, divine - Cynthia? - - _Cynthia._ I am Cynthia, and thou Endymion. - - _Endymion._ Endymion! What do I hear? What! a grey beard, hollow eyes, - withered body, and decayed limbs, and all in one night? - - _Eumenides._ One night! Thou hast slept here forty years, by what - enchantress, as yet it is not known: and behold the twig to which thou - laidest thy head, is now become a tree. Callest thou not Eumenides to - remembrance? - - _Endymion._ Thy name I do remember by the sound, but thy favour I do - not yet call to mind: only divine Cynthia, to whom time, fortune, - death, and destiny are subject, I see and remember; and in all - humility, I regard and reverence. - - _Cynthia._ You shall have good cause to remember Eumenides, who hath - for thy safety forsaken his own solace. - - _Endymion._ Am I that Endymion, who was wont in court to lead my life, - and in justs, tourneys, and arms, to exercise my youth? Am I that - Endymion? - - _Eumenides._ Thou art that Endymion, and I Eumenides: wilt thou not - yet call me to remembrance? - - _Endymion._ Ah! sweet Eumenides, I now perceive thou art he, and that - myself have the name of Endymion; but that this should be my body, I - doubt: for how could my curled locks be turned to gray hair, and my - strong body to a dying weakness, having waxed old, and not knowing it? - - _Cynthia._ Well, Endymion, arise: awhile sit down, for that thy limbs - are stiff and not able to stay thee, and tell what thou hast seen in - thy sleep all this while. What dreams, visions, thoughts, and - fortunes: for it is impossible but in so long time, thou shouldst see - strange things.’ - - _Act V. Scene 1._ - -It does not take away from the pathos of this poetical allegory on the -chances of love and the progress of human life, that it may be supposed -to glance indirectly at the conduct of Queen Elizabeth to our author, -who, after fourteen years’ expectation of the place of Master of the -Revels, was at last disappointed. This princess took no small delight in -keeping her poets in a sort of Fool’s Paradise. The wit of Lyly, in -parts of this romantic drama, seems to have grown spirited and classical -with his subject. He puts this fine hyperbolical irony in praise of -Dipsas, (a most unamiable personage, as it will appear), into the mouth -of Sir Tophas: - - ‘Oh what fine thin hair hath Dipsas! What a pretty low forehead! What - a tall and stately nose! What little hollow eyes! What great and - goodly lips! How harmless she is, being toothless! Her fingers fat and - short, adorned with long nails like a bittern! What a low stature she - is, and yet what a great foot she carrieth! How thrifty must she be, - in whom there is no waist; how virtuous she is like to be, over whom - no man can be jealous!’ - - _Act III. Scene 3._ - -It is singular that the style of this author, which is extremely sweet -and flowing, should have been the butt of ridicule to his -contemporaries, particularly Drayton, who compliments Sidney as the -author that - - ‘Did first reduce - Our tongue from Lyly’s writing, then in use; - Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, - Playing with words and idle similes, - As the English apes and very zanies be - Of every thing that they do hear and see.’ - -Which must apply to the prose style of his work, called ‘_Euphues and -his England_,’ and is much more like Sir Philip Sidney’s own manner, -than the dramatic style of our poet. Besides the passages above quoted, -I might refer to the opening speeches of Midas, and again to the -admirable contention between Pan and Apollo for the palm of music.—His -Alexander and Campaspe is another sufficient answer to the charge. This -play is a very pleasing transcript of old manners and sentiment. It is -full of sweetness and point, of Attic salt and the honey of Hymettus. -The following song given to Apelles, would not disgrace the mouth of the -prince of painters: - - ‘Cupid and my Campaspe play’d - At cards for kisses, Cupid paid; - He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows; - His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows; - Loses them too, then down he throws - The coral of his lip, the rose - Growing on’s cheek (but none knows how) - With these the chrystal of his brow, - And then the dimple of his chin; - All these did my Campaspe win. - At last he set her both his eyes, - She won, and Cupid blind did rise, - O, Love! has she done this to thee? - What shall, alas! become of me?’ - -The conclusion of this drama is as follows. Alexander addressing himself -to Apelles, says, - - ‘Well, enjoy one another: I give her thee frankly, Apelles. Thou shalt - see that Alexander maketh but a toy of love, and leadeth affection in - fetters: using fancy as a fool to make him sport, or a minstrel to - make him merry. It is not the amorous glance of an eye can settle an - idle thought in the heart: no, no, it is children’s game, a life for - sempsters and scholars; the one, pricking in clouts, have nothing else - to think on; the other, picking fancies out of books, have little else - to marvel at. Go, Apelles, take with you your Campaspe; Alexander is - cloyed with looking on that, which thou wonderest at. - - _Apelles._ Thanks to your Majesty on bended knee; you have honoured - Apelles. - - _Campaspe._ Thanks with bowed heart; you have blest Campaspe. - [_Exeunt._ - - _Alexander._ Page, go warn Clytus and Parmenio, and the other lords, - to be in readiness; let the trumpet sound, strike up the drum, and I - will presently into Persia. How now, Hephestion, is Alexander able to - resist love as he list? - - _Hephestion._ The conquering of Thebes was not so honourable as the - subduing of these thoughts. - - _Alexander._ It were a shame Alexander should desire to command the - world, if he could not command himself. But come, let us go. And, good - Hephestion, when all the world is won, and every country is thine and - mine, either find me out another to subdue, or on my word, I will fall - in love.’ - -Marlowe is a name that stands high, and almost first in this list of -dramatic worthies. He was a little before Shakespear’s time,[15] and has -a marked character both from him and the rest. There is a lust of power -in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of -the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own energies. His -thoughts burn within him like a furnace with bickering flames; or -throwing out black smoke and mists, that hide the dawn of genius, or -like a poisonous mineral, corrode the heart. His Life and Death of -Doctor Faustus, though an imperfect and unequal performance, is his -greatest work. Faustus himself is a rude sketch, but it is a gigantic -one. This character may be considered as a personification of the pride -of will and eagerness of curiosity, sublimed beyond the reach of fear -and remorse. He is hurried away, and, as it were, devoured by a -tormenting desire to enlarge his knowledge to the utmost bounds of -nature and art, and to extend his power with his knowledge. He would -realise all the fictions of a lawless imagination, would solve the most -subtle speculations of abstract reason; and for this purpose, sets at -defiance all mortal consequences, and leagues himself with demoniacal -power, with ‘fate and metaphysical aid.’ The idea of witchcraft and -necromancy, once the dread of the vulgar and the darling of the -visionary recluse, seems to have had its origin in the restless tendency -of the human mind, to conceive of and aspire to more than it can -atchieve by natural means, and in the obscure apprehension that the -gratification of this extravagant and unauthorised desire, can only be -attained by the sacrifice of all our ordinary hopes, and better -prospects to the infernal agents that lend themselves to its -accomplishment. Such is the foundation of the present story. Faustus, in -his impatience to fulfil at once and for a moment, for a few short -years, all the desires and conceptions of his soul, is willing to give -in exchange his soul and body to the great enemy of mankind. Whatever he -fancies, becomes by this means present to his sense: whatever he -commands, is done. He calls back time past, and anticipates the future: -the visions of antiquity pass before him, Babylon in all its glory, -Paris and Œnone: all the projects of philosophers, or creations of the -poet pay tribute at his feet: all the delights of fortune, of ambition, -of pleasure, and of learning are centered in his person; and from a -short-lived dream of supreme felicity and drunken power, he sinks into -an abyss of darkness and perdition. This is the alternative to which he -submits; the bond which he signs with his blood! As the outline of the -character is grand and daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The -thoughts are vast and irregular; and the style halts and staggers under -them, ‘with uneasy steps’;—‘such footing found the sole of unblest -feet.’ There is a little fustian and incongruity of metaphor now and -then, which is not very injurious to the subject. It is time to give a -few passages in illustration of this account. He thus opens his mind at -the beginning: - - ‘How am I glutted with conceit of this? - Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please? - Resolve me of all ambiguities? - Perform what desperate enterprise I will? - I’ll have them fly to India for gold, - Ransack the ocean for orient pearl, - And search all corners of the new-found world, - For pleasant fruits and princely delicates. - I’ll have them read me strange philosophy, - And tell the secrets of all foreign kings: - I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass, - And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg; - I’ll have them fill the public schools with skill, - Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad; - I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, - And chase the Prince of Parma from our land, - And reign sole king of all the provinces: - Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war - Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge, - I’ll make my servile spirits to invent. - - _Enter_ Valdes _and_ Cornelius. - - Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius, - And make me blest with your sage conference. - Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius, - Know that your words have won me at the last, - To practice magic and concealed arts. - Philosophy is odious and obscure; - Both Law and Physic are for petty wits; - ’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me. - Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt; - And I, that have with subtile syllogisms - Gravell’d the pastors of the German church, - And made the flow’ring pride of Wittenberg - Swarm to my problems, as th’ infernal spirits - On sweet Musæus when he came to hell; - Will be as cunning as Agrippa was, - Whose shadow made all Europe honour him. - _Valdes._ These books, thy wit, and our experience - Shall make all nations to canonize us. - As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords, - So shall the Spirits of every element - Be always serviceable to us three. - Like lions shall they guard us when we please; - Like Almain Rutters with their horsemen’s staves, - Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides: - Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, - Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows - Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love. - From Venice they shall drag whole argosies, - And from America the golden fleece, - That yearly stuffs old Philip’s treasury;[16] - If learned Faustus will be resolute. - _Faustus._ As resolute am I in this - As thou to live, therefore object it not.’ - -In his colloquy with the fallen angel, he shews the fixedness of his -determination:— - - ‘What is great Mephostophilis so passionate - For being deprived of the joys of heaven? - Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, - And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.’ - -Yet we afterwards find him faltering in his resolution, and struggling -with the extremity of his fate. - - ‘My heart is harden’d, I cannot repent: - Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven: - Swords, poisons, halters, and envenom’d steel - Are laid before me to dispatch myself; - And long ere this I should have done the deed, - Had not sweet pleasure conquer’d deep despair. - Have I not made blind Homer sing to me - Of Alexander’s love and Œnon’s death? - And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes - With ravishing sounds of his melodious harp, - Made music with my Mephostophilis? - Why should I die then or basely despair? - I am resolv’d, Faustus shall not repent. - Come, Mephostophilis, let us dispute again, - And reason of divine astrology.’ - -There is one passage more of this kind, which is so striking and -beautiful, so like a rapturous and deeply passionate dream, that I -cannot help quoting it here: it is the Address to the Apparition of -Helen. - - ‘_Enter_ Helen _again, passing over between two Cupids_. - - _Faustus._ Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, - And burned the topless tow’rs of Ilium? - Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. - Her lips suck forth my soul! See where it flies. - Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. - Here will I dwell, for Heav’n is in these lips, - And all is dross that is not Helena. - I will be Paris, and for love of thee, - Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack’d; - And I will combat with weak Menelaus, - And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; - Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, - And then return to Helen for a kiss. - —Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air, - Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars: - Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter, - When he appear’d to hapless Semele; - More lovely than the monarch of the sky - In wanton Arethusa’s azure arms; - And none but thou shalt be my paramour.’ - -The ending of the play is terrible, and his last exclamations betray an -anguish of mind and vehemence of passion, not to be contemplated without -shuddering. - - —‘Oh, Faustus! - Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, - And then thou must be damn’d perpetually. - Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heav’n, - That time may cease, and midnight never come. - Fair nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make - Perpetual day; or let this hour be but a year, - A month, a week, a natural day, - That Faustus may repent, and save his soul. - - (_The Clock strikes Twelve._) - - It strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air, - Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. - Oh soul! be chang’d into small water-drops, - And fall into the ocean; ne’er be found. - - (_Thunder. Enter the_ Devils.) - - Oh! mercy, Heav’n! Look not so fierce on me! - Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!— - Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer! - I’ll burn my books! Oh! Mephostophilis.’ - -Perhaps the finest _trait_ in the whole play, and that which softens and -subdues the horror of it, is the interest taken by the two scholars in -the fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts to dissuade him -from his relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling passion -of this drama; and its indications are as mild and amiable in them as -its ungoverned pursuit has been fatal to Faustus. - - ‘Yet, for he was a scholar once admir’d - For wondrous knowledge in our German schools, - We’ll give his mangled limbs due burial; - And all the students, clothed in mourning black, - Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.’ - -So the Chorus: - - ‘Cut is the branch that might have grown full strait, - And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough, - That sometime grew within this learned man.’ - -And still more affecting are his own conflicts of mind and agonising -doubts on this subject just before, when he exclaims to his friends; -‘Oh, gentlemen! Hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches. -Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student -here these thirty years; oh! would I had never seen Wittenberg, never -read book!’ A finer compliment was never paid, nor a finer lesson ever -read to the pride of learning.—The intermediate comic parts, in which -Faustus is not directly concerned, are mean and grovelling to the last -degree. One of the Clowns says to another: ‘Snails! what hast got there? -A book? Why thou can’st not tell ne’er a word on’t.’ Indeed, the -ignorance and barbarism of the time, as here described, might almost -justify Faustus’s overstrained admiration of learning, and turn the -heads of those who possessed it, from novelty and unaccustomed -excitement, as the Indians are made drunk with wine! Goethe, the German -poet, has written a drama on this tradition of his country, which is -considered a master-piece. I cannot find, in Marlowe’s play, any proofs -of the atheism or impiety attributed to him, unless the belief in -witchcraft and the Devil can be regarded as such; and at the time he -wrote, not to have believed in both, would have been construed into the -rankest atheism and irreligion. There is a delight, as Mr. Lamb says, -‘in dallying with interdicted subjects’; but that does not, by any -means, imply either a practical or speculative disbelief of them. - -LUST’S DOMINION; _or_, THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN, is referable to the same -general style of writing; and is a striking picture, or rather -caricature, of the unrestrained love of power, not as connected with -learning, but with regal ambition and external sway. There is a good -deal of the same intense passion, the same recklessness of purpose, the -same smouldering fire within: but there is not any of the same relief to -the mind in the lofty imaginative nature of the subject; and the -continual repetition of plain practical villainy and undigested horrors -disgusts the sense, and blunts the interest. The mind is hardened into -obduracy, not melted into sympathy, by such bare-faced and barbarous -cruelty. Eleazar, the Moor, is such another character as Aaron in Titus -Andronicus, and this play might be set down without injustice as -‘pue-fellow’ to that. I should think Marlowe has a much fairer claim to -be the author of Titus Andronicus than Shakespear, at least from -internal evidence; and the argument of Schlegel, that it must have been -Shakespear’s, because there was no one else capable of producing either -its faults or beauties, fails in each particular. The Queen is the same -character in both these plays; and the business of the plot is carried -on in much the same revolting manner, by making the nearest friends and -relatives of the wretched victims the instruments of their sufferings -and persecution by an arch-villain. To shew however, that the same -strong-braced tone of passionate declamation is kept up, take the speech -of Eleazar on refusing the proffered crown: - - ‘What do none rise? - No, no, for kings indeed are Deities. - And who’d not (as the sun) in brightness shine? - To be the greatest is to be divine. - Who among millions would not be the mightiest? - To sit in godlike state; to have all eyes - Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues - Shouting loud prayers; to rob every heart - Of love; to have the strength of every arm; - A sovereign’s name, why ’tis a sovereign charm. - This glory round about me hath thrown beams: - I have stood upon the top of Fortune’s wheel, - And backward turn’d the iron screw of fate. - The destinies have spun a silken thread - About my life; yet thus I cast aside - The shape of majesty, and on my knee - To this Imperial state lowly resign - This usurpation; wiping off your fears - Which stuck so hard upon me.’ - -This is enough to shew the unabated vigour of the author’s style. This -strain is certainly doing justice to the pride of ambition, and the -imputed majesty of kings. - -We have heard much of ‘Marlowe’s mighty line,’ and this play furnishes -frequent instances of it. There are a number of single lines that seem -struck out in the heat of a glowing fancy, and leave a track of golden -fire behind them. The following are a few that might be given. - - ‘I know he is not dead; I know proud death - Durst not behold such sacred majesty.’ - - · · · · · - - ‘Hang both your greedy ears upon my lips, - Let them devour my speech, suck in my breath.’ - - · · · · · - - ——‘From discontent grows treason, - And on the stalk of treason, death.’ - - · · · · · - - ‘Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood.’ - - · · · · · - -The two following lines— - - ‘Oh! I grow dull, and the cold hand of sleep - Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast’— - -are the same as those in King John— - - ‘And none of you will bid the winter come - To thrust his icy fingers in my maw.’ - -and again the Moor’s exclamation, - - ‘Now by the proud complexion of my cheeks, - Ta’en from the kisses of the amorous sun’— - -is the same as Cleopatra’s— - - ‘But I that am with Phœbus’ amorous pinches black’—&c. - -Eleazar’s sarcasm, - - ——‘These dignities, - Like poison, make men swell; this rat’s-bane honour, - Oh, ’tis so sweet! they’ll lick it till they burst’— - -shews the utmost virulence of smothered spleen; and his concluding -strain of malignant exultation has been but tamely imitated by Young’s -Zanga. - - ‘Now tragedy, thou minion of the night, - Rhamnusia’s pewfellow,[17] to thee I’ll sing, - Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones, - The proudest instrument the world affords: - To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks - Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee - I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,’ &c. - -It may be worth while to observe, for the sake of the curious, that many -of Marlowe’s most sounding lines consist of monosyllables, or nearly so. -The repetition of Eleazar’s taunt to the Cardinal, retorting his own -words upon him, ‘Spaniard or Moor, the saucy slave shall die’—may -perhaps have suggested Falconbridge’s spirited reiteration of the -phrase—‘And hang a calve’s skin on his recreant limbs.’ - -I do not think THE RICH JEW OF MALTA so characteristic a specimen of -this writer’s powers. It has not the same fierce glow of passion or -expression. It is extreme in act, and outrageous in plot and -catastrophe; but it has not the same vigorous filling up. The author -seems to have relied on the horror inspired by the subject, and the -national disgust excited against the principal character, to rouse the -feelings of the audience: for the rest, it is a tissue of gratuitous, -unprovoked, and incredible atrocities, which are committed, one upon the -back of the other, by the parties concerned, without motive, passion, or -object. There are, notwithstanding, some striking passages in it, as -Barabbas’s description of the bravo, Philia Borzo[18]; the relation of -his own unaccountable villainies to Ithamore; his rejoicing over his -recovered jewels ‘as the morning lark sings over her young;’ and the -backwardness he declares in himself to forgive the Christian injuries -that are offered him,[19] which may have given the idea of one of -Shylock’s speeches, where he ironically disclaims any enmity to the -merchants on the same account. It is perhaps hardly fair to compare the -Jew of Malta with the Merchant of Venice; for it is evident, that -Shakespear’s genius shews to as much advantage in knowledge of -character, in variety and stage-effect, as it does in point of general -humanity. - -Edward II. is, according to the modern standard of composition, -Marlowe’s best play. It is written with few offences against the common -rules, and in a succession of smooth and flowing lines. The poet however -succeeds less in the voluptuous and effeminate descriptions which he -here attempts, than in the more dreadful and violent bursts of passion. -Edward II. is drawn with historic truth, but without much dramatic -effect. The management of the plot is feeble and desultory; little -interest is excited in the various turns of fate; the characters are too -worthless, have too little energy, and their punishment is, in general, -too well deserved, to excite our commiseration; so that this play will -bear, on the whole, but a distant comparison with Shakespear’s Richard -II. in conduct, power, or effect. But the death of Edward II. in -Marlow’s tragedy, is certainly superior to that of Shakespear’s King; -and in heart-breaking distress, and the sense of human weakness, -claiming pity from utter helplessness and conscious misery, is not -surpassed by any writer whatever. - - ‘_Edward._ Weep’st thou already? List awhile to me, - And then thy heart, were it as Gurney’s is, - Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus, - Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale. - This dungeon, where they keep me, is the sink - Wherein the filth of all the castle falls. - _Lightborn._ Oh villains. - _Edward._ And here in mire and puddle have I stood - This ten days’ space; and lest that I should sleep, - One plays continually upon a drum. - They give me bread and water, being a king; - So that, for want of sleep and sustenance, - My mind’s distempered, and my body’s numbed: - And whether I have limbs or no, I know not. - Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein, - As doth this water from my tatter’d robes! - Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look’d not thus, - When for her sake I ran at tilt in France, - And there unhors’d the Duke of Cleremont.’ - -There are some excellent passages scattered up and down. The description -of the King and Gaveston looking out of the palace window, and laughing -at the courtiers as they pass, and that of the different spirit shewn by -the lion and the forest deer, when wounded, are among the best. The Song -‘Come, live with me and be my love,’ to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote -an answer, is Marlowe’s. - -Heywood I shall mention next, as a direct contrast to Marlowe in -everything but the smoothness of his verse. As Marlowe’s imagination -glows like a furnace, Heywood’s is a gentle, lambent flame that purifies -without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There is nothing -supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He makes use of the -commonest circumstances of every-day life, and of the easiest tempers, -to shew the workings, or rather the inefficacy of the passions, the _vis -inertiæ_ of tragedy. His incidents strike from their very familiarity, -and the distresses he paints invite our sympathy, from the calmness and -resignation with which they are borne. The pathos might be deemed purer -from its having no mixture of turbulence or vindictiveness in it; and in -proportion as the sufferers are made to deserve a better fate. In the -midst of the most untoward reverses and cutting injuries, good-nature -and good sense keep their accustomed sway. He describes men’s errors -with tenderness, and their duties only with zeal, and the heightenings -of a poetic fancy. His style is equally natural, simple, and -unconstrained. The dialogue (bating the verse), is such as might be -uttered in ordinary conversation. It is beautiful prose put into heroic -measure. It is not so much that he uses the common English idiom for -everything (for that I think the most poetical and impassioned of our -elder dramatists do equally), but the simplicity of the characters, and -the equable flow of the sentiments do not require or suffer it to be -warped from the tone of level speaking, by figurative expressions, or -hyperbolical allusions. A few scattered exceptions occur now and then, -where the hectic flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they -are not the worse for being rare. Thus, in the play called A WOMAN -KILLED WITH KINDNESS, Wendoll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with -his obligations to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying - - ——‘Oh speak no more! - For more than this I know, and have recorded - Within the _red-leaved table_ of my heart.’ - -And further on, Frankford, when doubting his wife’s fidelity, says, with -less feeling indeed, but with much elegance of fancy, - - ‘Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs, - Like morning dew upon the golden flow’rs.’ - -So also, when returning to his house at midnight to make the fatal -discovery, he exclaims, - - ——‘Astonishment, - Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart, - Even as a madman beats upon a drum.’ - -It is the reality of things present to their imaginations, that makes -these writers so fine, so bold, and yet so true in what they describe. -Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them ‘invisible, or -dimly seen’ through a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such -poetical ornaments are however to be met with at considerable intervals -in this play, and do not disturb the calm serenity and domestic -simplicity of the author’s style. The conclusion of Wendoll’s -declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of -its general merits, both as to thought and diction. - - ‘Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful - Bluntly to give my life into your hand, - And at one hazard, all my earthly means. - Go, tell your husband: he will turn me off, - And I am then undone. I care not, I; - ’Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he’ll kill me; - I care not; ’twas for you. Say I incur - The general name of villain thro’ the world, - Of traitor to my friend: I care not, I; - Poverty, shame, death, scandal, and reproach, - For you I’ll hazard all: why what care I? - For you I love, and for your love I’ll die.’ - -The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to his wife, and her repentant -agony at parting with him, are already before the public, in Mr. Lamb’s -Specimens. The winding up of this play is rather awkwardly managed, and -the moral is, according to established usage, equivocal. It required -only Frankford’s reconciliation to his wife, as well as his forgiveness -of her, for the highest breach of matrimonial duty, to have made a Woman -Killed with Kindness a complete anticipation of the Stranger. Heywood, -however, was in that respect but half a Kotzebue!—The view here given of -country manners is truly edifying. As in the higher walk of tragedy we -see the manners and moral sentiments of kings and nobles of former -times, here we have the feuds and amiable qualities of country ‘squires -and their relatives; and such as were the rulers, such were their -subjects. The frequent quarrels and ferocious habits of private life are -well exposed in the fatal rencounter between Sir Francis Acton and Sir -Charles Mountford about a hawking match, in the ruin and rancorous -persecution of the latter in consequence, and in the hard, unfeeling, -cold-blooded treatment he receives in his distress from his own -relations, and from a fellow of the name of Shafton. After reading the -sketch of this last character, who is introduced as a mere ordinary -personage, the representative of a class, without any preface or -apology, no one can doubt the credibility of that of Sir Giles -Over-reach, who is professedly held up (I should think almost unjustly) -as a prodigy of grasping and hardened selfishness. The influence of -philosophy and prevalence of abstract reasoning, if it has done nothing -for our poetry, has done, I should hope, something for our manners. The -callous declaration of one of these unconscionable churls, - - ‘This is no world in which to pity men,’ - -might have been taken as a motto for the good old times in general, and -with a very few reservations, if Heywood has not grossly libelled -them.—Heywood’s plots have little of artifice or regularity of design to -recommend them. He writes on carelessly, as it happens, and trusts to -Nature, and a certain happy tranquillity of spirit, for gaining the -favour of the audience. He is said, besides attending to his duties as -an actor, to have composed regularly a sheet a day. This may account in -some measure for the unembarrassed facility of his style. His own -account makes the number of his writings for the stage, or those in -which he had a main hand, upwards of 200. In fact, I do not wonder at -any quantity that an author is said to have written; for the more a man -writes, the more he can write. - -The same remarks will apply, with certain modifications, to other -remaining works of this writer, the Royal King and Loyal Subject, a -Challenge for Beauty, and the English Traveller. The barb of misfortune -is sheathed in the mildness of the writer’s temperament, and the story -jogs on very comfortably, without effort or resistance, to the -_euthanasia_ of the catastrophe. In two of these, the person principally -aggrieved survives, and feels himself none the worse for it. The most -splendid passage in Heywood’s comedies is the account of Shipwreck by -Drink, in the English Traveller, which was the foundation of Cowley’s -Latin Poem, _Naufragium Joculare_. - -The names of Middleton and Rowley, with which I shall conclude this -Lecture, generally appear together as two writers who frequently -combined their talents in the production of joint-pieces. Middleton -(judging from their separate works) was ‘the more potent spirit’ of the -two; but they were neither of them equal to some others. Rowley appears -to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of -disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a -paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman -never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity -and _naiveté_ equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton’s style -was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in -equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his -contemporaries. In his Women Beware Women, there is a rich marrowy vein -of internal sentiment, with fine occasional insight into human nature, -and cool cutting irony of expression. He is lamentably deficient in the -plot and denouement of the story. It is like the rough draught of a -tragedy, with a number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use -of first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, -instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of previous arrangement -and an eye to the whole. We have fine studies of heads, a piece of -richly-coloured drapery, ‘a foot, an hand, an eye from Nature drawn, -that’s worth a history’; but the groups are ill disposed, nor are the -figures proportioned to each other or the size of the canvas. The -author’s power is _in_ the subject, not _over_ it; or he is in -possession of excellent materials, which he husbands very ill. This -character, though it applies more particularly to Middleton, might be -applied generally to the age. Shakespear alone seemed to stand over his -work, and to do what he pleased with it. He saw to the end of what he -was about, and with the same faculty of lending himself to the impulses -of Nature and the impression of the moment, never forgot that he himself -had a task to perform, nor the place which each figure ought to occupy -in his general design.—The characters of Livia, of Bianca, of Leantio -and his Mother, in the play of which I am speaking, are all admirably -drawn. The art and malice of Livia shew equal want of principle and -acquaintance with the world; and the scene in which she holds the mother -in suspense, while she betrays the daughter into the power of the -profligate Duke, is a master-piece of dramatic skill. The proneness of -Bianca to tread the primrose path of pleasure, after she has made the -first false step, and her sudden transition from unblemished virtue to -the most abandoned vice, in which she is notably seconded by her -mother-in-law’s ready submission to the temptations of wealth and power, -form a true and striking picture. The first intimation of the intrigue -that follows, is given in a way that is not a little remarkable for -simplicity and acuteness. Bianca says, - - ‘Did not the Duke look up? Methought he saw us.’ - -To which the more experienced mother answers, - - ‘That’s every one’s conceit that sees a Duke. - If he looks stedfastly, he looks straight at them, - When he perhaps, good careful gentleman, - Never minds any, but the look he casts - Is at his own intentions, and his object - Only the public good.’ - -It turns out however, that he had been looking at them, and not ‘at the -public good.’ The moral of this tragedy is rendered more impressive from -the manly, independent character of Leantio in the first instance, and -the manner in which he dwells, in a sort of doting abstraction, on his -own comforts, in being possessed of a beautiful and faithful wife. As he -approaches his own house, and already treads on the brink of perdition, -he exclaims with an exuberance of satisfaction not to be restrained— - - ‘How near am I to a happiness - That earth exceeds not! Not another like it: - The treasures of the deep are not so precious, - As are the conceal’d comforts of a man - Lock’d up in woman’s love. I scent the air - Of blessings when I come but near the house: - What a delicious breath marriage sends forth! - The violet-bed’s not sweeter. Honest wedlock - Is like a banquetting-house built in a garden, - On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight - To cast their modest odours; when base lust, - With all her powders, paintings, and best pride, - Is but a fair house built by a ditch side. - When I behold a glorious dangerous strumpet, - Sparkling in beauty and destruction too, - Both at a twinkling, I do liken straight - Her beautified body to a goodly temple - That’s built on vaults where carcasses lie rotting; - And so by little and little I shrink back again, - And quench desire with a cool meditation; - And I’m as well, methinks. Now for a welcome - Able to draw men’s envies upon man: - A kiss now that will hang upon my lip, - As sweet as morning dew upon a rose, - And full as long; after a five days’ fast - She’ll be so greedy now and cling about me: - I take care how I shall be rid of her; - And here ‘t begins.’ - -This dream is dissipated by the entrance of Bianca and his Mother. - - ‘_Bian._ Oh, sir, you’re welcome home. - - _Moth._ Oh, is he come? I am glad on ‘t. - - _Lean._ (_Aside._) Is that all? - Why this is dreadful now as sudden death - To some rich man, that flatters all his sins - With promise of repentance when he’s old, - And dies in the midway before he comes to ‘t. - Sure you’re not well, Bianca! How dost, prithee? - - _Bian._ I have been better than I am at this time. - - _Lean._ Alas, I thought so. - - _Bian._ Nay, I have been worse too, - Than now you see me, sir. - - _Lean._ I’m glad thou mendst yet, - I feel my heart mend too. How came it to thee? - Has any thing dislik’d thee in my absence? - - _Bian._ No, certain, I have had the best content - That Florence can afford. - - _Lean._ Thou makest the best on ‘t: - Speak, mother, what ‘s the cause? you must needs know. - - _Moth._ Troth, I know none, son; let her speak herself; - Unless it be the same gave Lucifer a tumbling cast; that’s pride. - - _Bian._ Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind; - I’d have some pleasant lodging i’ th’ high street, sir; - Or if ’twere near the court, sir, that were much better; - ’Tis a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman - To stand in a bay-window, and see gallants. - - _Lean._ Now I have another temper, a mere stranger - To that of yours, it seems; I should delight - To see none but yourself. - - _Bian._ I praise not that; - Too fond is as unseemly as too churlish: - I would not have a husband of that proneness, - To kiss me before company, for a world: - Beside, ’tis tedious to see one thing still, sir, - Be it the best that ever heart affected; - Nay, were ‘t yourself, whose love had power you know - To bring me from my friends, I would not stand thus, - And gaze upon you always; troth, I could not, sir; - As good be blind, and have no use of sight, - As look on one thing still: what’s the eye’s treasure, - But change of objects? You are learned, sir, - And know I speak not ill; ’tis full as virtuous - For woman’s eye to look on several men, - As for her heart, sir, to be fixed on one. - - _Lean._ Now thou com’st home to me; a kiss for that word. - - _Bian._ No matter for a kiss, sir; let it pass; - ’Tis but a toy, we ‘ll not so much as mind it; - Let’s talk of other business, and forget it. - What news now of the pirates? any stirring? - Prithee discourse a little. - - _Moth._ (_Aside._) I am glad he ‘s here yet - To see her tricks himself; I had lied monst’rously - If I had told ’em first. - - _Lean._ Speak, what ‘s the humour, sweet, - You make your lips so strange? This was not wont. - - _Bian._ Is there no kindness betwixt man and wife, - Unless they make a pigeon-house of friendship, - And be still billing? ’tis the idlest fondness - That ever was invented; and ’tis pity - It ‘s grown a fashion for poor gentlewomen; - There ‘s many a disease kiss’d in a year by ‘t, - And a French court’sy made to’t: Alas, sir, - Think of the world, how we shall live, grow serious; - We have been married a whole fortnight now. - - _Lean._ How? a whole fortnight! why, is that so long? - - _Bian._ ’Tis time to leave off dalliance; ’tis a doctrine - Of your own teaching, if you be remember’d, - And I was bound to obey it. - - _Moth._ (_Aside._) Here’s one fits him; - This was well catch’d i’ faith, son, like a fellow - That rids another country of a plague, - And brings it home with him to his own house. - - [_A Messenger from the Duke knocks within._ - - Who knocks? - - _Lean._ Who’s there now? Withdraw you, Bianca; - Thou art a gem no stranger’s eye must see, - Howe’er thou ‘rt pleas’d now to look dull on me. - - [_Exit Bianca._ - -The Witch of Middleton is his most remarkable performance; both on its -own account, and from the use that Shakespear has made of some of the -characters and speeches in his Macbeth. Though the employment which -Middleton has given to Hecate and the rest, in thwarting the purposes -and perplexing the business of familiar and domestic life, is not so -grand or appalling as the more stupendous agency which Shakespear has -assigned them, yet it is not easy to deny the merit of the first -invention to Middleton, who has embodied the existing superstitions of -the time, respecting that anomalous class of beings, with a high spirit -of poetry, of the most grotesque and fanciful kind. The songs and -incantations made use of are very nearly the same. The other parts of -this play are not so good; and the solution of the principal difficulty, -by Antonio’s falling down a trap-door, most lame and impotent. As a -specimen of the similarity of the preternatural machinery, I shall here -give one entire scene. - - ‘_The Witches’ Habitation._ - - _Enter_ Heccat, Stadlin, Hoppo, _and other Witches_. - - _Hec._ The moon’s a gallant: see how brisk she rides. - - _Stad._ Here’s a rich evening, Heccat. - - _Hec._ Aye, is ‘t not, wenches, - To take a journey of five thousand miles? - - _Hop._ Our’s will be more to-night. - - _Hec._ Oh, ‘twill be precious. Heard you the owl yet? - - _Stad._ Briefly, in the copse, - As we came thro’ now. - - _Hec._ ’Tis high time for us then. - - _Stad._ There was a bat hung at my lips three times - As we came thro’ the woods, and drank her fill: - Old Puckle saw her. - - _Hec._ You are fortunate still, - The very scritch-owl lights upon your shoulder, - And woos you like a pidgeon. Are you furnish’d? - Have you your ointments? - - _Stad._ All. - - _Hec._ Prepare to flight then. - I’ll overtake you swiftly. - - _Stad._ Hye then, Heccat! - We shall be up betimes. - - _Hec._ I’ll reach you quickly. - [_They ascend._ - - _Enter_ Firestone. - - _Fire._ They are all going a birding to-night. They talk of fowls i’ - th’ air, that fly by day, I’m sure they’ll be a company of foul sluts - there to-night. If we have not mortality affeared, I’ll be hang’d, for - they are able to putrify it, to infect a whole region. She spies me - now. - - _Hec._ What, Firestone, our sweet son? - - _Fire._ A little sweeter than some of you; or a dunghill were too good - for me. - - _Hec._ How much hast there? - - _Fire._ Nineteen, and all brave plump ones; besides six lizards, and - three serpentine eggs. - - _Hec._ Dear and sweet boy! What herbs hast thou? - - _Fire._ I have some mar-martin, and man-dragon. - - _Hec._ Marmarittin, and mandragora, thou would’st say. - - _Fire._ Here’s pannax, too. I thank thee; my pan akes, I am sure, with - kneeling down to cut ’em. - - _Hec._ And selago, - Hedge-hissop too! How near he goes my cuttings! - Were they all cropt by moon-light? - - _Fire._ Every blade of ’em, or I’m a moon-calf, mother. - - _Hec._ Hie thee home with ’em. - Look well to th’ house to-night: I’m for aloft. - - _Fire._ Aloft, quoth you! I would you would break your neck once, that - I might have all quickly (_Aside_).—Hark, hark, mother! They are above - the steeple already, flying over your head with a noise of musicians. - - _Hec._ They are indeed. Help me! Help me! I’m too late else. - - SONG, (_in the air above_). - - Come away, come away! - Heccat, Heccat, come away! - _Hec._ I come, I come, I come, I come, - With all the speed I may, - With all the speed I may. - Where’s Stadlin? - - (_Above_). Here. - - _Hec._ Where’s Puckle? - - (_Above_). Here: - And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too: - We lack but you, we lack but you. - Come away, make up the count! - - _Hec._ I will but ‘noint, and then I mount. - - (_A Spirit descends in the shape of a Cat_). - - (_Above_). There’s one come down to fetch his dues; - A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood; - And why thou stay’st so long, I muse, I muse, - Since th’ air’s so sweet and good? - - _Hec._ Oh, art thou come, - What news, what news? - - _Spirit._ All goes still to our delight, - Either come, or else - Refuse, refuse. - - _Hec._ Now I am furnish’d for the flight. - - _Fire._ Hark, hark! The cat sings a brave treble in her own language. - - _Hec._ (_Ascending with the Spirit_). - Now I go, now I fly, - Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I. - Oh, what a dainty pleasure ’tis - To ride in the air - When the moon shines fair, - And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss! - Over woods, high rocks, and mountains, - Over seas our mistress’ fountains, - Over steep towers and turrets, - We fly by night, ‘mongst troops of spirits. - No ring of bells to our ears sounds, - No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds: - No, not the noise of water’s breach, - Or cannon’s roar, our height can reach. - - (_Above._) No ring of bells, &c. - - _Fire._ Well, mother, I thank you for your kindness. You must be - gamboling i’ th’ air, and leave me here like a fool and a mortal. - - [_Exit._’ - -The Incantation scene at the cauldron, is also the original of that in -Macbeth, and is in like manner introduced by the Duchess’s visiting the -Witches’ Habitation. - - ‘_The Witches’ Habitation._ - - _Enter_ Duchess, Heccat, Firestone. - - _Hec._ What death is’t you desire for Almachildes? - - _Duch._ A sudden and a subtle. - - _Hec._ Then I’ve fitted you. - Here lie the gifts of both; sudden and subtle; - His picture made in wax, and gently molten - By a blue fire, kindled with dead men’s eyes, - Will waste him by degrees. - - _Duch._ In what time, pr’ythee? - - _Hec._ Perhaps in a month’s progress. - - _Duch._ What? A month? - Out upon pictures! If they be so tedious, - Give me things with some life. - - _Hec._ Then seek no farther. - - _Duch._ This must be done with speed, dispatched this night, - If it may possibly. - - _Hec._ I have it for you: - Here’s that will do ‘t. Stay but perfection’s time, - And that’s not five hours hence. - - _Duch._ Can’st thou do this? - - _Hec._ Can I? - - _Duch._ I mean, so closely. - - _Hec._ So closely do you mean too? - - _Duch._ So artfully, so cunningly. - - _Hec._ Worse and worse; doubts and incredulities, - They make me mad. Let scrupulous creatures know, - _Cum volui, ripis ipsis mirantibus, amnes - In fontes rediere suos: concussaque sisto, - Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello, - Nubilaque induco: ventos abigoque vocoque. - Vipereas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces; - Et silvas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere montes, - Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchres. - Te quoque luna traho._ - Can you doubt me then, daughter? - That can make mountains tremble, miles of woods walk; - Whole earth’s foundations bellow, and the spirits - Of the entomb’d to burst out from their marbles; - Nay, draw yon moon to my involv’d designs? - - _Fire._ I know as well as can be when my mother’s mad, and our great - cat angry; for one spits French then, and th’ other spits Latin. - - _Duch._ I did not doubt you, mother. - - _Hec._ No? what did you? - My power’s so firm, it is not to be question’d. - - _Duch._ Forgive what’s past: and now I know th’ offensiveness - That vexes art, I’ll shun th’ occasion ever. - - _Hec._ Leave all to me and my five sisters, daughter. - It shall be conveyed in at howlet-time. - Take you no care. My spirits know their moments; - Raven or scritch-owl never fly by th’ door, - But they call in (I thank ’em), and they lose not by ‘t. - I give ’em barley soak’d in infants’ blood: - They shall have _semina cum sanguine_, - Their gorge cramm’d full, if they come once to our house: - We are no niggard. - [_Exit_ Duchess. - - _Fire._ They fare but too well when they come hither. They ate up as - much t’ other night as would have made me a good conscionable pudding. - - _Hec._ Give me some lizard’s brain: quickly, Firestone! - Where’s grannam Stadlin, and all the rest o’ th’ sisters? - - _Fire._ All at hand, forsooth. - - _Hec._ Give me marmaritin; some bear-breech. When? - - _Fire._ Here’s bear-breech and lizard’s brain, forsooth. - - _Hec._ Into the vessel; - And fetch three ounces of the red-hair’d girl - I kill’d last midnight. - - _Fire._ Whereabouts, sweet mother? - - _Hec._ Hip; hip or flank. Where is the acopus? - - _Fire._ You shall have acopus, forsooth. - - _Hec._ Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm. - - A CHARM SONG, - - (_The Witches going about the Cauldron_). - - Black spirits, and white; red spirits, and gray; - Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may. - Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in; - Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky; - Liard, Robin, you must bob in. - Round, around, around, about, about; - All ill come running in; all good keep out! - - _1st Witch._ Here’s the blood of a bat. - - _Hec._ Put in that; oh, put in that. - - _2d Witch._ Here’s libbard’s-bane. - - _Hec._ Put in again. - - _1st Witch._ The juice of toad; the oil of adder. - - _2d Witch._ Those will make the yonker madder. - - _Hec._ Put in: there’s all, and rid the stench. - - _Fire._ Nay, here’s three ounces of the red-hair’d wench. - - _All._ Round, around, around, &c. - - _Hec._ See, see enough: into the vessel with it. - There; ‘t hath the true perfection. I’m so light - At any mischief: there’s no villainy - But is in tune, methinks. - - _Fire._ A tune! ’Tis to the tune of damnation then. I warrant you that - song hath a villainous burthen. - - _Hec._ Come, my sweet sisters; let the air strike our tune, - Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon. - - [_The Witches dance, and then exeunt_. - -I will conclude this account with Mr. Lamb’s observations on the -distinctive characters of these extraordinary and formidable personages, -as they are described by Middleton or Shakespear. - -‘Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in Macbeth and -the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have preceded it, -this coincidence will not detract much from the originality of -Shakespear. His witches are distinguished from the witches of Middleton -by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman, -plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional consultation. -Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From the -moment that their eyes first meet Macbeth’s, he is spell-bound. That -meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These -Witches can hurt the body; those have power over the soul.—Hecate, in -Middleton, has a son, a low buffoon: the Hags of Shakespear have neither -child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are -foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they sprung, nor whether they -have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they -seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and -lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them.—Except -Hecate, they have no names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The -names, and some of the properties which Middleton has given to his Hags, -excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence -cannot consist with mirth. But in a lesser degree, the Witches of -Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over -the mind. They “raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o’er -life.“’ - - - - - LECTURE III - ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, AND WEBSTER - - -The writers of whom I have already treated, may be said to have been ‘no -mean men’; those of whom I have yet to speak, are certainly no whit -inferior. Would that I could do them any thing like justice! It is not -difficult to give at least their seeming due to great and well-known -names; for the sentiments of the reader meet the descriptions of the -critic more than half way, and clothe what is perhaps vague and -extravagant praise with a substantial form and distinct meaning. But in -attempting to extol the merits of an obscure work of genius, our words -are either lost in empty air, or are ‘blown stifling back’ upon the -mouth that utters them. The greater those merits are, and the truer the -praise, the more suspicious and disproportionate does it almost -necessarily appear; for it has no relation to any image previously -existing in the public mind, and therefore looks like an imposition -fabricated out of nothing. In this case, the only way that I know of is, -to make these old writers (as much as can be) vouchers for their own -pretensions, which they are well able to make good. I shall in the -present Lecture give some account of Marston and Chapman, and afterwards -of Deckar and Webster. - -Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground -of comedy, and whose _forte_ was not sympathy, either with the stronger -or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation -against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in -comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was -not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him. He was first -on terms of great intimacy, and afterwards at open war, with Ben Jonson; -and he is most unfairly criticised in The Return from Parnassus, under -the name of Monsieur Kinsayder, as a mere libeller and buffoon. Writers -in their life-time do all they can to degrade and vilify one another, -and expect posterity to have a very tender care of their reputations! -The writers of this age, in general, cannot however be reproached with -this infirmity. The number of plays that they wrote in conjunction, is a -proof of the contrary; and a circumstance no less curious, as to the -division of intellectual labour, than the cordial union of sentiment it -implied. Unlike most poets, the love of their art surmounted their -hatred of one another. Genius was not become a vile and vulgar pretence, -and they respected in others what they knew to be true inspiration in -themselves. They courted the applause of the multitude, but came to one -another for judgment and assistance. When we see these writers working -together on the same admirable productions, year after year, as was the -case with Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, with Chapman, -Deckar, and Jonson, it reminds one of Ariosto’s eloquent apostrophe to -the Spirit of Ancient Chivalry, when he has seated his rival knights, -Renaldo and Ferraw, on the same horse. - - ‘Oh ancient knights of true and noble heart, - They rivals were, one faith they liv’d not under; - Besides, they felt their bodies shrewdly smart - Of blows late given, and yet (behold a wonder) - Thro’ thick and thin, suspicion set apart, - Like friends they ride, and parted not asunder, - Until the horse with double spurring drived - Unto a way parted in two, arrived.’[20] - -Marston’s Antonio and Mellida is a tragedy of considerable force and -pathos; but in the most critical parts, the author frequently breaks off -or flags without any apparent reason but want of interest in his -subject; and farther, the best and most affecting situations and bursts -of feeling are too evidently imitations of Shakespear. Thus the -unexpected meeting between Andrugio and Lucio, in the beginning of the -third act, is a direct counterpart of that between Lear and Kent, only -much weakened: and the interview between Antonio and Mellida has a -strong resemblance to the still more affecting one between Lear and -Cordelia, and is most wantonly disfigured by the sudden introduction of -half a page of Italian rhymes, which gives the whole an air of -burlesque. The conversation of Lucio and Andrugio, again, after his -defeat seems to invite, but will not bear a comparison with Richard the -Second’s remonstrance with his courtiers, who offered him consolation in -his misfortunes; and no one can be at a loss to trace the allusion to -Romeo’s conduct on being apprized of his banishment, in the termination -of the following speech. - - ‘_Antonio._ Each man takes hence life, but no man death: - He’s a good fellow, and keeps open house: - A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate, - To his wide-mouthed porch: when niggard life - Hath but one little, little wicket through. - We wring ourselves into this wretched world - To pule and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail, - To fret and ban the fates, _to strike the earth - As I do now_. Antonio, curse thy birth, - And die.’ - -The following short passage might be quoted as one of exquisite beauty -and originality— - - —‘As having clasp’d a rose - Within my palm, the rose being ta’en away, - My hand retains a little breath of sweet; - So may man’s trunk, his spirit slipp’d away, - Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.’ - _Act IV. Scene_ 1. - -The character of Felice in this play is an admirable satirical -accompaniment, and is the favourite character of this author (in all -probability his own), that of a shrewd, contemplative cynic, and -sarcastic spectator in the drama of human life. It runs through all his -plays, is shared by Quadratus and Lampatho in WHAT YOU WILL (it is into -the mouth of the last of these that he has put that fine invective -against the uses of philosophy, in the account of himself and his -spaniel, ‘who still slept while he baus’d leaves, tossed o’er the -dunces, por’d on the old print’), and is at its height in the Fawn and -Malevole, in his Parasitaster and Malcontent. These two comedies are his -_chef d’œuvres_. The character of the Duke Hercules of Ferrara, -disguised as the Parasite, in the first of these, is well sustained -throughout, with great sense, dignity, and spirit. He is a wise censurer -of men and things, and rails at the world with charitable bitterness. He -may put in a claim to a sort of family likeness to the Duke, in Measure -for Measure: only the latter descends from his elevation to watch in -secret over serious crimes; the other is only a spy on private follies. -There is something in this cast of character (at least in comedy—perhaps -it neutralizes the tone and interest in tragedy), that finds a wonderful -reciprocity in the breast of the reader or audience. It forms a kind of -middle term or point of union between the busy actors in the scene and -the indifferent byestander, insinuates the plot, and suggests a number -of good wholesome reflections, for the sagacity and honesty of which we -do not fail to take credit to ourselves. We are let into its confidence, -and have a perfect reliance on its sincerity. Our sympathy with it is -without any drawback; for it has no part to perform itself, and ‘is -nothing, if not critical,’ It is a sure card to play. We may doubt the -motives of heroic actions, or differ about the just limits and extreme -workings of the passions; but the professed misanthrope is a character -that no one need feel any scruples in trusting, since the dislike of -folly and knavery in the abstract is common to knaves and fools with the -wise and honest! Besides the instructive moral vein of Hercules as the -Fawn or Parasitaster, which contains a world of excellent matter, most -aptly and wittily delivered; there are two other characters perfectly -hit off, Gonzago the old prince of Urbino, and Granuffo, one of his -lords in waiting. The loquacious, good-humoured, undisguised vanity of -the one is excellently relieved by the silent gravity of the other. The -wit of this last character (Granuffo) consists in his not speaking a -word through the whole play; he never contradicts what is said, and only -assents by implication. He is a most infallible courtier, and follows -the prince like his shadow, who thus graces his pretensions. - - ‘We would be private, only Faunus stay; he is a wise fellow, daughter, - a very wise fellow, for he is still just of my opinion; my Lord - Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know you’ll say nothing.’ - -And again, a little farther on, he says— - - ‘Faunus, this Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent - discourse, and never speaks; his signs to me and men of profound reach - instruct abundantly; he begs suits with signs, gives thanks with - signs, puts off his hat leisurely, maintains his beard learnedly, - keeps his lust privately, makes a nodding leg courtly, and lives - happily.’—‘Silence,’ replies Hercules, ‘is an excellent modest grace; - but especially before so instructing a wisdom as that of your - Excellency.’ - -The garrulous self-complacency of this old lord is kept up in a vein of -pleasant humour; an instance of which might be given in his owning of -some learned man, that ‘though he was no duke, yet he was wise;’ and the -manner in which the others play upon this foible, and make him -contribute to his own discomfiture, without his having the least -suspicion of the plot against him, is full of ingenuity and -counterpoint. In the last scene he says, very characteristically, - - ‘Of all creatures breathing, I do hate those things that struggle to - seem wise, and yet are indeed very fools. I remember when I was a - young man, in my father’s days, there were four gallant spirits for - resolution, as proper for body, as witty in discourse, as any were in - Europe; nay, Europe had not such. I was one of them. We four did all - love one lady; a most chaste virgin she was: we all enjoyed her, and - so enjoyed her, that, despite the strictest guard was set upon her, we - had her at our pleasure. I speak it for her honour, and my credit. - Where shall you find such witty fellows now a-days? Alas! how easy is - it in these weaker times to cross love-tricks! Ha! ha! ha! Alas, alas! - I smile to think (I must confess with some glory to mine own wisdom), - to think how I found out, and crossed, and curbed, and in the end made - desperate Tiberio’s love. Alas! good silly youth, that dared to cope - with age and such a beard! - - _Hercules._ But what yet might your well-known wisdom think, - If such a one, as being most severe, - A most protested opposite to the match - Of two young lovers; who having barr’d them speech, - All interviews, all messages, all means - To plot their wished ends; even he himself - Was by their cunning made the go-between, - The only messenger, the token-carrier; - Told them the times when they might fitly meet, - Nay, shew’d the way to one another’s bed?’ - -To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of exulting dotage: - - ‘May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing? Doth there - breathe such an egregious ass? Is there such a foolish animal in - _rerum natura_? How is it possible such a simplicity can exist? Let us - not lose our laughing at him, for God’s sake; let folly’s sceptre - light upon him, and to the ship of fools with him instantly. - - _Dondolo._ Of all these follies I arrest your grace.’ - -Molière has built a play on nearly the same foundation, which is not -much superior to the present. Marston, among other topics of satire, has -a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time, who were -‘full of wise saws and modern instances.’ Thus he freights his Ship of -Fools: - - ‘_Dondolo._ Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them proved - themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were let go: there’s none - left now in our ship but a few citizens that let their wives keep - their shop-books, some philosophers, and a few critics; one of which - critics has lost his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus’ - verses; another has vowed to get the consumption of the lungs, or to - leave to posterity the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing. - - _Hercules._ But what philosophers ha’ ye? - - _Dondolo._ Oh very strange fellows; one knows nothing, dares not aver - he lives, goes, sees, feels. - - _Nymphadoro._ A most insensible philosopher. - - _Dondolo._ Another, that there is no present time; and that one man - to-day and to-morrow, is not the same man; so that he that yesterday - owed money, to-day owes none; because he is not the same man. - - _Herod._ Would that philosophy hold good in law? - - _Hercules._ But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all the fools - shipped out of his dominions? - - _Dondolo._ Marry, because he would play the fool alone without any - rival.’ - - _Act IV._ - -Molière has enlarged upon the same topic in his _Mariage Forcé_, but not -with more point or effect. Nymphadoro’s reasons for devoting himself to -the sex generally, and Hercules’s description of the different -qualifications of different men, will also be found to contain excellent -specimens, both of style and matter.—The disguise of Hercules as the -Fawn, is assumed voluntarily, and he is comparatively a calm and -dispassionate observer of the times. Malevole’s disguise in the -Malcontent has been forced upon him by usurpation and injustice, and his -invectives are accordingly more impassioned and virulent. His satire -does not ‘like a wild goose fly, unclaimed of any man,’ but has a bitter -and personal application. Take him in the words of the usurping Duke’s -account of him. - - ‘This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever - conversed with Nature; a man, or rather a monster, more discontent - than Lucifer when he was thrust out of the presence. His appetite is - unsatiable as the grave, as far from any content as from heaven. His - highest delight is to procure others vexation, and therein he thinks - he truly serves Heaven; for ’tis his position, whosoever in this earth - can be contented, is a slave, and damned; therefore does he afflict - all, in that to which they are most affected. The elements struggle - with him; his own soul is at variance with herself; his speech is - halter-worthy at all hours. I like him, faith; he gives good - intelligence to my spirit, makes me understand those weaknesses which - others’ flattery palliates. - - Hark! they sing. - - _Enter_ Malevole, _after the Song._ - - _Pietro Jacomo._ See he comes! Now shall you hear the extremity of a - Malcontent; he is as free as air; he blows over every man. And—Sir, - whence come you now? - - _Malevole._ From the public place of much dissimulation, the church. - - _Pietro Jacomo._ What didst there? - - _Malevole._ Talk with a usurer; take up at interest. - - _Pietro Jacomo._ I wonder what religion thou art of? - - _Malevole._ Of a soldier’s religion. - - _Pietro Jacomo._ And what dost think makes most infidels now? - - _Malevole._ Sects, sects. I am weary: would I were one of the Duke’s - hounds. - - _Pietro Jacomo._ But what’s the common news abroad? Thou dogg’st - rumour still. - - _Malevole._ Common news? Why, common words are, God save ye, fare ye - well: common actions, flattery and cozenage: common things, women and - cuckolds.’ - - _Act I. Scene 3._ - -In reading all this, one is somehow reminded perpetually of Mr. Kean’s -acting: in Shakespear we do not often think of him, except in those -parts which he constantly acts, and in those one cannot forget him. I -might observe on the above passage, in excuse for some bluntnesses of -style, that the ideal barrier between names and things seems to have -been greater then than now. Words have become instruments of more -importance than formerly. To mention certain actions, is almost to -participate in them, as if consciousness were the same as guilt. The -standard of delicacy varies at different periods, as it does in -different countries, and is not a general test of superiority. The -French, who pique themselves (and justly, in some particulars) on their -quickness of tact and refinement of breeding, say and do things which -we, a plainer and coarser people, could not think of without a blush. -What would seem gross allusions to us at present, were without offence -to our ancestors, and many things passed for jests with them, or matters -of indifference, which would not now be endured. Refinement of language, -however, does not keep pace with simplicity of manners. The severity of -criticism exercised in our theatres towards some unfortunate straggling -phrases in the old comedies, is but an ambiguous compliment to the -immaculate purity of modern times. Marston’s style was by no means more -guarded than that of his contemporaries. He was also much more of a -free-thinker than Marlowe, and there is a frequent, and not unfavourable -allusion in his works, to later sceptical opinions.—In the play of the -Malcontent we meet with an occasional mixture of comic gaiety, to -relieve the more serious and painful business of the scene, as in the -easy loquacious effrontery of the old _intriguante_ Maquerella, and in -the ludicrous facility with which the idle courtiers avoid or seek the -notice of Malevole, as he is in or out of favour; but the general tone -and import of the piece is severe and moral. The plot is somewhat too -intricate and too often changed (like the shifting of a scene), so as to -break and fritter away the interest at the end; but the part of Aurelia, -the Duchess of Pietro Jacomo, a dissolute and proud-spirited woman, is -the highest strain of Marston’s pen. The scene in particular, in which -she receives and exults in the supposed news of her husband’s death, is -nearly unequalled in boldness of conception and in the unrestrained -force of passion, taking away not only the consciousness of guilt, but -overcoming the sense of shame.[21] - -Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose name is better known as the -translator of Homer than as a dramatic writer. He is, like Marston, a -philosophic observer, a didactic reasoner: but he has both more gravity -in his tragic style, and more levity in his comic vein. His BUSSY -D’AMBOIS, though not without interest or some fancy, is rather a -collection of apophthegms or pointed sayings in the form of a dialogue, -than a poem or a tragedy. In his verses the oracles have not ceased. -Every other line is an axiom in morals—a libel on mankind, if truth is a -libel. He is too stately for a wit, in his serious writings—too formal -for a poet. Bussy d’Ambois is founded on a French plot and French -manners. The character, from which it derives its name, is arrogant and -ostentatious to an unheard-of degree, but full of nobleness and lofty -spirit. His pride and unmeasured pretensions alone take away from his -real merit; and by the quarrels and intrigues in which they involve him, -bring about the catastrophe, which has considerable grandeur and -imposing effect, in the manner of Seneca. Our author aims at the highest -things in poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination and passion, to -fill up the epic moulds of tragedy with sense and reason alone, so that -he often runs into bombast and turgidity—is extravagant and pedantic at -one and the same time. From the nature of the plot, which turns upon a -love intrigue, much of the philosophy of this piece relates to the -character of the sex. Milton says, - - ‘The way of women’s will is hard to hit.’ - -But old Chapman professes to have found the clue to it, and winds his -uncouth way through all the labyrinth of love. Its deepest recesses -‘hide nothing from his view.’ The close intrigues of court policy, the -subtle workings of the human soul, move before him like a sea dark, -deep, and glittering with wrinkles for the smile of beauty. Fulke -Greville alone could go beyond him in gravity and mystery. The plays of -the latter (Mustapha and Alaham) are abstruse as the mysteries of old, -and his style inexplicable as the riddles of the Sphinx. As an instance -of his love for the obscure, the marvellous, and impossible, he calls up -‘the ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus,’ as prologue to one of his -tragedies; a very reverend and inscrutable personage, who, we may be -sure, blabs no living secrets. Chapman, in his other pieces, where he -lays aside the gravity of the philosopher and poet, discovers an -unexpected comic vein, distinguished by equal truth of nature and lively -good humour. I cannot say that this character pervades any one of his -entire comedies; but the introductory sketch of Monsieur D’Olive is the -undoubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, and infinitely -delightful class of character, of the professed men of wit and pleasure -about town, which we have in such perfection in Wycherley and Congreve, -such as Sparkish, Witwoud and Petulant, &c. both in the sentiments and -in the style of writing. For example, take the last scene of the first -act. - - ‘_Enter_ D’Olive. - - _Rhoderique._ What, Monsieur D’Olive, the only admirer of wit and good - words. - - _D’Olive._ Morrow, wits: morrow, good wits: my little parcels of wit, - I have rods in pickle for you. How dost, Jack; may I call thee, sir, - Jack yet? - - _Mugeron._ You may, sir; sir’s as commendable an addition as Jack, for - ought I know. - - _D’Ol._ I know it, Jack, and as common too. - - _Rhod._ Go to, you may cover; we have taken notice of your embroidered - beaver. - - _D’Ol._ Look you: by heaven thou ‘rt one of the maddest bitter slaves - in Europe: I do but wonder how I made shift to love thee all this - while. - - _Rhod._ Go to, what might such a parcel-gilt cover be worth? - - _Mug._ Perhaps more than the whole piece beside. - - _D’Ol._ Good i’ faith, but bitter. Oh, you mad slaves, I think you had - Satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you, I must take pleasure in - you, and i’ faith tell me, how is’t? live I see you do, but how? but - how, wits? - - _Rhod._ Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers. - - _D’Ol._ By your wits? - - _Mug._ Nay, not turned poets neither. - - _D’Ol._ Good in sooth! but indeed to say truth, time was when the sons - of the Muses had the privilege to live only by their wits, but times - are altered, Monopolies are now called in, and wit’s become a free - trade for all sorts to live by: lawyers live by wit, and they live - worshipfully: soldiers live by wit, and they live honourably: panders - live by wit, and they live honestly: in a word, there are but few - trades but live by wit, only bawds and midwives live by women’s - labours, as fools and fiddlers do by making mirth, pages and parasites - by making legs, painters and players by making mouths and faces: ha, - does’t well, wits? - - _Rhod._ Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as country - gentlemen follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare. - - _D’Ol._ Well, well, let’s leave these wit skirmishes, and say when - shall we meet? - - _Mug._ How think you, are we not met now? - - _D’Ol._ Tush, man! I mean at my chamber, where we may take free use of - ourselves; that is, drink sack, and talk satire, and let our wits run - the wild-goose chase over court and country. I will have my chamber - the rendezvous of all good wits, the shop of good words, the mint of - good jests, an ordinary of fine discourse; critics, essayists, - linguists, poets, and other professors of that faculty of wit, shall, - at certain hours i’ th’ day, resort thither; it shall be a second - Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences of learning, honour, - duellism, criticism, and poetry, shall be disputed: and how, wits, do - ye follow the court still? - - _Rhod._ Close at heels, sir; and I can tell you, you have much to - answer to your stars, that you do not so too. - - _D’Ol._ As why, wits? as why? - - _Rhod._ Why, sir, the court’s as ’twere the stage: and they that have - a good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press thither to grace - them, and receive their due merit. - - _D’Ol._ Tush, let the court follow me: he that soars too near the sun, - melts his wings many times; as I am, I possess myself, I enjoy my - liberty, my learning, my wit: as for wealth and honour, let ’em go; - I’ll not lose my learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an alderman. - - _Mug._ Admirable D’Olive! - - _D’Ol._ And what! you stand gazing at this comet here, and admire it, - I dare say. - - _Rhod._ And do not you? - - _D’Ol._ Not I, I admire nothing but wit. - - _Rhod._ But I wonder how she entertains time in that solitary cell: - does she not take tobacco, think you? - - _D’Ol._ She does, she does: others make it their physic, she makes it - her food: her sister and she take it by turn, first one, then the - other, and Vandome ministers to them both. - - _Mug._ How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece the Countess’s sister? - there were a paragon, Monsieur D’Olive, to admire and marry too. - - _D’Ol._ Not for me. - - _Rhod._ No? what exceptions lie against the choice? - - _D’Ol._ Tush, tell me not of choice; if I stood affected that way, I - would choose my wife as men do Valentines, blindfold, or draw cuts for - them, for so I shall be sure not to be deceived in choosing; for take - this of me, there’s ten times more deceit in women than in - horse-flesh; and I say still, that a pretty well-pac’d chamber-maid is - the only fashion; if she grows full or fulsome, give her but sixpence - to buy her a hand-basket, and send her the way of all flesh, there’s - no more but so. - - _Mug._ Indeed that’s the savingest way. - - _D’Ol._ O me! what a hell ’tis for a man to be tied to the continual - charge of a coach, with the appurtenances, horses, men, and so forth: - and then to have a man’s house pestered with a whole country of - guests, grooms, panders, waiting-maids, &c. I careful to please my - wife, she careless to displease me; shrewish if she be honest; - intolerable if she be wise; imperious as an empress; all she does must - be law, all she says gospel: oh, what a penance ’tis to endure her! I - glad to forbear still, all to keep her loyal, and yet perhaps when - all’s done, my heir shall be like my horse-keeper: fie on’t! the very - thought of marriage were able to cool the hottest liver in France. - - _Rhod._ Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt coney’s - wool, we shall have you change your copy ere a twelvemonth’s day. - - _Mug._ We must have you dubb’d o’ th’ order; there’s no remedy: you - that have, unmarried, done such honourable service in the - commonwealth, must needs receive the honour due to ‘t in marriage. - - _Rhod._ That he may do, and never marry. - - _D’Ol._ As how, wits? i’ faith as how? - - _Rhod._ For if he can prove his father was free o’ th’ order, and that - he was his father’s son, then, by the laudable custom of the city, he - may be a cuckold by his father’s copy, and never serve for ‘t. - - _D’Ol._ Ever good i’ faith! - - _Mug._ Nay how can he plead that, when ’tis as well known his father - died a bachelor? - - _D’Ol._ Bitter, in verity, bitter! But good still in its kind. - - _Rhod._ Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your - forefathers. - - _Mug._ His forefathers? S’body, had he more fathers than one? - - _D’Ol._ Why, this is right: here’s wit canvast out on ‘s coat, into ‘s - jacket: the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too much o’ th’ - frets: I must love your wits, I must take pleasure in you. Farewell, - good wits: you know my lodging, make an errand thither now and then, - and save your ordinary; do, wits, do. - - _Mug._ We shall be troublesome t’ ye. - - _D’Ol._ O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with wit: - I love a good wit as I love myself: if you need a brace or two of - crowns at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient - as your bond at all times: I carry half a score birds in a cage, shall - ever remain at your call. Farewell, wits; farewell, good wits. - - [_Exit._ - - _Rhod._ Farewell the true map of a gull: by heaven he shall to th’ - court! ’tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart; the compound of - a poet and a lawyer; he shall sure to th’ court. - - _Mug._ Nay, for God’s sake, let’s have no fools at court. - - _Rhod._ He shall to ‘t, that’s certain. The Duke had a purpose to - dispatch some one or other to the French king, to entreat him to send - for the body of his niece, which the melancholy Earl of St. Anne, her - husband, hath kept so long unburied, as meaning one grave should - entomb himself and her together. - - _Mug._ A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D’Olive is for an - embassador agent; and ’tis as suitable to his brain, as his - parcel-gilt beaver to his fool’s head. - - _Rhod._ Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. Oh, ’tis a - most accomplished ass; the mongrel of a gull, and a villain: the very - essence of his soul is pure villainy; the substance of his brain, - foolery: one that believes nothing from the stars upward; a pagan in - belief, an epicure beyond belief; prodigious in lust; prodigal in - wasteful expense; in necessary, most penurious. His wit is to admire - and imitate; his grace is to censure and detract; he shall to th’ - court, i’ faith he shall thither: I will shape such employment for - him, as that he himself shall have no less contentment, in making - mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and the whole court shall have - pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave, if he be rich, is fit to - make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, is fit to make an - intelligencer. - - [_Exeunt._’ - -His May-Day is not so good. All Fools, The Widow’s Tears, and Eastward -Hoe, are comedies of great merit, (particularly the last). The first is -borrowed a good deal from Terence, and the character of Valerio, an -accomplished rake, who passes with his father for a person of the -greatest economy and rusticity of manners, is an excellent idea, -executed with spirit. Eastward Hoe was written in conjunction with Ben -Jonson and Marston; and for his share in it, on account of some -allusions to the Scotch, just after the accession of James I. our -author, with his friends, had nearly lost his ears. Such were the -notions of poetical justice in those days! The behaviour of Ben Jonson’s -mother on this occasion is remarkable. ‘On his release from prison, he -gave an entertainment to his friends, among whom were Camden and Selden. -In the midst of the entertainment, his mother, more an antique Roman -than a Briton, drank to him, and shewed him a paper of poison, which she -intended to have given him in his liquor, having first taken a portion -of it herself, if the sentence for his punishment had been executed.’ -This play contains the first idea of Hogarth’s Idle and Industrious -Apprentices. - -It remains for me to say something of Webster and Deckar. For these two -writers I do not know how to shew my regard and admiration sufficiently. -Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Deckar, how may I hope to ‘express -ye unblam’d,’ and repay to your neglected _manes_ some part of the debt -of gratitude I owe for proud and soothing recollections? I pass by the -Appius and Virginia of the former, which is however a good, sensible, -solid tragedy, cast in a frame-work of the most approved models, with -little to blame or praise in it, except the affecting speech of Appius -to Virginia just before he kills her; as well as Deckar’s Wonder of a -Kingdom, his Jacomo Gentili, that truly ideal character of a magnificent -patron, and Old Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap, which last has the idle -garrulity of age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon its -cheek and in its heart. These go into the common catalogue, and are lost -in the crowd; but Webster’s Vittoria Corombona I cannot so soon part -with; and old honest Deckar’s Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I shall never -forget! I became only of late acquainted with this last-mentioned worthy -character; but the bargain between us is, I trust, for life. We -sometimes regret that we had not sooner met with characters like these, -that seem to raise, revive, and give a new zest to our being. Vain the -complaint! We should never have known their value, if we had not known -them always: they are old, very old acquaintance, or we should not -recognise them at first sight. We only find in books what is already -written within ‘the red-leaved tables of our hearts.’ The pregnant -materials are there; ‘the pangs, the internal pangs are ready; and poor -humanity’s afflicted will struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ But -the reading of fine poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or pour -balm and consolation into them, or sometimes even close them up for -ever! Let any one who has never known cruel disappointment, nor -comfortable hopes, read the first scene between Orlando and Hippolito, -in Deckar’s play of the Honest Whore, and he will see nothing in it. But -I think few persons will be entirely proof against such passages as some -of the following. - - ‘_Enter_ Orlando Friscobaldo. - - _Omnes._ Signior Friscobaldo. - - _Hipolito._ Friscobaldo, oh! pray call him, and leave me; we two have - business. - - _Carolo._ Ho, Signior! Signior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hipolito. - - [_Exeunt._ - - _Orlando._ My noble Lord! the Lord Hipolito! The Duke’s son! his brave - daughter’s brave husband! How does your honour’d Lordship? Does your - nobility remember so poor a gentleman as Signior Orlando Friscobaldo? - old mad Orlando? - - _Hip._ Oh, Sir, our friends! they ought to be unto us as our jewels; - as dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as when we wear them in - our hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of your blood; for - all time’s sickle hath gone over you, you are Orlando still. - - _Orl._ Why, my Lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, and stript - bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again? Though my head be like a - leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade, green? - - _Hip._ Scarce can I read the stories on your brow, Which age hath writ - there: you look youthful still. - - _Orl._ I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have - a wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem! with a clear voice. * * - - _Hip._ You are the happier man, Sir. - - _Orl._ May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha? I have a - little, have all things, have nothing: I have no wife, I have no - child, have no chick, and why should I not be in my jocundare? - - _Hip._ Is your wife then departed? - - _Orl._ She’s an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from me: - here, she’s here; a good couple are seldom parted. - - _Hip._ You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not? - - _Orl._ Oh, my Lord! this old tree had one branch, and but one branch, - growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was strait: I pruned - it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, help’d it to the - sun; yet for all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore crabs: - I hew’d it down. What’s become of it, I neither know nor care. - - _Hip._ Then can I tell you what’s become of it: that branch is - wither’d. - - _Orl._ So ’twas long ago. - - _Hip._ Her name, I think, was Bellafront; she’s dead. - - _Orl._ Ha! dead? - - _Hip._ Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping, Even in my - sight, was thrown into a grave. - - _Orl._ Dead! my last and best peace go with her! I see death’s a good - trencherman; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the - daintiest——Is she dead? - - _Hip._ She’s turn’d to earth. - - _Orl._ Would she were turned to Heaven. Umph! Is she dead? I am glad - the world has lost one of his idols: no whoremonger will at midnight - beat at the doors: in her grave sleep all my shame and her own; and - all my sorrows, and all her sins. - - _Hip._ I’m glad you are wax, not marble; you are made - Of man’s best temper; there are now good hopes - That all these heaps of ice about your heart, - By which a father’s love was frozen up, - Are thaw’d in those sweet show’rs fetch’d from your eye: - We are ne’er like angels till our passions die. - She is not dead, but lives under worse fate; - I think she’s poor; and more to clip her wings, - Her husband at this hour lies in the jail, - For killing of a man: to save his blood, - Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown, - The getting of his life preserves your own. - - _Orl._ In my daughter you will say! Does she live then? I am sorry I - wasted tears upon a harlot! but the best is, I have a handkerchief to - drink them up, soap can wash them all out again. Is she poor? - - _Hip._ Trust me, I think she is. - - _Orl._ Then she’s a right strumpet. I never knew one of their trade - rich two years together; sieves can hold no water, nor harlots hoard - up money: taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, fiddlers, swaggerers, - fools, and knaves, do all wait upon a common harlot’s trencher; she is - the gallypot to which these drones fly: not for love to the pot, but - for the sweet sucket in it, her money, her money. - - _Hip._ I almost dare pawn my word, her bosom gives warmth to no such - snakes; when did you see her? - - _Orl._ Not seventeen summers. - - _Hip._ Is your hate so old? - - _Orl._ Older; it has a white head, and shall never die ‘till she be - buried: her wrongs shall be my bed-fellow. - - _Hip._ Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame. - - _Orl._ No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out of the world; - I hate him for her: he taught her first to taste poison; I hate her - for herself, because she refused my physic. - - _Hip._ Nay, but Friscobaldo. - - _Orl._ I detest her, I defy both, she’s not mine, she’s— - - _Hip._ Hear her but speak. - - _Orl._ I love no mermaids, I’ll not be caught with a quail-pipe. - - _Hip._ You’re now beyond all reason. Is’t dotage to relieve your - child, being poor? - - _Orl._ ’Tis foolery; relieve her? Were her cold limbs stretcht out - upon a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my nails, to buy her an - hour’s breath, nor give this hair, unless it were to choak her. - - _Hip._ Fare you well, for I’ll trouble you no more. - - [_Exit._ - - _Orl._ And fare you well, Sir, go thy ways; we have few lords of thy - making, that love wenches for their honesty.—‘Las, my girl, art thou - poor? Poverty dwells next door to despair, there’s but a wall between - them: despair is one of hell’s catchpoles, and lest that devil arrest - her, I’ll to her; yet she shall not know me: she shall drink of my - wealth as beggars do of running water, freely; yet never know from - what fountain’s head it flows. Shall a silly bird pick her own breast - to nourish her young ones: and can a father see his child starve? That - were hard: the pelican does it, and shall not I?’ - -The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning. The execution -is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and masterly. There is -the least colour possible used; the pencil drags; the canvas is almost -seen through: but then, what precision of outline, what truth and purity -of tone, what firmness of hand, what marking of character! The words and -answers all along are so true and pertinent, that we seem to see the -gestures, and to hear the tone with which they are accompanied. So when -Orlando, disguised, says to his daughter, ‘You’ll forgive me,’ and she -replies, ‘I am not marble, I forgive you;’ or again, when she introduces -him to her husband, saying simply, ‘It is my father,’ there needs no -stage-direction to supply the relenting tones of voice or cordial -frankness of manner with which these words are spoken. It is as if there -were some fine art to chisel thought, and to embody the inmost movements -of the mind in every-day actions and familiar speech. It has been asked, - - ‘Oh! who can paint a sun-beam to the blind, - Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?’ - -But this difficulty is here in a manner overcome. Simplicity and -extravagance of style, homeliness and quaintness, tragedy and comedy, -interchangeably set their hands and seals to this admirable production. -We find the simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry. The stalk -grows out of the ground; but the flowers spread their flaunting leaves -in the air. The mixture of levity in the chief character bespeaks the -bitterness from which it seeks relief; it is the idle echo of fixed -despair, jealous of observation or pity. The sarcasm quivers on the lip, -while the tear stands congealed on the eye-lid. This ‘tough senior,’ -this impracticable old gentleman softens into a little child; this -choke-pear melts in the mouth like marmalade. In spite of his resolute -professions of misanthropy, he watches over his daughter with kindly -solicitude; plays the careful housewife; broods over her lifeless hopes; -nurses the decay of her husband’s fortune, as he had supported her -tottering infancy; saves the high-flying Matheo from the gallows more -than once, and is twice a father to them. The story has all the romance -of private life, all the pathos of bearing up against silent grief, all -the tenderness of concealed affection:—there is much sorrow patiently -borne, and then comes peace. Bellafront, in the two parts of this play -taken together, is a most interesting character. It is an extreme, and I -am afraid almost an ideal case. She gives the play its title, turns out -a true penitent, that is, a practical one, and is the model of an -exemplary wife. She seems intended to establish the converse of the -position, that _a reformed rake makes the best husband_, the only -difficulty in proving which, is, I suppose, to meet with the character. -The change of her relative position, with regard to Hippolito, who, in -the first part, in the sanguine enthusiasm of youthful generosity, has -reclaimed her from vice, and in the second part, his own faith and love -of virtue having been impaired with the progress of years, tries in vain -to lure her back again to her former follies, has an effect the most -striking and beautiful. The pleadings on both sides, for and against -female faith and constancy, are managed with great polemical skill, -assisted by the grace and vividness of poetical illustration. As an -instance of the manner in which Bellafront speaks of the miseries of her -former situation, ‘and she has felt them knowingly,’ I might give the -lines in which she contrasts the different regard shewn to the modest or -the abandoned of her sex. - - ‘I cannot, seeing she’s woven of such bad stuff, - Set colours on a harlot bad enough. - Nothing did make me when I lov’d them best, - To loath them more than this: when in the street - A fair, young, modest damsel, I did meet; - She seem’d to all a dove, when I pass’d by, - And I to all a raven: every eye - That followed her, went with a bashful glance; - At me each bold and jeering countenance - Darted forth scorn: to her, as if she had been - Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail; - ’Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail. - She crown’d with reverend praises, pass’d by them; - I, though with face mask’d, could not ‘scape the hem; - For, as if heav’n had set strange marks on whores, - Because they should be pointing-stocks to man, - Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan, - Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown, - Yet she’s betray’d by some trick of her own.’ - -Perhaps this sort of appeal to matter of fact and popular opinion, is -more convincing than the scholastic subtleties of the Lady in Comus. The -manner too, in which Infelice, the wife of Hippolito, is made acquainted -with her husband’s infidelity, is finely dramatic; and in the scene -where she convicts him of his injustice by taxing herself with -incontinence first, and then turning his most galling reproaches to her -into upbraidings against his own conduct, she acquits herself with -infinite spirit and address. The contrivance, by which, in the first -part, after being supposed dead, she is restored to life, and married to -Hippolito, though perhaps a little far-fetched, is affecting and -romantic. There is uncommon beauty in the Duke her father’s description -of her sudden illness. In reply to Infelice’s declaration on reviving, -‘I’m well,’ he says, - - ‘Thou wert not so e’en now. Sickness’ pale hand - Laid hold on thee, ev’n in the deadst of feasting: - And when a cup, crown’d with thy lover’s health, - Had touch’d thy lips, a sensible cold dew - Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept - To see such beauty altered.’ - -Candido, the good-natured man of this play, is a character of -inconceivable quaintness and simplicity. His patience and good-humour -cannot be disturbed by any thing. The idea (for it is nothing but an -idea) is a droll one, and is well supported. He is not only resigned to -injuries, but ‘turns them,’ as Falstaff says of diseases, ‘into -commodities.’ He is a patient Grizzel out of petticoats, or a Petruchio -reversed. He is as determined upon winking at affronts, and keeping out -of scrapes at all events, as the hero of the Taming of a Shrew is bent -upon picking quarrels out of straws, and signalizing his manhood without -the smallest provocation to do so. The sudden turn of the character of -Candido, on his second marriage, is, however, as amusing as it is -unexpected. - -Matheo, ‘the high-flying’ husband of Bellafront, is a masterly portrait, -done with equal ease and effect. He is a person almost without virtue or -vice, that is, he is in strictness without any moral principle at all. -He has no malice against others, and no concern for himself. He is gay, -profligate, and unfeeling, governed entirely by the impulse of the -moment, and utterly reckless of consequences. His exclamation, when he -gets a new suit of velvet, or a lucky run on the dice, ‘do we not fly -high,’ is an answer to all arguments. Punishment or advice has no more -effect upon him, than upon the moth that flies into the candle. He is -only to be left to his fate. Orlando saves him from it, as we do the -moth, by snatching it out of the flame, throwing it out of the window, -and shutting down the casement upon it! - -Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Deckar, if he -had the same originality; and perhaps is so, even without it. His White -Devil and Duchess of Malfy, upon the whole perhaps, come the nearest to -Shakespear of any thing we have upon record; the only drawback to them, -the only shade of imputation that can be thrown upon them, ‘by which -they lose some colour,’ is, that they are too like Shakespear, and often -direct imitations of him, both in general conception and individual -expression. So far, there is nobody else whom it would be either so -difficult or so desirable to imitate; but it would have been still -better, if all his characters had been entirely his own, had stood out -as much from others, resting only on their own naked merits, as that of -the honest Hidalgo, on whose praises I have dwelt so much above. Deckar -has, I think, more truth of character, more instinctive depth of -sentiment, more of the unconscious simplicity of nature; but he does -not, out of his own stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of -imagination, or the same glowing colours of language. Deckar excels in -giving expression to certain habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which -remain pretty much the same in all circumstances, the simple -uncompounded elements of nature and passion:—Webster gives more scope to -their various combinations and changeable aspects, brings them into -dramatic play by contrast and comparison, flings them into a state of -fusion by a kindled fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of -oscillation from the impulse of unbridled passion, and carries both -terror and pity to a more painful and sometimes unwarrantable excess. -Deckar is contented with the historic picture of suffering; Webster goes -on to suggest horrible imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and -for itself; the other adorns his sentiments with some image of tender or -awful beauty. In a word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or Boccaccio; as -Webster’s mind appears to have been cast more in the mould of -Shakespear’s, as well naturally as from studious emulation. The -Bellafront and Vittoria Corombona of these two excellent writers, shew -their different powers and turn of mind. The one is all softness; the -other ‘all fire and air.’ The faithful wife of Matheo sits at home -drooping, ‘like the female dove, the whilst her golden couplets are -disclosed’; while the insulted and persecuted Vittoria darts killing -scorn and pernicious beauty at her enemies. This White Devil (as she is -called) is made fair as the leprosy, dazzling as the lightning. She is -dressed like a bride in her wrongs and her revenge. In the trial-scene -in particular, her sudden indignant answers to the questions that are -asked her, startle the hearers. Nothing can be imagined finer than the -whole conduct and conception of this scene, than her scorn of her -accusers and of herself. The sincerity of her sense of guilt triumphs -over the hypocrisy of their affected and official contempt for it. In -answer to the charge of having received letters from the Duke of -Brachiano, she says, - - ‘Grant I was tempted: - Condemn you me, for that the Duke did love me? - So may you blame some fair and chrystal river, - For that some melancholic distracted man - Hath drown’d himself in ‘t.’ - -And again, when charged with being accessary to her husband’s death, and -shewing no concern for it— - - ‘She comes not like a widow; she comes arm’d - With scorn and impudence. Is this a mourning habit?’ - -she coolly replies, - - ‘Had I foreknown his death as you suggest, - I would have bespoke my mourning.’ - -In the closing scene with her cold-blooded assassins, Lodovico and -Gasparo, she speaks daggers, and might almost be supposed to exorcise -the murdering fiend out of these true devils. Every word probes to the -quick. The whole scene is the sublime of contempt and indifference. - - ‘_Vittoria._ If Florence be i’ th’ Court, he would not kill me. - - _Gasparo._ Fool! princes give rewards with their own hands, - But death or punishment by the hands of others. - - _Lodovico_ (_To_ Flamineo). Sirra, you once did strike me; I’ll strike - you - Unto the centre. - - _Flam._ Thou ‘lt do it like a hangman, a base hangman, - Not like a noble fellow; for thou see’st - I cannot strike again. - - _Lod._ Dost laugh? - - _Flam._ Would’st have me die, as I was born, in whining? - - _Gasp._ Recommend yourself to Heaven. - - _Flam._ No, I will carry mine own commendations thither. - - _Lod._ Oh! could I kill you forty times a-day, - And use ‘t four years together, ’twere too little: - Nought grieves, but that you are too few to feed - The famine of our vengeance. What do’st think on? - - _Flam._ Nothing; of nothing: leave thy idle questions— - I am i’ th’ way to study a long silence. - To prate were idle: I remember nothing; - There’s nothing of so infinite vexation - As man’s own thoughts. - - _Lod._ O thou glorious strumpet! - Could I divide thy breath from this pure air - When ‘t leaves thy body, I would suck it up, - And breathe ‘t upon some dunghill. - - _Vit. Cor._ You my death’s-man! - Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough; - Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman: - If thou be, do thy office in right form; - Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness. - - _Lod._ O! thou hast been a most prodigious comet; - But I’ll cut off your train: kill the Moor first. - - _Vit. Cor._ You shall not kill her first; behold my breast; - I will be waited on in death: my servant - Shall never go before me. - - _Gasp._ Are you so brave? - - _Vit. Cor._ Yes, I shall welcome death - As princes do some great embassadours; - I’ll meet thy weapon half way. - - _Lod._ Thou dost not tremble! - Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air. - - _Vit. Cor._ O, thou art deceiv’d, I am too true a woman! - Conceit can never kill me. I’ll tell thee what, - I will not in my death shed one base tear; - Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear. - - _Gasp._ (_To_ Zanche). Thou art my task, black fury. - - _Zanche._ I have blood - As red as either of theirs! Wilt drink some? - ’Tis good for the falling-sickness: I am proud - Death cannot alter my complexion, - For I shall ne’er look pale. - - _Lod._ Strike, strike, - With a joint motion. - - _Vit. Cor._ ’Twas a manly blow: - The next thou giv’st, murther some sucking infant, - And then thou wilt be famous.’ - -Such are some of the _terrible graces_ of the obscure, forgotten -Webster. There are other parts of this play of a less violent, more -subdued, and, if it were possible, even deeper character; such is the -declaration of divorce pronounced by Brachiano on his wife: - - ‘Your hand I’ll kiss: - This is the latest ceremony of my love; - I’ll never more live with you,’ &c. - -which is in the manner of, and equal to, Deckar’s finest things:—and -others, in a quite different style of fanciful poetry and bewildered -passion; such as the lamentation of Cornelia, his mother, for the death -of Marcello, and the parting scene of Brachiano; which would be as fine -as Shakespear, if they were not in a great measure borrowed from his -inexhaustible store. In the former, after Flamineo has stabbed his -brother, and Hortensio comes in, Cornelia exclaims, - - ‘Alas! he is not dead; he’s in a trance. - Why, here’s nobody shall get any thing by his death: - Let me call him again, for God’s sake. - - _Hor._ I would you were deceiv’d. - - _Corn._ O you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me! How many have gone - away thus, for want of ‘tendance? Rear up ‘s head, rear up ‘s head; - his bleeding inward will kill him. - - _Hor._ You see he is departed. - - _Corn._ Let me come to him; give me him as he is. If he be turn’d to - earth, let me but give him one hearty kiss, and you shall put us both - into one coffin. Fetch a looking-glass: see if his breath will not - stain it; or pull out some feathers from my pillow, and lay them to - his lips. Will you lose him for a little pains-taking? - - _Hor._ Your kindest office is to pray for him. - - _Corn._ Alas! I would not pray for him yet. He may live to lay me i’ - th’ ground, and pray for me, if you’ll let me come to him. - - _Enter_ Brachiano, _all armed, save the Bearer, with_ Flamineo _and - Page_. - - _Brach._ Was this your handy-work? - - _Flam._ It was my misfortune. - - _Corn._ He lies, he lies; he did not kill him. These have killed him, - that would not let him be better looked to. - - _Brach._ Have comfort, my griev’d mother. - - _Corn._ O, you screech-owl! - - _Hor._ Forbear, good madam. - - _Corn._ Let me go, let me go. - - (_She runs to_ Flamineo _with her knife drawn, and coming to him, lets - it fall_). - - The God of Heav’n forgive thee! Dost not wonder - I pray for thee? I’ll tell thee what’s the reason: - I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes; - I’d not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well! - Half of thyself lies there; and may’st thou live - To fill an hour-glass with his moulder’d ashes, - To tell how thou should’st spend the time to come - In blest repentance. - - _Brach._ Mother, pray tell me, - How came he by his death? What was the quarrel? - - _Corn._ Indeed, my younger boy presum’d too much - Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words, - Drew his sword first; and so, I know not how, - For I was out of my wits, he fell with ‘s head - Just in my bosom. - - _Page._ This is not true, madam. - - _Corn._ I pr’ythee, peace. - One arrow’s graz’d already: it were vain - To lose this; for that will ne’er be found again.’ - -This is a good deal borrowed from Lear; but the inmost folds of the -human heart, the sudden turns and windings of the fondest affection, are -also laid open with so masterly and original a hand, that it seems to -prove the occasional imitations as unnecessary as they are evident. The -scene where the Duke discovers that he is poisoned, is as follows, and -equally fine. - - ‘_Brach._ Oh! I am gone already. The infection - Flies to the brain and heart. O, thou strong heart, - There’s such a covenant ‘tween the world and thee, - They ‘re loth to part. - - _Giovanni._ O my most lov’d father! - - _Brach._ Remove the boy away: - Where’s this good woman? Had I infinite worlds, - They were too little for thee. Must I leave thee? - - (_To_ Vittoria). - - What say you, screech-owls. (_To the Physicians_) Is the venom mortal? - - _Phy._ Most deadly. - - _Brach._ Most corrupted politic hangman! - You kill without book; but your art to save - Fails you as oft as great men’s needy friends: - I that have given life to offending slaves, - And wretched murderers, have I not power - To lengthen mine own a twelve-month? - Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee. - This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence. - - _Francesco de Medici_ (_in disguise_). Sir, be of comfort. - - _Brach._ Oh thou soft natural death! that art joint-twin - To sweetest slumber!—no rough-bearded comet - Stares on thy mild departure: the dull owl - Beats not against thy casement: the hoarse wolf - Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse, - Whilst horror waits on princes. - - _Vit. Cor._ I am lost for ever. - - _Brach._ How miserable a thing it is to die - ‘Mongst women howling! What are those? - - _Flam._ Franciscans. - They have brought the extreme unction. - - _Brach._ On pain of death let no man name death to me: - It is a word most infinitely terrible. - Withdraw into our cabinet.’ - -The deception practised upon him by Lodovico and Gasparo, who offer him -the sacrament in the disguise of Monks, and then discover themselves to -damn him, is truly diabolical and ghastly. But the genius that suggested -it was as profound as it was lofty. When they are at first introduced, -Flamineo says, - - ‘See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye - Upon the crucifix.’ - -To which Vittoria answers, - - ‘Oh, hold it constant: - It settles his wild spirits; and so his eyes - Melt into tears.’ - -The Duchess of Malfy is not, in my judgment, quite so spirited or -effectual a performance as the White Devil. But it is distinguished by -the same kind of beauties, clad in the same terrors. I do not know but -the occasional strokes of passion are even profounder and more -Shakespearian; but the story is more laboured, and the horror is -accumulated to an overpowering and insupportable height. However -appalling to the imagination and finely done, the scenes of the madhouse -to which the Duchess is condemned with a view to unsettle her reason, -and the interview between her and her brother, where he gives her the -supposed dead hand of her husband, exceed, to my thinking, the just -bounds of poetry and of tragedy. At least, the merit is of a kind, -which, however great, we wish to be rare. A series of such exhibitions -obtruded upon the senses or the imagination must tend to stupefy and -harden, rather than to exalt the fancy or meliorate the heart. I speak -this under correction; but I hope the objection is a venial -common-place. In a different style altogether are the directions she -gives about her children in her last struggles; - - ‘I prythee, look thou giv’st my little boy - Some syrop for his cold, and let the girl - Say her pray’rs ere she sleep. Now what death you please—’ - -and her last word, ‘Mercy,’ which she recovers just strength enough to -pronounce; her proud answer to her tormentors, who taunt her with her -degradation and misery—‘But I am Duchess of Malfy still’[22]—as if the -heart rose up, like a serpent coiled, to resent the indignities put upon -it, and being struck at, struck again; and the staggering reflection her -brother makes on her death, ‘Cover her face: my eyes dazzle: she died -young!’ Bosola replies: - - ‘I think not so; her infelicity - Seem’d to have years too many. - - _Ferdinand._ She and I were twins: - And should I die this instant, I had liv’d - Her time to a minute.’ - -This is not the bandying of idle words and rhetorical common-places, but -the writhing and conflict, and the sublime colloquy of man’s nature with -itself! - -The Revenger’s Tragedy, by Cyril Tourneur, is the only other drama equal -to these and to Shakespear, in ‘the dazzling fence of impassioned -argument,’ in pregnant illustration, and in those profound reaches of -thought, which lay open the soul of feeling. The play, on the whole, -does not answer to the expectations it excites; but the appeals of -Castiza to her mother, who endeavours to corrupt her virtuous -resolutions, ‘Mother, come from that poisonous woman there,’ with others -of the like kind, are of as high and abstracted an essence of poetry, as -any of those above mentioned. - -In short, the great characteristic of the elder dramatic writers is, -that there is nothing theatrical about them. In reading them, you only -think how the persons, into whose mouths certain sentiments are put, -would have spoken or looked: in reading Dryden and others of that -school, you only think, as the authors themselves seem to have done, how -they would be ranted on the stage by some buskined hero or -tragedy-queen. In this respect, indeed, some of his more obscure -contemporaries have the advantage over Shakespear himself, inasmuch as -we have never seen their works represented on the stage; and there is no -stage-trick to remind us of it. The characters of their heroes have not -been cut down to fit into the prompt-book, nor have we ever seen their -names flaring in the play-bills in small or large capitals.—I do not -mean to speak disrespectfully of the stage; but I think higher still of -nature, and next to that, of books. They are the nearest to our -thoughts: they wind into the heart; the poet’s verse slides into the -current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember them when -old. We read there of what has happened to others; we feel that it has -happened to ourselves. They are to be had every where cheap and good. We -breathe but the air of books: we owe every thing to their authors, on -this side barbarism; and we pay them easily with contempt, while living, -and with an epitaph, when dead! Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps; Mrs. -Siddons has left the stage and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so, -there are neither picture-galleries nor theatres-royal on -Salisbury-plain, where I write this; but here, even here, with a few old -authors, I can manage to get through the summer or the winter months, -without ever knowing what it is to feel _ennui_. They sit with me at -breakfast; they walk out with me before dinner. After a long walk -through unfrequented tracks, after starting the hare from the fern, or -hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my head, or being greeted -by the woodman’s ‘stern good-night,’ as he strikes into his narrow -homeward path, I can ‘take mine ease at mine inn,’ beside the blazing -hearth, and shake hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo, as the oldest -acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman, Master Webster, and -Master Heywood, are there; and seated round, discourse the silent hours -away. Shakespear is there himself, not in Cibber’s manager’s coat. -Spenser is hardly yet returned from a ramble through the woods, or is -concealed behind a group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on -the table, as on an altar, never taken up or laid down without -reverence. Lyly’s Endymion sleeps with the moon, that shines in at the -window; and a breath of wind stirring at a distance seems a sigh from -the tree under which he grew old. Faustus disputes in one corner of the -room with fiendish faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront -soothes Matheo, Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chapman -repeats one of the hymns of Homer, in his own fine translation! I should -have no objection to pass my life in this manner out of the world, not -thinking of it, nor it of me; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended -by my friends; careless of the future, but sometimes dreaming of the -past, which might as well be forgotten! Mr. Wordsworth has expressed -this sentiment well (perhaps I have borrowed it from him)— - - ‘Books, dreams, are both a world; and books, we know, - Are a substantial world, both pure and good, - Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, - Our pastime and our happiness may grow. - - · · · · · - Two let me mention dearer than the rest, - The gentle lady wedded to the Moor, - And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb. - - Blessings be with them and eternal praise, - The poets, who on earth have made us heirs - Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays. - Oh, might my name be number’d among theirs, - Then gladly would I end my mortal days!’ - -I have no sort of pretension to join in the concluding wish of the last -stanza; but I trust the writer feels that this aspiration of his early -and highest ambition is already not unfulfilled! - - - - - LECTURE IV - ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. - - -BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, with all their prodigious merits, appear to me -the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine tragic -style of the age of Shakespear. They thought less of their subject, and -more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and unquestioned -command over the stores both of fancy and passion; but they availed -themselves too often of common-place extravagances and theatrical trick. -Men at first produce effect by studying nature, and afterwards they look -at nature only to produce effect. It is the same in the history of other -arts, and of other periods of literature. With respect to most of the -writers of this age, their subject was their master. Shakespear was -alone, as I have said before, master of his subject; but Beaumont and -Fletcher were the first who made a play-thing of it, or a convenient -vehicle for the display of their own powers. The example of preceding or -contemporary writers had given them facility; the frequency of dramatic -exhibition had advanced the popular taste; and this facility of -production, and the necessity for appealing to popular applause, tended -to vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing to pamper that of -the public for novelty and extraordinary effect. There wants something -of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers. They do not wait -nature’s time, or work out her materials patiently and faithfully, but -try to anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They would have a -catastrophe in every scene; so that you have none at last: they would -raise admiration to its height in every line; so that the impression of -the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. They pitch the -characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust themselves by the -eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find all the prodigality -of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an enthusiasm bordering on -extravagance, richness running riot, beauty dissolving in its own -sweetness. They are like heirs just come to their estates, like lovers -in the honey-moon. In the economy of nature’s gifts, they ‘misuse the -bounteous Pan, and thank the Gods amiss.’ Their productions shoot up in -haste, but bear the marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are -two goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, -and with the verdure springing at their feet; but they do not strike -their roots far enough into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen -for the flowers! - -It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and descriptive poets of the -first order; every page of their writings is a _florilegium_: they are -dramatic poets of the second class, in point of knowledge, variety, -vivacity, and effect; there is hardly a passion, character, or -situation, which they have not touched in their devious range, and -whatever they touched, they adorned with some new grace or striking -feature; they are masters of style and versification in almost every -variety of melting modulation or sounding pomp, of which they are -capable: in comic wit and spirit, they are scarcely surpassed by any -writers of any age. There they are in their element, ‘like eagles newly -baited’; but I speak rather of their serious poetry;—and this, I -apprehend, with all its richness, sweetness, loftiness, and grace, wants -something—stimulates more than it gratifies, and leaves the mind in a -certain sense exhausted and unsatisfied. Their fault is a too -ostentatious and indiscriminate display of power. Every thing seems in a -state of fermentation and effervescence, and not to have settled and -found its centre in their minds. The ornaments, through neglect or -abundance, do not always appear sufficiently appropriate: there is -evidently a rich wardrobe of words and images, to set off any sentiments -that occur, but not equal felicity in the choice of the sentiments to be -expressed; the characters in general do not take a substantial form, or -excite a growing interest, or leave a permanent impression; the passion -does not accumulate by the force of time, of circumstances, and habit, -but wastes itself in the first ebullitions of surprise and novelty. - -Besides these more critical objections, there is a too frequent mixture -of voluptuous softness or effeminacy of character with horror in the -subjects, a conscious weakness (I can hardly think it wantonness) of -moral constitution struggling with wilful and violent situations, like -the tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame that dazzles and -consumes it. In the hey-day of their youthful ardour, and the -intoxication of their animal spirits, they take a perverse delight in -tearing up some rooted sentiment, to make a mawkish lamentation over it; -and fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes into forbidden -grounds, to see how they will shoot up and vegetate into luxuriance, to -catch the eye of fancy. They are not safe teachers of morality: they -tamper with it, like an experiment tried _in corpore vili_; and seem to -regard the decomposition of the common affections, and the dissolution -of the strict bonds of society, as an agreeable study and a careless -pastime. The tone of Shakespear’s writings is manly and bracing; theirs -is at once insipid and meretricious, in the comparison. Shakespear never -disturbs the grounds of moral principle; but leaves his characters -(after doing them heaped justice on all sides) to be judged of by our -common sense and natural feeling. Beaumont and Fletcher constantly bring -in equivocal sentiments and characters, as if to set them up to be -debated by sophistical casuistry, or varnished over with the colours of -poetical ingenuity. Or Shakespear may be said to ‘cast the diseases of -the mind, only to restore it to a sound and pristine health’: the -dramatic paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher are, to all appearance, -tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity and laxity of principle. I -do not say that this was the character of the men; but it strikes me as -the character of their minds. The two things are very distinct. The -greatest purists (hypocrisy apart) are often free-livers; and some of -the most unguarded professors of a general license of behaviour, have -been the last persons to take the benefit of their own doctrine, from -which they reap nothing, but the obloquy and the pleasure of startling -their ‘wonder-wounded’ hearers. There is a division of labour, even in -vice. Some persons addict themselves to the speculation only, others to -the practice. The peccant humours of the body or the mind break out in -different ways. One man _sows his wild oats_ in his neighbour’s field: -another on Mount Parnassus; from whence, borne on the breath of fame, -they may hope to spread and fructify to distant times and regions. Of -the latter class were our poets, who, I believe, led unexceptionable -lives, and only indulged their imaginations in occasional unwarrantable -liberties with the Muses. What makes them more inexcusable, and confirms -this charge against them, is, that they are always abusing ‘wanton -poets,’ as if willing to shift suspicion from themselves. - -Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also who laid the foundation of the -artificial diction and tinselled pomp of the next generation of poets, -by aiming at a profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by translating the -commonest circumstances into the language of metaphor and passion. It is -this misplaced and inordinate craving after striking effect and -continual excitement that had at one time rendered our poetry the most -vapid of all things, by not leaving the moulds of poetic diction to be -filled up by the overflowings of nature and passion, but by swelling out -ordinary and unmeaning topics to certain preconceived and indispensable -standards of poetical elevation and grandeur.—I shall endeavour to -confirm this praise, mixed with unwilling blame, by remarking on a few -of their principal tragedies. If I have done them injustice, the -resplendent passages I have to quote will set every thing to rights. - -THE MAID’S TRAGEDY is one of the poorest. The nature of the distress is -of the most disagreeable and repulsive kind; and not the less so, -because it is entirely improbable and uncalled-for. There is no sort of -reason, or no sufficient reason to the reader’s mind, why the king -should marry off his mistress to one of his courtiers, why he should -pitch upon the worthiest for this purpose, why he should, by such a -choice, break off Amintor’s match with the sister of another principal -support of his throne (whose death is the consequence), why he should -insist on the inviolable fidelity of his former mistress to him after -she is married, and why her husband should thus inevitably be made -acquainted with his dishonour, and roused to madness and revenge, except -the mere love of mischief, and gratuitous delight in torturing the -feelings of others, and tempting one’s own fate. The character of -Evadne, however, her naked, unblushing impudence, the mixture of folly -with vice, her utter insensibility to any motive but her own pride and -inclination, her heroic superiority to any signs of shame or scruples of -conscience from a recollection of what is due to herself or others, are -well described; and the lady is true to herself in her repentance, which -is owing to nothing but the accidental impulse and whim of the moment. -The deliberate voluntary disregard of all moral ties and all pretence to -virtue, in the structure of the fable, is nearly unaccountable. Amintor -(who is meant to be the hero of the piece) is a feeble, irresolute -character: his slavish, recanting loyalty to his prince, who has -betrayed and dishonoured him, is of a piece with the tyranny and -insolence of which he is made the sport; and even his tardy revenge is -snatched from his hands, and he kills his former betrothed and beloved -mistress, instead of executing vengeance on the man who has destroyed -his peace of mind and unsettled her intellects. The king, however, meets -his fate from the penitent fury of Evadne; and on this account, the -Maid’s Tragedy was forbidden to be acted in the reign of Charles II. as -countenancing the doctrine of regicide. Aspatia is a beautiful sketch of -resigned and heart-broken melancholy; and Calianax, a blunt, satirical -courtier, is a character of much humour and novelty. There are striking -passages here and there, but fewer than in almost any of their plays. -Amintor’s speech to Evadne, when she makes confession of her -unlooked-for remorse, is, I think, the finest. - - ——‘Do not mock me: - Though I am tame, and bred up with my wrongs, - Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap, - Like a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness, - And do an outrage. Prithee, do not mock me!’ - -KING AND NO KING, which is on a strangely chosen subject as strangely -treated, is very superior in power and effect. There is an unexpected -reservation in the plot, which, in some measure, relieves the -painfulness of the impression. Arbaces is painted in gorgeous, but not -alluring colours. His vain-glorious pretensions and impatience of -contradiction are admirably displayed, and are so managed as to produce -an involuntary comic effect to temper the lofty tone of tragedy, -particularly in the scenes in which he affects to treat his vanquished -enemy with such condescending kindness; and perhaps this display of -upstart pride was meant by the authors as an oblique satire on his low -origin, which is afterwards discovered. His pride of self-will and -fierce impetuosity, are the same in war and in love. The haughty -voluptuousness and pampered effeminacy of his character admit neither -respect for his misfortunes, nor pity for his errors. His ambition is a -fever in the blood; and his love is a sudden transport of ungovernable -caprice that brooks no restraint, and is intoxicated with the lust of -power, even in the lap of pleasure, and the sanctuary of the affections. -The passion of Panthea is, as it were, a reflection from, and lighted at -the shrine of her lover’s flagrant vanity. In the elevation of his rank, -and in the consciousness of his personal accomplishments, he seems -firmly persuaded (and by sympathy to persuade others) that there is -nothing in the world which can be an object of liking or admiration but -himself. The first birth and declaration of this perverted sentiment to -himself, when he meets with Panthea after his return from conquest, -fostered by his presumptuous infatuation and the heat of his inflammable -passions, and the fierce and lordly tone in which he repels the -suggestion of the natural obstacles to his sudden phrenzy, are in -Beaumont and Fletcher’s most daring manner: but the rest is not equal. -What may be called the love-scenes are equally gross and commonplace; -and instead of any thing like delicacy or a struggle of different -feelings, have all the indecency and familiarity of a brothel. Bessus, a -comic character in this play, is a swaggering coward, something between -Parolles and Falstaff. - -The FALSE ONE is an indirect imitation of Antony and Cleopatra. We have -Septimius for Œnobarbas and Cæsar for Antony. Cleopatra herself is -represented in her girlish state, but she is made divine in - - ‘Youth that opens like perpetual spring,’ - -and promises the rich harvest of love and pleasure that succeeds it. Her -first presenting herself before Cæsar, when she is brought in by Sceva, -and the impression she makes upon him, like a vision dropt from the -clouds, or - - ‘Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love.’ - -are exquisitely conceived. Photinus is an accomplished villain, -well-read in crooked policy and quirks of state; and the description of -Pompey has a solemnity and grandeur worthy of his unfortunate end. -Septimius says, bringing in his lifeless head, - - ‘’Tis here, ’tis done! Behold, you fearful viewers, - Shake, and behold the model of the world here, - The pride and strength! Look, look again, ’tis finished! - That that whole armies, nay, whole nations, - Many and mighty kings, have been struck blind at, - And fled before, wing’d with their fear and terrors, - That steel War waited on, and Fortune courted, - That high-plum’d Honour built up for her own; - Behold that mightiness, behold that fierceness, - Behold that child of war, with all his glories, - By this poor hand made breathless!’ - -And again Cæsar says of him, who was his mortal enemy (it was not held -the fashion in those days, nor will it be held so in time to come, to -lampoon those whom you have vanquished)— - - ——‘Oh thou conqueror, - Thou glory of the world once, now the pity, - Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus? - What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on - To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian? - The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger, - That honourable war ne’er taught a nobleness, - Not worthy circumstance shew’d what a man was? - That never heard thy name sung but in banquets, - And loose lascivious pleasures? to a boy, - That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness, - No study of thy life to know thy goodness? - Egyptians, do you think your highest pyramids, - Built to outdure the sun, as you suppose, - Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes, - Are monuments fit for him! No, brood of Nilus, - Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven; - No pyramids set off his memories, - But the eternal substance of his greatness, - To which I leave him.’ - -It is something worth living for, to write or even read such poetry as -this is, or to know that it has been written, or that there have been -subjects on which to write it!—This, of all Beaumont and Fletcher’s -plays, comes the nearest in style and manner to Shakespear, not -excepting the first act of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which has been -sometimes attributed to him. - -The FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS by Fletcher alone, is ‘a perpetual feast of -nectar’d sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.’ The author has in it -given a loose to his fancy, and his fancy was his most delightful and -genial quality, where, to use his own words, - - ‘He takes most ease, and grows ambitious - Thro’ his own wanton fire and pride delicious.’ - -The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout are luxuriant and delicate -in a high degree. He came near to Spenser in a certain tender and -voluptuous sense of natural beauty; he came near to Shakespear in the -playful and fantastic expression of it. The whole composition is an -exquisite union of dramatic and pastoral poetry; where the local -descriptions receive a tincture from the sentiments and purposes of the -speaker, and each character, cradled in the lap of nature, paints ‘her -virgin fancies wild’ with romantic grace and classic elegance. - -The place and its employments are thus described by Chloe to Thenot: - - ——‘Here be woods as green - As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet - As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet - Face of the curled stream, with flow’rs as many - As the young spring gives, and as choice as any; - Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, - Arbours o’ergrown with woodbine; caves, and dells; - Chuse where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing, - Or gather rushes, to make many a ring - For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love, - How the pale Phœbe, hunting in a grove, - First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes - She took eternal fire that never dies; - How she conveyed him softly in a sleep, - His temples bound with poppy, to the steep - Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, - Gilding the mountain with her brother’s light, - To kiss her sweetest.’ - -There are few things that can surpass in truth and beauty of allegorical -description, the invocation of Amaryllis to the God of Shepherds, Pan, -to save her from the violence of the Sullen Shepherd, for Syrinx’ sake: - - ——‘For her dear sake, - That loves the rivers’ brinks, and still doth shake - In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit!’ - -Or again, the friendly Satyr promises Clorin— - - ‘Brightest, if there be remaining - Any service, without feigning - I will do it; were I set - To catch the nimble wind, or get - Shadows gliding on the green.’ - -It would be a task no less difficult than this, to follow the flight of -the poet’s Muse, or catch her fleeting graces, fluttering her golden -wings, and singing in notes angelical of youth, of love, and joy! - -There is only one affected and ridiculous character in this drama, that -of Thenot in love with Clorin. He is attached to her for her inviolable -fidelity to her buried husband, and wishes her not to grant his suit, -lest it should put an end to his passion. Thus he pleads to her against -himself: - - ——‘If you yield, I die - To all affection; ’tis that loyalty - You tie unto this grave I so admire; - And yet there’s something else I would desire, - If you would hear me, but withal deny. - Oh Pan, what an uncertain destiny - Hangs over all my hopes! I will retire; - For if I longer stay, this double fire - Will lick my life up.’ - -This is paltry quibbling. It is spurious logic, not genuine feeling. A -pedant may hang his affections on the point of a dilemma in this manner; -but nature does not sophisticate; or when she does, it is to gain her -ends, not to defeat them. - -The Sullen Shepherd turns out too dark a character in the end, and gives -a shock to the gentle and pleasing sentiments inspired throughout. - -The resemblance of Comus to this poem is not so great as has been -sometimes contended, nor are the particular allusions important or -frequent. Whatever Milton copied, he made his own. In reading the -Faithful Shepherdess, we find ourselves breathing the moonlight air -under the cope of heaven, and wander by forest side or fountain, among -fresh dews and flowers, following our vagrant fancies, or smit with the -love of nature’s works. In reading Milton’s Comus, and most of his other -works, we seem to be entering a lofty dome raised over our heads and -ascending to the skies, and as if nature and every thing in it were but -a temple and an image consecrated by the poet’s art to the worship of -virtue and pure religion. The speech of Clorin, after she has been -alarmed by the Satyr, is the only one of which Milton has made a free -use. - - ‘And all my fears go with thee, - What greatness or what private hidden power - Is there in me to draw submission - From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal: - The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal, - And she that bore me mortal: prick my hand, - And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and - The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink, - Makes me a-cold: my fear says, I am mortal. - Yet I have heard, (my mother told it me, - And now I do believe it), if I keep - My virgin flow’r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, - No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend, - Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves, - Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion - Draw me to wander after idle fires; - Or voices calling me in dead of night - To make me follow, and so tole me on - Thro’ mire and standing pools to find my ruin; - Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew - Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats - Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen, - Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there’s a pow’r - In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast - All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites - That break their confines: then, strong Chastity, - Be thou my strongest guard, for here I’ll dwell, - In opposition against fate and hell!’ - -Ben Jonson’s Sad Shepherd comes nearer it in style and spirit, but still -with essential differences, like the two men, and without any appearance -of obligation. Ben’s is more homely and grotesque, Fletcher’s is more -visionary and fantastical. I hardly know which to prefer. If Fletcher -has the advantage in general power and sentiment, Jonson is superior in -_naiveté_ and truth of local colouring. - -The TWO NOBLE KINSMEN is another monument of Fletcher’s genius; and it -is said also of Shakespear’s. The style of the first act has certainly -more weight, more abruptness, and more involution, than the general -style of Fletcher, with fewer softenings and fillings-up to sheathe the -rough projecting points and piece the disjointed fragments together. For -example, the compliment of Theseus to one of the Queens, that Hercules - - ‘Tumbled him down upon his Nemean hide, - And swore his sinews thaw’d’ - -at sight of her beauty, is in a bolder and more masculine vein than -Fletcher usually aimed at. Again, the supplicating address of the -distressed Queen to Hippolita, - - ——‘Lend us a knee: - But touch the ground for us no longer time - Than a dove’s motion, when the head’s pluck’d off’— - -is certainly in the manner of Shakespear, with his subtlety and strength -of illustration. But, on the other hand, in what immediately follows, -relating to their husbands left dead in the field of battle, - - ‘Tell him if he i’ th’ blood-siz’d field lay swoln, - Shewing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon, - What you would do’— - -I think we perceive the extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher, not -contented with truth or strength of description, but hurried away by the -love of violent excitement into an image of disgust and horror, not -called for, and not at all proper in the mouth into which it is put. -There is a studied exaggeration of the sentiment, and an evident -imitation of the parenthetical interruptions and breaks in the line, -corresponding to what we sometimes meet in Shakespear, as in the -speeches of Leontes in the Winter’s Tale; but the sentiment is overdone, -and the style merely mechanical. Thus Hippolita declares, on her lord’s -going to the wars, - - ‘We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep, - When our friends don their helms, or put to sea, - Or tell of babes broach’d on the lance, or women - That have seethed their infants in (and after eat them) - The brine they wept at killing ’em; then if - You stay to see of us such spinsters, we - Should hold you here forever.’ - -One might apply to this sort of poetry what Marvel says of some sort of -passions, that it is - - ‘Tearing our pleasures with rough strife - Thorough the iron gates of life.’ - -It is not in the true spirit of Shakespear, who was ‘born only heir to -all humanity,’ whose horrors were not gratuitous, and who did not harrow -up the feelings for the sake of making mere _bravura_ speeches. There -are also in this first act, several repetitions of Shakespear’s -phraseology: a thing that seldom or never occurs in his own works. For -instance, - - ——‘Past slightly - _His careless execution_’— - - ‘_The very lees_ of such, millions of rates - Exceed _the wine_ of others’— - - ——‘Let _the event_, - That _never-erring arbitrator_, tell us’— - - ‘Like _old importment’s bastard_’— - -There are also words that are never used by Shakespear in a similar -sense: - - ——‘All our surgeons - _Convent_ in their behoof’— - - ‘We _convent_ nought else but woes’— - -In short, it appears to me that the first part of this play was written -in imitation of Shakespear’s manner; but I see no reason to suppose that -it was his, but the common tradition, which is however by no means well -established. The subsequent acts are confessedly Fletcher’s, and the -imitations of Shakespear which occur there (not of Shakespear’s manner -as differing from his, but as it was congenial to his own spirit and -feeling of nature) are glorious in themselves, and exalt our idea of the -great original which could give birth to such magnificent conceptions in -another. The conversation of Palamon and Arcite in prison is of this -description—the outline is evidently taken from that of Guiderius, -Arviragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline, but filled up with a rich -profusion of graces that make it his own again. - - ‘_Pal._ How do you, noble cousin? - - _Arc._ How do you, Sir? - - _Pal._ Why, strong enough to laugh at misery, - And bear the chance of war yet. We are prisoners, - I fear for ever, cousin. - - _Arc._ I believe it; - And to that destiny have patiently - Laid up my hour to come. - - _Pal._ Oh, cousin Arcite, - Where is Thebes now? where is our noble country? - Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more - Must we behold those comforts; never see - The hardy youths strive for the games of honour, - Hung with the painted favours of their ladies, - Like tall ships under sail: then start amongst ’em, - And as an east wind, leave ’em all behind us - Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite, - Even in the wagging of a wanton leg, - Outstript the people’s praises, won the garlands, - Ere they have time to wish ’em ours. Oh, never - Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour, - Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses, - Like proud seas under us! Our good swords now - (Better the red-eyed God of war ne’er wore) - Ravish’d our sides, like age, must run to rust, - And deck the temples of those Gods that hate us: - These hands shall never draw ’em out like lightning, - To blast whole armies more. - - _Arc._ No, Palamon, - Those hopes are prisoners with us: here we are, - And here the graces of our youth must wither, - Like a too-timely spring: here age must find us, - And which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried; - The sweet embraces of a loving wife - Loaden with kisses, arm’d with thousand Cupids, - Shall never clasp our necks! No issue know us, - No figures of ourselves shall we e’er see, - To glad our age, and like young eaglets teach ’em - Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say, - Remember what your fathers were, and conquer! - The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments, - And in their songs curse ever-blinded fortune, - Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done - To youth and nature. This is all our world: - We shall know nothing here, but one another; - Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes; - The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it; - Summer shall come, and with her all delights, - But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still. - - _Pal._ ’Tis too true, Arcite! To our Theban hounds, - That shook the aged forest with their echoes, - No more now must we halloo; no more shake - Our pointed javelins, while the angry swine - Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages, - Struck with our well-steel’d darts! All valiant uses - (The food and nourishment of noble minds) - In us two here shall perish; we shall die - (Which is the curse of honour) lazily, - Children of grief and ignorance. - - _Arc._ Yet, cousin, - Even from the bottom of these miseries, - From all that fortune can inflict upon us, - I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings, - If the Gods please to hold here; a brave patience, - And the enjoying of our griefs together. - Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish - If I think this our prison! - - _Pal._ Certainly, - ’Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes - Were twinn’d together; ’tis most true, two souls - Put in two noble bodies, let ’em suffer - The gall of hazard, so they grow together, - Will never sink; they must not; say they could, - A willing man dies sleeping, and all’s done. - - _Arc._ Shall we make worthy uses of this place, - That all men hate so much? - - _Pal._ How, gentle cousin? - - _Arc._ Let’s think this prison a holy sanctuary - To keep us from corruption of worse men! - We’re young, and yet desire the ways of honour: - That, liberty and common conversation, - The poison of pure spirits, might, like women, - Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing - Can be, but our imaginations - May make it ours? And here, being thus together, - We are an endless mine to one another; - We’re father, friends, acquaintance; - We are, in one another, families; - I am your heir, and you are mine; this place - Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor - Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience, - We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us: - The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas - Swallow their youth; were we at liberty, - A wife might part us lawfully, or business; - Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men - Crave our acquaintance; I might sicken, cousin, - Where you should never know it, and so perish - Without your noble hand to close mine eyes, - Or prayers to the Gods: a thousand chances, - Were we from hence, would sever us. - - _Pal._ You have made me - (I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton - With my captivity; what a misery - It is to live abroad, and every where! - ’Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here, - I’m sure a more content; and all those pleasures, - That woo the wills of men to vanity, - I see thro’ now: and am sufficient - To tell the world, ’tis but a gaudy shadow - That old time, as he passes by, takes with him. - What had we been, old in the court of Creon, - Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance - The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite, - Had not the loving Gods found this place for us, - We had died as they do, ill old men unwept, - And had their epitaphs, the people’s curses! - Shall I say more? - - _Arc._ I would hear you still. - - _Pal._ You shall. - Is there record of any two that lov’d - Better than we do, Arcite? - - _Arc._ Sure there cannot. - - _Pal._ I do not think it possible our friendship - Should ever leave us. - - _Arc._ Till our deaths it cannot.’ - -Thus they ‘sing their bondage freely:’ but just then enters Æmilia, who -parts all this friendship between them, and turns them to deadliest -foes. - -The jailor’s daughter, who falls in love with Palamon, and goes mad, is -a wretched interpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy of Ophelia. -But they readily availed themselves of all the dramatic common-places to -be found in Shakespear, love, madness, processions, sports, -imprisonment, &c. and copied him too often in earnest, to have a right -to parody him, as they sometimes did, in jest.—The story of the Two -Noble Kinsmen is taken from Chaucer’s Palamon and Arcite; but the latter -part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic power and interest, -degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of the principal events, -and possesses little value or effect.—It is not improbable that Beaumont -and Fletcher’s having dramatised this story, put Dryden upon modernising -it. - -I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher’s dramas (52 in number), -but I have mentioned some of the principal, and the excellences and -defects of the rest may be judged of from these. The Bloody Brother, A -Wife for a Month, Bonduca, Thierry and Theodoret, are among the best of -their tragedies: among the comedies, the Night Walker, the Little French -Lawyer, and Monsieur Thomas, come perhaps next to the Chances, the Wild -Goose Chase, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife.—Philaster, or Love lies a -Bleeding, is one of the most admirable productions of these authors (the -last I shall mention); and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised as -Bellario, the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealousy of Philaster, are -beyond all praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty and -high-wrought passion that I might quote, are out of number. One only -must suffice, the account of the commencement of Euphrasia’s love to -Philaster. - - ——‘Sitting in my window, - Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God - I thought (but it was you) enter our gates; - My blood flew out, and back again as fast - As I had puffed it forth and suck’d it in - Like breath; then was I called away in haste - To entertain you. Never was a man - Heav’d from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais’d - So high in thoughts as I: you left a kiss - Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep - From you forever. I did hear you talk - Far above singing!’ - -And so it is our poets themselves write, ‘far above singing.’[23] I am -loth to part with them, and wander down, as we now must, - - ‘Into a lower world, to theirs obscure - And wild—To breathe in other air - Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.’ - -Ben Jonson’s serious productions are, in my opinion, superior to his -comic ones. What he does, is the result of strong sense and painful -industry; but sense and industry agree better with the grave and severe, -than with the light and gay productions of the Muse. ‘His plays were -works,’ as some one said of them, ‘while others’ works were plays.’ The -observation had less of compliment than of truth in it. He may be said -to mine his way into a subject, like a mole, and throws up a prodigious -quantity of matter on the surface, so that the richer the soil in which -he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have. His fault is, that he -sets himself too much to his subject, and cannot let go his hold of an -idea, after the insisting on it becomes tiresome or painful to others. -But his tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy -than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords -better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his -learning engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks -like genius. - - ‘_Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma._’ - -He was equal, by an effort, to the highest things, and took the same, -and even more successful pains to grovel to the lowest. He raised -himself up or let himself down to the level of his subject, by ponderous -machinery. By dint of application, and a certain strength of nerve, he -could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less than to mine Host of the -New Inn. His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an -admirable piece of ancient mosaic. The principal character gives one the -idea of a lofty column of solid granite, nodding to its base from its -pernicious height, and dashed in pieces, by a breath of air, a word of -its creator—feared, not pitied, scorned, unwept, and forgotten. The -depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another -throughout: the poet has worked out the historian’s outline, so that the -vices and passions, the ambition and servility of public men, in the -heated and poisoned atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were -never described in fuller or more glowing colours.—I am half afraid to -give any extracts, lest they should be tortured into an application to -other times and characters than those referred to by the poet. Some of -the sounds, indeed, may bear (for what I know), an awkward construction: -some of the objects may look double to squint-eyed suspicion. But that -is not my fault. It only proves, that the characters of prophet and poet -are implied in each other; that he who describes human nature well once, -describes it for good and all, as it was, is, and I begin to fear, will -ever be. Truth always was, and must always remain a libel to the tyrant -and the slave. Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius Natta, two public -informers in those days, are described as - - ‘Two of Sejanus’ blood-hounds, whom he breeds - With human flesh, to bay at citizens.’ - -But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, debating the point of his -own character with two Senators whom he has entrapped, boldly asserts, -in a more courtly strain, - - ‘——To be a spy on traitors, - Is honourable vigilance.’ - -This sentiment of the respectability of the employment of a government -spy, which had slept in Tacitus for near two thousand years, has not -been without its modern patrons. The effects of such ‘honourable -vigilance’ are very finely exposed in the following high-spirited -dialogue between Lepidus and Arruntius, two noble Romans, who loved -their country, but were not fashionable enough to confound their country -with its oppressors, and the extinguishers of its liberty. - - ‘_Arr._ What are thy arts (good patriot, teach them me) - That have preserv’d thy hairs to this white dye, - And kept so reverend and so dear a head - Safe on his comely shoulders? - - _Lep._ Arts, Arruntius! - None but the plain and passive fortitude - To suffer and be silent; never stretch - These arms against the torrent; live at home, - With my own thoughts and innocence about me, - Not tempting the wolves’ jaws: these are my arts. - - _Arr._ I would begin to study ’em, if I thought - They would secure me. May I pray to Jove - In secret, and be safe? aye, or aloud? - With open wishes? so I do not mention - Tiberius or Sejanus? Yes, I must, - If I speak out. ’Tis hard, that. May I think, - And not be rack’d? What danger is’t to dream? - Talk in one’s sleep, or cough! Who knows the law? - May I shake my head without a comment? Say - It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown - Upon the Gemonies? These now are things, - Whereon men’s fortunes, yea, their fate depends: - Nothing hath privilege ’gainst the violent ear. - No place, no day, no hour (we see) is free - (Not our religious and most sacred times) - From some one kind of cruelty; all matter, - Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madman’s rage, - The idleness of drunkards, women’s nothing, - Jesters’ simplicity, all, all is good - That can be catch’d at.’ - -’Tis a pretty picture; and the duplicates of it, though multiplied -without end, are seldom out of request. - -The following portrait of a prince besieged by flatterers (taken from -Tiberius) has unrivalled force and beauty, with historic truth. - - ——‘If this man - Had but a mind allied unto his words, - How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome? - Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall - Under a virtuous prince. Wish’d liberty - Ne’er lovelier looks than under such a crown. - But when his grace is merely but lip-good, - And that, no longer than he airs himself - Abroad in public, there to seem to shun - The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within - Are lechery unto him, and so feed - His brutish sense with their afflicting sound, - As (dead to virtue) he permits himself - Be carried like a pitcher by the ears - To every act of vice; this is a case - Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh - And close approach of bloody tyranny. - Flattery is midwife unto princes’ rage: - And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant - Than that, and whisperers’ grace, that have the time, - The place, the power, to make all men offenders!’ - -The only part of this play in which Ben Jonson has completely forgotten -himself, (or rather seems not to have done so), is in the conversations -between Livia and Eudemus, about a wash for her face, here called a -_fucus_, to appear before Sejanus. Catiline’s Conspiracy does not -furnish by any means an equal number of striking passages, and is spun -out to an excessive length with Cicero’s artificial and affected -orations against Catiline, and in praise of himself. His apologies for -his own eloquence, and declarations that in all his art he uses no art -at all, put one in mind of Polonius’s circuitous way of coming to the -point. Both these tragedies, it might be observed, are constructed on -the exact principles of a French historical picture, where every head -and figure is borrowed from the antique; but somehow, the precious -materials of old Roman history and character are better preserved in -Jonson’s page than on David’s canvas. - -Two of the most poetical passages in Ben Jonson, are the description of -Echo in Cynthia’s Revels, and the fine comparison of the mind to a -temple, in the New Inn; a play which, on the whole, however, I can read -with no patience. - -I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with some account of Massinger -and Ford, who wrote in the time of Charles I. I am sorry I cannot do it -_con amore_. The writers of whom I have chiefly had to speak were true -poets, impassioned, fanciful, ‘musical as is Apollo’s lute;’ but -Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford finical and fastidious. I find -little in the works of these two dramatists, but a display of great -strength and subtlety of understanding, inveteracy of purpose, and -perversity of will. This is not exactly what we look for in poetry, -which, according to the most approved recipes, should combine pleasure -with profit, and not owe all its fascination over the mind to its power -of shocking or perplexing us. The Muses should attract by grace or -dignity of mien. Massinger makes an impression by hardness and -repulsiveness of manner. In the intellectual processes which he delights -to describe, ‘reason panders will:’ he fixes arbitrarily on some object -which there is no motive to pursue, or every motive combined against it, -and then by screwing up his heroes or heroines to the deliberate and -blind accomplishment of this, thinks to arrive at ‘the true pathos and -sublime of human life.’ That is not the way. He seldom touches the heart -or kindles the fancy. It is in vain to hope to excite much sympathy with -convulsive efforts of the will, or intricate contrivances of the -understanding, to obtain that which is better left alone, and where the -interest arises principally from the conflict between the absurdity of -the passion and the obstinacy with which it is persisted in. For the -most part, his villains are a sort of _lusus naturæ_; his impassioned -characters are like drunkards or madmen. Their conduct is extreme and -outrageous, their motives unaccountable and weak; their misfortunes are -without necessity, and their crimes without temptation, to ordinary -apprehensions. I do not say that this is invariably the case in all -Massinger’s scenes, but I think it will be found that a principle of -playing at cross-purposes is the ruling passion throughout most of them. -This is the case in the tragedy of the Unnatural Combat, in the Picture, -the Duke of Milan, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and even in the Bondman, -and the Virgin Martyr, &c. In the Picture, Matthias nearly loses his -wife’s affections, by resorting to the far-fetched and unnecessary -device of procuring a magical portrait to read the slightest variation -in her thoughts. In the same play, Honoria risks her reputation and her -life to gain a clandestine interview with Matthias, merely to shake his -fidelity to his wife, and when she has gained her object, tells the king -her husband in pure caprice and fickleness of purpose. The Virgin Martyr -is nothing but a tissue of instantaneous conversions to and from -Paganism and Christianity. The only scenes of any real beauty and -tenderness in this play, are those between Dorothea and Angelo, her -supposed friendless beggar-boy, but her guardian angel in disguise, -which are understood to be by Deckar. The interest of the Bondman turns -upon two different acts of penance and self-denial, in the persons of -the hero and heroine, Pisander and Cleora. In the Duke of Milan (the -most poetical of Massinger’s productions), Sforza’s resolution to -destroy his wife, rather than bear the thought of her surviving him, is -as much out of the verge of nature and probability, as it is unexpected -and revolting, from the want of any circumstances of palliation leading -to it. It stands out alone, a pure piece of voluntary atrocity, which -seems not the dictate of passion, but a start of phrensy; as -cold-blooded in the execution as it is extravagant in the conception. - -Again, Francesco, in this play, is a person whose actions we are at a -loss to explain till the conclusion of the piece, when the attempt to -account for them from motives originally amiable and generous, only -produces a double sense of incongruity, and instead of satisfying the -mind, renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours to seduce the wife -of his benefactor, he then (failing) attempts her death, slanders her -foully, and wantonly causes her to be slain by the hand of her husband, -and has him poisoned by a nefarious stratagem, and all this to appease a -high sense of injured honour, that ‘felt a stain like a wound,’ and from -the tender overflowings of fraternal affection, his sister having, it -appears, been formerly betrothed to, and afterwards deserted by, the -Duke of Milan. Sir Giles Overreach is the most successful and striking -effort of Massinger’s pen, and the best known to the reader, but it will -hardly be thought to form an exception to the tenour of the above -remarks.[24] The same spirit of caprice and sullenness survives in -Rowe’s Fair Penitent, taken from this author’s Fatal Dowry. - -Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some others, from whose -judgment I dissent with diffidence. It has been lamented that the play -of his which has been most admired (’Tis Pity She’s a Whore) had not a -less exceptionable subject. I do not know, but I suspect that the -exceptionableness of the subject is that which constitutes the chief -merit of the play. The repulsiveness of the story is what gives it its -critical interest; for it is a studiously prosaic statement of facts, -and naked declaration of passions. It was not the least of Shakespear’s -praise, that he never tampered with unfair subjects. His genius was -above it; his taste kept aloof from it. I do not deny the power of -simple painting and polished style in this tragedy in general, and of a -great deal more in some few of the scenes, particularly in the quarrel -between Annabella and her husband, which is wrought up to a pitch of -demoniac scorn and phrensy with consummate art and knowledge; but I do -not find much other power in the author (generally speaking) than that -of playing with edged tools, and knowing the use of poisoned weapons. -And what confirms me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency of -his other plays. Except the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I -think extravagant—others may think it sublime, and be right) they are -merely exercises of style and effusions of wire-drawn sentiment. Where -they have not the sting of illicit passion, they are quite pointless, -and seem painted on gauze, or spun of cobwebs. The affected brevity and -division of some of the lines into hemistichs, &c. so as to make in one -case a mathematical stair-case of the words and answers given to -different speakers,[25] is an instance of frigid and ridiculous -pedantry. An artificial elaborateness is the general characteristic of -Ford’s style. In this respect his plays resemble Miss Baillie’s more -than any others I am acquainted with, and are quite distinct from the -exuberance and unstudied force which characterised his immediate -predecessors. There is too much of scholastic subtlety, an innate -perversity of understanding or predominance of will, which either seeks -the irritation of inadmissible subjects, or to stimulate its own -faculties by taking the most barren, and making something out of -nothing, in a spirit of contradiction. He does not _draw along with_ the -reader: he does not work upon our sympathy, but on our antipathy or our -indifference; and there is as little of the social or gregarious -principle in his productions as there appears to have been in his -personal habits, if we are to believe Sir John Suckling, who says of him -in the Sessions of the Poets— - - ‘In the dumps John Ford alone by himself sat - With folded arms and melancholy hat.’ - -I do not remember without considerable effort the plot or persons of -most of his plays—Perkin Warbeck, The Lover’s Melancholy, Love’s -Sacrifice, and the rest. There is little character, except of the most -evanescent or extravagant kind (to which last class we may refer that of -the sister of Calantha in the Broken Heart)—little imagery or fancy, and -no action. It is but fair however to give a scene or two, in -illustration of these remarks (or in confutation of them, if they are -wrong) and I shall take the concluding one of the Broken Heart, which is -held up as the author’s master-piece. - - ‘SCENE—_A Room in the Palace._ - - _Loud Music._—_Enter_ Euphranea, _led by_ Groneas _and_ Hemophil: - Prophilus, _led by_ Christalla _and_ Philema: Nearchus _supporting_ - Calantha, Crotolon, _and_ Amelus.—(_Music ceases_). - - _Cal._ We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus; on whom attend - they? - - _Crot._ My son, gracious princess, - Whisper’d some new device, to which these revels - Should be but usher: wherein I conceive - Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors. - - _Cal._ A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes, - Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes - Is with the king? - - _Crot._ He is. - - _Cal._ On to the dance! - Dear cousin, hand you the bride: the bridegroom must be - Entrusted to my courtship. Be not jealous, - Euphranea; I shall scarcely prove a temptress. - Fall to our dance! - - (_They dance the first change, during which enter_ Armostes). - - _Arm._ (_in a whisper to_ Calantha). The king your father’s dead. - - _Cal._ To the other change. - - _Arm._ Is’t possible? - - _Another Dance._—_Enter_ Bassanes. - - _Bass._ (_in a whisper to_ Calantha). Oh! Madam, - Panthea, poor Panthea’s starv’d. - - _Cal._ Beshrew thee! - Lead to the next! - - _Bass._ Amazement dulls my senses. - - _Another Dance._—_Enter_ Orgilus. - - _Org._ Brave Ithocles is murder’d, murder’d cruelly. - - (_Aside to_ Calantha). - - _Cal._ How dull this music sounds! Strike up more sprightly: - Our footings are not active like our heart,[26] - Which treads the nimbler measure. - - _Org._ I am thunderstruck. - - _The last Change._—_Music ceases._ - - _Cal._ So; Let us breathe awhile. Hath not this motion - Rais’d fresher colours on our cheek? - - _Near._ Sweet princess, - A perfect purity of blood enamels - The beauty of your white. - - _Cal._ We all look cheerfully: - And, cousin, ’tis methinks a rare presumption - In any who prefers our lawful pleasures - Before their own sour censure, to interrupt - The custom of this ceremony bluntly. - - _Near._ None dares, lady. - - _Cal._ Yes, yes; some hollow voice deliver’d to me - How that the king was dead. - - _Arm._ The king is dead,’ &c. &c. - -This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in masquerade. Nor is it, I -think, accounted for, though it may be in part redeemed by her solemn -address at the altar to the dead body of her husband. - - ‘_Cal._ Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow - Of my contracted lord! Bear witness all, - I put my mother’s wedding-ring upon - His finger; ’twas my father’s last bequest: - - (_Places a ring on the finger of_ Ithocles). - - Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am: - Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords, - I but deceiv’d your eyes with antic gesture, - When one news strait came huddling on another - Of death, and death, and death: still I danc’d forward; - But it struck home and here, and in an instant. - Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries - Can vow a present end to all their sorrow’s, - Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them. - They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings: - Let me die smiling. - - _Near._ ’Tis a truth too ominous. - - _Cal._ One kiss on these cold lips—my last: crack, crack: - Argos, now Sparta’s king, command the voices - Which wait at th’ altar, now to sing the song - I fitted for my end.’ - -And then, after the song, she dies. - - -This is the true false gallop of sentiment: any thing more artificial -and mechanical I cannot conceive. The boldness of the attempt, however, -the very extravagance, might argue the reliance of the author on the -truth of feeling prompting him to hazard it; but the whole scene is a -forced transposition of that already alluded to in Marston’s Malcontent. -Even the form of the stage directions is the same. - - ‘_Enter_ Mendozo _supporting the Duchess_; Guerrino; _the Ladies that - are on the stage rise_. Ferrardo _ushers in the_ Duchess; _then - takes a Lady to tread a measure_. - - _Aurelia._ We will dance: music: we will dance.... - - _Enter_ Prepasso. - - Who saw the Duke? the Duke? - - _Aurelia._ Music. - - _Prepasso._ The Duke? is the Duke returned? - - _Aurelia._ Music. - - _Enter_ Celso. - - The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not. - -_Aurelia._ We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private -retirement; we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves. - - _Enter a_ Page. - -_Celso._ Boy, thy master? where’s the Duke? - -_Page._ Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless -limbs; he told me he was heavy, would sleep: bid me walk off, for the -strength of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams: I strait obeyed, -nor ever saw him since; but wheresoe’er he is, he’s sad. - -_Aurelia._ Music, sound high, as in our heart; sound high. - - _Enter_ Malevole _and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit._ - -_Malevole._ The Duke? Peace, the Duke is dead. - -_Aurelia._ Music!’ - - _Act IV. Scene 3._ - -The passage in Ford appears to me an ill-judged copy from this. That a -woman should call for music, and dance on in spite of the death of her -husband whom she hates, without regard to common decency, is but too -possible: that she should dance on with the same heroic perseverance in -spite of the death of her husband, of her father, and of every one else -whom she loves, from regard to common courtesy or appearance, is not -surely natural. The passions may silence the voice of humanity, but it -is, I think, equally against probability and decorum to make both the -passions and the voice of humanity give way (as in the example of -Calantha) to a mere form of outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the -strongest and most uncontroulable feelings can only be justified from -necessity, for some great purpose, which is not the case in Ford’s play; -or it must be done for the effect and _eclat_ of the thing, which is not -fortitude but affectation. Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy on this -passage in the Broken Heart has failed (as far as I can judge) in -establishing the parallel between this uncalled-for exhibition of -stoicism, and the story of the Spartan Boy. - -It may be proper to remark here, that most of the great men of the -period I have treated of (except the greatest of all, and one other) -were men of classical education. They were learned men in an unlettered -age; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age. This -circumstance should be taken into the account in a theory of the -dramatic genius of that age. Except Shakespear, nearly all of them, -indeed, came up from Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately began to write -for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to London in those days -must have had a singular effect upon a young man of genius, almost like -visiting Babylon or Susa, or a journey to the other world. The stage -(even as it then was), after the recluseness and austerity of a -college-life, must have appeared like Armida’s enchanted palace, and its -gay votaries like - - ‘Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount, - Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side - Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, - Or dreams he sees; while overhead the moon - Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth - Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance - Intent, with jocund music charm his ear: - At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’ - -So our young novices must have felt when they first saw the magic of the -scene, and heard its syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the scholar’s -pride: and the joy that streamed from their eyes at that fantastic -vision, at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all its -pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic throng, still -has left a long lingering glory behind it; and though now ‘deaf the -praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue,’ lives in their eloquent page, -‘informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die!’ - - - - - LECTURE V - ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC., THE FOUR P’S, THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS, - GAMMER GURTON’S NEEDLE, AND OTHER WORKS. - - -I shall, in this Lecture, turn back to give some account of single -plays, poems, etc.; the authors of which are either not known or not -very eminent, and the productions themselves, in general, more -remarkable for their singularity, or as specimens of the style and -manners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poetical -excellence. There are many more works of this kind, however, remaining, -than I can pretend to give an account of; and what I shall chiefly aim -at, will be, to excite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to -satisfy it. - -The FOUR P’S is an interlude, or comic dialogue, in verse, between a -Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each exposes the -tricks of his own and his neighbours’ profession, with much humour and -shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood, the Epigrammatist, who -flourished chiefly in the reign of Henry VIII., was the intimate friend -of Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems to have had a congenial spirit, -and died abroad, in consequence of his devotion to the Roman Catholic -cause, about the year 1565. His zeal, however, on this head, does not -seem to have blinded his judgment, or to have prevented him from using -the utmost freedom and severity in lashing the abuses of Popery, at -which he seems to have looked ‘with the malice of a friend.’ The Four -P’s bears the date of 1547. It is very curious, as an evidence both of -the wit, the manners, and opinions of the time. Each of the parties in -the dialogue gives an account of the boasted advantages of his own -particular calling, that is, of the frauds which he practises on -credulity and ignorance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In -fact, they all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the contest -becomes a jest, and it ends in a wager, who shall tell the greatest lie? -when the prize is adjudged to him, who says, that he had found a patient -woman.[27] The common superstitions (here recorded) in civil and -religious matters, are almost incredible; and the chopped logic, which -was the fashion of the time, and which comes in aid of the author’s -shrewd and pleasant sallies to expose them, is highly entertaining. Thus -the Pardoner, scorning the Palmer’s long pilgrimages and circuitous -route to Heaven, flouts him to his face, and vaunts his own superior -pretensions. - - ‘_Pard._ By the first part of this last tale, - It seemeth you came of late from the ale: - For reason on your side so far doth fail, - That you leave reasoning, and begin to rail. - Wherein you forget your own part clearly, - For you be as untrue as I: - But in one point you are beyond me, - For you may lie by authority, - And all that have wandered so far, - That no man can be their controller. - And where you esteem your labour so much, - I say yet again, my pardons are such, - That if there were a thousand souls on a heap, - I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep, - As you have brought yourself on pilgrimage, - In the last quarter of your voyage, - Which is far a this side heaven, by God: - There your labour and pardon is odd. - With small cost without any pain, - These pardons bring them to heaven plain: - Give me but a penny or two-pence, - And as soon as the soul departeth hence, - In half an hour, or three-quarters at the most, - The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.’ - -The Poticary does not approve of this arrogance of the Friar, and -undertakes, in mood and figure, to prove them both ‘false knaves.’ It is -he, he says, who sends most souls to heaven, and who ought, therefore, -to have the credit of it. - - ‘No soul, ye know, entereth heaven-gate, - ‘Till from the body he be separate: - And whom have ye known die honestly, - Without help of the Poticary? - Nay, all that cometh to our handling, - Except ye hap to come to hanging.... - Since of our souls the multitude - I send to heaven, when all is view’d - Who should but I then altogether - Have thank of all their coming thither?’ - -The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously— - - ‘If ye kill’d a thousand in an hour’s space, - When come they to heaven, dying out of grace?’ - -But the Poticary not so baffled, retorts— - - ‘If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied; - When come they to heaven, if they never died? - - · · · · · - - But when ye feel your conscience ready, - I can send you to heaven very quickly.’ - -The Pedlar finds out the weak side of his new companions, and tells them -very bluntly, on their referring their dispute to him, a piece of his -mind. - - ‘Now have I found one mastery, - That ye can do indifferently; - And it is neither selling nor buying, - But even only very lying.’ - -At this game of imposture, the cunning dealer in pins and laces -undertakes to judge their merits; and they accordingly set to work like -regular graduates. The Pardoner takes the lead, with an account of the -virtues of his relics; and here we may find a plentiful mixture of -Popish superstition and indecency. The bigotry of any age is by no means -a test of its piety, or even sincerity. Men seemed to make themselves -amends for the enormity of their faith by levity of feeling, as well as -by laxity of principle; and in the indifference or ridicule with which -they treated the wilful absurdities and extravagances to which they -hood-winked their understandings, almost resembled children playing at -blindman’s buff, who grope their way in the dark, and make blunders on -purpose to laugh at their own idleness and folly. The sort of mummery at -which Popish bigotry used to play at the time when this old comedy was -written, was not quite so harmless as blind-man’s buff: what was sport -to her, was death to others. She laughed at her own mockeries of common -sense and true religion, and murdered while she laughed. The tragic -farce was no longer to be borne, and it was partly put an end to. At -present, though her eyes are blindfolded, her hands are tied fast behind -her, like the false Duessa’s. The sturdy genius of modern philosophy has -got her in much the same situation that Count Fathom has the old woman -that he lashes before him from the robbers’ cave in the forest. In the -following dialogue of this lively satire, the most sacred mysteries of -the Catholic faith are mixed up with its idlest legends by old Heywood, -who was a martyr to his religious zeal without the slightest sense of -impropriety. The Pardoner cries out in one place (like a lusty Friar -John, or a trusty Friar Onion)— - - ‘Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen, - For ghostly riches they have no cousin; - And moreover, to me they bring - Sufficient succour for my living. - And here be relics of such a kind, - As in this world no man can find. - Kneel down all three, and when ye leave kissing, - Who list to offer shall have my blessing. - Friends, here shall ye see even anon, - Of All-Hallows the blessed jaw-bone. - Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper; - My friends unfeigned, here is a slipper - Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure.— - Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk: - Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work, - May happily lose part of his eye-sight, - But not all till he be blind outright. - Kiss it hardly with good devotion. - - _Pot._ This kiss shall bring us much promotion: - Fogh, by St. Saviour I never kiss’d a worse. - - · · · · · - - For by All-Hallows, yet methinketh, - That All-Hallows’ breath stinketh. - - _Palm._ Ye judge All-Hallows’ breath unknown: - If any breath stink, it is your own. - - _Pot._ I know mine own breath from All-Hallows, - Or else it were time to kiss the gallows. - - _Pard._ Nay, Sirs, here may ye see - The great toe of the Trinity; - Who to this toe any money voweth, - And once may roll it in his mouth, - All his life after I undertake, - He shall never be vex’d with the tooth-ache. - - _Pot._ I pray you turn that relic about; - Either the Trinity had the gout; - Or else, because it is three toes in one, - God made it as much as three toes alone. - - _Pard._ Well, let that pass, and look upon this: - Here is a relic that doth not miss - To help the least as well as the most: - This is a buttock-bone of Penticost. - - · · · · · - - Here is a box full of humble bees, - That stung Eve as she sat on her knees - Tasting the fruit to her forbidden: - Who kisseth the bees within this hidden, - Shall have as much pardon of right, - As for any relic he kiss’d this night.... - Good friends, I have yet here in this glass, - Which on the drink at the wedding was - Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly: - If ye honour this relic devoutly, - Although ye thirst no whit the less, - Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless. - After which drinking, ye shall be as meet - To stand on your head as on your feet.’ - -The same sort of significant irony runs through the Apothecary’s knavish -enumeration of miraculous cures in his possession. - - ‘For this medicine helpeth one and other, - And bringeth them in case that they need no other. - Here is a _syrapus de Byzansis_, - A little thing is enough of this; - For even the weight of one scrippal - Shall make you as strong as a cripple.... - These be the things that break all strife, - Between man’s sickness and his life. - From all pain these shall you deliver, - And set you even at rest forever. - Here is a medicine no more like the same, - Which commonly is called thus by name.... - Not one thing here particularly, - But worketh universally; - For it doth me as much good when I sell it, - As all the buyers that take it or smell it. - If any reward may entreat ye, - I beseech your mastership be good to me, - And ye shall have a box of marmalade, - So fine that you may dig it with a spade.’ - -After these quaint but pointed examples of it, Swift’s boast with -respect to the invention of irony, - - ‘Which I was born to introduce, - Refin’d it first, and shew’d its use,’ - -can be allowed to be true only in part. - -The controversy between them being undecided, the Apothecary, to clench -his pretensions ‘as a liar of the first magnitude,’ by a -_coup-de-grace_, says to the Pedlar, ‘You are an honest man,’ but this -home-thrust is somehow ingeniously parried. The Apothecary and Pardoner -fall to their narrative vein again; and the latter tells a story of -fetching a young woman from the lower world, from which I shall only -give one specimen more as an instance of ludicrous and fantastic -exaggeration. By the help of a passport from Lucifer, ‘given in the -furnace of our palace,’ he obtains a safe conduct from one of the -subordinate imps to his master’s presence. - - ‘This devil and I walked arm in arm - So far, ‘till he had brought me thither, - Where all the devils of hell together - Stood in array in such apparel, - As for that day there meetly fell. - Their horns well gilt, their claws full clean, - Their tails well kempt, and as I ween, - With sothery butter their bodies anointed; - I never saw devils so well appointed. - The master-devil sat in his jacket, - And all the souls were playing at racket. - None other rackets they had in hand, - Save every soul a good fire-brand; - Wherewith they play’d so prettily, - That Lucifer laugh’d merrily. - And all the residue of the fiends - Did laugh thereat full well like friends. - But of my friend I saw no whit, - Nor durst not ask for her as yet. - Anon all this rout was brought in silence, - And I by an usher brought to presence - Of Lucifer; then low, as well I could, - I kneeled, which he so well allow’d - That thus he beck’d, and by St. Antony - He smiled on me well-favour’dly, - Bending his brows as broad as barn-doors; - Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs; - Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels; - Flashing the fire out of his nostrils; - Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously, - That methought time to fall to flattery, - Wherewith I told, as I shall tell; - Oh pleasant picture! O prince of hell!’ &c. - -The piece concludes with some good wholesome advice from the Pedlar, who -here, as well as in the poem of the Excursion, performs the part of Old -Morality; but he does not seem, as in the latter case, to be acquainted -with the ‘mighty stream of Tendency.’ He is more ‘full of wise saws than -modern instances;’ as prosing, but less paradoxical! - - ‘But where ye doubt, the truth not knowing, - Believing the best, good may be growing. - In judging the best, no harm at the least: - In judging the worst, no good at the best. - But best in these things it seemeth to me, - To make no judgment upon ye; - But as the church does judge or take them, - So do ye receive or forsake them. - And so be you sure you cannot err, - But may be a fruitful follower.’ - -Nothing can be clearer than this. - -The RETURN FROM PARNASSUS was ‘first publicly acted,’ as the title-page -imports, ‘by the Students in St. John’s College, in Cambridge.’ It is a -very singular, a very ingenious, and as I think, a very interesting -performance. It contains criticisms on contemporary authors, strictures -on living manners, and the earliest denunciation (I know of) of the -miseries and unprofitableness of a scholar’s life. The only part I -object to in our author’s criticism is his abuse of Marston; and that, -not because he says what is severe, but because he says what is not true -of him. Anger may sharpen our insight into men’s defects; but nothing -should make us blind to their excellences. The whole passage is, -however, so curious in itself (like the Edinburgh Review lately -published for the year 1755) that I cannot forbear quoting a great part -of it. We find in the list of candidates for praise many a name— - - ‘That like a trumpet, makes the spirits dance:’ - -there are others that have long since sunk to the bottom of the stream -of time, and no Humane Society of Antiquarians and Critics is ever -likely to fish them up again. - - ‘Read the names,’ says Judicio. - - _‘Ingenioso._ So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them. - - Edmund Spenser, - Henry Constable, - Thomas Lodge, - Samuel Daniel, - Thomas Watson, - Michael Drayton, - John Davis, - John Marston, - Kit. Marlowe, - William Shakespear;’ and one Churchyard [who is consigned to an - untimely grave.] - - ‘Good men and true, stand together, hear your censure: what’s thy - judgment of Spenser? - - _Jud._ A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po; - A shriller nightingale than ever blest - The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome. - Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud, - While he did chaunt his rural minstrelsy. - Attentive was full many a dainty ear: - Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue, - While sweetly of his Faëry Queen he sung; - While to the water’s fall he tuned her fame, - And in each bark engrav’d Eliza’s name. - And yet for all, this unregarding soil - Unlaced the line of his desired life, - Denying maintenance for his dear relief; - Careless even to prevent his exequy, - Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye. - - _Ing._ Pity it is that gentler wits should breed, - Where thick-skinn’d chuffs laugh at a scholar’s need. - But softly may our honour’d ashes rest, - That lie by merry Chaucer’s noble chest. - - But I pray thee proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud of - myself, as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with - thine. Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson. - - _Jud._ Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear, - And lays it up in willing prisonment: - Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage - War with the proudest big Italian, - That melts his heart in sugar’d sonnetting. - Only let him more sparingly make use - Of others’ wit, and use his own the more, - That well may scorn base imitation. - For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert, - Yet subject to a critic’s marginal: - Lodge for his oar in every paper boat, - He that turns over Galen every day, - To sit and simper Euphues’ legacy. - - _Ing._ Michael Drayton. - - _Jud._ Drayton’s sweet Muse is like a sanguine dye, - Able to ravish the rash gazer’s eye. - - _Ing._ However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times; and - that is this, he cannot swagger in a tavern, nor domineer in a - hot-house. John Davis— - - _Jud._ Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes, - That jerk in hidden charms these looser times: - Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein, - Is graced with a fair and sweeping train. - John Marston— - - _Jud._ What, Monsieur Kinsayder, put up man, put up for shame, - Methinks he is a ruffian in his style, - Withouten bands or garters’ ornament. - He quaffs a cup of Frenchman’s helicon, - Then royster doyster in his oily terms - Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe’er he meets, - And strews about Ram-alley meditations. - Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch’d terms, - Cleanly to gird our looser libertines? - Give him plain naked words stript from their shirts, - That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine. - - _Ing._ Christopher Marlowe— - - _Jud._ Marlowe was happy in his buskin’d Muse; - Alas! unhappy in his life and end. - Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, - Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell. - - _Ing._ Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got - A tragic penman for a dreary plot. - Benjamin Jonson. - - _Jud._ The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England. - - _Ing._ A mere empirick, one that gets what he hath by observation, and - makes only nature privy to what he endites: so slow an inventor, that - he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying, a blood - whoreson, as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times - past in laying of a brick. - - William Shakespear. - - _Jud._ Who loves Adonis’ love, or Lucrece’ rape, - His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life, - Could but a graver subject him content, - Without love’s lazy foolish languishment.’ - -This passage might seem to ascertain the date of the piece, as it must -be supposed to have been written before Shakespeare had become known as -a dramatic poet. Yet he afterwards introduces Kempe the actor talking -with Burbage, and saying, ‘Few (of the University) pen plays well: they -smell too much of that writer Ovid, and of that writer Metamorphosis, -and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here’s our fellow -Shakespear puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson too.’—There is a good -deal of discontent in all this; but the author complains of want of -success in a former attempt, and appears not to have been on good terms -with fortune. The miseries of a poet’s life form one of the favourite -topics of The Return from Parnassus, and are treated, as if by some one -who had ‘felt them knowingly.’ Thus Philomusus and Studioso chaunt their -griefs in concert. - - ‘_Phil._ Bann’d be those hours, when ‘mongst the learned throng, - By Granta’s muddy bank we whilom sung. - - _Stud._ Bann’d be that hill which learned wits adore, - Where erst we spent our stock and little store. - - _Phil._ Bann’d be those musty mews, where we have spent - Our youthful days in paled languishment. - - _Stud._ Bann’d be those cozening arts that wrought our woe, - Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro.... - - _Phil._ Curst be our thoughts whene’er they dream of hope; - Bann’d be those haps that henceforth flatter us, - When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye, - From our first birth until our burying day. - In our first gamesome age, our doting sires - Carked and car’d to have us lettered: - Sent us to Cambridge where our oil is spent: - Us our kind college from the teat did tent, - And forced us walk before we weaned were. - From that time since wandered have we still - In the wide world, urg’d by our forced will; - Nor ever have we happy fortune tried; - Then why should hope with our rent state abide?’ - -‘Out of our proof we speak.’—This sorry matter-of-fact retrospect of the -evils of a college-life is very different from the hypothetical -aspirations after its incommunicable blessings expressed by a living -writer of true genius and a lover of true learning, who does not seem to -have been cured of the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of classic -lore, two hundred years after its vanity and vexation of spirit had been -denounced in the Return from Parnassus: - - ‘I was not train’d in Academic bowers; - And to those learned streams I nothing owe, - Which copious from those fair twin founts do flow: - Mine have been any thing but studious hours. - Yet can I fancy, wandering ‘mid thy towers, - Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap. - My brow seems tightening with the Doctor’s cap; - And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers. - Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech; - Old Ramus’ ghost is busy at my brain, - And my skull teems with notions infinite: - Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach - Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen’s vein; - And half had stagger’d that stout Stagyrite.[28] - -Thus it is that our treasure always lies, where our knowledge does not; -and fortunately enough perhaps; for the empire of imagination is wider -and more prolific than that of experience. - -The author of the old play, whoever he was, appears to have belonged to -that class of mortals, who, as Fielding has it, feed upon their own -hearts; who are egotists the wrong way, ‘made desperate by too quick a -sense of constant infelicity;’ and have the same intense uneasy -consciousness of their own defects that most men have self-complacency -in their supposed advantages. Thus venting the dribblets of his spleen -still upon himself, he prompts the Page to say, ‘A mere scholar is a -creature that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box, put on a -pair of lined slippers, sit reuming till dinner, and then go to his meat -when the bell rings; one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a -licence to spit: or if you will have him defined by negatives, he is one -that cannot make a good leg, one that cannot eat a mess of broth -cleanly, one that cannot ride a horse without spur-galling, one that -cannot salute a woman, and look on her directly, one that cannot——’ - -If I was not afraid of being tedious, I might here give the examination -of Signor Immerito, a raw ignorant clown (whose father has purchased him -a living) by Sir Roderick and the Recorder, which throws considerable -light on the state of wit and humour, as well as of ecclesiastical -patronage in the reign of Elizabeth. It is to be recollected, that one -of the titles of this play is A Scourge for Simony. - - ‘_Rec._ For as much as nature has done her part in making you a - handsome likely man—in the next place some art is requisite for the - perfection of nature: for the trial whereof, at the request of my - worshipful friend, I will in some sort propound questions fit to be - resolved by one of your profession. Say what is a person, that was - never at the university? - - _Im._ A person that was never in the university, is a living creature - that can eat a tythe pig. - - _Rec._ Very well answered: but you should have added—and must be - officious to his patron. Write down that answer, to shew his learning - in logic. - - _Sir Rad._ Yea, boy, write that down: very learnedly, in good faith. I - pray now let me ask you one question that I remember, whether is the - masculine gender or the feminine more worthy? - - _Im._ The feminine, Sir. - - _Sir Rad._ The right answer, the right answer. In good faith, I have - been of that mind always: write, boy, that, to shew he is a - grammarian. - - _Rec._ What university are you of? - - _Im._ Of none. - - _Sir Rad._ He tells truth: to tell truth is an excellent virtue: boy, - make two heads, one for his learning, another for his virtues, and - refer this to the head of his virtues, not of his learning. Now, - Master Recorder, if it please you, I will examine him in an author, - that will sound him to the depth; a book of astronomy, otherwise - called an almanack. - - _Rec._ Very good, Sir Roderick; it were to be wished there were no - other book of humanity; then there would not be such busy state-prying - fellows as are now a-days. Proceed, good Sir. - - _Sir Rad._ What is the dominical letter? - - _Im._ C, Sir, and please your worship. - - _Sir Rad._ A very good answer, a very good answer, the very answer of - the book. Write down that, and refer it to his skill in philosophy. - How many days hath September? - - _Im._ Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, February - hath twenty-eight alone, and all the rest hath thirty and one. - - _Sir Rad._ Very learnedly, in good faith: he hath also a smack in - poetry. Write down that, boy, to shew his learning in poetry. How many - miles from Waltham to London? - - _Im._ Twelve, Sir. - - _Sir Rad._ How many from New Market to Grantham? - - _Im._ Ten, Sir. - - _Sir Rad._ Write down that answer of his, to shew his learning in - arithmetic. - - _Page._ He must needs be a good arithmetician that counted [out] money - so lately. - - _Sir Rad._ When is the new moon? - - _Im._ The last quarter, the 5th day, at two of the clock, and - thirty-eight minutes in the morning. - - _Sir Rad._ How call you him that is weather-wise? - - _Rec._ A good astronomer. - - _Sir Rad._ Sirrah, boy, write him down for a good astronomer. What day - of the month lights the queen’s day on? - - _Im._ The 17th of November. - - _Sir Rad._ Boy, refer this to his virtues, and write him down a good - subject. - - _Page._ Faith, he were an excellent subject for two or three good - wits: he would make a fine ass for an ape to ride upon. - - _Sir Rad._ And these shall suffice for the parts of his learning. Now - it remains to try, whether you be a man of a good utterance, that is, - whether you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as - also chide the boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the - dogs: let me hear your voice. - - _Im._ If any man or woman— - - _Sir Rad._ That’s too high. - - _Im._ If any man or woman— - - _Sir Rad._ That’s too low. - - _Im._ If any man or woman can tell any tidings of a horse with four - feet, two ears, that did stray about the seventh hour, three minutes - in the forenoon, the fifth day— - - _Sir Rad._ Boy, write him down for a good utterance. Master Recorder, - I think he hath been examined sufficiently. - - _Rec._ Aye, Sir Roderick, ’tis so: we have tried him very thoroughly. - - _Page._ Aye, we have taken an inventory of his good parts, and prized - them accordingly. - - _Sir Rad._ Signior Immerito, forasmuch as we have made a double trial - of thee, the one of your learning, the other of your erudition; it is - expedient, also, in the next place, to give you a few exhortations, - considering the greatest clerks are not the wisest men: this is - therefore first to exhort you to abstain from controversies; secondly, - not to gird at men of worship, such as myself, but to use yourself - discreetly; thirdly, not to speak when any man or woman coughs: do so, - and in so doing, I will persevere to be your worshipful friend and - loving patron. Lead Immerito in to my son, and let him dispatch him, - and remember my tythes to be reserved, paying twelve-pence a-year.’ - -Gammer Gurton’s Needle[29] is a still older and more curious relic; and -is a regular comedy in five acts, built on the circumstance of an old -woman having lost her needle, which throws the whole village into -confusion, till it is at last providentially found sticking in an -unlucky part of Hodge’s dress. This must evidently have happened at a -time when the manufacturers of Sheffield and Birmingham had not reached -the height of perfection which they have at present done. Suppose that -there is only one sewing-needle in a parish, that the owner, a diligent -notable old dame, loses it, that a mischief-making wag sets it about -that another old woman has stolen this valuable instrument of household -industry, that strict search is made every where in-doors for it in -vain, and that then the incensed parties sally forth to scold it out in -the open air, till words end in blows, and the affair is referred over -to the higher authorities, and we shall have an exact idea (though -perhaps not so lively a one) of what passes in this authentic document -between Gammer Gurton and her Gossip Dame Chat, Dickon the Bedlam (the -causer of these harms), Hodge, Gammer Gurton’s servant, Tyb her maid, -Cocke, her ‘prentice boy, Doll, Scapethrift, Master Baillie his master, -Doctor Rat, the Curate, and Gib the Cat, who may be fairly reckoned one -of the _dramatis personæ_, and performs no mean part. - - ‘Gog’s crosse, Gammer’ (says Cocke the boy), ‘if ye will laugh, look in - but at the door, - And see how Hodge lieth tumbling and tossing amidst the floor, - Raking there, some fire to find among the ashes dead’ - [That is, to light a candle to look for the lost needle], - ‘Where there is not a spark so big as a pin’s head: - At last in a dark corner two sparks he thought he sees, - Which were indeed nought else but Gib our cat’s two eyes. - Puff, quoth Hodge; thinking thereby to have fire without doubt; - With that Gib shut her two eyes, and so the fire was out; - And by and by them open’d, even as they were before, - With that the sparks appeared, even as they had done of yore: - And even as Hodge blew the fire, as he did think, - Gib, as he felt the blast, strait way began to wink; - Till Hodge fell of swearing, as came best to his turn; - The fire was sure bewitch’d, and therefore would not burn. - At last Gib up the stairs, among old posts and pins, - And Hodge he hied him after, till broke were both his shins; - Cursing and swearing oaths, were never of his making, - That Gib would fire the house, if that she were not taken.’ - -Diccon the strolling beggar (or Bedlam, as he is called) steals a piece -of bacon from behind Gammer Gurton’s door, and in answer to Hodge’s -complaint of being dreadfully pinched for hunger, asks— - - ‘Why Hodge, was there none at home thy dinner for to set? - - _Hodge._ Gog’s bread, Diccon, I came too late, was nothing there to - get: - Gib (a foul fiend might on her light) lick’d the milk-pan so clean: - See Diccon, ’twas not so well wash’d this seven year, I ween. - A pestilence light on all ill luck, I had thought yet for all this, - Of a morsel of bacon behind the door, at worst I should not miss: - But when I sought a slip to cut, as I was wont to do, - Gog’s souls, Diccon, Gib our cat had eat the bacon too.’ - -Hodge’s difficulty in making Diccon understand what the needle is which -his dame has lost, shows his superior acquaintance with the conveniences -and modes of abridging labour in more civilised life, of which the other -had no idea. - - ‘_Hodge._ Has she not gone, trowest now thou, and lost her neele?’ [So - it is called here.] - - ‘_Dic._ (_says staring_). Her eel, Hodge! Who fished of late? That was - a dainty dish.’ - - _Hodge._ Tush, tush, her neele, her neele, her neele, man, ’tis - neither flesh nor fish: - A little thing with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller - [silver], - Small, long, sharp at the point, and strait as any pillar. - - _Dic._ I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bring’st me more in - doubt. - - _Hodge._ (_answers with disdain_). Know’st not with what Tom tailor’s - man sits broching through a clout? - A neele, a neele, my Gammer’s neele is gone.’ - -The rogue Diccon threatens to shew Hodge a spirit; but though Hodge runs -away through pure fear before it has time to appear, he does not fail, -in the true spirit of credulity, to give a faithful and alarming account -of what he did not see to his mistress, concluding with a hit at the -Popish Clergy. - - ‘By the mass, I saw him of late call up a great black devil. - Oh, the knave cried, ho, ho, he roared and he thunder’d; - And ye had been there, I am sure you’d murrainly ha’ wonder’d. - - _Gam._ Wast not thou afraid, Hodge, to see him in his place? - - _Hodge_ (_lies and says_). No, and he had come to me, should have laid - him on his face, - Should have promised him. - - _Gam._ But, Hodge, had he no horns to push? - - _Hodge._ As long as your two arms. Saw ye never Friar Rush, - Painted on a cloth, with a fine long cow’s tail, - And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nail? - For all the world (if I should judge) should reckon him his brother: - Look even what face Friar Rush had, the devil had such another.’ - -He then adds (quite apocryphally) while he is in for it, that ‘the devil -said plainly that Dame Chat had got the needle,’ which makes all the -disturbance. The same play contains the well-known good old song, -beginning and ending— - - ‘Back and side, go bare, go bare, - Both foot and hand go cold: - But belly, God send thee good ale enough, - Whether it be new or old. - I cannot eat but little meat, - My stomach is not good; - But sure I think, that I can drink - With him that wears a hood: - Though I go bare, take ye no care; - I nothing am a-cold: - I stuff my skin so full within - Of jolly good ale and old. - Back and side go bare, &c. - - I love no roast, but a nut-brown toast, - And a crab laid in the fire: - A little bread shall do me stead, - Much bread I not desire. - No frost nor snow, no wind I trow, - Can hurt me if I wolde, - I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt - In jolly good ale and old. - Back and side go bare, &c. - - And Tib, my wife, that as her life - Loveth well good ale to seek; - Full oft drinks she, till ye may see - The tears run down her cheek: - Then doth she troll to me the bowl, - Even as a malt-worm sholde: - And saith, sweetheart, I took my part - Of this jolly good ale and old. - Back and side go bare, go bare, - Both foot and hand go cold: - But belly, God send thee good ale enough, - Whether it be new or old. - -Such was the wit, such was the mirth of our ancestors:—homely, but -hearty; coarse perhaps, but kindly. Let no man despise it, for ‘Evil to -him that evil thinks.’ To think it poor and beneath notice because it is -not just like ours, is the same sort of hypercriticism that was -exercised by the person who refused to read some old books, because they -were ‘such very poor spelling.’ The meagreness of their literary or -their bodily fare was at least relished by themselves; and this is -better than a surfeit or an indigestion. It is refreshing to look out of -ourselves sometimes, not to be always holding the glass to our own -peerless perfections: and as there is a dead wall which always -intercepts the prospect of the future from our view (all that we can see -beyond it is the heavens), it is as well to direct our eyes now and then -without scorn to the page of history, and repulsed in our attempts to -penetrate the secrets of the next six thousand years, not to turn our -backs on old long syne! - -The other detached plays of nearly the same period of which I proposed -to give a cursory account, are Green’s Tu Quoque, Microcosmus, Lingua, -The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Pinner of Wakefield, and the Spanish -Tragedy. Of the spurious plays attributed to Shakespear, and to be found -in the editions of his works, such as the Yorkshire Tragedy, Sir John -Oldcastle, The Widow of Watling Street, &c. I shall say nothing here, -because I suppose the reader to be already acquainted with them, and -because I have given a general account of them in another work. - -Green’s Tu Quoque, by George Cook, a contemporary of Shakespear’s, is so -called from Green the actor, who played the part of Bubble in this very -lively and elegant comedy, with the cant phrase of _Tu Quoque_ -perpetually in his mouth. The double change of situation between this -fellow and his master, Staines, each passing from poverty to wealth, and -from wealth to poverty again, is equally well imagined and executed. A -gay and gallant spirit pervades the whole of it; wit, poetry, and -morality, each take their turn in it. The characters of the two sisters, -Joyce and Gertrude, are very skilfully contrasted, and the manner in -which they mutually betray one another into the hands of their lovers, -first in the spirit of mischief, and afterwards of retaliation, is quite -dramatic. ‘If you cannot find in your heart to tell him you love him, -I’ll sigh it out for you. Come, we little creatures must help one -another,’ says the Madcap to the Madonna. As to style and matter, this -play has a number of pigeon-holes full of wit and epigrams which are -flying out in almost every sentence. I could give twenty pointed -conceits, wrapped up in good set terms. Let one or two at the utmost -suffice. A bad hand at cards is thus described. Will Rash says to -Scattergood, ‘Thou hast a wild hand indeed: thy small cards shew like a -troop of rebels, and the knave of clubs their chief leader.’ Bubble -expresses a truism very gaily on finding himself equipped like a -gallant—‘How apparel makes a man respected! The very children in the -street do adore me.’ We find here the first mention of Sir John -Suckling’s ‘melancholy hat,’ as a common article of wear—the same which -he chose to clap on Ford’s head, and the first instance of the -theatrical _double entendre_ which has been repeated ever since of an -actor’s ironically abusing himself in his feigned character. - - ‘_Gervase._ They say Green’s a good clown. - - _Bubble._ (_Played by Green, says_) Green! Green’s an ass. - - _Scattergood._ Wherefore do you say so? - - _Bub._ Indeed, I ha’ no reason; for they say he’s as like me as ever - he can look.’ - -The following description of the dissipation of a fortune in the hands -of a spendthrift is ingenious and beautiful. - - ‘Know that which made him gracious in your eyes, - And gilded o’er his imperfections, - Is wasted and consumed even like ice, - Which by the vehemence of heat dissolves, - And glides to many rivers: so his wealth, - That felt a prodigal hand, hot in expence, - Melted within his gripe, and from his coffers - Ran like a violent stream to other men’s.’ - -Microcosmus, by Thomas Nabbes, is a dramatic mask or allegory, in which -the Senses, the Soul, a Good and a Bad Genius, Conscience, &c. contend -for the dominion of a man; and notwithstanding the awkwardness of the -machinery, is not without poetry, elegance, and originality. Take the -description of morning as a proof. - - ‘What do I see? Blush, grey-eyed morn and spread - Thy purple shame upon the mountain tops: - Or pale thyself with envy, since here comes - A brighter Venus than the dull-eyed star - That lights thee up.’ - -But what are we to think of a play, of which the following is a literal -list of the _dramatis personæ_? - - ‘NATURE, a fair woman, in a white robe, wrought with birds, beasts, - fruits, flowers, clouds, stars, &c.; on her head a wreath of flowers - interwoven with stars. - - JANUS, a man with two faces, signifying Providence, in a yellow robe, - wrought with snakes, as he is _deus anni_: on his head a crown. He - is Nature’s husband. - - FIRE, a fierce-countenanced young man, in a flame-coloured robe, - wrought with gleams of fire; his hair red, and on his head a crown - of flames. His creature a Vulcan. - - AIR, a young man of a variable countenance, in a blue robe; wrought - with divers-coloured clouds; his hair blue; and on his head a wreath - of clouds. His creature a giant or silvan. - - WATER, a young woman in a sea-green robe, wrought with waves; her hair - a sea-green, and on her head a wreath of sedge bound about with - waves. Her creature a syren. - - EARTH, a young woman of a sad countenance, in a grass-green robe, - wrought with sundry fruits and flowers; her hair black, and on her - head a chaplet of flowers. Her creature a pigmy. - - LOVE, a Cupid in a flame-coloured habit; bow and quiver, a crown of - flaming hearts &c. - - PHYSANDER, a perfect grown man, in a long white robe, and on his head - a garland of white lilies and roses mixed. His name ἀπο τῆς φύσεος - καὶ τῶ ἀνδρος. - - CHOLER, a fencer; his clothes red. - - BLOOD, a dancer, in a watchet-coloured suit. - - PHLEGM, a physician, an old man; his doublet white and black; trunk - hose. - - MELANCHOLY, a musician: his complexion, hair, and clothes, black; a - lute in his hand. He is likewise an amorist. - - BELLANIMA, a lovely woman, in a long white robe; on her head a wreath - of white flowers. She signifies the soul. - - BONUS GENIUS, an angel, in a like white robe; wings and wreath white. - - MALUS GENIUS, a devil, in a black robe; hair, wreath, and wings, - black. - - The Five Senses—SEEING, a chambermaid; HEARING, the usher of the hall; - SMELLING, a huntsman or gardener; TASTING, a cook; TOUCHING, a - gentleman usher. - - SENSUALITY, a wanton woman, richly habited, but lasciviously dressed, - &c. - - TEMPERANCE, a lovely woman, of a modest countenance; her garments - plain, but decent, &c. - - A Philosopher,│all properly habited. - An Eremite, │ - A Ploughman, │ - A Shepherd, │ - - Three Furies as they are commonly fancied. - - FEAR, the Crier of the Court, with a tipstaff. - - CONSCIENCE, the Judge of the Court. - - HOPE and DESPAIR, an advocate and a lawyer. - - The other three Virtues, as they are frequently expressed by painters. - - The Heroes, in bright antique habits, &c. - - The front of a workmanship, proper to the fancy of the rest, adorned - with brass figures of angels and devils, with several inscriptions; - the title is an escutcheon, supported by an Angel and a Devil. - Within the arch a continuing perspective of ruins, which is drawn - still before the other scenes, whilst they are varied. - - THE INSCRIPTIONS. - - _Hinc gloria._ _Hinc pœna._ - _Appetitus boni._ _Appetitus Mali._’ - -Antony Brewer’s Lingua (1607) is of the same cast. It is much longer as -well as older than Microcosmus. It is also an allegory celebrating the -contention of the Five Senses for the crown of superiority, and the -pretensions of Lingua or the Tongue to be admitted as a sixth sense. It -is full of child’s play, and old wives’ tales; but is not unadorned with -passages displaying strong good sense, and powers of fantastic -description. - -Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages from it—the admirable enumeration of -the characteristics of different languages, ‘The Chaldee wise, the -Arabian physical,’ &c.; and the striking description of the ornaments -and uses of tragedy and comedy. The dialogue between Memory, Common -Sense, and Phantastes, is curious and worth considering. - - ‘_Common Sense._ Why, good father, why are you so late now-a-days? - - _Memory._ Thus ’tis; the most customers I remember myself to have, - are, as your lordship knows, scholars, and now-a-days the most of them - are become critics, bringing me home such paltry things to lay up for - them, that I can hardly find them again. - - _Phantastes._ Jupiter, Jupiter, I had thought these flies had bit none - but myself: do critics tickle you, i’faith? - - _Mem._ Very familiarly: for they must know of me, forsooth, how every - idle word is written in all the musty moth-eaten manuscripts, kept in - all the old libraries in every city, betwixt England and Peru. - - _Common Sense._ Indeed I have noted these times to affect antiquities - more than is requisite. - - _Mem._ I remember in the age of Assaracus and Ninus, and about the - wars of Thebes, and the siege of Troy, there were few things committed - to my charge, but those that were well worthy the preserving; but now - every trifle must be wrapp’d up in the volume of eternity. A rich - pudding-wife, or a cobbler, cannot die but I must immortalize his name - with an epitaph; a dog cannot water in a nobleman’s shoe, but it must - be sprinkled into the chronicles; so that I never could remember my - treasure more full, and never emptier of honourable and true heroical - actions.’ - -And again Mendacio puts in his claim with great success to many works of -uncommon merit. - - ‘_Appe._ Thou, boy! how is this possible? Thou art but a child, and - there were sects of philosophy before thou wert born. - - _Men._ Appetitus, thou mistakest me; I tell thee three thousand years - ago was Mendacio born in Greece, nursed in Crete, and ever since - honoured every where: I’ll be sworn I held old Homer’s pen when he - writ his Iliads and his Odysseys. - - _Appe._ Thou hadst need, for I hear say he was blind. - - _Men._ I helped Herodotus to pen some part of his Muses; lent Pliny - ink to write his history; rounded Rabelais in the ear when he - historified Pantagruel; as for Lucian, I was his genius; O, those two - books _de Vera Historia_, however they go under his name, I’ll be - sworn I writ them every tittle. - - _Appe._ Sure as I am hungry, thou’lt have it for lying. But hast thou - rusted this latter time for want of exercise? - - _Men._ Nothing less. I must confess I would fain have jogged Stow and - great Hollingshed on their elbows, when they were about their - chronicles; and, as I remember, Sir John Mandevill’s travels, and a - great part of the Decad’s, were of my doing: but for the Mirror of - Knighthood, Bevis of Southampton, Palmerin of England, Amadis of Gaul, - Huon de Bourdeaux, Sir Guy of Warwick, Martin Marprelate, Robin Hood, - Garagantua, Gerilion, and a thousand such exquisite monuments as - these, no doubt but they breathe in my breath up and down.’ - -The Merry Devil of Edmonton which has been sometimes attributed to -Shakespear, is assuredly not unworthy of him. It is more likely, -however, both from the style and subject-matter to have been Heywood’s -than any other person’s. It is perhaps the first example of sentimental -comedy we have—romantic, sweet, tender, it expresses the feelings of -honour, of love, and friendship in their utmost delicacy, enthusiasm, -and purity. The names alone, Raymond Mounchersey, Frank Jerningham, -Clare, Millisent, ‘sound silver sweet like lovers’ tongues by night.’ It -sets out with a sort of story of Doctor Faustus, but this is dropt as -jarring on the tender chords of the rest of the piece. The wit of the -Merry Devil of Edmonton is as genuine as the poetry. Mine Host of the -George is as good a fellow as Boniface, and the deer-stealing scenes in -the forest between him, Sir John the curate, Smug the smith, and Banks -the miller, are ‘very honest knaveries,’ as Sir Hugh Evans has it. The -air is delicate, and the deer, shot by their cross-bows, fall without a -groan! Frank Jerningham says to Clare, - - ‘The way lies right: hark, the clock strikes at Enfield: what’s the - hour? - - _Young Clare._ Ten, the bell says. - - _Jern._ It was but eight when we set out from Cheston: Sir John and - his sexton are at their ale to-night, the clock runs at random. - - _Y. Clare._ Nay, as sure as thou livest, the villainous vicar is - abroad in the chase. The priest steals more venison than half the - country. - - _Jern._ Millisent, how dost thou? - - _Mil._ Sir, very well. - I would to God we were at Brian’s lodge.’ - -A volume might be written to prove this last answer Shakespear’s, in -which the tongue says one thing in one line, and the heart contradicts -it in the next; but there were other writers living in the time of -Shakespear, who knew these subtle windings of the passions besides -him,—though none so well as he! - -The Pinner of Wakefield, or George a Greene, is a pleasant interlude, of -an early date, and the author unknown, in which kings and coblers, -outlaws and maid Marians are ‘hail-fellow well met,’ and in which the -features of the antique world are made smiling and amiable enough. -Jenkin, George a Greene’s servant, is a notorious wag. Here is one of -his pretended pranks. - - _Jenkin._ This fellow comes to me, - And takes me by the bosom: you slave, - Said he, hold my horse, and look - He takes no cold in his feet. - No, marry shall he, Sir, quoth I, - I’ll lay my cloak underneath him. - I took my cloak, spread it all along, - And his horse on the midst of it. - - _George._ Thou clown, did’st thou set his horse upon thy cloak? - - _Jenk._ Aye, but mark how I served him. - Madge and he was no sooner gone down into the ditch - But I plucked out my knife, cut four holes in my cloak, and made his - horse stand on the bare ground.’ - -The first part of Jeronymo is an indifferent piece of work, and the -second, or the Spanish Tragedy by Kyd, is like unto it, except the -interpolations idly said to have been added by Ben Jonson, relating to -Jeronymo’s phrensy ‘which have all the melancholy madness of poetry, if -not the inspiration.’ - - - - - LECTURE VI - ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, F. BEAUMONT, P. FLETCHER, DRAYTON, DANIEL, &C. - SIR P. SIDNEY’S ARCADIA, AND OTHER WORKS. - - -I shall, in the present Lecture, attempt to give some idea of the -lighter productions of the Muse in the period before us, in order to -shew that grace and elegance are not confined entirely to later times, -and shall conclude with some remarks on Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. - -I have already made mention of the lyrical pieces of Beaumont and -Fletcher. It appears from his poems, that many of these were composed by -Francis Beaumont, particularly the very beautiful ones in the tragedy of -the False One, the Praise of Love in that of Valentinian, and another in -the Nice Valour or Passionate Madman, an Address to Melancholy, which is -the perfection of this kind of writing. - - ‘Hence, all you vain delights; - As short as are the nights - Wherein you spend your folly: - There’s nought in this life sweet, - If man were wise to see ‘t, - But only melancholy, - Oh, sweetest melancholy. - Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes, - A sight that piercing mortifies; - A look that’s fasten’d to the ground, - A tongue chain’d up without a sound; - Fountain heads, and pathless groves, - Places which pale passion loves: - Moon-light walks, when all the fowls - Are warmly hous’d, save bats and owls; - A midnight bell, a passing groan, - These are the sounds we feed upon: - Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley; - Nothing so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.’ - -It has been supposed (and not without every appearance of good reason) -that this pensive strain, ‘most musical, most melancholy,’ gave the -first suggestion of the spirited introduction to Milton’s Il Penseroso. - - ‘Hence, vain deluding joys, - The brood of folly without father bred!... - But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy, - Hail, divinest melancholy, - Whose saintly visage is too bright - To hit the sense of human sight, &c.’ - -The same writer thus moralises on the life of man, in a set of similes, -as apposite as they are light and elegant. - - ‘Like to the falling of a star, - Or as the flights of eagles are, - Or like the fresh spring’s gaudy hue, - Or silver drops of morning dew, - Or like a wind that chafes the flood, - Or bubbles which on water stood: - Even such is man, whose borrow’d light - Is straight call’d in and paid to night:— - The wind blows out, the bubble dies; - The spring intomb’d in autumn lies; - The dew’s dried up, the star is shot, - The flight is past, and man forgot.’ - -‘The silver foam which the wind severs from the parted wave’ is not more -light or sparkling than this: the dove’s downy pinion is not softer and -smoother than the verse. We are too ready to conceive of the poetry of -that day, as altogether old-fashioned, meagre, squalid, deformed, -withered and wild in its attire, or as a sort of uncouth monster, like -‘grim-visaged comfortless despair,’ mounted on a lumbering, unmanageable -Pegasus, dragon-winged, and leaden-hoofed; but it as often wore a -sylph-like form with Attic vest, with faery feet, and the butterfly’s -gaudy wings. The bees were said to have come, and built their hive in -the mouth of Plato when a child; and the fable might be transferred to -the sweeter accents of Beaumont and Fletcher! Beaumont died at the age -of five and twenty. One of these writers makes Bellario the Page say to -Philaster, who threatens to take his life— - - ——‘’Tis not a life; - ’Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.’ - -But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut off -like a flower in its summer-pride, or like ‘the lily on its stalk -green,’ which makes us repine at fortune and almost at nature, that seem -to set so little store by their greatest favourites. The life of poets -is or ought to be (judging of it from the light it lends to ours) a -golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, ‘lapt in Elysium;’ and -it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid vision, by which they -are attended in their path of glory, fade like a vapour, and their -sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand of common mortals has -run out. Fletcher too was prematurely cut off by the plague. Raphael -died at four and thirty, and Correggio at forty. Who can help wishing -that they had lived to the age of Michael Angelo and Titian? Shakespear -might have lived another half-century, enjoying fame and repose, ‘now -that his task was smoothly done,’ listening to the music of his name, -and better still, of his own thoughts, without minding Rymer’s abuse of -‘the tragedies of the last age.’ His native stream of Avon would then -have flowed with softer murmurs to the ear, and his pleasant birthplace, -Stratford, would in that case have worn even a more gladsome smile than -it does, to the eye of fancy!—Poets however have a sort of privileged -after-life, which does not fall to the common lot: the rich and mighty -are nothing but while they are living: their power ceases with them; but -‘the sons of memory, the great heirs of fame’ leave the best part of -what was theirs, their thoughts, their verse, what they most delighted -and prided themselves in, behind them—imperishable, incorruptible, -immortal!—Sir John Beaumont (the brother of our dramatist) whose loyal -and religious effusions are not worth much, very feelingly laments his -brother’s untimely death in an epitaph upon him. - - ‘Thou should’st have followed me, but death to blame - Miscounted years, and measured age by fame: - So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines, - Their praise grew swiftly; so thy life declines. - Thy Muse, the hearer’s Queen, the reader’s Love, - All ears, all hearts (but Death’s) could please and move.’ - -Beaumont’s verses addressed to Ben Jonson at the Mermaid, are a pleasing -record of their friendship, and of the way in which they ‘fleeted the -time carelessly’ as well as studiously ‘in the golden age’ of our -poetry. - - [_Lines sent from the Country with two unfinished Comedies, which - deferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid._] - - ‘The sun which doth the greatest comfort bring - To absent friends, because the self-same thing - They know they see, however absent is, - (Here our best hay-maker, forgive me this, - It is our country style) in this warm shine - I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine: - Oh, we have water mixt with claret lees, - Drink apt to bring in drier heresies - Than here, good only for the sonnet’s strain, - With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain:— - Think with one draught a man’s invention fades, - Two cups had quite spoil’d Homer’s Iliads. - ’Tis liquor that will find out Sutclift’s wit, - Like where he will, and make him write worse yet: - Fill’d with such moisture, in most grievous qualms[30] - Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms: - And so must I do this: and yet I think - It is a potion sent us down to drink - By special providence, keep us from fights, - Make us not laugh when we make legs to knights; - ’Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states, - A medicine to obey our magistrates. - - · · · · · - - Methinks the little wit I had is lost - Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest - Held up at tennis, which men do the best - With the best gamesters. What things have we seen - Done at the Mermaid! Hard words that have been - So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, - As if that every one from whence they came - Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, - And had resolv’d to live a fool the rest - Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown - Wit able enough to justify the town - For three days past, wit that might warrant be - For the whole city to talk foolishly, - Till that were cancell’d; and when that was gone, - We left an air behind us, which alone - Was able to make the two next companies - Right witty, though but downright fools more wise.’ - -I shall not, in this place repeat Marlowe’s celebrated song, ‘Come live -with me and be my love,’ nor Sir Walter Raleigh’s no less celebrated -answer to it (they may both be found in Walton’s Complete Angler, -accompanied with scenery and remarks worthy of them); but I may quote as -a specimen of the high and romantic tone in which the poets of this age -thought and spoke of each other the ‘Vision upon the conceipt of the -Fairy Queen,’ understood to be by Sir Walter Raleigh. - - ‘Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay, - Within that temple, where the vestal flame - Was wont to burn, and passing by that way - To see that buried dust of living fame, - Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept. - All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen: - At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept; - And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen, - For they this queen attended, in whose stead - Oblivion laid him down on Laura’s hearse. - Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed, - And groans of buried ghosts the Heav’ns did pierce, - Where Homer’s spright did tremble all for grief, - And curst th’ access of that celestial thief.’ - -A higher strain of compliment cannot well be conceived than this, which -raises your idea even of that which it disparages in the comparison, and -makes you feel that nothing could have torn the writer from his -idolatrous enthusiasm for Petrarch and his Laura’s tomb, but Spenser’s -magic verses and diviner Faery Queen—the one lifted above mortality, the -other brought from the skies! - -The name of Drummond of Hawthornden is in a manner entwined in cypher -with that of Ben Jonson. He has not done himself or Jonson any credit by -his account of their conversation; but his Sonnets are in the highest -degree elegant, harmonious, and striking. It appears to me that they are -more in the manner of Petrarch than any others that we have, with a -certain intenseness in the sentiment, an occasional glitter of thought, -and uniform terseness of expression. The reader may judge for himself -from a few examples. - - ‘I know that all beneath the moon decays, - And what by mortals in this world is wrought - In time’s great periods shall return to nought; - That fairest states have fatal nights and days. - I know that all the Muse’s heavenly lays, - With toil of spright which are so dearly bought, - As idle sounds, of few or none are sought; - That there is nothing lighter than vain praise. - I know frail beauty’s like the purple flow’r, - To which one morn oft birth and death affords: - That love a jarring is of minds’ accords, - Where sense and will bring under reason’s pow’r. - Know what I list, this all cannot me move, - But that, alas! I both must write and love.’ - -Another— - - ‘Fair moon, who with thy cold and silver shine - Mak’st sweet the horror of the dreadful night, - Delighting the weak eye with smiles divine, - Which Phœbus dazzles with his too much light; - Bright queen of the first Heav’n, if in thy shrine - By turning oft, and Heav’n’s eternal might, - Thou hast not yet that once sweet fire of thine, - Endymion, forgot, and lovers’ plight: - If cause like thine may pity breed in thee, - And pity somewhat else to it obtain, - Since thou hast power of dreams as well as he - That holds the golden rod and mortal chain; - Now while she sleeps,[31] in doleful guise her show, - These tears, and the black map of all my woe.’ - -This is the eleventh sonnet: the twelfth is full of vile and forced -conceits, without any sentiment at all; such as calling the Sun ‘the -Goldsmith of the stars,’ ‘the enameller of the moon,’ and ‘the Apelles -of the flowers.’ This is as bad as Cowley or Sir Philip Sidney. Here is -one that is worth a million of such quaint devices. - - ‘_To the Nightingale._ - - Dear chorister, who from these shadows sends,[32] - Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light, - Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends - (Become all ear[33]) stars stay to hear thy plight. - If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends, - Who ne’er (not in a dream) did taste delight, - May thee importune who like case pretends, - And seem’st to joy in woe, in woe’s despite: - Tell me (so may thou milder fortune try, - And long, long sing!) for what thou thus complains,[32] - Since winter’s gone, and sun in dappled sky - Enamour’d smiles on woods and flow’ry plains? - The bird, as if my questions did her move, - With trembling wings sigh’d forth, ‘I love, I love.’ - -Or if a mixture of the Della Cruscan style be allowed to enshrine the -true spirit of love and poetry, we have it in the following address to -the river Forth, on which his mistress had embarked. - - ‘Slide soft, fair Forth, and make a chrystal plain, - Cut your white locks, and on your foamy face - Let not a wrinkle be, when you embrace - The boat that earth’s perfections doth contain. - Winds wonder, and through wondering hold your peace, - Or if that you your hearts cannot restrain - From sending sighs, feeling a lover’s case, - Sigh, and in her fair hair yourselves enchain. - Or take these sighs, which absence makes arise - From my oppressed breast, and fill the sails, - Or some sweet breath new brought from Paradise. - The floods do smile, love o’er the winds prevails, - And yet huge waves arise; the cause is this, - The ocean strives with Forth the boat to kiss.’ - -This to the English reader will express the very soul of Petrarch, the -molten breath of sentiment converted into the glassy essence of a set of -glittering but still graceful conceits. - -‘The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,’ and the critic that -tastes poetry, ‘his ruin meets.’ His feet are clogged with its honey, -and his eyes blinded with its beauties; and he forgets his proper -vocation, which is to buz and sting. I am afraid of losing my way in -Drummond’s ‘sugar’d sonnetting;’ and have determined more than once to -break off abruptly; but another and another tempts the rash hand and -curious eye, which I am loth not to give, and I give it accordingly: for -if I did not write these Lectures to please myself, I am at least sure I -should please nobody else. In fact, I conceive that what I have -undertaken to do in this and former cases, is merely to read over a set -of authors with the audience, as I would do with a friend, to point out -a favourite passage, to explain an objection; or if a remark or a theory -occurs, to state it in illustration of the subject, but neither to tire -him nor puzzle myself with pedantic rules and pragmatical _formulas_ of -criticism that can do no good to any body. I do not come to the task -with a pair of compasses or a ruler in my pocket, to see whether a poem -is round or square, or to measure its mechanical dimensions, like a -meter and alnager of poetry: it is not in my bond to look after -excisable articles or contraband wares, or to exact severe penalties and -forfeitures for trifling oversights, or to give formal notice of violent -breaches of the three unities, of geography and chronology; or to -distribute printed stamps and poetical licences (with blanks to be -filled up) on Mount Parnassus. I do not come armed from top to toe with -colons and semicolons, with glossaries and indexes, to adjust the -spelling or reform the metre, or to prove by everlasting contradiction -and querulous impatience, that former commentators did not know the -meaning of their author, any more than I do, who am angry at them, only -because I am out of humour with myself—as if the genius of poetry lay -buried under the rubbish of the press; and the critic was the -dwarf-enchanter who was to release its airy form from being stuck -through with blundering points and misplaced commas; or to prevent its -vital powers from being worm-eaten and consumed, letter by letter, in -musty manuscripts and black-letter print. I do not think that is the way -to learn ‘the gentle craft’ of poesy or to teach it to others:—to imbibe -or to communicate its spirit; which if it does not disentangle itself -and soar above the obscure and trivial researches of antiquarianism is -no longer itself, ‘a Phœnix gazed by all.’ At least, so it appeared to -me (it is for others to judge whether I was right or wrong). In a word, -I have endeavoured to feel what was good, and to ‘give a reason for the -faith that was in me’ when necessary, and when in my power. This is what -I have done, and what I must continue to do. - -To return to Drummond.—I cannot but think that his Sonnets come as near -as almost any others to the perfection of this kind of writing, which -should embody a sentiment and every shade of a sentiment, as it varies -with time and place and humour, with the extravagance or lightness of a -momentary impression, and should, when lengthened out into a series, -form a history of the wayward moods of the poet’s mind, the turns of his -fate; and imprint the smile or frown of his mistress in indelible -characters on the scattered leaves. I will give the two following, and -have done with this author. - - ‘In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs, - To quench the fever burning in my veins: - In vain (love’s pilgrim) mountains, dales, and plains - I over-run; vain help long absence brings. - In vain, my friends, your counsel me constrains - To fly, and place my thoughts on other things. - Ah, like the bird that fired hath her wings, - The more I move the greater are my pains. - Desire, alas! desire a Zeuxis new, - From the orient borrowing gold, from western skies - Heavenly cinnabar, sets before my eyes - In every place her hair, sweet look and hue; - That fly, run, rest I, all doth prove but vain; - My life lies in those eyes which have me slain.’ - -The other is a direct imitation of Petrarch’s description of the bower -where he first saw Laura. - - ‘Alexis, here she stay’d, among these pines, - Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair: - Here did she spread the treasure of her hair, - More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines; - Here sat she by these musked eglantines; - The happy flowers seem yet the print to bear: - Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar’d lines, - To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend an ear. - She here me first perceiv’d, and here a morn - Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face: - Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born, - Here first I got a pledge of promised grace; - But ah! what serves to have been made happy so, - Sith passed pleasures double but new woe!’ - -I should, on the whole, prefer Drummond’s Sonnets to Spenser’s; and they -leave Sidney’s, picking their way through verbal intricacies and ‘thorny -queaches,’[34] at an immeasurable distance behind. Drummond’s other -poems have great, though not equal merit; and he may be fairly set down -as one of our old English classics. - -Ben Jonson’s detached poetry I like much, as indeed I do all about him, -except when he degraded himself by ‘the laborious foolery’ of some of -his farcical characters, which he could not deal with sportively, and -only made stupid and pedantic. I have been blamed for what I have said, -more than once, in disparagement of Ben Jonson’s comic humour; but I -think he was himself aware of his infirmity, and has (not improbably) -alluded to it in the following speech of Crites in Cynthia’s Revels. - - ‘Oh, how despised and base a thing is man, - If he not strive to erect his groveling thoughts - Above the strain of flesh! But how more cheap, - When even his best and understanding part - (The crown and strength of all his faculties) - Floats like a dead-drown’d body, on the stream - Of vulgar humour, mix’d with common’st dregs: - I suffer for their guilt now; and my soul - (Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes) - Is hurt with mere intention on their follies. - Why will I view them then? my sense might ask me: - Or is’t a rarity or some new object - That strains my strict observance to this point: - But such is the perverseness of our nature, - That if we once but fancy levity, - (How antic and ridiculous soever - It suit with us) yet will our muffled thought - Chuse rather not to see it than avoid it, &c.’ - -Ben Jonson had self-knowledge and self-reflection enough to apply this -to himself. His tenaciousness on the score of critical objections does -not prove that he was not conscious of them himself, but the contrary. -The greatest egotists are those whom it is impossible to offend, because -they are wholly and incurably blind to their own defects; or if they -could be made to see them, would instantly convert them into so many -beauty-spots and ornamental graces. Ben Jonson’s fugitive and lighter -pieces are not devoid of the characteristic merits of that class of -composition; but still often in the happiest of them, there is a -specific gravity in the author’s pen, that sinks him to the bottom of -his subject, though buoyed up for a time with art and painted plumes, -and produces a strange mixture of the mechanical and fanciful, of poetry -and prose, in his songs and odes. For instance, one of his most airy -effusions is the Triumph of his Mistress: yet there are some lines in it -that seem inserted almost by way of burlesque. It is however well worth -repeating. - - ‘See the chariot at hand here of love, - Wherein my lady rideth! - Each that draws it is a swan or a dove; - And well the car love guideth! - As she goes all hearts do duty - Unto her beauty: - And enamour’d, do wish so they might - But enjoy such a sight, - That they still were to run by her side, - Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. - Do but look on her eyes, they do light - All that love’s world compriseth! - Do but look on her hair, it is bright - As love’s star when it riseth! - Do but mark, her forehead’s smoother - Than words that soothe her: - And from her arch’d brows, such a grace - Sheds itself through the face, - As alone there triumphs to the life - All the gain, all the good of the elements’ strife. - - Have you seen but a bright lily grow, - Before rude hands have touch’d it? - Ha’ you mark’d but the fall of the snow - Before the soil hath smutch’d it? - Ha’ you felt _the wool of beaver_? - Or swan’s down ever? - Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the briar? - Or _the nard in the fire_? - Or have tasted the bag of the bee? - Oh, so white! Oh so soft! Oh so sweet is she!’ - -His Discourse with Cupid, which follows, is infinitely delicate and -_piquant_, and without one single blemish. It is a perfect ‘nest of -spicery.’ - - ‘Noblest Charis, you that are - Both my fortune and my star! - And do govern more my blood, - Than the various moon the flood! - Hear, what late discourse of you, - Love and I have had; and true. - ‘Mongst my Muses finding me, - Where he chanc’t your name to see - Set, and to this softer strain; - ‘Sure,’ said he, ‘if I have brain, - This here sung can be no other, - By description, but my mother! - So hath Homer prais’d her hair; - So Anacreon drawn the air - Of her face, and made to rise, - Just about her sparkling eyes, - Both her brows, bent like my bow. - By her looks I do her know, - Which you call my shafts. And see! - Such my mother’s blushes be, - As the bath your verse discloses - In her cheeks, of milk and roses; - Such as oft I wanton in. - And, above her even chin, - Have you plac’d the bank of kisses, - Where you say, men gather blisses, - Rip’ned with a breath more sweet, - Than when flowers and west-winds meet. - Nay, her white and polish’d neck, - With the lace that doth it deck, - Is my mother’s! hearts of slain - Lovers, made into a chain! - And between each rising breast - Lies the valley, call’d my nest, - Where I sit and proyne my wings - After flight; and put new stings - To my shafts! Her very name - With my mother’s is the same.’— - ‘I confess all,’ I replied, - ‘And the glass hangs by her side, - And the girdle ‘bout her waste, - All is Venus: save unchaste. - But, alas! thou seest the least - Of her good, who is the best - Of her sex; but could’st thou, Love, - Call to mind the forms, that strove - For the apple, and those three - Make in one, the same were she. - For this beauty yet doth hide - Something more than thou hast spied. - Outward grace weak love beguiles: - She is Venus when she smiles, - But she’s Juno when she walks, - And Minerva when she talks.’ - -In one of the songs in Cynthia’s Revels, we find, amidst some very -pleasing imagery, the origin of a celebrated line in modern poetry— - - ‘Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, &c.’ - -This has not even the merit of originality, which is hard upon it. Ben -Jonson had said two hundred years before, - - ‘Oh, I could still - (Like melting snow upon some craggy hill) - Drop, drop, drop, drop, - Since nature’s pride is now a wither’d daffodil.’ - -His Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morrison, has been -much admired, but I cannot but think it one of his most fantastical and -perverse performances. - -I cannot, for instance, reconcile myself to such stanzas as these. - - —‘Of which we priests and poets say - Such truths as we expect for happy men, - And there he lives with memory; and Ben - -THE STAND - - Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went - Himself to rest, - Or taste a part of that full joy he meant - To have exprest, - In this bright asterism; - Where it were friendship’s schism - (Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry) - To separate these twi— - Lights, the Dioscori; - And keep the one half from his Harry. - But fate doth so alternate the design, - While that in Heaven, this light on earth doth shine.’ - -This seems as if because he cannot without difficulty write smoothly, he -becomes rough and crabbed in a spirit of defiance, like those persons -who cannot behave well in company, and affect rudeness to show their -contempt for the opinions of others. - -His Epistles are particularly good, equally full of strong sense and -sound feeling. They shew that he was not without friends, whom he -esteemed, and by whom he was deservedly esteemed in return. The -controversy started about his character is an idle one, carried on in -the mere spirit of contradiction, as if he were either made up entirely -of gall, or dipped in ‘the milk of human kindness.’ There is no -necessity or ground to suppose either. He was no doubt a sturdy, -plain-spoken, honest, well-disposed man, inclining more to the severe -than the amiable side of things; but his good qualities, learning, -talents, and convivial habits preponderated over his defects of temper -or manners; and in a course of friendship some difference of character, -even a little roughness or acidity, may relish to the palate; and olives -may be served up with effect as well as sweetmeats. Ben Jonson, even by -his quarrels and jealousies, does not seem to have been curst with the -last and damning disqualification for friendship, heartless -indifference. He was also what is understood by a _good fellow_, fond of -good cheer and good company: and the first step for others to enjoy your -society, is for you to enjoy theirs. If any one can do without the -world, it is certain that the world can do quite as well without him. -His ‘verses inviting a friend to supper,’ give us as familiar an idea of -his private habits and character as his Epistle to Michael Drayton, that -to Selden, &c., his lines to the memory of Shakespear, and his noble -prose eulogy on Lord Bacon, in his disgrace, do a favourable one. - -Among the best of these (perhaps the very best) is the address to Sir -Robert Wroth, which besides its manly moral sentiments, conveys a -strikingly picturesque description of rural sports and manners at this -interesting period. - - ‘How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth, - Whether by choice, or fate, or both! - And though so near the city and the court, - Art ta’en with neither’s vice nor sport: - That at great times, art no ambitious guest - Of sheriff’s dinner, or of mayor’s feast. - Nor com’st to view the better cloth of state; - The richer hangings, or the crown-plate; - Nor throng’st (when masquing is) to have a sight - Of the short bravery of the night; - To view the jewels, stuffs, the pains, the wit - There wasted, some not paid for yet! - But canst at home in thy securer rest, - Live with un-bought provision blest; - Free from proud porches or their guilded roofs, - ‘Mongst lowing herds and solid hoofs: - Along the curled woods and painted meads, - Through which a serpent river leads - To some cool courteous shade, which he calls his, - And makes sleep softer than it is! - Or if thou list the night in watch to break, - A-bed canst hear the loud stag speak, - In spring oft roused for their master’s sport, - Who for it makes thy house his court; - Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year, - Divid’st upon the lesser deer; - In autumn, at the partrich mak’st a flight, - And giv’st thy gladder guests the sight; - And in the winter hunt’st the flying hare, - More for thy exercise than fare; - While all that follows, their glad ears apply - To the full greatness of the cry: - Or hawking at the river or the bush, - Or shooting at the greedy thrush, - Thou dost with some delight the day out-wear, - Although the coldest of the year! - The whil’st the several seasons thou hast seen - Of flow’ry fields, of copses green, - The mowed meadows, with the fleeced sheep, - And feasts that either shearers keep; - The ripened ears yet humble in their height, - And furrows laden with their weight; - The apple-harvest that doth longer last; - The hogs return’d home fat from mast; - The trees cut out in log; and those boughs made - A fire now, that lent a shade! - Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites, - Comus puts in for new delights; - And fills thy open hall with mirth and cheer, - As if in Saturn’s reign it were; - Apollo’s harp and Hermes’ lyre resound, - Nor are the Muses strangers found: - The rout of rural folk come thronging in, - (Their rudeness then is thought no sin) - Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace; - And the great heroes of her race - Sit mixt with loss of state or reverence. - Freedom doth with degree dispense. - The jolly wassail walks the often round, - And in their cups their cares are drown’d: - They think not then which side the cause shall leese, - Nor how to get the lawyer fees. - Such, and no other was that age of old, - Which boasts t’ have had the head of gold. - And such since thou canst make thine own content, - Strive, Wroth, to live long innocent. - Let others watch in guilty arms, and stand - The fury of a rash command, - Go enter breaches, meet the cannon’s rage, - That they may sleep with scars in age. - And show their feathers shot and colours torn, - And brag that they were therefore born. - Let this man sweat, and wrangle at the bar - For every price in every jar - And change possessions oftener with his breath, - Than either money, war or death: - Let him, than hardest sires, more disinherit, - And each where boast it as his merit, - To blow up orphans, widows, and their states; - And think his power doth equal Fate’s. - Let that go heap a mass of wretched wealth, - Purchas’d by rapine, worse than stealth, - And brooding o’er it sit, with broadest eyes, - Not doing good, scarce when he dies. - Let thousands more go flatter vice, and win, - By being organs to great sin, - Get place and honour, and be glad to keep - The secrets, that shall breake their sleep: - And, so they ride in purple, eat in plate, - Though poyson, think it a great fate. - But thou, my Wroth, if I can truth apply, - Shalt neither that, nor this envy: - Thy peace is made; and, when man’s state is well, - ’Tis better, if he there can dwell. - God wisheth none should wrack on a strange shelf; - To him man’s dearer than t’ himself. - And, howsoever we may think things sweet, - He alwayes gives what he knows meet; - Which who can use is happy: such be thou. - Thy morning’s and thy evening’s vow - Be thanks to him, and earnest prayer, to find - A body sound, with sounder mind; - To do thy country service, thy self right; - That neither want do thee affright, - Nor death; but when thy latest sand is spent, - Thou mayst think life a thing but lent.’ - -Of all the poetical Epistles of this period, however, that of Daniel to -the Countess of Cumberland, for weight of thought and depth of feeling, -bears the palm. The reader will not peruse this effusion with less -interest or pleasure, from knowing that it is a favourite with Mr. -Wordsworth. - - ‘He that of such a height hath built his mind, - And rear’d the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, - As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame - Of his resolved pow’rs; nor all the wind - Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong - His settled peace, or to disturb the same: - What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may - The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey! - And with how free an eye doth he look down - Upon these lower regions of turmoil, - Where all the storms of passions mainly beat - On flesh and blood: where honour, pow’r, renown, - Are only gay afflictions, golden toil; - Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet, - As frailty doth; and only great doth seem - To little minds, who do it so esteem. - He looks upon the mightiest monarch’s wars - But only as on stately robberies; - Where evermore the fortune that prevails - Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars - The fairest and the best-fac’d enterprize. - Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails: - Justice, he sees (as if seduced) still - Conspires with pow’r, whose cause must not be ill. - He sees the face of right t’ appear as manifold - As are the passions of uncertain man. - Who puts it in all colours, all attires, - To serve his ends, and make his courses hold. - He sees, that let deceit work what it can, - Plot and contrive base ways to high desires; - That the all-guiding Providence doth yet - All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit. - Nor is he mov’d with all the thunder-cracks - Of tyrants’ threats, or with the surly brow - Of pow’r, that proudly sits on others’ crimes: - Charg’d with more crying sins than those he checks. - The storms of sad confusion, that may grow - Up in the present for the coming times, - Appal not him; that hath no side at all, - But of himself, and knows the worst can fall. - Although his heart (so near ally’d to earth) - Cannot but pity the perplexed state - Of troublous and distress’d mortality, - That thus make way unto the ugly birth - Of their own sorrows, and do still beget - Affliction upon imbecility: - Yet seeing thus the course of things must run, - He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done. - And whilst distraught ambition compasses, - And is encompass’d; whilst as craft deceives, - And is deceived; whilst man doth ransack man, - And builds on blood, and rises by distress; - And th’ inheritance of desolation leaves - To great expecting hopes: he looks thereon, - As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, - And bears no venture in impiety.’ - -Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion is a work of great length and of unabated -freshness and vigour in itself, though the monotony of the subject tires -the reader. He describes each place with the accuracy of a topographer, -and the enthusiasm of a poet, as if his Muse were the very _genius -loci_. His Heroical Epistles are also excellent. He has a few lighter -pieces, but none of exquisite beauty or grace. His mind is a rich marly -soil that produces an abundant harvest, and repays the husbandman’s -toil, but few flaunting flowers, the garden’s pride, grow in it, nor any -poisonous weeds. - -P. Fletcher’s Purple Island is nothing but a long enigma, describing the -body of a man, with the heart and veins, and the blood circulating in -them, under the fantastic designation of the Purple Island. - -The other Poets whom I shall mention, and who properly belong to the age -immediately following, were William Brown, Carew, Crashaw, Herrick, and -Marvell. Brown was a pastoral poet, with much natural tenderness and -sweetness, and a good deal of allegorical quaintness and prolixity. -Carew was an elegant court-trifler. Herrick was an amorist, with perhaps -more fancy than feeling, though he has been called by some the English -Anacreon. Crashaw was a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, and -erroneous in both. Marvell deserves to be remembered as a true poet as -well as patriot, not in the best of times.—I will, however, give short -specimens from each of these writers, that the reader may judge for -himself; and be led by his own curiosity, rather than my recommendation, -to consult the originals. Here is one by T. Carew. - - ‘Ask me no more where Jove bestows, - When June is past, the fading rose: - For in your beauties, orient deep - These flow’rs, as in their causes, sleep. - - Ask me no more, whither do stray - The golden atoms of the day; - For in pure love, Heaven did prepare - Those powders to enrich your hair. - - Ask me no more, whither doth haste - The nightingale, when May is past; - For in your sweet dividing throat - She winters, and keeps warm her note. - - Ask me no more, where those stars light, - That downwards fall in dead of night; - For in your eyes they sit, and there - Fixed become, as in their sphere. - - Ask me no more, if east or west - The phœnix builds her spicy nest; - For unto you at last she flies, - And in your fragrant bosom dies.’ - -The Hue and Cry of Love, the Epitaphs on Lady Mary Villiers, and the -Friendly Reproof to Ben Jonson for his angry Farewell to the stage, are -in the author’s best manner. We may perceive, however, a frequent -mixture of the superficial and common-place, with far-fetched and -improbable conceits. - -Herrick is a writer who does not answer the expectations I had formed of -him. He is in a manner a modern discovery, and so far has the freshness -of antiquity about him. He is not trite and threadbare. But neither is -he likely to become so. He is a writer of epigrams, not of lyrics. He -has point and ingenuity, but I think little of the spirit of love or -wine. From his frequent allusion to pearls and rubies, one might take -him for a lapidary instead of a poet. One of his pieces is entitled - - ‘_The Rock of Rubies, and the Quarry of Pearls._ - - Some ask’d me where the rubies grew; - And nothing I did say; - But with my finger pointed to - The lips of Julia. - - Some ask’d how pearls did grow, and where; - Then spoke I to my girl - To part her lips, and shew them there - The quarrelets of pearl.’ - -Now this is making a petrefaction both of love and poetry. - -His poems, from their number and size, are ‘like the motes that play in -the sun’s beams;’ that glitter to the eye of fancy, but leave no -distinct impression on the memory. The two best are a translation of -Anacreon, and a successful and spirited imitation of him. - - ‘_The Wounded Cupid._ - - Cupid, as he lay among - Roses, by a bee was stung. - Whereupon, in anger flying - To his mother said thus, crying, - Help, oh help, your boy’s a dying! - And why, my pretty lad? said she. - Then, blubbering, replied he, - A winged snake has bitten me, - Which country-people call a bee. - At which she smiled; then with her hairs - And kisses drying up his tears, - Alas, said she, my wag! if this - Such a pernicious torment is; - Come, tell me then, how great’s the smart - Of those thou woundest with thy dart?’ - -The Captive Bee, or the Little Filcher, is his own. - - ‘As Julia once a slumbering lay, - It chanced a bee did fly that way, - After a dew or dew-like show’r, - To tipple freely in a flow’r. - For some rich flow’r he took the lip - Of Julia, and began to sip: - But when he felt he suck’d from thence - Honey, and in the quintessence; - He drank so much he scarce could stir; - So Julia took the pilferer. - And thus surpris’d, as filchers use, - He thus began himself to excuse: - Sweet lady-flow’r! I never brought - Hither the least one thieving thought; - But taking those rare lips of yours - For some fresh, fragrant, luscious flow’rs, - I thought I might there take a taste, - Where so much syrup ran at waste: - Besides, know this, I never sting - The flow’r that gives me nourishing; - But with a kiss or thanks, do pay - For honey that I bear away. - This said, he laid his little scrip - Of honey ‘fore her ladyship: - And told her, as some tears did fall, - That that he took, and that was all. - At which she smil’d, and bid him go, - And take his bag, but thus much know, - When next he came a pilfering so, - He should from her full lips derive - Honey enough to fill his hive.’ - -Of Marvell I have spoken with such praise, as appears to me his due, on -another occasion: but the public are deaf, except to proof or to their -own prejudices, and I will therefore give an example of the sweetness -and power of his verse. - - ‘_To his Coy Mistress._ - - Had we but world enough, and time, - This coyness, Lady, were no crime. - We would sit down, and think which way - To walk, and pass our long love’s day. - Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side - Should’st rubies find: I by the tide - Of Humber would complain. I would - Love you ten years before the flood; - And you should, if you please, refuse - Till the conversion of the Jews. - My vegetable love should grow - Vaster than empires, and more slow - An hundred years should go to praise - Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; - Two hundred to adore each breast; - But thirty thousand to the rest. - An age at least to every part, - And the last age should shew your heart. - For, Lady, you deserve this state; - Nor would I love at lower rate. - But at my back I always hear - Time’s winged chariot hurrying near: - And yonder all before us lye - Desarts of vast eternity. - Thy beauty shall no more be found; - Nor in thy marble vault shall sound - My echoing song: then worms shall try - That long preserved virginity: - And your quaint honour turn to dust; - And into ashes all my lust. - The grave’s a fine and private place, - But none, I think, do there embrace. - Now, therefore, while the youthful hue - Sits on thy skin like morning dew, - And while thy willing soul transpires - At every pore with instant fires, - Now let us sport us while we may; - And now, like amorous birds of prey, - Rather at once our time devour, - Than languish in his slow-chapp’d pow’r. - Let us roll all our strength, and all - Our sweetness, up into one ball; - And tear our pleasures with rough strife, - Thorough the iron gates of life. - Thus, though we cannot make our sun - Stand still, yet we will make him run.’ - -In Brown’s Pastorals, notwithstanding the weakness and prolixity of his -general plan, there are repeated examples of single lines and passages -of extreme beauty and delicacy, both of sentiment and description, such -as the following Picture of Night. - - ‘Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd’s song, - And silence girt the woods: no warbling tongue - Talk’d to the echo; Satyrs broke their dance, - And all the upper world lay in a trance, - Only the curled streams soft chidings kept; - And little gales that from the green leaf swept - Dry summer’s dust, in fearful whisp’rings stirr’d, - As loth to waken any singing bird.’ - -Poetical beauties of this sort are scattered, not sparingly, over the -green lap of nature through almost every page of our author’s writings. -His description of the squirrel hunted by mischievous boys, of the -flowers stuck in the windows like the hues of the rainbow, and -innumerable others might be quoted. - -His Philarete (the fourth song of the Shepherd’s Pipe) has been said to -be the origin of Lycidas: but there is no resemblance, except that both -are pastoral elegies for the loss of a friend. The Inner Temple Mask has -also been made the foundation of Comus, with as little reason. But so it -is: if an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of -plagiarism ever after: and every writer that finds an ingenious or -partial editor, will be made to set up his claim of originality against -him. A more serious charge of this kind has been urged against the -principal character in Paradise Lost (that of Satan), which is said to -have been taken from Marino, an Italian poet. Of this, we may be able to -form some judgment, by a comparison with Crashaw’s translation of -Marino’s Sospetto d’Herode. The description of Satan alluded to, is -given in the following stanzas: - - ‘Below the bottom of the great abyss, - There where one centre reconciles all things, - The world’s profound heart pants; there placed is - Mischief’s old master; close about him clings - A curl’d knot of embracing snakes, that kiss - His correspondent cheeks; these loathsome strings - Hold the perverse prince in eternal ties - Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies. - - The judge of torments, and the king of tears, - He fills a burnish’d throne of quenchless fire; - And for his old fair robes of light, he wears - A gloomy mantle of dark flames; the tire - That crowns his hated head, on high appears; - Where seven tall horns (his empire’s pride) aspire; - And to make up hell’s majesty, each horn - Seven crested hydras horribly adorn. - - His eyes, the sullen dens of death and night, - Startle the dull air with a dismal red; - Such his fell glances as the fatal light - Of staring comets, that look kingdoms dead. - From his black nostrils and blue lips, in spite - Of hell’s own stink, a worser stench is spread. - His breath hell’s lightning is; and each deep groan - Disdains to think that heaven thunders alone. - - His flaming eyes’ dire exhalation - Unto a dreadful pile gives fiery breath; - Whose unconsum’d consumption preys upon - The never-dying life of a long death. - In this sad house of slow destruction - (His shop of flames) he fries himself, beneath - A mass of woes; his teeth for torment gnash, - While his steel sides sound with his tail’s strong lash.’ - -This portrait of monkish superstition does not equal the grandeur of -Milton’s description. - - ——‘His form had not yet lost - All her original brightness, nor appear’d - Less than archangel ruin’d and the excess - Of glory obscured.’ - -Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the vulgar and physical -_insignia_ of the devil, and clothed him with other greater and -intellectual terrors, reconciling beauty and sublimity, and converting -the grotesque and deformed into the _ideal_ and classical. Certainly -Milton’s mind rose superior to all others in this respect, on the -outstretched wings of philosophic contemplation, in not confounding the -depravity of the will with physical distortion, or supposing that the -distinctions of good and evil were only to be subjected to the gross -ordeal of the senses. In the subsequent stanzas, we however find the -traces of some of Milton’s boldest imagery, though its effect is injured -by the incongruous mixture above stated. - - ‘Struck with these great concurrences of things,[35] - Symptoms so deadly unto death and him; - Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings - Eternally bind each rebellious limb. - He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings, - Which like two bosom’d sails[36] embrace the dim - Air, with a dismal shade, but all in vain; - Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain. - - While thus heav’n’s highest counsels, by the low - Footsteps of their effects, he traced too well, - He tost his troubled eyes, embers that glow - Now with new rage, and wax too hot for hell. - With his foul claws he fenced his furrow’d brow, - And gave a ghastly shriek, whose horrid yell - Ran trembling through the hollow vaults of night.’ - -The poet adds— - - ‘The while his twisted tail he knaw’d for spite.’ - -There is no keeping in this. This action of meanness and mere vulgar -spite, common to the most contemptible creatures, takes away from the -terror and power just ascribed to the prince of Hell, and implied in the -nature of the consequences attributed to his every movement of mind or -body. Satan’s soliloquy to himself is more beautiful and more in -character at the same time. - - ‘Art thou not Lucifer? he to whom the droves - Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given? - The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves? - The fairest and the first-born smile of Heav’n? - Look in what pomp the mistress planet moves, - Reverently circled by the lesser seven: - Such and so rich the flames that from thine eyes - Opprest the common people of the skies? - Ah! wretch! what boots it to cast back thine eyes - Where dawning hope no beam of comfort shews?’ &c. - -This is true beauty and true sublimity: it is also true pathos and -morality: for it interests the mind, and affects it powerfully with the -idea of glory tarnished, and happiness forfeited with the loss of -virtue: but from the horns and tail of the brute-demon, imagination -cannot reascend to the Son of the morning, nor be dejected by the -transition from weal to woe, which it cannot, without a violent effort, -picture to itself. - -In our author’s account of Cruelty, the chief minister of Satan, there -is also a considerable approach to Milton’s description of Death and -Sin, the portress of hell-gates. - - ‘Thrice howl’d the caves of night, and thrice the sound, - Thundering upon the banks of those black lakes, - Rung through the hollow vaults of hell profound: - At last her listening ears the noise o’ertakes, - She lifts her sooty lamps, and looking round, - A general hiss,[37] from the whole tire of snakes - Rebounding through hell’s inmost caverns came, - In answer to her formidable name. - - ‘Mongst all the palaces in hell’s command, - No one so merciless as this of hers, - The adamantine doors forever stand - Impenetrable, both to prayers and tears. - The wall’s inexorable steel, no hand - Of time, or teeth of hungry ruin fears.’ - -On the whole, this poem, though Milton has undoubtedly availed himself -of many ideas and passages in it, raises instead of lowering our -conception of him, by shewing how much more he added to it than he has -taken from it. - -Crashaw’s translation of Strada’s description of the Contention between -a nightingale and a musician, is elaborate and spirited, but not equal -to Ford’s version of the same story in his Lover’s Melancholy. One line -may serve as a specimen of delicate quaintness, and of Crashaw’s style -in general. - - ‘And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings.’ - -Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste. As Mr. -Burke said, ‘he could not love the French Republic’—so I may say, that I -cannot love the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, with all my good-will to -it. It will not do for me, however, to imitate the summary petulance of -the epigrammatist. - - ‘The reason why I cannot tell, - But I don’t like you, Dr. Fell.’ - -I must give my reasons, ‘on compulsion,’ for not speaking well of a -person like Sir Philip Sidney— - - ‘The soldier’s, scholar’s, courtier’s eye, tongue, sword, - The glass of fashion, and the mould of form;’ - -the splendour of whose personal accomplishments, and of whose -wide-spread fame was, in his life time, - - ——‘Like a gate of steel, - Fronting the sun, that renders back - His figure and his heat’— - -a writer too who was universally read and enthusiastically admired for a -century after his death, and who has been admired with scarce less -enthusiastic, but with a more distant homage, for another century, after -ceasing to be read. - -We have lost the art of reading, or the privilege of writing, -voluminously, since the days of Addison. Learning no longer weaves the -interminable page with patient drudgery, nor ignorance pores over it -with implicit faith. As authors multiply in number, books diminish in -size; we cannot now, as formerly, swallow libraries whole in a single -folio: solid quarto has given place to slender duodecimo, and the dingy -letter-press contracts its dimensions, and retreats before the white, -unsullied, faultless margin. Modern authorship is become a species of -stenography: we contrive even to read by proxy. We skim the cream of -prose without any trouble; we get at the quintessence of poetry without -loss of time. The staple commodity, the coarse, heavy, dirty, unwieldy -bullion of books is driven out of the market of learning, and the -intercourse of the literary world is carried on, and the credit of the -great capitalists sustained by the flimsy circulating medium of -magazines and reviews. Those who are chiefly concerned in catering for -the taste of others, and serving up critical opinions in a compendious, -elegant, and portable form, are not forgetful of themselves: they are -not scrupulously solicitous, idly inquisitive about the real merits, the -_bona fide_ contents of the works they are deputed to appraise and -value, any more than the reading public who employ them. They look no -farther for the contents of the work than the title page, and pronounce -a peremptory decision on its merits or defects by a glance at the name -and party of the writer. This state of polite letters seems to admit of -improvement in only one respect, which is to go a step further, and -write for the amusement and edification of the world, accounts of works -that were never either written or read at all, and to cry up or abuse -the authors by name, although they have no existence but in the critic’s -invention. This would save a great deal of labour in vain: anonymous -critics might pounce upon the defenceless heads of fictitious candidates -for fame and bread; reviews, from being novels founded upon facts, would -aspire to be pure romances; and we should arrive at the _beau ideal_ of -a commonwealth of letters, at the euthanasia of thought, and Millennium -of criticism! - -At the time that Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia was written, those middle -men, the critics, were not known. The author and reader came into -immediate contact, and seemed never tired of each other’s company. We -are more fastidious and dissipated: the effeminacy of modern taste -would, I am afraid, shrink back affrighted at the formidable sight of -this once popular work, which is about as long (_horresco referens!_) as -all Walter Scott’s novels put together; but besides its size and -appearance, it has, I think, other defects of a more intrinsic and -insuperable nature. It is to me one of the greatest monuments of the -abuse of intellectual power upon record. It puts one in mind of the -court dresses and preposterous fashions of the time which are grown -obsolete and disgusting. It is not romantic, but scholastic; not poetry, -but casuistry; not nature, but art, and the worst sort of art, which -thinks it can do better than nature. Of the number of fine things that -are constantly passing through the author’s mind, there is hardly one -that he has not contrived to spoil, and to spoil purposely and -maliciously, in order to aggrandize our idea of himself. Out of five -hundred folio pages, there are hardly, I conceive, half a dozen -sentences expressed simply and directly, with the sincere desire to -convey the image implied, and without a systematic interpolation of the -wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom and everlasting impertinence of the -writer, so as to disguise the object, instead of displaying it in its -true colours and real proportions. Every page is ‘with centric and -eccentric scribbled o’er;’ his Muse is tattooed and tricked out like an -Indian goddess. He writes a court-hand, with flourishes like a -schoolmaster; his figures are wrought in chain-stitch. All his thoughts -are forced and painful births, and may be said to be delivered by the -Cæsarean operation. At last, they become distorted and ricketty in -themselves; and before they have been cramped and twisted and swaddled -into lifelessness and deformity. Imagine a writer to have great natural -talents, great powers of memory and invention, an eye for nature, a -knowledge of the passions, much learning and equal industry; but that he -is so full of a consciousness of all this, and so determined to make the -reader conscious of it at every step, that he becomes a complete -intellectual coxcomb or nearly so;—that he never lets a casual -observation pass without perplexing it with an endless, running -commentary, that he never states a feeling without so many -_circumambages_, without so many interlineations and parenthetical -remarks on all that can be said for it, and anticipations of all that -can be said against it, and that he never mentions a fact without giving -so many circumstances and conjuring up so many things that it is like or -not like, that you lose the main clue of the story in its infinite -ramifications and intersections; and we may form some faint idea of the -Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, which is spun with great labour out of -the author’s brains, and hangs like a huge cobweb over the face of -nature! This is not, as far as I can judge, an exaggerated description: -but as near the truth as I can make it. The proofs are not far to seek. -Take the first sentence, or open the volume any where and read. I will, -however, take one of the most beautiful passages near the beginning, to -shew how the subject-matter, of which the noblest use might have been -made, is disfigured by the affectation of the style, and the importunate -and vain activity of the writer’s mind. The passage I allude to, is the -celebrated description of Arcadia. - - ‘So that the third day after, in the time that the morning did strew - roses and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming of the sun, - the nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most - dainty variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow) made them put off - their sleep, and rising from under a tree (which that night had been - their pavilion) they went on their journey, which by and by welcomed - Musidorus’ eyes (wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia) with welcome - prospects. There were hills which garnished their proud heights with - stately trees: humble valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with - the refreshing of silver rivers; meadows enamelled with all sorts of - eye-pleasing flowers; thickets, which being lined with most pleasant - shade were witnessed so to, by the cheerful disposition of many - well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober - security, while the pretty lambs with bleating oratory craved the - dam’s comfort; here a shepherd’s boy piping, as though he should never - be old: there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing, and it - seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept - time to her voice-music. As for the houses of the country (for many - houses came under their eye) they were scattered, no two being one by - the other, and yet not so far off, as that it barred mutual succour; a - shew, as it were, of an accompaniable solitariness, and of a civil - wildness. I pray you, said Musidorus, (then first unsealing his - long-silent lips) what countries be these we pass through, which are - so divers in shew, the one wanting no store, the other having no store - but of want. The country, answered Claius, where you were cast ashore, - and now are past through is Laconia: but this country (where you now - set your foot) is Arcadia.’ - -One would think the very name might have lulled his senses to delightful -repose in some still, lonely valley, and have laid the restless spirit -of Gothic quaintness, witticism, and conceit in the lap of classic -elegance and pastoral simplicity. Here are images too of touching beauty -and everlasting truth that needed nothing but to be simply and nakedly -expressed to have made a picture equal (nay superior) to the allegorical -representation of the Four Seasons of Life by Georgioni. But no! He -cannot let his imagination or that of the reader dwell for a moment on -the beauty or power of the real object. He thinks nothing is done, -unless it is his doing. He must officiously and gratuitously interpose -between you and the subject as the Cicerone of Nature, distracting the -eye and the mind by continual uncalled-for interruptions, analysing, -dissecting, disjointing, murdering every thing, and reading a -pragmatical, self-sufficient lecture over the dead body of nature. The -moving spring of his mind is not sensibility or imagination, but dry, -literal, unceasing craving after intellectual excitement, which is -indifferent to pleasure or pain, to beauty or deformity, and likes to -owe everything to its own perverse efforts rather than the sense of -power in other things. It constantly interferes to perplex and -neutralise. It never leaves the mind in a wise passiveness. In the -infancy of taste, the froward pupils of art took nature to pieces, as -spoiled children do a watch, to see what was in it. After taking it to -pieces they could not, with all their cunning, put it together again, so -as to restore circulation to the heart, or its living hue to the face! -The quaint and pedantic style here objected to was not however the -natural growth of untutored fancy, but an artificial excrescence -transferred from logic and rhetoric to poetry. It was not owing to the -excess of imagination, but of the want of it, that is, to the -predominance of the mere understanding or dialectic faculty over the -imaginative and the sensitive. It is in fact poetry degenerating at -every step into prose, sentiment entangling itself in a controversy, -from the habitual leaven of polemics and casuistry in the writer’s mind. -The poet insists upon matters of fact from the beauty or grandeur that -accompanies them; our prose-poet insists upon them because they are -matters of fact, and buries the beauty and grandeur in a heap of common -rubbish, ‘like two grains of wheat in a bushel of chaff.’ The true poet -illustrates for ornament or use: the fantastic pretender, only because -he is not easy till he can translate every thing out of itself into -something else. Imagination consists in enriching one idea by another, -which has the same feeling or set of associations belonging to it in a -higher or more striking degree; the quaint or scholastic style consists -in comparing one thing to another by the mere process of abstraction, -and the more forced and naked the comparison, the less of harmony or -congruity there is in it, the more wire-drawn and ambiguous the link of -generalisation by which objects are brought together, the greater is the -triumph of the false and fanciful style. There was a marked instance of -the difference in some lines from Ben Jonson which I have above quoted, -and which, as they are alternate examples of the extremes of both in the -same author and in the same short poem, there can be nothing invidious -in giving. In conveying an idea of female softness and sweetness, he -asks— - - ‘Have you felt the wool of the beaver, - Or swan’s down ever? - Or smelt of the bud of the briar, - Or the nard in the fire?’ - -Now ‘the swan’s down’ is a striking and beautiful image of the most -delicate and yielding softness; but we have no associations of a -pleasing sort with the wool of the beaver. The comparison is dry, hard, -and barren of effect. It may establish the matter of fact, but detracts -from and impairs the sentiment. The smell of ‘the bud of the briar’ is a -double-distilled essence of sweetness: besides, there are all the other -concomitant ideas of youth, beauty, and blushing modesty, which blend -with and heighten the immediate feeling: but the poetical reader was not -bound to know even what _nard_ is (it is merely a learned substance, a -non-entity to the imagination) nor whether it has a fragrant or -disagreeable scent when thrown into the fire, till Ben Jonson went out -of his way to give him this pedantic piece of information. It is a mere -matter of fact or of experiment; and while the experiment is making in -reality or fancy, the sentiment stands still; or even taking it for -granted in the literal and scientific sense, we are where we were; it -does not enhance the passion to be expressed: we have no love for the -smell of nard in the fire, but we have an old, a long-cherished one, -from infancy, for the bud of the briar. Sentiment, as Mr. Burke said of -nobility, is a thing of inveterate prejudice, and cannot be created, as -some people (learned and unlearned) are inclined to suppose, out of -fancy or out of any thing by the wit of man. The artificial and natural -style do not alternate in this way in the Arcadia: the one is but the -Helot, the eyeless drudge of the other. Thus even in the above passage, -which is comparatively beautiful and simple in its general structure, we -have ‘the bleating oratory’ of lambs, as if anything could be more -unlike oratory than the bleating of lambs; we have a young shepherdess -knitting, whose hands keep time not to her voice, but to her -‘voice-music,’ which introduces a foreign and questionable distinction, -merely to perplex the subject; we have meadows enamelled with all sorts -of ‘eye-pleasing flowers,’ as if it were necessary to inform the reader -that flowers pleased the eye, or as if they did not please any other -sense: we have valleys refreshed ‘with _silver_ streams,’ an epithet -that has nothing to do with the refreshment here spoken of: we have ‘an -accompaniable solitariness and a civil wildness,’ which are a pair of -very laboured antitheses; in fine, we have ‘want of store, and store of -want.’ - -Again, the passage describing the shipwreck of Pyrochles, has been much -and deservedly admired: yet it is not free from the same inherent -faults. - - ‘But a little way off they saw the mast (of the vessel) whose proud - height now lay along, like a widow having lost her mate, of whom she - held her honour;’ [This needed explanation] ‘but upon the mast they - saw a young man (at least if it were a man) bearing show of about - eighteen years of age, who sat (as on horseback) having nothing upon - him but his shirt, which being wrought with blue silk and gold, had a - kind of resemblance to the sea’ [This is a sort of alliteration in - natural history] ‘on which the sun (then near his western home) did - shoot some of his beams. His hair, (which the young men of Greece used - to wear very long) was stirred up and down with the wind, which seemed - to have a sport to play with it, as the sea had to kiss his feet; - himself full of admirable beauty, set forth by the strangeness both of - his seat and gesture; for holding his head up full of unmoved majesty, - he held a sword aloft with his fair arm, which often he waved about - his crown, as though he would threaten the world in that extremity.’ - -If the original sin of alliteration, antithesis, and metaphysical -conceit could be weeded out of this passage, there is hardly a more -heroic one to be found in prose or poetry. - -Here is one more passage marred in the making. A shepherd is supposed to -say of his mistress, - - ‘Certainly, as her eyelids are more pleasant to behold, than two white - kids climbing up a fair tree and browsing on his tenderest branches, - and yet are nothing, compared to the day-shining stars contained in - them; and as her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, - which comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the - extreme heat of summer; and yet is nothing compared to the - honey-flowing speech that breath doth carry; no more all that our eyes - can see of her (though when they have seen her, what else they shall - ever see is but dry stubble after clover grass) is to be matched with - the flock of unspeakable virtues, laid up delightfully in that - best-builded fold.’ - -Now here are images of singular beauty and of Eastern originality and -daring, followed up with enigmatical or unmeaning common-places, because -he never knows when to leave off, and thinks he can never be too wise or -too dull for his reader. He loads his prose Pegasus, like a pack-horse, -with all that comes and with a number of little trifling circumstances, -that fall off, and you are obliged to stop to pick them up by the way. -He cannot give his imagination a moment’s pause, thinks nothing done, -while any thing remains to do, and exhausts nearly all that can be said -upon a subject, whether good, bad, or indifferent. The above passages -are taken from the beginning of the Arcadia, when the author’s style was -hardly yet formed. The following is a less favourable, but fairer -specimen of the work. It is the model of a love-letter, and is only -longer than that of Adriano de Armada, in Love’s Labour Lost. - - ‘Most blessed paper, which shalt kiss that hand, whereto all - blessedness is in nature a servant, do not yet disdain to carry with - thee the woeful words of a miser now despairing: neither be afraid to - appear before her, bearing the base title of the sender. For no sooner - shall that divine hand touch thee, but that thy baseness shall be - turned to most high preferment. Therefore mourn boldly my ink: for - while she looks upon you, your blackness will shine: cry out boldly my - lamentation, for while she reads you, your cries will be music. Say - then (O happy messenger of a most unhappy message) that the too soon - born and too late dying creature, which dares not speak, no, not look, - no, not scarcely think (as from his miserable self unto her heavenly - highness), only presumes to desire thee (in the time that her eyes and - voice do exalt thee) to say, and in this manner to say, not from him, - oh no, that were not fit, but of him, thus much unto her sacred - judgment. O you, the only honour to women, to men the only admiration, - you that being armed by love, defy him that armed you, in this high - estate wherein you have placed me’ [_i.e._ the letter] ‘yet let me - remember him to whom I am bound for bringing me to your presence: and - let me remember him, who (since he is yours, how mean soever he be) it - is reason you have an account of him. The wretch (yet your wretch) - though with languishing steps runs fast to his grave; and will you - suffer a temple (how poorly built soever, but yet a temple of your - deity) to be rased? But he dyeth: it is most true, he dyeth: and he in - whom you live, to obey you, dyeth. Whereof though he plain, he doth - not complain, for it is a harm, but no wrong, which he hath received. - He dies, because in woeful language all his senses tell him, that such - is your pleasure: for if you will not that he live, alas, alas, what - followeth, what followeth of the most ruined Dorus, but his end? End, - then, evil-destined Dorus, end; and end thou woeful letter, end: for - it sufficeth her wisdom to know, that her heavenly will shall be - accomplished.’ - - Lib. ii. p. 117. - -This style relishes neither of the lover nor the poet. Nine-tenths of -the work are written in this manner. It is in the very manner of those -books of gallantry and chivalry, which, with the labyrinths of their -style, and ‘the reason of their unreasonableness,’ turned the fine -intellects of the Knight of La Mancha. In a word (and not to speak it -profanely), the Arcadia is a riddle, a rebus, an acrostic in folio: it -contains about 4000 far-fetched similes, and 6000 impracticable -dilemmas, about 10,000 reasons for doing nothing at all, and as many -more against it; numberless alliterations, puns, questions and commands, -and other figures of rhetoric; about a score good passages, that one may -turn to with pleasure, and the most involved, irksome, improgressive, -and heteroclite subject that ever was chosen to exercise the pen or -patience of man. It no longer adorns the toilette or lies upon the -pillow of Maids of Honour and Peeresses in their own right (the Pamelas -and Philocleas of a later age), but remains upon the shelves of the -libraries of the curious in long works and great names, a monument to -shew that the author was one of the ablest men and worst writers of the -age of Elizabeth. - -His Sonnets, inlaid in the Arcadia, are jejune, far-fetched and frigid. -I shall select only one that has been much commended. It is to the High -Way where his mistress had passed, a strange subject, but not unsuitable -to the author’s genius. - - ‘High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be, - And that my Muse (to some ears not unsweet) - Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet - More oft than to a chamber melody; - Now blessed you bear onward blessed me - To her, where I my heart safe left shall meet; - My Muse, and I must you of duty greet - With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. - Be you still fair, honour’d by public heed, - By no encroachment wrong’d, nor time forgot; - Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed; - And that you know, I envy you no lot - Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, - Hundreds of years you Stella’s feet may kiss.’ - -The answer of the High-way has not been preserved, but the sincerity of -this appeal must no doubt have moved the stocks and stones to rise and -sympathise. His Defence of Poetry is his most readable performance; -there he is quite at home, in a sort of special pleader’s office, where -his ingenuity, scholastic subtlety, and tenaciousness in argument stand -him in good stead; and he brings off poetry with flying colours; for he -was a man of wit, of sense, and learning, though not a poet of true -taste or unsophisticated genius. - - - - - LECTURE VII - CHARACTER OF LORD BACON’S WORKS—COMPARED AS TO STYLE WITH SIR THOMAS - BROWN AND JEREMY TAYLOR. - - -Lord Bacon has been called (and justly) one of the wisest of mankind. -The word _wisdom_ characterises him more than any other. It was not that -he did so much himself to advance the knowledge of man or nature, as -that he saw what others had done to advance it, and what was still -wanting to its full accomplishment. He stood upon the high ‘vantage -ground of genius and learning; and traced, ‘as in a map the voyager his -course,’ the long devious march of human intellect, its elevations and -depressions, its windings and its errors. He had a ‘large discourse of -reason, looking before and after.’ He had made an exact and extensive -survey of human acquirements: he took the gauge and meter, the depths -and soundings of the human capacity. He was master of the comparative -anatomy of the mind of man, of the balance of power among the different -faculties. He had thoroughly investigated and carefully registered the -steps and processes of his own thoughts, with their irregularities and -failures, their liabilities to wrong conclusions, either from the -difficulties of the subject, or from moral causes, from prejudice, -indolence, vanity, from conscious strength or weakness; and he applied -this self-knowledge on a mighty scale to the general advances or -retrograde movements of the aggregate intellect of the world. He knew -well what the goal and crown of moral and intellectual power was, how -far men had fallen short of it, and how they came to miss it. He had an -instantaneous perception of the quantity of truth or good in any given -system; and of the analogy of any given result or principle to others of -the same kind scattered through nature or history. His observations take -in a larger range, have more profundity from the fineness of his tact, -and more comprehension from the extent of his knowledge, along the line -of which his imagination ran with equal celerity and certainty, than any -other person’s, whose writings I know. He however seized upon these -results, rather by intuition than by inference: he knew them in their -mixed modes, and combined effects rather than by abstraction or -analysis, as he explains them to others, not by resolving them into -their component parts and elementary principles, so much as by -illustrations drawn from other things operating in like manner, and -producing similar results; or as he himself has finely expressed it, ‘by -the same footsteps of nature treading or printing upon several subjects -or matters.’ He had great sagacity of observation, solidity of judgment -and scope of fancy; in this resembling Plato and Burke, that he was a -popular philosopher and a philosophical declaimer. His writings have the -gravity of prose with the fervour and vividness of poetry. His sayings -have the effect of axioms, are at once striking and self-evident. He -views objects from the greatest height, and his reflections acquire a -sublimity in proportion to their profundity, as in deep wells of water -we see the sparkling of the highest fixed stars. The chain of thought -reaches to the centre, and ascends the brightest heaven of invention. -Reason in him works like an instinct: and his slightest suggestions -carry the force of conviction. His opinions are judicial. His induction -of particulars is alike wonderful for learning and vivacity, for -curiosity and dignity, and an all-pervading intellect binds the whole -together in a graceful and pleasing form. His style is equally sharp and -sweet, flowing and pithy, condensed and expansive, expressing volumes in -a sentence, or amplifying a single thought into pages of rich, glowing, -and delightful eloquence. He had great liberality from seeing the -various aspects of things (there was nothing bigotted or intolerant or -exclusive about him) and yet he had firmness and decision from feeling -their weight and consequences. His character was then an amazing insight -into the limits of human knowledge and acquaintance with the landmarks -of human intellect, so as to trace its past history or point out the -path to future enquirers, but when he quits the ground of contemplation -of what others have done or left undone to project himself into future -discoveries, he becomes quaint and fantastic, instead of original. His -strength was in reflection, not in production: he was the surveyor, not -the builder of the fabric of science. He had not strictly the -constructive faculty. He was the principal pioneer in the march of -modern philosophy, and has completed the education and discipline of the -mind for the acquisition of truth, by explaining all the impediments or -furtherances that can be applied to it or cleared out of its way. In a -word, he was one of the greatest men this country has to boast, and his -name deserves to stand, where it is generally placed, by the side of -those of our greatest writers, whether we consider the variety, the -strength or splendour of his faculties, for ornament or use. - -His Advancement of Learning is his greatest work; and next to that, I -like the Essays; for the Novum Organum is more laboured and less -effectual than it might be. I shall give a few instances from the first -of these chiefly, to explain the scope of the above remarks. - -The Advancement of Learning is dedicated to James I. and he there -observes, with a mixture of truth and flattery, which looks very much -like a bold irony, - - ‘I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at - all, but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not - been, since Christ’s time, any king or temporal monarch, which hath - been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human (as - your majesty). For let a man seriously and diligently revolve and - peruse the succession of the Emperours of Rome, of which Cæsar the - Dictator, who lived some years before Christ, and Marcus Antoninus - were the best-learned; and so descend to the Emperours of Grecia, or - of the West, and then to the lines of France, Spain, England, - Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find his judgment is truly made. - For it seemeth much in a king, if by the compendious extractions of - other men’s wits and labour, he can take hold of any superficial - ornaments and shews of learning, or if he countenance and prefer - learning and learned men: but to drink indeed of the true fountain of - learning, nay, to have such a fountain of learning in himself, in a - king, and in a king born, is almost a miracle.’ - -To any one less wrapped up in self-sufficiency than James, the rule -would have been more staggering than the exception could have been -gratifying. But Bacon was a sort of prose-laureat to the reigning -prince, and his loyalty had never been suspected. - -In recommending learned men as fit counsellors in a state, he thus -points out the deficiencies of the mere empiric or man of business in -not being provided against uncommon emergencies.—‘Neither,’ he says, -‘can the experience of one man’s life furnish examples and precedents -for the events of one man’s life. For as it happeneth sometimes, that -the grand-child, or other descendant, resembleth the ancestor more than -the son: so many times occurrences of present times may sort better with -ancient examples, than with those of the latter or immediate times; and -lastly, the wit of one man can no more countervail learning, than one -man’s means can hold way with a common purse.’—This is finely put. It -might be added, on the other hand, by way of caution, that neither can -the wit or opinion of one learned man set itself up, as it sometimes -does, in opposition to the common sense or experience of mankind. - -When he goes on to vindicate the superiority of the scholar over the -mere politician in disinterestedness and inflexibility of principle, by -arguing ingeniously enough—‘The corrupter sort of mere politiques, that -have not their thoughts established by learning in the love and -apprehension of duty, nor never look abroad into universality, do refer -all things to themselves, and thrust themselves into the centre of the -world, as if all times should meet in them and their fortunes, never -caring in all tempests what becomes of the ship of estates, so they may -save themselves in the cock-boat of their own fortune, whereas men that -feel the weight of duty, and know the limits of self-love, use to make -good their places and duties, though with peril’—I can only wish that -the practice were as constant as the theory is plausible, or that the -time gave evidence of as much stability and sincerity of principle in -well-educated minds as it does of versatility and gross egotism in -self-taught men. I need not give the instances, ‘they will receive’ (in -our author’s phrase) ‘an open allowance:’ but I am afraid that neither -habits of abstraction nor the want of them will entirely exempt men from -a bias to their own interest; that it is neither learning nor ignorance -that thrusts us into the centre of our own little world, but that it is -nature that has put a man there! - -His character of the school-men is perhaps the finest philosophical -sketch that ever was drawn. After observing that there are ‘two marks -and badges of suspected and falsified science; the one, the novelty or -strangeness of terms, the other the strictness of positions, which of -necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations’—he -proceeds—‘Surely like as many substances in nature which are solid, do -putrify and corrupt into worms: so it is the property of good and sound -knowledge to putrify and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, -unwholesome, and (as I may term them) _vermiculate_ questions: which -have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of -matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did -chiefly reign amongst the school-men, who having sharp and strong wits, -and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading; but their wits -being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their -dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and -colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out -of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out -unto us those laborious webs of learning, which are extant in their -books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the -contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, -and is limited thereby: but if it work upon itself, as the spider -worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of -learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no -substance or profit.’ - -And a little further on, he adds—‘Notwithstanding, certain it is, that -if those school-men to their great thirst of truth and unwearied travel -of wit, had joined variety and universality of reading and -contemplation, they had proved excellent lights, to the great -advancement of all learning and knowledge; but as they are, they are -great undertakers indeed, and fierce with dark keeping. But as in the -inquiry of the divine truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of -God’s word, and to varnish in the mixture of their own inventions; so in -the inquisition of nature, they ever left the oracle of God’s works, and -adored the deceiving and deformed images, which the unequal mirror of -their own minds, or a few received authors or principles did represent -unto them.’ - -One of his acutest (I might have said profoundest) remarks relates to -the near connection between deceiving and being deceived. Volumes might -be written in explanation of it. ‘This vice therefore,’ he says, -‘brancheth itself into two sorts; delight in deceiving, and aptness to -be deceived, imposture and credulity; which although they appear to be -of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning, and the -other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most part concur. For -as the verse noteth _Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est_; an -inquisitive man is a prattler: so upon the like reason, a credulous man -is a deceiver; as we see it in fame, that he that will easily believe -rumours, will as easily augment rumours, and add somewhat to them of his -own, which Tacitus wisely noteth, when he saith, _Fingunt simul -creduntque_, so great an affinity hath fiction and belief.’ - -I proceed to his account of the causes of error, and directions for the -conduct of the understanding, which are admirable both for their -speculative ingenuity and practical use. - - ‘The first of these,’ says Lord Bacon, ‘is the extreme affection of - two extremities; the one antiquity, the other novelty, wherein it - seemeth the children of time do take after the nature and malice of - the father. For as he devoureth his children; so one of them seeketh - to devour and suppress the other; while antiquity envieth there should - be new additions, and novelty cannot be content to add, but it must - deface. Surely, the advice of the prophet is the true direction in - this respect, _state super vias antiquas, et videte quænam sit via - recta et bona, et ambulate in ea_. Antiquity deserveth that reverence, - that men should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best - way, but when the discovery is well taken, then to take progression. - And to speak truly,’ he adds, ‘_Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi_. - These times are the ancient times when the world is ancient; and not - those which we count ancient _ordine retrogrado_, by a computation - backwards from ourselves. - - ‘Another error induced by the former, is a distrust that any thing - should be now to be found out which the world should have missed and - passed over so long time, as if the same objection were to be made to - time that Lucian makes to Jupiter and other the Heathen Gods, of which - he wondereth that they begot so many children in old age, and begot - none in his time, and asketh whether they were become septuagenary, or - whether the law _Papia_ made against old men’s marriages had - restrained them. So it seemeth men doubt, lest time was become past - children and generation: wherein contrary-wise, we see commonly the - levity and unconstancy of men’s judgments, which till a matter be - done, wonder that it can be done, and as soon as it is done, wonder - again that it was done no sooner, as we see in the expedition of - Alexander into Asia, which at first was prejudged as a vast and - impossible enterprise, and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy to make no - more of it than this, _nil aliud quam bene ausus vana contemnere_. And - the same happened to Columbus in his western navigation. But in - intellectual matters, it is much more common; as may be seen in most - of the propositions in Euclid, which till they be demonstrate, they - seem strange to our assent, but being demonstrate, our mind accepteth - of them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak) as if we had - known them before. - - ‘Another is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due - and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation - are not unlike the two ways of action, commonly spoken of by the - Ancients. The one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end - impassable: the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after - a while fair and even; so it is in contemplation, if a man will begin - with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to - begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. - - ‘Another error is in the manner of the tradition or delivery of - knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and - not ingenuous and faithful; in a sort, as may be soonest believed, and - not easiliest examined. It is true, that in compendious treatises for - practice, that form is not to be disallowed. But in the true handling - of knowledge, men ought not to fall either on the one side into the - vein of Velleius the Epicurean; _nil tam metuens quam ne dubitare - aliqua de re videretur_: nor on the other side, into Socrates his - ironical doubting of all things, but to propound things sincerely, - with more or less asseveration; as they stand in a man’s own judgment, - proved more or less.’ - -Lord Bacon in this part declares, ‘that it is not his purpose to enter -into a laudative of learning or to make a Hymn to the Muses,’ yet he has -gone near to do this in the following observations on the dignity of -knowledge. He says, after speaking of rulers and conquerors: - - ‘But the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the commandment - over the will; for it is a commandment over the reason, belief, and - understanding of man, which is the highest part of the mind, and - giveth law to the will itself. For there is no power on earth which - setteth a throne or chair of estate in the spirits and souls of men, - and in their cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but - knowledge and learning. And therefore we see the detestable and - extreme pleasure that arch-heretics and false prophets and impostors - are transported with, when they once find in themselves that they have - a superiority in the faith and conscience of men: so great, as if they - have once tasted of it, it is seldom seen that any torture or - persecution can make them relinquish or abandon it. But as this is - that which the author of the Revelations calls the depth or - profoundness of Satan; so by argument of contraries, the just and - lawful sovereignty over men’s understanding, by force of truth rightly - interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to the similitude of - the Divine Rule.... Let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of - knowledge and learning in that whereunto man’s nature doth most - aspire, which is immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth - generation, and raising of houses and families; to this tendeth - buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of - memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect, the strength of all - other humane desires; we see then how far the monuments of wit and - learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. - For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years - and more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time - infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and - demolished? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of - Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, no, nor of the kings, or great personages of - much later years. For the originals cannot last; and the copies cannot - but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men’s wits and - knowledge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and - capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called - images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds - of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in - succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of the ship was thought so - noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and - consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, - how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships, pass - through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate - of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions the one of the other?’ - -Passages of equal force and beauty might be quoted from almost every -page of this work and of the Essays. - -Sir Thomas Brown and Bishop Taylor were two prose-writers in the -succeeding age, who, for pomp and copiousness of style, might be -compared to Lord Bacon. In all other respects they were opposed to him -and to one another.—As Bacon seemed to bend all his thoughts to the -practice of life, and to bring home the light of science to ‘the bosoms -and businesses of men,’ Sir Thomas Brown seemed to be of opinion that -the only business of life, was to think, and that the proper object of -speculation was, by darkening knowledge, to breed more speculation, and -‘find no end in wandering mazes lost.’ He chose the incomprehensible and -impracticable as almost the only subjects fit for a lofty and lasting -contemplation, or for the exercise of a solid faith. He cried out for an -_ob altitudo_ beyond the heights of revelation, and posed himself with -apocryphal mysteries, as the pastime of his leisure hours. He pushes a -question to the utmost verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the -certainty of doubt; and he removes an object to the greatest distance -from him, that he may take a high and abstracted interest in it, -consider it in its relation to the sum of things, not to himself, and -bewilder his understanding in the universality of its nature and the -inscrutableness of its origin. His is the sublime of indifference; a -passion for the abstruse and imaginary. He turns the world round for his -amusement, as if it was a globe of paste-board. He looks down on -sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station in one of the planets. -The Antipodes are next-door neighbours to him, and Dooms-day is not far -off. With a thought he embraces both the poles; the march of his pen is -over the great divisions of geography and chronology. Nothing touches -him nearer than humanity. He feels that he is mortal only in the decay -of nature, and the dust of long forgotten tombs. The finite is lost in -the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly bodies or the history of -empires are to him but a point in time or a speck in the universe. The -great Platonic year revolves in one of his periods. Nature is too little -for the grasp of his style. He scoops an antithesis out of fabulous -antiquity, and rakes up an epithet from the sweepings of Chaos. It is as -if his books had dropt from the clouds, or as if Friar Bacon’s head -could speak. He stands on the edge of the world of sense and reason, and -gains a vertigo by looking down at impossibilities and chimeras. Or he -busies himself with the mysteries of the Cabbala, or the enclosed -secrets of the heavenly quincunxes, as children are amused with tales of -the nursery. The passion of curiosity (the only passion of childhood) -had in him survived to old age, and had superannuated his other -faculties. He moralizes and grows pathetic on a mere idle fancy of his -own, as if thought and being were the same, or as if ‘all this world -were one glorious lie.’ For a thing to have ever had a name is -sufficient warrant to entitle it to respectful belief, and to invest it -with all the rights of a subject and its predicates. He is -superstitious, but not bigotted: to him all religions are much the same, -and he says that he should not like to have lived in the time of Christ -and the Apostles, as it would have rendered his faith too gross and -palpable.—His gossipping egotism and personal character have been -preferred unjustly to Montaigne’s. He had no personal character at all -but the peculiarity of resolving all the other elements of his being -into thought, and of trying experiments on his own nature in an -exhausted receiver of idle and unsatisfactory speculations. All that he -‘differences himself by,’ to use his own expression, is this moral and -physical indifference. In describing himself, he deals only in -negatives. He says he has neither prejudices nor antipathies to manners, -habits, climate, food, to persons or things; they were alike acceptable -to him as they afforded new topics for reflection; and he even professes -that he could never bring himself heartily to hate the Devil. He owns in -one place of the _Religio Medici_, that ‘he could be content if the -species were continued like trees,’ and yet he declares that this was -from no aversion to love, or beauty, or harmony; and the reasons he -assigns to prove the orthodoxy of his taste in this respect, is, that he -was an admirer of the music of the spheres! He tells us that he often -composed a comedy in his sleep. It would be curious to know the subject -or the texture of the plot. It must have been something like Nabbes’s -Mask of Microcosmus, of which the _dramatis personæ_ have been already -given; or else a misnomer, like Dante’s Divine Comedy of Heaven, Hell, -and Purgatory. He was twice married, as if to shew his disregard even -for his own theory; and he had a hand in the execution of some old women -for witchcraft, I suppose, to keep a decorum in absurdity, and to -indulge an agreeable horror at his own fantastical reveries on the -occasion. In a word, his mind seemed to converse chiefly with the -intelligible forms, the spectral apparitions of things, he delighted in -the preternatural and visionary, and he only existed at the -circumference of his nature. He had the most intense consciousness of -contradictions and non-entities, and he decks them out in the pride and -pedantry of words as if they were the attire of his proper person: the -categories hang about his neck like the gold chain of knighthood, and he -‘walks gowned’ in the intricate folds and swelling drapery of dark -sayings and impenetrable riddles! - -I will give one gorgeous passage to illustrate all this, from his -Urn-Burial, or Hydriotaphia. He digs up the urns of some ancient Druids -with the same ceremony and devotion as if they had contained the -hallowed relics of his dearest friends; and certainly we feel (as it has -been said) the freshness of the mould, and the breath of mortality, in -the spirit and force of his style. The conclusion of this singular and -unparalleled performance is as follows: - - ‘What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid - himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all - conjecture. What time the persons of these Ossuaries entered the - famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, - might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietors of these - bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above - antiquarianism: not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by - spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary - observators. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they - have done for their reliques, they had not so grossly erred in the art - of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally - extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, which in the oblivion of - names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves, a - fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems - of mortal vanities; antidotes against pride, vain glory, and madding - vices. Pagan vain-glories, which thought the world might last for - ever, had encouragement for ambition, and finding no Atropos unto the - immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of - oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the - attempts of their vain glories, who, acting early, and before the - probable meridian of time, have, by this time, found great - accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have - already outlasted their monuments, and mechanical preservations. But - in this latter scene of time we cannot expect such mummies unto our - memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of Elias, and Charles - the Fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselah’s of Hector. - - ‘And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories - unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and - superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our - names as some have done in their persons: one face of Janus holds no - proportion unto the other. ’Tis too late to be ambitious. The great - mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our - designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily - pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our - expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to - our beliefs. We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of - time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations. And being - necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally - constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excuseably - decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids - pillars of snow, and all that’s past a moment. - - ‘Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal - right-lined circle, must conclude and shut up all. There is no - antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all - things; our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly - tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth - scarce forty years: generations pass while some trees stand, and old - families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like - many in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets, or first - letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and - have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold - consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting - languages. - - ‘To be content that times to come should only know there was such a - man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition - in Cardan: disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of - himself, who cares to subsist like Hippocrates’ patients, or Achilles’ - horses in Homer, under naked nominations without deserts and noble - acts, which are the balsam of our memories, the Entelechia and soul of - our subsistences. To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous - history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than - Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, - than Pilate? - - ‘But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals - with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who - can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt - the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it; time hath spared - the epitaph of Adrian’s horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we - compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad - have equal durations: and Thersites is like to live as long as - Agamemnon, without the favour of the everlasting register. Who knows - whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more - remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known - account of time? the first man had been as unknown as the last, and - Methuselah’s long life had been his only chronicle. - - ‘Oblivion is not to be hired: the greater part must be content to be - as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not - in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and - the recorded names ever since, contain not one living century. The - number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of - time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every - hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one - moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans - could doubt - -whether thus to live, were to die: since our longest sun sets at right -descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be -long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since -the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time that -grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration: diuturnity is a dream -and folly of expectation. - -‘Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with -memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our -felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart -upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or -themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce -callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which -notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to -come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, -whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our -delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows -are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity -contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their -souls. A good way to continue their memories, while having the advantage -of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in -such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, -make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather -than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to -recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul -of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and -divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, -conserving their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of -their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The -Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now -consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and -Pharaoh is sold for balsams. - -‘In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from -oblivion, in preservations below the moon: Men have been deceived even -in their flatteries above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate -their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already -varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, -and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the -heavens, we find they are but like the earth; durable in their main -bodies, alterable in their parts: whereof beside comets and new stars, -perspectives begin to tell tales. And the spots that wander about the -sun, with Phaeton’s favour, would make clear conviction. - -‘There is nothing immortal, but immortality; whatever hath no beginning -may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent being, and -within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that necessary -essence that cannot destroy itself; and the highest strain of -omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from -the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality -frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after -death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our -souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names -hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, -that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold -long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble -animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing -Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of -bravery, in the infamy of his nature. - -‘Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A -small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after -death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like -Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal -blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, -wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, -and an urn. - -‘Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus; the man of God -lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by -Angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks -directing humane discovery. Enoch and Elias without either tomb or -burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of -perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict account being -still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act on this -stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all -die but be changed, according to received translation; the last day will -make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will anticipate -lasting sepultures; some graves will be opened before they be quite -closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared to die shall -groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second and -living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when men shall wish -the covering of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilation shall be -courted. - -‘While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined -them: and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not -acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus seems most subtle, who had a -river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla that thought -himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones -thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who -deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them in -the next, who when they die, make no commotion among the dead, and are -not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah. - -‘Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, -and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous -resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride, -and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible -perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be -poorly seen in angles of contingency. - -‘Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made -little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they -lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their -fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand -Christian annihilation, extasies, exolution, liquefaction, -transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression -into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation -of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes -unto them. - - ‘To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to - exist in their names, and prædicament of Chimeras, was large - satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their - Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. - To live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope - but an evidence in noble believers: ’tis all one to lie in St. - Innocent’s church-yard, as in the sands of Egypt: ready to be any - thing, in the extasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as - the moles of Adrianus.’ - -I subjoin the following account of this extraordinary writer’s style, -said to be written in a blank leaf of his works by Mr. Coleridge. - -‘Sir Thomas Brown is among my first favourites. Rich in various -knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits; contemplative, -imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, -though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and _hyperlatinistic_: thus I -might, without admixture of falshood, describe Sir T. Brown; and my -description would have this fault only, that it would be equally, or -almost equally, applicable to half a dozen other writers, from the -beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the end of the reign of Charles -the Second. He is indeed all this; and what he has more than all this, -and peculiar to himself, I seem to convey to my own mind in some -measure, by saying, that he is a quiet and sublime _enthusiast_, with a -strong tinge of the _fantast_; the humourist constantly mingling with, -and flashing across the philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk -play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains in his head, which is -all the more interesting for a little twist in the brains. He sometimes -reminds the reader of Montaigne; but from no other than the general -circumstance of an egotism common to both, which, in Montaigne, is too -often a mere amusing gossip, a chit-chat story of whims and -peculiarities that lead to nothing; but which, in Sir Thomas Brown, is -always the result of a feeling heart, conjoined with a mind of active -curiosity, the natural and becoming egotism of a man, who, loving other -men as himself, gains the habit and the privilege of talking about -himself as familiarly as about other men. Fond of the curious, and a -hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he conceives himself with -quaint and humorous gravity, an useful inquirer into physical truths and -fundamental science, he loved to contemplate and discuss his own -thoughts and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men’s, -that _they_, too, were curiosities; and so, with a perfectly graceful -interesting ease, he put _them_, too, into his museum and cabinet of -rarities. In very truth, he was not mistaken, so completely does he see -every thing in a light of his own; reading nature neither by sun, moon, -or candle-light, but by the light of the fairy glory around his own -head; that you might say, that nature had granted to _him_ in -perpetuity, a patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his -_Hydriotaphia_ above all, and, in addition to the peculiarity, the -exclusive _Sir Thomas Browne-ness_, of all the fancies and modes of -illustration, wonder at, and admire, his _entireness_ in every subject -which is before him. He is _totus in illo_, he follows it, he never -wanders from it, and he has no occasion to wander; for whatever happens -to be his subject, he metamorphoses all nature into it. In that -Hydriotaphia, or treatise on some urns dug up in Norfolk—how _earthy_, -how redolent of graves and sepulchres is every line! You have now dark -mould; now a thigh-bone; now a skull; then a bit of a mouldered coffin; -a fragment of an old tombstone, with moss in its _hic jacet_; a ghost, a -winding sheet; or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind: -and the gayest thing you shall meet with, shall be a silver nail, or -gilt _anno domini_, from a perished coffin top!—The very same remark -applies in the same force, to the interesting, though far less -interesting treatise on the Quincuncial Plantations of the Ancients, the -same _entireness_ of subject! Quincunxes in heaven above; quincunxes in -earth below; quincunxes in deity; quincunxes in the mind of man; -quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in -every thing! In short, just turn to the last leaf of this volume, and -read out aloud to yourself the seven last paragraphs of chapter 5th, -beginning with the words “_More considerable_.” But it is time for me to -be in bed. In the words of Sir T. Brown (which will serve as a fine -specimen of his manner), “But the quincunxes of Heaven (the _hyades, or -five stars about the horizon, at midnight at that time_) run low, and it -is time we close the five parts of knowledge; we are unwilling to spin -out our waking thoughts into the phantoms of sleep, which often continue -precogitations, making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome -groves. To keep our eyes open longer, were to _act_ our antipodes! The -huntsmen are up in Arabia; and they have already passed their first -sleep in Persia.” Think you, that there ever was such a reason given -before for going to bed at midnight; to wit, that if we did not, we -should be _acting_ the part of our antipodes! And then, “THE HUNTSMEN -ARE UP IN ARABIA,”—what life, what fancy! Does the whimsical knight give -us thus, the _essence_ of gunpowder tea, and call it an _opiate_?‘[38] - -Jeremy Taylor was a writer as different from Sir Thomas Brown as it was -possible for one writer to be from another. He was a dignitary of the -church, and except in matters of casuistry and controverted points, -could not be supposed to enter upon speculative doubts, or give a loose -to a sort of dogmatical scepticism. He had less thought, less ‘stuff of -the conscience,’ less ‘to give us pause,’ in his impetuous oratory, but -he had equal fancy—not the same vastness and profundity, but more -richness and beauty, more warmth and tenderness. He is as rapid, as -flowing, and endless, as the other is stately, abrupt, and concentrated. -The eloquence of the one is like a river, that of the other is more like -an aqueduct. The one is as sanguine, as the other is saturnine in the -temper of his mind. Jeremy Taylor took obvious and admitted truths for -granted, and illustrated them with an inexhaustible display of new and -enchanting imagery. Sir Thomas Brown talks in sum-totals: Jeremy Taylor -enumerates all the particulars of a subject. He gives every aspect it -will bear, and never ‘cloys with sameness.’ His characteristic is -enthusiastic and delightful amplification. Sir Thomas Brown gives the -beginning and end of things, that you may judge of their place and -magnitude: Jeremy Taylor describes their qualities and texture, and -enters into all the items of the debtor and creditor account between -life and death, grace and nature, faith and good works. He puts his -heart into his fancy. He does not pretend to annihilate the passions and -pursuits of mankind in the pride of philosophic indifference, but treats -them as serious and momentous things, warring with conscience and the -soul’s health, or furnishing the means of grace and hopes of glory. In -his writings, the frail stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of -eternity. His Holy Living and Dying is a divine pastoral. He writes to -the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. He -introduces touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life; condescends -to men of low estate; and his pious page blushes with modesty and -beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the rainbow; -it floats like the bubble through the air; it is like innumerable -dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble as they -glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but slides upon ice, borne -on the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he throws upon objects is -like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt heaven and earth— - - ‘Where pure Niemi’s faery banks arise, - And fringed with roses Tenglio rolls its stream.’ - -His exhortations to piety and virtue are a gay _memento mori_. He mixes -up death’s-heads and amaranthine flowers; makes life a procession to the -grave, but crowns it with gaudy garlands, and ‘rains sacrificial roses’ -on its path. In a word, his writings are more like fine poetry than any -other prose whatever; they are a choral song in praise of virtue, and a -hymn to the Spirit of the Universe. I shall give a few passages, to shew -how feeble and inefficient this praise is. - -The Holy Dying begins in this manner: - - ‘A man is a bubble. He is born in vanity and sin; he comes into the - world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the - air, and conversing with their kindred of the same production, and as - soon they turn into dust and forgetfulness; some of them without any - other interest in the affairs of the world, but that they made their - parents a little glad, and very sorrowful. Others ride longer in the - storm; it may be until seven years of vanity be expired, and then - peradventure the sun shines hot upon their heads, and they fall into - the shades below, into the cover of death and darkness of the grave to - hide them. But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and - outlives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a - pail of water, of being over-laid by a sleepy servant, or such little - accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble empty and gay, and - shines like a dove’s neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no - substance, and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical; and so - he dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a - storm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a - drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of - indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humour; - and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and - hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him - from rushing into nothing, and at first to draw him up from nothing, - were equally the issues of an Almighty power.’ - -Another instance of the same rich continuity of feeling and transparent -brilliancy in working out an idea, is to be found in his description of -the dawn and progress of reason. - - ‘Some are called _at age_ at fourteen, some at one and twenty, some - never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him - slowly and insensibly. But as when the sun approaches towards the - gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends - away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up - the lark to mattins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and - peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like - those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a - veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man - tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shews a fair face and - a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, - and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so - is a man’s reason and his life.’ - -This passage puts one in mind of the rising dawn and kindling skies in -one of Claude’s landscapes. Sir Thomas Brown has nothing of this rich -finishing and exact gradation. The genius of the two men differed, as -that of the painter from the mathematician. The one measures objects, -the other copies them. The one shews that things are nothing out of -themselves, or in relation to the whole: the one, what they are in -themselves, and in relation to us. Or the one may be said to apply the -telescope of the mind to distant bodies; the other looks at nature in -its infinite minuteness and glossy splendour through a solar microscope. - -In speaking of Death, our author’s style assumes the port and withering -smile of the King of Terrors. The following are scattered passages on -this subject. - - ‘It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday - or a maid servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in - that very night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men, and - many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the - folly of the latter does not make him unable to die.’... - - ‘I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, while living, - often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his - friends’ desire by giving way that after a few days’ burial, they - might send a painter to his vault, and if they saw cause for it, draw - the image of his death _unto the life_. They did so, and found his - face half-eaten, and his midriff and back-bone full of serpents; and - so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors.’... - - ‘It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and - it is visible to us, who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness - of youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the - vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five and twenty, to - the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a - three days’ burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very - great and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing from - the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, and - full with the dew of heaven, as the lamb’s fleece; but when a ruder - breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too - youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness and to - decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age, it bowed the - head and broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its - leaves, and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and - outworn faces. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as - bad with you and me; and then what servants shall we have to wait upon - us in the grave? What friends to visit us? What officious people to - cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our races - from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers - for our funerals?’ - - ‘A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man - preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the - same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, - and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where - their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more: - and where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, - and they must walk over their grandsires’ head to take his crown. - There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change - from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living - like Gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust, - to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of covetous - desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful, - artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, - the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes - mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell - all the world that when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings, and - our accounts easier, and our pains for our crimes shall be less.[39] - To my apprehension, it is a sad record which is left by Athenæus - concerning Ninus the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is - summed up in these words: “Ninus the Assyrian had an ocean of gold, - and other riches more than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw - the stars, and perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the - holy fire among the Magi; nor touched his God with the sacred rod - according to the laws: he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the - deity, nor administered justice, nor spake to the people; nor numbered - them: but he was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his - wines, he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead: behold his - sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. Sometime I was Ninus, and drew - the breath of a living man, but now am nothing but clay. I have - nothing but what I did eat, and what I served to myself in lust is all - my portion: the wealth with which I was blessed, my enemies meeting - together shall carry away, as the mad Thyades carry a raw goat. I am - gone to hell: and when I went thither, I neither carried gold nor - horse, nor silver chariot. I that wore a mitre, am now a little heap - of dust.“’ - -He who wrote in this manner also wore a mitre, and is now a heap of -dust; but when the name of Jeremy Taylor is no longer remembered with -reverence, genius will have become a mockery, and virtue an empty shade! - - - - - LECTURE VIII - ON THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE—ON THE GERMAN DRAMA, - CONTRASTED WITH THAT OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH - - -Before I proceed to the more immediate subject of the present Lecture, I -wish to say a few words of one or two writers in our own time, who have -imbibed the spirit and imitated the language of our elder dramatists. -Among these I may reckon the ingenious author of the Apostate and -Evadne, who in the last-mentioned play, in particular, has availed -himself with much judgment and spirit of the tragedy of the Traitor by -old Shirley. It would be curious to hear the opinion of a professed -admirer of the Ancients, and captious despiser of the Moderns, with -respect to this production, before he knew it was a copy of an old play. -Shirley himself lived in the time of Charles I. and died in the -beginning of Charles II.[40]; but he had formed his style on that of the -preceding age, and had written the greatest number of his plays in -conjunction with Jonson, Deckar, and Massinger. He was ‘the last of -those fair clouds that on the bosom of bright honour sailed in long -procession, calm and beautiful.’ The name of Mr. Tobin is familiar to -every lover of the drama. His Honey-Moon is evidently founded on The -Taming of a Shrew, and Duke Aranza has been pronounced by a polite -critic to be ‘an elegant Petruchio.’ The plot is taken from Shakespear; -but the language and sentiments, both of this play and of the Curfew, -bear a more direct resemblance to the flowery tenderness of Beaumont and -Fletcher, who were, I believe, the favourite study of our author. Mr. -Lamb’s John Woodvil may be considered as a dramatic fragment, intended -for the closet rather than the stage. It would sound oddly in the -lobbies of either theatre, amidst the noise and glare and bustle of -resort; but ‘there where we have treasured up our hearts,’ in silence -and in solitude, it may claim and find a place for itself. It might be -read with advantage in the still retreats of Sherwood Forest, where it -would throw a new-born light on the green, sunny glades; the tenderest -flower might seem to drink of the poet’s spirit, and ‘the tall deer that -paints a dancing shadow of his horns in the swift brook,’ might seem to -do so in mockery of the poet’s thought. Mr. Lamb, with a modesty often -attendant on fine feeling, has loitered too long in the humbler avenues -leading to the temple of ancient genius, instead of marching boldly up -to the sanctuary, as many with half his pretensions would have done: -‘but fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.’ The defective or -objectionable parts of this production are imitations of the defects of -the old writers: its beauties are his own, though in their manner. The -touches of thought and passion are often as pure and delicate as they -are profound; and the character of his heroine Margaret is perhaps the -finest and most genuine female character out of Shakespear. This tragedy -was not critic-proof: it had its cracks and flaws and breaches, through -which the enemy marched in triumphant. The station which he had chosen -was not indeed a walled town, but a straggling village, which the -experienced engineers proceeded to lay waste; and he is pinned down in -more than one Review of the day, as an exemplary warning to indiscreet -writers, who venture beyond the pale of periodical taste and -conventional criticism. Mr. Lamb was thus hindered by the taste of the -polite vulgar from writing as he wished; his own taste would not allow -him to write like them: and he (perhaps wisely) turned critic and -prose-writer in his own defence. To say that he has written better about -Shakespear, and about Hogarth, than any body else, is saying little in -his praise.—A gentleman of the name of Cornwall, who has lately -published a volume of Dramatic Scenes, has met with a very different -reception, but I cannot say that he has _deserved_ it. He has made no -sacrifice at the shrine of fashionable affectation or false glitter. -There is nothing common-place in his style to soothe the complacency of -dulness, nothing extravagant to startle the grossness of ignorance. He -writes with simplicity, delicacy, and fervour; continues a scene from -Shakespear, or works out a hint from Boccacio in the spirit of his -originals, and though he bows with reverence at the altar of those great -masters, he keeps an eye curiously intent on nature, and a mind awake to -the admonitions of his own heart. As he has begun, so let him proceed. -Any one who will turn to the glowing and richly-coloured conclusion of -the Falcon, will, I think, agree with me in this wish! - -There are four sorts or schools of tragedy with which I am acquainted. -The first is the antique or classical. This consisted, I apprehend, in -the introduction of persons on the stage, speaking, feeling, and acting -_according to nature_, that is, according to the impression of given -circumstances on the passions and mind of man in those circumstances, -but limited by the physical conditions of time and place, as to its -external form, and to a certain dignity of attitude and expression, -selection in the figures, and unity in their grouping, as in a statue or -bas-relief. The second is the Gothic or romantic, or as it might be -called, the historical or poetical tragedy, and differs from the former, -only in having a larger scope in the design and boldness in the -execution; that is, it is the dramatic representation of nature and -passion emancipated from the precise imitation of an actual event in -place and time, from the same fastidiousness in the choice of the -materials, and with the license of the epic and fanciful form added to -it in the range of the subject and the decorations of language. This is -particularly the style or school of Shakespear and of the best writers -of the age of Elizabeth, and the one immediately following. Of this -class, or genus, the _tragedie bourgeoise_ is a variety, and the -antithesis of the classical form. The third sort is the French or -common-place rhetorical style, which is founded on the antique as to its -form and subject-matter; but instead of individual nature, real passion, -or imagination growing out of real passion and the circumstances of the -speaker, it deals only in vague, imposing, and laboured declamations, or -descriptions of nature, dissertations on the passions, and pompous -flourishes which never entered any head but the author’s, have no -existence in nature which they pretend to identify, and are not dramatic -at all, but purely didactic. The fourth and last is the German or -paradoxical style, which differs from the others in representing men as -acting not from the impulse of feeling, or as debating common-place -questions of morality, but as the organs and mouth-pieces (that is, as -acting, speaking, and thinking, under the sole influence) of certain -extravagant speculative opinions, abstracted from all existing customs, -prejudices and institutions.—It is my present business to speak chiefly -of the first and last of these. - -Sophocles differs from Shakespear as a Doric portico does from -Westminster Abbey. The principle of the one is simplicity and harmony, -of the other richness and power. The one relies on form or proportion, -the other on quantity and variety and prominence of parts. The one owes -its charm to a certain union and regularity of feeling, the other adds -to its effects from complexity and the combination of the greatest -extremes. The classical appeals to sense and habit: the Gothic or -romantic strikes from novelty, strangeness and contrast. Both are -founded in essential and indestructible principles of human nature. We -may prefer the one to the other, as we chuse, but to set up an arbitrary -and bigotted standard of excellence in consequence of this preference, -and to exclude either one or the other from poetry or art, is to deny -the existence of the first principles of the human mind, and to war with -nature, which is the height of weakness and arrogance at once.—There are -some observations on this subject in a late number of the Edinburgh -Review, from which I shall here make a pretty long extract. - -‘The most obvious distinction between the two styles, the classical and -the romantic, is, that the one is conversant with objects that are grand -or beautiful in themselves, or in consequence of obvious and universal -associations; the other, with those that are interesting only by the -force of circumstances and imagination. A Grecian temple, for instance, -is a classical object: it is beautiful in itself, and excites immediate -admiration. But the ruins of a Gothic castle have no beauty or symmetry -to attract the eye; and yet they excite a more powerful and romantic -interest, from the ideas with which they are habitually associated. If, -in addition to this, we are told, that this is Macbeth’s castle, the -scene of the murder of Duncan, the interest will be instantly heightened -to a sort of pleasing horror. The classical idea or form of any thing, -it may also be observed, remains always the same, and suggests nearly -the same impressions; but the associations of ideas belonging to the -romantic character may vary infinitely, and take in the whole range of -nature and accident. Antigone, in Sophocles, waiting near the grove of -the Furies—Electra, in Æschylus, offering sacrifice at the tomb of -Agamemnon—are classical subjects, because the circumstances and the -characters have a correspondent dignity, and an immediate interest, from -their mere designation. Florimel, in Spenser, where she is described -sitting on the ground in the Witch’s hut, is not classical, though in -the highest degree poetical and romantic: for the incidents and -situation are in themselves mean and disagreeable, till they are -redeemed by the genius of the poet, and converted, by the very contrast, -into a source of the utmost pathos and elevation of sentiment. Othello’s -handkerchief is not classical, though “there was magic in the web:”—it -is only a powerful instrument of passion and imagination. Even Lear is -not classical; for he is a poor crazy old man, who has nothing sublime -about him but his afflictions, and who dies of a broken heart - -‘Schlegel somewhere compares the Furies of Æschylus to the Witches of -Shakespear—we think without much reason. Perhaps Shakespear has -surrounded the Weird Sisters with associations as terrible, and even -more mysterious, strange, and fantastic, than the Furies of Æschylus; -but the traditionary beings themselves are not so petrific. These are of -marble,—their look alone must blast the beholder;—those are of air, -bubbles; and though “so withered and so wild in their attire,” it is -their spells alone which are fatal. They owe their power to metaphysical -aid: but the others contain all that is dreadful in their corporal -figures. In this we see the distinct spirit of the classical and the -romantic mythology. The serpents that twine round the head of the Furies -are not to be trifled with, though they implied no preternatural power. -The bearded Witches in Macbeth are in themselves grotesque and -ludicrous, except as this strange deviation from nature staggers our -imagination, and leads us to expect and to believe in all incredible -things. They appal the faculties by what they say or do;—the others are -intolerable, even to sight. - -‘Our author is right in affirming, that the true way to understand the -plays of Sophocles and Æschylus, is to study them before the groupes of -the Niobe or the Laocoon. If we can succeed in explaining this analogy, -we shall have solved nearly the whole difficulty. For it is certain, -that there are exactly the same powers of mind displayed in the poetry -of the Greeks as in their statues. Their poetry is exactly what their -sculptors might have written. Both are exquisite imitations of nature; -the one in marble, the other in words. It is evident, that the Greek -poets had the same perfect idea of the subjects they described, as the -Greek sculptors had of the objects they represented; and they give as -much of this absolute truth of imitation, as can be given by words. But -in this direct and simple imitation of nature, as in describing the form -of a beautiful woman, the poet is greatly inferior to the sculptor: it -is in the power of illustration, in comparing it to other things, and -suggesting other ideas of beauty or love, that he has an entirely new -source of imagination opened to him: and of this power, the moderns have -made at least a bolder and more frequent use than the ancients. The -description of Helen in Homer is a description of what might have -happened and been seen, as “that she moved with grace, and that the old -men rose up with reverence as she passed;” the description of Belphœbe -in Spenser is a description of what was only visible to the eye of the -poet. - - “Upon her eyelids many graces sat, - Under the shadow of her even brows.” - -The description of the soldiers going to battle in Shakespear, “all -plumed like estriches, like eagles newly baited, wanton as goats, wild -as young bulls,” is too bold, figurative, and profuse of dazzling -images, for the mild, equable tone of classical poetry, which never -loses sight of the object in the illustration. The ideas of the ancients -were too exact and definite, too much attached to the material form or -vehicle by which they were conveyed, to admit of those rapid -combinations, those unrestrained flights of fancy, which, glancing from -heaven to earth, unite the most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest -illustrations from things the most remote. The two principles of -imitation and imagination, indeed, are not only distinct, but almost -opposite. - -‘The great difference, then, which we find between the classical and the -romantic style, between ancient and modern poetry, is, that the one more -frequently describes things as they are interesting in themselves,—the -other for the sake of the associations of ideas connected with them; -that the one dwells more on the immediate impressions of objects on the -senses—the other on the ideas which they suggest to the imagination. The -one is the poetry of form, the other of effect. The one gives only what -is necessarily implied in the subject, the other all that can possibly -arise out of it. The one seeks to identify the imitation with the -external object,—clings to it,—is inseparable from it,—is either that or -nothing; the other seeks to identify the original impression with -whatever else, within the range of thought or feeling, can strengthen, -relieve, adorn or elevate it. Hence the severity and simplicity of the -Greek tragedy, which excluded every thing foreign or unnecessary to the -subject. Hence the Unities: for, in order to identify the imitation as -much as possible with the reality, and leave nothing to mere -imagination, it was necessary to give the same coherence and consistency -to the different parts of a story, as to the different limbs of a -statue. Hence the beauty and grandeur of their materials; for, deriving -their power over the mind from the truth of the imitation, it was -necessary that the subject which they made choice of, and from which -they could not depart, should be in itself grand and beautiful. Hence -the perfection of their execution; which consisted in giving the utmost -harmony, delicacy, and refinement to the details of a given subject. -Now, the characteristic excellence of the moderns is the reverse of all -this. As, according to our author, the poetry of the Greeks is the same -as their sculpture; so, he says, our own more nearly resembles -painting,—where the artist can relieve and throw back his figures at -pleasure,—use a greater variety of contrasts,—and where light and shade, -like the colours of fancy, are reflected on the different objects. The -Muse of classical poetry should be represented as a beautiful naked -figure: the Muse of modern poetry should be represented clothed, and -with wings. The first has the advantage in point of form; the last in -colour and motion. - -‘Perhaps we may trace this difference to something analogous in physical -organization, situation, religion, and manners. First, the physical -organization of the Greeks seems to have been more perfect, more -susceptible of external impressions, and more in harmony with external -nature than ours, who have not the same advantages of climate and -constitution. Born of a beautiful and vigorous race, with quick senses -and a clear understanding, and placed under a mild heaven, they gave the -fullest developement to their external faculties: and where all is -perceived easily, every thing is perceived in harmony and proportion. It -is the stern genius of the North which drives men back upon their own -resources, which makes them slow to perceive, and averse to feel, and -which, by rendering them insensible to the single, successive -impressions of things, requires their collective and combined force to -rouse the imagination violently and unequally. It should be remarked, -however, that the early poetry of some of the Eastern nations has even -more of that irregularity, wild enthusiasm, and disproportioned -grandeur, which has been considered as the distinguishing character of -the Northern nations. - -‘Again, a good deal may be attributed to the state of manners and -political institutions. The ancient Greeks were warlike tribes encamped -in cities. They had no other country than that which was enclosed within -the walls of the town in which they lived. Each individual belonged, in -the first instance, to the state; and his relations to it were so close, -as to take away, in a great measure, all personal independence and -free-will. Every one was mortised to his place in society, and had his -station assigned him as part of the political machine, which could only -subsist by strict subordination and regularity. Every man was, as it -were, perpetually on duty, and his faculties kept constant watch and -ward. Energy of purpose and intensity of observation became the -necessary characteristics of such a state of society; and the general -principle communicated itself from this ruling concern for the public, -to morals, to art, to language, to every thing.—The tragic poets of -Greece were among her best soldiers; and it is no wonder that they were -as severe in their poetry as in their discipline. Their swords and their -styles carved out their way with equal sharpness.—After all, however, -the tragedies of Sophocles, which are the perfection of the classical -style, are hardly tragedies in our sense of the word.[41] They do not -exhibit the extremity of human passion and suffering. The object of -modern tragedy is to represent the soul utterly subdued as it were, or -at least convulsed and overthrown by passion or misfortune. That of the -ancients was to shew how the greatest crimes could be perpetrated with -the least remorse, and the greatest calamities borne with the least -emotion. Firmness of purpose and calmness of sentiment are their leading -characteristics. Their heroes and heroines act and suffer as if they -were always in the presence of a higher power, or as if human life -itself were a religious ceremony, performed in honour of the Gods and of -the State. The mind is not shaken to its centre; the whole being is not -crushed or broken down. Contradictory motives are not accumulated; the -utmost force of imagination and passion is not exhausted to overcome the -repugnance of the will to crime; the contrast and combination of outward -accidents are not called in to overwhelm the mind with the whole weight -of unexpected calamity. The dire conflict of the feelings, the desperate -struggle with fortune, are seldom there. All is conducted with a fatal -composure; prepared and submitted to with inflexible constancy, as if -Nature were only an instrument in the hands of Fate. - -‘This state of things was afterwards continued under the Roman empire. -In the ages of chivalry and romance, which, after a considerable -interval, succeeded its dissolution, and which have stamped their -character on modern genius and literature, all was reversed. Society was -again resolved into its component parts; and the world was, in a manner, -to begin anew. The ties which bound the citizen and the soldier to the -state being loosened, each person was thrown back into the circle of the -domestic affections, or left to pursue his doubtful way to fame and -fortune alone. This interval of time might be accordingly supposed to -give birth to all that was constant in attachment, adventurous in -action, strange, wild, and extravagant in invention. Human life took the -shape of a busy, voluptuous dream, where the imagination was now lost -amidst “antres vast and deserts idle;” or suddenly transported to -stately palaces, echoing with dance and song. In this uncertainty of -events, this fluctuation of hopes and fears, all objects became dim, -confused, and vague. Magicians, dwarfs, giants, followed in the train of -romance; and Orlando’s enchanted sword, the horn which he carried with -him, and which he blew thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero’s winged -horse, were not sufficient to protect them in their unheard-of -encounters, or deliver them from their inextricable difficulties. It was -a return to the period of the early heroic ages; but tempered by the -difference of domestic manners, and the spirit of religion. The marked -difference in the relation of the sexes arose from the freedom of choice -in women; which, from being the slaves of the will and passions of men, -converted them into the arbiters of their fate, which introduced the -modern system of gallantry, and first made love a feeling of the heart, -founded on mutual affection and esteem. The leading virtues of the -Christian religion, self-denial and generosity, assisted in producing -the same effect.—Hence the spirit of chivalry, of romantic love, and -honour! - -‘The mythology of the romantic poetry differed from the received -religion: both differed essentially from the classical. The religion or -mythology of the Greeks was nearly allied to their poetry: it was -material and definite. The Pagan system reduced the Gods to the human -form, and elevated the powers of inanimate nature to the same standard. -Statues carved out of the finest marble, represented the objects of -their religious worship in airy porticos, in solemn temples, and -consecrated groves. Mercury was seen “new-lighted on some heaven-kissing -hill;” and the Naiad or Dryad came gracefully forth as the personified -genius of the stream or wood. All was subjected to the senses. The -Christian religion, on the contrary, is essentially spiritual and -abstracted; it is “the evidence of things unseen.” In the Heathen -mythology, form is every where predominant; in the Christian, we find -only unlimited, undefined power. The imagination alone “broods over the -immense abyss, and makes it pregnant.” There is, in the habitual belief -of an universal, invisible principle of all things, a vastness and -obscurity which confounds our perceptions, while it exalts our piety. A -mysterious awe surrounds the doctrines of the Christian faith: the -infinite is everywhere before us, whether we turn to reflect on what is -revealed to us of the divine nature or our own. - -‘History, as well as religion, has contributed to enlarge the bounds of -imagination: and both together, by shewing past and future objects at an -interminable distance, have accustomed the mind to contemplate and take -an interest in the obscure and shadowy. The ancients were more -circumscribed within “the ignorant present time,”—spoke only their own -language,—were conversant only with their own customs,—were acquainted -only with the events of their own history. The mere lapse of time then, -aided by the art of printing, has served to accumulate an endless mass -of mixed and contradictory materials; and, by extending our knowledge to -a greater number of things, has made our particular ideas less perfect -and distinct. The constant reference to a former state of manners and -literature is a marked feature in modern poetry. We are always talking -of the Greeks and Romans;—_they_ never said any thing of us. This -circumstance has tended to give a certain abstract elevation, and -ethereal refinement to the mind, without strengthening it. We are lost -in wonder at what has been done, and dare not think of emulating it. The -earliest modern poets, accordingly, may be conceived to hail the glories -of the antique world, dawning through the dark abyss of time; while -revelation, on the other hand, opened its path to the skies. So Dante -represents himself as conducted by Virgil to the shades below; while -Beatrice welcomes him to the abodes of the blest.’ - -The French are the only people in modern Europe, who have professedly -imitated the ancients; but from their being utterly unlike the Greeks or -Romans, have produced a dramatic style of their own, which is neither -classical nor romantic. The same article contains the following censure -of this style: - -‘The true poet identifies the reader with the characters he represents; -the French poet only identifies him with himself. There is scarcely a -single page of their tragedy which fairly throws nature open to you. It -is tragedy in masquerade. We never get beyond conjecture and -reasoning—beyond the general impression of the situation of the -persons—beyond general reflections on their passions—beyond general -descriptions of objects. We never get at that something more, which is -what we are in search of, namely, what we ourselves should feel in the -same situations. The true poet transports you to the scene—you see and -hear what is passing—you catch, from the lips of the persons concerned, -what lies nearest to their hearts;—the French poet takes you into his -closet, and reads you a lecture upon it. The _chef d’œuvres_ of their -stage, then, are, at best, only ingenious paraphrases of nature. The -dialogue is a tissue of common-places, of laboured declamations on human -life, of learned casuistry on the passions, on virtue and vice, which -any one else might make just as well as the person speaking; and yet, -what the persons themselves would say, is all we want to know, and all -for which the poet puts them into those situations.’ - -After the Restoration, that is, after the return of the exiled family of -the Stuarts from France, our writers transplanted this artificial, -monotonous, and imposing common-place style into England, by imitations -and translations, where it could not be expected to take deep root, and -produce wholesome fruits, and where it has indeed given rise to little -but turgidity and rant in men of original force of genius, and to -insipidity and formality in feebler copyists. Otway is the only writer -of this school, who, in the lapse of a century and a half, has produced -a tragedy (upon the classic or regular model) of indisputable excellence -and lasting interest. The merit of Venice Preserved is not confined to -its effect on the stage, or to the opportunity it affords for the -display of the powers of the actors in it, of a Jaffier, a Pierre, a -Belvidera: it reads as well in the closet, and loses little or none of -its power of rivetting breathless attention, and stirring the deepest -yearnings of affection. It has passages of great beauty in themselves -(detached from the fable) touches of true nature and pathos, though none -equal or indeed comparable to what we meet with in Shakespear and other -writers of that day; but the awful suspense of the situations, the -conflict of duties and passions, the intimate bonds that unite the -characters together, and that are violently rent asunder like the -parting of soul and body, the solemn march of the tragical events to the -fatal catastrophe that winds up and closes over all, give to this -production of Otway’s Muse a charm and power that bind it like a spell -on the public mind, and have made it a proud and inseparable adjunct of -the English stage. Thomson has given it due honour in his feeling verse, -when he exclaims, - - ‘See o’er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks, - Othello rages, poor Monimia mourns, - And Belvidera pours her soul in love.’ - -There is a mixture of effeminacy, of luxurious and cowardly indulgence -of his wayward sensibility, in Jaffier’s character, which is, however, -finely relieved by the bold intrepid villainy and contemptuous irony of -Pierre, while it is excused by the difficulties of his situation, and -the loveliness of Belvidera: but in the Orphan there is little else but -this voluptuous effeminacy of sentiment and mawkish distress, which -strikes directly at the root of that mental fortitude and heroic cast of -thought which alone makes tragedy endurable—that renders its sufferings -pathetic, or its struggles sublime. Yet there are lines and passages in -it of extreme tenderness and beauty; and few persons, I conceive -(judging from my own experience) will read it at a certain time of life -without shedding tears over it as fast as the ‘Arabian trees their -medicinal gums.’ Otway always touched the reader, for he had himself a -heart. We may be sure that he blotted his page often with his tears, on -which so many drops have since fallen from glistening eyes, ‘that sacred -pity had engendered there.’ He had susceptibility of feeling and warmth -of genius; but he had not equal depth of thought or loftiness of -imagination, and indulged his mere sensibility too much, yielding to the -immediate impression or emotion excited in his own mind, and not placing -himself enough in the minds and situations of others, or following the -workings of nature sufficiently with keenness of eye and strength of -will into its heights and depths, its strongholds as well as its weak -sides. The Orphan was attempted to be revived some time since with the -advantage of Miss O’Neill playing the part of Monimia. It however did -not entirely succeed (as it appeared at the time) from the plot turning -all on one circumstance, and that hardly of a nature to be obtruded on -the public notice. The incidents and characters are taken almost -literally from an old play by Robert Tailor, called HOG HATH LOST HIS -PEARL. - -Addison’s Cato, in spite of Dennis’s criticism, still retains possession -of the stage with all its unities. My love and admiration for Addison is -as great as any person’s, let that other person be who he will; but it -is not founded on his Cato, in extolling which Whigs and Tories -contended in loud applause. The interest of this play (bating that -shadowy regret that always clings to and flickers round the form of free -antiquity) is confined to the declamation, which is feeble in itself, -and not heard on the stage. I have seen Mr. Kemble in this part repeat -the Soliloquy on Death without a line being distinctly heard; nothing -was observable but the thoughtful motion of his lips, and the occasional -extension of his hand in sign of doubts suggested or resolved; yet this -beautiful and expressive dumb-show, with the propriety of his costume, -and the elegance of his attitude and figure, excited the most lively -interest, and kept attention even more on the stretch, to catch every -imperfect syllable or speaking gesture. There is nothing, however, in -the play to excite ridicule, or shock by absurdity, except the -love-scenes which are passed over as what the spectator has no proper -concern with: and however feeble or languid the interest produced by a -dramatic exhibition, unless there is some positive stumbling-block -thrown in the way, or gross offence given to an audience, it is -generally suffered to linger on to a _euthanasia_, instead of dying a -violent and premature death. If an author (particularly an author of -high reputation) can contrive to preserve a uniform degree of -insipidity, he is nearly sure of impunity. It is the mixture of great -faults with splendid passages (the more striking from the contrast) that -is inevitable damnation. Every one must have seen the audience tired out -and watching for an opportunity to wreak their vengeance on the author, -and yet not able to accomplish their wish, because no one part seemed -more tiresome or worthless than another. The philosophic mantle of -Addison’s Cato, when it no longer spreads its graceful folds on the -shoulders of John Kemble, will I fear fall to the ground; nor do I think -Mr. Kean likely to pick it up again, with dauntless ambition or stoic -pride, like that of Coriolanus. He could not play Cato (at least I think -not) for the same reason that he will play Coriolanus. He can always -play a living man; he cannot play a lifeless statue. - -Dryden’s plays have not come down to us, except in the collection of his -printed works. The last of them that was on the list of regular acting -plays was Don Sebastian. The Mask of Arthur and Emmeline was the other -day revived at one of our theatres, without much success. Alexander the -Great is by Lee, who wrote some things in conjunction with Dryden, and -who had far more power and passion of an irregular and turbulent kind, -bordering upon constitutional morbidity, and who might have done better -things (as we see from his Œdipus) had not his genius been perverted and -rendered worse than abortive by carrying the vicious manner of his age -to the greatest excess. Dryden’s plays are perhaps the fairest specimen -of what this manner was. I do not know how to describe it better than by -saying that it is one continued and exaggerated common-place. All the -characters are put into a swaggering attitude of dignity, and tricked -out in the pomp of ostentatious drapery. The images are extravagant, yet -not far-fetched; they are outrageous caricatures of obvious thoughts: -the language oscillates between bombast and bathos: the characters are -noisy pretenders to virtue, and shallow boasters in vice; the -versification is laboured and monotonous, quite unlike the admirably -free and flowing rhyme of his satires, in which he felt the true -inspiration of his subject, and could find modulated sounds to express -it. Dryden had no dramatic genius either in tragedy or comedy. In his -plays he mistakes blasphemy for sublimity, and ribaldry for wit. He had -so little notion of his own powers, that he has put Milton’s Paradise -Lost into dramatic rhyme to make Adam look like a fine gentleman; and -has added a double love-plot to the Tempest, to ‘relieve the killing -languor and over-laboured lassitude’ of that solitude of the -imagination, in which Shakespear had left the inhabitants of his -Enchanted Island. I will give two passages out of Don Sebastian in -illustration of what I have said above of this mock-heroic style. - -Almeyda advising Sebastian to fly from the power of Muley-Moluch -addresses him thus: - - ‘Leave then the luggage of your fate behind; - To make your flight more easy, leave Almeyda. - Nor think me left a base, ignoble prey, - Exposed to this inhuman tyrant’s lust. - My virtue is a guard beyond my strength; - And death my last defence within my call.’ - -Sebastian answers very gravely: - - ‘Death may be called in vain, and cannot come: - Tyrants can tye him up from your relief: - Nor has a Christian privilege to die. - Alas, thou art too young in thy new faith: - Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls, - And give them furloughs for another world: - But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand, - In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour.’ - -Sebastian then urging her to prevent the tyrant’s designs by an instant -marriage, she says, - - ‘’Tis late to join, when we must part so soon. - - _Sebastian._ Nay, rather let us haste it, e’er we part: - Our souls for want of that acquaintance here - May wander in the starry walks above, - And, forced on worse companions, miss ourselves.’ - -In the scene with Muley-Moluch where she makes intercession for -Sebastian’s life, she says, - - ‘My father’s, mother’s, brother’s death I pardon: - That’s somewhat sure, a mighty sum of murder, - Of innocent and kindred blood struck off. - My prayers and penance shall discount for these, - And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me: - Behold what price I offer, and how dear - To buy Sebastian’s life. - - _Emperor._ Let after-reckonings trouble fearful fools; - I’ll stand the trial of those trivial crimes: - But since thou begg’st me to prescribe my terms, - The only I can offer are thy love; - And this one day of respite to resolve. - Grant or deny, for thy next word is Fate; - And Fate is deaf to Prayer. - - _Almeyda._ May heav’n be so - At thy last breath to thine: I curse thee not: - For who can better curse the plague or devil - Than to be what they are? That curse be thine. - Now do not speak, Sebastian, for you need not, - But die, for I resign your life: Look heav’n, - Almeyda dooms her dear Sebastian’s death - But is there heaven, for I begin to doubt? - The skies are hush’d; no grumbling thunders roll: - Now take your swing, ye impious: sin, unpunish’d. - Eternal Providence seems over-watch’d, - And with a slumbering nod assents to murder.... - Farewell, my lost Sebastian! - I do not beg, I challenge Justice now: - O Powers, if Kings be your peculiar care, - Why plays this wretch with your prerogative? - Now flash him dead, now crumble him to ashes: - Or henceforth live confined in your own palace; - And look not idly out upon a world - That is no longer yours.’ - -These passages, with many like them, will be found in the first scene of -the third act. - -The occasional striking expressions, such as that of souls at the -resurrection ‘fumbling for their limbs,’ are the language of strong -satire and habitual disdain, not proper to tragic or serious poetry. - -After Dryden there is no writer that has acquired much reputation as a -tragic poet for the next hundred years. In the hands of his successors, -the Smiths, the Hughes, the Hills, the Murphys, the Dr. Johnsons, of the -reigns of George I. and II., tragedy seemed almost afraid to know -itself, and certainly did not stand where it had done a hundred and -fifty years before. It had degenerated by regular and studied gradations -into the most frigid, insipid, and insignificant of all things. It faded -to a shade, it tapered to a point, ‘fine by degrees, and beautifully -less.’ I do not believe there is a single play of this period which -could be read with any degree of interest or even patience, by a modern -reader of poetry, if we except the productions of Southern, Lillo and -Moore, the authors of the Gamester, Oroonoko, and Fatal Curiosity, and -who instead of mounting on classic stilts and making rhetorical -flourishes, went out of the established road to seek for truth and -nature and effect in the commonest life and lowest situations. In short, -the only tragedy of this period is that to which their productions gave -a name, and which has been called in contradistinction by the French, -and with an express provision for its merits and defects, the _tragedie -bourgeoise_. An anecdote is told of the first of these writers by Gray, -in one of his Letters, dated from Horace Walpole’s country-seat, about -the year 1740, who says, ‘Old Mr. Southern is here, who is now above 80: -a very agreeable old man, at least I think so when I look in his face, -and think of Isabella and Oroonoko.’ It is pleasant to see these traits -of attachment and gratitude kept up in successive generations of poets -to one another, and also to find that the same works of genius that have -‘sent us weeping to our beds,’ and made us ‘rise sadder and wiser on the -morrow morn,’ have excited just the same fondness of affection in others -before we were born; and it is to be hoped, will do so, after we are -dead. Our best feelings, and those on which we pride ourselves most, and -with most reason, are perhaps the commonest of all others. - -Up to the present reign, and during the best part of it (with another -solitary exception, Douglas, which with all its feebleness and -extravagance, has in its style and sentiments a good deal of poetical -and romantic beauty) tragedy wore the face of the Goddess of Dulness in -the Dunciad, serene, torpid, sickly, lethargic, and affected, till it -was roused from its trance by the blast of the French Revolution, and by -the loud trampling of the German Pegasus on the English stage, which now -appeared as pawing to get free from its ancient trammels, and rampant -shook off the incumbrance of all former examples, opinions, prejudices, -and principles. If we have not been alive and well since this period, at -least we have been alive, and it is better to be alive than dead. The -German tragedy (and our own, which is only a branch of it) aims at -effect, and produces it often in the highest degree; and it does this by -going all the lengths not only of instinctive feeling, but of -speculative opinion, and startling the hearer by overturning all the -established maxims of society, and setting at nought all the received -rules of composition. It cannot be said of this style that in it -‘decorum is the principal thing.’ It is the violation of decorum, that -is its first and last principle, the beginning, middle, and end. It is -an insult and defiance to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. The action -is not grave, but extravagant: the fable is not probable, but -improbable: the favourite characters are not only low, but vicious: the -sentiments are such as do not become the person into whose mouth they -are put, nor that of any other person: the language is a mixture of -metaphysical jargon and flaring prose: the moral is immorality. In spite -of all this, a German tragedy is a good thing. It is a fine -hallucination: it is a noble madness, and as there is a pleasure in -madness, which none but madmen know, so there is a pleasure in reading a -German play to be found in no other. The world have thought so: they go -to see the Stranger, they go to see Lovers’ Vows and Pizarro, they have -their eyes wide open all the time, and almost cry them out before they -come away, and therefore they go again. There is something in the style -that hits the temper of men’s minds; that, if it does not hold the -mirrour up to nature, yet ‘shews the very age and body of the time its -form and pressure.’ It embodies, it sets off and aggrandizes in all the -pomp of action, in all the vehemence of hyperbolical declamation, in -scenery, in dress, in music, in the glare of the senses, and the glow of -sympathy, the extreme opinions which are floating in our time, and which -have struck their roots deep and wide below the surface of the public -mind. We are no longer as formerly heroes in warlike enterprise; martyrs -to religious faith; but we are all the partisans of a political system, -and devotees to some theory of moral sentiments. The modern style of -tragedy is not assuredly made up of pompous common-place, but it is a -tissue of philosophical, political, and moral paradoxes. I am not saying -whether these paradoxes are true or false: all that I mean to state is, -that they are utterly at variance with old opinions, with established -rules and existing institutions; that it is this tug of war between the -inert prejudice and the startling novelty which is to batter it down -(first on the stage of the theatre, and afterwards on the stage of the -world) that gives the excitement and the zest. We see the natural always -pitted against the social man; and the majority who are not of the -privileged classes, take part with the former. The hero is a sort of -metaphysical Orson, armed not with teeth and a club, but with hard -sayings and unanswerable sentences, ticketted and labelled with extracts -and mottos from the modern philosophy. This common representative of -mankind is a natural son of some feudal lord, or wealthy baron: and he -comes to claim as a matter of course and of simple equity, the rich -reversion of the title and estates to which he has a right by the bounty -of nature and the privilege of his birth. This produces a very edifying -scene, and the proud, unfeeling, unprincipled baron is hooted from the -stage. A young woman, a sempstress, or a waiting maid of much beauty and -accomplishment, who would not think of matching with a fellow of low -birth or fortune for the world, falls in love with the heir of an -immense estate out of pure regard to his mind and person, and thinks it -strange that rank and opulence do not follow as natural appendages in -the train of sentiment. A lady of fashion, wit, and beauty, forfeits the -sanctity of her marriage-vow, but preserves the inviolability of her -sentiments and character, - - ‘Pure in the last recesses of the mind’— - -and triumphs over false opinion and prejudice, like gold out of the -fire, the brighter for the ordeal. A young man turns robber and captain -of a gang of banditti; and the wonder is to see the heroic ardour of his -sentiments, his aspirations after the most godlike goodness and -unsullied reputation, working their way through the repulsiveness of his -situation, and making use of fortune only as a foil to nature. The -principle of contrast and contradiction is here made use of, and no -other. All qualities are reversed: virtue is always at odds with vice, -‘which shall be which:’ the internal character and external situation, -the actions and the sentiments, are never in accord: you are to judge of -everything by contraries: those that exalt themselves are abased, and -those that should be humbled are exalted: the high places and -strongholds of power and greatness are crumbled in the dust; opinions -totter, feelings are brought into question, and the world is turned -upside down, with all things in it!—‘There is some soul of goodness in -things evil’—and there is some soul of goodness in all this. The world -and every thing in it is not just what it ought to be, or what it -pretends to be; or such extravagant and prodigious paradoxes would be -driven from the stage—would meet with sympathy in no human breast, high -or low, young or old. _There’s something rotten in the state of -Denmark._ Opinion is not truth: appearance is not reality: power is not -beneficence: rank is not wisdom: nobility is not the only virtue: riches -are not happiness: desert and success are different things: actions do -not always speak the character any more than words. We feel this, and do -justice to the romantic extravagance of the German Muse. - -In Germany, where this _outré_ style of treating every thing established -and adventitious was carried to its height, there were, as we learn from -the Sorrows of Werter, seven-and-twenty ranks in society, each raised -above the other, and of which the one above did not speak to the one -below it. Is it wonderful that the poets and philosophers of Germany, -the discontented men of talent, who thought and mourned for themselves -and their fellows, the Goethes, the Lessings, the Schillers, the -Kotzebues, felt a sudden and irresistible impulse by a convulsive effort -to tear aside this factitious drapery of society, and to throw off that -load of bloated prejudice, of maddening pride and superannuated folly, -that pressed down every energy of their nature and stifled the breath of -liberty, of truth and genius in their bosoms? These Titans of our days -tried to throw off the dead weight that encumbered them, and in so -doing, warred not against heaven, but against earth. The same writers -(as far as I have seen) have made the only incorrigible Jacobins, and -their school of poetry is the only real school of Radical Reform. - -In reasoning, truth and soberness may prevail, on which side soever they -meet: but in works of imagination novelty has the advantage over -prejudice; that which is striking and unheard-of, over that which is -trite and known before, and that which gives unlimited scope to the -indulgence of the feelings and the passions (whether erroneous or not) -over that which imposes a restraint upon them. - -I have half trifled with this subject; and I believe I have done so, -because I despaired of finding language for some old rooted feelings I -have about it, which a theory could neither give or can it take away. -The Robbers was the first play I ever read: and the effect it produced -upon me was the greatest. It stunned me like a blow, and I have not -recovered enough from it to describe how it was. There are impressions -which neither time nor circumstances can efface. Were I to live much -longer than I have any chance of doing, the books which I read when I -was young, I can never forget. Five-and-twenty years have elapsed since -I first read the translation of the Robbers, but they have not blotted -the impression from my mind: it is here still, an old dweller in the -chambers of the brain. The scene in particular in which Moor looks -through his tears at the evening sun from the mountain’s brow, and says -in his despair, ‘It was my wish like him to live, like him to die: it -was an idle thought, a boy’s conceit,’ took fast hold of my imagination, -and that sun has to me never set! The last interview in Don Carlos -between the two lovers, in which the injured bride struggles to burst -the prison-house of her destiny, in which her hopes and youth lie -coffined, and buried, as it were, alive, under the oppression of -unspeakable anguish, I remember gave me a deep sense of suffering and a -strong desire after good, which has haunted me ever since. I do not like -Schiller’s later style so well. His Wallenstein, which is admirably and -almost literally translated by Mr. Coleridge, is stately, thoughtful, -and imaginative: but where is the enthusiasm, the throbbing of hope and -fear, the mortal struggle between the passions; as if all the happiness -or misery of a life were crowded into a moment, and the die was to be -cast that instant? Kotzebue’s best work I read first in Cumberland’s -imitation of it in the Wheel of Fortune; and I confess that that style -of sentiment which seems to make of life itself a long-drawn endless -sigh, has something in it that pleases me, in spite of rules and -criticism. Goethe’s tragedies are (those that I have seen of them, his -Count Egmont, Stella, &c.) constructed upon the second or inverted -manner of the German stage, with a deliberate design to avoid all -possible effect and interest, and this object is completely -accomplished. He is however spoken of with enthusiasm almost amounting -to idolatry by his countrymen, and those among ourselves who import -heavy German criticism into this country in shallow flat-bottomed -unwieldy intellects. Madame De Stael speaks of one passage in his -Iphigenia, where he introduces a fragment of an old song, which the -Furies are supposed to sing to Tantalus in hell, reproaching him with -the times when he sat with the Gods at their golden tables, and with his -after-crimes that hurled him from heaven, at which he turns his eyes -from his children and hangs his head in mournful silence. This is the -true sublime. Of all his works I like his Werter best, nor would I part -with it at a venture, even for the Memoirs of Anastasius the Greek, -whoever is the author; nor ever cease to think of the times, ‘when in -the fine summer evenings they saw the frank, noble-minded enthusiast -coming up from the valley,’ nor of ‘the high grass that by the light of -the departing sun waved in the breeze over his grave.’ - -But I have said enough to give an idea of this modern style, compared -with our own early Dramatic Literature, of which I had to treat.—I have -done: and if I have done no better, the fault has been in me, not in the -subject. My liking to this grew with my knowledge of it: but so did my -anxiety to do it justice. I somehow felt it as a point of honour not to -make my hearers think less highly of some of these old writers than I -myself did of them. If I have praised an author, it was because I liked -him: if I have quoted a passage, it was because it pleased me in the -reading: if I have spoken contemptuously of any one, it has been -reluctantly. It is no easy task that a writer, even in so humble a class -as myself, takes upon him; he is scouted and ridiculed if he fails; and -if he succeeds, the enmity and cavils and malice with which he is -assailed, are just in proportion to his success. The coldness and -jealousy of his friends not unfrequently keep pace with the rancour of -his enemies. They do not like you a bit the better for fulfilling the -good opinion they always entertained of you. They would wish you to be -always promising a great deal, and doing nothing, that they may answer -for the performance. That shows their sagacity and does not hurt their -vanity. An author wastes his time in painful study and obscure -researches, to gain a little breath of popularity, meets with nothing -but vexation and disappointment in ninety-nine instances out of a -hundred; or when he thinks to grasp the luckless prize, finds it not -worth the trouble—the perfume of a minute, fleeting as a shadow, hollow -as a sound; ‘as often got without merit as lost without deserving.’ He -thinks that the attainment of acknowledged excellence will secure him -the expression of those feelings in others, which the image and hope of -it had excited in his own breast, but instead of that, he meets with -nothing (or scarcely nothing) but squint-eyed suspicion, idiot wonder, -and grinning scorn.—It seems hardly worth while to have taken all the -pains he has been at for this! - -In youth we borrow patience from our future years: the spring of hope -gives us courage to act and suffer. A cloud is upon our onward path, and -we fancy that all is sunshine beyond it. The prospect seems endless, -because we do not know the end of it. We think that life is long, -because art is so, and that, because we have much to do, it is well -worth doing: or that no exertions can be too great, no sacrifices too -painful, to overcome the difficulties we have to encounter. Life is a -continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot. But -as we approach the goal, we draw in the reins; the impulse is less, as -we have not so far to go; as we see objects nearer, we become less -sanguine in the pursuit: it is not the despair of not attaining, so much -as knowing there is nothing worth obtaining, and the fear of having -nothing left even to wish for, that damps our ardour, and relaxes our -efforts; and if the mechanical habit did not increase the facility, -would, I believe, take away all inclination or power to do any thing. We -stagger on the few remaining paces to the end of our journey; make -perhaps one final effort; and are glad when our task is done! - - End of LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH - - - - - PREFACE AND CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS - FROM - SELECT BRITISH POETS - - - - - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE - - -The first edition of the _Select British Poets_ (5¾ in. × 9 in.) was -published in 1824 with the following title-page: ‘Select British Poets, -or New Elegant Extracts from Chaucer to the Present Time, with Critical -Remarks. By William Hazlitt. Embellished with Seven Ornamented -Portraits, after a Design by T. Stothard, R.A. London: Published by Wm. -C. Hall, and sold by all Booksellers. 1824.’ The frontispiece bore the -imprint ‘London. Published by T. Tegg, 73, Cheapside, June 1824.’ This -edition included selections from the works of living poets, and was -suppressed upon a threat of legal proceedings on behalf of some of the -copyright owners. There is a copy in the British Museum, but the volume -is exceedingly rare. In the following year (1825), a second edition was -published with a fresh title-page, the copyright poems being omitted. -The title-page ran: ‘Select Poets of Great Britain. To which are -prefixed, Critical Notices of Each Author. By William Hazlitt, Esq. -Author of “Lectures on the English Poets,” “Characters of Shakspeare’s -Plays,” “Lectures on Dramatic Literature,” etc. London: Printed by -Thomas Davison, Whitefriars, for Thomas Tegg, 73, Cheapside; R. Griffin -and Co., Glasgow; also R. Milliken, Dublin; and M. Baudry, Paris. 1825.’ -The pages which follow are printed from the first (complete) edition of -1824. - - - - - PREFACE - - -The volume here presented to the public is an attempt to improve upon -the plan of the Elegant Extracts in Verse by the late Dr. Knox. From the -length of time which had elapsed since the first appearance of that -work, a similar undertaking admitted of considerable improvement, -although the size of the volume has been compressed by means of a more -severe selection of matter. At least, a third of the former popular and -in many respects valuable work was devoted to articles either entirely -worthless, or recommended only by considerations foreign to the reader -of poetry. The object and indeed ambition of the present compiler has -been to offer to the public a BODY OF ENGLISH POETRY, from Chaucer to -Burns, such as might at once satisfy individual curiosity and justify -our national pride. We have reason to boast of the genius of our country -for poetry and of the trophies earned in that way; and it is well to -have a collection of such examples of excellence inwoven together as may -serve to nourish our own taste and love for the sublime or beautiful, -and also to silence the objections of foreigners, who are too ready to -treat us as behindhand with themselves in all that relates to the arts -of refinement and elegance. If in some respects we are so, it behoves us -the more to cultivate and cherish the superiority we can lay claim to in -others. Poetry is one of those departments in which we possess a decided -and as it were natural pre-eminence: and therefore no pains should be -spared in selecting and setting off to advantage the different proofs -and vouchers of it. - -All that could be done for this object, has been attempted in the -present instance. I have brought together in one view (to the best of my -judgment) the most admired smaller pieces of poetry, and the most -striking passages in larger works, which could not themselves be given -entire. I have availed myself of the plan chalked out by my predecessor, -but in the hope of improving upon it. To possess a work of this kind -ought to be like holding the contents of a library in one’s hand without -any of the refuse or ‘baser matter.’ If it had not been thought that the -former work admitted of considerable improvement in the choice of -subjects, inasmuch as inferior and indifferent productions not rarely -occupied the place of sterling excellence, the present publication would -not have been hazarded. Another difference is that I have followed the -order of time, instead of the division of the subjects. By this method, -the progress of poetry is better seen and understood; and besides, the -real subjects of poetry are so much alike or run so much into one -another, as not easily to come under any precise classification. - -The great deficiency which I have to lament is the small portion of -Shakespear’s poetry, which has been introduced into the work; but this -arose unavoidably from the plan of it, which did not extend to dramatic -poetry as a general species. The extracts from the best parts of -Chaucer, which are given at some length, will, it is hoped, be -acceptable to the lover both of poetry and history. The quotations from -Spenser do not occupy a much larger space than in the Elegant Extracts; -but entire passages are given, instead of a numberless quantity of -shreds and patches. The essence of Spenser’s poetry was a continuous, -endless flow of indescribable beauties, like the galaxy or milky -way:—Dr. Knox has ‘taken him and cut him out in little stars,’ which was -repugnant to the genius of his writings. I have made it my aim to -exhibit the characteristic and striking features of English poetry and -English genius; and with this view have endeavoured to give such -specimens from each author as showed his peculiar powers of mind and the -peculiar style in which he excelled, and have omitted those which were -not only less remarkable in themselves, but were common to him with -others, or in which others surpassed him, who were therefore the proper -models in that particular way. _Cuique tribuitur suum._ In a word, it -has been proposed to retain those passages and pieces with which the -reader of taste and feeling would be most pleased in the perusal of the -original works, and to which he would wish oftenest to turn again—and -which consequently may be conceived to conduce most beneficially to form -the taste and amuse the fancy of those who have not leisure or industry -to make themselves masters of the whole range of English poetry. By -leaving out a great deal of uninteresting and common-place poetry, room -has been obtained for nearly all that was emphatically excellent. The -reader, it is presumed, may here revel and find no end of delight, in -the racy vigour and manly characteristic humour, or simple pathos of -Chaucer’s Muse, in the gorgeous voluptuousness and romantic tenderness -of Spenser, in the severe, studied beauty and awful majesty of Milton, -in the elegance and refinement and harmony of Pope, in the strength and -satire and sounding rhythm of Dryden, in the sportive gaiety and graces -of Suckling, Dorset, Gay, and Prior, in Butler’s wit, in Thomson’s rural -scenes, in Cowper’s terse simplicity, in Burns’s laughing eye and -feeling heart (among standard and established reputations)—and in the -polished tenderness of Campbell, the buoyant heart-felt levity of Moore, -the striking, careless, picturesque beauties of Scott, the thoughtful -humanity of Wordsworth, and Byron’s glowing rage (among those whose -reputation seems less solid and towering, because we are too near them -to perceive its height or measure its duration). Others might be -mentioned to lengthen out the list of poetic names - - ‘That on the steady breeze of honour sail - In long possession, calm and beautiful:’— - -but from all together enough has been gleaned to make a ‘perpetual feast -of nectar’d sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.’ Such at least has -been my ardent wish; and if this volume is not pregnant with matter both -‘rich and rare,’ it has been the fault of the compiler, and not of the -poverty or niggardliness of the ENGLISH MUSE. - - W. H. - - - - - A CRITICAL LIST - OF - AUTHORS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME - - -CHAUCER is in the first class of poetry (the _natural_) and one of the -first. He describes the common but individual objects of nature and the -strongest and most universal, because spontaneous workings of the heart. -In invention he has not much to boast, for the materials are chiefly -borrowed (except in some of his comic tales); but the masterly execution -is his own. He is remarkable for the degree and variety of the qualities -he possesses—excelling equally in the comic and serious. He has little -fancy, but he has great wit, great humour, strong manly sense, great -power of description, perfect knowledge of character, occasional -sublimity, as in parts of the _Knight’s Tale_, and the deepest pathos, -as in the story of _Griselda_, _Custance_, _The Flower and the Leaf_, -&c. In humour and spirit, _The Wife of Bath_ is unequalled. - -SPENSER excels in the two qualities in which Chaucer is most -deficient—invention and fancy. The invention shown in his allegorical -personages is endless, as the fancy shown in his description of them is -gorgeous and delightful. He is the poet of romance. He describes things -as in a splendid and voluptuous dream. He has displayed no comic talent, -except in his _Shepherd’s Calendar_. He has little attempt at character, -an occasional visionary sublimity, and a pensive tenderness approaching -to the finest pathos. Nearly all that is excellent in the _Faery Queen_ -is contained in the three first Books. His style is sometimes ambiguous -and affected; but his versification is to the last degree flowing and -harmonious. - -Sir PHILIP SIDNEY is an affected writer, but with great power of thought -and description. His poetry, of which he did not write much, has the -faults of his prose without its recommendations. - -DRAYTON has chiefly tried his strength in description and learned -narrative. The plan of the _Poly-Olbion_ (a local or geographical -account of Great Britain) is original, but not very happy. The -descriptions of places are often striking and curious, but become -tedious by uniformity. There is some fancy in the poem, but little -general interest. His Heroic Epistles have considerable tenderness and -dignity; and, in the structure of the verse, have served as a model to -succeeding writers. - -DANIEL is chiefly remarkable for simplicity of style, and natural -tenderness. In some of his occasional pieces (as the _Epistle to the -Countess of Cumberland_) there is a vast philosophic gravity and -stateliness of sentiment. - -Sir JOHN SUCKLING is one of the most piquant and attractive of the Minor -poets. He has fancy, wit, humour, descriptive talent, the highest -elegance, perfect ease, a familiar style and a pleasing versification. -He has combined all these in his _Ballad on a Wedding_, which is a -masterpiece of sportive gaiety and good humour. His genius was confined -entirely to the light and agreeable. - -GEORGE WITHER is a poet of comparatively little power; though he has -left one or two exquisitely affecting passages, having a personal -reference to his own misfortunes. - -WALLER belonged to the same class as Suckling—the sportive, the -sparkling, the polished, with fancy, wit, elegance of style, and -easiness of versification at his command. Poetry was the plaything of -his idle hours—the mistress, to whom he addressed his verses, was his -real Muse. His lines on the _Death of Oliver Cromwell_ are however -serious, and even sublime. - -MILTON was one of the four great English poets, who must certainly take -precedence over all others, I mean himself, Spenser, Chaucer, and -Shakespear. His subject is not common or _natural_ indeed, but it is of -preternatural grandeur and unavoidable interest. He is altogether a -serious poet; and in this differs from Chaucer and Shakespear, and -resembles Spenser. He has sublimity in the highest degree: beauty in an -equal degree; pathos in a degree next to the highest; perfect character -in the conception of Satan, of Adam and Eve; fancy, learning, vividness -of description, stateliness, decorum. He seems on a par with his -subjects in _Paradise Lost_; to raise it, and to be raised with it. His -style is elaborate and powerful, and his versification, with occasional -harshness and affectation, superior in harmony and variety to all other -blank verse. It has the effect of a piece of fine music. His smaller -pieces, _Lycidas_, _L’Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, the Sonnets, &c., -display proportionable excellence, from their beauty, sweetness, and -elegance. - -COWLEY is a writer of great sense, ingenuity, and learning; but as a -poet, his fancy is quaint, far-fetched, and mechanical, and he has no -other distinguishing quality whatever. To these objections his -Anacreontics are a delightful exception. They are the perfection of that -sort of gay, unpremeditated, lyrical effusion. They breathe the very -spirit of love and wine. Most of his other pieces should be read for -instruction, not for pleasure. - -MARVELL is a writer almost forgotten: but undeservedly so. His poetical -reputation seems to have sunk with his political party. His satires were -coarse, quaint, and virulent; but his other productions are full of a -lively, tender, and elegant fancy. His verses leave an echo on the ear, -and find one in the heart. See those entitled BERMUDAS, TO HIS COY -MISTRESS, ON THE DEATH OF A FAWN, &c. - -BUTLER (the author of _Hudibras_) has undoubtedly more wit than any -other writer in the language. He has little besides to recommend him, if -we except strong sense, and a laudable contempt of absurdity and -hypocrisy. He has little story, little character, and no great humour in -his singular poem. The invention of the fable seems borrowed from Don -Quixote. He has however prodigious merit in his style, and in the -fabrication of his rhymes. - -Sir JOHN DENHAM’S fame rests chiefly on his _Cooper’s Hill_. This poem -is a mixture of the descriptive and didactic, and has given birth to -many poems on the same plan since. His _forte_ is strong, sound sense, -and easy, unaffected, manly verse. - -DRYDEN stands nearly at the head of the second class of English poets, -_viz._ the _artificial_, or those who describe the mixed modes of -artificial life, and convey general precepts and abstract ideas. He had -invention in the plan of his Satires, very little fancy, not much wit, -no humour, immense strength of character, elegance, masterly ease, -indignant contempt approaching to the sublime, not a particle of -tenderness, but eloquent declamation, the perfection of uncorrupted -English style, and of sounding, vehement, varied versification. The -_Alexander’s Feast_, his _Fables_ and _Satires_, are his standard and -lasting works. - -ROCHESTER, as a wit, is first-rate: but his fancy is keen and caustic, -not light and pleasing, like Suckling or Waller. His verses cut and -sparkle like diamonds. - -ROSCOMMON excelled chiefly as a translator; but his translation of -_Horace’s Art of Poetry_ is so _unique_ a specimen of fidelity and -felicity, that it has been adopted into this collection. - -POMFRET left one popular poem behind him, THE CHOICE; the attraction of -which may be supposed to lie rather in the subject than in the peculiar -merit of the execution. - -Lord DORSET, for the playful ease and elegance of his verses, is not -surpassed by any of the poets of that class. - -J. PHILIPS‘s SPLENDID SHILLING makes the fame of this poet—it is a lucky -thought happily executed. - -HALIFAX (of whom two short poems are here retained) was the least of the -Minor poets—one of ‘the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.’ - -The praise of PARNELL‘s poetry is, that it was moral, amiable, with a -tendency towards the pensive; and it was his fortune to be the friend of -poets. - -PRIOR is not a very moral poet, but the most arch, piquant, and -equivocal of those that have been admitted into this collection. He is a -graceful narrator, a polished wit, full of the delicacies of style -amidst gross allusions. - -POPE is at the head of the second class of poets, viz. the describers of -artificial life and manners. His works are a delightful, never-failing -fund of good sense and refined taste. He had high invention and fancy of -the comic kind, as in the _Rape of the Lock_; wit, as in the _Dunciad_ -and _Satires_; no humour; some beautiful descriptions, as in the -_Windsor Forest_; some exquisite delineations of character (those of -Addison and Villiers are master-pieces); he is a model of elegance -everywhere, but more particularly in his eulogies and friendly epistles; -his ease is the effect of labour; he has no pretensions to sublimity, -but sometimes displays an indignant moral feeling akin to it; his pathos -is playful and tender, as in his Epistles to _Arbuthnot_ and _Jervas_, -or rises into power by the help of rhetoric, as in the _Eloisa_, and -_Elegy on the Death of an Unfortunate Lady_; his style is polished and -almost faultless in its kind; his versification tires by uniform -smoothness and harmony. He has been called ‘the most sensible of poets:’ -but the proofs of his sense are to be looked for in his single -observations and hints, as in the _Essay on Criticism_ and _Moral -Epistles_, and not in the larger didactic reasonings of the _Essay on -Man_, which is full of verbiage and bombast. - -If good sense has been made the characteristic of Pope, good-nature -might be made (with at least equal truth) the characteristic of GAY. He -was a satirist without gall. He had a delightful placid vein of -invention, fancy, wit, humour, description, ease and elegance, a happy -style, and a versification which seemed to cost him nothing. His -_Beggar’s Opera_ indeed has stings in it, but it appears to have left -the writer’s mind without any. - -The _Grave_ of BLAIR is a serious and somewhat gloomy poem, but pregnant -with striking reflections and fine fancy. - -SWIFT‘s poetry is not at all equal to his prose. He was actuated by the -spleen in both. He has however sense, wit, humour, ease, and even -elegance when he pleases, in his poetical effusions. But he trifled with -the Muse. He has written more agreeable nonsense than any man. His -_Verses on his own Death_ are affecting and beautiful. - -AMBROSE PHILIPS‘s _Pastorals_ were ridiculed by Pope, and their merit is -of an humble kind. They may be said rather to mimic nature than to -imitate it. They talk about rural objects, but do not paint them. His -verses descriptive of a NORTHERN WINTER are better. - -THOMSON is the best and most original of our descriptive poets. He had -nature; but, through indolence or affectation, too often embellished it -with the gaudy ornaments of art. Where he gave way to his genuine -impulses, he was excellent. He had invention in the choice of his -subject (_The Seasons_), some fancy, wit and humour of a most voluptuous -kind; in the _Castle of Indolence_, great descriptive power. His -elegance is tawdriness; his ease slovenliness; he sometimes rises into -sublimity, as in his account of the _Torrid_ and _Frozen Zones_; he has -occasional pathos too, as in his _Traveller Lost in the Snow_; his style -is barbarous, and his ear heavy and bad. - -COLLINS, of all our Minor poets, that is, those who have attempted only -short pieces, is probably the one who has shown the most of the highest -qualities of poetry, and who excites the most intense interest in the -bosom of the reader. He soars into the regions of imagination, and -occupies the highest peaks of Parnassus. His fancy is glowing, vivid, -but at the same time hasty and obscure. Gray’s sublimity was borrowed -and mechanical, compared to Collins’s, who has the true inspiration, the -_vivida vis_ of the poet. He heats and melts objects in the fervour of -his genius, as in a furnace. See his _Odes to Fear_, _On the Poetical -Character_, and _To Evening_. The _Ode on the Passions_ is the most -popular, but the most artificial of his principal ones. His qualities -were fancy, sublimity of conception, and no mean degree of pathos, as in -the _Eclogues_, and the _Dirge in Cymbeline_. - -DYER‘s _Grongar Hill_ is a beautiful moral and descriptive effusion, -with much elegance, and perfect ease of style and versification. - -SHENSTONE was a writer inclined to feebleness and affectation: but when -he could divest himself of sickly pretensions, he produces occasional -excellence of a high degree. His SCHOOL-MISTRESS is the perfection of -_naïve_ description, and of that mixture of pathos and humour, than -which nothing is more delightful or rare. - -MALLET was a poet of small merit—but every one has read his _Edwin and -Emma_, and no one ever forgot it. - -AKENSIDE is a poet of considerable power, but of little taste or -feeling. His thoughts, like his style, are stately and imposing, but -turgid and gaudy. In his verse, ‘_less_ is meant than meets the ear.’ He -has some merit in the invention of the subject (the _Pleasures of -Imagination_) his poem being the first of a series of similar ones on -the faculties of the mind, as the _Pleasures of Memory_, _of Hope_, &c. - -YOUNG is a poet who has been much over-rated from the popularity of his -subject, and the glitter and lofty pretensions of his style. I wished to -have made more extracts from the _Night Thoughts_, but was constantly -repelled by the tinsel of expression, the false ornaments, and laboured -conceits. Of all writers who have gained a great name, he is the most -meretricious and objectionable. His is false wit, false fancy, false -sublimity, and mock-tenderness. At least, it appears so to me. - -GRAY was an author of great pretensions, but of great merit. He has an -air of sublimity, if not the reality. He aims at the highest things; and -if he fails, it is only by a hair’s-breadth. His pathos is injured, like -his sublimity, by too great an ambition after the ornaments and -machinery of poetry. His craving after foreign help perhaps shows the -want of the internal impulse. His _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, which -is the most simple, is the best of his productions. - -CHURCHILL is a fine rough satirist. He had sense, wit, eloquence, and -honesty. - -GOLDSMITH, both in verse and prose, was one of the most delightful -writers in the language. His verse flows like a limpid stream. His ease -is quite unconscious. Every thing in him is spontaneous, unstudied, -unaffected, yet elegant, harmonious, graceful, nearly faultless. Without -the point or refinement of Pope, he has more natural tenderness, a -greater suavity of manner, a more genial spirit. Goldsmith never rises -into sublimity, and seldom sinks into insipidity, or stumbles upon -coarseness. His _Traveller_ contains masterly national sketches. The -_Deserted Village_ is sometimes spun out into a mawkish sentimentality; -but the characters of the _Village Schoolmaster_, and the _Village -Clergyman_, redeem a hundred faults. His _Retaliation_ is a poem of -exquisite spirit, humour, and freedom of style. - -ARMSTRONG‘s _Art of Preserving Health_ displays a fine natural vein of -sense and poetry on a most unpromising subject. - -CHATTERTON‘s _Remains_ show great premature power, but are chiefly -interesting from his fate. He discovered great boldness of spirit and -versatility of talent; yet probably, if he had lived, would not have -increased his reputation for genius. - -THOMAS WARTON was a man of taste and genius. His SONNETS I cannot help -preferring to any in the language. - -COWPER is the last of the English poets in the first division of this -collection, but though last, not least. He is, after Thomson, the best -of our descriptive poets—more minute and graphical, but with less warmth -of feeling and natural enthusiasm than the author of THE SEASONS. He has -also fine manly sense, a pensive and interesting turn of thought, -tenderness occasionally running into the most touching pathos, and a -patriotic or religious zeal mounting almost into sublimity. He had great -simplicity with terseness of style: his versification is neither -strikingly faulty nor excellent. His occasional copies of verses have -great elegance; and his _John Gilpin_ is one of the most humorous pieces -in the language. - -BURNS concludes the series of the ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD; and one might be -tempted to write an elegy rather than a criticism on him. In _naïveté_, -in spirit, in characteristic humour, in vivid description of natural -objects and of the natural feelings of the heart, he has left behind him -no superior. - - -Of the living poets I wish to speak freely, but candidly. - -ROGERS is an elegant and highly polished writer, but without much -originality or power. He seems to have paid the chief attention to his -style—_Materiam superabat opus_. He writes, however, with an admiration -of the muse, and with an interest in humanity. - -CAMPBELL has equal elegance, equal elaborateness, with more power and -scope both of thought and fancy. His _Pleasures of Hope_ is too -artificial and antithetical; but his _Gertrude of Wyoming_ strikes at -the heart of nature, and has passages of extreme interest, with an air -of tenderness and sweetness over the whole, like the breath of flowers. -Some of his shorter effusions have great force and animation, and a -patriotic fire. - -BLOOMFIELD‘s excellence is confined to a minute and often interesting -description of individual objects in nature, in which he is surpassed -perhaps by no one. - -CRABBE is a writer of great power, but of a perverse and morbid taste. -He gives the very objects and feelings he treats of, whether in morals -or rural scenery, but he gives none but the most uninteresting or the -most painful. His poems are a sort of funeral dirge over human life, but -without pity, without hope. He has neither smiles nor tears for his -readers. - -COLERIDGE has shewn great wildness of conception in his _Ancient -Mariner_, sublimity of imagery in his _Ode to the Departing Year_, -grotesqueness of fancy in his _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_, and -tenderness of sentiment in his _Genevieve_. He has however produced -nothing equal to his powers. - -Mr. WORDSWORTH‘s characteristic is one, and may be expressed in one -word;—a power of raising the smallest things in nature into sublimity by -the force of sentiment. He attaches the deepest and loftiest feelings to -the meanest and most superficial objects. His peculiarity is his -combination of simplicity of subject with profundity and power of -execution. He has no fancy, no wit, no humour, little descriptive power, -no dramatic power, great occasional elegance, with continual rusticity -and boldness of allusion; but he is sublime without the Muse’s aid, -pathetic in the contemplation of his own and man’s nature; add to this, -that his style is natural and severe, and his versification sonorous and -expressive. - -Mr. SOUTHEY‘s talent in poetry lies chiefly in fancy and the invention -of his subject. Some of his oriental descriptions, characters, and -fables, are wonderfully striking and impressive, but there is an air of -extravagance in them, and his versification is abrupt, affected, and -repulsive. In his early poetry there is a vein of patriotic fervour, and -mild and beautiful moral reflection. - -Sir WALTER SCOTT is the most popular of our living poets. His excellence -is romantic narrative and picturesque description. He has great bustle, -great rapidity of action and flow of versification, with a sufficient -distinctness of character, and command of the ornaments of style. He has -neither lofty imagination, nor depth or intensity of feeling; _vividness -of mind_ is apparently his chief and pervading excellence. - -Mr. C. LAMB has produced no poems equal to his prose writings: but I -could not resist the temptation of transferring into this collection his -_Farewell to Tobacco_, and some of the sketches in his _John Woodvil_; -the first of which is rarely surpassed in quaint wit, and the last in -pure feeling. - -MONTGOMERY is an amiable and pleasing versifier, who puts his heart and -fancy into whatever he composes. - -Lord BYRON‘s distinguishing quality is intensity of conception and -expression. He _wills_ to be sublime or pathetic. He has great wildness -of invention, brilliant and elegant fancy, caustic wit, but no humour. -Gray’s description of the poetical character—‘Thoughts that glow, and -words that burn,’—applies to him more than to any of his contemporaries. - -THOMAS MOORE is the greatest wit now living. His light, ironical pieces -are unrivalled for point and facility of execution. His fancy is -delightful and brilliant, and his songs have gone to the heart of a -nation. - -LEIGH HUNT has shewn great wit in his _Feast of the Poets_, elegance in -his occasional verses, and power of description and pathos in his _Story -of Rimini_. The whole of the third canto of that poem is as chaste as it -is classical. - -The late Mr. SHELLEY (for he is dead since the commencement of this -publication) was chiefly distinguished by a fervour of philosophic -speculation, which he clad in the garb of fancy, and in words of Tyrian -die. He had spirit and genius, but his eagerness to give effect and -produce conviction often defeated his object, and bewildered himself and -his readers. - -Lord THURLOW has written some very unaccountable, but some occasionally -good and feeling poetry. - -Mr. KEATS is also dead. He gave the greatest promise of genius of any -poet of his day. He displayed extreme tenderness, beauty, originality, -and delicacy of fancy; all he wanted was manly strength and fortitude to -reject the temptations of singularity in sentiment and expression. Some -of his shorter and later pieces are, however, as free from faults as -they are full of beauties. - -Mr. MILMAN is a writer of classical taste and attainments rather than of -original genius. _Poeta nascitur—non fit._ - -Of BOWLES‘s sonnets it is recommendation enough to say, that they were -the favourites of Mr. Coleridge’s youthful mind. - -It only remains to speak of Mr. BARRY CORNWALL, who, both in the drama, -and in his other poems, has shewn brilliancy and tenderness of fancy, -and a fidelity to truth and nature, in conceiving the finer movements of -the mind equal to the felicity of his execution in expressing them. - - -Some additions have been made in the Miscellaneous part of the volume, -from the Lyrical effusions of the elder Dramatists, whose beauty, it is -presumed, can never decay, whose sweetness can never cloy! - - - - - NOTES - - - - - LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS - - - I. ON POETRY IN GENERAL - -Any differences between the text quoted by Hazlitt and the texts used -for the purposes of these notes which seem worth pointing out are -indicated in square brackets. - -For Sergeant Talfourd’s impressions of these lectures, and other matters -of interest connected with their delivery, the reader may be referred to -the _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, vol. i., pp. 236 _et seq._ - - PAGE - - 1. _Spreads its sweet leaves._ _Romeo and Juliet_, I. 1. - - 2. _The stuff of which our life is made._ Cf. _The Tempest_, IV. 1. - - _Mere oblivion._ _As You Like It_, II. 7. - - _Man’s life is poor as beast’s._ _King Lear_, II. 4. [‘Man’s life’s as - cheap as beast’s.’] - - _There is warrant for it._ Cf. _Richard III._, I. 4, and _Macbeth_, - II. 3. - - _Such seething brains_ and _the lunatic_. _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, - V. 1. - - 3. _Angelica and Medoro._ Characters in Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ - (1516). - - _Plato banished the poets._ _The Republic_, Book X. - - _Ecstasy is very cunning in._ _Hamlet_, III. 4. - - _According to Lord Bacon._ An adaptation of a passage in the - _Advancement of Learning_, Book II., Chap. xiii. (ed. Joseph Devey, - _Bohn_, p. 97). - - 4. _Our eyes are made the fools._ _Macbeth_, II. 1. - - _That if it would but apprehend._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, V. 1. - - _The flame o’ the taper._ _Cymbeline_, II. 2. - - _For they are old._ Cf. _King Lear_, II. 4. - - 5. _Nothing but his unkind daughters._ _King Lear_, III. 4. [‘Could - have subdued nature to such a lowness.’] - - _The little dogs._ _King Lear_, III. 6. - - _So I am._ _King Lear_, IV. 7. - - _O now for ever._ _Othello_, III. 3. - - 6. _Never, Iago._ _Othello_, III. 3. - - _But there where I have garner’d._ _Othello_, IV. 2. - - _Moore._ Edward Moore (1712–1757), author of _The Gamester_ (1753). - - _Lillo._ George Lillo (1693–1739), author of _The London Merchant, or - the History of George Barnwell_ (1731). - - 7. _As Mr. Burke observes._ _Sublime and Beautiful_, Part I. § 15. - - _Masterless passion._ _Merchant of Venice_, IV. 1. - - [‘for affection, - Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood.’] - - _Satisfaction to the thought._ Cf. _Othello_, III. 3. - - 8. _Now night descending._ _Dunciad_, I. 89, 90. - - 8. _Throw him on the steep._ _Ode to Fear._ - - [‘ridgy steep - Of some loose hanging rock to sleep.’] - - _Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend._ _King Lear_, I. 4. [‘More - hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child.’] - - _Both at the first and now._ _Hamlet_, III. 2. - - 9. _Doctor Chalmers’s Discoveries._ Thomas Chalmers, D.D. (1780–1847), - who sought in his _A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, - viewed in connection with Modern Astronomy_ (1817), to reconcile - science with current conceptions of Christianity. See _The Spirit of - the Age_, vol. III. p. 228 and note. - - 10. _Bandit fierce._ _Comus_, l. 426. - - _Our fell of hair._ _Macbeth_, V. 5. - - _Macbeth ... for the sake of the music._ Probably Purcell’s. It was - written for D’Avenant’s version and produced in 1672 (Genest). Cf. - _The Round Table_, vol. I. p. 138 and note. - - _Between the acting._ _Julius Caesar_, II. 1. [‘The Genius and the - mortal instruments.’] - - 11. _Thoughts that voluntary move._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 37, 38. - - _The words of Mercury._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. 11. [‘The words of - Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.’] - - _So from the ground._ _Faery Queene_, I. vi. [‘With doubled Eccho.’] - - 12. _The secret soul of harmony._ _L’Allegro_, l. 144. [‘The hidden - soul of harmony.’] - - _The golden cadences of poetry._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, IV. 2. - - _Sailing with supreme dominion._ Gray’s _Progress of Poesy_, III. 3. - - 13. _Sounding always._ Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_, l. 275. - - _Addison’s Campaign._ 1705. Addison wrote it on Marlborough’s victory - of Blenheim. For its description as a ‘Gazette in Rhyme,’ see Dr. - Joseph Warton’s (1722–1800) _An Essay on the Writings and Genius of - Pope_ (1756–82). - - 14. _Married to immortal verse._ _L’Allegro_, l. 137. - - _Dipped in dews of Castalie._ Cf. T. Heywood’s, - - ‘And Jonson, though his learned pen - Was dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.’ - - _The most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies._ Sophocles’s - _Philoctetes_. - - _As I walked about._ Defoe’s _Robinson Crusoe_, Part I. p. 125, ed. G. - A. Aitken. - - 15. _Give an echo._ _Twelfth Night_, II. 4. - - _Our poesy._ _Timon of Athens_, I. 1. [‘Which oozes.’] - - 16. _All plumed like ostriches._ Adapted from the First Part of _King - Henry IV._, IV. 1. [‘As full of spirit as the month of May.’] - - _If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth._ Cf. _Psalms_, - cxxxix. 9–11. - - 18. _Pope Anastasius the Sixth._ _Inferno_, XI. - - _Count Ugolino._ _Inferno_, XXXIII. Neither was Lamb satisfied with - the conception. See his paper on ‘The Reynolds Gallery’ in _The - Examiner_, June 6, 1813. - - _The lamentation of Selma._ Colma’s lament in the _Songs of Selma_. - - - II. ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. - -The Chaucer and Spenser references throughout are to Skeat’s _Student’s -Chaucer_, and to the _Globe_ Edition of _Spenser_ (Morris and Hales). - - 19. _Chaucer._ Modern authorities date Chaucer’s birth from 1340. It - is no longer held as true that he had an university education. The - story of his plot against the king, his flight and his imprisonment, - is also legendary. - - 20. _Close pent up_, and the next quotation. _King Lear_, III. 2. - - _Flowery tenderness._ _Measure for Measure_, III. 1. - - _And as the new abashed nightingale._ _Troilus and Criseyde_, III. - 177. - - _Thus passeth yere by yere._ ll. 1033–9 [‘fairer of hem two’]. - - 21. _That stondeth at a gap._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1639–42. - - _Have ye not seen._ ‘The Tale of the Man of Law,’ 645–51. - - _Swiche sorrow he maketh._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1277–80. - - 22. _Babbling gossip of the air._ _Twelfth Night_, I. 5. - - _There was also a nonne._ ‘The Prologue,’ 118–129 [‘Entuned in hir - nose ful semely’]; 137–155 [‘And held after the newe world the - space’]; 165–178; 189–207. - - 24. _Lawyer Dowling._ Book VIII., Chap. viii. - - _No wher so besy a man._ ‘The Prologue,’ 321–2. - - _Whose hous it snewed._ _Ibid._ 345. - - _Who rode upon a rouncie._ _Ibid._ 390. - - _Whose studie was but litel of the Bible._ _Ibid._ 438. - - _All whose parish._ _Ibid._ 449–52. - - _Whose parish was wide._ _Ibid._ 491. - - _A slendre colerike man._ _Ibid._ 587. - - _Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men._ Cf. Wm. - Blake’s _Descriptive Catalogue_, III. ‘As Newton numbered the stars, - and as Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes - of men.’ - - _A Sompnoure._ _Ibid._ 623–41. [‘Children were aferd,’ ‘oynons, and - eek lekes,’ ‘A fewe termes hadde he’]; 663–669. - - 25. _Ther maist thou se._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 2128–2151; 2155–2178; - 2185–6. - - 27. _The Flower and the Leaf._ Most modern scholars regard the - evidence which attributes this poem to Chaucer as insufficient. The - same few words of Hazlitt’s were originally used in _The Round Table_, - ‘Why the Arts are not Progressive?’ vol. I. p. 162. - - 28. _Griselda._ ‘The Clerkes Tale.’ See _The Round Table_, vol. I. p. - 162. - - _The faith of Constance._ ‘The Tale of the Man of Law.’ - - 29. _Oh Alma redemptoris mater._ ‘The Prioress’s Tale.’ - - _Whan that Arcite._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1355–71. [‘His hewe falwe.’] - - _Alas the wo!_ ll. 2771–9. - - 30. _The three temples_, ll. 1918–2092. - - _Dryden’s version_, _i.e._ his ‘Palamon and Arcite.’ - - _Why shulde I not._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1967–9, 1972–80. [‘In which - ther dwelleth.’] - - _The statue of Mars._ _Ibid._ 2041–2, 2047–8. - - _That heaves no sigh._ ‘Heave thou no sigh, nor shed a tear,’ Prior: - _Answer to Chloe_. - - _Let me not like a worm._ ‘The Clerkes Tale,’ l. 880. - - 31. _Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable._ _Ibid._ 197–245. - [‘Sette his yë’]; 274–94 [‘Hir threshold goon’]. - - 32. _All conscience and tender heart._ ‘The Prologue,’ 150. - - _From grave to gay._ Pope, _Essay on Man_, Ep. IV. 380. - - 33. _The Cock and the Fox._ ‘The Nonne Preestes Tale of the Cok and - Hen.’ - - _January and May._ ‘The Marchantes Tale.’ - - _The story of the three thieves._ ‘The Pardoners Tale.’ - - _Mr. West._ Benjamin West (1738–1820). See the article on this picture - by Hazlitt in _The Edinburgh Magazine_, Dec. 1817, where the same - extract is quoted. - - 34. _Ne Deth, alas._ ‘The Marchantes Tale,’ 727–38. - - 34. _Occleve._ Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (b. 1368), who expressed his - grief at his ‘master dear’ Chaucer’s death in his version of _De - Regimine Principum_. - - ‘_Ancient Gower_’ John Gower (1330–1408), who wrote _Confessio - Amantis_ (1392–3), and to whom Chaucer dedicated (‘O moral Gower’) his - _Troilus and Criseyde_. See _Pericles_, I. - - _Lydgate._ John Lydgate (_c._ 1370–c. 1440), poet and imitator of - Chaucer. - - _Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville._ Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), courtier - and poet; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1518–1547), who shares with - Wyatt the honour of introducing the sonnet into English verse; Thomas - Sackville, Earl of Dorset (c. 1536–1608), part author of the earliest - tragedy in English, _Ferrex and Porrex_, acted 1561–2. - - _Sir John Davies_ (1569–1626), poet and statesman. Spenser was sent to - Ireland in 1580 as private secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, - Lord Deputy of Ireland. Davies was sent to Ireland as - Solicitor-General in 1603, four years after Spenser’s death. - - _The bog of Allan._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book II. Canto IX. - - _An ably written paper._ ‘A View of the Present State of Ireland,’ - registered 1598, printed 1633. - - _An obscure inn._ In King Street, Westminster, Jan. 13, 1599. - - _The treatment he received from Burleigh._ It has been suggested that - the disfavour with which Spenser was regarded by Burleigh—a disfavour - that stood in the way of his preferment—was because of Spenser’s - friendship with Essex, and Leicester’s patronage of him. - - 35. _Clap on high._ _The Faerie Queene_, III. XII. 23. - - _In green vine leaves._ I. IV. 22. - - _Upon the top of all his lofty crest._ I. VII. 32. - - _In reading the Faery Queen._ The incidents mentioned will be found in - Books III. 9, I. 7, II. 6, and III. 12, respectively. - - 36. _And mask, and antique pageantry._ _L’Allegro_, 128. - - _And more to lull him._ I. I. 41. - - _The honey-heavy dew of slumber._ _Julius Caesar_, II. 1. - - _Eftsoones they heard._ II. XII. 70–1. [‘To read what manner.’] - - _The whiles some one did chaunt._ _Ibid._ 74–8. [‘Bare to ready - spoyl.’] - - 38. _The House of Pride._ I. IV. - - _The Cave of Mammon._ II. VII. 28–50. - - _The Cave of Despair._ I. IX. 33–35. - - _The wars he well remember’d._ II. IX. 56. - - _The description of Belphœbe._ II. III. 21. - - _Florimel and the Witch’s son._ III. VII. 12. - - _The gardens of Adonis._ III. VI. 29. - - _The Bower of Bliss._ II. XII. 42. - - _Poussin’s pictures._ Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). See Hazlitt’s - _Table Talk_, vol. VI. p. 168, _et seq._ - - _And eke that stranger knight._ III. IX. 20. - - _Her hair was sprinkled with flowers._ II. III. 30. - - _The cold icicles._ III. VIII. 35. [‘Ivory breast.’]. - - _That was Arion crowned._ IV. XI. line 3, stanza 23, and line 1, - stanza 24. - - 39. _And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony._ I. IV. 21–2. [‘In shape - and life.’] - - _And next to him rode lustfull Lechery._ _Ibid._ 24–6. - - 40. _Yet not more sweet._ Carmen Nuptiale, _The Lay of the Laureate_ - (1816), xviii. 4–6. - - _The first was Fancy._ III. XII. 7–13, 22–3. [‘Next after her.’] - - 42. _The account of Satyrane._ I. VI. 24. - - _Go seek some other play-fellows._ Stanza 28. [‘Go find.’] - - 42. _By the help of his fayre horns._ III. X. 47. - - _The change of Malbecco into Jealousy._ III. X. 56–60. - - _That house’s form._ II. VII. 28–9, 23. - - _That all with one consent._ _Troilus and Cressida_, III. 3. - - 43. _High over hill._ III. X. 55. - - _Pope, who used to ask._ In view of this remark, it may be of interest - to quote the following passage from Spence’s _Anecdotes_ (pp. 296–7, - 1820; Section viii., 1743–4): ‘There is something in Spenser that - pleases one as strongly in one’s old age, as it did in one’s youth. I - read the _Faerie Queene_, when I was about twelve, with infinite - delight, and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a - year or two ago.’ - - _The account of Talus, the Iron Man._ V. I. 12. - - _The ... Episode of Pastorella._ VI. IX. 12. - - 44. _In many a winding bout._ _L’Allegro_, 139–140. - - - III. ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON - -The references are to the _Globe_ Edition of Shakespeare, and Masson’s -three-volume edition of Milton’s _Poetical Works_. See _The Round -Table_, ‘On Milton’s Versification,’ vol. i. pp. 36 _et seq._, for -passages used again for the purposes of this lecture. See also _ibid._ -‘Why the Arts are not Progressive?’ pp. 160 _et seq._, and notes to -those two Essays. - - PAGE - - 46. _The human face divine._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 44. - - _And made a sunshine in the shady place._ _Faerie Queene_, I. III. 4. - - _The fault has been more in their_ [is not in our] _stars._ Cf. - _Julius Caesar_, I. 2. - - 47. _A mind reflecting ages past._ See vol. IV. notes to p. 213. - - _All corners of the earth._ _Cymbeline_, III. iv. - - _Nodded to him._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, III. 1. - - _His so potent art._ _Tempest_, V. 1. - - 48. _Subject_ [servile] _to the same_ [all] _skyey influences_. - _Measure for Measure_, III. 1. - - _His frequent haunts_ [‘my daily walks’]. _Comus_, 314. - - _Coheres semblably together._. Cf. _2 Henry IV._, V. 1. - - _Me and thy crying self._ _The Tempest_, I. 2. - - _What, man! ne’er pull your hat._ _Macbeth_, IV. 3. - - _Man delights not me_, and the following quotation. Adapted from - _Hamlet_, II. 2. Rosencraus should be Rosencrantz. - - _A combination and a form._ _Hamlet_, III. 4. - - 49. _My lord, as I was reading_ [sewing], _Hamlet_, II. 1. [‘His - stockings foul’d ... so piteous in purport ... loosed out of hell.’] - - _There is a willow_ [‘grows aslant’]. _Hamlet_, IV. 7. - - 50. _He’s speaking now._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, I. 5. - - _It is my birth-day._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, III. 13. - - 51. _Nigh sphered in Heaven._ Collins’s _Ode on the Poetical - Character_, 66. - - _To make society the sweeter welcome._ _Macbeth_, III. 1. - - 52. _With a little act upon the blood_ [burn] _like the mines of - sulphur._ _Othello_, III. 3. [‘Syrups of the world.’]. - - _While rage with rage._ _Troilus and Cressida_, I. 3. - - _In their untroubled element._ - - ‘That glorious star - In its untroubled element will shine, - As now it shines, when we are laid in earth - And safe from all our sorrows.’ - - Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, VI. 763–66. - - 52. _Satan’s address to the sun._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 31 _et seq._ - - 53. _O that I were a mockery king of snow_ [standing before] _the sun - of Bolingbroke._ _Richard II._, IV. 1. - - _His form had not yet lost._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 591–4. - - _A modern school of poetry._ The Lake School. - - _With what measure they mete._ _St. Mark_, iv. 24; _St. Luke_, vi. 38. - - _It glances from heaven to earth._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, V. 1. - - _Puts a girdle._ _Ibid._ II. 1. - - 54. _I ask that I might waken reverence_ [‘and bid the cheek’]. - _Troilus and Cressida_, I. 3. - - _No man is the lord of anything_, and the following quotation. _Ibid._ - III. 3. - - 55. _In Shakespeare._ Cf. ‘On application to study,’ _The Plain - Speaker_. - - _Light thickens._ _Macbeth_, III. 2. - - _His whole course of love._ _Othello_, I. 3. - - _The business of the State._ _Ibid._ IV. 2. - - _Of ditties highly penned._ _1 King Henry IV._, III. 1. - - _And so by many winding nooks._ _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. 7. - - 56. _Great vulgar and the small._ Cowley’s _Translation of Horace’s - Ode_, III. 1. - - _His delights_ [were] _dolphin-like._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, V. 2. - - 57. _Blind Thamyris._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 35–6. - - _With darkness._ _Ibid._ VII. 27. - - _Piling up every stone._ _Ibid._ XI. 324–5. - - _For after ... I had from my first years._ _The Reason of Church - Government_, Book II. - - 58. _The noble heart._ _Faerie Queene_, I. V. 1. - - _Makes Ossa like a wart._ _Hamlet_, V. 1. - - 59. _Him followed Rimmon._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 467–9. - - _As when a vulture._ _Ibid._ III. 431–9. - - _The great vision._ _Lycidas_, 161. - - _The Pilot._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 204. - - _The wandering moon._ _Il Penseroso_, 67–70. - - 60. _Like a steam._ _Comus_, 556. - - _He soon saw within ken._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 621–44. - - 61. _With Atlantean shoulders._ _Ibid._ II. 306–7. - - _Lay floating many a rood._ _Ibid._ I. 196. - - _That sea beast, Leviathan._ _Ibid._ I. 200–202. - - _What a force of imagination._ Cf. _Notes and Queries_, 4th Series, - xi. 174, where J. H. T. Oakley points out that Milton is simply - translating a well-known Greek phrase for the ocean. - - _His hand was known._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 732–47. - - 62. _But chief the spacious hall._ _Ibid._ I. 762–88. - - _Round he surveys._ _Ibid._ III. 555–67. - - 63. _Such as the meeting soul._ _L’Allegro_, 138–140. - - _The hidden soul._ _Ibid._ 144. - - _God the Father turns a school-divine._ Pope, 1st Epistle, _Hor._ Book - II. 102. - - _As when heaven’s fire._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 612–13. - - 64. _All is not lost._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 106–9. - - _That intellectual being._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 147–8. - - _Being swallowed up._ _Ibid._ II. 149–50. - - _Fallen cherub._ _Ibid._ I. 157–8. - - _Rising aloft_ [‘he steers his flight aloft’]. _Ibid._ I. 225–6. - - 65. _Is this the region._ _Ibid._ I. 242–63. - - 66. _His philippics against Salmasius._ In 1651 Milton replied in his - _Defensio pro Populo Anglicano_ to _Defensio Regia pro Carolo I._ - (1649) by Claudius Salmasius or Claude de Saumaise (1588–1658), a - professor at Leyden. The latter work had been undertaken at the - request of Charles II. by Salmasius, who was regarded as the leading - European scholar of his day. - - _With hideous ruin._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 46. - - _Retreated in a silent valley._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 547–50. - - _A noted political writer of the present day._ See _Political Essays_, - vol. III. pp. 155, _et seq._ ‘Illustrations of the Times Newspaper,’ - and notes thereto. Dr. Stoddart and Napoleon the Great are the persons - alluded to. See also Hone’s ‘Buonapartephobia, or the Origin of Dr. - Slop’s Name,’ which had reached a tenth edition in 1820. - - _Longinus._ _On the Sublime_, IX. - - 67. _No kind of traffic._ Adapted from _The Tempest_, II. 1. - - _The generations were prepared._ Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, VI. - 554–57. - - _The unapparent deep._ _Paradise Lost_, VII. 103. - - _Know to know no more._ Cf. Cowper, _Truth_, 327. - - _They toiled not._ _St. Matthew_, VI. 28, 29. - - _In them the burthen._ Wordsworth, ‘Lines composed a few miles above - Tintern Abbey,’ 38–41. - - _Such as angels weep._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 620. - - 68. _In either hand._ _Paradise Lost_, XII. 637–47. - - - IV. ON DRYDEN AND POPE - -The references throughout are to the _Globe_ Editions of Pope and -Dryden. - - 69–71. _The question, whether Pope was a poet._ In a slightly - different form these paragraphs appeared in _The Edinburgh Magazine_, - Feb. 1818. - - 70. _The pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow._ _Romeo and Juliet_, III. 5. - - 71. _Martha Blount_ (1690–1762). She was Pope’s life-long friend, to - whom he dedicated several poems, and to whom he bequeathed most of his - property. - - _In Fortune’s ray._ _Troilus and Cressida_, I. 3. - - _The gnarled oak ... the soft myrtle._ _Measure for Measure_, II. 2. - - _Calm contemplation and poetic ease._ Thomson’s _Autumn_, 1275. - - 72. _More subtle web Arachne cannot spin._ _Faerie Queene_, II. XII. - 77. - - _Not with more glories._ _The Rape of the Lock_, II. 1–22. - - 73. _From her fair head._ _Ibid._ III. 154. - - _Now meet thy fate._ _Ibid._ V. 87–96. - - _The Lutrin of Boileau._ Boileau’s account of an ecclesiastical - dispute over a reading-desk was published in 1674–81. It was - translated into English by Nicholas Rowe in 1708. _The Rape of the - Lock_ was published in 1712–14. - - _’Tis with our judgments._ _Essay on Criticism_, 9–10. - - 74. _Still green with bays._ _Ibid._ 181–92. - - _His little bark with theirs should sail._ _Essay on Man_, IV. 383–6. - [‘My little bark attendant sail.’] - - _But of the two, etc._ _Essay on Criticism_, See the _Round Table_, - vol. I. p. 41, for the first mention of these couplets by Hazlitt. - - 75. _There died the best of passions._ _Eloisa to Abelard_, 40. - - 76. _If ever chance._ _Ibid._ 347–8. - - _He spins_ [‘draweth out’] _the thread of his verbosity_. _Love’s - Labour’s Lost_, V. 1. - - _The very words._ _Macbeth_, I. 3. - - _Now night descending._ _The Dunciad_, I. 89–90. - - _Virtue may chuse._ _Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue I., 137–172. - - 77. _His character of Chartres._ _Moral Essays_, Epistle III. - - _Where Murray._ _Imitations of Horace_, Epistle VI., To Mr. Murray, - 52–3. William Murray (1704–1793) was created Baron Mansfield in 1756. - - _Why rail they then._ _Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue II. 138–9. - - _Despise low thoughts_ [joys]. _Imitations of Horace_, Epistle VI., To - Mr. Murray, 60–2. - - 78. _Character of Addison._ _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, 193–214. - - _Alas! how changed._ _Moral Essays_, Epistle III. 305–8. - - _Why did I write?_ _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, 125–146. - - _Oh, lasting as those colours._ _Epistle to Mr. Jervas_, 63–78. - - 79. _Who have eyes, but they see not._ _Psalm_, CXV. 5, etc. - - _I lisp’d in numbers._ _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, 128. - - _Et quum conabar scribere, versus erat._ Ovid, _Trist._, IV. x. 25–26. - - ‘Sponte sua numeros carmen veniebat ad aptos; - Et quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.’ - - 80. _Besides these jolly birds._ _The Hind and the Panther_, III. - 991–1025. [‘Whose crops impure.’] - - 81. _The jolly God._ _Alexander’s Feast, or the power of music: A song - in honour of St. Cecilia’s Day_ 1697, 49–52. A few phrases from this - criticism were used in the Essay on Mr. Wordsworth, _The Spirit of the - Age_ (vol. IV. p. 276). - - For _for, as piece_, read _for, as a piece_. - - 82. _The best character of Shakespeare._ Dryden’s _Essay of Dramatic - Poesy_, ed. Ker, I. 79–80. - - _Tancred and Sigismunda._ _i.e._ Sigismonda and Guiscardo. - - _Thou gladder of the mount._ _Palamon and Arcite_, III. 145. - - 83. _Donne._ John Donne (1573–1631), whose life was written by Izaak - Walton, and whom Ben Jonson described as ‘the first poet in the world - in some things,’ but who would not live ‘for not being understood.’ - - _Waller._ Edmund Waller’s (1605–1687) Saccharissa was Lady Dorothy - Sidney, daughter of the Earl of Leicester. - - _Marvel._ Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), ‘poet, patriot, and friend of - Milton.’ - - _Harsh, as the words of Mercury._ [‘The words of Mercury are harsh - after the songs of Apollo.’] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. 2. - - _Rochester._ John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680). - - _Denham._ Sir John Denham (1615–1669). His _Cooper’s Hill_ was - published in 1642. - - _Wither’s._ George Wither (1588–1667). See Lamb’s Essay on the - Poetical Works of George Wither. _Poems, Plays, and Essays_, ed. - Ainger. The lines quoted by Hazlitt are from ‘The Shepheards’ - Hunting,’ (1615). [‘To be pleasing ornaments.’ ‘Let me never taste of - gladnesse.’] - - - V. ON THOMSON AND COWPER - - 85. _Dr. Johnson makes it his praise._ ‘It is said by Lord Lyttelton, - in the Prologue to his posthumous play, that his works contained “no - line which, dying, he could wish to blot.“’ _Life of Thomson._ - - _Bub Doddington._ George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762), one of Browning’s - ‘persons of importance in their day.’ His Diary was published in 1784. - - _Would he had blotted a thousand!_ Said by Ben Jonson of Shakespeare, - in his _Timber._ - - 86. _Cannot be constrained by mastery._ - - ‘Love will not submit to be controlled - By mastery.’ - Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, VI. - - _Come, gentle Spring!_ ‘Spring,’ 1–4. - - _And see where surly Winter._ _Ibid._ 11–25. - - 88. _A man of genius._ Coleridge. See Hazlitt’s Essay, ‘My First - Acquaintance with the Poets.’ - - _A burnished fly._ _The Castle of Indolence_, I. 64. [‘In prime of - June.’] - - _For whom the merry bells._ _Ibid._ I. 62. - - _All was one full-swelling bed._ _Ibid._ I. 33. - - _The stock-dove’s plaint._ _Ibid._ I. 4. - - _The effects of the contagion._ ‘Summer,’ 1040–51. - - _Of the frequent corse._ _Ibid._ 1048–9. - - _Breath’d hot._ _Ibid._ 961–979. - - 89. _The inhuman rout._ ‘Autumn,’ 439–44. - - _There through the prison._ ‘Winter,’ 799–809. - - _Where pure Niemi’s fairy mountains rise._ _Ibid._ 875–6. - - _The traveller lost in the snow._ _Ibid._ 925–35. - - 90. _Through the hush’d air._ _Ibid._ 229–64. - - _Enfield’s Speaker._ _The Speaker_, or Miscellaneous Pieces selected - from the best English Writers, 1775, and often reprinted. By William - Enfield, LL.D., (1741–1797). - - _Palemon and Lavinia._ ‘Autumn,’ 177–309. - - _Damon and Musidora._ ‘Summer,’ 1267–1370. - - _Celadon and Amelia._ _Ibid._ 1171–1222. - - 91. _Overrun with the spleen._ Cf. ‘The lad lay swallow’d up in - spleen.’—Swift’s _Cassinus and Peter_, a Tragical Elegy, 1731. - - _Unbought grace._ Burke’s _Reflections on the French Revolution_: - Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89. - - 92. _His Vashti._ _The Task_, III. 715. - - _Crazy Kate, etc._ _The Task_, I. 534, _et seq._ - - _Loud hissing urn._ _Ibid._ IV. 38. - - _The night was winter._ _Ibid._ VI. 57–117. - - 94. _The first volume of Cowper’s poems._ This was published in 1782, - and contained _Table Talk_, _The Progress of Error_, _Truth_, - _Expostulation_, _Hope_, _Charity_, _Conversation_, _Retirement_, etc. - - _The proud and humble believer._ _Truth_, 58–70. - - _Yon cottager._ _Truth_, 317–36. - - _But if, unblamable in word and thought._ _Hope_, 622–34. - - 95. _Robert Bloomfield_ (1766–1823). _The Farmer’s Boy_ was written in - a London garret. It was published in 1800, and rapidly became popular. - - 96. _Thomson, in describing the same image._ _The Seasons_, ‘Spring,’ - 833–45. - - _While yet the year._ [‘As yet the trembling year is unconfirm’d.’] - _The Seasons_, ‘Spring,’ 18. - - 97. _Burn’s Justice._ _Justice of the Peace_, by Richard Burn - (1709–1785), the first of many editions of which was issued in two - vols., 1755. - - _Wears cruel garters._ _Twelfth Night_, II. 5. [‘Cross-gartered.’] - - _A panopticon._ Jeremy Bentham’s name for his method of prison - supervision. See _The Spirit of the Age_, vol. III., note to p. 197. - - _The latter end of his Commonwealth_ [does not] _forget_[s] _the - beginning_. _The Tempest_, II. 1. - - 98. _Mother Hubberd’s Tale._ _Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberd’s Tale._ - - 98. _The Oak and the Briar._ ‘Februarie,’ in _The Shepheard’s - Calender_. - - _Browne._ William Browne (1591–?1643), pastoral poet. His chief work - was _Britannia’s Pastorals_ (1613–6). - - _Withers._ See note to p. 83, _ante_. The family name is occasionally - spelt Withers though the poet is generally known as Wither. - - _The shepherd boy piping._ Book I. chap. ii. - - _Like Nicholas Poussin’s picture._ See Hazlitt’s Essay ‘On a Landscape - by Nicolas Poussin’ in _Table Talk_, vol. VI. p. 168, _et seq._ - - _Sannazarius’s Piscatory Eclogues._ Iacopo Sannazaro’s (1458–1530) - _Piscatory Eclogues_, translated by Rooke, appeared in England in - 1726. See _The Round Table_, vol. I. p. 56, ‘On John Buncle,’ for a - similar passage on Walton. - - 99. _A fair and happy milk-maid._ The quotation of the ‘Character’ - from Sir Thomas Overbury’s _Wife_ was contributed to the notes to - Walton’s _Complete Angler_ by Sir Henry Ellis, editor of Bagster’s - edition, 1815. He took it from the twelfth edition, 1627, of Sir - Thomas Overbury’s book. The following passages may be added between - ‘curfew’ and ‘her breath’ to make the note as quoted perfect:—‘In - milking a cow, and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems - that so sweet a milk press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for - never came almond glue or aromatic ointment of her palm to taint it. - The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as - if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that - felled them.’ - - 100. _Two quarto volumes._ John Horne Tooke’s _Diversions of Purley_ - was published in two volumes, 4to, in 1786–1805. See _The Spirit of - the Age_, vol. IV. p. 231, on ‘The Late Mr. Horne Tooke.’ - - _The heart of his mystery._ _Hamlet_, III. 2. - - _Rousseau in his Confessions ... a little spot of green._ Part I. Book - III. See _The Round Table_, ‘On the Love of the Country,’ and notes - thereto, vol. I. p. 17, _et seq._ The greater part of that letter was - used for the purposes of this lecture. - - 102. _Expatiates freely._ Pope’s _Essay on Man_, Epis. I. 5. - - _Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances._ Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), author of _The - Romance of the Forest_ (1791), _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ (1794), and - other popular stories of sombre mystery and gloom. - - 103. _My heart leaps up._ Wordsworth. - - [‘So be it when I shall grow old, - Or let me die! - The Child is father of the Man; - And I could wish my days to be - Bound each to each by natural piety.’] - - _Ah! voila de la pervenche._ _Confessions_, Part I. Book VI. - - _That wandering voice._ Wordsworth. _To the Cuckoo._ - - - VI. ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. - - 104. _Parnell._ Thomas Parnell (1679–1717). His poems were published - by Pope, and his life was written by Goldsmith. - - _Arbuthnot._ John Arbuthnot (1667–1735), physician and writer. He had - the chief share in the _Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus_, which was - published amongst Pope’s works in 1741. His _History of John Bull_ was - published in 1712. - - 105. _Trim ... the old jack-boots._ _Tristram Shandy_, III. 20. - - 106. _Prior._ Matthew Prior (1664–1721), diplomatist and writer of - ‘occasional’ verse. See Thackeray’s _English Humourists_. - - _Sedley._ Sir Charles Sedley (1639–1701), Restoration courtier and - poet. - - _Little Will._ An English Ballad on the taking of Namur by the King of - Great Britain, 1695. - - 107. _Gay._ John Gay (1685–1732), the author of _Fables_, _The - Beggar’s Opera_, so often quoted by Hazlitt, and _Black-eyed Susan_. - _Polly_ was intended as a sequel to _The Beggar’s Opera_, but it was - prohibited from being played, though permitted to be printed. See _The - Round Table_, _The Beggar’s Opera_, and notes thereto. That Essay was - used as part of the present lecture. - - _Happy alchemy of mind._ See _The Round Table_, vol. i., p. 65. Cf. - also Lamb’s essay, ‘The Londoner,’ _Morning Post_, Feb. 1, 1802: ‘Thus - an art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a town - life, is attained by the same well-natured alchemy, with which the - Foresters of Arden,’ etc. - - _O’erstepping_ [not] _the modesty of nature_. _Hamlet_, III. 2. - - 108. _Miss Hannah More’s laboured invectives._ _Thoughts on the - Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society_, 1788, and - _An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World_, 1790. Each - passed through several editions before the close of the century. Of - the first named, the third edition is stated to have been sold out in - four hours. - - _Sir Richard Blackmore._ Court physician to William and Anne. He died - in 1729, after having written six epics in sixty books. - - 109. _Mr. Jekyll’s parody._ Joseph Jekyll (1754–1837), Master of - Chancery. The parody was published in the _Morning Chronicle_, Friday, - Aug. 19, 1809. - - _A City Shower._ See _The Tatler_, No. 238. - - 110. _Mary the cookmaid ... Mrs. Harris._ ‘Mary the Cook-maid’s letter - to Dr. Sheridan,’ 1723, which begins thus:— - - ‘Well, if ever I saw such another man since my mother bound my head! - You a gentleman! marry come up! I wonder where you were bred.’ - - ‘Mrs. Harris’s Petition,’ 1699, after the preliminaries— - - ‘Humbly sheweth, - That I went to warm myself in Lady Betty’s chamber, because I was - cold; - And I had in a purse seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, - besides farthings, in money and gold.’ - - _Rector of Laracor._ Swift was appointed to the vicarage of Laracor, - Trim, West Meath, Ireland, in 1700. - - _Gulliver’s nurse._ In the Voyage to Brobdingnag. - - _An eminent critic._ Jeffrey’s article on Scott’s _Swift_, _Edinburgh - Review_, No. 53, Sept. 1816, vol. xxvii. pp. 1 _et seq._ - - 112. _Shews vice her own image._ [To shew virtue her own feature, - scorn her own image.] _Hamlet_, III. 2. - - _Indignatio facit versus._ [Facit indignatio versum.] Juvenal, _Sat._ - I. 79. - - _As dry as the remainder biscuit._ _As You Like It_, II. 7. - - _Reigned there and revelled._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 765. - - _As riches fineless._ _Othello_, III. 3. - - 113. _Camacho’s wedding._ Part II. chap. xx. - - _How Friar John ... lays about him._ _Gargantua_, Book I., chap. - xxvii. - - _How Panurge whines in the storm._ _Pantagruel_, Book IV. chap. xix., - _et seq._ - - _How Gargantua mewls._ _Gargantua_, Book I., chap. vii. - - 113. _The pieces of silver money in the Arabian Nights._ The Story of - the Barber’s Fourth Brother. - - _Mortal consequences._ _Macbeth_, V. 3. - - 114. _The dull product of a scoffer’s pen._ Wordsworth’s _Excursion_, - Book II. - - _Nothing can touch him further._ _Macbeth_, III. 2. - - _Voltaire’s Traveller._ See _Histoire des Voyages de Scarmentado._ - - _Be wise to-day._ _Night Thoughts_, I. 390–433. - - 115. _Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it._ Cf. _Characters of - Shakespear’s Plays_, ‘Othello,’ vol. I. p. 209. Edward Young’s - (1683–1765) _Revenge_ was first acted in 1721. - - 116. _We poets in our youth._ Wordsworth, _Resolution and - Independence_, 8. - - _Read the account of Collins._ See Johnson’s life of him in his - _English Poets_, where the eighth verse of the ‘Ode to Evening’ is as - follows:— - - ‘Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene, - Or find some ruin ‘midst its dreary dells, - Whose Walls more awful nod, - By thy religious gleams.’ - - And the last:— - - ‘So long regardful of thy quiet rule, - Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace, - Thy gentlest influence own, - And love thy favourite name!’ - - 118. _Hammond._ James Hammond (1710–1741). See Johnson’s _Lives of the - Poets_. He seems to have died of love. His _Love Elegies_, in - imitation of Tibullus, were published posthumously. - - _Mr. Coleridge_ (_in his Literary Life_). See ed. Bohn, p. 19. ‘[I] - felt almost as if I had been newly couched, when by Mr. Wordsworth’s - conversation, I had been induced to re-examine with impartial - strictness Gray’s celebrated Elegy.’ - - _The still sad music of humanity._ Wordsworth’s _Tintern Abbey_. - - _Be mine ... to read eternal new romances._ Letter to Richard West, - Thursday, April 1742. - - _Don’t you remember Lords —— and ——._ Letter to Richard West, May 27, - 1742. - - _Shenstone._ William Shenstone (1714–1763),the ‘water-gruel bard’ of - Horace Walpole. - - 119. _Akenside._ Mark Akenside (1721–1770), physician and poet. The - _Pleasures of the Imagination_ was begun in his eighteenth year, and - was first published in 1744. - - _Armstrong._ John Armstrong (1709–1779), also physician and poet, - whose _Art of Preserving Health_, a poem in four books, was also - published in 1744. - - _Churchill._ Charles Churchill (1731–1764), satirist. His _Rosciad_, - in which the chief actors of the time were taken off, was published in - 1761. _The Prophecy of Famine_, a Scots Pastoral, inscribed to John - Wilkes, Esq., in which the Scotch are ridiculed, appeared in 1763. - - _Green._ Matthew Green (1696–1737). _The Spleen_ (1737). - - _Dyer._ John Dyer (?1700–1758), _Grongar Hill_ (1727). See Johnson’s - _Lives of the Poets_ and Wordsworth’s Sonnet to him. - - _His lot_ [feasts] _though small_. _The Traveller._ - - _And turn’d and look’d._ _The Deserted Village_, 370. ‘Return’d and - wept and still return’d to weep.’ - - 120. _Mr. Liston._ John Liston (1776–1846). - - 120. _His character of a country schoolmaster._ In _The Deserted - Village_. - - _Warton._ Thomas Warton (1728–1790), author of _The History of English - Poetry_ (1774–81). He succeeded William Whitehead as poet laureate. - - _Tedious and brief._ _All’s Well that Ends Well_, II. 3, etc. - - 122. _Chatterton._ Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770). The verse of - Wordsworth’s quoted is in _Resolution and Independence_. - - _Dr. Milles, etc._ Dr. Jeremiah Milles (1713–1784), whom Coleridge - described as ‘an owl mangling a poor dead nightingale.’ See Sir - Herbert Croft’s (1751–1816) _Love and Madness_, Letter 51 (1780). - Vicesimus Knox, D.D. (1752–1821), author of many volumes of Essays, - Sermons, etc. - - - VII. ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS - - 123. _Unslacked of motion._ See vol. IV., note to p. 42. - - _Anderson._ Robert Anderson, M.D. (1751–1830), editor and biographer - of _British Poets_. - - _Mr. Malone._ Edmond Malone (1741–1812), the Shakespearian editor. He - did not believe in the ‘antiquity’ of Chatterton’s productions. See - his ‘Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley,’ - 1782. - - _Dr. Gregory._ George Gregory, D.D. (1754–1808), author of _The Life - of Thomas Chatterton, with Criticisms on his Genius and Writings, and - a concise view of the Controversy concerning Rowley’s Poems_. 1789. - - 124. _Annibal Caracci._ Annibale Caracci (1560–1609), painter of the - Farnese Gallery at Rome. - - _Essays_, _p._ 144. The reference should be to Dr. Knox’s Essay, No. - CXLIV., not p. 144 (vol. iii. p. 206, 1787). - - 127. _He was like a man made after supper._ _2 King Henry IV._, III. - 2. - - _Some one said._ Cf. Hazlitt’s Essay, ‘Of Persons one would wish to - have seen,’ where Burns’s hand, held out to be grasped, is described - as ‘in a burning fever.’ - - _Made him poetical._ _As You Like It_, III. 2. - - _Create a soul under the ribs of death._ _Comus_, 562. - - 128. _A brazen candlestick tuned._ _1 King Henry IV._, III. 1. - - _In a letter to Mr. Gray._ January 1816. - - _Via goodman Dull._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. 1. - - 129. _Out upon this half-faced fellowship._ _1 King Henry IV._, I. 3. - - _As my Uncle Toby._ Tristram Shandy, Book VI., chap. xxxii. - - _Drunk full after._ Chaucer’s _The Clerkes Tale_. ‘Wel ofter of the - welle than of the tonne she drank.’ - - _The act and practique part._ _King Henry V._, I. 1. - - _The fly that sips treacle._ _The Beggar’s Opera_, II. 2. - - 131. _In a poetical epistle._ To a friend who had declared his - intention of writing no more poetry. - - _Self-love and social._ Pope’s _Essay on Man_, IV. 396. - - _Himself alone._ _3 King Henry VI._, V. 6. - - _If the species were continued like trees._ Sir Thomas Browne’s - _Religio Medici_, Part II. - - _This, this was the unkindest cut._ _Julius Caesar_, III. 2. - - 132. _Launce’s account of his dog Crabbe._ _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, - IV. 4. - - 135. _Tam o’ Shanter._ [For ‘light cotillon,’ read ‘cotillon, brent.’] - - 137. _The bosom of its Father._ Gray’s _Elegy_. - - _The Cotter’s Saturday Night._ [For ‘carking cares,’ read ‘kiaugh and - care.’] - - 139. _The true pathos and sublime of human life._ Burns, ‘Epistle to - Dr. Blacklock.’ - - 140. _O gin my love._ [‘O my luv’s like a red, red rose.’] - - 140. _Thoughts that often lie._ Wordsworth’s _Intimations of - Immortality_. - - _Singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles._ Part II., Chap. IX. - - 141. _Archbishop Herring._ Thomas Herring (1693–1757), Archbishop of - Canterbury. _Letters to William Duncombe, Esq._, 1728–1757 (1777), - Letter XII., Sept. 11, 1739. - - _Auld Robin Gray ... Lady Ann Bothwell’s lament._ Lady Anne Barnard - (1750–1825) did not acknowledge her authorship of ‘Auld Robin Gray’ - (to Sir Walter Scott) until 1823. - - 142. _O waly, waly._ This ballad was first published in Allan Ramsay’s - _Tea Table Miscellany_, 1724. - - [I. 8. ‘Sae my true love did lichtlie me.’ - - II. 5–8. ‘O wherefore should I busk my heid, - Or wherefore should I kame my hair? - For my true love has me forsook, - And says he’ll never lo’e me mair.’ - - III. 2, 8. ‘The sheets sall ne’er be press’d by me - For of my life I am wearie.’ - - V. 7–8. ‘And I mysel’ were dead and gane, - And the green grass growing over me!‘] - William Allingham’s _Ballad Book_, p. 41. - - _The Braes of Yarrow._ By William Hamilton, of Bangour (1704–1754). - - 143. _Turner’s History of England._ Sharon Turner (1768–1847), - _History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Death of - Elizabeth_ (1814–1823). The story is a pretty one, but the Eastern - lady was not the mother of the Cardinal. - - _J. H. Reynolds._ John Hamilton Reynolds (1796–1852). - - - VIII. ON THE LIVING POETS - - 143. _No more talk where God or angel guest._ _Paradise Lost_, IX. - 1–3. - - 146. _The Darwins, the Hayleys, the Sewards._ Erasmus Darwin - (1731–1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin, and author of _The Loves - of the Plants_ (1789), a poem parodied by Frere in _The Anti-Jacobin_ - as ‘The Loves of the Triangles.’ William Hayley (1745–1820), who wrote - _The Triumphs of Temper_ and a _Life of Cowper_. Anna Seward - (1747–1809), the ‘Swan of Lichfield.’ She wrote poetical novels, - sonnets and a life of Dr. Darwin. - - _Face-making._ _Hamlet_, III. 2. - - _Mrs. Inchbald._ Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821), novelist, dramatist - and actress. - - _Thank the Gods._ Cf. _As You Like It_, III. 3. - - _Mrs. Leicester’s School._ Ten narratives, seven by Mary, three by - Charles, Lamb (1807). - - _The next three volumes of the Tales of My Landlord._ _The Heart of - Midlothian_ (second series of the _Tales_) was published in 1818, and - the third series, consisting of _The Bride of Lammermoor_ and _A - Legend of Montrose_, in 1819. - - 147. _Mrs. Barbauld._ Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825), daughter of - the Rev. John Aitken, D.D., joint-author, with her brother John - Aitken, of _Evenings at Home_. - - _Mrs. Hannah More_ (1745–1833). Her verses and sacred dramas were - published in the first half of her life: she gradually retired from - London society, and this may have led to Hazlitt’s doubtful remark as - to her being still in life. - - 147. _Miss Baillie._ Joanna Baillie (1762–1851). _Count Basil_ is one - of her _Plays of the Passions_ (1798–1802), and is concerned with the - ‘passion’ of love. _De Montfort_ was acted at Drury Lane in 1800 by - Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. - - _Remorse, Bertram, and lastly Fazio._ Coleridge’s _Remorse_ (1813), - for twenty nights at Drury Lane. C. R. Maturin’s _Bertram_ (1816), - successful at Drury lane. Dean Milman’s _Fazio_ (1815), acted at Bath - and then at Covent Garden. - - _A man of no mark._ _1 King Henry IV._, III. 2. - - _Make mouths_ [in them]. _Hamlet_, IV. 3. - - _Mr. Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory._ Published in 1792. - - _The Election._ Genest says it was performed for the third time on - June 10, 1817. - - 148. _The Della Cruscan._ The sentimental and affected style, - initiated in 1785 by some English residents at Florence, and - extinguished by Gifford’s satire in the _Baviad_ (1794), and _Maeviad_ - (1796). - - _To show that power of love_ - - ‘He knows who gave that love sublime, - And gave that strength of feeling great - Above all human estimate.’ - Wordsworth’s _Fidelity_. - - 149. _Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope._ Published in 1799, _Gertrude of - Wyoming_ in 1809. - - _Some hamlet shade._ _Pleasures of Hope_, I. 309–10. - - _Curiosa infelicitas._ ‘Curiosa felicitas Horatii.’ _Petronius - Arbiter_, § 118. - - _Of outward show elaborate._ _Paradise Lost_, VIII. 538. - - _Tutus nimium, timidusque procellarum._ Horace, _De Arte Poet._, 128. - - 150. _Like morning brought by night._ _Gertrude of Wyoming_, I. xiii. - - _Like Angels’ visits._ _Pleasures of Hope_, Part II., l. 378. Cf. _The - Spirit of the Age_, vol. III. p. 346. - - _Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus._ Horace, _De Arte - Poetica_, 191. - - 151. _So work the honey-bees._ _Henry V._, I. 2. - - _Around him the bees._ From the Sixth Song in _The Beggar’s Opera_. - - _Perilous stuff._ _Macbeth_, V. 3. - - 152. _Nest of spicery._ _King Richard III._, IV. 4. - - _Therefore to be possessed with double pomp._ _King John_, IV. 2. - - 153. _Nook monastic._ _As You Like It_, III. 2. - - _He hath a demon._ Cf. ‘He hath a devil,’ _St. John_ X. 20. - - _House on the wild sea._ Coleridge’s _The Piccolomini_, I. iv. 117. - - 154. _Looks on tempests._ _Shakespeare’s Sonnets_, CXVI. - - _Great princes’ favourites._ Shakespeare’s _Sonnets_, XXV. - - 155. _Their mortal consequences._ _Macbeth_, V. 3. - - _The warriors in the Lady of the Lake._ Canto V. 9. - - _The Goblin Page._ Canto II. 31. - - _Mr. Westall’s pictures._ Richard Westall (1765–1836). He designed - numerous drawings to illustrate Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, etc. - - 156. _Robinson Crusoe’s boat._ _The Surprising Adventures of Robinson - Crusoe_, p. 138, ed. G. A. Aitken. - - _I did what little I could._ Hazlitt reviewed _The Excursion_ in _The - Examiner_ (see _The Round Table_, vol. I. pp. 111–125). - - 162. _Coryate’s Crudites._ _Hastily gobled up in Five Moneths’ - Travells in France, etc._ (1611), by Thomas Coryate (? 1577–1617). - - _The present poet-laureate._ Southey. - - _Neither butress nor coign of vantage._ _Macbeth_, I. 6. - - 162. _Born so high._ _King Richard III._, I. 3. - - _In their train_ [‘his livery’] _walked crowns_. _Antony and - Cleopatra_, V. 2. - - 163. _Meek daughters._ Coleridge’s _The Eolian Harp_. - - _Owls and night-ravens flew._ Cf. _Titus Andronicus_, II. 3. ‘The - nightly owl or fatal raven.’ - - _Degrees, priority, and place._ _Troilus and Cressida_, I. 3. - - _No figures nor no fantasies._ _Julius Caesar_, II. 1. - - [No] _trivial fond records_. Hamlet, I. v. - - _The marshal’s truncheon_, and the next quotation. _Measure for - Measure_, II. 2. - - _Metre ballad-mongering._ _1 King Henry IV._, III. 1. - - _The bare trees and mountains bare._ Wordsworth, ‘To my Sister.’ - - _He hates conchology._ See _The Spirit of the Age_, vol. IV. p. 277. - - 164. _The Anti-Jacobin Review._ Not _The Anti-Jacobin Review_ - (1798–1821) but _The Anti-Jacobin_, wherein will be found Canning and - Frere’s parodies, the best-known of which is the one on Southey’s _The - Widow_, entitled ‘The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.’ - - _When Adam delved._ See _Political Essays_, ‘Wat Tyler,’ Vol. III. pp. - 192 _et seq._, and notes thereto. - - _The Rejected Addresses._ By Horace and James Smith (1812). - - _Sir Richard Blackmore._ See p. 108 and note thereto _ante_. - - 166. _Is there here any dear friend of Caesar?_ _Julius Caesar_, III. - 2. - - _Conceive of poetry._ ‘Apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a - drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, - present, or to come,’ _Measure for Measure_, IV. 2. - - _It might seem insidious._ Probably a misprint for ‘invidious.’ - - 167. _Schiller! that hour._ - - [‘Lest in some after moment aught more mean ... - Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene.’] - - _His Conciones ad Populum._ Two addresses against Pitt, 1795, - republished in ‘Essays on his Own Times.’ - - _The Watchman._ A Weekly Miscellany lasted from March 1, 1796, to May - 13, 1796. - - _His Friend._ Coleridge’s weekly paper lived from June 1, 1809, to - March 15, 1810. - - _What though the radiance._ _Intimations of Immortality._ - - [‘Of splendour in the grass; of glory in the flower; - We will grieve not, rather find.’] - - - - - NOTES ON LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH - - - I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT - - 170. Add, to the Bibliographical Note: ‘The volume was printed by B. - M’Millan, Bow Street, Covent Garden.’ - - 175. _Coke._ Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), the jurist. - - 176. _Mere oblivion._ _As You Like It_, II. 7. - - _Poor, poor dumb names_ [mouths.] _Julius Caesar_, III. 2. - - _Webster._ John Webster (? d. 1625). - - _Deckar._ Thomas Dekker (_c._ 1570–_c._ 1637). - - _Marston._ John Marston (? 1575–1634). - - _Marlow._ Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593). - - _Chapman._ George Chapman (? 1559–1634). - - _Heywood._ Thomas Heywood (c. 1575–c. 1641). - - _Middleton._ Thomas Middleton (c. 1570–1627). - - _Jonson._ Ben Jonson (1572/3–1637). - - _Beaumont._ Francis Beaumont (1584–1616). - - _Fletcher._ John Fletcher (1579–1625). - - _Rowley._ William Rowley (c. 1585–c. 1642) is chiefly remembered as a - collaborator with the better-known Elizabethan Dramatists. - - _How lov’d, how honour’d once._ Pope’s _Elegy to the Memory of an - Unfortunate Lady._ - - _Draw the curtain of time._ Cf. _Twelfth Night_, I. 5. ‘Draw the - curtain and shew you the picture.’ - - _Of poring pedantry._ ‘Of painful pedantry the poring child.’ Warton: - _Sonnet written in a blank leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon_. - - 177. _The sacred influence of light._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 1034. - - _Pomp of elder days._ Warton’s sonnet referred to above. - - _Nor can we think what thoughts._ Dryden’s _The Hind and the Panther_, - I. 315. - - 178. _Think ... there’s livers out of Britain._ _Cymbeline_, III. 4. - - _By nature’s own sweet and cunning hand._ _Twelfth Night_, I. 5. - - _Where Pan, knit with the Graces_ [‘while universal Pan.’] _Paradise - Lost_, IV. 266. - - _There are more things between_ [in] _heaven and earth_. _Hamlet_, I. - 5. - - 179. _Matchless, divine, what we will._ Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, - Epis. I., Book II. 70. - - 180. _Less than smallest dwarfs._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 779. - - _Desiring this man’s art._ Shakspeare’s _Sonnets_, XXIV. 7. - - _In shape and gesture proudly eminent._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 590. - - _His soul was like a star._ Wordsworth’s _London_, 1802. - - 181. _Drew after him._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 692. - - _Otway ... Venice Preserved._ Thomas Otway’s (1651–85) play was - published in 1682. - - _Jonson’s learned sock._ Milton’s _L’Allegro_. - - 183. _To run and read._ _Habakkuk_, ii. 2. - - _Penetrable stuff._ _Hamlet_, III. 4. - - _My peace I give unto you_ [‘not as the world giveth.’] _St. John_, - xiv. 27. - - _That they should love one another._ _Ibid._ XV. 12. - - 184. _Woman behold thy son._ _Ibid._ XIX. 26–7. - - _To the Jews._ _1 Cor._ I. 23. - - 185. _Soft as sinews of the new-born babe._ _Hamlet_, III. 3. - - _The best of men._ Dekker’s _The Honest Whore_. Part I. Act V. 2. - - 186. _Tasso by Fairfax._ Edward Fairfax’s translation of _Jerusalem - Delivered_ was published in 1600. - - _Ariosto by Harrington._ Sir John Harington’s translation of _Orlando - Furioso_ was published in 1591. - - _Homer and Hesiod by Chapman._ A part of George Chapman’s translation - of Homer’s _Iliad and Odyssey_ appeared in 1598 and the rest at - various dates to 1615; _Hesiod_ in 1618. - - _Virgil long before._ Possibly Gawin Douglas’s version of the _Æneid_ - (1512–53) is in mind. - - _Ovid soon after._ (?) Arthur Golding’s _Ovid_ (1565–75). - - _North’s translation of Plutarch._ In 1579, by Sir Thomas North. - - _Catiline and Sejanus._ Acted in 1611 and 1603 respectively. - - _The satirist Aretine._ Pietro Aretino (1492–1557), the ‘Scourge of - Princes.’ _Machiavel._ _The Arte of Warre_ and _The Florentine - Historie_ appeared in English in 1560 and 1594 respectively. - - _Castiglione._ Count Baldasare Castiglione’s _Il Cortegiano_, a Manual - for Courtiers, was translated in 1561 by Sir Thomas Hoby. - - _Ronsard._ Pierre de Ronsard (1524–85), ‘Prince of Poets.’ - - _Du Bartas._ Guillaume de Saluste Seigneur du Bartas (1544–1590), - soldier, statesman and precursor of Milton as a writer on the theme of - creation. His ‘Diuine Weekes and Workes’ were Englished in 1592 and - later by ‘yt famous Philomusus,’ Joshua Sylvester (1563–1618). See Dr. - Grosart’s edition of his works. - - 187. _Fortunate fields and groves, etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 568–70. - - _Prospero’s Enchanted Island._ Modern editors give Eden’s _History of - Travayle_, 1577, as the probable source of Setebos, etc. - - _Right well I wote._ _The Faerie Queene_, Stanzas I.–III. - - 188. _Lear ... old ballad._ Or rather from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s - _Historia Britonum_, c. 1130. The ballad of _King Leir_ (Percy’s - _Reliques_) is probably of later date than Shakespeare. - - _Othello ... Italian novel._ The Heccatommithi of Giraldi Cinthio. The - work may have been known in England through a French translation. - - _Those bodiless creations._ _Hamlet_, III. 4. - - _Your face, my Thane._ _Macbeth_, I. 5. - - _Tyrrel and Forrest._ In _King Richard III._ - - 189. _Thick and slab._ _Macbeth_, IV. 1. - - _Snatched a_ [wild and] _fearful joy_. Gray’s _Ode on a Distant - Prospect of Eton College_. - - _The great pestilence of Florence._ In 1348. The plague forms but the - artificial framework of the tales; to escape it certain Florentines - retire to a country house and, in its garden, they tell the tales that - form the book. - - _The course of true love never did run even_ [smooth.] _A Midsummer - Night’s Dream_, I. 1. - - _The age of chivalry._ ‘The age of chivalry is gone ... and the glory - of Europe is extinguished for ever.’ Burke’s _Reflections on the - French Revolution_. Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89. - - _The gentle Surrey._ Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (_c._ 1517–1547) - whose Songs and Sonnets are in Tottel’s _Miscellany_ (1557). - - _Sir John Suckling_, 1609–42. Besides writing _A ballad upon a - wedding_ Sir John was the best player at bowls in the country and he - ‘invented’ cribbage. - - _Who prized black eyes._ _The Session of the Poets_, Ver. 20. - - _Like strength reposing._ ‘’Tis might half slumbering on it own right - arm.’ - - Keats’ _Sleep and Poetry_, 237. - - 190. _They heard the tumult._ Cowper’s _The Task_, IV. 99–100. - - ‘I behold - The tumult and am still.’ - - _Fletcher’s Noble Kinsmen._ _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, 1634. Although - Fletcher was certainly one of the two authors of the play, it is not - known who was the other. Scenes have been attributed, with some - probability, to Shakespeare. - - _The Return from Parnassus._ 1606. See _post_, p. 280. - - _It snowed of meat and drink._ _Canterbury Tales_, Prologue, 345. - - _As Mr. Lamb observes._ Cf. _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_, - Lamb’s note attached to Marston’s _What you will_. - - 191. _In act and complement_ [compliment] _extern_. _Othello_, I. 1. - - _Description of a madhouse._ In _The Honest Whore_, Part I. Act V. 2. - - _A Mad World, my Masters._ The title of one of Middleton’s comedies, - 1608. - - _Like birdlime, brains and all._ _Othello_, II. 1. - - ‘My invention - Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frize; - It plucks out brains and all.’ - - 192. _But Pan is a God._ Lyly’s _Midas_, Act IV. 1. - - _Materiam superabat opus._ Ovid, _Met._, II. 5. - - - II. ON LYLY, MARLOW, ETC. - -It is not possible to give references to thoroughly satisfactory texts -of the Elizabethan dramatists for the simple reason that, unfortunately, -few exist. For reading purposes the volumes of select plays in ‘The -Mermaid Series’ and a few single plays in ‘The Temple Dramatists’ may be -mentioned. - - PAGE - - 192. _The rich strond._ _The Faerie Queene_, III. iv. 20, 34. - - 193. _Rich as the oozy bottom._ _King Henry V._, I. 2. [‘sunken - wreck.’] - - _Majestic though in ruin._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 300. - - _The Cave of Mammon._ _The Faerie Queene_, II. vii. 29. - - _New-born gauds, etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, III. 3. - - _Ferrex and Porrex._ By Thomas Norton (1532–1584), and Thomas - Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (1536–1608). Acted Jan. 18, 1561–2. - - 194. _No figures nor no fantasies._ _Julius Caesar_, II. 1. - - 195. _Sir Philip Sidney says._ In his _Apologie for Poetrie_. - - 196. _Mr. Pope ... says._ See Spence, Letter to the Earl of Middlesex, - prefixed to Dodsley’s edition of _Gorboduc_. - - _His Muse._ Thomas Sackville wrote the Induction (1563). - - _John Lyly._ The Euphuist (c. 1554–1606), a native of the Kentish - Weald. _Midas_ (1592), _Endymion_ (1591), _Alexander and Campaspe_ - (1584), _Mother Bombie_ (1594). - - 198. _Poor, unfledged._ _Cymbeline_, III. 3. - - _Very_ [most] _tolerable_. _Much Ado about Nothing_, III. 3. - - _Grating their lean and flashy jests._ _Lycidas_, 123–4. - - ‘their lean and flashy songs - Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.’ - - _Bobadil._ Captain Bobadil, in _Every Man in his Humour_. - - 199. _The very reeds bow down._ Act IV. 2. - - _Out of my weakness._ _Hamlet_, II. 2. - - _It is silly sooth._ _Twelfth Night_, II. 4. - - 201. _Did first reduce._ Elegy to Henry Reynolds, Esquire, 91 _et - seq._ - - _Euphues and his England._ _Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit_, appeared in - 1579 and _Euphues and his England_ the year following. They may be - read in Arber’s reprint. - - _Pan and Apollo._ _Midas_, IV. 1. - - 202. _Note._ Marlowe died in 1593. He was stabbed in a tavern quarrel - at Deptford. - - _Life and Death of Doctor Faustus._ Printed 1604, 1616. See the - editions of Dr. A. W. Ward and Mr. Israel Gollancz. The latter is a - ‘contamination’ of the two texts. - - 202. _Fate and metaphysical aid._ _Macbeth_, I. 5. - - 203. _With uneasy steps._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 295. - - _Such footing_ [resting.] _Paradise Lost_, I. 237–8. - - _How am I glutted._ _Life and Death of Doctor Faustus_, Scene I. - [public schools with silk.] - - 205. _What is great Mephostophilis._ Scene III. - - _My heart is harden’d._ Scene VI. - - _Was this the face?_ Scene XVII. - - 206. _Oh, Faustus._ Scene XIX. - - _Yet, for he was a scholar._ And the next quotation. Scene XX. - - 207. _Oh, gentlemen?_ Scene XIX. - - _Snails! what hast got there._ Cf. Scene VIII. - - ‘Come, what dost thou with that same book? - Thou can’st not read.’ - - _As Mr. Lamb says._ Lamb’s _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_, ed. - Gollancz, Vol. I. p. 43. (Published originally in 1808). - - _Lust’s Dominion._ Published 1657. The view now seems to be that - Dekker had a hand in it: in the form in which we have it it cannot be - Marlowe’s. See also W. C. Hazlitt’s _Manual of Old Plays_, 1892. - - _Pue-fellow_ [pew-fellow.] _Richard III_, IV. 4. - - _The argument of Schlegel._ Cf. _Lectures on Dramatic Art and - Literature_ (Bohn, 1846), pp. 442–4. - - 208. _What, do none rise?_ Act V. 1. - - _Marlowe’s mighty line._ The phrase is Ben Jonson’s, in his lines ‘To - the Memory of my Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath - left us,’ originally prefixed to the First Folio of Shakespeare, 1623. - - _I know he is not dead._ _Lust’s Dominion_, I. 3. - - _Hang both your greedy ears_, and the next quotation. _Ibid._ Act II. - 2. - - _Tyrants swim safest._ Act V. 3. - - 209. _Oh! I grow dull._ Act III. 2. - - _And none of you._ _King John_, V. 7. - - _Now by the proud complexion._ _Lust’s Dominion_, Act III. 4. - - _But I that am._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, I. 5. - - _These dignities._ _Lust’s Dominion_, Act V. 5. - - _Now tragedy._ Act V. 6. - - _Spaniard or Moor._ Act V. 1. - - _And hang a calve’s [calf’s] skin._ _King John_, III. 1. - - _The rich Jew of Malta._ _The Jew of Malta_, acted 1588. - - 209. Note _Falstaff_. Cf. ‘minions of the moon,’ _1 King Henry IV._, - I. 2. - - 210. _The relation._ Act II. 3. - - _As the morning lark._ Act II. 1. - - _In spite of these swine-eating Christians._ Act II. 3. - - _One of Shylock’s speeches._ _Merchant of Venice_, Act I. 3. - - 211. _Edward II._ 1594. - - _Weep’st thou already?_ Act V. 5. - - _The King and Gaveston._ Cf. Act I. 1. - - _The lion and the forest deer._ Act V. 1. - - _The Song._ See p. 298 and note. - - 212. _A Woman killed with Kindness._ 1603. - - _Oh, speak no more._ Act II. 3. - - _Cold drops of sweat._ Act III. 2. - - _Astonishment._ Act IV. 4. - - 213. _Invisible, or dimly seen._ _Paradise Lost_, V. 157. - - _Fair, and of all beloved._ Act II. 3. - - _The affecting remonstrance._ Act V. 5. - - _The Stranger._ Benjamin Thompson’s (1776?–1816) translation of - Kotzebue’s (1761–1819) _Menschenhass und Reue_. - - _Sir Giles Over-reach._ In Massinger’s _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_. - - 214. _This is no world in which to pity men._ _A Woman killed with - Kindness_, Act III. 3 (ed. Dr. Ward). - - _His own account._ See his address ‘To the Reader’ in _The English - Traveller_, printed 1633. - - _The Royal King and Loyal Subject._ 1637. - - _A Challenge for Beauty._ 1636. - - _Shipwreck by Drink._ Act II. 1. - - _Fair Quarrel._ 1617. - - _A Woman never Vexed._ 1632. - - _Women beware Women._ 1657. - - 215. _She holds the mother in suspense._ Act II. 2. - - _Did not the Duke look up?_ Act I. 3. - - 216. _How near am I._ Act III. 1. - - 218. _The Witch._ No date can be given for this play. - - _The moon’s a gallant._ Act III. 3. [‘If we have not mortality after - ‘t’] [‘leave me to walk here.’] - - 220. _What death is ‘t you desire?_ Act V. 2. - - 222. _Mr. Lamb’s Observations._ The same extract from the _Specimens_ - is quoted in _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_, vol. I. p. 194 - [cannot co-exist with mirth.] - - - III. ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, ETC. - - 223. _Blown stifling back._ _Paradise Lost_, XI. 313. - - 224. _Monsieur Kinsayder._ This was the _nom-de-plume_ under which - John Marston published his _Scourge of Villanie_, 1598. - - _Oh ancient Knights._ Sir John Harington’s translation of _Orlando - Furioso_ was published in 1591. - - _Antonio and Mellida._ 1602. - - 225. _Half a page of Italian rhymes._ Part I. Act IV. - - _Each man takes hence life._ Part I. Act III. - - _What you Will._ 1607. - - _Who still slept._ Act II. 1. - - _Parasitaster and Malcontent._ _Parasitaster; or The Fawn_, 1606. _The - Malcontent_, 1604. - - 226. _Is nothing, if not critical._ _Othello_, II. 1. - - _We would be private._ _The Fawn_, Act II. 1. - - _Faunus, this Granuffo._ Act III. - - 227. _Though he was no duke._ Act II. 1. - - _Molière has built a play._ _L’École des Maris._ - - _Full of wise saws._ _As You Like It_, Act II. 7. - - 228. _Nymphadoro’s reasons._ _The Fawn_, Act III. - - _Hercules’s description._ Act II. 1. - - _Like a wild goose fly._ _As You Like It_, II. 7. - - 230. _Bussy d’Ambois._ 1607. - - _The way of women’s will._ - - ‘It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, - Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit, - That woman’s love can win, or long inherit, - But what it is hard is to say, - Harder to hit....’ - _Samson Agonistes_, 1010 _et seq._ - - _Hide nothing._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 27. - - 231. _Fulke Greville._ Lord Brooke (1554–1628). _Alaham and Mustapha_ - were published in the folio edition of Brooke, 1633. He was the school - friend, and wrote the Life, of Sir Philip Sidney. His self-composed - epitaph reads, ‘Fulke Grevill, servant to Queene Elizabeth, councellor - to King James, frend to Sir Philip Sidney.’ See Hazlitt’s Essay ‘Of - Persons one would wish to have seen.’ - - _The ghost of one of the old kings._ _Alaham._ - - _Monsieur D’Olive._ 1606. - - _Sparkish._ In Wycherley’s _Country Wife_ (1675). - - _Witwoud and Petulant._ In Congreve’s _The Way of the World_ (1700). - - 234. _May-Day._ 1611. - - _All Fools._ 1605. - - _The Widow’s Tears._ 1612. - - _Eastward Hoe._ 1605. Ben Jonson accompanied his two friends to prison - for this voluntarily. Their imprisonment was of short duration. - - _On his release from prison._ See Drummond’s Conversations, XIII. - - _Express ye unblam’d._ Paradise Lost, III. 3. - - _Appius and Virginia._ Printed 1654. - - _The affecting speech._ _I.e._ that of Virginius to Virginia, Act IV. - 1. - - _Wonder of a Kingdom._ Published 1636. - - _Jacomo Gentili._ In the above play. - - _Old Fortunatus._ 1600. - - 235. _Vittorio Corombona._ _The White Devil_, 1612. - - _Signior Orlando Friscobaldo._ In _The Honest Whore_, Part II., 1630. - - _The red-leaved tables._ Heywood’s _A Woman killed with Kindness_, Act - II. 3. - - _The pangs._ Wordsworth’s _Excursion_, VI. 554. - - _The Honest Whore._ In two Parts, 1604 and 1630. - - _Signior Friscobaldo._ The Second Part, Act I. 2. - - 237. _You’ll forgive me._ The Second Part, Act II. 1. - - _It is my father._ The Second Part, Act IV. 1. - - _Oh! who can paint._ - - 238. _Tough senior._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act I. 2. - - _And she has felt them knowingly._ _Cymbeline_, III. 3. - - _I cannot._ _The Honest Whore_, Second Part, Act IV. 1. - - 239. _The manner too._ The Second Part, Act III. 1. - - _I’m well._ The First Part, Act I. 3 [‘midst of feasting’]. - - _Turns them._ _II. Henry IV._, I. 2. - - _Patient Grizzel._ Griselda in Chaucer’s _Clerke’s Tale_. Dekker - collaborated in a play entitled _The Pleasant Comedy of Patient - Grissill_ (1603). - - _The high-flying._ _The Honest Whore_, Second Part, Act II. 1. etc. - - 240. _White Devil._ 1612. - - _Duchess of Malfy._ 1623. - - _By which they lose some colour._ Cf. _Othello_, I. 1. ‘As it may lose - some colour.’ - - 241. _All fire and air._ _Henry V._, III. 7, ‘he is pure air and - fire,’ and _Antony and Cleopatra_, V. 2, ‘I am fire and air.’ - - _Like the female dove._ _Hamlet_, V. 1, ‘As patient as the female - dove, when that her golden couplets are disclosed.’ - - _The trial scene_ and the two following quotations, _The White Devil._ - Act III. 1. - - 243. _Your hand I’ll kiss._ Act II. 1. - - _The lamentation of Cornelia._ Act V. 2. - - _The parting scene of Brachiano._ Act V. 3. - - 245. _The scenes of the madhouse._ Act IV. 2. - - _The interview._ Act IV. 1. - - _I prythee_, and the three following quotations and note on p. 246. - _The Duchess of Malfy_, Act IV. 2. - - 246. _The Revenger’s Tragedy._ 1607. - - _The dazzling fence._ Cf. the ‘dazzling fence’ of rhetoric, _Comus_, - 790–91. - - _The appeals of Castiza._ Act II. 1., and Act IV. 4. - - 247. _Mrs. Siddons has left the stage._ Mrs. Siddons left the stage in - June 1819. See _The Round Table_, vol. I., Note to p. 156. - - _On Salisbury-plain._ At Winterslow Hut. See _Memoirs of W. Hazlitt_. - 1867, vol. I. p. 259. - - _Stern good-night._ _Macbeth_, Act II. 2. ‘The fatal bellman which - gives the stern’st good night.’ - - _Take mine ease._ _1 Henry IV._ III. 3. - - _Cibber’s manager’s coat._ Colley Cibber (1671–1757), actor, - dramatist, and manager. See the _Apology for his Life_ (1740). - - _Books, dreams._ _Personal Talk._ [‘Dreams, books, are each a - world.... Two shall be named pre-eminently dear ... by heavenly - lays....’] - - - IV. ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC. - - 249. _Misuse_ [praise] _the bounteous Pan_. _Comus_, 176–7. - - _Like eagles newly baited._ Cf. - - ‘All plumed like estridges that with the wind - Baited like eagles having lately bathed.’ - _1 King Henry IV._, IV. 1. - - 250. _Cast the diseases of the mind._ Cf. - - ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ... cast - The water of my land, find her disease, - And purge it to a sound and pristine health?’ - _Macbeth_, V. 3. - - _Wonder-wounded._ _Hamlet_, V. 1. - - _Wanton poets._ Cf. Marlowe’s _Edward II._, Act I. 1., and Beaumont - and Fletcher’s _The Maid’s Tragedy_, II. 2. - - 251. _The Maid’s Tragedy._ Acted 1609–10, printed 1619. - - 252. _Do not mock me._ Act IV. 1. - - _King and No King._ Licensed 1611, printed 1619. - - _When he meets with Panthea._ Act III. 1. - - 253. _The False One._ 1619. - - _Youth that opens._ Act III. 2. - - _Like_ [‘I should imagine’] _some celestial sweetness_. Act II. 3. - - ‘_Tis here_, and the next quotation. Act II. 1. [‘Egyptians, dare ye - think.’] - - 254. _The Faithful Shepherdess._ Acted 1610. - - _A perpetual feast._ _Comus_, 479–80. - - _He takes most ease._ _The Faithful Shepherdess_, Act V. 3. - - _Her virgin fancies wild._ _Paradise Lost_, V. 296–7. - - _Here he woods._ _The Faithful Shepherdess_, Act I. 3. - - 255. _For her dear sake._ Act V. 3. - - _Brightest._ Act IV. 2. - - _If you yield._ Act II. 2. - - 256. _And all my fears._ Act I. 1. - - _Sad Shepherd._ 1637. - - 257. _Tumbled him_ [He tumbled] _down_, and the two following - quotations. _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, Act I. 1. - - _We have been soldiers._ Act I. 3. - - 258. _Tearing our pleasures._ _To his Coy Mistress_, 43 and 44. - - _How do you._ _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, Act II. 2. [‘lastly, children - of grief and ignorance.’] - - 261. _Sing their bondage._ _Cymbeline_, III. 3. - - _The Bloody Brother_, 1624; _A Wife for a Month_, 1623; _Bonduca_, - acted _c._ 1619; _Thierry and Theodoret_, 1621; _The Night Walker_, - 1625; _The Little French Lawyer_, _c._ 1618; _Monsieur Thomas_, _c._ - 1619; _The Chances_, _c._ 1620; _The Wild Goose Chase_, acted 1621; - _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_, 1624. - - 262. _Philaster._ Acted _c._ 1608. - - _Sitting in my window._ Act V. 5. - - _Into a lower world._ _Paradise Lost_, XI. 283–5. - - _His plays were works._ Suckling’s _The Session of the Poets_, ver. 5. - - Note, _Euphrasia_. _Philaster_, Act V. 2. - - 263. _Miraturque._ Virgil, _Georgics_, II. 82. - - _The New Inn._ Acted 1630. - - _The Fall of Sejanus._ Acted 1603. - - _Two of Sejanus’ bloodhounds._ Act III. 1. - - _To be a spy._ Act IV. 3. - - 264. _What are thy arts._ Act IV. 5. - - _If this man._ Act I. 2 [‘blood and tyranny.’] - - 265. _The conversations between Livia._ Act II. 1. - - _Catiline’s Conspiracy._ Acted 1611. - - _David’s canvas._ Jacques Louis David (1748–1825), historical painter. - - _The description of Echo._ Act I. 1. _Cynthia’s Revels_ was acted in - 1600 and printed the year after. - - _The fine comparison ... the New Inn._ Cf. Act III. 2. - - _Massinger and Ford._ Philip Massinger (1583–1640) and John Ford - (1586–? 1656). - - _Musical as is Apollo’s lute._ _Comus_, 478. - - 266. _Reason panders will._ Hamlet, III. 4. - - _The true pathos._ Burns, _Epistle to Dr. Blacklock_. - - _The Unnatural Combat_, 1639; _The Picture_, licensed 1629; _The Duke - of Milan_, 1623; _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, 1633; _The Bondman_, - 1624; _The Virgin Martyr_, 1622. - - 267. _Felt a stain like a wound._ Burke, _Reflections on the French - Revolution_, ed. Payne, II. 89. - - Note. See _A View of the English Stage_, and notes thereto. - - 268. _Rowe’s Fair Penitent._ 1703. Nicholas Rowe (1673–1718). - - _Fatal Dowry._ 1632. - - _’Tis Pity She’s a Whore._ 1633. - - 269. _Annabella and her husband._ Act IV. 3. - - _The Broken Heart._ 1633. - - 270. _Miss Baillie._ See p. 147 and notes thereto. - - _Perkin Warbeck._ 1634. - - _The Lover’s Melancholy._ 1628. - - _Love’s Sacrifice._ 1633. - - Note. _Soft peace._ Act IV. 4. - - _The concluding one._ Act V. 2 and 3 [‘court new pleasures’.] - - 272. _Already alluded to._ See p. 230. - - 273. _Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy._ _Specimens_, vol. II. p. - 199. - - 274. _Armida’s enchanted palace._ The sorceress who seduces the - Crusaders. Tasso’s _Jerusalem Delivered_. - - _Fairy elves._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 781 _et seq._ - - ‘Like that Pygmean race - Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves.’ - - _Deaf the praised ear._ Pope’s _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate - Lady_. - - - V. ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC. - -_The Four P’s._ ? 1530–3. - -_John Heywood._ (_c._ 1497–_c._ 1575). He was responsible for various -collections of Epigrams, containing six hundred proverbs. - -276. _False knaves._ _Much Ado about Nothing_, IV. 2. - -277. _Count Fathom._ Chap. XXI. - -_Friar John._ Rabelais’ _Gargantua_, I. 27. - -278. L. 5 from foot. _Take_ [taste]. - -279. _Which I was born to introduce._ Swift’s lines _On the Death of Dr. -Swift_. - -_As a liar of the first magnitude._ Congreve’s _Love for Love_, Act II. -5. - -280. _Mighty stream of Tendency._ _The Excursion_, IX. 87. - -_Full of wise saws._ _As You Like It_, Act II. 7. - -_The Return from Parnassus._ 1606. - -_Like the Edinburgh Review._ Only two numbers were published, which were -reprinted (8vo) 1818. - -_Read the names._ _The Return from Parnassus_, Act I. 2. - -282. _Kempe the actor._ William Kempe, fl. _c._ 1600. - -_Burbage._ Richard Burbage (_c._ 1567–1618), the builder of the Globe -Theatre, and a great actor therein. - -_Few_ (_of the University_). Act IV. 3. - -283. _Felt them knowingly._ _Cymbeline_, III. 3. - -_Philomusus and Studioso._ Act II. 1, Act III. 5. - -_Out of our proof we speak._ _Cymbeline_, III. 3. - -_I was not train’d._ Charles Lamb’s Sonnet, written at Cambridge, August -15, 1819. - -284. _Made desperate._ _The Excursion_, VI. 532–3, quoted from Jeremy -Taylor’s _Holy Dying_, Chap. 1, § V. - -_A mere scholar._ _Return from Parnassus_, II. 6. - -_The examination of Signor Immerito._ Act III. 1. - -286. _Gammer Gurton’s Needle._ Printed 1575. John Still (1543–1607), -afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, is supposed to be its author. - -287. _Gog’s crosse_, and the following quotations. Act I. 5. - -289. _Such very poor spelling._ Cf. Lamb’s story of Randal Norris, who -once remarked after trying to read a black-letter Chaucer, ‘in those old -books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent spelling.’ -See - - Lamb’s Letter to H. Crabb Robinson, Jan. 20, 1827; Hone’s _Table - Book_, Feb. 10, 1827; and the first edition of the Last Essays of - Elia, 1833. _A Death-Bed_. - - _The Yorkshire Tragedy._ 1604 (attributed to Shakespeare); _Sir John - Oldcastle_, 1600, (? by Munday and Drayton); _The Widow of Watling - Street_, [_The Puritan, or The Widow, etc._], 1607 (? by Wentworth - Smith). See _The Round Table_, vol. I. p. 353, _et seq._, for Schlegel - and Hazlitt on these. - - _Green’s Tu Quoque, by George Cook._ Greene’s ‘Tu Quoque,’ 1614, by - Joseph Cooke (fl. _c._ 1600). Greene, the comedian, after whom the - play is called, died 1612. - - 290. _Suckling’s melancholy hat._ Cf. p. 270 _ante_. - - _Microcosmus, by Thomas Nabbes._ 1637. Thomas Nabbes flourished in the - time of Charles I. - - 291. _What do I see?_ Act IV. - - 292. _Antony Brewer’s Lingua._ 1607. This play is now said to be by - John Tomkins, Scholar of Trinity, Cambridge (1594–8). - - _Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages._ _Specimens_, vol. I. pp. 99–100. - - 292. _Why, good father._ Act II. 4. - - 293. _Thou, boy._ Act II. 1. - - _The Merry Devil of Edmonton._ 1608. The author is unknown. - - _Sound silver sweet._ _Romeo and Juliet_, II. 2. - - _The deer-stealing scenes._ _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, Act V. 1, - etc. - - 294. _Very honest knaveries._ _Merry Wives of Windsor_, IV. 4. - - _The way lies right._ _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, Act IV. 1. - - _The Pinner of Wakefield._ By Robert Greene (1560–1592). His works - have been edited by Dr. Grosart, and by Mr. Churton Collins. - - _Hail-fellow well met._ Cf. Swift’s _My Lady’s Lamentation_. - - _Jeronymo._ 1588. _The Spanish Tragedy_ (? 1583–5), licensed and - performed 1592. See Prof. Schick’s edition in ‘The Temple Dramatists.’ - Thomas Kyd, baptised November 6, 1558, died before 1601. - - _Which have all the melancholy madness of poetry._ Junius: Letter No - 7. to Sir W. Draper. - - - VI. ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Etc. - - 295. _The False One._ 1619. - - _Valentinian._ Produced before 1619. ‘Now the lusty spring is seen,’ - Act II. 5. - - _The Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman._ Published 1647. - - _Most musical._ _Il Penseroso_, 62. - - 296. _The silver foam._ Cowper’s _Winter’s Walk at Noon_, ll. 155–6— - - ‘Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf - That the wind severs from the broken wave.’ - - _Grim-visaged, comfortless despair._ Cf. ‘grim visag’d war.’ _Richard - III._, I. 1; and ‘grim and comfortless despair.’ _Comedy of Errors_, - V. 1. - - _Beaumont died._ His years were thirty-two (1584–1616). - - _’Tis not a life._ _Philaster_, Act V. 2. See p. 262. - - _The lily on its stalk green._ Chaucer, _The Knighte’s Tale_, 1036. - - _Lapt in Elysium._ _Comus_, 257. - - _Raphael._ Raphael’s years were thirty-seven (1483–1520). - - 297. _Now that his task._ _Comus_, 1012. - - _Rymer’s abuse._ See Thomas Rymer’s (1641–1713) _The Tragedies of the - Last Age Considered_ (1678). He was called by Pope ‘the best’ and by - Macaulay ‘the worst’ English critic. - - _The sons of memory._ Milton’s _Sonnet on Shakespeare_, 1630. - - _Sir John Beaumont_ (1582–1628), the author of _Bosworth Field_. - - _Fleeted the time carelessly._ _As You Like It_, I. 1. [‘golden - world.’] - - 298. _Walton’s Complete Angler._ Third Day, chap. iv. - - Note. Rochester’s _Epigram_. Sternhold and Hopkins were the joint - authors of the greater number of the metrical versions of the Psalms - (1547–62) which used to form part of the _Book of Common Prayer_. - - 299–300. _Drummond of Hawthornden._ William Drummond (1585–1649). His - _Conversations with Ben Jonson_ were written of a visit paid him by - Jonson in 1618. Mention might be made of Mr. W. C. Ware’s edition of - his Poems (1894), wherein many variations from Hazlitt’s text of the - sonnets may be noted, too numerous to detail here. - - Note. _I was all ear._ _Comus_, 560. - - 301. _The fly that sips treacle._ Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_, II. 2. - - _Sugar’d sonnetting._ Cf. Francis Meres’ _Palladis Tamia_, 1598, - concerning Shakespeare’s ‘sugred Sonnets,’ and Judicio in _The Return - from Parnassus_ (see p. 281 _ante_), ‘sugar’d sonnetting.’ - - 302. _The gentle craft._ The sub-title of a play of T. Dekker’s: _The - Shoemaker’s Holiday, or the Gentle Craft_ (1600). The phrase has long - been associated with that handicraft. - - _A Phœnix gazed by all._ _Paradise Lost_, V. 272. - - _Give a reason for the faith that was in me._ Cf. Sydney Smith’s—‘It - is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the - faith that is within him.’ - - 303. _Oh, how despised._ Act I. 1. - - 304. _The Triumph of his Mistress._ _The Triumph of Charis._ - - _Nest of spicery._ _Richard III._, IV. 4. - - _Oh, I could still._ _Cynthia’s Revels_, I. 1. - - 306. _A celebrated line._ See Coleridge’s Tragedy _Osorio_, Act iv., - Sc. 1., written 1797, but not published in its original form until - 1873. Coleridge’s _Poetical Works_, ed. Dykes Campbell, p. 498. - - ‘Drip! drip! drip! drip! in such a place as this - It has nothing else to do but drip! drip! drip!’ - - Recast and entitled _Remorse_, the tragedy was performed at Drury - Lane, Jan. 23, 1813, and published in pamphlet form. In the Preface - Coleridge relates the story of Sheridan reading the play to a large - company, and turning it into ridicule by saying— - - ‘Drip! drip! drip! there’s nothing here but dripping.’ - - Hazlitt’s quotation is taken, of course, from this Preface to - _Remorse_. - - 307. _The milk of human kindness._ Macbeth, I. 5. - - 309. _Daniel._ Samuel Daniel, 1562–1619. - - 311. _Michael Drayton_ (1563–1631). His Polyolbion, or - ‘chorographicall’ description of England in thirty books was issued in - 1612–22. See the Spenser Society’s editions of Drayton’s works. - - _P. Fletcher’s Purple Island._ Phineas Fletcher (1582–1650). _The - Purple Island_, 1633. The poem has been topographically catalogued - under ‘Man, Isle of’! - - _Brown._ William Browne (1591–_c._ 1643). _Britannia’s Pastorals_, - 1613–16; a third book (in MSS.) was printed in 1852. - - _Carew._ Thomas Carew (_c._ 1594–_c._ 1639). - - _Herrick._ Robert Herrick (1591–1674). His poems were edited by Dr. - Grosart in 1876. - - _Crashaw._ Richard Crashaw (? 1612–1649), the English Mystic. See Dr. - Grosart’s edition, 1872. - - _Marvell._ Andrew Marvell (1621–1678). See Dr. Grosart’s edition, - 1872–74. - - 312. _Like the motes._ ‘The gay motes that people the sunbeams.’ - Milton’s _Il Penseroso_, 8. - - 313. _On another occasion._ See _ante_ p. 83. - - 315. _Clamour grew dumb._ _Pastorals_, Book II. Song 1. - - _The squirrel._ Book I. Song 5. - - _The hues of the rainbow._ Book II. Song 3. - - _The Shepherd’s Pipe_, 1614. - - _The Inner Temple Mask_, 1620. - - _Marino._ Giambattista Marini (1569–1625). - - _His form had not yet lost._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 591. - - _Sir Philip Sidney_ (1554–86). See Grosart’s edition of the Poems and - Arber’s editions of the _Apologie_ and _Astrophel and Stella_. - - 318. _Ford’s Version._ See Act I. 1. _The Countess of Pembroke’s - Arcadia_ was published in 1690. - - _On compulsion._ _I. Henry IV._ II. 4. - - _The soldier’s._ _Hamlet_, III. 1. - - _Like a gate of steel._ _Troilus and Cressida_ III. 3. [‘receives and - renders’]. - - 320. _With centric._ _Paradise Lost_, VIII. 83. - - 321. _So that the third day._ Book I. chap. ii. [‘delightful - prospects’]. - - _Georgioni_, _i.e._ Giorgione, or Giorgio Barbarella (1477–1511), the - great Venetian painter. - - 322. _Like two grains of wheat._ _The Merchant of Venice_, I. 1. [‘hid - in two bushels’]. - - _Have you felt the wool._ In _The Triumph of Charis_. - - 323. _As Mr. Burke said of nobility._ Cf. _Reflections on the - Revolution in France_, ed. Payne, vol. II. p. 163. ‘To be honoured and - even privileged by the laws, opinions and inveterate usages of our - country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke - horror and indignation in any man.’ - - _The shipwreck of Pyrochles._ Book I. chap. i. - - 324. _Certainly, as her eyelids._ Book I. chap. i. - - _Adriano de Armada, in Love’s Labour Lost._ See the two characteristic - letters of Don Adriano de Armado, in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act I. - 1., and IV. 1. - - 325. _The reason of their unreasonableness._ _Don Quixote_, l. 1. - - _Pamelas and Philocleas._ Heroines of the _Arcadia_. - - 326. _Defence of Poetry._ _An Apologie for Poetry_, 1595. - - - VII. CHARACTER OF LORD BACON’S WORKS, ETC. - - _One of the wisest._ Pope’s _Essay on Man_, Epis. iv. 282. - - _As in a map._ Cowper’s _Task_, vi. 17. - - 327. _Large discourse._ _Hamlet_, IV. 4. - - 331. _Sir Thomas Brown._ Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682). - - 333. _The bosoms and businesses._ Dedication to Bacon’s _Essays_. - - _Find no end._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 561. - - _Oh altitudo._ _Religio Medici_, Part I. ‘I love to lose myself in a - mystery, to pursue my reason to an O altitudo!’ - - 334. _Differences himself by._ _Religio Medici_, Part I. ‘But (to - difference my self nearer, and draw into a lesser Circle).’ - - _He could be content if the species were continued like trees._ - _Religio Medici_, Part II. - - 335. _Walks gowned._ Lamb’s _Sonnet_, written at Cambridge, August 15, - 1819. - - _As it has been said._ Cf. the passage quoted later (p. 340) from - Coleridge. - - 339. _Mr. Coleridge._ See Coleridge’s _Literary Remains_, vol. II. - 1836. On p. 340, l. 4 the phrase, as written by Coleridge, should be - ‘Sir-Thomas-Brownness.’ - - 341. _Stuff of the conscience._ _Othello_, I. 2. - - _To give us pause._ _Hamlet_, III. I. - - _Cloys with sameness._ Cf. Shakespeare’s _Venus and Adonis_, XIX., - ‘cloy thy lips with loathed satiety.’ - - Note. _One of no mark._ _1 Henry IV._, III. 2. - - _Without form and void._ _Genesis_, I. 2. - - _He saw nature in the elements of its chaos._ _Religio Medici_, Part - I. - - 342. _Where pure Niemi’s faery banks_ [mountains]. Thomson’s _Winter_, - 875–6. - - _Rains sacrificial roses_ [whisperings]. _Timon of Athens_, I. 1. - - _Some are called at age._ Chap. i. § 3. - - 343. _It is the same._ Chap. iii. § 7. - - _I have read_, and the next two quotations. Chap. i. § 2. - - - VIII. ON THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE, ETC. - - 345. _The Apostate and Evadne._ _The Apostate_ (1817) by Richard Lalor - Sheil (1791–1851), _Evadne_ (1819). - - _The Traitor by old Shirley._ James Shirley’s (1596–1666) _The - Traitor_ (1637). - - _The last of those fair clouds._ - - _Mr. Tobin._ John Tobin (1770–1804). The _Honey-Moon_ was produced at - Drury Lane, Jan. 31, 1805. See _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_, - vol. I. p. 344. - - _The Curfew._ Tobin’s play was produced at Drury Lane, Feb. 19, 1807. - - 346. _Mr. Lamb’s_ _John Woodvil._ Published 1802. - - _There where we have treasured._ Cf. _St. Matt._ vi. 21. - - _The tall_ [and elegant stag] _deer that paints a dancing shadow of - his horns in the swift brook_ [in the water, where he drinks]. - - Lamb’s _John Woodvil_, II. ii. 195–7. - - _But fools rush in._ Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_, III. 66. - - _To say that he has written better._ Lamb’s articles in Leigh Hunt’s - _Reflector_ on Hogarth and Shakespeare’s tragedies, appeared in 1811. - - _A gentleman of the name of Cornwall._ Bryan Waller Procter’s (Barry - Cornwall 1787–1874), _Dramatic Scenes_ were published in 1819. - - 347. _The Falcon._ Boccaccio’s _Decameron_, 5th day, 9th story. See - _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_, vol. I. p. 331, and _The Round - Table_, vol. I. p. 163. - - 348. _A late number of the Edinburgh Review._ The article is by - Hazlitt himself, in the number for Feb. 1816, vol. 26, pp. 68, _et - seq._ - - _Florimel in Spenser._ Book III. 7. - - _There was magic._ _Othello_, III. 4. - - 349. _Schlegel somewhere compares._ Cf. _Lectures on Dramatic Art and - Literature_ (Bohn, 1846) p. 407. - - _So withered._ _Macbeth_, I. 3. - - _The description of Belphœbe._ _The Faerie Queene_, II. iii. 21 _et - seq._ - - 350. _All plumed like estriches._ Cf. _1 King Henry IV._ IV. 1. - - 352. _Antres vast._ _Othello_, I. 3. - - _Orlando ... Rogero._ In Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_. - - 353. _New-lighted._ _Hamlet_, III. 4. - - _The evidence of things unseen._ _Hebrews_, xi. 1. - - _Broods over the immense_ [vast] _abyss_. _Paradise Lost_, I. 21. - - _The ignorant present time._ _Macbeth_, I. 5. - - 355. _See o’er the stage._ Thomson’s _Winter_, ll. 646–8. - - _The Orphan._ By Otway, 1680. - - _Arabian trees._ _Othello_, V. 2. - - _That sacred pity._ _As You Like It_, II. 7. - - _Miss O’Neill._ Eliza O’Neill (1791–1872). - - 356. _Hog hath lost his Pearl._ 1613. - - _Addison’s Cato._ 1713. - - _Dennis’s Criticism._ John Dennis’s (1657–1734) _Remarks on Cato_, - 1713. - - _Don Sebastian._ 1690. - - _The mask of Arthur and Emmeline._ _King Arthur, or the British - Worthy_ 1691, a Dramatic Opera with music by Purcell. - - 357. _Alexander the Great ... Lee._ _The Rival Queens_ (1677) by - Nathaniel Lee (1655–92). - - _Œdipus._ 1679. - - _Relieve the killing languor._ Burke’s _Reflections on the Revolution - in France_ (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 120). - - _Leave then the luggage_, and the two following quotations. _Don - Sebastian_, Act II. 1. - - 359. _The Hughes._ John Hughes (1677–1720) author of _The Siege of - Damascus_ 1720, and one of the contributors to _The Spectator_. - - _The Hills._ Aaron Hill (1684–1749) poet and dramatist. - - _The Murphys._ Arthur Murphy (1727–1805) dramatist and biographer. - - _Fine by degrees._ Matthew Prior’s _Henry and Emma_. - - _Southern._ Thomas Southerne (1660/1–1746), who wrote _Oroonoko, or - the Royal Slave_ (1696). - - _Lillo._ George Lillo (1693–1739), _Fatal Curiosity_, 1737. - - _Moore._ Edward Moore (1712–1757), _The Gamester_, 1753. - - _In one of his Letters._ See the letter dated September, 1737. - - _Sent us weeping._ _Richard II._ V. 1. - - _Rise sadder._ Coleridge’s _Ancient Mariner_. - - _Douglas._ A tragedy by John Home (1724–1808), first played at - Edinburgh in 1756. - - 360. _Decorum is the principal thing._ ‘What Decorum is, which is the - grand Master-piece to observe.’ Milton on Education, Works, 1738, I. - p. 140. - - _Aristotle’s definition of tragedy._ In the _Poetics_. - - _Lovers’ Vows._ Mrs. Inchbald’s adaptation from Kotzebue, 1800. - - _Pizarro._ Sheridan’s adaptation from Kotzebue’s _The Spaniard in - Peru_, 1799. - - _Shews the very age._ _Hamlet_, III. 2. - - 361. _Orson._ In the fifteenth century romance, _Valentine and Orson_. - - _Pure in the last recesses._ Dryden’s translation from the Second - Satire of _Persius_, 133. - - _There is some soul of goodness._ _Henry V._, IV. 1. - - _There’s something rotten._ _Hamlet_, I. 4. - - 362. _The Sorrows of Werter._ Goethe’s _Sorrows of Werther_ was - finished in 1774. - - _The Robbers._ By Schiller, 1781. - - _It was my wish._ Act III. 2. - - 363. _Don Carlos._ 1787. - - _His Wallenstein._ Schiller’s, 1799; Coleridge’s, 1800. - - _Cumberland’s imitation._ Richard Cumberland’s (1732–1811) _Wheel of - Fortune_ (1779). - - _Goethe’s tragedies._ _Count Egmont_, 1788; _Stella_, 1776; - _Iphigenia_, 1786. - - _Memoirs of Anastasius the Greek._ Thomas Hope’s (1770–1831) Eastern - romance was published in 1819 and was received with enthusiasm by the - _Edinburgh Review_. - - _When in the fine summer evenings._ Werther (ed. Bohn), p. 337. - - 364. _As often got without merit._ _Othello_, II. 3. - - - - - SELECT BRITISH POETS - - -Dates, etc., are not given of those writers mentioned earlier in the -present volume. - -See W. C. Hazlitt’s _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, II. 197–8, for the few -details that are known concerning the origin of this work. It was the -opinion of Edward Fitzgerald that ‘Hazlitt’s Poets is the best selection -I have ever seen.’ - - 367. _Dr. Knox._ Vicesimus Knox, D.D. (1752–1821), a voluminous and - able author, preacher, and compiler. See Boswell’s _Johnson_, ed. G. - B. Hill, iv. 390–1. - - 368. _Baser matter._ _Hamlet_, I. 5. - - _Taken him._ _Romeo and Juliet_, III. 2. - - 369. _Perpetual feast._ _Comus_, 480. - - _Rich and rare._ Cf. Pope, Prologue to _Satires_, 171. - - 371. _Daniel._ Samuel Daniel, 1562–1619. - - 372. _Cowley._ Abraham Cowley, 1618–1667. - - _Roscommon._ Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, 1634–1685. His - translation of Horace’s _Art of Poetry_ was published in 1680. - - _Pomfret._ John Pomfret, 1667–1703. _The Choice_, 1699. - - _Lord Dorset._ Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (_c._ 1536–1608), - author of the _Induction to a Mirror for Magistrates_, and - joint-author with Thomas Norton of the tragedy _Ferrex and Porrex_ - (Gorboduc). See p. 193, _et seq._ - - _J. Philips._ John Philips, 1676–1708. _The Splendid Shilling_, 1705. - - _Halifax._ Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, 1661–1715, joint-author - with Matthew Prior of the parody on Dryden’s _Hind and Panther_, - entitled _The Town and Country Mouse_. - - 373. _The mob of gentlemen._ Pope, _Epis. Hor._ Ep. I. Book II. 108. - - _Parnell._ Thomas Parnell, 1679–1717. He was a friend of Swift and of - Pope. - - _Prior._ Matthew Prior, 1664–1721. - - 374. _Blair._ Robert Blair, 1699–1746. _The Grave_, 1743. - - _Ambrose Philips’s Pastorals._ These appeared in Tonson’s _Miscellany_ - (1709). Ambrose Philips’s dates are ? 1675–1749. He has his place in - _The Dunciad_. - - 375. _Mallet._ David Mallet, 1700–1765, is best remembered for his - fusion of two old ballads into his _William and Margaret_, and for his - possible authorship of _Rule Britannia_. - - _Less is meant._ Cf. Milton’s _Il Penseroso_, 120. - - 378. _Thoughts that glow_ [breathe]. Gray’s _Progress of Poesy_, 110. - - _Lord Thurlow._ Edward, second Lord Thurlow (1781–1829), a nephew of - the Lord Chancellor, published _Verses on Several Occasions_ (1812), - _Ariadne_ (1814), and other volumes of poems. - - 379. _Mr. Milman._ Henry Hart Milman, 1791–1868, of _Latin - Christianity_ fame was also the author of several dramas and dramatic - poems, and of several well-known hymns. - - _Bowles._ William Lisle Bowles, 1762–1850. - - _Mr. Barry Cornwall._ Bryan Waller Procter (1787–1874). - ------ - -Footnote 1: - - Burke’s writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the - fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, - but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that - the one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the - understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the - reason: poetry produces its effect by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing - is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general - bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, - are not to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French - poetry wants the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than - dramatic. And some of our own poetry which has been most admired, is - only poetry in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic diction. - -Footnote 2: - - Taken from Tasso. - -Footnote 3: - - This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser - sometimes took with language. - -Footnote 4: - - ‘That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, - Tho’ they are made and moulded of things past, - And give to Dust, that is a little gilt, - More laud than gold o’er-dusted.’ - _Troilus and Cressida._ - -Footnote 5: - - ‘To begin then with Shakspeare: he was the man who of all modern, and - perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. - All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them - not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more - than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted - learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned: - he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked - inwards and found her there. I cannot say, he is every where alike; - were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of - mankind. He is many times flat, and insipid; his comic wit - degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he - is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him. No man - can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise - himself as high above the rest of poets, - - _Quantum lenta solent inter Viburna Cupressi._’ - -Footnote 6: - - Written in the Fleet Prison. - -Footnote 7: - - Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post - which stood in the court-yard before the house where he was brought - up. - -Footnote 8: - - Burns.—These lines are taken from the introduction to Mr. Wordsworth’s - poem of the LEECH-GATHERER. - -Footnote 9: - - Sonnet on Sherwood Forest, by J. H. Reynolds, Esq. - -Footnote 10: - - There is the same idea in Blair’s Grave. - - ‘——Its visits, - Like those of angels, short, and far between.’ - - Mr. Campbell in altering the expression has spoiled it. ‘Few,’ and - ‘far between,’ are the same thing. - -Footnote 11: - - ‘O reader! hast thou ever stood to see - The Holly Tree? - The eye that contemplates it well perceives - Its glossy leaves, - Ordered by an intelligence so wise - As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries. - - Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen - Wrinkled and keen; - No grazing cattle through their prickly round - Can reach to wound; - But as they grow where nothing is to fear, - Smooth and unarm’d the pointless leaves appear. - - I love to view these things with curious eyes, - And moralize; - And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree - Can emblems see - Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, - Such as may profit in the after time. - - So, though abroad perchance I might appear - Harsh and austere, - To those who on my leisure would intrude - Reserved and rude, - Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be, - Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. - - And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, - Some harshness show, - All vain asperities I day by day - Would wear away, - Till the smooth temper of my age should be - Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. - - And as when all the summer trees are seen - So bright and green, - The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display - Less bright than they, - But when the bare and wintry woods we see, - What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree? - - So serious should my youth appear among - The thoughtless throng, - So would I seem amid the young and gay - More grave than they, - That in my age as cheerful I might be - As the green winter of the Holly Tree.’— - -Footnote 12: - - In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the place - of the translation of the Bible: and this dumb art arose in the - silence of the written oracles. - -Footnote 13: - - See a Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594. - -Footnote 14: - - ‘The smiler with the knife under his cloke.’ - - _Knight’s Tale._ - -Footnote 15: - - He died about 1594. - -Footnote 16: - - An anachronism. - -Footnote 17: - - This expression seems to be ridiculed by Falstaff. - -Footnote 18: - - ‘He sent a shaggy, tattered, staring slave, - That when he speaks, draws out his grisly beard, - And winds it twice or thrice about his ear; - Whose face has been a grind-stone for men’s swords: - His hands are hack’d, some fingers cut quite off, - Who when he speaks, grunts like a hog, and looks - Like one that is employ’d in catzerie, - And cross-biting; such a rogue - As is the husband to a hundred whores; - And I by him must send three hundred crowns.’ - - _Act IV._ - -Footnote 19: - - ‘In spite of these swine-eating Christians - (Unchosen nation, never circumcised; - Such poor villains as were ne’er thought upon, - Till Titus and Vespasian conquer’d us) - Am I become as wealthy as I was. - They hoped my daughter would have been a nun; - But she’s at home, and I have bought a house - As great and fair as is the Governor’s: - And there, in spite of Malta, will I dwell, - Having Ferneze’s hand; whose heart I’ll have, - Aye, and his son’s too, or it shall go hard. - - I am not of the tribe of Levi, I, - That can so soon forget an injury. - We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please; - And when we grin we bite; yet are our looks - As innocent and harmless as a lamb’s. - I learn’d in Florence how to kiss my hand, - Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog, - And duck as low as any bare-foot Friar: - Hoping to see them starve upon a stall, - Or else be gather’d for in our synagogue, - That when the offering bason comes to me, - Even for charity I may spit into it.’ - -Footnote 20: - - Sir John Harrington’s translation. - -Footnote 21: - - See the conclusion of Lecture IV. - -Footnote 22: - - ‘Am I not thy Duchess? - - _Bosola._ Thou art some great woman, sure; for riot begins to sit on - thy forehead (clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry - milkmaid’s. Thou sleep’st worse than if a mouse should be forced to - take up his lodging in a cat’s ear: a little infant that breeds its - teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou wert the - more unquiet bed-fellow. - - _Duch._ I am Duchess of Malfy still.’ - -Footnote 23: - - Euphrasia as the Page, just before speaking of her life, which - Philaster threatens to take from her, says, - - ——‘’Tis not a life; - ’Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.’ - - What exquisite beauty and delicacy! - -Footnote 24: - - The following criticism on this play has appeared in another - publication, but may be not improperly inserted here: - - ‘A New Way to Pay Old Debts is certainly a very admirable play, and - highly characteristic of the genius of its author, which was hard and - forcible, and calculated rather to produce a strong impression than a - pleasing one. There is considerable unity of design and a progressive - interest in the fable, though the artifice by which the catastrophe is - brought about, (the double assumption of the character of favoured - lovers by Wellborn and Lovell), is somewhat improbable, and out of - date; and the moral is peculiarly striking, because its whole weight - falls upon one who all along prides himself in setting every principle - of justice and all fear of consequences at defiance. - - ‘The character of Sir Giles Overreach (the most prominent feature of - the play, whether in the perusal, or as it is acted) interests us less - by exciting our sympathy than our indignation. We hate him very - heartily, and yet not enough; for he has strong, robust points about - him that repel the impertinence of censure, and he sometimes succeeds - in making us stagger in our opinion of his conduct, by throwing off - any idle doubts or scruples that might hang upon it in his own mind, - ‘like dew-drops from the lion’s mane.’ His steadiness of purpose - scarcely stands in need of support from the common sanctions of - morality, which he intrepidly breaks through, and he almost conquers - our prejudices by the consistent and determined manner in which he - braves them. Self-interest is his idol, and he makes no secret of his - idolatry: he is only a more devoted and unblushing worshipper at this - shrine than other men. Self-will is the only rule of his conduct, to - which he makes every other feeling bend: or rather, from the nature of - his constitution, he has no sickly, sentimental obstacles to interrupt - him in his headstrong career. He is a character of obdurate self-will, - without fanciful notions or natural affections; one who has no regard - to the feelings of others, and who professes an equal disregard to - their opinions. He minds nothing but his own ends, and takes the - shortest and surest way to them. His understanding is clear-sighted, - and his passions strong-nerved. Sir Giles is no flincher, and no - hypocrite; and he gains almost as much by the hardihood with which he - avows his impudent and sordid designs as others do by their caution in - concealing them. He is the demon of selfishness personified; and - carves out his way to the objects of his unprincipled avarice and - ambition with an arm of steel, that strikes but does not feel the blow - it inflicts. The character of calculating, systematic self-love, as - the master-key to all his actions, is preserved with great truth of - keeping and in the most trifling circumstances. Thus ruminating to - himself he says, “I’ll walk, to get me an appetite: ’tis but a mile; - and exercise will keep me from being pursy!”—Yet to show the absurdity - and impossibility of a man’s being governed by any such pretended - exclusive regard to his own interest, this very Sir Giles, who laughs - at conscience, and scorns opinion, who ridicules every thing as - fantastical but wealth, solid, substantial wealth, and boasts of - himself as having been the founder of his own fortune, by his contempt - for every other consideration, is ready to sacrifice the whole of his - enormous possessions—to what?—to a title, a sound, to make his - daughter “right honourable,” the wife of a lord whose name he cannot - repeat without loathing, and in the end he becomes the dupe of, and - falls a victim to, that very opinion of the world which he despises! - - The character of Sir Giles Overreach has been found fault with as - unnatural; and it may, perhaps, in the present refinement of our - manners, have become in a great measure obsolete. But we doubt whether - even still, in remote and insulated parts of the country, sufficient - traces of the same character of wilful selfishness, mistaking the - inveteracy of its purposes for their rectitude, and boldly appealing - to power as justifying the abuses of power, may not be found to - warrant this an undoubted original—probably a fac-simile of some - individual of the poet’s actual acquaintance. In less advanced periods - of society than that in which we live, if we except rank, which can - neither be an object of common pursuit nor immediate attainment, money - is the only acknowledged passport to respect. It is not merely - valuable as a security from want, but it is the only defence against - the insolence of power. Avarice is sharpened by pride and necessity. - There are then few of the arts, the amusements, and accomplishments - that soften and sweeten life, that raise or refine it: the only way in - which any one can be of service to himself or another, is by his - command over the gross commodities of life; and a man is worth just so - much as he has. Where he who is not ‘lord of acres’ is looked upon as - a slave and a beggar, the soul becomes wedded to the soil by which its - worth is measured, and takes root in it in proportion to its own - strength and stubbornness of character. The example of Wellborn may be - cited in illustration of these remarks. The loss of his land makes all - the difference between “young master Wellborn” and “rogue Wellborn;” - and the treatment he meets with in this latter capacity is the best - apology for the character of Sir Giles. Of the two it is better to be - the oppressor than the oppressed. - - ‘Massinger, it is true, dealt generally in extreme characters, as well - as in very repulsive ones. The passion is with him wound up to its - height at once, and he never lets it down afterwards. It does not - gradually arise out of previous circumstances, nor is it modified by - other passions. This gives an appearance of abruptness, violence, and - extravagance to all his plays. Shakespear’s characters act from mixed - motives, and are made what they are by various circumstances. - Massinger’s characters act from single motives, and become what they - are, and remain so, by a pure effort of the will, in spite of - circumstances. This last author endeavoured to embody an abstract - principle; labours hard to bring out the same individual trait in its - most exaggerated state; and the force of his impassioned characters - arises for the most part, from the obstinacy with which they exclude - every other feeling. Their vices look of a gigantic stature from their - standing alone. Their actions seem extravagant from their having - always the same fixed aim—the same incorrigible purpose. The fault of - Sir Giles Overreach, in this respect, is less in the excess to which - he pushes a favourite propensity, than in the circumstance of its - being unmixed with any other virtue or vice. - - ‘We may find the same simplicity of dramatic conception in the comic - as in the tragic characters of the author. Justice Greedy has but one - idea or subject in his head throughout. He is always eating, or - talking of eating. His belly is always in his mouth, and we know - nothing of him but his appetite; he is as sharpset as travellers from - off a journey. His land of promise touches on the borders of the - wilderness: his thoughts are constantly in apprehension of feasting or - famishing. A fat turkey floats before his imagination in royal state, - and his hunger sees visions of chines of beef, venison pasties, and - Norfolk dumplings, as if it were seized with a calenture. He is a very - amusing personage; and in what relates to eating and drinking, as - peremptory as Sir Giles himself.—Marrall is another instance of - confined comic humour, whose ideas never wander beyond the ambition of - being the implicit drudge of another’s knavery or good fortune. He - sticks to his stewardship, and resists the favour of a salute from a - fine lady as not entered in his accounts. The humour of this character - is less striking in the play than in Munden’s personification of it. - The other characters do not require any particular analysis. They are - very insipid, good sort of people.’ - -Footnote 25: - - ‘_Ithocles._ Soft peace enrich this room. - - _Orgilus._ How fares the lady? - - _Philema._ Dead! - - _Christalla._ Dead! - - _Philema._ Starv’d! - - _Christalla._ Starv’d! - - _Ithocles._ Me miserable!’ - -Footnote 26: - - ‘High as our heart.’—See passage from the Malcontent. - -Footnote 27: - - Or never known one otherwise than patient. - -Footnote 28: - - Sonnet to Cambridge, by Charles Lamb. - -Footnote 29: - - The name of Still has been assigned as the author of this singular - production, with the date of 1566. - -Footnote 30: - - So in Rochester’s Epigram. - - ‘Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms, - When they translated David’s Psalms.’ - -Footnote 31: - - His mistress. - -Footnote 32: - - Scotch for send’st, for complain’st, &c. - -Footnote 33: - - ‘I was all ear,’ see Milton’s Comus. - -Footnote 34: - - Chapman’s Hymn to Pan. - -Footnote 35: - - Alluding to the fulfilment of the prophecies and the birth of the - Messiah. - -Footnote 36: - - ‘He spreads his sail-broad vans.’—Par. Lost, b. ii. l. 927. - -Footnote 37: - - See Satan’s reception on his return to Pandemonium, in book X. of - Paradise Lost. - -Footnote 38: - - Sir Thomas Brown has it, ‘The huntsmen are up in America,’ but Mr. - Coleridge prefers reading Arabia. I do not think his account of the - Urn-Burial very happy. Sir Thomas can be said to be ‘wholly in his - subject,’ only because he is _wholly out of it_. There is not a word - in the Hydriotaphia about ‘a thigh-bone, or a skull, or a bit of - mouldered coffin, or a tomb-stone, or a ghost, or a winding-sheet, or - an echo,’ nor is ‘a silver nail or a gilt _anno domini_ the gayest - thing you shall meet with.’ You do not meet with them at all in the - text; nor is it possible, either from the nature of the subject, or of - Sir T. Brown’s mind, that you should! He chose the subject of - Urn-Burial, because it was ‘one of no mark or likelihood,’ totally - free from the romantic prettinesses and pleasing poetical - common-places with which Mr. Coleridge has adorned it, and because, - being ‘without form and void,’ it gave unlimited scope to his - high-raised and shadowy imagination. The motto of this author’s - compositions might be—‘_De apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est - ratio._’ He created his own materials: or to speak of him in his own - language, ‘he saw nature in the elements of its chaos, and discerned - his favourite notions in the great obscurity of nothing!‘ - -Footnote 39: - - The above passage is an inimitably fine paraphrase of some lines on - the tombs in Westminster Abbey by F. Beaumont. It shows how near - Jeremy Taylor’s style was to poetry, and how well it weaves in with - it. - - ‘Mortality, behold, and fear, - What a charge of flesh is here! - Think how many royal bones - Sleep within this heap of stones: - Here they lie, had realms and lands, - Who now want strength to stir their hands. - Where from their pulpits seal’d in dust, - They preach “In greatness is no trust.” - Here’s an acre sown indeed - With the richest, royal’st seed - That the earth did e’er suck in, - Since the first man died for sin. - Here the bones of birth have cried, - Though Gods they were, as men they died. - Here are sands, ignoble things, - Dropp’d from the ruin’d sides of kings. - Here’s a world of pomp and state - Buried in dust, once dead by fate.’ - -Footnote 40: - - He and his wife both died from fright, occasioned by the great fire of - London in 1665, and lie buried in St. Giles’s church-yard. - -Footnote 41: - - The difference in the tone of moral sentiment is the greatest of all - others. - - - Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. P. 20, changed “was an effeminate as” to “was as effeminate as”. - 2. P. 89, changed “that that of the torrid zone” to “than that of the - torrid zone”. - 3. P. 150, changed “Procustes” to “Procrustes”. - 4. Other spelling errors were left uncorrected. - 5. Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at - the end of the last chapter. - 6. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. - 7. Enclosed bold font in =equals=. - 8. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript - character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in - curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}. - 9. 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} - body {font-family: Georgia, serif, 'DejaVu Sans'; text-align: justify; } - table {font-size: .9em; padding: 1.5em .5em 1em; page-break-inside: avoid; - clear: both; } - div.titlepage {text-align: center; page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; } - div.titlepage p {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 3em; } - .ph1 { text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; font-size: xx-large; - margin: .67em auto; page-break-before: always; } - .ph2 { text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; font-size: x-large; margin: .75em auto; - page-break-before: always; } - .x-ebookmaker p.dropcap:first-letter { float: left; } - .scite {font-variant:small-caps; font-style: normal; } - </style> - </head> - <body> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 05 (of 12), by William Hazlitt</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 05 (of 12)</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: William Hazlitt</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 15, 2021 [eBook #64823]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT, VOL. 05 (OF 12) ***</div> - -<div class='tnotes covernote'> - -<p class='c000'><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b></p> - -<p class='c000'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter ph1'> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div>THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT IN TWELVE VOLUMES</div> - <div class='c002'>VOLUME FIVE</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div><span class='small'><em>All rights reserved</em></span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='figcenter id001'> -<img src='images/i_004.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> -<div class='ic001'> -<p><em>William Hazlitt.</em><br /><br /><em>From a miniature by John Hazlitt, executed about 1808.</em></p> -</div> -</div> - -<div class='titlepage'> - -<div> - <h1 class='c003'><span class='xlarge'>THE COLLECTED WORKS OF</span><br /> <span class='color_red'>WILLIAM HAZLITT</span></h1> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='large'>EDITED BY A. R. WALLER AND ARNOLD GLOVER</span></div> - <div class='c004'><span class='small'>WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY</span></div> - <div>W. E. HENLEY</div> - <div class='c004'>❦</div> - <div class='c004'>Lectures on the English Poets and on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth Etc.</div> - <div class='c004'>❦</div> - <div class='c004'>1902</div> - <div><span class='large'>LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.</span></div> - <div>McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div><span class='small'>Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. <span class='sc'>Constable</span></span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table class='table0' summary='CONTENTS'> - <tr> - <th class='c006'></th> - <th class='c007'><span class='small'>PAGE</span></th> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#ix'>ix</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_169'>169</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>PREFACE AND CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS FROM SELECT BRITISH POETS</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_365'>365</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>NOTES</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_381'>381</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 id='ix' class='c005'>LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c003'>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h3> - -<p class='c008'>The <cite>Lectures on The English Poets.</cite> <em>Delivered at the Surrey Institution. By William -Hazlitt</em>, were published in 8vo. (8¾ × 5¼), in the year of their delivery, 1818; a -second edition was published in 1819, of which the present issue is a reprint. -The imprint reads, ‘London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 93, Fleet Street. -1819,’ and the volume was printed by ‘T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street, Cheapside.’ -Behind the half-title appears the following advertisement: ‘This day is published, -Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, by William Hazlitt. Second Edition, 8vo. price -10s. 6d. boards.’ A four-page advertisement of ‘Books just published by Taylor -and Hessey’ ends the volume, with ‘Characters of Shakspeare’s Plays’ at the top, -and a notice of it from the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>.</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>CONTENTS</h3> - -<table class='table0' summary='CONTENTS'> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE I.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <th class='c006'></th> - <th class='c007'><span class='small'>PAGE</span></th> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>Introductory.—On Poetry in General</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE II.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Chaucer and Spenser</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_19'>19</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE III.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Shakspeare and Milton</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE IV.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Dryden and Pope</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_68'>68</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE V.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Thomson and Cowper</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_85'>85</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE VI.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Swift, Young, Gray, Collins, etc.</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE VII.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Burns, and the Old English Ballads</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_123'>123</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE VIII.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On the Living Poets</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span></div> -<div class='section ph2'> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div><span class='large'>LECTURES ON</span></div> - <div>THE ENGLISH POETS</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<h3 class='c010'>LECTURE I.—INTRODUCTORY<br /> <span class='small'>ON POETRY IN GENERAL</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the -natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness exciting -an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and producing, -by sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, or sounds, expressing -it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-matter of it, -next of the forms of expression to which it gives birth, and afterwards -of its connection with harmony of sound.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It relates -to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. -It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of men; for nothing -but what so comes home to them in the most general and intelligible -shape, can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language -which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt -for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for any -thing else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment, (as some -persons have been led to imagine) the trifling amusement of a few -idle readers or leisure hours—it has been the study and delight of -mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something -to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with -like endings: but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or -harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of a -flower that ‘spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its -beauty to the sun,’—<em>there</em> is poetry, in its birth. If history is a grave -study, poetry may be said to be a graver: its materials lie deeper, and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>are spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous -and unwieldly masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of -the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different -states, and from century to century: but there is no thought or feeling -that can have entered into the mind of man, which he would be -eager to communicate to others, or which they would listen to with -delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch of -authorship: it is ‘the stuff of which our life is made.’ The rest is -‘mere oblivion,’ a dead letter: for all that is worth remembering in -life, is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is -poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, -wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. Poetry is that -fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole -being: without it ‘man’s life is poor as beast’s.’ Man is a poetical -animal: and those of us who do not study the principles of poetry, -act upon them all our lives, like Molière’s <cite>Bourgeois Gentilhomme</cite>, who -had always spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a poet -in fact, when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of -Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a poet, when he first -crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers; the countryman, when -he stops to look at the rainbow; the city-apprentice, when he gazes -after the Lord-Mayor’s show; the miser, when he hugs his gold; -the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who -paints his idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the -tyrant, who fancies himself a god;—the vain, the ambitious, the proud, -the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, -the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of -their own making; and the poet does no more than describe what all -the others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly -and madness at second hand. ‘There is warrant for it.’ Poets -alone have not ‘such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that -apprehend more than cooler reason’ can.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet</div> - <div class='line'>Are of imagination all compact.</div> - <div class='line'>One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;</div> - <div class='line'>The madman. While the lover, all as frantic,</div> - <div class='line'>Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.</div> - <div class='line'>The poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling,</div> - <div class='line'>Doth glance from heav’n to earth, from earth to heav’n;</div> - <div class='line'>And as imagination bodies forth</div> - <div class='line'>The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen</div> - <div class='line'>Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing</div> - <div class='line'>A local habitation and a name.</div> - <div class='line'>Such tricks hath strong imagination.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. If -it is a fiction, made up of what we wish things to be, and fancy -that they are, because we wish them so, there is no other nor -better reality. Ariosto has described the loves of Angelica and -Medoro: but was not Medoro, who carved the name of his mistress -on the barks of trees, as much enamoured of her charms as he? -Homer has celebrated the anger of Achilles: but was not the hero -as mad as the poet? Plato banished the poets from his Commonwealth -lest their descriptions of the natural man should spoil his -mathematical man, who was to be without passions and affections, -who was neither to laugh nor weep, to feel sorrow nor anger, to be -cast down nor elated by any thing. This was a chimera, however, -which never existed but in the brain of the inventor; and Homer’s -poetical world has outlived Plato’s philosophical Republic.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagination and the -passions are a part of man’s nature. We shape things according to -our wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most -emphatical language that can be found for those creations of the -mind ‘which ecstacy is very cunning in.’ Neither a mere description -of natural objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however -distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry, -without the heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is -not only a direct but also a reflected light, that while it shews us the -object, throws a sparkling radiance on all around it: the flame of -the passions, communicated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with -a flash of lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates our -whole being. Poetry represents forms chiefly as they suggest other -forms; feelings, as they suggest forms or other feelings. Poetry puts -a spirit of life and motion into the universe. It describes the flowing, -not the fixed. It does not define the limits of sense, or analyze the -distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the -imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object -or feeling. The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, -exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within -itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) -strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or -grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, -and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the -boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality -in other instances. Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this -reason, ‘has something divine in it, because it raises the mind and -hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the shows of things to the -desires of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>as reason and history do.’ It is strictly the language of the imagination; -and the imagination is that faculty which represents objects, -not as they are in themselves, but as they are moulded by other -thoughts and feelings, into an infinite variety of shapes and combinations -of power. This language is not the less true to nature, because -it is false in point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if -it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of -passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented -to the senses in a state of agitation or fear—and the imagination -will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of -whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. ‘Our eyes are made -the fools’ of our other faculties. This is the universal law of the -imagination,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That if it would but apprehend some joy,</div> - <div class='line'>It comprehends some bringer of that joy:</div> - <div class='line'>Or in the night imagining some fear,</div> - <div class='line'>How easy is each bush suppos’d a bear!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>When Iachimo says of Imogen,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>‘——The flame o’ th’ taper</div> - <div class='line'>Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids</div> - <div class='line'>To see the enclosed lights’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>this passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame to accord -with the speaker’s own feelings, is true poetry. The lover, equally -with the poet, speaks of the auburn tresses of his mistress as locks of -shining gold, because the least tinge of yellow in the hair has, from -novelty and a sense of personal beauty, a more lustrous effect to the -imagination than the purest gold. We compare a man of gigantic -stature to a tower: not that he is any thing like so large, but because -the excess of his size beyond what we are accustomed to expect, or -the usual size of things of the same class, produces by contrast a -greater feeling of magnitude and ponderous strength than another -object of ten times the same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling -makes up for the disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to -the imagination, which have the power of affecting the mind with an -equal degree of terror, admiration, delight, or love. When Lear -calls upon the heavens to avenge his cause, ‘for they are old like -him,’ there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identification -of his age with theirs; for there is no other image which could -do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and his despair!</p> - -<p class='c011'>Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling. As -in describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impressions with -<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain, by -blending them with the strongest movements of passion, and the most -striking forms of nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most impassioned -species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost -point of sublimity or pathos, by all the force of comparison or contrast; -loses the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration -of it; exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it; -grapples with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint; -throws us back upon the past, forward into the future; brings every -moment of our being or object of nature in startling review before us; -and in the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to -the highest contemplations on human life. When Lear says of -Edgar, ‘Nothing but his unkind daughters could have brought him -to this;’ what a bewildered amazement, what a wrench of the -imagination, that cannot be brought to conceive of any other cause of -misery than that which has bowed it down, and absorbs all other -sorrow in its own! His sorrow, like a flood, supplies the sources of -all other sorrow. Again, when he exclaims in the mad scene, ‘The -little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at -me!’ it is passion lending occasion to imagination to make every -creature in league against him, conjuring up ingratitude and insult in -their least looked-for and most galling shapes, searching every thread -and fibre of his heart, and finding out the last remaining image of -respect or attachment in the bottom of his breast, only to torture and -kill it! In like manner, the ‘So I am’ of Cordelia gushes from her -heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a weight of love and of -supposed ingratitude, which had pressed upon it for years. What a -fine return of the passion upon itself is that in Othello—with what -a mingled agony of regret and despair he clings to the last traces of -departed happiness—when he exclaims,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>——‘Oh now, for ever</div> - <div class='line'>Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content;</div> - <div class='line'>Farewel the plumed troops and the big war,</div> - <div class='line'>That make ambition virtue! Oh farewel!</div> - <div class='line'>Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,</div> - <div class='line'>The spirit-stirring drum, th’ ear-piercing fife,</div> - <div class='line'>The royal banner, and all quality,</div> - <div class='line'>Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war:</div> - <div class='line'>And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats</div> - <div class='line'>Th’ immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit,</div> - <div class='line'>Farewel! Othello’s occupation’s gone!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide in its -<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>sounding course, when in answer to the doubts expressed of his -returning love, he says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose icy current and compulsive course</div> - <div class='line'>Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on</div> - <div class='line'>To the Propontic and the Hellespont:</div> - <div class='line'>Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,</div> - <div class='line'>Till that a capable and wide revenge</div> - <div class='line'>Swallow them up.’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desdemona is at -that line,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘But there where I had garner’d up my heart,</div> - <div class='line'>To be discarded thence!”—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites our -sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion as it -sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment, it strengthens the -desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by -making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of -passion lays bare and shews us the rich depths of the human soul: -the whole of our existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits, -of that which we desire and that which we dread, is brought before -us by contrast; the action and re-action are equal; the keenness of -immediate suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and -a more intimate participation with the antagonist world of good; -makes us drink deeper of the cup of human life; tugs at the heart-strings; -loosens the pressure about them; and calls the springs of -thought and feeling into play with tenfold force.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual -part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive—of the desire to know, -the will to act, and the power to feel; and ought to appeal to these -different parts of our constitution, in order to be perfect. The -domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural, -is in this sense the least so, because it appeals almost exclusively to -one of these faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and -Lillo, for this reason, however affecting at the time, oppress and lie -like a dead weight upon the mind, a load of misery which it is unable -to throw off: the tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, stirs -our inmost affections; abstracts evil from itself by combining it with -all the forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings of the -heart, and rouses the whole man within us.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry, is not any -thing peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is -not an anomaly of the imagination. It has its source and ground-work -in the common love of strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, -people flock to see a tragedy; but if there were a public execution in -the next street, the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not -then the difference between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty. -Children are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain -prose: nor do the hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of -murders and executions about the streets, find it necessary to have -them turned into penny ballads, before they can dispose of these -interesting and authentic documents. The grave politician drives a -thriving trade of abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom -he makes his enemies for no other end than that he may live by them. -The popular preacher makes less frequent mention of heaven than of -hell. Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or -rhetoric. We are as fond of indulging our violent passions as of -reading a description of those of others. We are as prone to make -a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be -asked, Why we do so? the best answer will be, Because we cannot -help it. The sense of power is as strong a principle in the mind as -the love of pleasure. Objects of terror and pity exercise the same -despotic control over it as those of love or beauty. It is as natural -to hate as to love, to despise as to admire, to express our hatred or -contempt, as our love or admiration.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Masterless passion sways us to the mood</div> - <div class='line'>Of what it likes or loathes.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Not that we like what we loathe; but we like to indulge our -hatred and scorn of it; to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it -by every refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration; to -make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the -splendour of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by -name, to grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect, -to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend -with, and to contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the -highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that -can be given to our conception of any thing, whether pleasurable or -painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect -coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, -and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant -‘satisfaction to the thought.’ This is equally the origin of wit and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When -Pope says of the Lord Mayor’s shew,—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Now night descending, the proud scene is o’er,</div> - <div class='line'>But lives in Settle’s numbers one day more!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>—when Collins makes Danger, ‘with limbs of giant mould,’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>——‘Throw him on the steep</div> - <div class='line'>Of some loose hanging rock asleep:’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>when Lear calls out in extreme anguish,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,</div> - <div class='line'>How much more hideous shew’st in a child</div> - <div class='line'>Than the sea-monster!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>—the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the other, and -of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing -ourselves, and shew it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in spite -of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination, by -thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to -the indistinct and importunate cravings of the will.—We do not -wish the thing to be so; but we wish it to appear such as it is. -For knowledge is conscious power; and the mind is no longer, in this -case, the dupe, though it may be the victim of vice or folly.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and the -passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd -than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic -critics, for reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common -sense and reason: for the end and use of poetry, ‘both at the first -and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature,’ seen through -the medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium -by means of literal truth or abstract reason. The painter of history -might as well be required to represent the face of a person who has -just trod upon a serpent with the still-life expression of a common -portrait, as the poet to describe the most striking and vivid impressions -which things can be supposed to make upon the mind, in the language -of common conversation. Let who will strip nature of the colours -and the shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound to do so; the impressions -of common sense and strong imagination, that is, of passion -and indifference, cannot be the same, and they must have a separate -language to do justice to either. Objects must strike differently upon -the mind, independently of what they are in themselves, as long as -we have a different interest in them, as we see them in a different -point of view, nearer or at a greater distance (morally or physically -<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>speaking) from novelty, from old acquaintance, from our ignorance -of them, from our fear of their consequences, from contrast, from -unexpected likeness. We can no more take away the faculty of -the imagination, than we can see all objects without light or shade. -Some things must dazzle us by their preternatural light; others must -hold us in suspense, and tempt our curiosity to explore their obscurity. -Those who would dispel these various illusions, to give us their drab-coloured -creation in their stead, are not very wise. Let the naturalist, -if he will, catch the glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box, -and find it next morning nothing but a little grey worm; let the poet -or the lover of poetry visit it at evening, when beneath the scented -hawthorn and the crescent moon it has built itself a palace of -emerald light. This is also one part of nature, one appearance which -the glow-worm presents, and that not the least interesting; so poetry -is one part of the history of the human mind, though it is neither -science nor philosophy. It cannot be concealed, however, that the -progress of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circumscribe -the limits of the imagination, and to clip the wings of poetry. The -province of the imagination is principally visionary, the unknown -and undefined: the understanding restores things to their natural -boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful pretensions. Hence -the history of religious and poetical enthusiasm is much the same -and both have received a sensible shock from the progress of experimental -philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives -birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what we do -not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill -them with what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns -vast, and drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about -us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no -bounds to the wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And visions, as poetic eyes avow,</div> - <div class='line'>Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>There can never be another Jacob’s dream. Since that time, the -heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have -become averse to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the -squares of the distances, or on Doctor Chalmers’s Discourses. -Rembrandt’s picture brings the matter nearer to us.—It is not only -the progress of mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of -civilization that are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not -only stand in less awe of the preternatural world, but we can calculate -more surely, and look with more indifference, upon the regular routine -of this. The heroes of the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters -<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>and giants. At present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of -good or evil, to the incursions of wild beasts or ‘bandit fierce,’ or to -the unmitigated fury of the elements. The time has been that ‘our -fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in -it.’ But the police spoils all; and we now hardly so much as dream -of a midnight murder. Macbeth is only tolerated in this country -for the sake of the music; and in the United States of America, -where the philosophical principles of government are carried still -farther in theory and practice, we find that the Beggar’s Opera is -hooted from the stage. Society, by degrees, is constructed into a -machine that carries us safely and insipidly from one end of life to -the other, in a very comfortable prose style.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Obscurity her curtain round them drew,</div> - <div class='line'>And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The remarks which have been here made, would, in some measure, -lead to a solution of the question of the comparative merits of painting -and poetry. I do not mean to give any preference, but it should -seem that the argument which has been sometimes set up, that painting -must affect the imagination more strongly, because it represents -the image more distinctly, is not well founded. We may assume -without much temerity, that poetry is more poetical than painting. -When artists or connoisseurs talk on stilts about the poetry of painting, -they shew that they know little about poetry, and have little love for -the art. Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. -Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself: poetry suggests -what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it. But this -last is the proper province of the imagination. Again, as it relates -to passion, painting gives the event, poetry the progress of events: -but it is during the progress, in the interval of expectation and -suspense, while our hopes and fears are strained to the highest pitch -of breathless agony, that the pinch of the interest lies.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing</div> - <div class='line'>And the first motion, all the interim is</div> - <div class='line'>Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.</div> - <div class='line'>The mortal instruments are then in council;</div> - <div class='line'>And the state of man, like to a little kingdom,</div> - <div class='line'>Suffers then the nature of an insurrection.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>But by the time that the picture is painted, all is over. Faces are -the best part of a picture; but even faces are not what we chiefly -remember in what interests us most.—But it may be asked then, Is -<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>there anything better than Claude Lorraine’s landscapes, than Titian’s -portraits, than Raphael’s cartoons, or the Greek statues? Of the -two first I shall say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque, rather -than imaginative. Raphael’s cartoons are certainly the finest comments -that ever were made on the Scriptures. Would their effect be -the same, if we were not acquainted with the text? But the New -Testament existed before the cartoons. There is one subject of -which there is no cartoon, Christ washing the feet of the disciples -the night before his death. But that chapter does not need a -commentary! It is for want of some such resting place for the -imagination that the Greek statues are little else than specious -forms. They are marble to the touch and to the heart. They -have not an informing principle within them. In their faultless -excellence they appear sufficient to themselves. By their beauty -they are raised above the frailties of passion or suffering. By their -beauty they are deified. But they are not objects of religious faith -to us, and their forms are a reproach to common humanity. They -seem to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our admiration.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feeling, combined -with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the -ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a -question of long standing, in what the essence of poetry consists; -or what it is that determines why one set of ideas should be expressed -in prose, another in verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in -a single line—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thoughts that voluntary move</div> - <div class='line'>Harmonious numbers.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and -the song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain -thoughts that lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, -and change ‘the words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo.’ There -is a striking instance of this adaptation of the movement of sound and -rhythm to the subject, in Spenser’s description of the Satyrs -accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘So from the ground she fearless doth arise</div> - <div class='line in2'>And walketh forth without suspect of crime.</div> - <div class='line'>They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round,</div> - <div class='line'>Shouting and singing all a shepherd’s rhyme;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And with green branches strewing all the ground,</div> - <div class='line'>Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown’d.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>And all the way their merry pipes they sound,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That all the woods and doubled echoes ring;</div> - <div class='line'>And with their horned feet do wear the ground,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring;</div> - <div class='line'>So towards old Sylvanus they her bring,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who with the noise awaked, cometh out.’</div> - <div class='line in32'><cite>Faery Queen</cite>, b. i. c. vi.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural in the -ordinary construction of language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary -and conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, which are the -voluntary signs of certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrangements -in common speech, is there any principle of natural imitation, -or correspondence to the individual ideas, or to the tone of feeling -with which they are conveyed to others. The jerks, the breaks, -the inequalities, and harshnesses of prose, are fatal to the flow of a -poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs -the reverie of an absent man. But poetry makes these odds all -even. It is the music of language, answering to the music of the -mind, untying as it were ‘the secret soul of harmony.’ Wherever -any object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, -and brood over it, melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a -sentiment of enthusiasm;—wherever a movement of imagination or -passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and -repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, -and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, -or gradually varied according to the occasion, to the sounds that -express it—this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and -continuous; the musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. -There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted passion. -Mad people sing. As often as articulation passes naturally into -intonation, there poetry begins. Where one idea gives a tone and -colour to others, where one feeling melts others into it, there can be -no reason why the same principle should not be extended to the -sounds by which the voice utters these emotions of the soul, and -blends syllables and lines into each other. It is to supply the inherent -defect of harmony in the customary mechanism of language, to -make the sound an echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort of -echo to itself—to mingle the tide of verse, ‘the golden cadences of -poetry,’ with the tide of feeling, flowing and murmuring as it flows—in -short, to take the language of the imagination from off the ground, and -enable it to spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Sailing with supreme dominion</div> - <div class='line'>Through the azure deep of air—’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses and -petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry -was invented. It is to common language, what springs are to a -carriage, or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain -harmony by the modulations of the voice: in poetry the same thing -is done systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has -been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows -intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured -prose. The merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way -‘sounding always the increase of his winning.’ Every prose-writer -has more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when -deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle -of modulation left in their writings.</p> - -<p class='c011'>An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It is -but fair that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or -avail itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence -of syllables, that have been displayed in the invention and collocation -of images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory; and a man -of wit and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four -good lines of poetry are the well-known ones which tell the number -of days in the months of the year.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thirty days hath September,’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken -the fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers’ -ends, besides the contents of the almanac.—Pope’s versification is -tiresome, from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare’s -blank verse is the perfection of dramatic dialogue.</p> - -<p class='c011'>All is not poetry that passes for such: nor does verse make the -whole difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not -cease to be poetry in a literal translation; and Addison’s Campaign -has been very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common -prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such -trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary -impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and -laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward -or violent movements either of the imagination or the passions.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as -possible without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim’s Progress, -Robinson Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and -Dryden have translated some of the last into English rhyme, but the -essence and the power of poetry was there before. That which lifts -the spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with -<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>indescribable longings, is poetry in kind, and generally fit to become -so in name, by being ‘married to immortal verse.’ If it is of the -essence of poetry to strike and fix the imagination, whether we will -or no, to make the eye of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to -be never thought of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and -Daniel Defoe may be permitted to pass for poets in their way. The -mixture of fancy and reality in the Pilgrim’s Progress was never -equalled in any allegory. His pilgrims walk above the earth, and -yet are on it. What zeal, what beauty, what truth of fiction! -What deep feeling in the description of Christian’s swimming -across the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones -within the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their heads, -who are to wipe all tears from his eyes! The writer’s genius, though -not ‘dipped in dews of Castalie,’ was baptised with the Holy -Spirit and with fire. The prints in this book are no small part of -it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a -subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall -we say to Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the Greek -hero on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it with the -reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place of confinement. -The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for ever -cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls -its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings of -his heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him. -Thus he says,</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country, -the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a -sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the -mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked up with -the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without -redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, -this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, -and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my -work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the -ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse to me, for if -I could burst into tears or vent myself in words, it would go off, and the -grief having exhausted itself would abate.’ P. 50.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the -Odyssey, it is true; but the relator had the true genius of a poet. -It has been made a question whether Richardson’s romances are -poetry; and the answer perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because -they are not romance. The interest is worked up to an inconceivable -height; but it is by an infinite number of little things, by -<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>incessant labour and calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows -that have no rebound in them. The sympathy excited is not a -voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and -spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story -does not ‘give an echo to the seat where love is throned.’ The -heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does -not run on before the writer with breathless expectation, but is -dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those -with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the -royal palace.—Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of -a figure would he cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of -Achilles? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. -She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts -and uncles—she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such -things, however intensely they may be brought home to us, are not -conductors to the imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling in -Richardson; but it is extracted from a <em>caput mortuum</em> of circumstances: -it does not evaporate of itself. His poetical genius is like -Ariel confined in a pine-tree, and requires an artificial process to let -it out. Shakspeare says—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>‘Our poesy is as a gum</div> - <div class='line'>Which issues whence ’tis nourished, our gentle flame</div> - <div class='line'>Provokes itself, and like the current flies</div> - <div class='line'>Each bound it chafes.’<a id='r1' /><a href='#f1' class='c015'><sup>[1]</sup></a></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of -the principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods of -history—Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add, Ossian. In -Homer, the principle of action or life is predominant; in the Bible, -the principle of faith and the idea of Providence; Dante is a -personification of blind will; and in Ossian we see the decay of life, -and the lag end of the world. Homer’s poetry is the heroic: it is -full of life and action: it is bright as the day, strong as a river. In -the vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects of nature, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>and enters into all the relations of social life. He saw many -countries, and the manners of many men; and he has brought them -all together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to battle -with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal spirits: -we see them before us, their number, and their order of battle, -poured out upon the plain ‘all plumed like estriches, like eagles newly -bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and -gorgeous as the sun at midsummer,’ covered with glittering armour, -with dust and blood; while the Gods quaff their nectar in golden -cups, or mingle in the fray; and the old men assembled on the walls -of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen passes by them. The -multitude of things in Homer is wonderful; their splendour, their -truth, their force, and variety. His poetry is, like his religion, the -poetry of number and form: he describes the bodies as well as the -souls of men.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of faith: it is -abstract and disembodied: it is not the poetry of form, but of power; -not of multitude, but of immensity. It does not divide into many, -but aggrandizes into one. Its ideas of nature are like its ideas of -God. It is not the poetry of social life, but of solitude: each man -seems alone in the world, with the original forms of nature, the rocks, -the earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or heroic -enterprise, but of faith in a supreme Providence, and resignation to -the power that governs the universe. As the idea of God was -removed farther from humanity, and a scattered polytheism, it became -more profound and intense, as it became more universal, for the -Infinite is present to every thing: ‘If we fly into the uttermost parts -of the earth, it is there also; if we turn to the east or the west, we -cannot escape from it.’ Man is thus aggrandised in the image of -his Maker. The history of the patriarchs is of this kind; they are -founders of a chosen race of people, the inheritors of the earth; they -exist in the generations which are to come after them. Their poetry, -like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, obscure, and infinite; a -vision is upon it—an invisible hand is suspended over it. The spirit -of the Christian religion consists in the glory hereafter to be revealed; -but in the Hebrew dispensation, Providence took an immediate share -in the affairs of this life. Jacob’s dream arose out of this intimate -communion between heaven and earth: it was this that let down, in -the sight of the youthful patriarch, a golden ladder from the sky to -the earth, with angels ascending and descending upon it, and shed a -light upon the lonely place, which can never pass away. The story -of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth of natural affection in the -human race was involved in her breast. There are descriptions in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>the book of Job more prodigal of imagery, more intense in passion, -than any thing in Homer, as that of the state of his prosperity, and -of the vision that came upon him by night. The metaphors in the -Old Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were collected -more into masses, and gave a greater <em>momentum</em> to the imagination.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim -a place in this connection. His poem is the first great step from -Gothic darkness and barbarism; and the struggle of thought in it to -burst the thraldom in which the human mind had been so long held, -is felt in every page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark -shore which separates the ancient and the modern world; and saw -the glories of antiquity dawning through the abyss of time, while -revelation opened its passage to the other world. He was lost in -wonder at what had been done before him, and he dared to emulate -it. Dante seems to have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy -tone of his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and -kindles his poetry; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His genius is -not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, -passion, self-will personified. In all that relates to the descriptive or -fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to many who had gone -before, or who have come after him; but there is a gloomy abstraction -in his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight upon the mind; -a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, from the intensity of the -impression; a terrible obscurity, like that which oppresses us in -dreams; an identity of interest, which moulds every object to its own -purposes, and clothes all things with the passions and imaginations of -the human soul,—that make amends for all other deficiencies. The -immediate objects he presents to the mind are not much in themselves, -they want grandeur, beauty, and order; but they become every thing -by the force of the character he impresses upon them. His mind -lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates, instead of -borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness -and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the -shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest -of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to -the flowery and glittering; who relies most on his own power, and -the sense of it in others, and who leaves most room to the imagination -of his readers. Dante’s only endeavour is to interest; and he -interests by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is -himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects by which -that emotion has been created; but he seizes on the attention, by -shewing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry -accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some -object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness -and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never -flags, from the continued earnestness of the author’s mind. Dante’s -great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. -Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, -seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its -dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author -habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest -wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and shadowy -regions of the lower world, a tomb suddenly rises up with the -inscription, ‘I am the tomb of Pope Anastasius the Sixth’: and half -the personages whom he has crowded into the Inferno are his own -acquaintance. All this, perhaps, tends to heighten the effect by the -bold intermixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to the -individual knowledge and experience of the reader. He affords few -subjects for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of -Count Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and -which Sir Joshua Reynolds ought not to have painted.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot -persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is -Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in -the minds of his readers. As Homer is the first vigour and -lustihed, Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He lives only -in the recollection and regret of the past. There is one impression -which he conveys more entirely than all other poets, namely, the -sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of good name, of -country—he is even without God in the world. He converses only -with the spirits of the departed; with the motionless and silent -clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head; the -fox peeps out of the ruined tower; the thistle waves its beard to the -wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, -as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the -dry reeds in the winter’s wind! The feeling of cheerless desolation, -of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the -substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a mock-embrace, -is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for -the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed possible to -shew that this writer was nothing, it would only be another instance -of mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart, -another confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often -complain, ‘Roll on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your -wing to Ossian!’</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span> - <h3 class='c003'>LECTURE II<br /> <span class='small'>ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER</span></h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'>Having, in the former Lecture, given some account of the nature of -poetry in general, I shall proceed, in the next place, to a more -particular consideration of the genius and history of English poetry. -I shall take, as the subject of the present lecture, Chaucer and -Spenser, two out of four of the greatest names in poetry, which this -country has to boast. Both of them, however, were much indebted -to the early poets of Italy, and may be considered as belonging, in a -certain degree, to the same school. The freedom and copiousness -with which our most original writers, in former periods, availed -themselves of the productions of their predecessors, frequently -transcribing whole passages, without scruple or acknowledgment, may -appear contrary to the etiquette of modern literature, when the whole -stock of poetical common-places has become public property, and no -one is compelled to trade upon any particular author. But it is not -so much a subject of wonder, at a time when to read and write was of -itself an honorary distinction, when learning was almost as great a -rarity as genius, and when in fact those who first transplanted the -beauties of other languages into their own, might be considered as -public benefactors, and the founders of a national literature.—There -are poets older than Chaucer, and in the interval between him and -Spenser; but their genius was not such as to place them in any point -of comparison with either of these celebrated men; and an inquiry -into their particular merits or defects might seem rather to belong to -the province of the antiquary, than be thought generally interesting to -the lovers of poetry in the present day.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Chaucer (who has been very properly considered as the father of -English poetry) preceded Spenser by two centuries. He is supposed -to have been born in London, in the year 1328, during the reign of -Edward <span class='fss'>III.</span> and to have died in 1400, at the age of seventy-two. -He received a learned education at one, or at both of the universities, -and travelled early into Italy, where he became thoroughly imbued -with the spirit and excellences of the great Italian poets and prose-writers, -Dante, Petrarch, and Boccace; and is said to have had a -personal interview with one of these, Petrarch. He was connected, -by marriage, with the famous John of Gaunt, through whose interest -he was introduced into several public employments. Chaucer was an -active partisan, a religious reformer, and from the share he took in -some disturbances, on one occasion, he was obliged to fly the country. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>On his return, he was imprisoned, and made his peace with government, -as it is said, by a discovery of his associates. Fortitude does not -appear, at any time, to have been the distinguishing virtue of poets.—There -is, however, an obvious similarity between the practical turn -of Chaucer’s mind and restless impatience of his character, and the -tone of his writings. Yet it would be too much to attribute the one -to the other as cause and effect: for Spenser, whose poetical temperament -was as<a id='t20'></a> effeminate as Chaucer’s was stern and masculine, was -equally engaged in public affairs, and had mixed equally in the great -world. So much does native disposition predominate over accidental -circumstances, moulding them to its previous bent and purposes! For -while Chaucer’s intercourse with the busy world, and collision with -the actual passions and conflicting interests of others, seemed to -brace the sinews of his understanding, and gave to his writings the -air of a man who describes persons and things that he had known -and been intimately concerned in; the same opportunities, operating -on a differently constituted frame, only served to alienate Spenser’s -mind the more from the ‘close-pent up’ scenes of ordinary life, and -to make him ‘rive their concealing continents,’ to give himself up to -the unrestrained indulgence of ‘flowery tenderness.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this -respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer, in -severe activity of mind. As Spenser was the most romantic and -visionary, Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the most -a man of business and the world. His poetry reads like history. -Every thing has a downright reality; at least in the relator’s mind. -A simile, or a sentiment, is as if it were given in upon evidence. -Thus he describes Cressid’s first avowal of her love.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And as the new abashed nightingale,</div> - <div class='line'>That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,</div> - <div class='line'>When that she heareth any herde’s tale,</div> - <div class='line'>Or in the hedges any wight stirring,</div> - <div class='line'>And after, sicker, doth her voice outring;</div> - <div class='line'>Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent</div> - <div class='line'>Open’d her heart, and told him her intent.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>This is so true and natural, and beautifully simple, that the two -things seem identified with each other. Again, it is said in the -Knight’s Tale—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day,</div> - <div class='line'>Till it felle ones in a morwe of May,</div> - <div class='line'>That Emelie that fayrer was to sene</div> - <div class='line'>Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>And fresher than the May with floures newe,</div> - <div class='line'>For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe:</div> - <div class='line'>I n’ot which was the finer of hem two.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>This scrupulousness about the literal preference, as if some question of -matter of fact was at issue, is remarkable. I might mention that -other, where he compares the meeting between Palamon and Arcite -to a hunter waiting for a lion in a gap;—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That stondeth at a gap with a spere,</div> - <div class='line'>Whan hunted is the lion or the bere,</div> - <div class='line'>And hereth him come rushing in the greves,</div> - <div class='line'>And breking both the boughes and the leves:’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>or that still finer one of Constance, when she is condemned to -death:—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Have ye not seen somtime a pale face</div> - <div class='line'>(Among a prees) of him that hath been lad</div> - <div class='line'>Toward his deth, wheras he geteth no grace,</div> - <div class='line'>And swiche a colour in his face hath had,</div> - <div class='line'>Men mighten know him that was so bestad,</div> - <div class='line'>Amonges all the faces in that route;</div> - <div class='line'>So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to be of the poet’s -seeking, but a part of the necessary texture of the fable. He speaks -of what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, the discrimination -of one who relates what has happened to himself, or has had the -best information from those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The -strokes of his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential, -on that which would be interesting to the persons really concerned: -yet as he never omits any material circumstance, he is prolix from the -number of points on which he touches, without being diffuse on any -one; and is sometimes tedious from the fidelity with which he -adheres to his subject, as other writers are from the frequency of -their digressions from it. The chain of his story is composed of a -number of fine links, closely connected together, and rivetted by a -single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness which he -introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of Palamon -when left alone in his cell:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour</div> - <div class='line'>Resouned of his yelling and clamour:</div> - <div class='line'>The pure fetters on his shinnes grete</div> - <div class='line'>Were of his bitter salte teres wete.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the instructions -he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to leave -out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace and -beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object, -with little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, -are not for ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things -themselves. He does not affect to shew his power over the reader’s -mind, but the power which his subject has over his own. The -readers of Chaucer’s poetry feel more nearly what the persons he -describes must have felt, than perhaps those of any other poet. His -sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the poet’s fancy, but founded -on the natural impulses and habitual prejudices of the characters he -has to represent. There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of -feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or -say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony -of the poet’s materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he -lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, -rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no ‘babbling gossip -of the air,’ fluent and redundant; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb -person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things -together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions -to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the objects, like -the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic -diction in our author’s time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed -roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to look -narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of -morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions -have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce -the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for -truth of nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in -what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. -The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended -together, and hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes -external appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal -sentiment. There is a meaning in what he sees; and it is this which -catches his eye by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the -Canterbury Pilgrims—of the Knight-the Squire—the Oxford -Scholar—the Gap-toothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for -themselves. To take one or two of these at random:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘There was also a nonne, a Prioresse,</div> - <div class='line'>That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy;</div> - <div class='line'>Hire gretest othe n’as but by seint Eloy:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>And she was cleped Madame Eglentine.</div> - <div class='line'>Ful wel she sange the service divine</div> - <div class='line'>Entuned in hire nose ful swetely;</div> - <div class='line'>And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly,</div> - <div class='line'>After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,</div> - <div class='line'>For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.</div> - <div class='line'>At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle;</div> - <div class='line'>She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle,</div> - <div class='line'>Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And sikerly she was of great disport,</div> - <div class='line'>And ful plesant, and amiable of port,</div> - <div class='line'>And peined hire to contrefeten chere</div> - <div class='line'>Of court, and ben estatelich of manere,</div> - <div class='line'>And to ben holden digne of reverence.</div> - <div class='line in2'>But for to speken of hire conscience,</div> - <div class='line'>She was so charitable and so pitous,</div> - <div class='line'>She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous</div> - <div class='line'>Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.</div> - <div class='line'>Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde</div> - <div class='line'>With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede.</div> - <div class='line'>But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,</div> - <div class='line'>Or if men smote it with a yerde smert:</div> - <div class='line'>And all was conscience and tendre herte.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was;</div> - <div class='line'>Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas;</div> - <div class='line'>Hire mouth ful smale; and therto soft and red;</div> - <div class='line'>But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed.</div> - <div class='line'>It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie,</div> - <div class='line'>An out-rider, that loved venerie:</div> - <div class='line'>A manly man, to ben an abbot able.</div> - <div class='line'>Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable:</div> - <div class='line'>And whan he rode, men mighte his bridel here,</div> - <div class='line'>Gingeling in a whistling wind as clere,</div> - <div class='line'>And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle,</div> - <div class='line'>Ther as this lord was keper of the celle.</div> - <div class='line in2'>The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit,</div> - <div class='line'>Because that it was olde and somdele streit,</div> - <div class='line'>This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace,</div> - <div class='line'>And held after the newe world the trace.</div> - <div class='line'>He yave not of the text a pulled hen,</div> - <div class='line'>That saith, that hunters ben not holy men;—</div> - <div class='line'>Therfore he was a prickasoure a right:</div> - <div class='line'>Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight:</div> - <div class='line'>Of pricking and of hunting for the hare</div> - <div class='line'>Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>I saw his sleves purfiled at the hond</div> - <div class='line'>With gris, and that the finest of the lond.</div> - <div class='line'>And for to fasten his hood under his chinne,</div> - <div class='line'>He had of gold ywrought a curious pinne:</div> - <div class='line'>A love-knotte in the greter end ther was.</div> - <div class='line'>His bed was balled, and shone as any glas,</div> - <div class='line'>And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint.</div> - <div class='line'>He was a lord ful fat and in good point.</div> - <div class='line'>His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed,</div> - <div class='line'>That stemed as a forneis of a led.</div> - <div class='line'>His botes souple, his hors in gret estat,</div> - <div class='line'>Now certainly he was a fayre prelat.</div> - <div class='line'>He was not pale as a forpined gost.</div> - <div class='line'>A fat swan loved he best of any rost.</div> - <div class='line'>His palfrey was as broune as is a bery.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as Lawyer -Dowling in Tom Jones, who wished to divide himself into a hundred -pieces, to be in a hundred places at once.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘No wher so besy a man as he ther n’as,</div> - <div class='line'>And yet he semed besier than he was.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The Frankelein, in ‘whose hous it snewed of mete and drinke’; the -Shipman, ‘who rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe’; the Doctour of -Phisike, ‘whose studie was but litel of the Bible’; the Wif of -Bath, in</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘All whose parish ther was non,</div> - <div class='line'>That to the offring before hire shulde gon,</div> - <div class='line'>And if ther did, certain so wroth was she,</div> - <div class='line'>That she was out of alle charitee;’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>—the poure Persone of a toun, ‘whose parish was wide, and houses -fer asonder’; the Miller, and the Reve, ‘a slendre colerike man,’ -are all of the same stamp. They are every one samples of a kind; -abstract definitions of a species. Chaucer, it has been said, numbered -the classes of men, as Linnæus numbered the plants. Most of them -remain to this day: others that are obsolete, and may well be dispensed -with, still live in his descriptions of them. Such is the -Sompnoure:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place,</div> - <div class='line'>That hadde a fire-red cherubinnes face,</div> - <div class='line'>For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe,</div> - <div class='line'>As hote he was, and likerous as a sparwe,</div> - <div class='line'>With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd:</div> - <div class='line'>Of his visage children were sore aferd.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>Ther n’as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston,</div> - <div class='line'>Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non,</div> - <div class='line'>Ne oinement that wolde clense or bite,</div> - <div class='line'>That him might helpen of his whelkes white,</div> - <div class='line'>Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes.</div> - <div class='line'>Wel loved he garlike, onions, and lekes,</div> - <div class='line'>And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood.</div> - <div class='line'>Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood.</div> - <div class='line'>And whan that he wel dronken had the win,</div> - <div class='line'>Than wold he speken no word but Latin.</div> - <div class='line'>A fewe termes coude he, two or three,</div> - <div class='line'>That he had lerned out of som decree;</div> - <div class='line'>No wonder is, he heard it all the day.—</div> - <div class='line in2'>In danger hadde he at his owen gise</div> - <div class='line'>The yonge girles of the diocise,</div> - <div class='line'>And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede.</div> - <div class='line'>A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede</div> - <div class='line'>As gret as it were for an alestake:</div> - <div class='line'>A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake.</div> - <div class='line'>With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere—</div> - <div class='line'>That hadde a vois as smale as hath a gote.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It would be a curious speculation (at least for those who think that -the characters of men never change, though manners, opinions, and -institutions may) to know what has become of this character of the -Sompnoure in the present day; whether or not it has any technical -representative in existing professions; into what channels and conduits -it has withdrawn itself, where it lurks unseen in cunning obscurity, -or else shews its face boldly, pampered into all the insolence of office, -in some other shape, as it is deterred or encouraged by circumstances. -<em>Chaucer’s characters modernised</em>, upon this principle of historic derivation, -would be an useful addition to our knowledge of human nature. -But who is there to undertake it?</p> - -<p class='c011'>The descriptions of the equipage, and accoutrements of the two -kings of Thrace and Inde, in the Knight’s Tale, are as striking and -grand, as the others are lively and natural:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon</div> - <div class='line'>Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace:</div> - <div class='line'>Blake was his berd, and manly was his face.</div> - <div class='line'>The cercles of his eyen in his hed</div> - <div class='line'>They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red,</div> - <div class='line'>And like a griffon loked he about,</div> - <div class='line'>With kemped heres on his browes stout;</div> - <div class='line'>His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge,</div> - <div class='line'>His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>And as the guise was in his contree,</div> - <div class='line'>Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he,</div> - <div class='line'>With foure white bolles in the trais.</div> - <div class='line'>Instede of cote-armure on his harnais,</div> - <div class='line'>With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold,</div> - <div class='line'>He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old.</div> - <div class='line'>His longe here was kempt behind his bak,</div> - <div class='line'>As any ravenes fether it shone for blake.</div> - <div class='line'>A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight,</div> - <div class='line'>Upon his hed sate full of stones bright,</div> - <div class='line'>Of fine rubins and of diamants.</div> - <div class='line'>About his char ther wenten white alauns,</div> - <div class='line'>Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere,</div> - <div class='line'>To hunten at the leon or the dere,</div> - <div class='line'>And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound.—</div> - <div class='line in4'>With Arcita, in stories as men find,</div> - <div class='line'>The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde,</div> - <div class='line'>Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,</div> - <div class='line'>Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,</div> - <div class='line'>Came riding like the god of armes Mars.</div> - <div class='line'>His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars,</div> - <div class='line'>Couched with perles, white, and round and grete.</div> - <div class='line'>His sadel was of brent gold new ybete;</div> - <div class='line'>A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging</div> - <div class='line'>Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling.</div> - <div class='line'>His crispe here like ringes was yronne,</div> - <div class='line'>And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne.</div> - <div class='line'>His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin,</div> - <div class='line'>His lippes round, his colour was sanguin,</div> - <div class='line'>A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint,</div> - <div class='line'>Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint,</div> - <div class='line'>And as a leon he his loking caste.</div> - <div class='line'>Of five and twenty yere his age I caste.</div> - <div class='line'>His berd was wel begonnen for to spring;</div> - <div class='line'>His vois was as a trompe thondering.</div> - <div class='line'>Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene</div> - <div class='line'>A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene.</div> - <div class='line'>Upon his hond he bare for his deduit</div> - <div class='line'>An egle tame, as any lily whit.—</div> - <div class='line'>About this king ther ran on every part</div> - <div class='line'>Ful many a tame leon and leopart.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>What a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this description! -The imagination of a poet brings such objects before us, as when we -look at wild beasts in a menagerie; their claws are pared, their eyes -glitter like harmless lightning; but we gaze at them with a pleasing -awe, clothed in beauty, formidable in the sense of abstract power.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Chaucer’s descriptions of natural scenery possess the same sort of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>characteristic excellence, or what might be termed <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">gusto</span></i>. They -have a local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the -air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are -thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story; and -render back the sentiment of the speaker’s mind. One of the finest -parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is the beginning of the -Flower and the Leaf, where he describes the delight of that young -beauty, shrowded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the -year, to the singing of the nightingale; while her joy rises with the -rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with -the full tide of pleasure, and still increases and repeats, and prolongs -itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour, its retirement, -the early time of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the -neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with which they devour and rend -the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling, -which make the whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Which as me thought was right a pleasing sight,</div> - <div class='line'>And eke the briddes song for to here,</div> - <div class='line'>Would haue rejoyced any earthly wight,</div> - <div class='line'>And I that couth not yet in no manere</div> - <div class='line'>Heare the nightingale of all the yeare,</div> - <div class='line'>Ful busily herkened with herte and with eare,</div> - <div class='line'>If I her voice perceiue coud any where.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie,</div> - <div class='line'>Thought sodainly I felt so sweet an aire</div> - <div class='line'>Of the eglentere, that certainely</div> - <div class='line'>There is no herte I deme in such dispaire,</div> - <div class='line'>Ne with thoughts froward and contraire,</div> - <div class='line'>So ouerlaid, but it should soone haue bote,</div> - <div class='line'>If it had ones felt this savour sote.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And as I stood and cast aside mine eie,</div> - <div class='line'>I was ware of the fairest medler tree</div> - <div class='line'>That ever yet in all my life I sie</div> - <div class='line'>As full of blossomes as it might be,</div> - <div class='line'>Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile</div> - <div class='line'>Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet</div> - <div class='line'>Here and there of buds and floures sweet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And to the herber side was joyning</div> - <div class='line'>This faire tree, of which I haue you told,</div> - <div class='line'>And at the last the brid began to sing,</div> - <div class='line'>Whan he had eaten what he eat wold,</div> - <div class='line'>So passing sweetly, that by manifold</div> - <div class='line'>It was more pleasaunt than I coud deuise,</div> - <div class='line'>And whan his song was ended in this wise,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>The nightingale with so merry a note</div> - <div class='line'>Answered him, that all the wood rong</div> - <div class='line'>So sodainly, that as it were a sote,</div> - <div class='line'>I stood astonied, so was I with the song</div> - <div class='line'>Thorow rauished, that till late and long,</div> - <div class='line'>I ne wist in what place I was, ne where,</div> - <div class='line'>And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wherefore I waited about busily</div> - <div class='line'>On euery side, if I her might see,</div> - <div class='line'>And at the last I gan full well aspie</div> - <div class='line'>Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree,</div> - <div class='line'>On the further side euen right by me,</div> - <div class='line'>That gaue so passing a delicious smell,</div> - <div class='line'>According to the eglentere full well.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Whereof I had so inly great pleasure,</div> - <div class='line'>That as me thought I surely rauished was</div> - <div class='line'>Into Paradice, where my desire</div> - <div class='line'>Was for to be, and no ferther passe</div> - <div class='line'>As for that day, and on the sote grasse,</div> - <div class='line'>I sat me downe, for as for mine entent,</div> - <div class='line'>The birds song was more conuenient,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And more pleasaunt to me by manifold,</div> - <div class='line'>Than meat or drinke, or any other thing,</div> - <div class='line'>Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold,</div> - <div class='line'>The wholesome sauours eke so comforting,</div> - <div class='line'>That as I demed, sith the beginning</div> - <div class='line'>Of the world was neur seene or than</div> - <div class='line'>So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And as I sat the birds harkening thus,</div> - <div class='line'>Me thought that I heard voices sodainly,</div> - <div class='line'>The most sweetest and most delicious</div> - <div class='line'>That euer any wight I trow truly</div> - <div class='line'>Heard in their life, for the armony</div> - <div class='line'>And sweet accord was in so good musike,</div> - <div class='line'>That the uoice to angels was most like.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment: the -whole is an ebullition of natural delight ‘welling out of the heart,’ like -water from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of art: there is a -strength as well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely -on nature, that nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in -nature, and reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe -the grief and patience of Griselda; the faith of Constance; and the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>heroic perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through -the streets of Jewry,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Oh <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Alma Redemptoris mater</span></i>, loudly sung,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>and who after his death still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has -more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment, than any other writer, -except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, and intensity of conception, -never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes -near him, not even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed -to give one or two instances of what I mean. I will take the -following from the Knight’s Tale. The distress of Arcite, in consequence -of his banishment from his love, is thus described:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was,</div> - <div class='line'>Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas,</div> - <div class='line'>For sene his lady shall be never mo.</div> - <div class='line'>And shortly to concluden all his wo,</div> - <div class='line'>So mochel sorwe hadde never creature,</div> - <div class='line'>That is or shall be, while the world may dure.</div> - <div class='line'>His slepe, his mete, his drinke is him byraft.</div> - <div class='line'>That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft.</div> - <div class='line'>His eyen holwe, and grisly to behold,</div> - <div class='line'>His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold,</div> - <div class='line'>And solitary he was, and ever alone,</div> - <div class='line'>And wailing all the night, making his mone.</div> - <div class='line'>And if he herde song or instrument,</div> - <div class='line'>Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent.</div> - <div class='line'>So feble were his spirites, and so low,</div> - <div class='line'>And changed so, that no man coude know</div> - <div class='line'>His speche ne his vois, though men it herd.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This picture of the sinking of the heart, of the wasting away of the -body and mind, of the gradual failure of all the faculties under the -contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be surpassed. Of the same -kind is his farewel to his mistress, after he has gained her hand and -lost his life in the combat:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Alas the wo! alas the peines stronge,</div> - <div class='line'>That I for you have suffered, and so longe!</div> - <div class='line'>Alas the deth! alas min Emilie!</div> - <div class='line'>Alas departing of our compagnie:</div> - <div class='line'>Alas min hertes quene! alas my wif!</div> - <div class='line'>Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif!</div> - <div class='line'>What is this world? what axen men to have?</div> - <div class='line'>Now with his love, now in his colde grave</div> - <div class='line'>Alone withouten any compagnie.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>The death of Arcite is the more affecting, as it comes after triumph -and victory, after the pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of prayer, the -celebration of the gorgeous rites of chivalry. The descriptions of -the three temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments -and ceremonies used in each, with the reception given to the offerings -of the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much of which is lost in -Dryden’s version. For instance, such lines as the following are not -rendered with their true feeling.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all</div> - <div class='line'>The purtreiture that was upon the wall</div> - <div class='line'>Within the temple of mighty Mars the rede—</div> - <div class='line'>That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace</div> - <div class='line'>In thilke colde and frosty region,</div> - <div class='line'>Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion.</div> - <div class='line'>First on the wall was peinted a forest,</div> - <div class='line'>In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,</div> - <div class='line'>With knotty knarry barrein trees old</div> - <div class='line'>Of stubbes sharpe and hideous to behold;</div> - <div class='line'>In which ther ran a romble and a swough,</div> - <div class='line'>As though a storme shuld bresten every bough.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>And again, among innumerable terrific images of death and slaughter -painted on the wall, is this one:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The statue of Mars upon a carte stood</div> - <div class='line'>Armed, and looked grim as he were wood.</div> - <div class='line'>A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete</div> - <div class='line'>With eyen red, and of a man he ete.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio; but the Clerk of Oxenforde, -who tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch. This -story has gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb. In -spite of the barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the -sentiment remains unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind, -‘that heaves no sigh, that sheds no tear’; but it hangs upon the -beatings of the heart; it is a part of the very being; it is as -inseparable from it as the breath we draw. It is still and calm as the -face of death. Nothing can touch it in its ethereal purity: tender as -the yielding flower, it is fixed as the marble firmament. The only -remonstrance she makes, the only complaint she utters against all the -ill-treatment she receives, is that single line where, when turned back -naked to her father’s house, she says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Let me not like a worm go by the way.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>The first outline given of the character is inimitable:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable,</div> - <div class='line'>Wher as this markis shope his mariage,</div> - <div class='line'>Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable,</div> - <div class='line'>In which that poure folk of that village</div> - <div class='line'>Hadden hir bestes and her herbergage,</div> - <div class='line'>And of hir labour toke hir sustenance,</div> - <div class='line'>After that the earthe yave hem habundance.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man,</div> - <div class='line'>Which that was holden pourest of hem all:</div> - <div class='line'>But highe God sometime senden can</div> - <div class='line'>His grace unto a litel oxes stall:</div> - <div class='line'>Janicola men of that thorpe him call.</div> - <div class='line'>A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight,</div> - <div class='line'>And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But for to speke of vertuous beautee,</div> - <div class='line'>Than was she on the fairest under Sonne:</div> - <div class='line'>Ful pourely yfostred up was she:</div> - <div class='line'>No likerous lust was in hire herte yronne;</div> - <div class='line'>Ful ofter of the well than of the tonne</div> - <div class='line'>She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese,</div> - <div class='line'>She knew wel labour, but non idel ese.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But though this mayden tendre were of age,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet in the brest of hire virginitee</div> - <div class='line'>Ther was enclosed sad and ripe corage:</div> - <div class='line'>And in gret reverence and charitee</div> - <div class='line'>Hire olde poure fader fostred she:</div> - <div class='line'>A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept,</div> - <div class='line'>She wolde not ben idel til she slept.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And whan she homward came she wolde bring</div> - <div class='line'>Wortes and other herbes times oft,</div> - <div class='line'>The which she shred and sethe for hire living,</div> - <div class='line'>And made hire bed ful hard, and nothing soft:</div> - <div class='line'>And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft</div> - <div class='line'>With every obeisance and diligence,</div> - <div class='line'>That child may don to fadres reverence,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Upon Grisilde, this poure creature,</div> - <div class='line'>Ful often sithe this markis sette his sye,</div> - <div class='line'>As he on hunting rode paraventure:</div> - <div class='line'>And whan it fell that he might hire espie,</div> - <div class='line'>He not with wanton loking of folie</div> - <div class='line'>His eyen cast on hire, but in sad wise</div> - <div class='line'>Upon hire chere he wold him oft avise,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>Commending in his herte hire womanhede,</div> - <div class='line'>And eke hire vertue, passing any wight</div> - <div class='line'>Of so yong age, as wel in chere as dede.</div> - <div class='line'>For though the people have no gret insight</div> - <div class='line'>In vertue, he considered ful right</div> - <div class='line'>Hire bountee, and disposed that he wold</div> - <div class='line'>Wedde hire only, if ever he wedden shold.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Grisilde of this (God wot) ful innocent,</div> - <div class='line'>That for hire shapen was all this array,</div> - <div class='line'>To fetchen water at a welle is went,</div> - <div class='line'>And cometh home as sone as ever she may.</div> - <div class='line'>For wel she had herd say, that thilke day</div> - <div class='line'>The markis shulde wedde, and, if she might,</div> - <div class='line'>She wolde fayn han seen som of that sight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She thought, “I wol with other maidens stond,</div> - <div class='line'>That ben my felawes, in our dore, and see</div> - <div class='line'>The markisesse, and therto wol I fond</div> - <div class='line'>To don at home, as sone as it may be,</div> - <div class='line'>The labour which longeth unto me,</div> - <div class='line'>And than I may at leiser hire behold,</div> - <div class='line'>If she this way unto the castel hold.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And she wolde over the threswold gon,</div> - <div class='line'>The markis came and gan hire for to call,</div> - <div class='line'>And she set doun her water-pot anon</div> - <div class='line'>Beside the threswold in an oxes stall,</div> - <div class='line'>And doun upon hire knees she gan to fall.</div> - <div class='line'>And with sad countenance kneleth still,</div> - <div class='line'>Till she had herd what was the lordes will.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The story of the little child slain in Jewry, (which is told by the -Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was ‘all conscience and -tender heart,’) is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is -simple and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a -religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners and superstitions -of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of -comic humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. In -this too Chaucer resembled Boccaccio that he excelled in both styles, -and could pass at will ‘from grave to gay, from lively to severe’; -but he never confounded the two styles together (except from that -involuntary and unconscious mixture of the pathetic and humorous, -which is almost always to be found in nature,) and was exclusively -taken up with what he set about, whether it was jest or earnest. The -Wife of Bath’s Prologue (which Pope has very admirably modernised) -<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>is, perhaps, unequalled as a comic story. The Cock and the -Fox is also excellent for lively strokes of character and satire. -January and May is not so good as some of the others. Chaucer’s -versification, considering the time at which he wrote, and that -versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is not one of his -least merits. It has considerable strength and harmony, and its -apparent deficiency in the latter respect arises chiefly from the alterations -which have since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of -accenting the words of the language. The best general rule for -reading him is to pronounce the final <em>e</em>, as in reading Italian.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It was observed in the last Lecture that painting describes what -the object is in itself, poetry what it implies or suggests. Chaucer’s -poetry is not, in general, the best confirmation of the truth of this -distinction, for his poetry is more picturesque and historical than -almost any other. But there is one instance in point which I cannot -help giving in this place. It is the story of the three thieves who go -in search of Death to kill him, and who meeting with him, are -entangled in their fate by his words, without knowing him. In the -printed catalogue to Mr. West’s (in some respects very admirable) -picture of Death on the Pale Horse, it is observed, that ‘In poetry -the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of -description, touching, as it were with fire, the features and edges of a -general mass of awful obscurity; but in painting, such indistinctness -would be a defect, and imply that the artist wanted the power to -pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr. West was of opinion -that to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression -would approximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was -necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance of super-human -strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost force and -perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure.’—One might suppose -from this, that the way to represent a shadow was to make it as -substantial as possible. Oh, no! Painting has its prerogatives, (and -high ones they are) but they lie in representing the visible, not the -invisible. The moral attributes of Death are powers and effects of -an infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or -physical form can possibly represent, but by a courtesy of speech, or -by a distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially -visionary; its reality is in the mind’s eye. Words are here the only -<em>things</em>; and things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the understanding. -The less definite, the less bodily the conception, the more -vast, unformed, and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some -resemblance of that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, -which every where, and at some time or other, exerts its power over -<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>all things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or -Time. He is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, -or to sit for his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not -see him. He stalks on before us, and we do not mind him: he -follows us close behind, and we do not turn to look back at him. -We do not see him making faces at us in our life-time, nor perceive -him afterwards sitting in mock-majesty, a twin-skeleton, beside us, -tickling our bare ribs, and staring into our hollow eye-balls! Chaucer -knew this. He makes three riotous companions go in search of -Death to kill him, they meet with an old man whom they reproach -with his age, and ask why he does not die, to which he answers -thus:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Ne Deth, alas! he will not han my lif.</div> - <div class='line'>Thus walke I like a restless caitiff,</div> - <div class='line'>And on the ground, which is my modres gate,</div> - <div class='line'>I knocke with my staf, erlich and late,</div> - <div class='line'>And say to hire, “Leve mother, let me in.</div> - <div class='line'>Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin,</div> - <div class='line'>Alas! when shall my bones ben at reste?</div> - <div class='line'>Mother, with you wolde I changen my cheste,</div> - <div class='line'>That in my chambre longe time hath be,</div> - <div class='line'>Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me.”</div> - <div class='line'>But yet to me she will not don that grace,</div> - <div class='line'>For which ful pale and welked is my face.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>They then ask the old man where they shall find out Death to -kill him, and he sends them on an errand which ends in the death of -all three. We hear no more of him, but it is Death that they have -encountered!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary. -There is nothing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve, -‘ancient Gower,’ Lydgate, Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville. Spenser -flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John -Davies into Ireland, of which he has left behind him some tender -recollections in his description of the bog of Allan, and a record in -an ably written paper, containing observations on the state of that -country and the means of improving it, which remain in full force to -the present day. Spenser died at an obscure inn in London, it is -supposed in distressed circumstances. The treatment he received -from Burleigh is well known. Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was -engaged in active life; but the genius of his poetry was not active: it -is inspired by the love of ease, and relaxation from all the cares and -business of life. Of all the poets, he is the most poetical. Though -much later than Chaucer, his obligations to preceding writers were -<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of his poem (as a -number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto; but he has engrafted -upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness of -sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Farther, -Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is -an originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and -fictions, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology. -If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser’s poetry -is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in a -company, gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In Spenser, we -wander in another world, among ideal beings. The poet takes and -lays us in the lap of a lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, -among greener hills and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we -find it, but as we expected to find it; and fulfils the delightful -promise of our youth. He waves his wand of enchantment—and at -once embodies airy beings, and throws a delicious veil over all actual -objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are poised on the -wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than -his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them -with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God -of Love ‘clap on high his coloured winges <em>twain</em>‘: and it is said of -Gluttony, in the Procession of the Passions,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty; as -where he compares Prince Arthur’s crest to the appearance of the -almond tree:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Upon the top of all his lofty crest,</div> - <div class='line in4'>A bunch of hairs discolour’d diversely</div> - <div class='line in2'>With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest</div> - <div class='line in4'>Did shake and seem’d to daunce for jollity;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like to an almond tree ymounted high</div> - <div class='line in4'>On top of green Selenis all alone,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With blossoms brave bedecked daintily;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Her tender locks do tremble every one</div> - <div class='line'>At every little breath that under heav’n is blown.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle -of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule -but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates -equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a -hermit’s cell—in the extremes of sensuality or refinement.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by -a wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>a damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs; -and all of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers -burning, amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song, -‘and mask, and antique pageantry.’ What can be more solitary, -more shut up in itself, than his description of the house of Sleep, to -which Archimago sends for a dream:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘And more to lull him in his slumber soft</div> - <div class='line in4'>A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mix’d with a murmuring wind, much like the sound</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound.</div> - <div class='line in4'>No other noise, nor people’s troublous cries.</div> - <div class='line in2'>That still are wont t’ annoy the walled town</div> - <div class='line in4'>Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies</div> - <div class='line'>Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>It is as if ‘the honey-heavy dew of slumber’ had settled on his pen -in writing these lines. How different in the subject (and yet how -like in beauty) is the following description of the Bower of Bliss:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of all that mote delight a dainty ear;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Such as at once might not on living ground,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Right hard it was for wight which did it hear,</div> - <div class='line in4'>To tell what manner musicke that mote be;</div> - <div class='line in2'>For all that pleasing is to living eare</div> - <div class='line in4'>Was there consorted in one harmonee:</div> - <div class='line'>Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade</div> - <div class='line in4'>Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet:</div> - <div class='line in2'>The angelical soft trembling voices made</div> - <div class='line in4'>To th’ instruments divine respondence meet.</div> - <div class='line in2'>The silver sounding instruments did meet</div> - <div class='line in4'>With the base murmur of the water’s fall;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The water’s fall with difference discreet,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;</div> - <div class='line'>The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The remainder of the passage has all that voluptuous pathos, and -languid brilliancy of fancy, in which this writer excelled:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Ah! see, whoso fayre thing dost thou fain to see,</div> - <div class='line in2'>In springing flower the image of thy day!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly she</div> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That fairer seems the less ye see her may!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lo! see soon after, how more bold and free</div> - <div class='line in4'>Her bared bosom she doth broad display;</div> - <div class='line'>Lo! see soon after, how she fades and falls away!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>So passeth in the passing of a day</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Ne more doth flourish after first decay,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of many a lady and many a paramour!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime,</div> - <div class='line in2'>For soon comes age that will her pride deflower;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time,</div> - <div class='line'>Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.<a id='r2' /><a href='#f2' class='c015'><sup>[2]</sup></a></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>He ceased; and then gan all the quire of birds</div> - <div class='line in4'>Their divers notes to attune unto his lay,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As in approvance of his pleasing wordes.</div> - <div class='line in4'>The constant pair heard all that he did say,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet swerved not, but kept their forward way</div> - <div class='line in4'>Through many covert groves and thickets close,</div> - <div class='line in2'>In which they creeping did at last display<a id='r3' /><a href='#f3' class='c015'><sup>[3]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line in4'>That wanton lady with her lover loose,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose sleepy head she in her lap did soft dispose.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Upon a bed of roses she was laid</div> - <div class='line in4'>As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And was arrayed or rather disarrayed,</div> - <div class='line in4'>All in a veil of silk and silver thin,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That hid no whit her alabaster skin,</div> - <div class='line in4'>But rather shewed more white, if more might be:</div> - <div class='line in2'>More subtle web Arachne cannot spin;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see</div> - <div class='line'>Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of hungry eyes which n’ ote therewith be fill’d,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And yet through languor of her late sweet toil</div> - <div class='line in4'>Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill’d,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That like pure Orient perles adown it trill’d;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight</div> - <div class='line in2'>Moisten’d their fiery beams, with which she thrill’d</div> - <div class='line in4'>Frail hearts, yet quenched not; like starry light,</div> - <div class='line'>Which sparkling on the silent waves does seem more bright.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una, in the first -book; the House of Pride; the Cave of Mammon, and the Cave -of Despair; the account of Memory, of whom it is said, among other -things,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The wars he well remember’d of King Nine,</div> - <div class='line'>Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine’;</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>the description of Belphœbe; the story of Florimel and the Witch’s -son; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of -Cupid; and Colin Clout’s vision, in the last book. But some people -will say that all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand -it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if -they thought it would bite them: they look at it as a child looks at -a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. -This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the -allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the -whole is as plain as a pike-staff. It might as well be pretended that, -we cannot see Poussin’s pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory -prevents us from understanding Spenser. For instance, when Britomart, -seated amidst the young warriors, lets fall her hair and discovers -her sex, is it necessary to know the part she plays in the allegory, to -understand the beauty of the following stanza?</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest</div> - <div class='line in4'>Was for like need enforc’d to disarray.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Her golden locks that were in trammels gay</div> - <div class='line in2'>Upbounden, did themselves adown display,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And raught unto her heels like sunny beams</div> - <div class='line in2'>That in a cloud their light did long time stay;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams,</div> - <div class='line'>And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Or is there any mystery in what is said of Belphœbe, that her hair -was sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which had been entangled in -it as she fled through the woods? Or is it necessary to have a more -distinct idea of Proteus, than that which is given of him in his boat, -with the frighted Florimel at his feet, while</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘——the cold icicles from his rough beard</div> - <div class='line'>Dropped adown upon her snowy breast!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the sea-gods that pass by -them, to say—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That was Arion crowned:—</div> - <div class='line'>So went he playing on the watery plain.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>Or to take the Procession of the Passions that draw the coach of -Pride, in which the figures of Idleness, of Gluttony, of Lechery, of -Avarice, of Envy, and of Wrath speak, one should think, plain -enough for themselves; such as this of Gluttony:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Deformed creature, on a filthy swine;</div> - <div class='line in2'>His belly was up blown with luxury;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And like a crane his neck was long and fine,</div> - <div class='line in4'>With which he swallowed up excessive feast,</div> - <div class='line'>For want whereof poor people oft did pine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad;</div> - <div class='line in4'>For other clothes he could not wear for heat:</div> - <div class='line in2'>And on his head an ivy garland had,</div> - <div class='line in4'>From under which fast trickled down the sweat:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat.</div> - <div class='line in4'>And in his hand did bear a bouzing can,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat</div> - <div class='line in4'>His drunken corse he scarce upholden can;</div> - <div class='line'>In shape and size more like a monster than a man.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Or this of Lechery:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘And next to him rode lustfull Lechery</div> - <div class='line in4'>Upon a bearded goat, whose rugged hair</div> - <div class='line in2'>And whaly eyes (the sign of jealousy)</div> - <div class='line in4'>Was like the person’s self whom he did bear:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who rough and black, and filthy did appear.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Unseemly man to please fair lady’s eye:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear,</div> - <div class='line in4'>When fairer faces were bid standen by:</div> - <div class='line'>O! who does know the bent of woman’s fantasy?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>In a green gown he clothed was full fair,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Which underneath did hide his filthiness;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And in his hand a burning heart he bare,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Full of vain follies and new fangleness;</div> - <div class='line in2'>For he was false and fraught with fickleness;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And learned had to love with secret looks;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And well could dance; and sing with ruefulness;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And fortunes tell; and read in loving books;</div> - <div class='line'>And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Inconstant man that loved all he saw,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And lusted after all that he did love;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Ne would his looser life be tied to law;</div> - <div class='line in4'>But joyed weak women’s hearts to tempt and prove,</div> - <div class='line'>If from their loyal loves he might them move.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>‘——Yet not more sweet</div> - <div class='line'>Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise;</div> - <div class='line'>High priest of all the Muses’ mysteries!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries which do -not strictly belong to the Muses.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions, as little -obscure, and still more beautiful, is the Mask of Cupid, with his train -of votaries:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>His garment neither was of silk nor say,</div> - <div class='line in4'>But painted plumes in goodly order dight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array</div> - <div class='line in4'>Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight:</div> - <div class='line in2'>As those same plumes so seem’d he vain and light,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That by his gait might easily appear;</div> - <div class='line in2'>For still he far’d as dancing in delight,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And in his hand a windy fan did bear</div> - <div class='line'>That in the idle air he mov’d still here and there.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>And him beside march’d amorous Desire,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Who seem’d of riper years than the other swain,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet was that other swain this elder’s sire,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And gave him being, common to them twain:</div> - <div class='line in2'>His garment was disguised very vain,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And his embroidered bonnet sat awry;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Which still he blew, and kindled busily,</div> - <div class='line'>That soon they life conceiv’d and forth in flames did fly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad</div> - <div class='line in4'>In a discolour’d coat of strange disguise,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That at his back a broad capuccio had,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And sleeves dependant <em>Albanese-wise</em>;</div> - <div class='line in2'>He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or that the floor to shrink he did avise;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And on a broken reed he still did stay</div> - <div class='line'>His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>With him went Daunger, cloth’d in ragged weed,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Made of bear’s skin, that him more dreadful made;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need</div> - <div class='line in4'>Strange horror to deform his grisly shade;</div> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>A net in th’ one hand, and a rusty blade</div> - <div class='line in4'>In th’ other was; this Mischiefe, that Mishap;</div> - <div class='line in2'>With th’ one his foes he threat’ned to invade,</div> - <div class='line in4'>With th’ other he his friends meant to enwrap;</div> - <div class='line'>For whom he could not kill he practiz’d to entrap.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Next him was Fear, all arm’d from top to toe,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But fear’d each shadow moving to and fro;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And his own arms when glittering he did spy</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly,</div> - <div class='line in4'>As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel’d;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye,</div> - <div class='line in4'>’Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield,</div> - <div class='line'>Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of chearfull look and lovely to behold;</div> - <div class='line in2'>In silken samite she was light array’d,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And her fair locks were woven up in gold;</div> - <div class='line in2'>She always smil’d, and in her hand did hold</div> - <div class='line in4'>An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With which she sprinkled favours manifold</div> - <div class='line in4'>On whom she list, and did great liking shew,</div> - <div class='line'>Great liking unto many, but true love to few.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Next after them, the winged God himself</div> - <div class='line in4'>Came riding on a lion ravenous,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Taught to obey the menage of that elfe</div> - <div class='line in4'>That man and beast with power imperious</div> - <div class='line in2'>Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous:</div> - <div class='line in4'>His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That his proud spoil of that same dolorous</div> - <div class='line in4'>Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind;</div> - <div class='line'>Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Of which full proud, himself uprearing high,</div> - <div class='line in4'>He looked round about with stern disdain,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And did survey his goodly company:</div> - <div class='line in4'>And marshalling the evil-ordered train,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With that the darts which his right hand did strain,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And clapt on high his colour’d winges twain,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That all his many it afraid did make:</div> - <div class='line'>Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The description of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one -of the most beautiful in Spenser: and the triumph of Cupid at the -mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In -<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>reading these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of -Rubens’s allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming the -lion’s whelps and lugging the bear’s cubs along in his arms while yet -an infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to ‘go seek some -other play-fellows,’ has even more of this high picturesque character. -Nobody but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser; and he -could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that hovers over it!</p> - -<p class='c011'>With all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. The -only jest in his poem is an allegorical play upon words, where he -describes Malbecco as escaping in the herd of goats, ‘by the help of -his fayre hornes on hight.’ But he has been unjustly charged with a -want of passion and of strength. He has both in an immense degree. -He has not indeed the pathos of immediate action or suffering, which -is more properly the dramatic; but he has all the pathos of sentiment -and romance—all that belongs to distant objects of terror, and -uncertain, imaginary distress. His strength, in like manner, is not -strength of will or action, of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and -palpable—but it assumes a character of vastness and sublimity seen -through the same visionary medium, and blended with the appalling -associations of preternatural agency. We need only turn, in proof of -this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the -account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The following -stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly house -of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the forms, the -splendid chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘That house’s form within was rude and strong,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift,</div> - <div class='line in2'>From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And with rich metal loaded every rift,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That heavy ruin they did seem to threat:</div> - <div class='line in2'>And over them Arachne high did lift</div> - <div class='line in4'>Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net,</div> - <div class='line'>Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold,</div> - <div class='line in4'>But overgrown with dust and old decay,<a id='r4' /><a href='#f4' class='c015'><sup>[4]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line in2'>And hid in darkness that none could behold</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>The hue thereof: for view of cheerful day</div> - <div class='line in2'>Did never in that house itself display,</div> - <div class='line in4'>But a faint shadow of uncertain light;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night</div> - <div class='line'>Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>And over all sad Horror with grim hue</div> - <div class='line in4'>Did always soar, beating his iron wings;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And after him owls and night-ravens flew,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The hateful messengers of heavy things,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of death and dolour telling sad tidings;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A song of bitter bale and sorrow sings,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That heart of flint asunder could have rift;</div> - <div class='line'>Which having ended, after him she flieth swift.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess and power of -fancy; and the fine moral declamation of the owner of it, on the evils -of life, almost makes one in love with death. In the story of -Malbecco, who is haunted by jealousy, and in vain strives to run away -from his own thoughts—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘High over hill and over dale he flies’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending are equally -striking.—It is not fair to compare Spenser with Shakspeare, in point -of interest. A fairer comparison would be with Comus; and the -result would not be unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one -work of the same allegorical kind, which has more interest than -Spenser (with scarcely less imagination): and that is the Pilgrim’s -Progress. The three first books of the Faery Queen are very -superior to the three last. One would think that Pope, who used to -ask if any one had ever read the Faery Queen through, had only -dipped into these last. The only things in them equal to the former, -are the account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the delightful episode of -Pastorella.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The language of Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing: it is -less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer’s, and is enriched and adorned -with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both -ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain -license of expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his -complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native -language. This stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring -rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians. It was peculiarly fitted to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>their language, which abounds in similar vowel terminations, and is as -little adapted to ours, from the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance -which the consonant endings of the northern languages make to this -sort of endless sing-song.—Not that I would, on that account, part -with the stanza of Spenser. We are, perhaps, indebted to this very -necessity of finding out new forms of expression, and to the occasional -faults to which it led, for a poetical language rich and varied and -magnificent beyond all former, and almost all later example. His -versification is, at once, the most smooth and the most sounding in -the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, ‘in many a winding -bout of linked sweetness long drawn out’—that would cloy by their -very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted -by their continued variety of modulation—dwelling on the pauses of -the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide of harmony with the movement -of the sentiment. It has not the bold dramatic transitions of -Shakspeare’s blank verse, nor the high-raised tone of Milton’s; but -it is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the soul in pleasure, -or holding it captive in the chains of suspense. Spenser was the -poet of our waking dreams; and he has invented not only a language, -but a music of his own for them. The undulations are infinite, like -those of the waves of the sea: but the effect is still the same, lulling -the senses into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises of the world, -from which we have no wish to be ever recalled.</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE III<br /> <span class='small'>ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>In looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we are -sometimes disposed to wonder at the little progress which has since -been made in poetry, and in the arts of imitation in general. But -this is perhaps a foolish wonder. Nothing can be more contrary to -the fact, than the supposition that in what we understand by the <em>fine -arts</em>, as painting, and poetry, relative perfection is only the result of -repeated efforts in successive periods, and that what has been once -well done, constantly leads to something better. What is mechanical, -reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and -admits of gradual improvement: what is not mechanical, or definite, -but depends on feeling, taste, and genius, very soon becomes stationary, -or retrograde, and loses more than it gains by transfusion. The -contrary opinion is a vulgar error, which has grown up, like many -<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>others, from transferring an analogy of one kind to something quite -distinct, without taking into the account the difference in the nature -of the things, or attending to the difference of the results. For most -persons, finding what wonderful advances have been made in biblical -criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c. -<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">i.e.</span></i> in things depending on mere inquiry and experiment, or on -absolute demonstration, have been led hastily to conclude, that there -was a general tendency in the efforts of the human intellect to improve -by repetition, and, in all other arts and institutions, to grow perfect -and mature by time. We look back upon the theological creed of -our ancestors, and their discoveries in natural philosophy, with a -smile of pity: science, and the arts connected with it, have all had -their infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem to contain in them -no principle of limitation or decay: and, inquiring no farther about -the matter, we infer, in the intoxication of our pride, and the height -of our self-congratulation, that the same progress has been made, and -will continue to be made, in all other things which are the work of -man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face, that one -would think the smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and over-turn -our sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators, -the best painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw, -appeared soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a state of -society which was, in other respects, comparatively barbarous. Those -arts, which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power, -have always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from the first -rude dawn of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, -and have in general declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction -and privilege of each, of science and of art:—of the one, -never to attain its utmost limit of perfection; and of the other, to -arrive at it almost at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, -Dante, and Ariosto, (Milton alone was of a later age, and not the -worse for it)—Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, -Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek sculptors and tragedians,—all -lived near the beginning of their arts—perfected, and all but created -them. These giant-sons of genius stand indeed upon the earth, but -they tower above their fellows; and the long line of their successors, -in different ages, does not interpose any object to obstruct their view, -or lessen their brightness. In strength and stature they are unrivalled; -in grace and beauty they have not been surpassed. In after-ages, and -more refined periods, (as they are called) great men have arisen, one by -one, as it were by throes and at intervals; though in general the best of -these cultivated and artificial minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso -and Pope, among poets; Guido and Vandyke, among painters. But -<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>in the earlier stages of the arts, as soon as the first mechanical difficulties -had been got over, and the language was sufficiently acquired, they -rose by clusters, and in constellations, never so to rise again!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of -thought within us, and with the world of sense around us—with what -we know, and see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred -shrine of our own breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of -nature. But the pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the -depths and soundings of the human heart were as well understood -three thousand, or three hundred years ago, as they are at present: -the face of nature, and ‘the human face divine’ shone as bright then -as they have ever done. But it is <em>their</em> light, reflected by true genius -on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a glory round the -Muses’ feet, like that which</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in10'>‘Circled Una’s angel face,</div> - <div class='line'>And made a sunshine in the shady place.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first -we come to—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are -no others that can really be put in competition with these. The two -last have had justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their -names are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation; while the -two first (though ‘the fault has been more in their stars than in -themselves that they are underlings’) either never emerged far above -the horizon, or were too soon involved in the obscurity of time. The -three first of these are excluded from Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the -Poets (Shakspeare indeed is so from the dramatic form of his compositions): -and the fourth, Milton, is admitted with a reluctant and -churlish welcome.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that -Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser, as -the poet of romance; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the largest -use of the term); and Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer -most frequently describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish -them to be; Shakspeare, as they would be; and Milton as they -ought to be. As poets, and as great poets, imagination, that is, the -power of feigning things according to nature, was common to them -all: but the principle or moving power, to which this faculty was -most subservient in Chaucer, was habit, or inveterate prejudice; in -Spenser, novelty, and the love of the marvellous; in Shakspeare, it -was the force of passion, combined with every variety of possible -circumstances; and in Milton, only with the highest. The characteristic -of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>elevation; of Shakspeare, every thing.—It has been said by some -critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the other dramatic -writers of his day only by his wit; that they had all his other -qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as -much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the -same depth of passion, and another as great a power of language. -This statement is not true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, -even if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that, -upon his own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare’s genius -was its virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age, -and not his differing from them in one accidental particular. But to -have done with such minute and literal trifling.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare’s mind was its generic -quality, its power of communication with all other minds—so that -it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had -no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He -was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He -was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing -in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could -become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and -feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all -their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or -conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had ‘a mind reflecting -ages past,’ and present:—all the people that ever lived are there. -There was no respect of persons with him. His genius shone -equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the -monarch and the beggar: ‘All corners of the earth, kings, queens, -and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,’ are hardly -hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, -changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our -purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his -amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals -as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, -virtues, actions, and motives—as well those that they knew, as those -which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The -dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his -fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding. -Harmless fairies ‘nodded to him, and did him curtesies’: and the -night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of ‘his so potent art.’ -The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and -women: and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as -of the other; for if the preternatural characters he describes, could be -supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes -<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>them. He had only to think of any thing in order to become that -thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived -of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into -all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by -touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same objects, -‘subject to the same skyey influences,’ the same local, outward, and -unforeseen accidents which would occur in reality. Thus the -character of Caliban not only stands before us with a language and -manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of the enchanted -island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange noises, its -hidden recesses, ‘his frequent haunts and ancient neighbourhood,’ are -given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all the familiarity -of an old recollection. The whole ‘coheres semblably together’ in -time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author, you do not -merely learn what his characters say,—you see their persons. By -something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to decypher -their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the -bye-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet paints -a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the history of the -person represented. So (as it has been ingeniously remarked) when -Prospero describes himself as left alone in the boat with his daughter, -the epithet which he applies to her, ‘Me and thy <em>crying</em> self,’ flings -the imagination instantly back from the grown woman to the helpless -condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying scene of his -misfortunes before us, with all that he must have suffered in the -interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to the -reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm—‘What! man, -ne’er pull your hat upon your brows!’ Again, Hamlet, in the -scene with Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes -his fine soliloquy on life by saying, ‘Man delights not me, nor -woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.’ Which -is explained by their answer—‘My lord, we had no such stuff in our -thoughts. But we smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what -lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you, whom we -met on the way’:—as if while Hamlet was making this speech, his -two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been really standing by, -and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players -crossing their minds. It is not ‘a combination and a form’ of words, -a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a character, that will do -this: but all the persons concerned must have been present in the -poet’s imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and whatever would -have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have been -observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>reader.—I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best -directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus to take -one example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet; and as -Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken -against that of any modern authority.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Ophelia.</em> My lord, as I was reading in my closet,</div> - <div class='line'>Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d,</div> - <div class='line'>No hat upon his head, his stockings loose,</div> - <div class='line'>Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,</div> - <div class='line'>Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,</div> - <div class='line'>And with a look so piteous,</div> - <div class='line'>As if he had been sent from hell</div> - <div class='line'>To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Polonius.</em> Mad for thy love!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Oph.</em> My lord, I do not know,</div> - <div class='line'>But truly I do fear it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pol.</em> What said he?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Oph.</em> He took me by the wrist, and held me hard</div> - <div class='line'>Then goes he to the length of all his arm;</div> - <div class='line'>And with his other hand thus o’er his brow,</div> - <div class='line'>He falls to such perusal of my face,</div> - <div class='line'>As he would draw it: long staid he so;</div> - <div class='line'>At last, a little shaking of my arm,</div> - <div class='line'>And thrice his head thus waving up and down,</div> - <div class='line'>He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound,</div> - <div class='line'>As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,</div> - <div class='line'>And end his being. That done, he lets me go,</div> - <div class='line'>And with his head over his shoulder turn’d,</div> - <div class='line'>He seem’d to find his way without his eyes;</div> - <div class='line'>For out of doors he went without their help,</div> - <div class='line'>And to the last bended their light on me.’</div> - <div class='line in44'><em>Act. II. Scene 1.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered -melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with -strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is -difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the -prompter’s cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of -Ophelia’s death begins thus:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘There is a willow hanging o’er a brook,</div> - <div class='line'>That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which -is as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact, -white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear -<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>‘hoary’ in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive -power, the same faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether -present or absent, before the mind’s eye, is observable in the speech -of Cleopatra, when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony -in his absence:—‘He’s speaking now, or murmuring, where’s my -serpent of old Nile?’ How fine to make Cleopatra have this consciousness -of her own character, and to make her feel that it is this -for which Antony is in love with her! She says, after the battle of -Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, ‘It is my -birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since my lord is -Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ What other poet would have -thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have -dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it -might have happened in fact.—That which, perhaps, more than any -thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from -all others, is this wonderful truth and individuality of conception. -Each of his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent -of the rest, as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not -fictions of the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify -himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one -to another, like the same soul successively animating different bodies. -By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out -of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth -of the person in whose name it is given. His plays alone are properly -expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters -are real beings of flesh and blood; they speak like men, not like -authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at the time, and -overheard what passed. As in our dreams we hold conversations -with ourselves, make remarks, or communicate intelligence, and have -no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and which we ourselves -make, till we hear it: so the dialogues in Shakspeare are carried on -without any consciousness of what is to follow, without any appearance -of preparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and go -like sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by -formal inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis: all comes, or -seems to come, immediately from nature. Each object and circumstance -exists in his mind, as it would have existed in reality: each -several train of thought and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion -or effort. In the world of his imagination, every thing has a life, -a place, and being of its own!</p> - -<p class='c011'>Chaucer’s characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but -they are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical propositions. -They are consistent, but uniform; we get no new idea of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>them from first to last; they are not placed in different lights, nor -are their subordinate <em>traits</em> brought out in new situations; they are -like portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing -features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that -preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare’s are -historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where -every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with -all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light and -shade. Chaucer’s characters are narrative, Shakspeare’s dramatic, -Milton’s epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much of his story as -he pleased, as was required for a particular purpose. He answered -for his characters himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced upon -the stage, are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced -to answer for themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of -character. In Shakspeare there is a continual composition and decomposition -of its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the -whole mass, by its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles -which are brought in contact with it. Till the experiment is tried, -we do not know the result, the turn which the character will take in -its new circumstances. Milton took only a few simple principles of -character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and -refined them from every base alloy. His imagination, ‘nigh sphered -in Heaven,’ claimed kindred only with what he saw from that height, -and could raise to the same elevation with itself. He sat retired and -kept his state alone, ‘playing with wisdom’; while Shakspeare -mingled with the crowd, and played the host, ‘to make society the -sweeter welcome.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation -of character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment preying -upon itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to -itself; it is passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings -to which the individual is liable, and to which others are liable with -him; subject to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident; calling -into play all the resources of the understanding and all the energies of -the will; irritated by obstacles or yielding to them; rising from -small beginnings to its utmost height; now drunk with hope, now -stung to madness, now sunk in despair, now blown to air with a -breath, now raging like a torrent. The human soul is made the -sport of fortune, the prey of adversity: it is stretched on the wheel -of destiny, in restless ecstacy. The passions are in a state of projection. -Years are melted down to moments, and every instant -teems with fate. We know the results, we see the process. Thus -after Iago has been boasting to himself of the effect of his poisonous -<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>suggestions on the mind of Othello, ‘which, with a little act upon -the blood, will work like mines of sulphur,’ he adds—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Look where he comes! not poppy, nor mandragora,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep</div> - <div class='line'>Which thou ow’dst yesterday.’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with -his wrongs and raging for revenge! The whole depends upon the -turn of a thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into -a flame; and the explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. -The dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, -and nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up -to its highest pitch, afford examples of this dramatic fluctuation of -passion. The interest in Chaucer is quite different; it is like the -course of a river, strong, and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on -the contrary, it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed -by furious storms; while in the still pauses of the blast, we -distinguish only the cries of despair, or the silence of death! Milton, -on the other hand, takes the imaginative part of passion—that which -remains after the event, which the mind reposes on when all is over, -which looks upon circumstances from the remotest elevation of -thought and fancy, and abstracts them from the world of action to -that of contemplation. The objects of dramatic poetry affect us by -sympathy, by their nearness to ourselves, as they take us by surprise, -or force us upon action, ‘while rage with rage doth sympathise’; the -objects of epic poetry affect us through the medium of the imagination, -by magnitude and distance, by their permanence and universality. -The one fill us with terror and pity, the other with admiration and -delight. There are certain objects that strike the imagination, and -inspire awe in the very idea of them, independently of any dramatic -interest, that is, of any connection with the vicissitudes of human life. -For instance, we cannot think of the pyramids of Egypt, of a Gothic -ruin, or an old Roman encampment, without a certain emotion, a -sense of power and sublimity coming over the mind. The heavenly -bodies that hung over our heads wherever we go, and ‘in their -untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust, and all our -cares forgotten,’ affect us in the same way. Thus Satan’s address to -the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic interest; for though the second -person in the dialogue makes no answer and feels no concern, yet the -eye that vast luminary is upon him, like the eye of heaven, and -seems conscious of what he says, like an universal presence. Dramatic -poetry and epic, in their perfection, indeed, approximate to and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>strengthen one another. Dramatic poetry borrows aid from the -dignity of persons and things, as the heroic does from human passion, -but in theory they are distinct.—When Richard <span class='fss'>II.</span> calls for the -looking-glass to contemplate his faded majesty in it, and bursts into -that affecting exclamation: ‘Oh, that I were a mockery-king of -snow, to melt away before the sun of Bolingbroke,’ we have here the -utmost force of human passion, combined with the ideas of regal -splendour and fallen power. When Milton says of Satan:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>‘——His form had not yet lost</div> - <div class='line'>All her original brightness, nor appear’d</div> - <div class='line'>Less than archangel ruin’d, and th’ excess</div> - <div class='line'>Of glory obscur’d;’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense -of irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an -experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; -or what is worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human -passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and -devouring egotism of the writers’ own minds. Milton and Shakspeare -did not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation -both to nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of -the one and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of -their own Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to -their having had a deeper sense than others of what was grand in the -objects of nature, or affecting in the events of human life. But to -the men I speak of there is nothing interesting, nothing heroical, -but themselves. To them the fall of gods or of great men is the -same. They do not enter into the feeling. They cannot understand -the terms. They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry -consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen greatness; for their -minds reject, with a convulsive effort and intolerable loathing, the -very idea that there ever was, or was thought to be, any thing -superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the attention or -admiration of the world, they look upon with the most perfect -indifference; and they are surprised to find that the world repays -their indifference with scorn. ‘With what measure they mete, it has -been meted to them again.’—</p> - -<p class='c011'>Shakespeare’s imagination is of the same plastic kind as his conception -of character or passion. ‘It glances from heaven to earth, -from earth to heaven.’ Its movement is rapid and devious. It -unites the most opposite extremes: or, as Puck says, in boasting of -his own feats, ‘puts a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.’ -<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>He seems always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it; -but the stroke, like the lightning’s, is sure as it is sudden. He takes -the widest possible range, but from that very range he has his choice -of the greatest variety and aptitude of materials. He brings together -images the most alike, but placed at the greatest distance from each -other; that is, found in circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude. -From the remoteness of his combinations, and the celerity with which -they are effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly together. The -more the thoughts are strangers to each other, and the longer they -have been kept asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to -become. Their felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is -made more dazzling by their novelty. They startle, and take the -fancy prisoner in the same instant. I will mention one or two which -are very striking, and not much known, out of Troilus and Cressida. -Æneas says to Agamemnon,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I ask that I may waken reverence,</div> - <div class='line'>And on the cheek be ready with a blush</div> - <div class='line'>Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes</div> - <div class='line'>The youthful Phœbus.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘No man is the lord of anything,</div> - <div class='line'>Till he communicate his parts to others:</div> - <div class='line'>Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,</div> - <div class='line'>Till he behold them formed in the applause,</div> - <div class='line'>Where they’re extended! which like an arch reverberates</div> - <div class='line'>The voice again, or like a gate of steel,</div> - <div class='line'>Fronting the sun, receives and renders back</div> - <div class='line'>Its figure and its heat.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid</div> - <div class='line'>Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,</div> - <div class='line'>And like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane</div> - <div class='line'>Be shook to air.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Shakspeare’s language and versification are like the rest of him. -He has a magic power over words: they come winged at his -bidding; and seem to know their places. They are struck out at a -heat, on the spur of the occasion, and have all the truth and vividness -which arise from an actual impression of the objects. His epithets -and single phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, -fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is -<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds -in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of -his mixed metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech. -These, however, give no pain from long custom. They have, in -fact, become idioms in the language. They are the building, and not -the scaffolding to thought. We take the meaning and effect of a -well-known passage entire, and no more stop to scan and spell out the -particular words and phrases, than the syllables of which they are -composed. In trying to recollect any other author, one sometimes -stumbles, in case of failure, on a word as good. In Shakspeare, any -other word but the true one, is sure to be wrong. If any body, for -instance, could not recollect the words of the following description,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in18'>‘——Light thickens,</div> - <div class='line'>And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them equally -expressive of the feeling. These remarks, however, are strictly -applicable only to the impassioned parts of Shakspeare’s language, -which flowed from the warmth and originality of his imagination, and -were his own. The language used for prose conversation and -ordinary business is sometimes technical, and involved in the affectation -of the time. Compare, for example, Othello’s apology to the -senate, relating ‘his whole course of love,’ with some of the preceding -parts relating to his appointment, and the official dispatches from -Cyprus. In this respect, ‘the business of the state does him offence.’ -His versification is no less powerful, sweet, and varied. It has -every occasional excellence, of sullen intricacy, crabbed and -perplexed, or of the smoothest and loftiest expansion—from the -ease and familiarity of measured conversation to the lyrical sounds</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in10'>‘——Of ditties highly penned,</div> - <div class='line'>Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower,</div> - <div class='line'>With ravishing division to her lute.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It is the only blank verse in the language, except Milton’s, that for -itself is readable. It is not stately and uniformly swelling like his, -but varied and broken by the inequalities of the ground it has to pass -over in its uncertain course,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And so by many winding nooks it strays,</div> - <div class='line'>With willing sport to the wild ocean.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They are not so -many or so great as they have been represented; what there are, are -chiefly owing to the following causes:—The universality of his genius -<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>was, perhaps, a disadvantage to his single works; the variety of his -resources, sometimes diverting him from applying them to the most -effectual purposes. He might be said to combine the powers of -Æschylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind. -If he had been only half what he was, he would perhaps have -appeared greater. The natural ease and indifference of his temper -made him sometimes less scrupulous than he might have been. He -is relaxed and careless in critical places; he is in earnest throughout -only in Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had no models of -acknowledged excellence constantly in view to stimulate his efforts, -and by all that appears, no love of fame. He wrote for the ‘great -vulgar and the small,’ in his time, not for posterity. If Queen -Elizabeth and the maids of honour laughed heartily at his worst -jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were silent at his best passages, -he went home satisfied, and slept the next night well. He did not -trouble himself about Voltaire’s criticisms. He was willing to take -advantage of the ignorance of the age in many things; and if his plays -pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His very facility -of production would make him set less value on his own excellences, -and not care to distinguish nicely between what he did well or -ill. His blunders in chronology and geography do not amount to -above half a dozen, and they are offences against chronology and -geography, not against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in -setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so -great a man. His barbarisms were those of his age. His genius -was his own. He had no objection to float down with the stream of -common taste and opinion: he rose above it by his own buoyancy, -and an impulse which he could not keep under, in spite of himself or -others, and ‘his delights did shew most dolphin-like.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies -are better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy. -His female characters, which have been found fault with as insipid, -are the finest in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a -coxcomb of any one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and -an indifference to personal reputation; he had none of the bigotry of -his age, and his political prejudices were not very strong. In these -respects, as well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to -Milton. Milton’s works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a -hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation -of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth; -and he seized the pen with a hand just warm from the touch of the -ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its character into his imagination; -<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>so that he devotes himself with the same sense of duty to -the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or the -good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the -prophet, vied with each other in his breast. His mind appears to -have held equal communion with the inspired writers, and with the -bards and sages of ancient Greece and Rome;—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,</div> - <div class='line'>And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>He had a high standard, with which he was always comparing himself, -nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition. He -thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about -him. He lived apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully -excluding from his mind whatever might distract its purposes or -alloy its purity, or damp its zeal. ‘With darkness and with dangers -compassed round,’ he had the mighty models of antiquity always -present to his thoughts, and determined to raise a monument of equal -height and glory, ‘piling up every stone of lustre from the brook,’ -for the delight and wonder of posterity. He had girded himself up, -and as it were, sanctified his genius to this service from his youth. -‘For after,’ he says, ‘I had from my first years, by the ceaseless -diligence and care of my father, been exercised to the tongues, and -some sciences as my age could suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, -it was found that whether aught was imposed upon me by them, or -betaken to of my own choice, the style by certain vital signs it had, -was likely to live; but much latelier, in the private academies of -Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed -at under twenty or thereabout, met with acceptance above what was -looked for; I began thus far to assent both to them and divers -of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting -which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study -(which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong -propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to -after-times as they should not willingly let it die. The accomplishment -of these intentions, which have lived within me ever since -I could conceive myself anything worth to my country, lies not -but in a power above man’s to promise; but that none hath by -more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit -that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and -free leisure will extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant -with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet, I may go on -trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as -being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours -<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar -amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be -obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, -but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit who can enrich with all -utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the -hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he -pleases: to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady -observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. -Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand; -but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small -willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than -these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful -and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and -hoarse disputes, from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the -quiet and still air of delightful studies.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>So that of Spenser:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And is with child of glorious great intent,</div> - <div class='line'>Can never rest until it forth have brought</div> - <div class='line in2'>The eternal brood of glory excellent.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a -severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave -nothing undone which it was in his power to do. He always labours, -and almost always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things -in the world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his -subject to the utmost: he surrounds it with every possible association -of beauty or grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical. He -refines on his descriptions of beauty; loading sweets on sweets, till -the sense aches at them; and raises his images of terror to a gigantic -elevation, that ‘makes Ossa like a wart.’ In Milton, there is always -an appearance of effort: in Shakespeare, scarcely any.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted -every source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly -distinct from every other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet -in originality scarcely inferior to Homer. The power of his mind -is stamped on every line. The fervour of his imagination melts -down and renders malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory -materials. In reading his works, we feel ourselves under the influence -of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes -more distinct from them. The quantity of art in him shews the -strength of his genius: the weight of his intellectual obligations -would have oppressed any other writer. Milton’s learning has the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he could only -have read in books, with the vividness of actual observation. His -imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as -pictures.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat</div> - <div class='line'>Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks</div> - <div class='line'>Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The word <em>lucid</em> here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the -most perfect landscape.</p> - -<p class='c011'>And again:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘As when a vulture on Imaus bred,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,</div> - <div class='line'>Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,</div> - <div class='line'>To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids</div> - <div class='line'>On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs</div> - <div class='line'>Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;</div> - <div class='line'>But in his way lights on the barren plains</div> - <div class='line'>Of Sericana, where Chineses drive</div> - <div class='line'>With sails and wind their cany waggons light.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he could not -have described this scenery and mode of life better. Such passages -are like demonstrations of natural history. Instances might be -multiplied without end.</p> - -<p class='c011'>We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with which he -describes visible objects, was owing to their having acquired an -unusual degree of strength in his mind, after the privation of his sight; -but we find the same palpableness and truth in the descriptions which -occur in his early poems. In Lycidas he speaks of ‘the great vision -of the guarded mount,’ with that preternatural weight of impression -with which it would present itself suddenly to ‘the pilot of some -small night-foundered skiff’: and the lines in the Penseroso, describing -‘the wandering moon,’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Riding near her highest noon,</div> - <div class='line'>Like one that had been led astray</div> - <div class='line'>Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her. There is also -the same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all -the different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells—the same -absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. -It has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of -criticism, that his ideas were musical rather than picturesque, as if -because they were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>keep the sage critical balance even, and to allow no one man to possess -two qualities at the same time) proportionably deficient in other -respects. But Milton’s poetry is not cast in any such narrow, -common-place mould; it is not so barren of resources. His worship -of the Muse was not so simple or confined. A sound arises ‘like -a steam of rich distilled perfumes’; we hear the pealing organ, but -the incense on the altars is also there, and the statues of the gods are -ranged around! The ear indeed predominates over the eye, because -it is more immediately affected, and because the language of music -blends more immediately with, and forms a more natural accompaniment -to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas conveyed by -words. But where the associations of the imagination are not the -principal thing, the individual object is given by Milton with equal -force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a -characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of Adam and -Eve, of Satan, &c. are always accompanied, in our imagination, with -the grandeur of the naked figure; they convey to us the ideas of -sculpture. As an instance, take the following:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>‘——He soon</div> - <div class='line'>Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand,</div> - <div class='line'>The same whom John saw also in the sun:</div> - <div class='line'>His back was turned, but not his brightness hid;</div> - <div class='line'>Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar</div> - <div class='line'>Circled his head, nor less his locks behind</div> - <div class='line'>Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings</div> - <div class='line'>Lay waving round; on some great charge employ’d</div> - <div class='line'>He seem’d, or fix’d in cogitation deep.</div> - <div class='line'>Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope</div> - <div class='line'>To find who might direct his wand’ring flight</div> - <div class='line'>To Paradise, the happy seat of man,</div> - <div class='line'>His journey’s end, and our beginning woe.</div> - <div class='line'>But first he casts to change his proper shape,</div> - <div class='line'>Which else might work him danger or delay</div> - <div class='line'>And now a stripling cherub he appears,</div> - <div class='line'>Not of the prime, yet such as in his face</div> - <div class='line'>Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb</div> - <div class='line'>Suitable grace diffus’d, so well he feign’d:</div> - <div class='line'>Under a coronet his flowing hair</div> - <div class='line'>In curls on either cheek play’d; wings he wore</div> - <div class='line'>Of many a colour’d plume sprinkled with gold,</div> - <div class='line'>His habit fit for speed succinct, and held</div> - <div class='line'>Before his decent steps a silver wand.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of -a Greek statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and -musical as the strings of Memnon’s harp!</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait of -Beelzebub:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear</div> - <div class='line'>The weight of mightiest monarchies:’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Or the comparison of Satan, as he ‘lay floating many a rood,’ to -‘that sea beast,’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Leviathan, which God of all his works</div> - <div class='line'>Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>What a force of imagination is there in this last expression! What -an idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it -shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as -a very little thing? Force of style is one of Milton’s greatest -excellences. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, -and less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners, -is to take down the book and read it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Milton’s blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except -Shakspeare’s) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who -had modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of -Pope, condemns the Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not -pretend to say that this is not sometimes the case; for where a -degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted, -the poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine that there are more -perfect examples in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of -the sound and movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage, -than in all our other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put -together, (with the exception already mentioned). Spenser is the -most harmonious of our stanza writers, as Dryden is the most sounding -and varied of our rhymists. But in neither is there any thing like the -same ear for music, the same power of approximating the varieties of -poetical to those of musical rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet. -The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, -almost of the very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly -on, with exquisite art, but without the least trick or affectation, as the -occasion seems to require.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The following are some of the finest instances:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>‘——His hand was known</div> - <div class='line'>In Heaven by many a tower’d structure high;—</div> - <div class='line'>Nor was his name unheard or unador’d</div> - <div class='line'>In ancient Greece: and in the Ausonian land</div> - <div class='line'>Men called him Mulciber: and how he fell</div> - <div class='line'>From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>Sheer o’er the chrystal battlements; from morn</div> - <div class='line'>To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,</div> - <div class='line'>A summer’s day; and with the setting sun</div> - <div class='line'>Dropt from the zenith like a falling star</div> - <div class='line'>On Lemnos, the Ægean isle: thus they relate,</div> - <div class='line'>Erring.’—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>‘——But chief the spacious hall</div> - <div class='line'>Thick swarm’d, both on the ground and in the air,</div> - <div class='line'>Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees</div> - <div class='line'>In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,</div> - <div class='line'>Pour forth their populous youth about the hive</div> - <div class='line'>In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow’rs</div> - <div class='line'>Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank,</div> - <div class='line'>The suburb of their straw-built citadel,</div> - <div class='line'>New rubb’d with balm, expatiate and confer</div> - <div class='line'>Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd</div> - <div class='line'>Swarm’d and were straiten’d; till the signal giv’n,</div> - <div class='line'>Behold a wonder! They but now who seem’d</div> - <div class='line'>In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons,</div> - <div class='line'>Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room</div> - <div class='line'>Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race</div> - <div class='line'>Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose midnight revels by a forest side</div> - <div class='line'>Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,</div> - <div class='line'>Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon</div> - <div class='line'>Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth</div> - <div class='line'>Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance</div> - <div class='line'>Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;</div> - <div class='line'>At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I can only give another instance, though I have some difficulty in -leaving off.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood</div> - <div class='line'>So high above the circling canopy</div> - <div class='line'>Of night’s extended shade) from th’ eastern point</div> - <div class='line'>Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears</div> - <div class='line'>Andromeda far off Atlantic seas</div> - <div class='line'>Beyond the horizon: then from pole to pole</div> - <div class='line'>He views in breadth, and without longer pause</div> - <div class='line'>Down right into the world’s first region throws</div> - <div class='line'>His flight precipitant, and winds with ease</div> - <div class='line'>Through the pure marble air his oblique way</div> - <div class='line'>Amongst innumerable stars that shone</div> - <div class='line'>Stars distant, but nigh hand seem’d other worlds;</div> - <div class='line'>Or other worlds they seem’d or happy isles,’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down -<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>as if it had itself wings. Milton has himself given us the theory of his -versification—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Such as the meeting soul may pierce</div> - <div class='line'>In notes with many a winding bout</div> - <div class='line'>Of linked sweetness long drawn out.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Dr. Johnson and Pope would, have converted his vaulting Pegasus -into a rocking-horse. Read any other blank verse but Milton’s,—Thomson’s, -Young’s, Cowper’s, Wordsworth’s,—and it will be -found, from the want of the same insight into ‘the hidden soul of -harmony,’ to be mere lumbering prose.</p> - -<p class='c011'>To proceed to a consideration of the merits of Paradise Lost, in -the most essential point of view, I mean as to the poetry of character -and passion. I shall say nothing of the fable, or of other technical -objections or excellences; but I shall try to explain at once the -foundation of the interest belonging to the poem. I am ready to give -up the dialogues in Heaven, where, as Pope justly observes, ‘God -the Father turns a school-divine’; nor do I consider the battle of the -angels as the climax of sublimity, or the most successful effort of -Milton’s pen. In a word, the interest of the poem arises from the -daring ambition and fierce passions of Satan, and from the account of -the paradisaical happiness, and the loss of it by our first parents. -Three-fourths of the work are taken up with these characters, and -nearly all that relates to them is unmixed sublimity and beauty. The -two first books alone are like two massy pillars of solid gold.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem; -and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the -first of created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the -highest, and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was -hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the -universe; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part -of the heavens, whom he lured after him with his countenance, and -who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His ambition was the -greatest, and his punishment was the greatest; but not so his despair, -for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind -was matchless as his strength of body; the vastness of his designs -did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with which he -submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His -power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest -power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist -or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a -tower; or</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>‘—— —— ——As when Heaven’s fire</div> - <div class='line'>Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>He was still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, -who own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he -sympathises as he views them round, far as the eye can reach; though -he keeps aloof from them in his own mind, and holds supreme -counsel only with his own breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell -trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and mankind -are his easy prey.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will,</div> - <div class='line'>And study of revenge, immortal hate,</div> - <div class='line'>And courage never to submit or yield,</div> - <div class='line'>And what else is not to be overcome,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude -of it; the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made -innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride; the loss of infinite -happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of -inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle -of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil—but of the abstract love -of power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which last principle all -other good and evil, and even his own, are subordinate. From this -principle he never once flinches. His love of power and contempt -for suffering are never once relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity. -His thoughts burn like a hell within him; but the power of thought -holds dominion in his mind over every other consideration. The -consciousness of a determined purpose, of ‘that intellectual being, -those thoughts that wander through eternity,’ though accompanied -with endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to ‘being swallowed up -and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night.’ He expresses the -sum and substance of all ambition in one line. ‘Fallen cherub, to be -weak is miserable, doing or suffering!’ After such a conflict as -his, and such a defeat, to retreat in order, to rally, to make terms, -to exist at all, is something; but he does more than this—he founds -a new empire in hell, and from it conquers this new world, whither -he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way through nether and -surrounding fires. The poet has not in all this given us a mere -shadowy outline; the strength is equal to the magnitude of the -conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more distinct; the -Titans were not more vast; Prometheus chained to his rock was not -a more terrific example of suffering and of crime. Wherever the -figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, ‘rising aloft -incumbent on the dusky air,’ it is illustrated with the most striking -and appropriate images: so that we see it always before us, gigantic, -irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed—but dazzling in its faded -<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan -is only in the depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to -excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, -poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing -agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous and open an antagonist -to support his argument by the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot; -to bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic -prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have availed themselves, and -which the mystic German critics would restore. He relied on the -justice of his cause, and did not scruple to give the devil his due. -Some persons may think that he has carried his liberality too far, -and injured the cause he professed to espouse by making him the -chief person in his poem. Considering the nature of his subject, he -would be equally in danger of running into this fault, from his faith -in religion, and his love of rebellion; and perhaps each of these -motives had its full share in determining the choice of his subject.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Not only the figure of Satan, but his speeches in council, his -soliloquies, his address to Eve, his share in the war in heaven, or in -the fall of man, shew the same decided superiority of character. To -give only one instance, almost the first speech he makes:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,</div> - <div class='line'>Said then the lost archangel, this the seat</div> - <div class='line'>That we must change for Heaven; this mournful gloom</div> - <div class='line'>For that celestial light? Be it so, since he</div> - <div class='line'>Who now is sov’rain can dispose and bid</div> - <div class='line'>What shall be right: farthest from him is best,</div> - <div class='line'>Whom reason hath equal’d, force hath made supreme</div> - <div class='line'>Above his equals. Farewel happy fields,</div> - <div class='line'>Where joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail</div> - <div class='line'>Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell,</div> - <div class='line'>Receive thy new possessor: one who brings</div> - <div class='line'>A mind not to be chang’d by place or time.</div> - <div class='line'>The mind is its own place, and in itself</div> - <div class='line'>Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.</div> - <div class='line'>What matter where, if I be still the same,</div> - <div class='line'>And what I should be, all but less than he</div> - <div class='line'>Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least</div> - <div class='line'>We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built</div> - <div class='line'>Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:</div> - <div class='line'>Here we may reign secure, and in my choice</div> - <div class='line'>To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:</div> - <div class='line'>Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The whole of the speeches and debates in Pandemonium are well -worthy of the place and the occasion—with Gods for speakers, and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>angels and archangels for hearers. There is a decided manly tone in -the arguments and sentiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each -person spoke from thorough conviction; an excellence which Milton -probably borrowed from his spirit of partisanship, or else his spirit of -partisanship from the natural firmness and vigour of his mind. In -this respect Milton resembles Dante, (the only modern writer with -whom he has any thing in common) and it is remarkable that Dante, -as well as Milton, was a political partisan. That approximation to -the severity of impassioned prose which has been made an objection -to Milton’s poetry, and which is chiefly to be met with in these bitter -invectives, is one of its great excellences. The author might here -turn his philippics against Salmasius to good account. The rout in -Heaven is like the fall of some mighty structure, nodding to its base, -‘with hideous ruin and combustion down.’ But, perhaps, of all the -passages in Paradise Lost, the description of the employments of the -angels during the absence of Satan, some of whom ‘retreated in a -silent valley, sing with notes angelical to many a harp their own -heroic deeds and hapless fall by doom of battle,’ is the most perfect -example of mingled pathos and sublimity.—What proves the truth of -this noble picture in every part, and that the frequent complaint of -want of interest in it is the fault of the reader, not of the poet, is that -when any interest of a practical kind takes a shape that can be at all -turned into this, (and there is little doubt that Milton had some such -in his eye in writing it,) each party converts it to its own purposes, -feels the absolute identity of these abstracted and high speculations; -and that, in fact, a noted political writer of the present day has -exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan in the Paradise Lost, -by applying it to a character whom he considered as after the devil, -(though I do not know whether he would make even that exception) -the greatest enemy of the human race. This may serve to shew that -Milton’s Satan is not a very insipid personage.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Of Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary reader can -feel little interest in them, because they have none of the passions, -pursuits, or even relations of human life, except that of man and wife, -the least interesting of all others, if not to the parties concerned, at -least to the by-standers. The preference has on this account been -given to Homer, who, it is said, has left very vivid and infinitely -diversified pictures of all the passions and affections, public and -private, incident to human nature—the relations of son, of brother, -parent, friend, citizen, and many others. Longinus preferred the -Iliad to the Odyssey, on account of the greater number of battles it -contains; but I can neither agree to his criticism, nor assent to the -present objection. It is true, there is little action in this part of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>Milton’s poem; but there is much repose, and more enjoyment. -There are none of the every-day occurrences, contentions, disputes, -wars, fightings, feuds, jealousies, trades, professions, liveries, and -common handicrafts of life; ‘no kind of traffic; letters are not -known; no use of service, of riches, poverty, contract, succession, -bourne, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none; no occupation, no -treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, nor need of any engine.’ -So much the better; thank Heaven, all these were yet to come. -But still the die was cast, and in them our doom was sealed. In -them</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The generations were prepared; the pangs,</div> - <div class='line'>The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife</div> - <div class='line'>Of poor humanity’s afflicted will,</div> - <div class='line'>Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>In their first false step we trace all our future woe, with loss of -Eden. But there was a short and precious interval between, like the -first blush of morning before the day is overcast with tempest, the -dawn of the world, the birth of nature from ‘the unapparent deep,’ -with its first dews and freshness on its cheek, breathing odours. -Theirs was the first delicious taste of life, and on them depended all -that was to come of it. In them hung trembling all our hopes and -fears. They were as yet alone in the world, in the eye of nature, -wondering at their new being, full of enjoyment and enraptured with -one another, with the voice of their Maker walking in the garden, -and ministering angels attendant on their steps, winged messengers -from heaven like rosy clouds descending in their sight. Nature -played around them her virgin fancies wild; and spread for them a -repast where no crude surfeit reigned. Was there nothing in this -scene, which God and nature alone witnessed, to interest a modern -critic? What need was there of action, where the heart was full of -bliss and innocence without it! They had nothing to do but feel -their own happiness, and ‘know to know no more.’ ‘They toiled -not, neither did they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not -arrayed like one of these.’ All things seem to acquire fresh sweetness, -and to be clothed with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted -as it were for themselves and us, of all that there ever was pure in -human bliss. ‘In them the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and -the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened.’ They -stood awhile perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were driven out of -Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss. -But their pangs were such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight—their -tears ‘such as angels weep.’ The pathos is of that mild -<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>contemplative kind which arises from regret for the loss of unspeakable -happiness, and resignation to inevitable fate. There is none of the -fierceness of intemperate passion, none of the agony of mind and -turbulence of action, which is the result of the habitual struggles of -the will with circumstances, irritated by repeated disappointment, and -constantly setting its desires most eagerly on that which there is an -impossibility of attaining. This would have destroyed the beauty of -the whole picture. They had received their unlooked-for happiness -as a free gift from their Creator’s hands, and they submitted to its -loss, not without sorrow, but without impious and stubborn repining.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘In either hand the hast’ning angel caught</div> - <div class='line'>Our ling’ring parents, and to th’ eastern gate</div> - <div class='line'>Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast</div> - <div class='line'>To the subjected plain; then disappear’d.</div> - <div class='line'>They looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld</div> - <div class='line'>Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,</div> - <div class='line'>Wav’d over by that flaming brand, the gate</div> - <div class='line'>With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms:</div> - <div class='line'>Some natural tears they dropt, but wip’d them soon;</div> - <div class='line'>The world was all before them, where to choose</div> - <div class='line'>Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE IV<br /> <span class='small'>ON DRYDEN AND POPE</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of -poetry in our language, as the poets of whom I have already treated, -Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, were of the natural; and -though this artificial style is generally and very justly acknowledged -to be inferior to the other, yet those who stand at the head of that -class, ought, perhaps, to rank higher than those who occupy an -inferior place in a superior class. They have a clear and independent -claim upon our gratitude, as having produced a kind and degree of -excellence which existed equally nowhere else. What has been done -well by some later writers of the highest style of poetry, is included -in, and obscured by a greater degree of power and genius in those -before them: what has been done best by poets of an entirely distinct -turn of mind, stands by itself, and tells for its whole amount. -Young, for instance, Gray, or Akenside, only follow in the train of -Milton and Shakspeare: Pope and Dryden walk by their side, -though of an unequal stature, and are entitled to a first place in the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>lists of fame. This seems to be not only the reason of the thing, but -the common sense of mankind, who, without any regular process of -reflection, judge of the merit of a work, not more by its inherent and -absolute worth, than by its originality and capacity of gratifying a -different faculty of the mind, or a different class of readers; for it -should be recollected, that there may be readers (as well as poets) -not of the highest class, though very good sort of people, and not -altogether to be despised.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The question, whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been -settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great poet, -he must have been a great prose-writer, that is, he was a great writer -of some sort. He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most -refined taste; and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of -poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed -for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, by a great poet, we mean -one who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or -the utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this -sense a great poet; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, -lay the clean contrary way; namely, in representing things as they -appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and passion, -as in his Critical Essays; or in representing them in the most contemptible -and insignificant point of view, as in his Satires; or in -clothing the little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of Fancy; or -in adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations of life with the -utmost elegance of expression, and all the flattering illusions of friendship -or self-love, as in his Epistles. He was not then distinguished -as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate -sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the workings of -the heart; but he was a wit, and a critic, a man of sense, of observation, -and the world, with a keen relish for the elegances of art, or of -nature when embellished by art, a quick tact for propriety of thought -and manners as established by the forms and customs of society, a -refined sympathy with the sentiments and habitudes of human life, as -he felt them within the little circle of his family and friends. He -was, in a word, the poet, not of nature, but of art; and the distinction -between the two, as well as I can make it out, is this—The poet -of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of -passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and -grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its -immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all -men; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony -of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of -nature; to be identified with and to foreknow and to record the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>feelings of all men at all times and places, as they are liable to the -same impressions; and to exert the same power over the minds of -his readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, -for he sees them as they are; he feels them in their universal interest, -for he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our -common nature. Such was Homer, such was Shakspeare, whose -works will last as long as nature, because they are a copy of the -indestructible forms and everlasting impulses of nature, welling out -from the bosom as from a perennial spring, or stamped upon the -senses by the hand of their maker. The power of the imagination in -them, is the representative power of all nature. It has its centre -in the human soul, and makes the circuit of the universe.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of -it. He saw nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by -fashion; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged -of the feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shakspeare -had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could -enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances: Pope had -an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or -wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth, -through Chaos and old Night. Pope’s Muse never wandered with -safety, but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his -library back again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own -garden, than on the garden of Eden; he could describe the faultless -whole-length mirror that reflected his own person, better than the -smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven—a piece of -cut glass or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect, -than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. He would be more -delighted with a patent lamp, than with ‘the pale reflex of Cynthia’s -brow,’ that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, that trembles -through the cottage window, and cheers the watchful mariner on the -lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of personality and of polished -life. That which was nearest to him, was the greatest; the fashion -of the day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of nature. -He preferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, because -he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love of the maker or -proprietor of a gewgaw, than admiration of that which was interesting -to all mankind. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, -because the involuntary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried -him away with a force and vehemence with which he could not -grapple; while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial -modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them -on or off like a masquerade-dress, make much or little of them, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>indulge them for a longer or a shorter time, as he pleased; and -because while they amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, -they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His -mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur; its power was the -power of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry; -he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It cannot be denied, that his chief excellence lay more in diminishing, -than in aggrandizing objects; in checking, not in encouraging -our enthusiasm; in sneering at the extravagances of fancy or passion, -instead of giving a loose to them; in describing a row of pins and -needles, rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans; -in penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in praising Martha -Blount.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Shakspeare says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘—— ——In Fortune’s ray and brightness</div> - <div class='line'>The herd hath more annoyance by the brize</div> - <div class='line'>Than by the tyger: but when the splitting wind</div> - <div class='line'>Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,</div> - <div class='line'>And flies fled under shade, why then</div> - <div class='line'>The thing of courage,</div> - <div class='line'>As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise;</div> - <div class='line'>And with an accent tuned in the self-same key,</div> - <div class='line'>Replies to chiding Fortune.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>There is none of this rough work in Pope. His Muse was on a -peace-establishment, and grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and -indulgence. He lived in the smiles of fortune, and basked in the -favour of the great. In his smooth and polished verse we meet with -no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit; the thunders of his -pen are whispered flatteries; its forked lightnings pointed sarcasms; -for ‘the gnarled oak,’ he gives us ‘the soft myrtle’: for rocks, and -seas, and mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling -rills; for earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or -the fall of a china jar; for the tug and war of the elements, or the -deadly strife of the passions, we have</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Calm contemplation and poetic ease.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and that how -exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what -delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, -what pampered refinement of sentiment! It is like looking at the -world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new -character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their -<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference; where the -little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful -deformed. The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held to -every thing, but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we know -not whether to be most pleased or surprised. Such, at least, is the -best account I am able to give of this extraordinary man, without -doing injustice to him or others. It is time to refer to particular -instances in his works.—The Rape of the Lock is the best or most -ingenious of these. It is the most exquisite specimen of <em>fillagree</em> -work ever invented. It is admirable in proportion as it is made of -nothing.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘More subtle web Arachne cannot spin,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see</div> - <div class='line'>Of scorched dew, do not in th’ air more lightly flee.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most glittering appearance -is given to every thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and -patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around;—the atmosphere is -perfumed with affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity -of an altar raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver -bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, -no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off -the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and -the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in -Europe. The little is made great, and the great little. You hardly -know whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, -the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic! -I will give only the two following passages in illustration of -these remarks. Can any thing be more elegant and graceful than the -description of Belinda, in the beginning of the second canto?</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain,</div> - <div class='line'>The sun first rises o’er the purpled main,</div> - <div class='line'>Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams</div> - <div class='line'>Launch’d on the bosom of the silver Thames.</div> - <div class='line'>Fair nymphs, and well-drest youths around her shone,</div> - <div class='line'>But ev’ry eye was fix’d on her alone.</div> - <div class='line'>On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,</div> - <div class='line'>Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.</div> - <div class='line'>Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,</div> - <div class='line'>Quick as her eyes, and as unfix’d as those:</div> - <div class='line'>Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;</div> - <div class='line'>Oft she rejects, but never once offends.</div> - <div class='line'>Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike;</div> - <div class='line'>And like the sun, they shine on all alike.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,</div> - <div class='line'>Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:</div> - <div class='line'>If to her share some female errors fall,</div> - <div class='line'>Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,</div> - <div class='line'>Nourish’d two locks, which graceful hung behind</div> - <div class='line'>In equal curls, and well conspir’d to deck</div> - <div class='line'>With shining ringlets the smooth iv’ry neck.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The following is the introduction to the account of Belinda’s -assault upon the baron bold, who had dissevered one of these locks -‘from her fair head for ever and for ever.’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Now meet thy fate, incens’d Belinda cry’d,</div> - <div class='line'>And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.</div> - <div class='line'>(The same his ancient personage to deck,</div> - <div class='line'>Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck,</div> - <div class='line'>In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,</div> - <div class='line'>Form’d a vast buckle for his widow’s gown:</div> - <div class='line'>Her infant grandame’s whistle next it grew,</div> - <div class='line'>The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew;</div> - <div class='line'>Then in a bodkin grac’d her mother’s hairs,</div> - <div class='line'>Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears).’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original idea, -or the delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin of -Boileau.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of wit and -fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity -of thought and observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope -was when he wrote it, is wonderful: unless we adopt the supposition, -that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others -what they themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness -and felicity of the expression are equally remarkable. Thus in reasoning -on the variety of men’s opinion, he says—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘’Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none</div> - <div class='line'>Go just alike, yet each believes his own.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks -and illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules laid down are too -much those of a school, and of a confined one. There is one passage -in the Essay on Criticism in which the author speaks with that -eloquent enthusiasm of the fame of ancient writers, which those -will always feel who have themselves any hope or chance of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>immortality. I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I will repeat -it here.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,</div> - <div class='line'>Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;</div> - <div class='line'>Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage,</div> - <div class='line'>Destructive war, and all-involving age.</div> - <div class='line'>Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,</div> - <div class='line'>Immortal heirs of universal praise!</div> - <div class='line'>Whose honours with increase of ages grow,</div> - <div class='line'>As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>These lines come with double force and beauty on the reader, as -they were dictated by the writer’s despair of ever attaining that -lasting glory which he celebrates with such disinterested enthusiasm -in others, from the lateness of the age in which he lived, and from -his writing in a tongue, not understood by other nations, and that -grows obsolete and unintelligible to ourselves at the end of every -second century. But he needed not have thus antedated his own -poetical doom—the loss and entire oblivion of that which can never -die. If he had known, he might have boasted that ‘his little bark’ -wafted down the stream of time,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>‘—— ——With <em>theirs</em> should sail,</div> - <div class='line'>Pursue the triumph and partake the gale’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>if those who know how to set a due value on the blessing, were not -the last to decide confidently on their own pretensions to it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>There is a cant in the present day about genius, as every thing in -poetry: there was a cant in the time of Pope about sense, as performing -all sorts of wonders. It was a kind of watchword, the -shibboleth of a critical party of the day. As a proof of the exclusive -attention which it occupied in their minds, it is remarkable that in -the Essay on Criticism (not a very long poem) there are no less than -half a score successive couplets rhyming to the word <em>sense</em>. This -appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less so -when they are given.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘But of the two, less dangerous is the offence,</div> - <div class='line'>To tire our patience than mislead our sense.’—<em>lines 3, 4.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘In search of wit these lose their common sense,</div> - <div class='line'>And then turn critics in their own defence.’—<em>l. 28, 29.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,</div> - <div class='line'>And fills up all the mighty void of sense.’—<em>l. 209, 10.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Some by old words to fame have made pretence,</div> - <div class='line'>Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.’—<em>l. 324, 5.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>‘’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence;</div> - <div class='line'>The sound must seem an echo to the sense.’—<em>l. 364, 5.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘At every trifle scorn to take offence;</div> - <div class='line'>That always shews great pride, or little sense.’—<em>l. 386, 7.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Be silent always, when you doubt your sense,</div> - <div class='line'>And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.’—<em>l. 366, 7.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Be niggards of advice on no pretence,</div> - <div class='line'>For the worst avarice is that of sense.’—<em>l. 578, 9.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense,</div> - <div class='line'>And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.’—<em>l. 608, 9.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Horace still charms with graceful negligence,</div> - <div class='line'>And without method talks us into sense.’—<em>l. 653, 4.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I have mentioned this the more for the sake of those critics who -are bigotted idolisers of our author, chiefly on the score of his correctness. -These persons seem to be of opinion that ‘there is but one -perfect writer, even Pope.’ This is, however, a mistake: his excellence -is by no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is -full of little errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and -imperfect. In the Abelard and Eloise, he says—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘There died the best of passions, Love and Fame.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>This is not a legitimate ellipsis. Fame is not a passion, though love -is: but his ear was evidently confused by the meeting of the sounds -‘love and fame,’ as if they of themselves immediately implied ‘love, -and love of fame.’ Pope’s rhymes are constantly-defective, being -rhymes to the eye instead of the ear; and this to a greater degree, -not only than in later, but than in preceding writers. The praise -of his versification must be confined to its uniform smoothness and -harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered -as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the -tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which -shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to -punctilious exactness. But to have done with this.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I can -think of, to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks; and I should -be disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The -foundation is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which -are quite as impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a -poem: it is finer as a piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman -could be supposed to write a better love-letter in verse. Besides the -richness of the historical materials, the high <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">gusto</span></i> of the original -<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>sentiments which Pope had to work upon, there were perhaps -circumstances in his own situation which made him enter into the -subject with even more than a poet’s feeling. The tears shed are -drops gushing from the heart: the words are burning sighs breathed -from the soul of love. Perhaps the poem to which it bears the -greatest similarity in our language, is Dryden’s Tancred and Sigismunda, -taken from Boccaccio. Pope’s Eloise will bear this comparison; -and after such a test, with Boccaccio for the original -author, and Dryden for the translator, it need shrink from no other. -There is something exceedingly tender and beautiful in the sound of -the concluding lines:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘If ever chance two wandering lovers brings</div> - <div class='line'>To Paraclete’s white walls and silver springs,’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Essay on Man is not Pope’s best work. It is a theory -which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, and which he -expanded into verse. But ‘he spins the thread of his verbosity -finer than the staple of his argument.’ All that he says, ‘the very -words, and to the self-same tune,’ would prove just as well that -whatever is, is wrong, as that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad -has splendid passages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and mechanical. -The sarcasm already quoted on Settle, the Lord Mayor’s poet, (for -at that time there was a city as well as a court poet)</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Now night descending, the proud scene is o’er,</div> - <div class='line'>But lives in Settle’s numbers one day more’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>is the finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is even better -than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, the triumphant -bards of antiquity!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The finest burst of severe moral invective in all Pope, is the -prophetical conclusion of the epilogue to the Satires:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Virtue may chuse the high or low degree,</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis just alike to virtue, and to me;</div> - <div class='line'>Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king,</div> - <div class='line'>She’s still the same belov’d, contented thing.</div> - <div class='line'>Vice is undone if she forgets her birth,</div> - <div class='line'>And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth.</div> - <div class='line'>But ’tis the Fall degrades her to a whore:</div> - <div class='line'>Let Greatness own her, and she’s mean no more.</div> - <div class='line'>Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess,</div> - <div class='line'>Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless;</div> - <div class='line'>In golden chains the willing world she draws,</div> - <div class='line'>And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,</div> - <div class='line'>And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead.</div> - <div class='line'>Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal car,</div> - <div class='line'>Old England’s Genius, rough with many a scar,</div> - <div class='line'>Dragg’d in the dust! his arms hang idly round,</div> - <div class='line'>His flag inverted trains along the ground!</div> - <div class='line'>Our youth, all livery’d o’er with foreign gold,</div> - <div class='line'>Before her dance; behind her, crawl the old!</div> - <div class='line'>See thronging millions to the Pagod run,</div> - <div class='line'>And offer country, parent, wife, or son!</div> - <div class='line'>Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim,</div> - <div class='line'>That <em>not to be corrupted is the shame</em>.</div> - <div class='line'>In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in pow’r,</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis av’rice all, ambition is no more!</div> - <div class='line'>See all our nobles begging to be slaves!</div> - <div class='line'>See all our fools aspiring to be knaves!</div> - <div class='line'>The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore,</div> - <div class='line'>Are what ten thousand envy and adore:</div> - <div class='line'>All, all look up with reverential awe,</div> - <div class='line'>At crimes that ‘scape or triumph o’er the law;</div> - <div class='line'>While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry:</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing is sacred now but villainy.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)</div> - <div class='line'>Show there was one who held it in disdain.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>His Satires are not in general so good as his Epistles. His -enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his -friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, -for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women. -His delicacy often borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes -others fastidious. But his compliments are divine; they are equal in -value to a house or an estate. Take the following. In addressing -Lord Mansfield, he speaks of the grave as a scene,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Where Murray, long enough his country’s pride,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>To Bolingbroke he says—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Why rail they then if but one wreath of mine,</div> - <div class='line'>Oh all-accomplish’d St. John, deck thy shrine?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord Cornbury—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Despise low thoughts, low gains:</div> - <div class='line'>Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains;</div> - <div class='line'>Be virtuous and be happy for your pains.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>One would think (though there is no knowing) that a descendant of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>this nobleman, if there be such a person living, could hardly be guilty -of a mean or paltry action.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The finest piece of personal satire in Pope (perhaps in the world) -is his character of Addison; and this, it may be observed, is of a -mixed kind, made up of his respect for the man, and a cutting sense -of his failings. The other finest one is that of Buckingham, and the -best part of that is the pleasurable.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘——Alas! how changed from him,</div> - <div class='line'>That life of pleasure and that soul of whim:</div> - <div class='line'>Gallant and gay, in Cliveden’s proud alcove,</div> - <div class='line'>The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Among his happiest and most inimitable effusions are the Epistles -to Arbuthnot, and to Jervas the painter; amiable patterns of the -delightful unconcerned life, blending ease with dignity, which poets -and painters then led. Thus he says to Arbuthnot—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Why did I write? What sin to me unknown</div> - <div class='line'>Dipp’d me in ink, my parents’ or my own?</div> - <div class='line'>As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,</div> - <div class='line'>I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.</div> - <div class='line'>I left no calling for this idle trade,</div> - <div class='line'>No duty broke, no father disobey’d:</div> - <div class='line'>The muse but serv’d to ease some friend, not wife;</div> - <div class='line'>To help me through this long disease, my life,</div> - <div class='line'>To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,</div> - <div class='line'>And teach the being you preserv’d to bear.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>But why then publish? Granville the polite,</div> - <div class='line'>And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;</div> - <div class='line'>Well-natur’d Garth inflam’d with early praise,</div> - <div class='line'>And Congreve lov’d, and Swift endur’d my lays;</div> - <div class='line'>The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read;</div> - <div class='line'>E’en mitred Rochester would nod the head;</div> - <div class='line'>And St. John’s self (great Dryden’s friend before)</div> - <div class='line'>With open arms receiv’d one poet more.</div> - <div class='line'>Happy my studies, when by these approv’d!</div> - <div class='line'>Happier their author, when by these belov’d!</div> - <div class='line'>From these the world will judge of men and books,</div> - <div class='line'>Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I cannot help giving also the conclusion of the Epistle to Jervas.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Oh, lasting as those colours may they shine,</div> - <div class='line'>Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line;</div> - <div class='line'>New graces yearly like thy works display,</div> - <div class='line'>Soft without weakness, without glaring gay;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains;</div> - <div class='line'>And finish’d more through happiness than pains.</div> - <div class='line'>The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire,</div> - <div class='line'>One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet should the Graces all thy figures place,</div> - <div class='line'>And breathe an air divine on ev’ry face;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll</div> - <div class='line'>Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul;</div> - <div class='line'>With Zeuxis’ Helen thy Bridgewater vie,</div> - <div class='line'>And these be sung till Granville’s Myra die:</div> - <div class='line'>Alas! how little from the grave we claim!</div> - <div class='line'>Thou but preserv’st a face, and I a name.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>And shall we cut ourselves off from beauties like these with -a theory? Shall we shut up our books, and seal up our senses, to -please the dull spite and inordinate vanity of those ‘who have eyes, -but they see not—ears, but they hear not—and understandings, but -they understand not,’—and go about asking our blind guides, -whether Pope was a poet or not? It will never do. Such persons, -when you point out to them a fine passage in Pope, turn it off -to something of the same sort in some other writer. Thus they say -that the line, ‘I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came,’ is pretty, -but taken from that of Ovid—<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Et quum conabar scribere, versus -erat</span></i>. They are safe in this mode of criticism: there is no danger -of any one’s tracing their writings to the classics.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Pope’s letters and prose writings neither take away from, nor add -to his poetical reputation. There is, occasionally, a littleness of -manner, and an unnecessary degree of caution. He appears anxious -to say a good thing in every word, as well as every sentence. They, -however, give a very favourable idea of his moral character in all -respects; and his letters to Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do -equal honour to both. If I had to choose, there are one or two -persons, and but one or two, that I should like to have been better -than Pope!</p> - -<p class='c011'>Dryden was a better prose-writer, and a bolder and more varied -versifier than Pope. He was a more vigorous thinker, a more -correct and logical declaimer, and had more of what may be called -strength of mind than Pope; but he had not the same refinement and -delicacy of feeling. Dryden’s eloquence and spirit were possessed in -a higher degree by others, and in nearly the same degree by Pope -himself; but that by which Pope was distinguished, was an essence -which he alone possessed, and of incomparable value on that sole -account. Dryden’s Epistles are excellent, but inferior to Pope’s, -though they appear (particularly the admirable one to Congreve) to -have been the model on which the latter formed his. His Satires -<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>are better than Pope’s. His Absalom and Achitophel is superior, -both in force of invective and discrimination of character, to any thing -of Pope’s in the same way. The character of Achitophel is very -fine; and breathes, if not a sincere love for virtue, a strong spirit of -indignation against vice.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mac Flecknoe is the origin of the idea of the Dunciad; but it is -less elaborately constructed, less feeble, and less heavy. The difference -between Pope’s satirical portraits and Dryden’s, appears to be -this in a good measure, that Dryden seems to grapple with his -antagonists, and to describe real persons; Pope seems to refine upon -them in his own mind, and to make them out just what he pleases, -till they are not real characters, but the mere driveling effusions of -his spleen and malice. Pope describes the thing, and then goes on -describing his own description till he loses himself in verbal repetitions. -Dryden recurs to the object often, takes fresh sittings of nature, and -gives us new strokes of character as well as of his pencil. The Hind -and Panther is an allegory as well as a satire; and so far it tells less -home; the battery is not so point-blank. But otherwise it has more -genius, vehemence, and strength of description than any other of -Dryden’s works, not excepting the Absalom and Achitophel. It -also contains the finest examples of varied and sounding versification. -I will quote the following as an instance of what I mean. He is -complaining of the treatment which the Papists, under James <span class='fss'>II.</span> -received from the church of England.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Besides these jolly birds, whose corpse impure</div> - <div class='line'>Repaid their commons with their salt manure,</div> - <div class='line'>Another farm he had behind his house,</div> - <div class='line'>Not overstocked, but barely for his use;</div> - <div class='line'>Wherein his poor domestic poultry fed,</div> - <div class='line'>And from his pious hand ‘received their bread.’</div> - <div class='line'>Our pampered pigeons, with malignant eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Beheld these inmates, and their nurseries;</div> - <div class='line'>Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn,</div> - <div class='line'>(A cruise of water, and an ear of corn,)</div> - <div class='line'>Yet still they grudged that <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">modicum</span></i>, and thought</div> - <div class='line'>A sheaf in every single grain was brought.</div> - <div class='line'>Fain would they filch that little food away,</div> - <div class='line'>While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey;</div> - <div class='line'>And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall,</div> - <div class='line'>The bird that warned St. Peter of his fall;</div> - <div class='line'>That he should raise his mitred crest on high,</div> - <div class='line'>And clap his wings, and call his family</div> - <div class='line'>To sacred rites; and vex the ethereal powers</div> - <div class='line'>With midnight mattins at uncivil hours;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest,</div> - <div class='line'>Just in the sweetness of their morning rest.</div> - <div class='line'>Beast of a bird! supinely when he might</div> - <div class='line'>Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light!</div> - <div class='line'>What if his dull forefathers us’d that cry,</div> - <div class='line'>Could he not let a bad example die?</div> - <div class='line'>The world was fallen into an easier way:</div> - <div class='line'>This age knew better than to fast and pray.</div> - <div class='line'>Good sense in sacred worship would appear,</div> - <div class='line'>So to begin as they might end the year.</div> - <div class='line'>Such feats in former times had wrought the falls</div> - <div class='line'>Of crowing chanticleers in cloister’d walls.</div> - <div class='line'>Expell’d for this, and for their lands they fled;</div> - <div class='line'>And sister Partlet with her hooded head</div> - <div class='line'>Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>There is a magnanimity of abuse in some of these epithets, a fearless -choice of topics of invective, which may be considered as the heroical -in satire.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The <cite><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Annus Mirabilis</span></cite> is a tedious performance; it is a tissue of -far-fetched, heavy, lumbering conceits, and in the worst style of what -has been denominated metaphysical poetry. His Odes in general are -of the same stamp; they are the hard-strained offspring of a meagre, -meretricious fancy. The famous Ode on St. Cecilia deserves its -reputation; for, as piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or -recited in alternate strophe and antistrophe, with classical allusions, -and flowing verse, nothing can be better. It is equally fit to be said -or sung; it is not equally good to read. It is lyrical, without being -epic or dramatic. For instance, the description of Bacchus,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The jolly god in triumph comes,</div> - <div class='line'>Sound the trumpets, beat the drums;</div> - <div class='line'>Flush’d with a purple grace,</div> - <div class='line'>He shews his honest face’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>does not answer, as it ought, to our idea of the God, returning from -the conquest of India, with satyrs and wild beasts, that he had tamed, -following in his train; crowned with vine leaves, and riding in a -chariot drawn by leopards—such as we have seen him painted by -Titian or Rubens! Lyrical poetry, of all others, bears the nearest -resemblance to painting: it deals in hieroglyphics and passing figures, -which depend for effect, not on the working out, but on the selection. -It is the dance and pantomime of poetry. In variety and rapidity of -movement, the Alexander’s Feast has all that can be required in this -respect; it only wants loftiness and truth of character.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Dryden’s plays are better than Pope could have written; for -<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>though he does not go out of himself by the force of imagination, -he goes out of himself by the force of common-places and rhetorical -dialogue. On the other hand, they are not so good as Shakspeare’s; -but he has left the best character of Shakspeare that has ever been -written.<a id='r5' /><a href='#f5' class='c015'><sup>[5]</sup></a></p> - -<p class='c011'>His alterations from Chaucer and Boccaccio shew a greater -knowledge of the taste of his readers and power of pleasing them, -than acquaintance with the genius of his authors. He ekes out the -lameness of the verse in the former, and breaks the force of the -passion in both. The Tancred and Sigismunda is the only general -exception, in which, I think, he has fully retained, if not improved -upon, the impassioned declamation of the original. The Honoria -has none of the bewildered, dreary, preternatural effect of Boccaccio’s -story. Nor has the Flower and the Leaf anything of the enchanting -simplicity and concentrated feeling of Chaucer’s romantic fiction. -Dryden, however, sometimes seemed to indulge himself as well as -his readers, as in keeping entire that noble line in Palamon’s address -to Venus:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thou gladder of the mount of Cithæron!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>His Tales have been, upon the whole, the most popular of his -works; and I should think that a translation of some of the other -serious tales in Boccaccio and Chaucer, as that of Isabella, the -Falcon, of Constance, the Prioress’s Tale, and others, if executed -with taste and spirit, could not fail to succeed in the present day.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It should appear, in tracing the history of our literature, that -poetry had, at the period of which we are speaking, in general -declined, by successive gradations, from the poetry of imagination, in -the time of Elizabeth, to the poetry of fancy (to adopt a modern -distinction) in the time of Charles I.; and again from the poetry of -fancy to that of wit, as in the reign of Charles II. and Queen Anne. -It degenerated into the poetry of mere common places, both in style -<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>and thought, in the succeeding reigns: as in the latter part of the -last century, it was transformed, by means of the French Revolution, -into the poetry of paradox.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Of Donne I know nothing but some beautiful verses to his wife, -dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad, and -some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Waller still lives in the name of Sacharissa; and his lines on the -death of Oliver Cromwell shew that he was a man not without genius -and strength of thought.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Marvel is a writer of nearly the same period, and worthy of a -better age. Some of his verses are harsh, as the words of Mercury; -others musical, as is Apollo’s lute. Of the latter kind are his boat-song, -his description of a fawn, and his lines to Lady Vere. His -lines prefixed to Paradise Lost are by no means the most favourable -specimen of his powers.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Butler’s Hudibras is a poem of more wit than any other in the -language. The rhymes have as much genius in them as the thoughts; -but there is no story in it, and but little humour. Humour is the -making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously: wit is the -pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more -or less ill-nature. The fault of Butler’s poem is not that it has too -much wit, but that it has not an equal quantity of other things. -One would suppose that the starched manners and sanctified grimace -of the times in which he lived, would of themselves have been -sufficiently rich in ludicrous incidents and characters; but they seem -rather to have irritated his spleen, than to have drawn forth his -powers of picturesque imitation. Certainly if we compare Hudibras -with Don Quixote in this respect, it seems rather a meagre and -unsatisfactory performance.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Rochester’s poetry is the poetry of wit combined with the love of -pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless -levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in it; his contempt for -every thing that others respect, almost amounts to sublimity. His -poem upon Nothing is itself no trifling work. His epigrams were -the bitterest, the least laboured, and the truest, that ever were written.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Sir John Suckling was of the same mercurial stamp, but with a -greater fund of animal spirits; as witty, but less malicious. His -Ballad on a Wedding is perfect in its kind, and has a spirit of high -enjoyment in it, of sportive fancy, a liveliness of description, and a -truth of nature, that never were surpassed. It is superior to either -Gay or Prior; for with all their <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naïveté</span></i> and terseness, it has a -Shakspearian grace and luxuriance about it, which they could not -have reached.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>Denham and Cowley belong to the same period, but were quite -distinct from each other: the one was grave and prosing, the other -melancholy and fantastical. There are a number of good lines and -good thoughts in the Cooper’s Hill. And in Cowley there is an -inexhaustible fund of sense and ingenuity, buried in inextricable -conceits, and entangled in the cobwebs of the schools. He was a -great man, not a great poet. But I shall say no more on this -subject. I never wish to meddle with names that are sacred, unless -when they stand in the way of things that are more sacred.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Withers is a name now almost forgotten, and his works seldom -read; but his poetry is not unfrequently distinguished by a tender -and pastoral turn of thought; and there is one passage of exquisite -feeling, describing the consolations of poetry in the following terms:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘She doth tell me where to borrow</div> - <div class='line'>Comfort in the midst of sorrow;</div> - <div class='line'>Makes the desolatest place<a id='r6' /><a href='#f6' class='c015'><sup>[6]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line'>To her presence be a grace;</div> - <div class='line'>And the blackest discontents</div> - <div class='line'>Be her fairest ornaments.</div> - <div class='line'>In my former days of bliss</div> - <div class='line'>Her divine skill taught me this,</div> - <div class='line'>That from every thing I saw,</div> - <div class='line'>I could some invention draw;</div> - <div class='line'>And raise pleasure to her height,</div> - <div class='line'>Through the meanest object’s sight,</div> - <div class='line'>By the murmur of a spring,</div> - <div class='line'>Or the least bough’s rusteling,</div> - <div class='line'>By a daisy whose leaves spread</div> - <div class='line'>Shut when Titan goes to bed;</div> - <div class='line'>Or a shady bush or tree,</div> - <div class='line'>She could more infuse in me,</div> - <div class='line'>Than all Nature’s beauties can,</div> - <div class='line'>In some other wiser man.</div> - <div class='line'>By her help I also now</div> - <div class='line'>Make this churlish place allow</div> - <div class='line'>Some things that may sweeten gladness</div> - <div class='line'>In the very gall of sadness.</div> - <div class='line'>The dull loneness, the black shade,</div> - <div class='line'>That these hanging vaults have made,</div> - <div class='line'>The strange music of the waves,</div> - <div class='line'>Beating on these hollow caves,</div> - <div class='line'>This black den which rocks emboss,</div> - <div class='line'>Overgrown with eldest moss,</div> - <div class='line'>The rude portals that give light</div> - <div class='line'>More to terror than delight,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>This my chamber of neglect,</div> - <div class='line'>Wall’d about with disrespect,</div> - <div class='line'>From all these and this dull air,</div> - <div class='line'>A fit object for despair,</div> - <div class='line'>She hath taught me by her might</div> - <div class='line'>To draw comfort and delight.</div> - <div class='line'>Therefore, thou best earthly bliss,</div> - <div class='line'>I will cherish thee for this.</div> - <div class='line'>Poesie; thou sweet’st content</div> - <div class='line'>That ere Heav’n to mortals lent:</div> - <div class='line'>Though they as a trifle leave thee,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee,</div> - <div class='line'>Though thou be to them a scorn,</div> - <div class='line'>That to nought but earth are born:</div> - <div class='line'>Let my life no longer be</div> - <div class='line'>Than I am in love with thee.</div> - <div class='line'>Though our wise ones call thee madness,</div> - <div class='line'>Let me never taste of sadness,</div> - <div class='line'>If I love not thy maddest fits,</div> - <div class='line'>Above all their greatest wits.</div> - <div class='line'>And though some too seeming holy,</div> - <div class='line'>Do account thy raptures folly,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou dost teach me to contemn</div> - <div class='line'>What makes knaves and fools of them.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE V<br /> <span class='small'>ON THOMSON AND COWPER</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>Thomson, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of -mortals and of poets. But he was also one of the best both of -mortals and of poets. Dr. Johnson makes it his praise that he wrote -‘no line which dying he would wish to blot.’ Perhaps a better -proof of his honest simplicity, and inoffensive goodness of disposition, -would be that he wrote no line which any other person living would -wish that he should blot. Indeed, he himself wished, on his death-bed, -formally to expunge his dedication of one of the Seasons to that -finished courtier, and candid biographer of his own life, Bub -Doddington. As critics, however, not as moralists, we might say -on the other hand—‘Would he had blotted a thousand!’—The -same suavity of temper and sanguine warmth of feeling which threw -such a natural grace and genial spirit of enthusiasm over his poetry, -was also the cause of its inherent vices and defects. He is affected -through carelessness: pompous from unsuspecting simplicity of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>character. He is frequently pedantic and ostentatious in his style, -because he had no consciousness of these vices in himself. He -mounts upon stilts, not out of vanity, but indolence. He seldom -writes a good line, but he makes up for it by a bad one. He takes -advantage of all the most trite and mechanical common-places of -imagery and diction as a kindly relief to his Muse, and as if he -thought them quite as good, and likely to be quite as acceptable to -the reader, as his own poetry. He did not think the difference -worth putting himself to the trouble of accomplishing. He had too -little art to conceal his art: or did not even seem to know that there -was any occasion for it. His art is as naked and undisguised as his -nature; the one is as pure and genuine as the other is gross, gaudy, -and meretricious.—All that is admirable in the Seasons, is the -emanation of a fine natural genius, and sincere love of his subject, -unforced, unstudied, that comes uncalled for, and departs unbidden. -But he takes no pains, uses no self-correction; or if he seems to -labour, it is worse than labour lost. His genius ‘cannot be constrained -by mastery.’ The feeling of nature, of the changes of the -seasons, was in his mind; and he could not help conveying this -feeling to the reader, by the mere force of spontaneous expression; -but if the expression did not come of itself, he left the whole business -to chance; or, willing to evade instead of encountering the difficulties -of his subject, fills up the intervals of true inspiration with the most -vapid and worthless materials, pieces out a beautiful half line with a -bombastic allusion, or overloads an exquisitely natural sentiment or -image with a cloud of painted, pompous, cumbrous phrases, like the -shower of roses, in which he represents the Spring, his own lovely, -fresh, and innocent Spring, as descending to the earth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come,</div> - <div class='line'>And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,</div> - <div class='line'>While music wakes around, veil’d in a shower</div> - <div class='line'>Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Who, from such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as -this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions -of natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion -through this and the following cantos? For instance, the very next -passage is crowded with a set of striking images.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And see where surly Winter passes off</div> - <div class='line'>Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:</div> - <div class='line'>His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,</div> - <div class='line'>The shatter’d forest, and the ravag’d vale;</div> - <div class='line'>While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,</div> - <div class='line'>The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.</div> - <div class='line'>As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,</div> - <div class='line'>And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,</div> - <div class='line'>Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets</div> - <div class='line'>Deform the day delightless; so that scarce</div> - <div class='line'>The bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht</div> - <div class='line'>To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore</div> - <div class='line'>The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath,</div> - <div class='line'>And sing their wild notes to the list’ning waste.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets: for he gives most -of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal -to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the -picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and -curious details of objects;—no one has yet come up to him in giving -the sum total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind. -He does not go into the <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">minutiæ</span></i> of a landscape, but describes the -vivid impression which the whole makes upon his own imagination; -and thus transfers the same unbroken, unimpaired impression to the -imagination of his readers. The colours with which he paints seem -yet wet and breathing, like those of the living statue in the Winter’s -Tale. Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh -and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of the atmosphere, its -humidity or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow of summer, the -gloom of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the full overshadowing -foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of autumn. -He transports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, or plunges us -into the chilling horrors and desolation of the frozen zone. We -hear the snow drifting against the broken casement without, and see -the fire blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops of -a vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads, or the coming -storm resounds through the leafless groves. In a word, he describes -not to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the whole man. -He puts his heart into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanises -whatever he touches. He makes all his descriptions teem with life -and vivifying soul. His faults were those of his style—of the author -and the man; but the original genius of the poet, the pith and marrow -of his imagination, the fine natural mould in which his feelings were -bedded, were too much for him to counteract by neglect, or affectation, -or false ornaments. It is for this reason that he is, perhaps, the most -popular of all our poets, treating of a subject that all can understand, -and in a way that is interesting to all alike, to the ignorant or the -refined, because he gives back the impression which the things -<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>themselves make upon us in nature. ‘That,’ said a man of genius, -seeing a little shabby soiled copy of Thomson’s Seasons lying on the -window-seat of an obscure country alehouse—‘That is true fame!’</p> - -<p class='c011'>It has been supposed by some, that the Castle of Indolence is -Thomson’s best poem; but that is not the case. He has in it, -indeed, poured out the whole soul of indolence, diffuse, relaxed, -supine, dissolved into a voluptuous dream; and surrounded himself -with a set of objects and companions, in entire unison with the -listlessness of his own temper. Nothing can well go beyond the -descriptions of these inmates of the place, and their luxurious -pampered way of life—of him who came among them like ‘a -burnished fly in month of June,’ but soon left them on his heedless -way; and him,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘For whom the merry bells had rung, I ween,</div> - <div class='line'>If in this nook of quiet, bells had ever been.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The in-door quiet and cushioned ease, where ‘all was one full-swelling -bed’; the out-of-door stillness, broken only by ‘the stock-dove’s -plaint amid the forest deep,’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>are in the most perfect and delightful keeping. But still there are no -passages in this exquisite little production of sportive ease and fancy, -equal to the best of those in the Seasons. Warton, in his Essay on -Pope, was the first to point out and do justice to some of these; for -instance, to the description of the effects of the contagion among our -ships at Carthagena—‘of the frequent corse heard nightly plunged -amid the sullen waves,’ and to the description of the pilgrims lost in -the deserts of Arabia. This last passage, profound and striking as -it is, is not free from those faults of style which I have already -noticed.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>‘—— ——Breath’d hot</div> - <div class='line'>From all the boundless furnace of the sky,</div> - <div class='line'>And the wide-glitt’ring waste of burning sand,</div> - <div class='line'>A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites</div> - <div class='line'>With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,</div> - <div class='line'>Son of the desert, ev’n the camel feels</div> - <div class='line'>Shot through his wither’d heart the fiery blast.</div> - <div class='line'>Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,</div> - <div class='line'>Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,</div> - <div class='line'>Commov’d around, in gath’ring eddies play;</div> - <div class='line'>Nearer and nearer still they dark’ning come,</div> - <div class='line'>Till with the gen’ral all-involving storm</div> - <div class='line'>Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise,</div> - <div class='line'>And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath descending hills the caravan</div> - <div class='line'>Is buried deep. In Cairo’s crowded streets,</div> - <div class='line'>Th’ impatient merchant, wond’ring, waits in vain;</div> - <div class='line'>And Mecca saddens at the long delay.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There are other passages of equal beauty with these; such as that -of the hunted stag, followed by ‘the inhuman rout,’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>‘——That from the shady depth</div> - <div class='line'>Expel him, circling through his ev’ry shift.</div> - <div class='line'>He sweeps the forest oft, and sobbing sees</div> - <div class='line'>The glades mild op’ning to the golden day,</div> - <div class='line'>Where in kind contest with his butting friends</div> - <div class='line'>He wont to struggle, or his loves enjoy.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The whole of the description of the frozen zone, in the Winter, is -perhaps even finer and more thoroughly felt, as being done from early -associations, than<a id='t89'></a> that of the torrid zone in his Summer. Any thing -more beautiful than the following account of the Siberian exiles is, I -think, hardly to be found in the whole range of poetry.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘There through the prison of unbounded wilds,</div> - <div class='line'>Barr’d by the hand of nature from escape,</div> - <div class='line'>Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around</div> - <div class='line'>Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow,</div> - <div class='line'>And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods,</div> - <div class='line'>That stretch athwart the solitary vast</div> - <div class='line'>Their icy horrors to the frozen main;</div> - <div class='line'>And cheerless towns far distant, never bless’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Save when its annual course the caravan</div> - <div class='line'>Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,</div> - <div class='line'>With news of human kind.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The feeling of loneliness, of distance, of lingering, slow-revolving -years of pining expectation, of desolation within and without the -heart, was never more finely expressed than it is here.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The account which follows of the employments of the Polar night—of -the journeys of the natives by moonlight, drawn by rein-deer, -and of the return of spring in Lapland—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Where pure Niemi’s fairy mountains rise,</div> - <div class='line'>And fring’d with roses Tenglio rolls his stream,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>is equally picturesque and striking in a different way. The traveller -lost in the snow, is a well-known and admirable dramatic episode. I -prefer, however, giving one example of our author’s skill in painting -common domestic scenery, as it will bear a more immediate comparison -with the style of some later writers on such subjects. It is of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>little consequence what passage we take. The following description -of the first setting in of winter is, perhaps, as pleasing as any.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Through the hush’d air the whitening shower descends,</div> - <div class='line'>At first thin wav’ring, till at last the flakes</div> - <div class='line'>Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day</div> - <div class='line'>With a continual flow. The cherish’d fields</div> - <div class='line'>Put on their winter-robe of purest white:</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts</div> - <div class='line'>Along the mazy current. Low the woods</div> - <div class='line'>Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid Sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Faint, from the West emits his ev’ning ray,</div> - <div class='line'>Earth’s universal face, deep hid, and chill,</div> - <div class='line'>Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide</div> - <div class='line'>The works of man. Drooping, the lab’rer-ox</div> - <div class='line'>Stands cover’d o’er with snow, and then demands</div> - <div class='line'>The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav’n,</div> - <div class='line'>Tam’d by the cruel season, crowd around</div> - <div class='line'>The winnowing store, and claim the little boon</div> - <div class='line'>Which Providence assigns them. One alone,</div> - <div class='line'>The red-breast, sacred to the household Gods,</div> - <div class='line'>Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,</div> - <div class='line'>In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves</div> - <div class='line'>His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man</div> - <div class='line'>His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first</div> - <div class='line'>Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights</div> - <div class='line'>On the warm hearth; then hopping o’er the floor,</div> - <div class='line'>Eyes all the smiling family askance,</div> - <div class='line'>And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is:</div> - <div class='line'>Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs</div> - <div class='line'>Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds</div> - <div class='line'>Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,</div> - <div class='line'>Though timorous of heart, and hard beset</div> - <div class='line'>By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,</div> - <div class='line'>And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,</div> - <div class='line'>Urg’d on by fearless want. The bleating kind</div> - <div class='line'>Eye the bleak heav’n, and next, the glist’ning earth,</div> - <div class='line'>With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispers’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Dig for the wither’d herb through heaps of snow.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>It is thus that Thomson always gives a <em>moral sense</em> to nature.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Thomson’s blank verse is not harsh, or utterly untuneable; but it -is heavy and monotonous; it seems always labouring up-hill. The -selections which have been made from his works in Enfield’s -Speaker, and other books of extracts, do not convey the most favourable -idea of his genius or taste; such as Palemon and Lavinia, Damon -and Musidora, Celadon and Amelia. Those parts of any author -which are most liable to be stitched in worsted, and framed and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>glazed, are not by any means always the best. The moral descriptions -and reflections in the Seasons are in an admirable spirit, and written -with great force and fervour.</p> - -<p class='c011'>His poem on Liberty is not equally good: his Muse was too easy -and good-natured for the subject, which required as much indignation -against unjust and arbitrary power, as complacency in the constitutional -monarchy, under which, just after the expulsion of the Stuarts and -the establishment of the House of Hanover, in contempt of the claims -of hereditary pretenders to the throne, Thomson lived. Thomson -was but an indifferent hater; and the most indispensable part of the -love of liberty has unfortunately hitherto been the hatred of tyranny. -Spleen is the soul of patriotism, and of public good: but you would -not expect a man who has been seen eating peaches off a tree with -both hands in his waistcoat pockets, to be ‘overrun with the spleen,’ -or to heat himself needlessly about an abstract proposition.</p> - -<p class='c011'>His plays are liable to the same objection. They are never acted, -and seldom read. The author could not, or would not, put himself -out of his way, to enter into the situations and passions of others, -particularly of a tragic kind. The subject of Tancred and Sigismunda, -which is taken from a serious episode in Gil Blas, is an admirable -one, but poorly handled: the ground may be considered as still -unoccupied.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this connection, lived at a -considerable distance of time after Thomson; and had some advantages -over him, particularly in simplicity of style, in a certain precision and -minuteness of graphical description, and in a more careful and leisurely -choice of such topics only as his genius and peculiar habits of mind -prompted him to treat of. The Task has fewer blemishes than the -Seasons; but it has not the same capital excellence, the ‘unbought -grace’ of poetry, the power of moving and infusing the warmth of the -author’s mind into that of the reader. If Cowper had a more -polished taste, Thomson had, beyond comparison, a more fertile -genius, more impulsive force, a more entire forgetfulness of himself -in his subject. If in Thomson you are sometimes offended with the -slovenliness of the author by profession, determined to get through -his task at all events; in Cowper you are no less dissatisfied with the -finicalness of the private gentleman, who does not care whether he -completes his work or not; and in whatever he does, is evidently -more solicitous to please himself than the public. There is an -effeminacy about him, which shrinks from and repels common and -hearty sympathy. With all his boasted simplicity and love of the -country, he seldom launches out into general descriptions of nature: -he looks at her over his clipped hedges, and from his well-swept -<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>garden-walks; or if he makes a bolder experiment now and then, -it is with an air of precaution, as if he were afraid of being caught in -a shower of rain, or of not being able, in case of any untoward -accident, to make good his retreat home. He shakes hands with -nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on, and leads ‘his Vashti’ -forth to public view with a look of consciousness and attention to -etiquette, as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a minuet. -He is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, after a romantic -adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies or a little child on -a common, to the drawing room and the ladies again, to the sofa and -the tea-kettle—No, I beg his pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured -tea-kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing urn. His walks and -arbours are kept clear of worms and snails, with as much an appearance -of <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petit-maitreship</span></i> as of humanity. He has some of the sickly -sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope; but then Pope prided -himself in them: whereas, Cowper affects to be all simplicity and -plainness. He had neither Thomson’s love of the unadorned beauties -of nature, nor Pope’s exquisite sense of the elegances of art. He -was, in fact, a nervous man, afraid of trusting himself to the seductions -of the one, and ashamed of putting forward his pretensions to an -intimacy with the other: but to be a coward, is not the way to -succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love! Still he is a genuine -poet, and deserves all his reputation. His worst vices are amiable -weaknesses, elegant trifling. Though there is a frequent dryness, -timidity, and jejuneness in his manner, he has left a number of -pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement, as well as of -natural imagery and feeling, which can hardly be forgotten but with -the language itself. Such, among others, are his memorable description -of the post coming in, that of the preparations for tea in a winter’s -evening in the country, of the unexpected fall of snow, of the frosty -morning (with the fine satirical transition to the Empress of Russia’s -palace of ice), and most of all, the winter’s walk at noon. Every -one of these may be considered as distinct studies, or highly finished -cabinet-pieces, arranged without order or coherence. I shall be -excused for giving the last of them, as what has always appeared -to me one of the most feeling, elegant, and perfect specimens of this -writer’s manner.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The night was winter in his roughest mood;</div> - <div class='line'>The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the southern side of the slant hills,</div> - <div class='line'>And where the woods fence off the northern blast,</div> - <div class='line'>The season smiles, resigning all its rage,</div> - <div class='line'>And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>Without a cloud, and white without a speck</div> - <div class='line'>The dazzling splendour of the scene below.</div> - <div class='line'>Again the harmony comes o’er the vale;</div> - <div class='line'>And through the trees I view th’ embattled tow’r,</div> - <div class='line'>Whence all the music. I again perceive</div> - <div class='line'>The soothing influence of the wafted strains,</div> - <div class='line'>And settle in soft musings as I tread</div> - <div class='line'>The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.</div> - <div class='line'>The roof, though moveable through all its length,</div> - <div class='line'>As the wind sways it, has yet well suffic’d,</div> - <div class='line'>And, intercepting in their silent fall</div> - <div class='line'>The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.</div> - <div class='line'>No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.</div> - <div class='line'>The redbreast warbles still, but is content</div> - <div class='line'>With slender notes, and more than half suppress’d.</div> - <div class='line'>Pleas’d with his solitude, and flitting light</div> - <div class='line'>From spray to spray, where’er he rests he shakes</div> - <div class='line'>From many a twig the pendent drop of ice,</div> - <div class='line'>That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below.</div> - <div class='line'>Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,</div> - <div class='line'>Charms more than silence. Meditation here</div> - <div class='line'>May think down hours to moments. Here the heart</div> - <div class='line'>May give a useful lesson to the head,</div> - <div class='line'>And Learning wiser grow without his books.</div> - <div class='line'>Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,</div> - <div class='line'>Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells</div> - <div class='line'>In heads replete with thoughts of other men;</div> - <div class='line'>Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.</div> - <div class='line'>Books are not seldom talismans and spells,</div> - <div class='line'>By which the magic art of shrewder wits</div> - <div class='line'>Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall’d.</div> - <div class='line'>Some to the fascination of a name</div> - <div class='line'>Surrender judgment hood-wink’d. Some the style</div> - <div class='line'>Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds</div> - <div class='line'>Of error leads them, by a tune entranc’d,</div> - <div class='line'>While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear</div> - <div class='line'>The insupportable fatigue of thought,</div> - <div class='line'>And swallowing therefore without pause or choice</div> - <div class='line'>The total grist unsifted, husks and all.</div> - <div class='line'>But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course</div> - <div class='line'>Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,</div> - <div class='line'>And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,</div> - <div class='line'>And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time</div> - <div class='line'>Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,</div> - <div class='line'>Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,</div> - <div class='line'>Not shy, as in the world, and to be won</div> - <div class='line'>By slow solicitation, seize at once</div> - <div class='line'>The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the -polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the -virtuous man. His religious poetry, except where it takes a tincture -of controversial heat, wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not -a seraph’s wing. I might refer, in illustration of this opinion, to -the laboured anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth -book. He could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any -modern poet: but he could not describe the New Jerusalem so well -as John Bunyan;—nor are his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good -as Robinson Crusoe. The one is not so much like a vision, nor is -the other so much like the reality.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The first volume of Cowper’s poems has, however, been less read -than it deserved. The comparison in these poems of the proud and -humble believer to the peacock and the pheasant, and the parallel -between Voltaire and the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of -eloquence and poetry, particularly the last.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,</div> - <div class='line'>Pillow and bobbins all her little store;</div> - <div class='line'>Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay,</div> - <div class='line'>Shuffling her threads about the live-long day,</div> - <div class='line'>Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night,</div> - <div class='line'>Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light;</div> - <div class='line'>She, for her humble sphere by nature fit,</div> - <div class='line'>Has little understanding, and no wit,</div> - <div class='line'>Receives no praise; but, though her lot be such,</div> - <div class='line'>(Toilsome and indigent) she renders much;</div> - <div class='line'>Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true—</div> - <div class='line'>A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew;</div> - <div class='line'>And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Her title to a treasure in the skies.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>O happy peasant! Oh unhappy bard!</div> - <div class='line'>His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward;</div> - <div class='line'>He prais’d, perhaps, for ages yet to come,</div> - <div class='line'>She never heard of half a mile from home:</div> - <div class='line'>He lost in errors his vain heart prefers,</div> - <div class='line'>She safe in the simplicity of hers.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>His character of Whitfield, in the poem on Hope, is one of his -most spirited and striking things. It is written <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">con amore</span></i>.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘But if, unblameable in word and thought,</div> - <div class='line'>A man arise, a man whom God has taught,</div> - <div class='line'>With all Elijah’s dignity of tone,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the love of the beloved John,</div> - <div class='line'>To storm the citadels they build in air,</div> - <div class='line'>To smite the untemper’d wall (’tis death to spare,)</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>To sweep away all refuges of lies,</div> - <div class='line'>And place, instead of quirks, themselves devise,</div> - <div class='line'>Lama Sabachthani before their eyes;</div> - <div class='line'>To show that without Christ all gain is loss,</div> - <div class='line'>All hope despair that stands not on his cross;</div> - <div class='line'>Except a few his God may have impressed,</div> - <div class='line'>A tenfold phrensy seizes all the rest.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>These lines were quoted, soon after their appearance, by the Monthly -Reviewers, to shew that Cowper was no poet, though they afterwards -took credit to themselves for having been the first to introduce his -verses to the notice of the public. It is not a little remarkable that -these same critics regularly damned, at its first coming out, every -work which has since acquired a standard reputation with the public.—Cowper’s -verses on his mother’s picture, and his lines to Mary, -are some of the most pathetic that ever were written. His stanzas on -the loss of the Royal George have a masculine strength and feeling -beyond what was usual with him. The story of John Gilpin has -perhaps given as much pleasure to as many people as any thing of the -same length that ever was written.</p> - -<p class='c011'>His life was an unhappy one. It was embittered by a morbid -affection, and by his religious sentiments. Nor are we to wonder at -this, or bring it as a charge against religion; for it is the nature of -the poetical temperament to carry every thing to excess, whether it -be love, religion, pleasure, or pain, as we may see in the case of -Cowper and of Burns, and to find torment or rapture in that in which -others merely find a resource from <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ennui</span></i>, or a relaxation from common -occupation.</p> - -<p class='c011'>There are two poets still living who belong to the same class of -excellence, and of whom I shall here say a few words; I mean -Crabbe, and Robert Bloomfield, the author of the Farmer’s Boy. -As a painter of simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the -country, few writers have more undeniable and unassuming pretensions -than the ingenious and self-taught poet, last-mentioned. -Among the sketches of this sort I would mention, as equally distinguished -for delicacy, faithfulness, and <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naïveté</span></i>, his description of -lambs racing, of the pigs going out an acorning, of the boy sent to -feed his sheep before the break of day in winter; and I might add -the innocently told story of the poor bird-boy, who in vain through -the live-long day expects his promised companions at his hut, to -share his feast of roasted sloes with him, as an example of that -humble pathos, in which this author excels. The fault indeed of -his genius is that it is too humble: his Muse has something not -only rustic, but menial in her aspect. He seems afraid of elevating -<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>nature, lest she should be ashamed of him. Bloomfield very -beautifully describes the lambs in springtime as racing round the -hillocks of green turf: Thomson, in describing the same image, -makes the mound of earth the remains of an old Roman encampment. -Bloomfield never gets beyond his own experience; and that is somewhat -confined. He gives the simple appearance of nature, but he -gives it naked, shivering, and unclothed with the drapery of a moral -imagination. His poetry has much the effect of the first approach -of spring, ‘while yet the year is unconfirmed,’ where a few tender -buds venture forth here and there, but are chilled by the early frosts -and nipping breath of poverty.—It should seem from this and other -instances that have occurred within the last century, that we cannot -expect from original genius alone, without education, in modern and -more artificial periods, the same bold and independent results as in -former periods. And one reason appears to be, that though such -persons, from whom we might at first expect a restoration of the good -old times of poetry, are not encumbered and enfeebled by the -trammels of custom, and the dull weight of other men’s ideas; yet -they are oppressed by the consciousness of a want of the common -advantages which others have; are looking at the tinsel finery of the -age, while they neglect the rich unexplored mine in their own breasts; -and instead of setting an example for the world to follow, spend their -lives in aping, or in the despair of aping, the hackneyed accomplishments -of their inferiors. Another cause may be, that original genius -alone is not sufficient to produce the highest excellence, without a -corresponding state of manners, passions, and religious belief: that no -single mind can move in direct opposition to the vast machine of the -world around it; that the poet can do no more than stamp the mind -of his age upon his works; and that all that the ambition of the highest -genius can hope to arrive at, after the lapse of one or two generations, -is the perfection of that more refined and effeminate style of studied -elegance and adventitious ornament, which is the result, not of nature, -but of art. In fact, no other style of poetry has succeeded, or seems -likely to succeed, in the present day. The public taste hangs like a -millstone round the neck of all original genius that does not conform -to established and exclusive models. The writer is not only without -popular sympathy, but without a rich and varied mass of materials -for his mind to work upon and assimilate unconsciously to itself; his -attempts at originality are looked upon as affectation, and in the end, -degenerate into it from the natural spirit of contradiction, and the -constant uneasy sense of disappointment and undeserved ridicule. -But to return.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Crabbe is, if not the most natural, the most literal of our descriptive -<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>poets. He exhibits the smallest circumstances of the smallest things. -He gives the very costume of meanness; the nonessentials of every -trifling incident. He is his own landscape-painter, and engraver too. -His pastoral scenes seem pricked on paper in little dotted lines. He -describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain -for rent. He has an eye to the number of arms in an old worm-eaten -chair, and takes care to inform himself and the reader whether a -joint-stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by the -fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance as a tottering -world; and he records the rent in a ragged counterpane as an event -in history. He is equally curious in his back-grounds and in his -figures. You know the christian and surnames of every one of his -heroes,—the dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a -Monday,—their place of birth and burial, the colour of their clothes, -and of their hair, and whether they squinted or not. He takes an -inventory of the human heart exactly in the same manner as of the -furniture of a sick room: his sentiments have very much the air of -fixtures; he gives you the petrifaction of a sigh, and carves a tear, to -the life, in stone. Almost all his characters are tired of their lives, -and you heartily wish them dead. They remind one of anatomical -preservations; or may be said to bear the same relation to actual life -that a stuffed cat in a glass-case does to the real one purring on the -hearth: the skin is the same, but the life and the sense of heat is gone. -Crabbe’s poetry is like a museum, or curiosity-shop: every thing has -the same posthumous appearance, the same inanimateness and identity -of character. If Bloomfield is too much of the Farmer’s Boy, Crabbe -is too much of the parish beadle, an overseer of the country poor. He -has no delight beyond the walls of a workhouse, and his officious zeal -would convert the world into a vast infirmary. He is a kind of -Ordinary, not of Newgate, but of nature. His poetical morality is taken -from Burn’s Justice, or the Statutes against Vagrants. He sets his own -imagination in the stocks, and his Muse, like Malvolio, ‘wears cruel -garters.’ He collects all the petty vices of the human heart, and -superintends, as in a panopticon, a select circle of rural malefactors. -He makes out the poor to be as bad as the rich—a sort of vermin for -the others to hunt down and trample upon, and this he thinks a good -piece of work. With him there are but two moral categories, riches -and poverty, authority and dependence. His parish apprentice, -Richard Monday, and his wealthy baronet, Sir Richard Monday, of -Monday-place, are the same individual—the extremes of the same -character, and of his whole system. ‘The latter end of his Commonwealth -does not forget the beginning.’ But his parish ethics are -the very worst model for a state: any thing more degrading and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>helpless cannot well be imagined. He exhibits just the contrary -view of human life to that which Gay has done in his Beggar’s -Opera. In a word, Crabbe is the only poet who has attempted and -succeeded in the <em>still life</em> of tragedy: who gives the stagnation of -hope and fear—the deformity of vice without the temptation—the -pain of sympathy without the interest—and who seems to rely, for -the delight he is to convey to his reader, on the truth and accuracy -with which he describes only what is disagreeable.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The best descriptive poetry is not, after all, to be found in our -descriptive poets. There are set descriptions of the flowers, for -instance, in Thomson, Cowper, and others; but none equal to those -in Milton’s Lycidas, and in the Winter’s Tale.</p> - -<p class='c011'>We have few good pastorals in the language. Our manners are -not Arcadian; our climate is not an eternal spring; our age is not -the age of gold. We have no pastoral-writers equal to Theocritus, -nor any landscapes like those of Claude Lorraine. The best parts of -Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar are two fables, Mother Hubberd’s -Tale, and the Oak and the Briar; which last is as splendid a piece -of oratory as any to be found in the records of the eloquence of the -British senate! Browne, who came after Spenser, and Withers, -have left some pleasing allegorical poems of this kind. Pope’s are as -full of senseless finery and trite affectation, as if a peer of the realm -were to sit for his picture with a crook and cocked hat on, smiling -with an insipid air of no-meaning, between nature and fashion. Sir -Philip Sidney’s Arcadia is a lasting monument of perverted power; -where an image of extreme beauty, as that of ‘the shepherd boy -piping as though he should never be old,’ peeps out once in a hundred -folio pages, amidst heaps of intricate sophistry and scholastic quaintness. -It is not at all like Nicholas Poussin’s picture, in which he -represents some shepherds wandering out in a morning of the spring, -and coming to a tomb with this inscription—‘I also was an Arcadian!’ -Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, Walton’s -Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic -interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the description -of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of the -author’s mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius’s Piscatory -Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks -of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air: we walk -with him along the dusty road-side, or repose on the banks of the -river under a shady tree; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe -what he beautifully calls ‘the patience and simplicity of poor honest -fishermen.’ We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake -of their simple, but delicious fare; while Maud, the pretty milk-maid, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>at her mother’s desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow; -‘Come live with me, and be my love.’ Good cheer is not neglected -in this work, any more than in Homer, or any other history that sets -a proper value on the good things of this life. The prints in the -Complete Angler give an additional reality and interest to the scenes -it describes. While Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy -work, amiable and happy old man, shall last!—It is in the notes to -it that we find that character of ‘a fair and happy milkmaid,’ by Sir -Thomas Overbury, which may vie in beauty and feeling with -Chaucer’s character of Griselda.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘A fair and happy milk-maid is a country wench that is so far from -making herself beautiful by art, that one look of her’s is able to put all -face-physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb -orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellences -stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. -The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than -outsides of tissue; for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silkworm, -she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, -with lying long in bed, spoil both her complexion and conditions. Nature -hath taught her, too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul: she rises therefore -with chanticleer, her dame’s cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. -Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made -haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft -with pity; and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) -she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of Fortune. She doth all things -with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being -her mind is to do well. She bestows her year’s wages at next fair; and in -choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The -garden and bee-hive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the -longer for’t. She dares go alone, and unfold sheep in the night, and fears -no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say the truth, she is -never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, -and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are -not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste, -that she dare tell them; only a Friday’s dream is all her superstition; that -she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she; and all her care is she -may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her -winding-sheet.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>The love of the country has been sung by poets, and echoed by -philosophers; but the first have not attempted, and the last have been -greatly puzzled to account for it. I do not know that any one has -ever explained, satisfactorily, the true source of this feeling, or of that -soothing emotion which the sight of the country, or a lively description -of rural objects hardly ever fails to infuse into the mind. Some -have ascribed this feeling to the natural beauty of the objects themselves; -<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>others to the freedom from care, the silence and tranquillity -which scenes of retirement afford; others to the healthy and innocent -employments of a country life; others to the simplicity of country -manners, and others to a variety of different causes; but none to the -right one. All these, indeed, have their effect; but there is another -principal one which has not been touched upon, or only slightly -glanced at. I will not, however, imitate Mr. Horne Tooke, who -after enumerating seventeen different definitions of the verb, and -laughing at them all as deficient and nugatory, at the end of two -quarto volumes does not tell us what the verb really is, and has left -posterity to pluck out ‘the heart of his mystery.’ I will say at once -what it is that distinguishes this interest from others, and that is its -<em>abstractedness</em>. The interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, -and confined to the individual; the interest we feel in external nature -is common, and transferable from one object to all others of the same -class. Thus.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Rousseau in his Confessions relates, that when he took possession -of his room at Annecy, he found that he could see ‘a little spot of -green’ from his window, which endeared his situation the more to -him, because, he says, it was the first time he had had this object -constantly before him since he left Boissy, the place where he was at -school when a child.<a id='r7' /><a href='#f7' class='c015'><sup>[7]</sup></a> Some such feeling as that here described will -be found lurking at the bottom of all our attachments of this sort. -Were it not for the recollections habitually associated with them, -natural objects could not interest the mind in the manner they do. -No doubt, the sky is beautiful, the clouds sail majestically along its -bosom; the sun is cheering; there is something exquisitely graceful -in the manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its branches; the -motion with which they bend and tremble in the evening breeze is -soft and lovely; there is music in the babbling of a brook; the view -from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur; nor can we behold -the ocean with indifference. Or, as the Minstrel sweetly sings,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of charms which Nature to her votary yields!</div> - <div class='line'>The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;</div> - <div class='line'>All that the genial ray of morning gilds,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And all that echoes to the song of even,</div> - <div class='line'>All that the mountain’s sheltering bosom shields,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And all the dread magnificence of heaven,</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we -admire in Nature; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often -found connected with the strongest emotions; we become attached to -the most common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom -we have long known, and from whom we have received many benefits. -It is because natural objects have been associated with the sports of -our childhood, with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, -when the mind takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with -the fondest interest to whatever strikes its attention; with change of -place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends; it is -because they have surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in -sorrow, in pleasure and in pain; because they have been one chief -source and nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that -we love them as we do ourselves.</p> - -<p class='c011'>There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of -Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of -ideas. But this is not all. That which distinguishes this attachment -from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to -physical objects; the associations connected with any one object -extending to the whole class. Our having been attached to any -particular person does not make us feel the same attachment to the -next person we may chance to meet; but, if we have once associated -strong feelings of delight with the objects of natural scenery, the tie -becomes indissoluble, and we shall ever after feel the same attachment -to other objects of the same sort. I remember when I was abroad, -the trees, and grass, and wet leaves, rustling in the walks of the -Thuilleries, seemed to be as much English, to be as much the same -trees and grass, that I had always been used to, as the sun shining -over my head was the same sun which I saw in England; the faces -only were foreign to me. Whence comes this difference? It arises -from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the individual -with man, and only the idea of the class with natural objects. In the -one case, the external appearance or physical structure is the least -thing to be attended to; in the other, it is every thing. The springs -that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to me, lie -hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and ideas, -contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in -which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself, -governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can, -therefore, make no inference from one individual to another; nor can -my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond -himself to others. A crowd of people presents a disjointed, confused, -and unsatisfactory appearance to the eye, because there is nothing to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>connect the motley assemblage into one continuous or general impression, -unless when there is some common object of interest to fix -their attention, as in the case of a full pit at the play-house. The -same principle will also account for that feeling of littleness, vacuity, -and perplexity, which a stranger feels on entering the streets of a -populous city. Every individual he meets is a blow to his personal -identity. Every new face is a teazing, unanswered riddle. He feels -the same wearisome sensation in walking from Oxford Street to -Temple Bar, as a person would do who should be compelled to read -through the first leaf of all the volumes in a library. But it is otherwise -with respect to nature. A flock of sheep is not a contemptible, -but a beautiful sight. The greatest number and variety of physical -objects do not puzzle the will, or distract the attention, but are -massed together under one uniform and harmonious feeling. The -heart reposes in greater security on the immensity of Nature’s works, -‘expatiates freely there,’ and finds elbow room and breathing space. -We are always at home with Nature. There is neither hypocrisy, -caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours. Our intercourse with -her is not liable to accident or change, suspicion or disappointment: -she smiles on us still the same. A rose is always sweet, a lily is -always beautiful: we do not hate the one, nor envy the other. If -we have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a -deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its foot, we are sure -that wherever we can find a shady stream, we can enjoy the same -pleasure again; so that when we imagine these objects, we can easily -form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, -Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. -Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the -same kind being the same, not only in their appearance, but in their -practical uses, we habitually confound them together under the same -general idea; and whatever fondness we may have conceived for one, -is immediately placed to the common account. The most opposite -kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go to enrich the same -sentiment; and in our love of nature, there is all the force of individual -attachment, combined with the most airy abstraction. It is -this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and wild -interest, to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which every -one must have experienced who is a true lover of nature.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It is the same setting sun that we see and remember year after -year, through summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. The moon -that shines above our heads, or plays through the checquered shade, -is the same moon that we used to read of in Mrs. Radcliffe’s -romances. We see no difference in the trees first covered with leaves -<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>in the spring. The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream—the -woods swept by the loud blast—the dark massy foliage of autumn—the -grey trunks and naked branches of the trees in winter—the -sequestered copse, and wide-extended heath—the glittering sunny -showers, and December snows—are still the same, or accompanied -with the same thoughts and feelings: there is no object, however -trifling or rude, that does not in some mood or other find its way into -the heart, as a link in the chain of our living being; and this it is that -makes good that saying of the poet—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give</div> - <div class='line'>Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Thus nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it presents -to us an old acquaintance with unaltered looks; for there is that -consent and mutual harmony among all her works, one undivided -spirit pervading them throughout, that to him who has well acquainted -himself with them, they speak always the same well-known language, -striking on the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the -world, like the music of one’s native tongue heard in some far-off -country.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘My heart leaps up when I behold</div> - <div class='line'>A rainbow in the sky:</div> - <div class='line'>So was it when my life began,</div> - <div class='line'>So is it now I am a man,</div> - <div class='line'>So shall it be when I grow old and die.</div> - <div class='line'>The child’s the father of the man,</div> - <div class='line'>And I would have my years to be</div> - <div class='line'>Linked each to each by natural piety.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The daisy that first strikes the child’s eye in trying to leap over -his own shadow, is the same flower that with timid upward glance -implores the grown man not to tread upon it. Rousseau, in one of -his botanical excursions, meeting with the periwinkle, fell upon his -knees, crying out—<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah! voila de la pervenche!</span></i> It was because -he had thirty years before brought home the same flower with him -in one of his rambles with Madame de Warens, near Chambery. It -struck him as the same identical little blue flower that he remembered -so well; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced -from his memory. That, or a thousand other flowers of the same -name, were the same to him, to the heart, and to the eye; but there -was but one Madame Warens in the world, whose image was never -absent from his thoughts; with whom flowers and verdure sprung up -beneath his feet, and without whom all was cold and barren in nature -and in his own breast. The cuckoo, ‘that wandering voice,’ that -<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>comes and goes with the spring, mocks our ears with one note from -youth to age; and the lapwing, screaming round the traveller’s path, -repeats for ever the same sad story of Tereus and Philomel!</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE VI<br /> <span class='small'>ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, &C.</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>I shall in the present Lecture go back to the age of Queen Anne, -and endeavour to give a cursory account of the most eminent of our -poets, of whom I have not already spoken, from that period to the -present.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The three principal poets among the wits of Queen Anne’s reign, -next to Pope, were Prior, Swift, and Gay. Parnell, though a good-natured, -easy man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself -little more than an occasional versifier; and Arbuthnot, who had as -much wit as the best of them, chose to shew it in prose, and not in -verse. He had a very notable share in the immortal History of John -Bull, and the inimitable and praise-worthy Memoirs of Martinus -Scriblerus. There has been a great deal said and written about the -plagiarisms of Sterne; but the only real plagiarism he has been guilty -of (if such theft were a crime), is in taking Tristram Shandy’s father -from Martin’s, the elder Scriblerus. The original idea of the -character, that is, of the opinionated, captious old gentleman, who is -pedantic, not from profession, but choice, belongs to Arbuthnot.—Arbuthnot’s -style is distinguished from that of his contemporaries, -even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness. He leaves out -every superfluous word; is sparing of connecting particles, and introductory -phrases; uses always the simplest forms of construction; and -is more a master of the idiomatic peculiarities and internal resources -of the language than almost any other writer. There is a research in -the choice of a plain, as well as of an ornamented or learned style; -and, in fact, a great deal more. Among common English words, -there may be ten expressing the same thing with different degrees of -force and propriety, and only one of them the very word we want, -because it is the only one that answers exactly with the idea we have -in our minds. Each word in familiar use has a different set of -associations and shades of meaning attached to it, and distinguished -from each other by inveterate custom; and it is in having the whole -of these at our command, and in knowing which to choose, as they -are called for by the occasion, that the perfection of a pure conversational -prose-style consists. But in writing a florid and artificial style, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>neither the same range of invention, nor the same quick sense of propriety—nothing -but learning is required. If you know the words, -and their general meaning, it is sufficient: it is impossible you should -know the nicer inflections of signification, depending on an endless -variety of application, in expressions borrowed from a foreign or dead -language. They all impose upon the ear alike, because they are not -familiar to it; the only distinction left is between the pompous and -the plain; the <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">sesquipedalia verba</span></i> have this advantage, that they are -all of one length; and any words are equally fit for a learned style, -so that we have never heard them before. Themistocles thought -that the same sounding epithets could not suit all subjects, as the -same dress does not fit all persons. The style of our modern prose -writers is very fine in itself; but it wants variety of inflection and -adaptation; it hinders us from seeing the differences of the things it -undertakes to describe.</p> - -<p class='c011'>What I have here insisted on will be found to be the leading distinction -between the style of Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, and the other -writers of the age of Queen Anne, and the style of Dr. Johnson, -which succeeded to it. The one is English, and the other is not. -The writers first mentioned, in order to express their thoughts, looked -about them for the properest word to convey any idea, that the -language which they spoke, and which their countrymen understood, -afforded: Dr. Johnson takes the first English word that offers, and -by translating it at a venture into the first Greek or Latin word he -can think of, only retaining the English termination, produces an -extraordinary effect upon the reader, by much the same sort of -mechanical process that Trim converted the old jack-boots into a pair -of new mortars.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man, who liked to think and talk, -better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, -but too often by rote. His long compound Latin phrases required -less thought, and took up more room than others. What shews the -facilities afforded by this style of imposing generalization, is, that it -was instantly adopted with success by all those who were writers by -profession, or who were not; and that at present, we cannot see a -lottery puff or a quack advertisement pasted against a wall, that is -not perfectly Johnsonian in style. Formerly, the learned had the -privilege of translating their notions into Latin; and a great privilege -it was, as it confined the reputation and emoluments of learning to -themselves. Dr. Johnson may be said to have naturalised this -privilege, by inventing a sort of jargon translated half-way out of one -language into the other, which raised the Doctor’s reputation, and -confounded all ranks in literature.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>In the short period above alluded to, authors professed to write as -other men spoke; every body now affects to speak as authors write; and -any one who retains the use of his mother tongue, either in writing or -conversation, is looked upon as a very illiterate character.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Prior and Gay belong, in the characteristic excellences of their -style, to the same class of writers with Suckling, Rochester, and -Sedley: the former imbibed most of the licentious levity of the age -of Charles II. and carried it on beyond the Revolution under King -William. Prior has left no single work equal to Gay’s Fables, or -the Beggar’s Opera. But in his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has -shown even more genius, more playfulness, more mischievous gaiety. -No one has exceeded him in the laughing grace with which he glances -at a subject that will not bear examining, with which he gently hints -at what cannot be directly insisted on, with which he half conceals, -and half draws aside the veil from some of the Muses’ nicest -mysteries. His Muse is, in fact, a giddy wanton flirt, who spends -her time in playing at snap-dragon and blind-man’s buff, who tells -what she should not, and knows more than she tells. She laughs -at the tricks she shews us, and blushes, or would be thought to do so, -at what she keeps concealed. Prior has translated several of Fontaine’s -Tales from the French; and they have lost nothing in the translation, -either of their wit or malice. I need not name them: but the one I -like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus’s doves. No one -could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose moral, with -such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained new -self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and confusion into -which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize on -all the ticklish parts of his subject, from their involuntarily shrinking -under his grasp. Some of his imitations of Boileau’s servile addresses -to Louis XIV. which he has applied with a happy mixture of wit and -patriotic enthusiasm to King William, or as he familiarly calls him, to</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Little Will, the scourge of France,</div> - <div class='line'>No Godhead, but the first of men,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>are excellent, and shew the same talent for <em>double-entendre</em> and the -same gallantry of spirit, whether in the softer lyric, or the more lively -heroic. Some of Prior’s <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bon mots</span></i> are the best that are recorded.—His -serious poetry, as his <cite>Solomon</cite>, is as heavy as his familiar style -was light and agreeable. His moral Muse is a Magdalen, and should -not have obtruded herself on public view. Henry and Emma is -a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Nut-brown Maid, and not so -good as the original. In short, as we often see in other cases, where -<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>men thwart their own genius, Prior’s sentimental and romantic productions -are mere affectation, the result not of powerful impulse or -real feeling, but of a consciousness of his deficiencies, and a wish to -supply their place by labour and art.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Gay was sometimes grosser than Prior, not systematically, but -inadvertently—from not being so well aware of what he was about; -nor was there the same necessity for caution, for his grossness is by no -means so seductive or inviting.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Gay’s Fables are certainly a work of great merit, both as to the -quantity of invention implied, and as to the elegance and facility of the -execution. They are, however, spun out too long; the descriptions -and narrative are too diffuse and desultory; and the moral is sometimes -without point. They are more like Tales than Fables. The -best are, perhaps, the Hare with Many Friends, the Monkeys, and -the Fox at the Point of Death. His Pastorals are pleasing and -poetical. But his capital work is his Beggar’s Opera. It is indeed -a masterpiece of wit and genius, not to say of morality. In composing -it, he chose a very unpromising ground to work upon, and he has -prided himself in adorning it with all the graces, the precision, and -brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar error to call this a vulgar play. -So far from it, that I do not scruple to say that it appears to me one -of the most refined productions in the language. The elegance of -the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness of the -materials: by ‘happy alchemy of mind,’ the author has extracted an -essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its very -dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in -themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind: but, by the -sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highwaymen, -turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has converted -this motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and -philosophers. He has also effected this transformation without once -violating probability, or ‘o’erstepping the modesty of nature.’ In fact, -Gay has turned the tables on the critics; and by the assumed licence -of the mock-heroic style, has enabled himself to <em>do justice to nature</em>, -that is, to give all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to the -thoughts and expressions, without being called to the bar of false -taste and affected delicacy. The extreme beauty and feeling of the -song, ‘Woman is like the fair flower in its lustre,’ are only equalled -by its characteristic propriety and <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naïveté</span></i>. <em>Polly</em> describes her lover -going to the gallows, with the same touching simplicity, and with all -the natural fondness of a young girl in her circumstances, who sees in -his approaching catastrophe nothing but the misfortunes and the -personal accomplishments of the object of her affections. ‘I see -<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand; the admiring crowd -lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely end:—even -butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather than -consent to tie the fatal knot.’ The preservation of the character -and costume is complete. It has been said by a great authority—‘There -is some soul of goodness in things evil’:—and the <cite>Beggar’s -Opera</cite> is a good-natured but instructive comment on this text. The -poet has thrown all the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all the -intoxication of pleasure, and the vanity of despair, round the short-lived -existence of his heroes; while <em>Peachum</em> and <em>Lockitt</em> are seen in -the back-ground, parcelling out their months and weeks between -them. The general view exhibited of human life is of the most -subtle and abstracted kind. The author has, with great felicity, -brought out the good qualities and interesting emotions almost inseparable -from the lowest conditions; and with the same penetrating -glance, has detected the disguises which rank and circumstances lend -to exalted vice. Every line in this sterling comedy sparkles with -wit, and is fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The very wit, -however, takes off from the offensiveness of the satire; and I have -seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying the joke, -laughing most immoderately at the compliments paid to them as not -much worse than pickpockets and cut-throats in a different line of -life, and pleased, as it were, to see themselves humanised by some -sort of fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said that the -moral of the piece <em>is to shew the vulgarity of vice</em>; or that the same -violations of integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in -palliating their want of principle, are common to the great and -powerful, with the meanest and most contemptible of the species. -What can be more convincing than the arguments used by these -would-be politicians, to shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and -treachery, they do not come up to many of their betters? The -exclamation of <em>Mrs. Peachum</em>, when her daughter marries <em>Macheath</em>, -‘Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as if -you had married a lord,’ is worth all Miss Hannah More’s laboured -invectives on the laxity of the manners of high life!</p> - -<p class='c011'>I shall conclude this account of Gay with his verses on Sir Richard -Blackmore, which may serve at once as a specimen of his own -manner, and as a character of a voluminous contemporary poet, who -was admired by Mr. Locke, and knighted by King William <span class='fss'>III.</span></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘See who ne’er was nor will be half-read,</div> - <div class='line'>Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred;</div> - <div class='line'>Praised great Eliza in God’s anger,</div> - <div class='line'>Till all true Englishmen cried, ‘Hang her!’—</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>Maul’d human wit in one thick satire;</div> - <div class='line'>Next in three books spoil’d human nature:</div> - <div class='line'>Undid Creation at a jerk,</div> - <div class='line'>And of Redemption made damn’d work.</div> - <div class='line'>Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her</div> - <div class='line'>Full in the middle of the Scripture.</div> - <div class='line'>What wonders there the man, grown old, did?</div> - <div class='line'>Sternhold himself he out Sternholded.</div> - <div class='line'>Made David seem so mad and freakish,</div> - <div class='line'>All thought him just what thought King Achish.</div> - <div class='line'>No mortal read his Solomon</div> - <div class='line'>But judg’d Re’boam his own son.</div> - <div class='line'>Moses he serv’d as Moses Pharaoh,</div> - <div class='line'>And Deborah as she Siserah;</div> - <div class='line'>Made Jeremy full sore to cry,</div> - <div class='line'>And Job himself curse God and die.</div> - <div class='line'>What punishment all this must follow?</div> - <div class='line'>Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo?</div> - <div class='line'>Shall David as Uriah slay him?</div> - <div class='line'>Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him?</div> - <div class='line'>No!—none of these! Heaven spare his life!</div> - <div class='line'>But send him, honest Job, thy wife!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Gay’s Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, is as pleasant as -walking the streets must have been at the time when it was written. -His ballad of Black Eyed Susan is one of the most delightful that -can be imagined; nor do I see that it is a bit the worse for -Mr. Jekyll’s parody on it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Swift’s reputation as a poet has been in a manner obscured by the -greater splendour, by the natural force and inventive genius of his -prose writings; but if he had never written either the Tale of a Tub -or Gulliver’s Travels, his name merely as a poet would have come -down to us, and have gone down to posterity with well-earned -honours. His Imitations of Horace, and still more his Verses on -his own Death, place him in the first rank of agreeable moralists in -verse. There is not only a dry humour, an exquisite tone of irony, -in these productions of his pen; but there is a touching, unpretending -pathos, mixed up with the most whimsical and eccentric strokes of -pleasantry and satire. His Description of the Morning in London, -and of a City Shower, which were first published in the Tatler, are -among the most delightful of the contents of that very delightful -work. Swift shone as one of the most sensible of the poets; he is -also distinguished as one of the most nonsensical of them. No man -has written so many lack-a-daisical, slip-shod, tedious, trifling, foolish, -fantastical verses as he, which are so little an imputation on the -wisdom of the writer; and which, in fact, only shew his readiness -<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>to oblige others, and to forget himself. He has gone so far as to -invent a new stanza of fourteen and sixteen syllable lines for Mary -the cookmaid to vent her budget of nothings, and for Mrs. Harris to -gossip with the deaf old housekeeper. Oh, when shall we have such -another Rector of Laracor!—The Tale of a Tub is one of the most -masterly compositions in the language, whether for thought, wit, or -style. It is so capital and undeniable a proof of the author’s talents, -that Dr. Johnson, who did not like Swift, would not allow that he -wrote it. It is hard that the same performance should stand in the -way of a man’s promotion to a bishopric, as wanting gravity, and at the -same time be denied to be his, as having too much wit. It is a pity -the Doctor did not find out some graver author, for whom he felt a -critical kindness, on whom to father this splendid but unacknowledged -production. Dr. Johnson could not deny that Gulliver’s Travels -were his; he therefore disputed their merits, and said that after the -first idea of them was conceived, they were easy to execute; all the -rest followed mechanically. I do not know how that may be; but -the mechanism employed is something very different from any that -the author of Rasselas was in the habit of bringing to bear on such -occasions. There is nothing more futile, as well as invidious, than -this mode of criticising a work of original genius. Its greatest merit -is supposed to be in the invention; and you say, very wisely, that it -is not <em>in the execution</em>. You might as well take away the merit of the -invention of the telescope, by saying that, after its uses were explained -and understood, any ordinary eyesight could look through it. Whether -the excellence of Gulliver’s Travels is in the conception or the -execution, is of little consequence; the power is somewhere, and it -is a power that has moved the world. The power is not that of big -words and vaunting common places. Swift left these to those who -wanted them; and has done what his acuteness and intensity of mind -alone could enable any one to conceive or to perform. His object -was to strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which -external circumstances throw around them; and for this purpose he -has cheated the imagination of the illusions which the prejudices of -sense and of the world put upon it, by reducing every thing to the -abstract predicament of size. He enlarges or diminishes the scale, as -he wishes to shew the insignificance or the grossness of our overweening -self-love. That he has done this with mathematical precision, -with complete presence of mind and perfect keeping, in a manner that -comes equally home to the understanding of the man and of the child, -does not take away from the merit of the work or the genius of the -author. He has taken a new view of human nature, such as a being -of a higher sphere might take of it; he has torn the scales from off -<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>his moral vision; he has tried an experiment upon human life, and -sifted its pretensions from the alloy of circumstances; he has measured -it with a rule, has weighed it in a balance, and found it, for the most -part, wanting and worthless—in substance and in shew. Nothing solid, -nothing valuable is left in his system but virtue and wisdom. What a -libel is this upon mankind! What a convincing proof of misanthropy! -What presumption and what <em>malice prepense</em>, to shew men what they are, -and to teach them what they ought to be! What a mortifying stroke -aimed at national glory, is that unlucky incident of Gulliver’s wading -across the channel and carrying off the whole fleet of Blefuscu! -After that, we have only to consider which of the contending parties -was in the right. What a shock to personal vanity is given in the -account of Gulliver’s nurse Glumdalclitch! Still, notwithstanding -the disparagement to her personal charms, her good-nature remains -the same amiable quality as before. I cannot see the harm, the -misanthropy, the immoral and degrading tendency of this. The -moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is amusing. It is -an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the world; and -nothing but imposture has a right to complain of it. It is, indeed, the -way with our quacks in morality to preach up the dignity of human -nature, to pamper pride and hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of the -virtues they pretend to, and which they have not: but it was not -Swift’s way to cant morality, or any thing else; nor did his genius -prompt him to write unmeaning panegyrics on mankind!</p> - -<p class='c011'>I do not, therefore, agree with the estimate of Swift’s moral or -intellectual character, given by an eminent critic, who does not seem -to have forgotten the party politics of Swift. I do not carry my -political resentments so far back: I can at this time of day forgive -Swift for having been a Tory. I feel little disturbance (whatever I -might think of them) at his political sentiments, which died with him, -considering how much else he has left behind him of a more solid and -imperishable nature! If he had, indeed, (like some others) merely -left behind him the lasting infamy of a destroyer of his country, or -the shining example of an apostate from liberty, I might have thought -the case altered.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The determination with which Swift persisted in a preconcerted -theory, savoured of the morbid affection of which he died. There is -nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get -rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an -obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable. Swift -was not a Frenchman. In this respect he differed from Rabelais and -Voltaire. They have been accounted the three greatest wits in -modern times; but their wit was of a peculiar kind in each. They -<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>are little beholden to each other; there is some resemblance between -Lord Peter in the Tale of a Tub, and Rabelais’ Friar John; but in -general they are all three authors of a substantive character in themselves. -Swift’s wit (particularly in his chief prose works) was -serious, saturnine, and practical; Rabelais’ was fantastical and joyous; -Voltaire’s was light, sportive, and verbal. Swift’s wit was the wit of -sense; Rabelais’, the wit of nonsense; Voltaire’s, of indifference to -both. The ludicrous in Swift arises out of his keen sense of -impropriety, his soreness and impatience of the least absurdity. He -separates, with a severe and caustic air, truth from falsehood, folly -from wisdom, ‘shews vice her own image, scorn her own feature’; -and it is the force, the precision, and the honest abruptness with -which the separation is made, that excites our surprise, our admiration, -and laughter. He sets a mark of reprobation on that which offends -good sense and good manners, which cannot be mistaken, and which -holds it up to our ridicule and contempt ever after. His occasional -disposition to trifling (already noticed) was a relaxation from the -excessive earnestness of his mind. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Indignatio facit versus.</span></i> His better -genius was his spleen. It was the biting acrimony of his temper that -sharpened his other faculties. The truth of his perceptions produced -the pointed coruscations of his wit; his playful irony was the result of -inward bitterness of thought; his imagination was the product of the -literal, dry, incorrigible tenaciousness of his understanding. He -endeavoured to escape from the persecution of realities into the -regions of fancy, and invented his Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians, -Yahoos, and Houynhyms, as a diversion to the more painful knowledge -of the world around him: <em>they</em> only made him laugh, while men and -women made him angry. His feverish impatience made him view -the infirmities of that great baby the world, with the same scrutinizing -glance and jealous irritability that a parent regards the failings of -its offspring; but, as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on -this account been supposed to have more affection for other people’s -children than their own. In other respects, and except from the -sparkling effervescence of his gall, Swift’s brain was as ‘dry as the -remainder biscuit after a voyage.’ He hated absurdity—Rabelais -loved it, exaggerated it with supreme satisfaction, luxuriated in its -endless varieties, rioted in nonsense, ‘reigned there and revelled.’ -He dwelt on the absurd and ludicrous for the pleasure they gave him, -not for the pain. He lived upon laughter, and died laughing. He -indulged his vein, and took his full swing of folly. He did not -baulk his fancy or his readers. His wit was to him ‘as riches -fineless’; he saw no end of his wealth in that way, and set no limits -to his extravagance: he was communicative, prodigal, boundless, and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>inexhaustible. His were the Saturnalia of wit, the riches and the -royalty, the health and long life. He is intoxicated with gaiety, -mad with folly. His animal spirits drown him in a flood of mirth: -his blood courses up and down his veins like wine. His thirst of -enjoyment is as great as his thirst of drink: his appetite for good -things of all sorts is unsatisfied, and there is a never-ending supply. -<em>Discourse is dry</em>; so they moisten their words in their cups, and -relish their dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats’ tongues. -It is like Camacho’s wedding in Don Quixote, where Sancho ladled -out whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-kettles at a pull. The -flagons are set a running, their tongues wag at the same time, and -their mirth flows as a river. How Friar John roars and lays about -him in the vineyard! How Panurge whines in the storm, and how -dexterously he contrives to throw the sheep overboard! How much -Pantagruel behaves like a wise king! How Gargantua mewls, and -pules, and slabbers his nurse, and demeans himself most like a royal -infant! what provinces he devours! what seas he drinks up! How -he eats, drinks, and sleeps—sleeps, eats, and drinks! The style of -Rabelais is no less prodigious than his matter. His words are of -marrow, unctuous, dropping fatness. He was a mad wag, the king -of good fellows, and prince of practical philosophers!</p> - -<p class='c011'>Rabelais was a Frenchman of the old school—Voltaire of the new. -The wit of the one arose from an exuberance of enjoyment—of the -other, from an excess of indifference, real or assumed. Voltaire had -no enthusiasm for one thing or another: he made light of every thing. -In his hands all things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver -money in the Arabian Nights were changed by the hands of the enchanter -into little dry crumbling leaves! He is a Parisian. He never -exaggerates, is never violent: he treats things with the most provoking -<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sang froid</span></i>; and expresses his contempt by the most indirect hints, -and in the fewest words, as if he hardly thought them worth even his -contempt. He retains complete possession of himself and of his -subject. He does not effect his purpose by the eagerness of his -blows, but by the delicacy of his tact. The poisoned wound he -inflicted was so fine, as scarcely to be felt till it rankled and festered -in its ‘mortal consequences.’ His callousness was an excellent foil -for the antagonists he had mostly to deal with. He took knaves and -fools on his shield well. He stole away its cloak from grave -imposture. If he reduced other things below their true value, making -them seem worthless and hollow, he did not degrade the pretensions -of tyranny and superstition below their true value, by making them -seem utterly worthless and hollow, as contemptible as they were -odious. This was the service he rendered to truth and mankind! -<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>His <cite>Candide</cite> is a masterpiece of wit. It has been called ‘the dull -product of a scoffer’s pen’; it is indeed the ‘product of a scoffer’s pen’; -but after reading the Excursion, few people will think it <em>dull</em>. It is in -the most perfect keeping, and without any appearance of effort. Every -sentence tells, and the whole reads like one sentence. There is something -sublime in Martin’s sceptical indifference to moral good and evil. -It is the repose of the grave. It is better to suffer this living death, -than a living martyrdom. ‘Nothing can touch him further.’ The -moral of Candide (such as it is) is the same as that of Rasselas: the -execution is different. Voltaire says, ‘A great book is a great evil.’ -Dr. Johnson would have laboured this short apophthegm into a -voluminous common-place. Voltaire’s traveller (in another work) -being asked ‘whether he likes black or white mutton best,’ replies -that ‘he is indifferent, provided it is tender.’ Dr. Johnson did not -get at a conclusion by so short a way as this. If Voltaire’s licentiousness -is objected to me, I say, let it be placed to its true account, the -manners of the age and court in which he lived. The lords and -ladies of the bedchamber in the reign of Louis <span class='fss'>XV.</span> found no fault -with the immoral tendency of his writings. Why then should our -modern <em>purists</em> quarrel with them?—But to return.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Young is a gloomy epigrammatist. He has abused great powers -both of thought and language. His moral reflections are sometimes -excellent; but he spoils their beauty by overloading them with a -religious horror, and at the same time giving them all the smart turns -and quaint expression of an enigma or repartee in verse. The well-known -lines on Procrastination are in his best manner:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Be wise to-day; ’tis madness to defer;</div> - <div class='line'>Next day the fatal precedent will plead;</div> - <div class='line'>Thus on, till wisdom is push’d out of life.</div> - <div class='line'>Procrastination is the thief of time;</div> - <div class='line'>Year after year it steals, till all are fled,</div> - <div class='line'>And to the mercies of a moment leaves</div> - <div class='line'>The vast concerns of an eternal scene.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Of man’s miraculous mistakes, this bears</div> - <div class='line'>The palm, “That all men are about to live,”</div> - <div class='line'>For ever on the brink of being born.</div> - <div class='line'>All pay themselves the compliment to think</div> - <div class='line'>They, one day, shall not drivel; and their pride</div> - <div class='line'>On this reversion takes up ready praise;</div> - <div class='line'>At least, their own; their future selves applauds;</div> - <div class='line'>How excellent that life they ne’er will lead!</div> - <div class='line'>Time lodg’d in their own hands is Folly’s vails:</div> - <div class='line'>That lodg’d in Fate’s, to Wisdom they consign;</div> - <div class='line'>The thing they can’t but purpose, they postpone.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>’Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool;</div> - <div class='line'>And scarce in human Wisdom to do more.</div> - <div class='line'>All Promise is poor dilatory man,</div> - <div class='line'>And that through every stage. When young, indeed,</div> - <div class='line'>In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest,</div> - <div class='line'>Un-anxious for ourselves; and only wish,</div> - <div class='line'>As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.</div> - <div class='line'>At thirty man suspects himself a fool;</div> - <div class='line'>Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;</div> - <div class='line'>At fifty chides his infamous delay</div> - <div class='line'>Pushes his prudent purpose to Resolve;</div> - <div class='line'>In all the magnanimity of thought</div> - <div class='line'>Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.</div> - <div class='line'>All men think all men mortal, but themselves;</div> - <div class='line'>Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate</div> - <div class='line'>Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;</div> - <div class='line'>But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,</div> - <div class='line'>Soon close; where past the shaft, no trace is found.</div> - <div class='line'>As from the wing no scar the sky retains;</div> - <div class='line'>The parted wave no furrow from the keel;</div> - <div class='line'>So dies in human hearts the thought of death.</div> - <div class='line'>Ev’n with the tender tear which nature sheds</div> - <div class='line'>O’er those we love, we drop it in their grave.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>His Universal Passion is a keen and powerful satire; but the effort -takes from the effect, and oppresses attention by perpetual and violent -demands upon it. His tragedy of the Revenge is monkish and -scholastic. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of Iago. The finest lines -in it are the burst of triumph at the end, when his revenge is -completed:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep,</div> - <div class='line'>Let Afric on her hundred thrones rejoice,’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Collins is a writer of a very different stamp, who had perhaps less -general power of mind than Young; but he had that true <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">vivida vis</span></i>, -that genuine inspiration, which alone can give birth to the highest -efforts of poetry. He leaves stings in the minds of his readers, -certain traces of thought and feelings which never wear out, because -nature had left them in his own mind. He is the only one of the -minor poets of whom, if he had lived, it cannot be said that he might -not have done the greatest things. The germ is there. He is sometimes -affected, unmeaning, and obscure; but he also catches rich -glimpses of the bowers of Paradise, and has lofty aspirations after -the highest seats of the Muses. With a great deal of tinsel and -splendid patch-work, he has not been able to hide the solid sterling -<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>ore of genius. In his best works there is an attic simplicity, a pathos, -and fervour of imagination, which make us the more lament that the -efforts of his mind were at first depressed by neglect and pecuniary -embarrassment, and at length buried in the gloom of an unconquerable -and fatal malady. How many poets have gone through all the -horrors of poverty and contempt, and ended their days in moping -melancholy or moody madness!</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘We poets in our youth begin in gladness,</div> - <div class='line'>But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Is this the fault of themselves, of nature in tempering them of too -fine a clay, or of the world, that spurner of living, and patron of dead -merit? Read the account of Collins—with hopes frustrated, with -faculties blighted, at last, when it was too late for himself or others, -receiving the deceitful favours of relenting Fortune, which served -only to throw their sunshine on his decay, and to light him to an -early grave. He was found sitting with every spark of imagination -extinguished, and with only the faint traces of memory and reason -left—with only one book in his room, the Bible; ‘but that,’ he said, -‘was the best.’ A melancholy damp hung like an unwholesome -mildew upon his faculties—a canker had consumed the flower of his -life. He produced works of genius, and the public regarded them -with scorn: he aimed at excellence that should be his own, and his -friends treated his efforts as the wanderings of fatuity. The proofs -of his capacity are, his Ode on Evening, his Ode on the Passions -(particularly the fine personification of Hope), his Ode to Fear, the -Dirge in Cymbeline, the Lines on Thomson’s Grave, and his -Eclogues, parts of which are admirable. But perhaps his Ode on -the Poetical Character is the best of all. A rich distilled perfume -emanates from it like the breath of genius; a golden cloud envelopes -it; a honeyed paste of poetic diction encrusts it, like the candied coat -of the auricula. His Ode to Evening shews equal genius in the -images and versification. The sounds steal slowly over the ear, like -the gradual coming on of evening itself:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song</div> - <div class='line'>May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Like thy own solemn springs,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Thy springs and dying gales,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O nymph reserv’d, while now the bright-haired sun</div> - <div class='line'>Sits on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts</div> - <div class='line in4'>With brede ethereal wove,</div> - <div class='line in4'>O’erhang his wavy bed:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>Now air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d bat,</div> - <div class='line'>With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Or where the beetle winds</div> - <div class='line in4'>His small but sullen horn,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As oft he rises midst the twilight path,</div> - <div class='line'>Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Now teach me, maid compos’d,</div> - <div class='line in4'>To breathe some soften’d strain,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Whose numbers stealing through thy darkling vale</div> - <div class='line'>May not unseemly with its stillness suit,</div> - <div class='line in4'>As musing slow, I hail</div> - <div class='line in4'>Thy genial, lov’d return!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For when thy folding star arising shews</div> - <div class='line'>His paly circlet, at his warning lamp</div> - <div class='line in4'>The fragrant Hours and Elves</div> - <div class='line in4'>Who slept in flow’rs the day,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,</div> - <div class='line'>And sheds the fresh’ning dew, and lovelier still,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The pensive Pleasures sweet</div> - <div class='line in4'>Prepare thy shadowy car;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then lead, calm Votress, where some sheety lake</div> - <div class='line'>Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow’d pile,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Or upland fallows grey</div> - <div class='line in4'>Reflect its last cool gleam.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But when chill blust’ring winds, or driving rain,</div> - <div class='line'>Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That from the mountain’s side</div> - <div class='line in4'>Views wilds and swelling floods,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And hamlets brown, and dim discover’d spires,</div> - <div class='line'>And hears their simple bell, and marks o’er all</div> - <div class='line in4'>Thy dewy fingers draw</div> - <div class='line in4'>The gradual dusky veil.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>While Spring shall pour his show’rs, as oft he wont,</div> - <div class='line'>And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!</div> - <div class='line in4'>While Summer loves to sport</div> - <div class='line in4'>Beneath thy lingering light;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;</div> - <div class='line'>Or Winter yelling through the troublous air,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Affrights thy shrinking train,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And rudely rends thy robes;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp’d Health,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Thy gentlest influence own,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And hymn thy favourite name.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>Hammond, whose poems are bound up with Collins’s, in Bell’s -pocket edition, was a young gentleman, who appears to have fallen -in love about the year 1740, and who translated Tibullus into English -verse, to let his mistress and the public know of it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I should conceive that Collins had a much greater poetical genius -than Gray: he had more of that fine madness which is inseparable -from it, of its turbid effervescence, of all that pushes it to the verge -of agony or rapture. Gray’s Pindaric Odes are, I believe, generally -given up at present: they are stately and pedantic, a kind of -methodical borrowed phrenzy. But I cannot so easily give up, nor -will the world be in any haste to part with his Elegy in a Country -Church-yard: it is one of the most classical productions that ever -was penned by a refined and thoughtful mind, moralising on human -life. Mr. Coleridge (in his Literary Life) says, that his friend -Mr. Wordsworth had undertaken to shew that the language of the -Elegy is unintelligible: it has, however, been understood! The -Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is more mechanical and -common-place; but it touches on certain strings about the heart, -that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever -passes by Windsor’s ‘stately heights,’ or sees the distant spires of -Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves that -we should think of him; for he thought of others, and turned a -trembling, ever-watchful ear to ‘the still sad music of humanity.’—His -Letters are inimitably fine. If his poems are sometimes finical -and pedantic, his prose is quite free from affectation. He pours his -thoughts out upon paper as they arise in his mind; and they arise in -his mind without pretence, or constraint, from the pure impulse -of learned leisure and contemplative indolence. He is not here on -stilts or in buckram; but smiles in his easy chair, as he moralises -through the loopholes of retreat, on the bustle and raree-show of the -world, or on ‘those reverend bedlams, colleges and schools!’ He -had nothing to do but to read and to think, and to tell his friends -what he read and thought. His life was a luxurious, thoughtful -dream. ‘Be mine,’ he says in one of his Letters, ‘to read eternal -new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon.’ And in another, to shew -his contempt for action and the turmoils of ambition, he says to some -one, ‘Don’t you remember Lords —— and ——, who are now great -statesmen, little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my part, I do -not feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then.’ What an -equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young! What -a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life, -by being never any thing more than a looker-on!</p> - -<p class='c011'>How different from Shenstone, who only wanted to be looked at: -<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>who withdrew from the world to be followed by the crowd, and -courted popularity by affecting privacy! His Letters shew him to -have lived in a continual fever of petty vanity, and to have been a -finished literary coquet. He seems always to say, ‘You will find -nothing in the world so amiable as Nature and me: come, and admire -us.’ His poems are indifferent and tasteless, except his Pastoral -Ballad, his Lines on Jemmy Dawson, and his School-mistress, which -last is a perfect piece of writing.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, but he was hardly a -great poet. He improved his Pleasures of the Imagination in the -subsequent editions, by pruning away a great many redundances of -style and ornament. Armstrong is better, though he has not chosen -a very exhilarating subject—The Art of Preserving Health. -Churchill’s Satires on the Scotch, and Characters of the Players, -are as good as the subjects deserved—they are strong, coarse, and -full of an air of hardened assurance. I ought not to pass over without -mention Green’s Poem on the Spleen, or Dyer’s Grongar Hill.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The principal name of the period we are now come to is that of -Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher or fairer in the -annals of modern literature. One should have his own pen to -describe him as he ought to be described—amiable, various, and -bland, with careless inimitable grace touching on every kind of -excellence—with manners unstudied, but a gentle heart—performing -miracles of skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose greatest -fault was ignorance of his own worth. As a poet, he is the most -flowing and elegant of our versifiers since Pope, with traits of artless -nature which Pope had not, and with a peculiar felicity in his turns -upon words, which he constantly repeated with delightful effect: -such as—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘——His lot, though small,</div> - <div class='line'>He sees that little lot, the lot of all.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And turn’d and look’d, and turn’d to look again.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe. -What reader is there in the civilised world, who is not the better for -the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished -so deliberately with the poker—for the knowledge of the guinea -which the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets—the -adventure of the picture of the Vicar’s family, which could not be -got into the house—and that of the Flamborough family, all painted -with oranges in their hands—or for the story of the case of shagreen -spectacles and the cosmogony?</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers -from Mr. Liston’s face. That alone is praise enough for it. Poor -Goldsmith! how happy he has made others! how unhappy he was -in himself! He never had the pleasure of reading his own works! -He had only the satisfaction of good-naturedly relieving the necessities -of others, and the consolation of being harassed to death with his -own! He is the most amusing and interesting person, in one of the -most amusing and interesting books in the world, Boswell’s Life of -Johnson. His peach-coloured coat shall always bloom in Boswell’s -writings, and his fame survive in his own!—His genius was a -mixture of originality and imitation: he could do nothing without -some model before him, and he could copy nothing that he did not -adorn with the graces of his own mind. Almost all the latter part -of the Vicar of Wakefield, and a great deal of the former, is taken -from Joseph Andrews; but the circumstances I have mentioned -above are not.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The finest things he has left behind him in verse are his character -of a country school-master, and that prophetic description of Burke -in the Retaliation. His moral Essays in the Citizen of the World, -are as agreeable chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of didactic -discourses.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious with ease, learned without -affectation. He had a happiness which some have been prouder -of than he, who deserved it less—he was poet-laureat.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead,</div> - <div class='line'>That laurel garland crown’d his living head.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>But he bore his honours meekly, and performed his half-yearly task -regularly. I should not have mentioned him for this distinction alone -(the highest which a poet can receive from the state), but for another -circumstance; I mean his being the author of some of the finest -sonnets in the language—at least so they appear to me; and as this -species of composition has the necessary advantage of being short -(though it is also sometimes both ‘tedious and brief’), I will here -repeat two or three of them, as treating pleasing subjects in a pleasing -and philosophical way.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Written in a blank leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Deem not, devoid of elegance, the sage,</div> - <div class='line'>By Fancy’s genuine feelings unbeguil’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Of painful pedantry the poring child;</div> - <div class='line'>Who turns of these proud domes the historic page,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>Now sunk by Time, and Henry’s fiercer rage.</div> - <div class='line'>Think’st thou the warbling Muses never smil’d</div> - <div class='line'>On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage</div> - <div class='line'>His thoughts, on themes unclassic falsely styl’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Intent. While cloister’d piety displays</div> - <div class='line'>Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores</div> - <div class='line'>New manners, and the pomp of elder days,</div> - <div class='line'>Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur’d stores.</div> - <div class='line'>Not rough nor barren are the winding ways</div> - <div class='line'>Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'><em>Sonnet. Written at Stonehenge.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thou noblest monument of Albion’s isle,</div> - <div class='line'>Whether, by Merlin’s aid, from Scythia’s shore</div> - <div class='line'>To Amber’s fatal plain Pendragon bore,</div> - <div class='line'>Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,</div> - <div class='line'>T’ entomb his Britons slain by Hengist’s guile:</div> - <div class='line'>Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,</div> - <div class='line'>Taught mid thy massy maze their mystic lore:</div> - <div class='line'>Or Danish chiefs, enrich’d with savage spoil,</div> - <div class='line'>To victory’s idol vast, an unhewn shrine,</div> - <div class='line'>Rear’d the rude heap, or in thy hallow’d ground</div> - <div class='line'>Repose the kings of Brutus’ genuine line;</div> - <div class='line'>Or here those kings in solemn state were crown’d;</div> - <div class='line'>Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,</div> - <div class='line'>We muse on many an ancient tale renown’d.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Nothing can be more admirable than the learning here displayed, or -the inference from it, that it is of no use but as it leads to interesting -thought and reflection.</p> - -<p class='c011'>That written after seeing Wilton House is in the same style, but I -prefer concluding with that to the river Lodon, which has a personal -as well as poetical interest about it.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Ah! what a weary race my feet have run,</div> - <div class='line'>Since first I trod thy banks with alders crown’d,</div> - <div class='line'>And thought my way was all through fairy ground,</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath the azure sky and golden sun:</div> - <div class='line'>When first my Muse to lisp her notes begun!</div> - <div class='line'>While pensive memory traces back the round</div> - <div class='line'>Which fills the varied interval between;</div> - <div class='line'>Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene.—</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure</div> - <div class='line'>No more return, to cheer my evening road!</div> - <div class='line'>Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure</div> - <div class='line'>Nor useless, all my vacant days have flow’d</div> - <div class='line'>From youth’s gay dawn to manhood’s prime mature,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor with the Muse’s laurel unbestow’d.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>I have thus gone through all the names of this period I could -think of, but I find that there are others still waiting behind that I -had never thought of. Here is a list of some of them—Pattison, -Tickell, Hill, Somerville, Browne, Pitt, Wilkie, Dodsley, Shaw, -Smart, Langhorne, Bruce, Greame, Glover, Lovibond, Penrose, -Mickle, Jago, Scott, Whitehead, Jenyns, Logan, Cotton, Cunningham, -and Blacklock.—I think it will be best to let them pass and say -nothing about them. It will be hard to persuade so many respectable -persons that they are dull writers, and if we give them any praise, -they will send others.</p> - -<p class='c011'>But here comes one whose claims cannot be so easily set aside: -they have been sanctioned by learning, hailed by genius, and hallowed -by misfortune—I mean Chatterton. Yet I must say what I think of -him, and that is not what is generally thought. I pass over the -disputes between the learned antiquaries, Dr. Mills, Herbert Croft, -and Dr. Knox, whether he was to be placed after Shakspeare and -Dryden, or to come after Shakspeare alone. A living poet has -borne a better testimony to him—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;</div> - <div class='line'>And him<a id='r8' /><a href='#f8' class='c015'><sup>[8]</sup></a> who walked in glory and in joy</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside his plough along the mountain side.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>I am loth to put asunder whom so great an authority has joined -together; but I cannot find in Chatterton’s works any thing so -extraordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a -facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of -sixteen, but which would not have been so in a man of twenty. He -did not shew extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary -precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he -lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great -geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill themselves; -for their mind to them also ‘a kingdom is.’ With an unaccountable -power coming over him at an unusual age, and with the -youthful confidence it inspired, he performed wonders, and was willing -to set a seal on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. He had -done his best; and, like another Empedocles, threw himself into -Ætna, to ensure immortality. The brazen slippers alone remain!—</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span> - <h3 class='c003'>LECTURE VII<br /> <span class='small'>ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS</span></h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'>I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture -respecting Chatterton, should have given dissatisfaction to some -persons, with whom I would willingly agree on all such matters. -What I meant was less to call in question Chatterton’s genius, than -to object to the common mode of estimating its magnitude by its -prematureness. The lists of fame are not filled with the dates of -births or deaths; and the side-mark of the age at which they were -done, wears out in works destined for immortality. Had Chatterton -really done more, we should have thought less of him, for our -attention would then have been fixed on the excellence of the works -themselves, instead of the singularity of the circumstances in which -they were produced. But because he attained to the full powers of -manhood at an early age, I do not see that he would have attained to -more than those powers, had he lived to be a man. He was a -prodigy, because in him the ordinary march of nature was violently -precipitated; and it is therefore inferred, that he would have continued -to hold on his course, ‘unslacked of motion.’ On the -contrary, who knows but he might have lived to be poet-laureat? It -is much better to let him remain as he was. Of his actual productions, -any one may think as highly as he pleases; I would only -guard against adding to the account of his <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">quantum meruit</span></i>, those -possible productions by which the learned rhapodists of his time -raised his gigantic pretensions to an equality with those of Homer -and Shakspeare. It is amusing to read some of these exaggerated -descriptions, each rising above the other in extravagance. In -Anderson’s Life, we find that Mr. Warton speaks of him ‘as a -prodigy of genius,’ as ‘a singular instance of prematurity of abilities’: -that may be true enough, and Warton was at any rate a competent judge; -but Mr. Malone ‘believes him to have been the greatest genius that -England has produced since the days of Shakspeare.’ Dr. Gregory -says, ‘he must rank, as a universal genius, above Dryden, and -perhaps only second to Shakspeare.’ Mr. Herbert Croft is still more -unqualified in his praises; he asserts, that ‘no such being, at any -period of life, has ever been known, or possibly ever will be known.’ -He runs a parallel between Chatterton and Milton; and asserts, that -‘an army of Macedonian and Swedish mad butchers fly before him,’ -<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>meaning, I suppose, that Alexander the Great and Charles the -Twelfth were nothing to him; ‘nor,’ he adds, ‘does my memory -supply me with any human being, who at such an age, with such -advantages, has produced such compositions. Under the heathen -mythology, superstition and admiration would have explained all, -by bringing Apollo on earth; nor would the God ever have -descended with more credit to himself.’—Chatterton’s physiognomy -would at least have enabled him to pass <em>incognito</em>. It is quite -different from the look of timid wonder and delight with which -Annibal Caracci has painted a young Apollo listening to the first -sounds he draws from a Pan’s pipe, under the tutelage of the old -Silenus! If Mr. Croft is sublime on the occasion, Dr. Knox is no -less pathetic. ‘The testimony of Dr. Knox,’ says Dr. Anderson, -(Essays, p. 144), ‘does equal credit to the classical taste and -amiable benevolence of the writer, and the genius and reputation of -Chatterton.’ ‘When I read,’ says the Doctor, ‘the researches of -those learned antiquaries who have endeavoured to prove that the -poems attributed to Rowley were really written by him, I observe -many ingenious remarks in confirmation of their opinion, which it -would be tedious, if not difficult, to controvert.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Now this is so far from the mark, that the whole controversy -might have been settled by any one but the learned antiquaries themselves, -who had the smallest share of their learning, from this single -circumstance, that the poems read as smooth as any modern poems, if -you read them as modern compositions; and that you cannot read them, -or make verse of them at all, if you pronounce or accent the words as -they were spoken at the time when the poems were pretended to -have been written. The whole secret of the imposture, which -nothing but a deal of learned dust, raised by collecting and removing -a great deal of learned rubbish, could have prevented our laborious -critics from seeing through, lies on the face of it (to say nothing of -the burlesque air which is scarcely disguised throughout) in the -repetition of a few obsolete words, and in the mis-spelling of common -ones.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘No sooner,’ proceeds the Doctor, ‘do I turn to the poems, than -the labour of the antiquaries appears only waste of time; and I am -involuntarily forced to join in placing that laurel, which he seems so -well to have deserved, on the brow of Chatterton. The poems bear -so many marks of superior genius, that they have deservedly excited -the general attention of polite scholars, and are considered as the -most remarkable productions in modern poetry. We have many -instances of poetical eminence at an early age; but neither Cowley, -Milton, nor Pope, ever produced any thing while they were boys, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>which can justly be compared to the poems of Chatterton. The -learned antiquaries do not indeed dispute their excellence. They -extol it in the highest terms of applause. They raise their favourite -Rowley to a rivalry with Homer: but they make the very merits of -the works an argument against their real author. Is it possible, say -they, that a boy should produce compositions so beautiful and -masterly? That a common boy should produce them is not possible,’ -rejoins the Doctor; ‘but that they should be produced by a boy -of an extraordinary genius, such as was that of Homer or Shakspeare, -though a prodigy, is such a one as by no means exceeds the bounds -of rational credibility.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Now it does not appear that Shakspeare or Homer were such early -prodigies; so that by this reasoning he must take precedence of them -too, as well as of Milton, Cowley, and Pope. The reverend and -classical writer then breaks out into the following melancholy -raptures:—</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Unfortunate boy! short and evil were thy days, but thy fame -shall be immortal. Hadst thou been known to the munificent -patrons of genius....</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Unfortunate boy! poorly wast thou accommodated during thy -short sojourning here among us;—rudely wast thou treated—sorely did -thy feelings suffer from the scorn of the unworthy; and there are at last -those who wish to rob thee of thy only meed, thy posthumous glory. -Severe too are the censures of thy morals. In the gloomy moments -of despondency, I fear thou hast uttered impious and blasphemous -thoughts. But let thy more rigid censors reflect, that thou wast -literally and strictly but a boy. Let many of thy bitterest enemies -reflect what were their own religious principles, and whether they -had any at the age of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. Surely it is -a severe and unjust surmise that thou wouldst probably have ended -thy life as a victim to the laws, if thou hadst not ended it as thou -didst.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Enough, enough, of the learned antiquaries, and of the classical and -benevolent testimony of Dr. Knox. Chatterton was, indeed, badly -enough off; but he was at least saved from the pain and shame of -reading this woful lamentation over fallen genius, which circulates -splendidly bound in the fourteenth edition, while he is a prey to -worms. As to those who are really capable of admiring Chatterton’s -genius, or of feeling an interest in his fate, I would only say, that I -never heard any one speak of any one of his works as if it were an -old well-known favourite, and had become a faith and a religion in his -mind. It is his name, his youth, and what he might have lived to -have done, that excite our wonder and admiration. He has the same -<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>sort of posthumous fame that an actor of the last age has—an abstracted -reputation which is independent of any thing we know of his -works. The admirers of Collins never think of him without recalling -to their minds his Ode on Evening, or on the Poetical Character. -Gray’s Elegy, and his poetical popularity, are identified together, and -inseparable even in imagination. It is the same with respect to -Burns: when you speak of him as a poet, you mean his works, his -Tam o’ Shanter, or his Cotter’s Saturday Night. But the enthusiasts -for Chatterton, if you ask for the proofs of his extraordinary genius, -are obliged to turn to the volume, and perhaps find there what -they seek; but it is not in their minds; and it is of <em>that</em> I spoke.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Minstrel’s song in Ælla is I think the best.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘O! synge untoe my roundelaie,</div> - <div class='line'>O! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee,</div> - <div class='line'>Daunce ne moe atte hallie daie,</div> - <div class='line'>Lycke a rennynge ryver bee.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Black hys cryne as the wyntere nyght,</div> - <div class='line'>Whyte hys rode as the sommer snowe,</div> - <div class='line'>Rodde hys face as the mornynge lyghte,</div> - <div class='line'>Cale he lyes ynne the grave belowe.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Swote hys tongue as the throstles note,</div> - <div class='line'>Quycke ynne daunce as thought cann bee,</div> - <div class='line'>Defte his taboure, codgelle stote,</div> - <div class='line'>O! hee lys bie the wyllowe-tree.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Harke! the ravenne flappes hys wynge,</div> - <div class='line'>In the briered dell belowe;</div> - <div class='line'>Harke! the dethe-owle loude dothe synge,</div> - <div class='line'>To the nygthe-mares as theie goe.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gone to hys deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>See! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie;</div> - <div class='line'>Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>Whyterre yanne the mornynge skie,</div> - <div class='line'>Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Heere, upon mie true loves grave,</div> - <div class='line'>Schalle the baren fleurs be layde,</div> - <div class='line'>Ne one hallie seyncte to save</div> - <div class='line'>Al the celness of a mayde.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gonne to his deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wythe mie hondes I’ll dent the brieres</div> - <div class='line'>Rounde hys hallie corse to gre,</div> - <div class='line'>Ouphante fairies, lyghte your fyres,</div> - <div class='line'>Heere mie boddie stille schalle bee.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Comme, wythe acorne-coppe and thorne,</div> - <div class='line'>Drayne my hartys blodde awaie;</div> - <div class='line'>Lyfe and all yttes goode I scorne,</div> - <div class='line'>Daunce bie nete, or feaste by daie.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mie love ys dedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Al under the wyllowe-tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Water wytches, crownede wythe reytes,</div> - <div class='line'>Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde.</div> - <div class='line'>I die; I comme; mie true love waytes.</div> - <div class='line'>Thos the damselle spake, and dyed.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>To proceed to the more immediate subject of the present Lecture, -the character and writings of Burns.—Shakspeare says of some one, -that ‘he was like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.’ -Burns, the poet, was not such a man. He had a strong mind, and a -strong body, the fellow to it. He had a real heart of flesh and -blood beating in his bosom—you can almost hear it throb. Some -one said, that if you had shaken hands with him, his hand would -have burnt yours. The Gods, indeed, ‘made him poetical’; but -nature had a hand in him first. His heart was in the right place. -He did not ‘create a soul under the ribs of death,’ by tinkling siren -sounds, or by piling up centos of poetic diction; but for the artificial -flowers of poetry, he plucked the mountain-daisy under his feet; and -a field-mouse, hurrying from its ruined dwelling, could inspire him -<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>with the sentiments of terror and pity. He held the plough or the -pen with the same firm, manly grasp; nor did he cut out poetry as -we cut out watch-papers, with finical dexterity, nor from the same -flimsy materials. Burns was not like Shakspeare in the range of his -genius; but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness, -and unaffected character about him. He was not a sickly sentimentalist, -a namby-pamby poet, a mincing metre ballad-monger, any -more than Shakspeare. He would as soon hear ‘a brazen candlestick -tuned, or a dry wheel grate on the axletree.’ He was as much -of a man—not a twentieth part as much of a poet as Shakspeare. -With but little of his imagination or inventive power, he had the -same life of mind: within the narrow circle of personal feeling or -domestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows as healthily and -vigorously. He had an eye to see; a heart to feel:—no more. -His pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of quaint humour, are -equal to any thing; they come up to nature, and they cannot go -beyond it. The sly jest collected in his laughing eye at the sight of -the grotesque and ludicrous in manners—the large tear rolled down -his manly cheek at the sight of another’s distress. He has made us -as well acquainted with himself as it is possible to be; has let out the -honest impulses of his native disposition, the unequal conflict of the -passions in his breast, with the same frankness and truth of description. -His strength is not greater than his weakness: his virtues were greater -than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius: his vices to his -situation, which did not correspond to his genius.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It has been usual to attack Burns’s moral character, and the moral -tendency of his writings at the same time; and Mr. Wordsworth, in -a letter to Mr. Gray, Master of the High School at Edinburgh, in -attempting to defend, has only laid him open to a more serious and -unheard-of responsibility. Mr. Gray might very well have sent him -back, in return for his epistle, the answer of Holofernes in Love’s -Labour’s Lost:—‘<em>Via</em> goodman Dull, thou hast spoken no word all -this while.’ The author of this performance, which is as weak in -effect as it is pompous in pretension, shews a great dislike of -Robespierre, Buonaparte, and of Mr. Jeffrey, whom he, by some -unaccountable fatality, classes together as the three most formidable -enemies of the human race that have appeared in his (Mr. Wordsworth’s) -remembrance; but he betrays very little liking to Burns. -He is, indeed, anxious to get him out of the unhallowed clutches of -the Edinburgh Reviewers (as a mere matter of poetical privilege), -only to bring him before a graver and higher tribunal, which is his -own; and after repeating and insinuating ponderous charges against -him, shakes his head, and declines giving any opinion in so tremendous -<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>a case; so that though the judgment of the former critic is set aside, -poor Burns remains just where he was, and nobody gains any thing -by the cause but Mr. Wordsworth, in an increasing opinion of his -own wisdom and purity. ‘Out upon this half-faced fellowship!’ -The author of the Lyrical Ballads has thus missed a fine opportunity -of doing Burns justice and himself honour. He might have shewn -himself a philosophical prose-writer, as well as a philosophical poet. -He might have offered as amiable and as gallant a defence of the -Muses, as my uncle Toby, in the honest simplicity of his heart, did -of the army. He might have said at once, instead of making a parcel -of wry faces over the matter, that Burns had written Tam o’ Shanter, -and that that alone was enough; that he could hardly have described -the excesses of mad, hairbrained, roaring mirth and convivial indulgence, -which are the soul of it, if he himself had not ‘drunk full -ofter of the ton than of the well’—unless ‘the act and practique part -of life had been the mistress of his theorique.’ Mr. Wordsworth -might have quoted such lines as—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The landlady and Tam grew gracious,</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ favours secret, sweet, and precious’;—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>or,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Care, mad to see a man so happy,</div> - <div class='line'>E’en drown’d himself among the nappy’;</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>and fairly confessed that he could not have written such lines from a -want of proper habits and previous sympathy; and that till some great -puritanical genius should arise to do these things equally well without -any knowledge of them, the world might forgive Burns the injuries -he had done his health and fortune in his poetical apprenticeship to -experience, for the pleasure he had afforded them. Instead of this, -Mr. Wordsworth hints, that with different personal habits and greater -strength of mind, Burns would have written differently, and almost as -well as <em>he</em> does. He might have taken that line of Gay’s,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>and applied it in all its force and pathos to the poetical character. -He might have argued that poets are men of genius, and that a man -of genius is not a machine; that they live in a state of intellectual -intoxication, and that it is too much to expect them to be distinguished -by peculiar <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sang froid</span></i>, circumspection, and sobriety. Poets are by -nature men of stronger imagination and keener sensibilities than others; -and it is a contradiction to suppose them at the same time governed -only by the cool, dry, calculating dictates of reason and foresight. -Mr. Wordsworth might have ascertained the boundaries that part the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>provinces of reason and imagination:—that it is the business of the -understanding to exhibit things in their relative proportions and -ultimate consequences—of the imagination to insist on their immediate -impressions, and to indulge their strongest impulses; but it is -the poet’s office to pamper the imagination of his readers and his own -with the extremes of present ecstacy or agony, to snatch the swift-winged -golden minutes, the torturing hour, and to banish the dull, -prosaic, monotonous realities of life, both from his thoughts and from -his practice. Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn how it is that all -men of genius, or of originality and independence of mind, are liable -to practical errors, from the very confidence their superiority inspires, -which makes them fly in the face of custom and prejudice, always -rashly, sometimes unjustly; for, after all, custom and prejudice are -not without foundation in truth and reason, and no one individual is -a match for the world in power, very few in knowledge. The world -may altogether be set down as older and wiser than any single person -in it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Again, our philosophical letter-writer might have enlarged on the -temptations to which Burns was exposed from his struggles with -fortune and the uncertainty of his fate. He might have shewn how a -poet, not born to wealth or title, was kept in a constant state of feverish -anxiety with respect to his fame and the means of a precarious livelihood: -that ‘from being chilled with poverty, steeped in contempt, he -had passed into the sunshine of fortune, and was lifted to the very -pinnacle of public favour’; yet even there could not count on the -continuance of success, but was, ‘like the giddy sailor on the mast, -ready with every blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the -deep!’ He might have traced his habit of ale-house tippling to the -last long precious draught of his favourite usquebaugh, which he took -in the prospect of bidding farewel for ever to his native land; and his -conjugal infidelities to his first disappointment in love, which would -not have happened to him, if he had been born to a small estate in -land, or bred up behind a counter!</p> - -<p class='c011'>Lastly, Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn the incompatibility -between the Muses and the Excise, which never agreed well together, -or met in one seat, till they were unaccountably reconciled -on Rydal Mount. He must know (no man better) the distraction -created by the opposite calls of business and of fancy, the torment of -extents, the plague of receipts laid in order or mislaid, the disagreeableness -of exacting penalties or paying the forfeiture; and how all -this (together with the broaching of casks and the splashing of beer-barrels) -must have preyed upon a mind like Burns, with more than -his natural sensibility and none of his acquired firmness.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>Mr. Coleridge, alluding to this circumstance of the promotion of -the Scottish Bard to be ‘a gauger of ale-firkins,’ in a poetical epistle -to his friend Charles Lamb, calls upon him in a burst of heartfelt -indignation, to gather a wreath of henbane, nettles, and nightshade,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in18'>‘——To twine</div> - <div class='line'>The illustrious brow of Scotch nobility.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>If, indeed, Mr. Lamb had undertaken to write a letter in defence of -Burns, how different would it have been from this of Mr. Wordsworth’s! -How much better than I can even imagine it to have been -done!</p> - -<p class='c011'>It is hardly reasonable to look for a hearty or genuine defence of -Burns from the pen of Mr. Wordsworth; for there is no common -link of sympathy between them. Nothing can be more different or -hostile than the spirit of their poetry. Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry is -the poetry of mere sentiment and pensive contemplation: Burns’s -is a very highly sublimated essence of animal existence. With -Burns, ‘self-love and social are the same’—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And we’ll tak a cup of kindness yet,</div> - <div class='line'>For auld lang syne.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. Wordsworth is ‘himself alone,’ a recluse philosopher, or a -reluctant spectator of the scenes of many-coloured life; moralising on -them, not describing, not entering into them. Robert Burns has -exerted all the vigour of his mind, all the happiness of his nature, in -exalting the pleasures of wine, of love, and good fellowship: but -in Mr. Wordsworth there is a total disunion and divorce of the -faculties of the mind from those of the body; the banns are forbid, -or a separation is austerely pronounced from bed and board—<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">a mensâ -et thoro</span></i>. From the Lyrical Ballads, it does not appear that men eat -or drink, marry or are given in marriage. If we lived by every -sentiment that proceeded out of mouths, and not by bread or wine, or -if the species were continued like trees (to borrow an expression -from the great Sir Thomas Brown), Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry -would be just as good as ever. It is not so with Burns: he is -‘famous for the keeping of it up,’ and in his verse is ever fresh and -gay. For this, it seems, he has fallen under the displeasure of the -Edinburgh Reviewers, and the still more formidable patronage of -Mr. Wordsworth’s pen.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘This, this was the unkindest cut of all.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I was going to give some extracts out of this composition in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>support of what I have said, but I find them too tedious. Indeed (if I -may be allowed to speak my whole mind, under correction) Mr. -Wordsworth could not be in any way expected to tolerate or give a -favourable interpretation to Burns’s constitutional foibles—even his -best virtues are not good enough for him. He is repelled and driven -back into himself, not less by the worth than by the faults of others. -His taste is as exclusive and repugnant as his genius. It is because -so few things give him pleasure, that he gives pleasure to so few -people. It is not every one who can perceive the sublimity of a -daisy, or the pathos to be extracted from a withered thorn!</p> - -<p class='c011'>To proceed from Burns’s patrons to his poetry, than which no two -things can be more different. His ‘Twa Dogs’ is a very spirited -piece of description, both as it respects the animal and human creation, -and conveys a very vivid idea of the manners both of high and low -life. The burlesque panegyric of the first dog,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘His locked, lettered, braw brass collar</div> - <div class='line'>Shew’d him the gentleman and scholar’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>reminds one of Launce’s account of his dog Crabbe, where he is said, -as an instance of his being in the way of promotion, ‘to have got -among three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke’s table.’ -The ‘Halloween’ is the most striking and picturesque description of -local customs and scenery. The Brigs of Ayr, the Address to a -Haggis, Scotch Drink, and innumerable others are, however, full of -the same kind of characteristic and comic painting. But his master-piece -in this way is his Tam o’ Shanter. I shall give the beginning -of it, but I am afraid I shall hardly know when to leave off.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘When chapman billies leave the street,</div> - <div class='line'>And drouthy neebors, neebors meet,</div> - <div class='line'>As market-days are wearing late,</div> - <div class='line'>And folk begin to tak the gate;</div> - <div class='line'>While we sit bousing at the nappy,</div> - <div class='line'>And getting fou and unco happy,</div> - <div class='line'>We think na on the lang Scots miles,</div> - <div class='line'>The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,</div> - <div class='line'>That lie between us and our hame,</div> - <div class='line'>Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,</div> - <div class='line'>Gathering her brows like gathering storm,</div> - <div class='line'>Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter,</div> - <div class='line'>As he frae Ayr ae night did canter;</div> - <div class='line'>(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,</div> - <div class='line'>For honest men and bonny lasses.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise,</div> - <div class='line'>As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice!</div> - <div class='line'>She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,</div> - <div class='line'>A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum;</div> - <div class='line'>That frae November till October</div> - <div class='line'>Ae market-day thou was na sober;</div> - <div class='line'>That ilka melder, wi’ the miller,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;</div> - <div class='line'>That ev’ry naig was ca’d a shoe on,</div> - <div class='line'>The smith and thee gat roaring fou on;</div> - <div class='line'>That at the Lord’s house, ev’n on Sunday,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou drank wi’ Kirton Jean till Monday—</div> - <div class='line'>She prophesy’d, that late or soon,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou wad be found deep drown’d in Doon;</div> - <div class='line'>Or catcht wi’ warlocks in the mirk,</div> - <div class='line'>By Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,</div> - <div class='line'>To think how mony counsels sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>How mony lengthen’d, sage advices,</div> - <div class='line'>The husband frae the wife despises!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>But to our tale: Ae market night,</div> - <div class='line'>Tam had got planted unco right</div> - <div class='line'>Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely;</div> - <div class='line'>And at his elbow, Souter Johnny,</div> - <div class='line'>His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;</div> - <div class='line'>Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither;</div> - <div class='line'>They had been fou for weeks thegither.</div> - <div class='line'>The night drave on wi’ sangs an clatter,</div> - <div class='line'>And aye the ale was growing better:</div> - <div class='line'>The landlady and Tam grew gracious</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ favours secret, sweet, and precious:</div> - <div class='line'>The Souter tauld his queerest stories;</div> - <div class='line'>The landlord’s laugh was ready chorus:</div> - <div class='line'>The storm without might rair and rustle,</div> - <div class='line'>Tam did na mind the storm a whistle.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Care, mad to see a man sae happy,</div> - <div class='line'>E’en drown’d himsel amang the nappy;</div> - <div class='line'>As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure,</div> - <div class='line'>The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure:</div> - <div class='line'>Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,</div> - <div class='line'>O’er a’ the ills of life victorious!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>But pleasures are like poppies spread,</div> - <div class='line'>You seize the flow’r—its bloom is shed;</div> - <div class='line'>Or like the snow, falls in the river,</div> - <div class='line'>A moment white—then melts for ever;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>Or like the Borealis race,</div> - <div class='line'>That flit ere you can point their place;</div> - <div class='line'>Or like the rainbow’s lovely form,</div> - <div class='line'>Evanishing amid the storm.—</div> - <div class='line'>Nae man can tether time or tide,</div> - <div class='line'>The hour approaches, Tam maun ride;</div> - <div class='line'>That hour o’ night’s black arch the key-stane,</div> - <div class='line'>That dreary hour he mounts his beast in,</div> - <div class='line'>And sic a night he taks the road in,</div> - <div class='line'>As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last;</div> - <div class='line'>The rattling showers rose on the blast,</div> - <div class='line'>The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d:</div> - <div class='line'>That night a child might understand,</div> - <div class='line'>The Deil had business on his hand.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg,</div> - <div class='line'>A better never lifted leg,</div> - <div class='line'>Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire,</div> - <div class='line'>Despising wind, and rain, and fire;</div> - <div class='line'>Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet;</div> - <div class='line'>Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet;</div> - <div class='line'>Whiles glowring round wi’ prudent cares,</div> - <div class='line'>Lest bogles catch him unawares;</div> - <div class='line'>Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,</div> - <div class='line'>Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>By this time Tam was cross the ford,</div> - <div class='line'>Whare in the snaw, the chapman smoor’d;</div> - <div class='line'>And past the birks and meikle stane,</div> - <div class='line'>Whare drunken Charlie brak ‘s neck-bane;</div> - <div class='line'>And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn,</div> - <div class='line'>Where hunters fand the murder’d bairn;</div> - <div class='line'>And near the thorn, aboon the well,</div> - <div class='line'>Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel.—</div> - <div class='line'>Before him Doon pours all his floods;</div> - <div class='line'>The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods;</div> - <div class='line'>The lightnings flash from pole to pole;</div> - <div class='line'>Near and more near the thunders roll:</div> - <div class='line'>Whan, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,</div> - <div class='line'>Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;</div> - <div class='line'>Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;</div> - <div class='line'>And loud resounded mirth and dancing.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!</div> - <div class='line'>What dangers thou canst make us scorn!</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ Tippenny, we fear nae evil,</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ Usqueba, we’ll face the devil!</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>The swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle,</div> - <div class='line'>Fair play, he car’d na de’ils a boddle.</div> - <div class='line'>But Maggie stood right sair astonish’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Till by the heel and hand admonish’d,</div> - <div class='line'>She ventur’d forward on the light,</div> - <div class='line'>And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight!</div> - <div class='line'>Warlocks and witches in a dance,</div> - <div class='line'>Nae light cotillion new frae France,</div> - <div class='line'>But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,</div> - <div class='line'>Put life and mettle in their heels.</div> - <div class='line'>As winnock-bunker, in the east,</div> - <div class='line'>There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;</div> - <div class='line'>A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large,</div> - <div class='line'>To gie them music was his charge;</div> - <div class='line'>He screw’d the pipes, and gart them skirl,</div> - <div class='line'>Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl—</div> - <div class='line'>Coffins stood round like open presses,</div> - <div class='line'>That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses;</div> - <div class='line'>And, by some devilish cantrip slight,</div> - <div class='line'>Each in its cauld hand held a light—</div> - <div class='line'>By which heroic Tam was able</div> - <div class='line'>To note upon the haly table,</div> - <div class='line'>A murderer’s banes in gibbet-airns;</div> - <div class='line'>Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen’d bairns;</div> - <div class='line'>A thief, new cutted frae a rape,</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape;</div> - <div class='line'>Five tomahawks, wi’ bluid red rusted;</div> - <div class='line'>Five scimitars, wi’ murder crusted;</div> - <div class='line'>A garter, which a babe had strangled;</div> - <div class='line'>A knife, a father’s throat had mangled,</div> - <div class='line'>Whom his ain son o’ life bereft,</div> - <div class='line'>The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ mair, o’ horrible and awfu’,</div> - <div class='line'>Which e’en to name wad be unlawfu’.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>As Tammie glowr’d amaz’d, and curious,</div> - <div class='line'>The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:</div> - <div class='line'>The Piper loud and louder blew;</div> - <div class='line'>The dancers quick and quicker flew;</div> - <div class='line'>They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit,</div> - <div class='line'>Till ilka Carlin swat and reekit,</div> - <div class='line'>And coost her duddies to the wark,</div> - <div class='line'>And linket at it in her sark!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Now Tam, O Tam! had they been queans</div> - <div class='line'>A’ plump and strapping in their teens;</div> - <div class='line'>Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flannen,</div> - <div class='line'>Been snaw-white seventeen hundred linen!</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair,</div> - <div class='line'>That ance were plush, o’ guid blue hair,</div> - <div class='line'>I wad hae gi’en them aff my hurdies,</div> - <div class='line'>For ae blink o’ the bonnie burdies!</div> - <div class='line in2'>But wither’d beldams, auld and droll,</div> - <div class='line'>Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,</div> - <div class='line'>Louping and flinging on a crummock,</div> - <div class='line'>I wonder did na turn thy stomach.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>But Tam ken’d what was what fu’ brawly,</div> - <div class='line'>There was ae winsome wench and waly,</div> - <div class='line'>That night enlisted in the core,</div> - <div class='line'>(Lang after ken’d on Carrick shore;</div> - <div class='line'>For mony a beast to dead she shot,</div> - <div class='line'>And perish’d mony a bonnie boat,</div> - <div class='line'>And shook baith meikle corn and bear,</div> - <div class='line'>And kept the country-side in fear—)</div> - <div class='line'>Her cutty sark o’ Paisley harn,</div> - <div class='line'>That while a lassie she had worn,</div> - <div class='line'>In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,</div> - <div class='line'>It was her best, and she was vaunty.—</div> - <div class='line'>Ah! little ken’d thy reverend grannie,</div> - <div class='line'>That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ twa pund Scots (’twas a’ her riches),</div> - <div class='line'>Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>But here my Muse her wing maun cour;</div> - <div class='line'>Sic flights are far beyond her power:</div> - <div class='line'>To sing how Nannie lap and flang,</div> - <div class='line'>(A souple jade she was, and strang)</div> - <div class='line'>And how Tam stood like ane bewitch’d,</div> - <div class='line'>And thought his very een enrich’d;</div> - <div class='line'>Ev’n Satan glowr’d and fidg’d fu’ fain,</div> - <div class='line'>And hotch’t, and blew wi’ might and main;</div> - <div class='line'>Till first ae caper, syne anither,</div> - <div class='line'>Tam tint his reason a’ thegither,</div> - <div class='line'>And roars out, ‘Weel done, Cutty Sark!’</div> - <div class='line'>And in an instant all was dark;</div> - <div class='line'>And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,</div> - <div class='line'>When out the hellish legion sallied.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>As bees biz out wi’ angry fyke</div> - <div class='line'>When plundering herds assail their byke;</div> - <div class='line'>As open pussie’s mortal foes,</div> - <div class='line'>When, pop! she starts before their nose;</div> - <div class='line'>As eager rins the market-crowd,</div> - <div class='line'>When ‘Catch the thief!’ resounds aloud;</div> - <div class='line'>So Maggie rins—the witches follow,</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ mony an eldritch skreech and hollow,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou ‘ll get thy fairin’!</div> - <div class='line'>In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin’!</div> - <div class='line'>In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin’!</div> - <div class='line'>Kate soon will be a waefu’ woman!</div> - <div class='line'>Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,</div> - <div class='line'>And win the key-stane o’ the brig;</div> - <div class='line'>There, at them thou thy tail may toss,</div> - <div class='line'>A running stream they dare na cross;</div> - <div class='line'>But ere the key-stane she could make,</div> - <div class='line'>The fient a tail she had to shake!</div> - <div class='line'>For Nannie, far before the rest,</div> - <div class='line'>Hard upon noble Maggie prest,</div> - <div class='line'>And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle;</div> - <div class='line'>But little wist she Maggie’s mettle—</div> - <div class='line'>Ae spring brought off her master hale,</div> - <div class='line'>But left behind, her ain grey tail:</div> - <div class='line'>The Carlin claught her by the rump,</div> - <div class='line'>And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read,</div> - <div class='line'>Ilk man and mother’s son tak heed:</div> - <div class='line'>Whane’er to drink you are inclin’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Or Cutty Sarks rin in your mind,</div> - <div class='line'>Think, ye may buy the joys owre dear;</div> - <div class='line'>Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Burns has given the extremes of licentious eccentricity and convivial -enjoyment, in the story of this scape-grace, and of patriarchal -simplicity and gravity in describing the old national character of the -Scottish peasantry. The Cotter’s Saturday Night is a noble and -pathetic picture of human manners, mingled with a fine religious awe. -It comes over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of music. The -soul of the poet aspires from this scene of low-thoughted care, and -reposes, in trembling hope, on ‘the bosom of its Father and its God.’ -Hardly any thing can be more touching than the following stanzas, -for instance, whether as they describe human interests, or breathe a -lofty devotional spirit.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,</div> - <div class='line in2'>This night his weekly moil is at an end,</div> - <div class='line'>Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,</div> - <div class='line'>And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>At length his lonely cot appears in view,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;</div> - <div class='line'>Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through</div> - <div class='line in2'>To meet their dad, wi’ flichterin noise and glee.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>His wee-bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,</div> - <div class='line in2'>His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie’s smile,</div> - <div class='line'>The lisping infant, prattling on his knee,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Does a’ his weary carking cares beguile,</div> - <div class='line'>And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,</div> - <div class='line in2'>At service out, amang the farmers roun’,</div> - <div class='line'>Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin</div> - <div class='line in2'>A cannie errand to a neebor town;</div> - <div class='line'>Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,</div> - <div class='line in2'>In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e,</div> - <div class='line'>Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee,</div> - <div class='line'>To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wi’ joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,</div> - <div class='line in2'>An’ each for other’s welfare kindly spiers;</div> - <div class='line'>The social hours, swift-winged, unnotic’d fleet;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears:</div> - <div class='line'>The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Anticipation forward points the view;</div> - <div class='line'>The mither, wi’ her needle an’ her shears,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new;</div> - <div class='line'>The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But, hark! a rap comes gently to the door;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same,</div> - <div class='line'>Tells how a neebor lad cam o’er the moor,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To do some errands, and convoy her hame.</div> - <div class='line'>The wily mother sees the conscious flame</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek;</div> - <div class='line'>With heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name,</div> - <div class='line in2'>While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;</div> - <div class='line'>Weel pleas’d the mother hears it’s nae wild, worthless rake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wi’ kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben;</div> - <div class='line in2'>A strappan youth; he taks the mother’s eye;</div> - <div class='line'>Blithe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill ta’en;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The father craks of horses, pleughs, and kye.</div> - <div class='line'>The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy,</div> - <div class='line'>But blate an’ laithfu’, scarce can weel behave;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy</div> - <div class='line'>What makes the youth sae bashfu’ an’ sae grave;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Weel-pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But now the supper crowns their simple board,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The halesome parritch, chief o’ Scotia’s food:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>The soupe their only hawkie does afford,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That ‘yont the hallan snugly chows her cood:</div> - <div class='line'>The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck, fell,</div> - <div class='line'>An’ aft he’s prest, an’ aft he ca’s it guid;</div> - <div class='line'>The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,</div> - <div class='line in2'>How ’twas a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,</div> - <div class='line in2'>They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;</div> - <div class='line'>The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride:</div> - <div class='line'>His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,</div> - <div class='line in2'>His lyart haffets wearing thin an’ bare;</div> - <div class='line'>Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,</div> - <div class='line in2'>He wales a portion wi’ judicious care;</div> - <div class='line'>And ‘Let us worship God!’ he says, with solemn air.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They chant their artless notes in simple guise;</div> - <div class='line in2'>They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:</div> - <div class='line'>Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;</div> - <div class='line'>Or noble Elgin beets the heav’n-ward flame,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays:</div> - <div class='line'>Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise;</div> - <div class='line'>Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Burns’s poetical epistles to his friends are admirable, whether for -the touches of satire, the painting of character, or the sincerity of -friendship they display. Those to Captain Grose, and to Davie, a -brother poet, are among the best:—they are ‘the true pathos and -sublime of human life.’ His prose-letters are sometimes tinctured -with affectation. They seem written by a man who has been -admired for his wit, and is expected on all occasions to shine. Those in -which he expresses his ideas of natural beauty in reference to Alison’s -Essay on Taste, and advocates the keeping up the remembrances of -old customs and seasons, are the most powerfully written. His -English serious odes and moral stanzas are, in general, failures, such -as the The Lament, Man was made to Mourn, &c. nor do I much -admire his ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.’ In this strain of -didactic or sentimental moralising, the lines to Glencairn are the -most happy, and impressive. His imitations of the old humorous -ballad style of Ferguson’s songs are no whit inferior to the admirable -originals, such as ‘John Anderson, my Joe,’ and many more. But -of all his productions, the pathetic and serious love-songs which he -<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>has left behind him, in the manner of the old ballads, are perhaps -those which take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind. -Such are the lines to Mary Morison, and those entitled Jessy.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear—</div> - <div class='line'>Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear—</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And soft as their parting tear—Jessy!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Altho’ thou maun never be mine,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Altho’ even hope is denied;</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis sweeter for thee despairing,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Than aught in the world beside—Jessy!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The conclusion of the other is as follows.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Yestreen, when to the trembling string</div> - <div class='line in2'>The dance gaed through the lighted ha’,</div> - <div class='line'>To thee my fancy took its wing,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I sat, but neither heard nor saw.</div> - <div class='line'>Tho’ this was fair, and that was bra’,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And yon the toast of a’ the town,</div> - <div class='line'>I sighed and said among them a’,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Ye are na’ Mary Morison.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>That beginning, ‘Oh gin my love were a bonny red rose,’ is a piece -of rich and fantastic description. One would think that nothing -could surpass these in beauty of expression, and in true pathos: and -nothing does or can, but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves. -There is in them a still more original cast of thought, a more -romantic imagery—the thistle’s glittering down, the gilliflower on the -old garden-wall, the horseman’s silver bells, the hawk on its perch—a -closer intimacy with nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only -stock of wealth which the mind has to resort to, a more infantine -simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, hopes longer -cherished and longer deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly heave, -and ‘thoughts that often lie too deep for tears.’ We seem to feel -that those who wrote and sung them (the early minstrels) lived in the -open air, wandering on from place to place with restless feet and -thoughts, and lending an ever-open ear to the fearful accidents of war -or love, floating on the breath of old tradition or common fame, and -moving the strings of their harp with sounds that sank into a nation’s -heart. How fine an illustration of this is that passage in Don -Quixote, where the knight and Sancho, going in search of Dulcinea, -inquire their way of the countryman, who was driving his mules to -plough before break of day, ‘singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles.’ -<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>Sir Thomas Overbury describes his country girl as still -accompanied with fragments of old songs. One of the best and most -striking descriptions of the effects of this mixture of national poetry -and music is to be found in one of the letters of Archbishop Herring, -giving an account of a confirmation-tour in the mountains of Wales.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to -mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone. -I submitted to this, which they told me was but a taste of the country, and -to prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse things did not -come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets; and -though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best -formed for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, -yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and -the air gave me appetite much keener than the knife I ate with. We had -our music too; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group -of figures that Hogarth would have given any price for. The harper was -in his true place and attitude; a man and woman stood before him, singing -to his instrument wildly, but not disagreeably; a little dirty child was -playing with the bottom of the harp; a woman in a sick night-cap hanging -over the stairs; a boy with crutches fixed in a staring attention, and a girl -carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet, -interrupted in her business by the charms of the music; all ragged and -dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most entertaining -picture, and would please you or any man of observation; and one reflection -gave me a particular comfort, that the assembly before us demonstrated, -that even here, the influential sun warmed poor mortals, and inspired them -with love and music.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>I could wish that Mr. Wilkie had been recommended to take this -group as the subject of his admirable pencil; he has painted a picture -of Bathsheba, instead.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In speaking of the old Scotch ballads, I need do no more than -mention the name of Auld Robin Gray. The effect of reading this -old ballad is as if all our hopes and fears hung upon the last fibre of -the heart, and we felt that giving way. What silence, what loneliness, -what leisure for grief and despair!</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘My father pressed me sair,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Though my mother did na’ speak;</div> - <div class='line'>But she looked in my face</div> - <div class='line in2'>Till my heart was like to break.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The irksomeness of the situations, the sense of painful dependence, is -excessive; and yet the sentiment of deep-rooted, patient affection -triumphs over all, and is the only impression that remains. Lady -<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>Ann Bothwell’s Lament is not, I think, quite equal to the lines -beginning—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘O waly, waly, up the bank,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And waly, waly, down the brae,</div> - <div class='line'>And waly, waly, yon burn side,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where I and my love wont to gae.</div> - <div class='line'>I leant my back unto an aik,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I thought it was a trusty tree;</div> - <div class='line'>But first it bow’d, and syne it brak,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sae my true-love’s forsaken me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O waly, waly, love is bonny,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A little time while it is new;</div> - <div class='line'>But when its auld, it waxeth cauld,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And fades awa’ like the morning dew.</div> - <div class='line'>When cockle-shells turn siller bells,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And muscles grow on every tree,</div> - <div class='line'>Whan frost and snaw sall warm us aw,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Then sall my love prove true to me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now Arthur seat sall be my bed,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The sheets sall ne’er be fyld by me:</div> - <div class='line'>Saint Anton’s well sall be my drink,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Since my true-love’s forsaken me.</div> - <div class='line'>Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And shake the green leaves aff the tree?</div> - <div class='line'>O gentle death, whan wilt thou cum,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And tak’ a life that wearies me!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>’Tis not the frost that freezes sae,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nor blawing snaw’s inclemencie,</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis not sic cauld, that makes me cry,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But my love’s heart grown cauld to me.</div> - <div class='line'>Whan we came in by Glasgow town,</div> - <div class='line in2'>We were a comely sight to see,</div> - <div class='line'>My love was clad in black velvet,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And I myself in cramasie.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But had I wist before I kist,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That love had been sae hard to win;</div> - <div class='line'>I’d lockt my heart in case of gowd,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And pinn’d it with a siller pin.</div> - <div class='line'>And oh! if my poor babe were born,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And set upon the nurse’s knee,</div> - <div class='line'>And I mysel in the cold grave!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Since my true-love’s forsaken me.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The finest modern imitation of this style is the Braes of Yarrow; -and perhaps the finest subject for a story of the same kind in any -<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>modern book, is that told in Turner’s History of England, of a -Mahometan woman, who having fallen in love with an English -merchant, the father of Thomas à Becket, followed him all the way -to England, knowing only the word London, and the name of her -lover, Gilbert.</p> - -<p class='c011'>But to have done with this, which is rather too serious a subject.—The -old English ballads are of a gayer and more lively turn. They -are adventurous and romantic; but they relate chiefly to good living -and good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes. Robin Hood -is the chief of these, and he still, in imagination, haunts Sherwood -Forest. The archers green glimmer under the waving branches; -the print on the grass remains where they have just finished their -noon-tide meal under the green-wood tree; and the echo of their -bugle-horn and twanging bows resounds through the tangled mazes of -the forest, as the tall slim deer glances startled by.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The grass beneath them now is dimly green:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Are they deserted all? Is no young mien,</div> - <div class='line'>With loose-slung bugle, met within the wood?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>No arrow found—foil’d of its antler’d food—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Struck in the oak’s rude side?—Is there nought seen</div> - <div class='line in2'>To mark the revelries which there have been,</div> - <div class='line'>In the sweet days of merry Robin Hood?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Go there with summer, and with evening—go</div> - <div class='line in2'>In the soft shadows, like some wand’ring man—</div> - <div class='line in2'>And thou shalt far amid the forest know</div> - <div class='line'>The archer-men in green, with belt and bow,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl and swan,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With Robin at their head, and Marian.’<a id='r9' /><a href='#f9' class='c015'><sup>[9]</sup></a></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE VIII<br /> <span class='small'>ON THE LIVING POETS</span></h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘No more of talk where God or Angel guest</div> - <div class='line'>With man, as with his friend, familiar us’d</div> - <div class='line'>To sit indulgent.’——</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c008'>Genius is the heir of fame; but the hard condition on which the -bright reversion must be earned is the loss of life. Fame is the -recompense not of the living, but of the dead. The temple of fame -<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled -from the ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not -begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. For fame is not -popularity, the shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the -venal puff, the soothing flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is -the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of -other men, undying and imperishable. It is the power which the -intellect exercises over the intellect, and the lasting homage which is -paid to it, as such, independently of time and circumstances, purified -from partiality and evil-speaking. Fame is the sound which the -stream of high thoughts, carried down to future ages, makes as it flows—deep, -distant, murmuring evermore like the waters of the mighty -ocean. He who has ears truly touched to this music, is in a manner -deaf to the voice of popularity.—The love of fame differs from mere -vanity in this, that the one is immediate and personal, the other ideal -and abstracted. It is not the direct and gross homage paid to himself, -that the lover of true fame seeks or is proud of; but the indirect and -pure homage paid to the eternal forms of truth and beauty as they -are reflected in his mind, that gives him confidence and hope. The -love of nature is the first thing in the mind of the true poet: the -admiration of himself the last. A man of genius cannot well be -a coxcomb; for his mind is too full of other things to be much -occupied with his own person. He who is conscious of great powers in -himself, has also a high standard of excellence with which to compare -his efforts: he appeals also to a test and judge of merit, which is -the highest, but which is too remote, grave, and impartial, to flatter his -self-love extravagantly, or puff him up with intolerable and vain conceit. -This, indeed, is one test of genius and of real greatness of mind, -whether a man can wait patiently and calmly for the award of -posterity, satisfied with the unwearied exercise of his faculties, retired -within the sanctuary of his own thoughts; or whether he is eager to -forestal his own immortality, and mortgage it for a newspaper puff. -He who thinks much of himself, will be in danger of being forgotten -by the rest of the world: he who is always trying to lay violent -hands on reputation, will not secure the best and most lasting. If -the restless candidate for praise takes no pleasure, no sincere and -heartfelt delight in his works, but as they are admired and applauded -by others, what should others see in them to admire or applaud? -They cannot be expected to admire them because they are <em>his</em>; but -for the truth and nature contained in them, which must first be inly -felt and copied with severe delight, from the love of truth and nature, -before it can ever appear there. Was Raphael, think you, when he -painted his pictures of the Virgin and Child in all their inconceivable -<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>truth and beauty of expression, thinking most of his subject or of -himself? Do you suppose that Titian, when he painted a landscape, -was pluming himself on being thought the finest colourist in the world, -or making himself so by looking at nature? Do you imagine that -Shakspeare, when he wrote Lear or Othello, was thinking of any -thing but Lear and Othello? Or that Mr. Kean, when he plays -these characters, is thinking of the audience?—No: he who would -be great in the eyes of others, must first learn to be nothing in his -own. The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only -another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain -the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority—that of -time.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Those minds, then, which are the most entitled to expect it, can -best put up with the postponement of their claims to lasting fame. -They can afford to wait. They are not afraid that truth and nature -will ever wear out; will lose their gloss with novelty, or their effect -with fashion. If their works have the seeds of immortality in them, -they will live; if they have not, they care little about them as theirs. -They do not complain of the start which others have got of them in -the race of everlasting renown, or of the impossibility of attaining the -honours which time alone can give, during the term of their natural -lives. They know that no applause, however loud and violent, can -anticipate or over-rule the judgment of posterity; that the opinion of -no one individual, nor of any one generation, can have the weight, the -authority (to say nothing of the force of sympathy and prejudice), -which must belong to that of successive generations. The brightest -living reputation cannot be equally imposing to the imagination, with -that which is covered and rendered venerable with the hoar of -innumerable ages. No modern production can have the same -atmosphere of sentiment around it, as the remains of classical -antiquity. But then our moderns may console themselves with the -reflection, that they will be old in their turn, and will either be -remembered with still increasing honours, or quite forgotten!</p> - -<p class='c011'>I would speak of the living poets as I have spoken of the dead -(for I think highly of many of them); but I cannot speak of them -with the same reverence, because I do not feel it; with the same -confidence, because I cannot have the same authority to sanction my -opinion. I cannot be absolutely certain that any body, twenty years -hence, will think any thing about any of them; but we may be -pretty sure that Milton and Shakspeare will be remembered twenty -years hence. We are, therefore, not without excuse if we husband our -enthusiasm a little, and do not prematurely lay out our whole stock -in untried ventures, and what may turn out to be false bottoms. I -<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>have myself out-lived one generation of favourite poets, the Darwins, -the Hayleys, the Sewards. Who reads them now?—If, however, I -have not the verdict of posterity to bear me out in bestowing the -most unqualified praises on their immediate successors, it is also to -be remembered, that neither does it warrant me in condemning them. -Indeed, it was not my wish to go into this ungrateful part of the -subject; but something of the sort is expected from me, and I must -run the gauntlet as well as I can. Another circumstance that adds -to the difficulty of doing justice to all parties is, that I happen to -have had a personal acquaintance with some of these jealous votaries -of the Muses; and that is not the likeliest way to imbibe a high -opinion of the rest. Poets do not praise one another in the language -of hyperbole. I am afraid, therefore, that I labour under a degree -of prejudice against some of the most popular poets of the day, from -an early habit of deference to the critical opinions of some of the -least popular. I cannot say that I ever learnt much about Shakspeare -or Milton, Spenser or Chaucer, from these professed guides; for I -never heard them say much about them. They were always talking -of themselves and one another. Nor am I certain that this sort of -personal intercourse with living authors, while it takes away all real -relish or freedom of opinion with regard to their contemporaries, -greatly enhances our respect for themselves. Poets are not ideal beings; -but have their prose-sides, like the commonest of the people. We -often hear persons say, What they would have given to have seen -Shakspeare! For my part, I would give a great deal not to have -seen him; at least, if he was at all like any body else that I have -ever seen. But why should he; for his works are not! This is, -doubtless, one great advantage which the dead have over the living. -It is always fortunate for ourselves and others, when we are prevented -from exchanging admiration for knowledge. The splendid vision -that in youth haunts our idea of the poetical character, fades, upon -acquaintance, into the light of common day; as the azure tints that -deck the mountain’s brow are lost on a nearer approach to them. -It is well, according to the moral of one of the Lyrical Ballads,—‘To -leave Yarrow unvisited.’ But to leave this ‘face-making,’ and -begin.—</p> - -<p class='c011'>I am a great admirer of the female writers of the present day; -they appear to me like so many modern Muses. I could be in love -with Mrs. Inchbald, romantic with Mrs. Radcliffe, and sarcastic -with Madame D’Arblay: but they are novel-writers, and, like -Audrey, may ‘thank the Gods for not having made them poetical.’ -Did any one here ever read Mrs. Leicester’s School? If they have -not, I wish they would; there will be just time before the next three -<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>volumes of the Tales of My Landlord come out. That is not a -school of affectation, but of humanity. No one can think too highly -of the work, or highly enough of the author.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with whose -works I became acquainted before those of any other author, male -or female, when I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her -story-books for children. I became acquainted with her poetical -works long after in Enfield’s Speaker; and remember being much -divided in my opinion at that time, between her Ode to Spring and -Collins’s Ode to Evening. I wish I could repay my childish debt of -gratitude in terms of appropriate praise. She is a very pretty poetess; -and, to my fancy, strews the flowers of poetry most agreeably round -the borders of religious controversy. She is a neat and pointed -prose-writer. Her ‘Thoughts on the Inconsistency of Human -Expectations,’ is one of the most ingenious and sensible essays in -the language. There is the same idea in one of Barrow’s Sermons.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mrs. Hannah More is another celebrated modern poetess, and I -believe still living. She has written a great deal which I have never -read.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Miss Baillie must make up this trio of female poets. Her tragedies -and comedies, one of each to illustrate each of the passions, separately -from the rest, are heresies in the dramatic art. She is a Unitarian -in poetry. With her the passions are, like the French republic, one -and indivisible: they are not so in nature, or in Shakspeare. Mr. -Southey has, I believe, somewhere expressed an opinion, that the -Basil of Miss Baillie is superior to Romeo and Juliet. I shall not -stay to contradict him. On the other hand, I prefer her De Montfort, -which was condemned on the stage, to some later tragedies, -which have been more fortunate—to the Remorse, Bertram, and -lastly, Fazio. There is in the chief character of that play a nerve, -a continued unity of interest, a setness of purpose and precision of -outline which John Kemble alone was capable of giving; and there -is all the grace which women have in writing. In saying that De -Montfort was a character which just suited Mr. Kemble, I mean to -pay a compliment to both. He was not ‘a man of no mark or likelihood’: -and what he could be supposed to do particularly well, must -have a meaning in it. As to the other tragedies just mentioned, there -is no reason why any common actor should not ‘make mouths in -them at the invisible event,’—one as well as another. Having thus -expressed my sense of the merits of the authoress, I must add, that -her comedy of the Election, performed last summer at the Lyceum -with indifferent success, appears to me the perfection of baby-house -theatricals. Every thing in it has such a <em>do-me-good</em> air, is so insipid -<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>and amiable. Virtue seems such a pretty playing at make-believe, -and vice is such a naughty word. It is a theory of some French -author, that little girls ought not to be suffered to have dolls to play -with, to call them <em>pretty dears</em>, to admire their black eyes and cherry -cheeks, to lament and bewail over them if they fall down and hurt -their faces, to praise them when they are good, and scold them when -they are naughty. It is a school of affectation: Miss Baillie has -profited of it. She treats her grown men and women as little girls -treat their dolls—makes moral puppets of them, pulls the wires, and -they talk virtue and act vice, according to their cue and the title -prefixed to each comedy or tragedy, not from any real passions of -their own, or love either of virtue or vice.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The transition from these to Mr. Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory, -is not far: he is a very lady-like poet. He is an elegant, but feeble -writer. He wraps up obvious thoughts in a glittering cover of fine -words; is full of enigmas with no meaning to them; is studiously -inverted, and scrupulously far-fetched; and his verses are poetry, -chiefly because no particle, line, or syllable of them reads like prose. -He differs from Milton in this respect, who is accused of having -inserted a number of prosaic lines in Paradise Lost. This kind -of poetry, which is a more minute and inoffensive species of the -Della Cruscan, is like the game of asking what one’s thoughts are -like. It is a tortuous, tottering, wriggling, fidgetty translation of -every thing from the vulgar tongue, into all the tantalizing, teasing, -tripping, lisping <em>mimminee-pimminee</em> of the highest brilliancy and -fashion of poetical diction. You have nothing like truth of nature -or simplicity of expression. The fastidious and languid reader is -never shocked by meeting, from the rarest chance in the world, -with a single homely phrase or intelligible idea. You cannot see -the thought for the ambiguity of the language, the figure for the -finery, the picture for the varnish. The whole is refined, and -frittered away into an appearance of the most evanescent brilliancy -and tremulous imbecility.—There is no other fault to be found with -the Pleasures of Memory, than a want of taste and genius. The -sentiments are amiable, and the notes at the end highly interesting, -particularly the one relating to the Countess Pillar (as it is called) -between Appleby and Penrith, erected (as the inscription tells the -thoughtful traveller) by Anne Countess of Pembroke, in the year -1648, in memory of her last parting with her good and pious mother -in the same place in the year 1616.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘To shew that power of love, how great</div> - <div class='line'>Beyond all human estimate.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>This story is also told in the poem, but with so many artful innuendos -and tinsel words, that it is hardly intelligible; and still less does it -reach the heart.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope is of the same school, in which a -painful attention is paid to the expression in proportion as there is -little to express, and the decomposition of prose is substituted for the -composition of poetry. How much the sense and keeping in the -ideas are sacrificed to a jingle of words and epigrammatic turn of -expression, may be seen in such lines as the following:—one of the -characters, an old invalid, wishes to end his days under</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Some hamlet shade, to yield his sickly form</div> - <div class='line'>Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Now the antithesis here totally fails: for it is the breeze, and not -the tree, or as it is quaintly expressed, <em>hamlet shade</em>, that affords -health, though it is the tree that affords shelter in or from the storm. -Instances of the same sort of <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">curiosa infelicitas</span></i> are not rare in this -author. His verses on the Battle of Hohenlinden have considerable -spirit and animation. His Gertrude of Wyoming is his principal -performance. It is a kind of historical paraphrase of Mr. Wordsworth’s -poem of Ruth. It shews little power, or power enervated -by extreme fastidiousness. It is</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘——Of outward show</div> - <div class='line'>Elaborate; of inward less exact.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>There are painters who trust more to the setting of their pictures -than to the truth of the likeness. Mr. Campbell always seems to me -to be thinking how his poetry will look when it comes to be hot-pressed -on superfine wove paper, to have a disproportionate eye to -points and commas, and dread of errors of the press. He is so -afraid of doing wrong, of making the smallest mistake, that he does -little or nothing. Lest he should wander irretrievably from the -right path, he stands still. He writes according to established -etiquette. He offers the Muses no violence. If he lights upon a -good thought, he immediately drops it for fear of spoiling a good -thing. When he launches a sentiment that you think will float him -triumphantly for once to the bottom of the stanza, he stops short -at the end of the first or second line, and stands shivering on the -brink of beauty, afraid to trust himself to the fathomless abyss. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Tutus -nimium, timidusque procellarum.</span></i> His very circumspection betrays -him. The poet, as well as the woman, that deliberates, is undone. -He is much like a man whose heart fails him just as he is going up -in a balloon, and who breaks his neck by flinging himself out of it -<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>when it is too late. Mr. Campbell too often maims and mangles -his ideas before they are full formed, to fit them to the Procrustes’<a id='t150'></a> -bed of criticism; or strangles his intellectual offspring in the birth, -lest they should come to an untimely end in the Edinburgh Review. -He plays the hypercritic on himself, and starves his genius to death -from a needless apprehension of a plethora. No writer who thinks -habitually of the critics, either to tremble at their censures or set -them at defiance, can write well. It is the business of reviewers -to watch poets, not of poets to watch reviewers.—There is one -admirable simile in this poem, of the European child brought by -the sooty Indian in his hand, ‘like morning brought by night.’ The -love-scenes in Gertrude of Wyoming breathe a balmy voluptuousness -of sentiment; but they are generally broken off in the middle; they -are like the scent of a bank of violets, faint and rich, which the -gale suddenly conveys in a different direction. Mr. Campbell is -careful of his own reputation, and economical of the pleasures of -his readers. He treats them as the fox in the fable treated his -guest the stork; or, to use his own expression, his fine things are</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Like angels’ visits, few, and far between.’<a id='r10' /><a href='#f10' class='c015'><sup>[10]</sup></a></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>There is another fault in this poem, which is the mechanical structure -of the fable. The most striking events occur in the shape of -antitheses. The story is cut into the form of a parallelogram. -There is the same systematic alternation of good and evil, of violence -and repose, that there is of light and shade in a picture. The Indian, -who is the chief agent in the interest of the poem, vanishes and -returns after long intervals, like the periodical revolutions of the -planets. He unexpectedly appears just in the nick of time, after -years of absence, and without any known reason but the convenience -of the author and the astonishment of the reader; as if nature were -a machine constructed on a principle of complete contrast, to produce -a theatrical effect. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus.</span></i> Mr. -Campbell’s savage never appears but upon great occasions, and then -his punctuality is preternatural and alarming. He is the most -wonderful instance on record of poetical <em>reliability</em>. The most -dreadful mischiefs happen at the most mortifying moments; and -when your expectations are wound up to the highest pitch, you are -sure to have them knocked on the head by a premeditated and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>remorseless stroke of the poet’s pen. This is done so often for the -convenience of the author, that in the end it ceases to be for the -satisfaction of the reader.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Tom Moore is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heedless, -gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, -reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. -Moore’s Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, -and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters -in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and -sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his purple light. -His thoughts are as restless, as many, and as bright as the insects -that people the sun’s beam. ‘So work the honey-bees,’ extracting -liquid sweets from opening buds; so the butterfly expands its wings -to the idle air; so the thistle’s silver down is wafted over summer -seas. An airy voyager on life’s stream, his mind inhales the fragrance -of a thousand shores, and drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon -skies. Wherever his footsteps tend over the enamelled ground of -fairy fiction—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Around him the bees in play flutter and cluster,</div> - <div class='line'>And gaudy butterflies frolic around.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power. -His facility of production lessens the effect of, and hangs as a dead -weight upon, what he produces. His levity at last oppresses. The -infinite delight he takes in such an infinite number of things, creates -indifference in minds less susceptible of pleasure than his own. He -exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys; his -rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with -which he lends himself to every subject, the genial spirit with which -he indulges in every sentiment, prevents him from giving their full -force to the masses of things, from connecting them into a whole. -He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not -brood over the great and permanent; it glances over the surfaces, -the first impressions of things, instead of grappling with the deep-rooted -prejudices of the mind, its inveterate habits, and that ‘perilous -stuff that weighs upon the heart.’ His pen, as it is rapid and fanciful, -wants momentum and passion. It requires the same principle to -make us thoroughly like poetry, that makes us like ourselves so well, -the feeling of continued identity. The impressions of Mr. Moore’s -poetry are detached, desultory, and physical. Its gorgeous colours -brighten and fade like the rainbow’s. Its sweetness evaporates like -the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers! His gay laughing style, -which relates to the immediate pleasures of love or wine, is better -<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>than his sentimental and romantic vein. His Irish melodies are not -free from affectation and a certain sickliness of pretension. His -serious descriptions are apt to run into flowery tenderness. His -pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crystallizes -into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, and glittering hardness -of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality. -His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best: it is first-rate. His -Twopenny Post-Bag is a perfect ‘nest of spicery’; where the Cayenne -is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet’s pen. In this -too, our bard resembles the bee—he has its honey and its sting.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three -thousand guineas. His fame is worth more than that. He should -have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure, -so much as an evasion and a consequent disappointment of public -expectation. He should have left it to others to break conventions -with nations, and faith with the world. He should, at any rate, -have kept his with the public. Lalla Rookh is not what people -wanted to see whether Mr. Moore could do; namely, whether he -could write a long epic poem. It is four short tales. The interest, -however, is often high-wrought and tragic, but the execution still -turns to the effeminate and voluptuous side. Fortitude of mind is -the first requisite of a tragic or epic writer. Happiness of nature -and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of the bard -of Erin. If he is not perfectly contented with what he is, all the -world beside is. He had no temptation to risk any thing in adding -to the love and admiration of his age, and more than one country.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Therefore to be possessed with double pomp,</div> - <div class='line'>To guard a title that was rich before,</div> - <div class='line'>To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,</div> - <div class='line'>To throw a perfume on the violet,</div> - <div class='line'>To smooth the ice, or add another hue</div> - <div class='line'>Unto the rainbow, or with taper light</div> - <div class='line'>To seek the beauteous eye of heav’n to garnish,</div> - <div class='line'>Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The same might be said of Mr. Moore’s seeking to bind an epic -crown, or the shadow of one, round his other laurels.</p> - -<p class='c011'>If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough personally, Lord Byron -(judging from the tone of his writings) might be thought to have -suffered too much to be a truly great poet. If Mr. Moore lays -himself too open to all the various impulses of things, the outward -shews of earth and sky, to every breath that blows, to every stray -sentiment that crosses his fancy; Lord Byron shuts himself up too -<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>much in the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts, and buries the -natural light of things in ‘nook monastic.’ The Giaour, the Corsair, -Childe Harold, are all the same person, and they are apparently all -himself. The everlasting repetition of one subject, the same dark -ground of fiction, with the darker colours of the poet’s mind spread -over it, the unceasing accumulation of horrors on horror’s head, steels -the mind against the sense of pain, as inevitably as the unwearied -Siren sounds and luxurious monotony of Mr. Moore’s poetry make -it inaccessible to pleasure. Lord Byron’s poetry is as morbid as -Mr. Moore’s is careless and dissipated. He has more depth of -passion, more force and impetuosity, but the passion is always of the -same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and -gloomy. It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, -or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, -and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things. There is -nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. -There is nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption of -all the interests of others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling -passion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would make -itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cherishing -but its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer, eating into the -heart of poetry. But still there is power; and power rivets attention -and forces admiration. ‘He hath a demon:’ and that is the next -thing to being full of the God. His brow collects the scattered gloom: -his eye flashes livid fire that withers and consumes. But still we -watch the progress of the scathing bolt with interest, and mark the -ruin it leaves behind with awe. Within the contracted range of his -imagination, he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses -elements and agents congenial to his mind, the dark and glittering -ocean, the frail bark hurrying before the storm, pirates and men that -‘house on the wild sea with wild usages.’ He gives the tumultuous -eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour of -style and force of conception, he in one sense surpasses every writer -of the present day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles of -misanthropy. He who wishes for ‘a curse to kill with,’ may find it -in Lord Byron’s writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath -his strength, tenderness sometimes joined with the phrenzy of despair. -A flash of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil, -like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over -charnel-houses and the grave!</p> - -<p class='c011'>There is one subject on which Lord Byron is fond of writing, on -which I wish he would not write—Buonaparte. Not that I quarrel -with his writing for him, or against him, but with his writing both -<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>for him and against him. What right has he to do this? Buonaparte’s -character, be it what else it may, does not change every hour according -to his Lordship’s varying humour. He is not a pipe for Fortune’s -finger, or for his Lordship’s Muse, to play what stop she pleases on. -Why should Lord Byron now laud him to the skies in the hour of -his success, and then peevishly wreak his disappointment on the God -of his idolatry? The man he writes of does not rise or fall with -circumstances: but ‘looks on tempests and is never shaken.’ Besides, -he is a subject for history, and not for poetry.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,</div> - <div class='line'>And in themselves their pride lies buried;</div> - <div class='line in2'>For at a frown they in their glory die.</div> - <div class='line'>The painful warrior, famoused for fight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>After a thousand victories once foil’d,</div> - <div class='line'>Is from the book of honour razed quite,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>If Lord Byron will write any thing more on this hazardous theme, -let him take these lines of Shakspeare for his guide, and finish them -in the spirit of the original—they will then be worthy of the subject.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present -day, and deservedly so. He describes that which is most easily and -generally understood with more vivacity and effect than any body else. -He has no excellences, either of a lofty or recondite kind, which lie -beyond the reach of the most ordinary capacity to find out; but he -has all the good qualities which all the world agree to understand. -His style is clear, flowing, and transparent: his sentiments, of which -his style is an easy and natural medium, are common to him with his -readers. He has none of Mr. Wordsworth’s <em>idiosyncracy</em>. He differs -from his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and facility of -expression. His poetry belongs to the class of <em>improvisatori</em> poetry. -It has neither depth, height, nor breadth in it; neither uncommon -strength, nor uncommon refinement of thought, sentiment, or language. -It has no originality. But if this author has no research, -no moving power in his own breast, he relies with the greater safety -and success on the force of his subject. He selects a story such as -is sure to please, full of incidents, characters, peculiar manners, -costume, and scenery; and he tells it in a way that can offend no -one. He never wearies or disappoints you. He is communicative -and garrulous; but he is not his own hero. He never obtrudes himself -on your notice to prevent your seeing the subject. What passes -in the poem, passes much as it would have done in reality. The -author has little or nothing to do with it. Mr. Scott has great -<span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing external -objects and events before the eye. The force of his mind is picturesque, -rather than <em>moral</em>. He gives more of the features of nature -than the soul of passion. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible -changes in outward objects, rather than ‘their mortal consequences.’ -He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in -delightful fancy, to Mr. Wordsworth in profound sentiment: but he -has more picturesque power than any of them; that is, he places the -objects themselves, about which <em>they</em> might feel and think, in a much -more striking point of view, with greater variety of dress and attitude, -and with more local truth of colouring. His imagery is Gothic and -grotesque. The manners and actions have the interest and curiosity -belonging to a wild country and a distant period of time. Few -descriptions have a more complete reality, a more striking appearance -of life and motion, than that of the warriors in the Lady of the Lake, -who start up at the command of Rhoderic Dhu, from their concealment -under the fern, and disappear again in an instant. The Lay of -the Last Minstrel and Marmion are the first, and perhaps the best -of his works. The Goblin Page, in the first of these, is a very -interesting and inscrutable little personage. In reading these poems, -I confess I am a little disconcerted, in turning over the page, to find -Mr. Westall’s pictures, which always seem <em>fac-similes</em> of the persons -represented, with ancient costume and a theatrical air. This may be -a compliment to Mr. Westall, but it is not one to Walter Scott. -The truth is, there is a modern air in the midst of the antiquarian -research of Mr. Scott’s poetry. It is history or tradition in masquerade. -Not only the crust of old words and images is worn off -with time,—the substance is grown comparatively light and worthless. -The forms are old and uncouth; but the spirit is effeminate and -frivolous. This is a deduction from the praise I have given to his -pencil for extreme fidelity, though it has been no obstacle to its -drawing-room success. He has just hit the town between the -romantic and the fashionable; and between the two, secured all -classes of readers on his side. In a word, I conceive that he is to -the great poet, what an excellent mimic is to a great actor. There -is no determinate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry. -It has no results. The reader rises up from the perusal with new -images and associations, but he remains the same man that he was -before. A great mind is one that moulds the minds of others. -Mr. Scott has put the Border Minstrelsy and scattered traditions of -the country into easy, animated verse. But the Notes to his poems -are just as entertaining as the poems themselves, and his poems are -only entertaining.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. He is the -reverse of Walter Scott in his defects and excellences. He has -nearly all that the other wants, and wants all that the other possesses. -His poetry is not external, but internal; it does not depend upon -tradition, or story, or old song; he furnishes it from his own mind, -and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Of many -of the Lyrical Ballads, it is not possible to speak in terms of too high -praise, such as Hart-leap Well, the Banks of the Wye, Poor Susan, -parts of the Leech-gatherer, the lines to a Cuckoo, to a Daisy, the -Complaint, several of the Sonnets, and a hundred others of inconceivable -beauty, of perfect originality and pathos. They open a finer -and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any poet in modern times -has done, or attempted. He has produced a deeper impression, and -on a smaller circle, than any other of his contemporaries. His -powers have been mistaken by the age, nor does he exactly understand -them himself. He cannot form a whole. He has not the -constructive faculty. He can give only the fine tones of thought, -drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds drawn -from the Æolian harp by the wandering gale.—He is totally deficient -in all the machinery of poetry. His <cite>Excursion</cite>, taken as a whole, notwithstanding -the noble materials thrown away in it, is a proof of this. -The line labours, the sentiment moves slow, but the poem stands -stock-still. The reader makes no way from the first line to the last. -It is more than any thing in the world like Robinson Crusoe’s boat, -which would have been an excellent good boat, and would have -carried him to the other side of the globe, but that he could not get -it out of the sand where it stuck fast. I did what little I could to -help to launch it at the time, but it would not do. I am not, however, -one of those who laugh at the attempts or failures of men of genius. -It is not my way to cry ‘Long life to the conqueror.’ Success and -desert are not with me synonymous terms; and the less Mr. Wordsworth’s -general merits have been understood, the more necessary is it -to insist upon them. This is not the place to repeat what I have -already said on the subject. The reader may turn to it in the Round -Table. I do not think, however, there is any thing in the larger -poem equal to many of the detached pieces in the Lyrical Ballads. -As Mr. Wordsworth’s poems have been little known to the public, -or chiefly through garbled extracts from them, I will here give an -entire poem (one that has always been a favourite with me), that the -reader may know what it is that the admirers of this author find to -be delighted with in his poetry. Those who do not feel the beauty -and the force of it, may save themselves the trouble of inquiring -farther.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'><span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>HART-LEAP WELL</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor</div> - <div class='line in2'>With the slow motion of a summer’s cloud;</div> - <div class='line'>He turned aside towards a vassal’s door,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And, “Bring another horse!” he cried aloud.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Another horse!”—That shout the vassal heard,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And saddled his best steed, a comely gray;</div> - <div class='line'>Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third</div> - <div class='line in2'>Which he had mounted on that glorious day.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Joy sparkled in the prancing courser’s eyes:</div> - <div class='line in2'>The horse and horseman are a happy pair;</div> - <div class='line'>But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,</div> - <div class='line in2'>There is a doleful silence in the air.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A rout this morning left Sir Walter’s hall,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That as they galloped made the echoes roar;</div> - <div class='line'>But horse and man are vanished, one and all;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Such race, I think, was never seen before.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain:</div> - <div class='line'>Brach, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Follow, and up the weary mountain strain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The knight hallooed, he chid and cheered them on</div> - <div class='line in2'>With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern;</div> - <div class='line'>But breath and eye-sight fail; and, one by one,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where is the throng, the tumult of the race?</div> - <div class='line in2'>The bugles that so joyfully were blown?</div> - <div class='line'>—This chase it looks not like an earthly chase;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sir Walter and the hart are left alone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The poor hart toils along the mountain side;</div> - <div class='line in2'>I will not stop to tell how far he fled,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor will I mention by what death he died;</div> - <div class='line in2'>But now the knight beholds him lying dead.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn;</div> - <div class='line in2'>He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy:</div> - <div class='line'>He neither smacked his whip, nor blew his horn,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Stood his dumb partner in this glorious act;</div> - <div class='line'>Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And foaming like a mountain cataract.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>Upon his side the hart was lying stretched:</div> - <div class='line in2'>His nose half-touched a spring beneath a hill,</div> - <div class='line'>And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched</div> - <div class='line in2'>The waters of the spring were trembling still.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And now, too happy for repose or rest,</div> - <div class='line in2'>(Was never man in such a joyful case!)</div> - <div class='line'>Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And gazed, and gazed upon that darling place.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And climbing up the hill—(it was at least</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found,</div> - <div class='line'>Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast</div> - <div class='line in2'>Had left imprinted on the verdant ground.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sir Walter wiped his face and cried, “Till now</div> - <div class='line in2'>Such sight was never seen by living eyes:</div> - <div class='line'>Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Down to the very fountain where he lies.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I’ll build a pleasure-house upon this spot,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And a small arbour, made for rural joy;</div> - <div class='line'>‘Twill be the traveller’s shed, the pilgrim’s cot,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A place of love for damsels that are coy.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A cunning artist will I have to frame</div> - <div class='line in2'>A bason for that fountain in the dell;</div> - <div class='line'>And they, who do make mention of the same</div> - <div class='line in2'>From this day forth, shall call it <span class='sc'>Hart-leap Well</span>.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And, gallant brute! to make thy praises known,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Another monument shall here be raised;</div> - <div class='line'>Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And planted where thy hoofs the turf have grazed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And, in the summer-time when days are long,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I will come hither with my paramour;</div> - <div class='line'>And with the dancers, and the minstrel’s song,</div> - <div class='line in2'>We will make merry in that pleasant bower.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Till the foundations of the mountains fail,</div> - <div class='line in2'>My mansion with its arbour shall endure;—</div> - <div class='line'>The joy of them who till the fields of Swale,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And them who dwell among the woods of Ure!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then home he went, and left the hart, stone-dead,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring.</div> - <div class='line'>—Soon did the knight perform what he had said,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And far and wide the fame thereof did ring.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A cup of stone received the living well;</div> - <div class='line'>Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And built a house of pleasure in the dell.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall</div> - <div class='line in2'>With trailing plants and trees were intertwined,—</div> - <div class='line'>Which soon composed a little sylvan hall,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And thither, when the summer-days were long,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sir Walter journeyed with his paramour;</div> - <div class='line'>And with the dancers and the minstrel’s song</div> - <div class='line in2'>Made merriment within that pleasant bower.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And his bones lie in his paternal vale.—</div> - <div class='line'>But there is matter for a second rhyme,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And I to this would add another tale.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14 c002'>PART SECOND</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The moving accident is not my trade:</div> - <div class='line in2'>To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair,</div> - <div class='line in2'>It chanced that I saw standing in a dell</div> - <div class='line'>Three aspens at three corners of a square,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And one, not four yards distant, near a well.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What this imported I could ill divine:</div> - <div class='line in2'>And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop,</div> - <div class='line'>I saw three pillars standing in a line,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green;</div> - <div class='line'>So that you just might say, as then I said,</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Here in old time the hand of man hath been.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I looked upon the hill both far and near,</div> - <div class='line in2'>More doleful place did never eye survey;</div> - <div class='line'>It seemed as if the spring-time came not here,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And Nature here were willing to decay.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,</div> - <div class='line in2'>When one, who was in shepherd’s garb attired,</div> - <div class='line'>Came up the hollow:—Him did I accost,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And what this place might be I then inquired.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>The shepherd stopped, and that same story told</div> - <div class='line in2'>Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed.</div> - <div class='line'>“A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old!</div> - <div class='line in2'>But something ails it now; the spot is curst.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Some say that they are beeches, others elms—</div> - <div class='line'>These were the bower; and here a mansion stood,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The finest palace of a hundred realms!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The arbour does its own condition tell;</div> - <div class='line in2'>You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream;</div> - <div class='line'>But as to the great lodge! you might as well</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There’s neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Will wet his lips within that cup of stone;</div> - <div class='line'>And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep,</div> - <div class='line in2'>This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Some say that here a murder has been done,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And blood cries out for blood: but, for my part,</div> - <div class='line'>I’ve guessed, when I’ve been sitting in the sun,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That it was all for that unhappy hart.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What thoughts must through the creature’s brain have passed!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Even from the top-most stone, upon the steep,</div> - <div class='line'>Are but three bounds—and look, Sir, at this last—</div> - <div class='line in2'>—O Master! it has been a cruel leap.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And in my simple mind we cannot tell</div> - <div class='line'>What cause the hart might have to love this place,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And come and make his death-bed near the well.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lulled by this fountain in the summer-tide;</div> - <div class='line'>This water was perhaps the first he drank</div> - <div class='line in2'>When he had wandered from his mother’s side.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In April here beneath the scented thorn</div> - <div class='line in2'>He heard the birds their morning carols sing;</div> - <div class='line'>And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born</div> - <div class='line in2'>Not half a furlong from that self-same spring.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But now here’s neither grass nor pleasant shade;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The sun on drearier hollow never shone;</div> - <div class='line'>So will it be, as I have often said,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>‘Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Small difference lies between thy creed and mine:</div> - <div class='line'>This beast not unobserved by Nature fell;</div> - <div class='line in2'>His death was mourned by sympathy divine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The Being, that is in the clouds and air,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That is in the green leaves among the groves,</div> - <div class='line'>Maintains a deep, and reverential care</div> - <div class='line in2'>For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The pleasure-house is dust:—behind, before,</div> - <div class='line in2'>This is no common waste, no common gloom;</div> - <div class='line'>But Nature, in due course of time, once more</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She leaves these objects to a slow decay,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That what we are, and have been, may be known;</div> - <div class='line'>But at the coming of the milder day,</div> - <div class='line in2'>These monuments shall all be overgrown.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Taught both by what she shews, and what conceals,</div> - <div class='line'>Never to blend our pleasure or our pride</div> - <div class='line in2'>With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that which has been denominated -the Lake school of poetry; a school which, with all my respect for -it, I do not think sacred from criticism or exempt from faults, of -some of which faults I shall speak with becoming frankness; for I -do not see that the liberty of the press ought to be shackled, or freedom -of speech curtailed, to screen either its revolutionary or renegado -extravagances. This school of poetry had its origin in the French -revolution, or rather in those sentiments and opinions which produced -that revolution; and which sentiments and opinions were indirectly -imported into this country in translations from the German about that -period. Our poetical literature had, towards the close of the last -century, degenerated into the most trite, insipid, and mechanical of all -things, in the hands of the followers of Pope and the old French school -of poetry. It wanted something to stir it up, and it found that something -in the principles and events of the French revolution. From -the impulse it thus received, it rose at once from the most servile -imitation and tamest common-place, to the utmost pitch of singularity -and paradox. The change in the belles-lettres was as complete, and -to many persons as startling, as the change in politics, with which it -went hand in hand. There was a mighty ferment in the heads of -statesmen and poets, kings and people. According to the prevailing -notions, all was to be natural and new. Nothing that was established -<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>was to be tolerated. All the common-place figures of poetry, tropes, -allegories, personifications, with the whole heathen mythology, were -instantly discarded; a classical allusion was considered as a piece of -antiquated foppery; capital letters were no more allowed in print, -than letters-patent of nobility were permitted in real life; kings and -queens were dethroned from their rank and station in legitimate -tragedy or epic poetry, as they were decapitated elsewhere; rhyme -was looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular metre -was abolished along with regular government. Authority and fashion, -elegance or arrangement, were hooted out of countenance, as pedantry -and prejudice. Every one did that which was good in his own eyes. -The object was to reduce all things to an absolute level; and a -singularly affected and outrageous simplicity prevailed in dress and -manners, in style and sentiment. A striking effect produced where -it was least expected, something new and original, no matter whether -good, bad, or indifferent, whether mean or lofty, extravagant or -childish, was all that was aimed at, or considered as compatible with -sound philosophy and an age of reason. The licentiousness grew -extreme: Coryate’s Crudities were nothing to it. The world was -to be turned topsy-turvy; and poetry, by the good will of our Adam-wits, -was to share its fate and begin <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">de novo</span></i>. It was a time of -promise, a renewal of the world and of letters; and the Deucalions, -who were to perform this feat of regeneration, were the present poet-laureat -and the two authors of the Lyrical Ballads. The Germans, -who made heroes of robbers, and honest women of cast-off mistresses, -had already exhausted the extravagant and marvellous in sentiment -and situation: our native writers adopted a wonderful simplicity of -style and matter. The paradox they set out with was, that all things -are by nature equally fit subjects for poetry; or that if there is any -preference to be given, those that are the meanest and most unpromising -are the best, as they leave the greatest scope for the unbounded -stores of thought and fancy in the writer’s own mind. Poetry had -with them ‘neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its pendant -bed and procreant cradle.’ It was not ‘born so high: its aiery -buildeth in the cedar’s top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns -the sun.’ It grew like a mushroom out of the ground; or was -hidden in it like a truffle, which it required a particular sagacity and -industry to find out and dig up. They founded the new school on a -principle of sheer humanity, on pure nature void of art. It could not -be said of these sweeping reformers and dictators in the republic of -letters, that ‘in their train walked crowns and crownets; that realms -and islands, like plates, dropt from their pockets’: but they were -surrounded, in company with the Muses, by a mixed rabble of idle -<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>apprentices and Botany Bay convicts, female vagrants, gipsies, meek -daughters in the family of Christ, of ideot boys and mad mothers, -and after them ‘owls and night-ravens flew.’ They scorned ‘degrees, -priority, and place, insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office, -and custom in all line of order’:—the distinctions of birth, the -vicissitudes of fortune, did not enter into their abstracted, lofty, and -levelling calculation of human nature. He who was more than man, -with them was none. They claimed kindred only with the commonest -of the people: peasants, pedlars, and village-barbers were their oracles -and bosom friends. Their poetry, in the extreme to which it -professedly tended, and was in effect carried, levels all distinctions -of nature and society; has ‘no figures nor no fantasies,’ which the -prejudices of superstition or the customs of the world draw in the -brains of men; ‘no trivial fond records’ of all that has existed in -the history of past ages; it has no adventitious pride, pomp, or -circumstance, to set it off; ‘the marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s -robe’; neither tradition, reverence, nor ceremony, ‘that to great -ones ‘longs’: it breaks in pieces the golden images of poetry, and -defaces its armorial bearings, to melt them down in the mould of -common humanity or of its own upstart self-sufficiency. They took -the same method in their new-fangled ‘metre ballad-mongering’ -scheme, which Rousseau did in his prose paradoxes—of exciting -attention by reversing the established standards of opinion and -estimation in the world. They were for bringing poetry back to -its primitive simplicity and state of nature, as he was for bringing -society back to the savage state: so that the only thing remarkable -left in the world by this change, would be the persons who had -produced it. A thorough adept in this school of poetry and -philanthropy is jealous of all excellence but his own. He does -not even like to share his reputation with his subject; for he would -have it all proceed from his own power and originality of mind. -Such a one is slow to admire any thing that is admirable; feels no -interest in what is most interesting to others, no grandeur in any -thing grand, no beauty in anything beautiful. He tolerates only -what he himself creates; he sympathizes only with what can enter -into no competition with him, with ‘the bare trees and mountains -bare, and grass in the green field.’ He sees nothing but himself and -the universe. He hates all greatness and all pretensions to it, whether -well or ill-founded. His egotism is in some respects a madness; for -he scorns even the admiration of himself, thinking it a presumption in -any one to suppose that he has taste or sense enough to understand -him. He hates all science and all art; he hates chemistry, he hates -conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates Sir Isaac Newton; he -<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>hates wisdom; he hates wit; he hates metaphysics, which he says -are unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them; -he hates prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the -dialogues in Shakespeare; he hates music, dancing, and painting; he -hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates -Titian; he hates Vandyke; he hates the antique; he hates the -Apollo Belvidere; he hates the Venus of Medicis. This is the -reason that so few people take an interest in his writings, because he -takes an interest in nothing that others do!—The effect has been -perceived as something odd; but the cause or principle has never -been distinctly traced to its source before, as far as I know. The -proofs are to be found every where—in Mr. Southey’s Botany Bay -Eclogues, in his book of Songs and Sonnets, his Odes and Inscriptions, -so well parodied in the Anti-Jacobin Review, in his Joan of -Arc, and last, though not least, in his Wat Tyler:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘When Adam delved, and Eve span,</div> - <div class='line'>Where was then the gentleman?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>(—or the poet laureat either, we may ask?)—In Mr. Coleridge’s -Ode to an Ass’s Foal, in his Lines to Sarah, his Religious Musings; -and in his and Mr. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">passim</span></i>.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Of Mr. Southey’s larger epics, I have but a faint recollection at -this distance of time, but all that I remember of them is mechanical -and extravagant, heavy and superficial. His affected, disjointed style -is well imitated in the Rejected Addresses. The difference between -him and Sir Richard Blackmore seems to be, that the one is heavy -and the other light, the one solemn and the other pragmatical, the -one phlegmatic and the other flippant; and that there is no Gay -in the present time to give a Catalogue Raisonné of the performances -of the living undertaker of epics. Kehama is a loose sprawling -figure, such as we see cut out of wood or paper, and pulled or jerked -with wire or thread, to make sudden and surprising motions, without -meaning, grace, or nature in them. By far the best of his works are -some of his shorter personal compositions, in which there is an -ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, such as his lines on a -picture of Gaspar Poussin, the fine tale of Gualberto, his Description -of a Pig, and the Holly-tree, which is an affecting, beautiful, and -modest retrospect on his own character. May the aspiration with -which it concludes be fulfilled!<a id='r11' /><a href='#f11' class='c015'><sup>[11]</sup></a>—But the little he has done of true -<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>and sterling excellence, is overloaded by the quantity of indifferent -matter which he turns out every year, ‘prosing or versing,’ with -equally mechanical and irresistible facility. His Essays, or political -and moral disquisitions, are not so full of original matter as Montaigne’s. -They are second or third rate compositions in that class.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It remains that I should say a few words of Mr. Coleridge; and -there is no one who has a better right to say what he thinks of him -<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>than I have. ‘Is there here any dear friend of Cæsar? To him I -say, that Brutus’s love to Cæsar was no less than his.’ But no -matter.—His Ancient Mariner is his most remarkable performance, -and the only one that I could point out to any one as giving an -adequate idea of his great natural powers. It is high German, -however, and in it he seems to ‘conceive of poetry but as a drunken -dream, reckless, careless, and heedless, of past, present, and to come.’ -His tragedies (for he has written two) are not answerable to it; they -are, except a few poetical passages, drawling sentiment and metaphysical -jargon. He has no genuine dramatic talent. There is one -fine passage in his Christabel, that which contains the description -of the quarrel between Sir Leoline and Sir Roland de Vaux of -Tryermaine, who had been friends in youth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Alas! they had been friends in youth,</div> - <div class='line'>But whispering tongues can poison truth;</div> - <div class='line'>And constancy lives in realms above;</div> - <div class='line'>And life is thorny; and youth is vain;</div> - <div class='line'>And to be wroth with one we love,</div> - <div class='line'>Doth work like madness in the brain:</div> - <div class='line'>And thus it chanc’d as I divine,</div> - <div class='line'>With Roland and Sir Leoline.</div> - <div class='line'>Each spake words of high disdain</div> - <div class='line'>And insult to his heart’s best brother,</div> - <div class='line'>And parted ne’er to meet again!</div> - <div class='line'>But neither ever found another</div> - <div class='line'>To free the hollow heart from paining—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>They stood aloof, the scars remaining,</div> - <div class='line'>Like cliffs which had been rent asunder:</div> - <div class='line'>A dreary sea now flows between,</div> - <div class='line'>But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall wholly do away I ween</div> - <div class='line'>The marks of that which once hath been.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Sir Leoline a moment’s space</div> - <div class='line'>Stood gazing on the damsel’s face;</div> - <div class='line'>And the youthful lord of Tryermaine</div> - <div class='line'>Came back upon his heart again.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>It might seem insidious if I were to praise his ode entitled Fire, -Famine, and Slaughter, as an effusion of high poetical enthusiasm, -and strong political feeling. His Sonnet to Schiller conveys a fine -compliment to the author of the Robbers, and an equally fine idea of -the state of youthful enthusiasm in which he composed it.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>‘Schiller! that hour I would have wish’d to die,</div> - <div class='line in2'>If through the shudd’ring midnight I had sent</div> - <div class='line in2'>From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent,</div> - <div class='line'>That fearful voice, a famish’d father’s cry—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>That in no after moment aught less vast</div> - <div class='line in2'>Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout</div> - <div class='line in2'>Black Horror scream’d, and all her goblin rout</div> - <div class='line'>From the more with’ring scene diminish’d pass’d.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood,</div> - <div class='line'>Wand’ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood,</div> - <div class='line'>Then weep aloud in a wild ecstacy!’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>His <cite><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Conciones ad Populum</span></cite>, Watchman, &c. are dreary trash. Of -his Friend, I have spoken the truth elsewhere. But I may say of -him here, that he is the only person I ever knew who answered to -the idea of a man of genius. He is the only person from whom I -ever learnt any thing. There is only one thing he could learn from -me in return, but <em>that</em> he has not. He was the first poet I ever -knew. His genius at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. -He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever. -His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if -borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination -lifted him from off his feet. His voice rolled on the ear like the -pealing organ, and its sound alone was the music of thought. His -mind was clothed with wings; and raised on them, he lifted -philosophy to heaven. In his descriptions, you then saw the -progress of human happiness and liberty in bright and never-ending -succession, like the steps of Jacob’s ladder, with airy shapes ascending -and descending, and with the voice of God at the top of the ladder. -And shall I, who heard him then, listen to him now? Not I!... -That spell is broke; that time is gone for ever; that voice is heard -no more: but still the recollection comes rushing by with thoughts of -long-past years, and rings in my ears with never-dying sound.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘What though the radiance which was once so bright,</div> - <div class='line'>Be now for ever taken from my sight,</div> - <div class='line'>Though nothing can bring back the hour</div> - <div class='line'>Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow’r;</div> - <div class='line in4'>I do not grieve, but rather find</div> - <div class='line in4'>Strength in what remains behind;</div> - <div class='line in4'>In the primal sympathy,</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>Which having been, must ever be;</div> - <div class='line in4'>In the soothing thoughts that spring</div> - <div class='line in4'>Out of human suffering;</div> - <div class='line'>In years that bring the philosophic mind!’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I have thus gone through the task I intended, and have come at -last to the level ground. I have felt my subject gradually sinking -from under me as I advanced, and have been afraid of ending in -nothing. The interest has unavoidably decreased at almost every -successive step of the progress, like a play that has its catastrophe -in the first or second act. This, however, I could not help. I have -done as well as I could.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div>End of <span class='sc'>Lectures on the English Poets</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span> - <h2 class='c005'>LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH</h2> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span> - <h3 class='c003'>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'><cite>The Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth; Delivered at the -Surrey Institution</cite>, <em>By William Hazlitt</em>, were published in 8vo (8¾ × 5¼), in the year -of their delivery, 1820, and they were reviewed in the same year in <cite>The Edinburgh -Review</cite>. A second edition was published in 1821, of which the present -issue is a reprint. The half-title reads simply ‘Hazlitt’s Lectures,’ and the imprint -is ‘London: John Warren, Old Bond-Street, <span class='fss'>MDCCCXXI.</span>’ An ‘Erratum,’ behind -the Advertisement, ‘Page 18, l. 20, <em>for</em> “wildnesses,” <em>read</em> wildernesses,’ has been -corrected in the present text.</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span> - <h3 class='c003'>CONTENTS</h3> -</div> - -<table class='table0' summary=''> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE I.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <th class='c006'></th> - <th class='c007'><span class='small'>PAGE</span></th> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>Introductory.—General view of the Subject</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_175'>175</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE II.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On the Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shakespear, Lyly, Marlow, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_192'>192</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE III.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Marston, Chapman, Deckar, and Webster</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE IV.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Ford, and Massinger</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_248'>248</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE V.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On single Plays, Poems, &c., the Four P’s, the Return from Parnassus, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, and other Works</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_274'>274</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE VI.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On Miscellaneous Poems, F. Beaumont, P. Fletcher, Drayton, Daniel, &c., Sir P. Sidney’s Arcadia, and Sonnets</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_295'>295</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE VII.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>Character of Lord Bacon’s Work—compared as to style with Sir Thomas Brown and Jeremy Taylor</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_326'>326</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>LECTURE VIII.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'>On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature—on the German Drama, contrasted with that of the Age of Elizabeth</td> - <td class='c007'><a href='#Page_345'>345</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span> - <h3 class='c003'>ADVERTISEMENT</h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'>By the Age of Elizabeth (as it relates to the History of our -Literature) I would be understood to mean the time from the -Reformation, to the end of Charles <span class='fss'>I.</span> including the Writers of -a certain School or style of Poetry or Prose, who flourished together -or immediately succeeded one another within this period. I have, -in the following pages, said little of two of the greatest Writers of -that Age, Shakespear and Spenser, because I had treated of them -separately in former Publications.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span></div> -<div class='section ph2'> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div>LECTURES ON</div> - <div>THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, &c.</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<h3 class='c010'>LECTURE I.—INTRODUCTORY<br /> <span class='small'>GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>The age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, any other -in our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, -and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours; -statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers, Raleigh, -Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still -more frequent in our mouths, Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, -Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternised in -her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were -benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their -attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it -was sterling: what they did, had the mark of their age and country -upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak -without offence or flattery), never shone out fuller or brighter, or -looked more like itself, than at this period. Our writers and great -men had something in them that savoured of the soil from which -they grew: they were not French, they were not Dutch, or German, -or Greek, or Latin; they were truly English. They did not look -out of themselves to see what they should be; they sought for -truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There was no tinsel, -and but little art; they were not the spoiled children of affectation -and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of thinkers, -with prodigious strength and energy, with none but natural grace, -and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not at all sophisticated. -The mind of their country was great in them, and it prevailed. With -their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did not forget that -they were men: with all their endeavours after excellence, they did -not lay aside the strong original bent and character of their minds. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>What they performed was chiefly nature’s handy-work; and time -has claimed it for his own.—To these, however, might be added -others not less learned, nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less -fortunate in the event, who, though as renowned in their day, have -sunk into ‘mere oblivion,’ and of whom the only record (but that -the noblest) is to be found in their works. Their works and their -names, ‘poor, poor dumb names,’ are all that remains of such men -as Webster, Deckar, Marston, Marlow, Chapman, Heywood, -Middleton, and Rowley! ‘How lov’d, how honour’d once, avails -them not:’ though they were the friends and fellow-labourers of -Shakespear, sharing his fame and fortunes with him, the rivals of -Jonson, and the masters of Beaumont and Fletcher’s well-sung woes! -They went out one by one unnoticed, like evening lights; or were -swallowed up in the headlong torrent of puritanic zeal which succeeded, -and swept away every thing in its unsparing course, throwing -up the wrecks of taste and genius at random, and at long fitful -intervals, amidst the painted gew-gaws and foreign frippery of the -reign of Charles II. and from which we are only now recovering the -scattered fragments and broken images to erect a temple to true -Fame! How long, before it will be completed?</p> - -<p class='c011'>If I can do any thing to rescue some of these writers from hopeless -obscurity, and to do them right, without prejudice to well-deserved -reputation, I shall have succeeded in what I chiefly propose. -I shall not attempt, indeed, to adjust the spelling, or restore the -pointing, as if the genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press, -but leaving these weightier matters of criticism to those who are -more able and willing to bear the burden, try to bring out their real -beauties to the eager sight, ‘draw the curtain of Time, and shew -the picture of Genius,’ restraining my own admiration within -reasonable bounds!</p> - -<p class='c011'>There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way of thought, than -that which would confine all excellence, or arrogate its final accomplishment -to the present, or modern times. We ordinarily speak -and think of those who had the misfortune to write or live before -us, as labouring under very singular privations and disadvantages in -not having the benefit of those improvements which we have made, -as buried in the grossest ignorance, or the slaves ‘of poring pedantry’; -and we make a cheap and infallible estimate of their progress in -civilization upon a graduated scale of perfectibility, calculated from -the meridian of our own times. If we have pretty well got rid of -the narrow bigotry that would limit all sense or virtue to our own -country, and have fraternized, like true cosmopolites, with our -neighbours and contemporaries, we have made our self-love amends -<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>by letting the generation we live in engross nearly all our admiration -and by pronouncing a sweeping sentence of barbarism and ignorance -on our ancestry backwards, from the commencement (as near as can -be) of the nineteenth, or the latter end of the eighteenth century. -From thence we date a new era, the dawn of our own intellect -and that of the world, like ‘the sacred influence of light’ glimmering -on the confines of Chaos and old night; new manners rise, and -all the cumbrous ‘pomp of elder days’ vanishes, and is lost in -worse than Gothic darkness. Pavilioned in the glittering pride of -our superficial accomplishments and upstart pretensions, we fancy -that every thing beyond that magic circle is prejudice and error; -and all, before the present enlightened period, but a dull and useless -blank in the great map of time. We are so dazzled with the gloss -and novelty of modern discoveries, that we cannot take into our -mind’s eye the vast expanse, the lengthened perspective of human -intellect, and a cloud hangs over and conceals its loftiest monuments, -if they are removed to a little distance from us—the cloud of our -own vanity and shortsightedness. The modern sciolist <em>stultifies</em> all -understanding but his own, and that which he conceives like his -own. We think, in this age of reason and consummation of philosophy, -because we knew nothing twenty or thirty years ago, and -began to think then for the first time in our lives, that the rest of -mankind were in the same predicament, and never knew any thing till -we did; that the world had grown old in sloth and ignorance, had -dreamt out its long minority of five thousand years in a dozing state, -and that it first began to wake out of sleep, to rouse itself, and look -about it, startled by the light of our unexpected discoveries, and the -noise we made about them. Strange error of our infatuated self-love! -Because the clothes we remember to have seen worn when we were -children, are now out of fashion, and our grandmothers were then -old women, we conceive with magnanimous continuity of reasoning, -that it must have been much worse three hundred years before, and -that grace, youth, and beauty are things of modern date—as if nature -had ever been old, or the sun had first shone on our folly and presumption. -Because, in a word, the last generation, when tottering -off the stage, were not so active, so sprightly, and so promising as we -were, we begin to imagine, that people formerly must have crawled -about in a feeble, torpid state, like flies in winter, in a sort of dim -twilight of the understanding; ‘nor can we think what thoughts they -could conceive,’ in the absence of all those topics that so agreeably -enliven and diversify our conversation and literature, mistaking the -imperfection of our knowledge for the defect of their organs, as if it -was necessary for us to have a register and certificate of their thoughts, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>or as if, because they did not see with our eyes, hear with our ears, -and understand with our understandings, they could hear, see, and -understand nothing. A falser inference could not be drawn, nor -one more contrary to the maxims and cautions of a wise humanity. -‘Think,’ says Shakespear, the prompter of good and true feelings, -‘there’s livers out of Britain.’ So there have been thinkers, and -great and sound ones, before our time. They had the same capacities -that we have, sometimes greater motives for their exertion, and, for -the most part, the same subject-matter to work upon. What we -learn from nature, we may hope to do as well as they; what we -learn from them, we may in general expect to do worse.—What is, -I think, as likely as any thing to cure us of this overweening admiration -of the present, and unmingled contempt for past times, is the -looking at the finest old pictures; at Raphael’s heads, at Titian’s -faces, at Claude’s landscapes. We have there the evidence of the -senses, without the alterations of opinion or disguise of language. -We there see the blood circulate through the veins (long before it -was known that it did so), the same red and white ‘by nature’s own -sweet and cunning hand laid on,’ the same thoughts passing through -the mind and seated on the lips, the same blue sky, and glittering -sunny vales, ‘where Pan, knit with the Graces and the Hours in -dance, leads on the eternal spring.’ And we begin to feel, that -nature and the mind of man are not a thing of yesterday, as we had -been led to suppose; and that ‘there are more things between heaven -and earth, than were ever dreamt of in our philosophy.’—Or grant -that we improve, in some respects, in a uniformly progressive ratio, -and build, Babel-high, on the foundation of other men’s knowledge, -as in matters of science and speculative inquiry, where by going often -over the same general ground, certain general conclusions have been -arrived at, and in the number of persons reasoning on a given -subject, truth has at last been hit upon, and long-established error -exploded; yet this does not apply to cases of individual power and -knowledge, to a million of things beside, in which we are still to -seek as much as ever, and in which we can only hope to find, by -going to the fountain-head of thought and experience. We are quite -wrong in supposing (as we are apt to do), that we can plead an -exclusive title to wit and wisdom, to taste and genius, as the net -produce and clear reversion of the age we live in, and that all we -have to do to be great, is to despise those who have gone before us -as nothing.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Or even if we admit a saving clause in this sweeping proscription, -and do not make the rule absolute, the very nature of the exceptions -shews the spirit in which they are made. We single out one or two -<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>striking instances, say Shakespear or Lord Bacon, which we would -fain treat as prodigies, and as a marked contrast to the rudeness and -barbarism that surrounded them. These we delight to dwell upon -and magnify; the praise and wonder we heap upon their shrines, are -at the expence of the time in which they lived, and would leave it -poor indeed. We make them out something more than human, -‘matchless, divine, what we will,’ so to make them no rule for their -age, and no infringement of the abstract claim to superiority which -we set up. Instead of letting them reflect any lustre, or add any -credit to the period of history to which they rightfully belong, we -only make use of their example to insult and degrade it still more -beneath our own level.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It is the present fashion to speak with veneration of old English -literature; but the homage we pay to it is more akin to the rites of -superstition, than the worship of true religion. Our faith is doubtful; -our love cold; our knowledge little or none. We now and then -repeat the names of some of the old writers by rote; but we are shy -of looking into their works. Though we seem disposed to think -highly of them, and to give them every credit for a masculine and -original vein of thought, as a matter of literary courtesy and enlargement -of taste, we are afraid of coming to the proof, as too great a -trial of our candour and patience. We regard the enthusiastic -admiration of these obsolete authors, or a desire to make proselytes -to a belief in their extraordinary merits, as an amiable weakness, -a pleasing delusion; and prepare to listen to some favourite passage, -that may be referred to in support of this singular taste, with an -incredulous smile; and are in no small pain for the result of the -hazardous experiment; feeling much the same awkward condescending -disposition to patronise these first crude attempts at poetry and -lispings of the Muse, as when a fond parent brings forward a bashful -child to make a display of its wit or learning. We hope the best, -put a good face on the matter, but are sadly afraid the thing cannot -answer.—Dr. Johnson said of these writers generally, that ‘they were -sought after because they were scarce, and would not have been -scarce, had they been much esteemed.’ His decision is neither true -history nor sound criticism. They were esteemed, and they deserved -to be so.</p> - -<p class='c011'>One cause that might be pointed out here, as having contributed -to the long-continued neglect of our earlier writers, lies in the very -nature of our academic institutions, which unavoidably neutralizes -a taste for the productions of native genius, estranges the mind from -the history of our own literature, and makes it in each successive -age like a book sealed. The Greek and Roman classics are a sort of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>privileged text-books, the standing order of the day, in a University -education, and leave little leisure for a competent acquaintance with, -or due admiration of, a whole host of able writers of our own, who -are suffered to moulder in obscurity on the shelves of our libraries, -with a decent reservation of one or two top-names, that are cried up -for form’s sake, and to save the national character. Thus we keep -a few of these always ready in capitals, and strike off the rest, to -prevent the tendency to a superfluous population in the republic of -letters; in other words, to prevent the writers from becoming more -numerous than the readers. The ancients are become effete in this -respect, they no longer increase and multiply; or if they have -imitators among us, no one is expected to read, and still less to -admire them. It is not possible that the learned professors and the -reading public should clash in this way, or necessary for them to -use any precautions against each other. But it is not the same with -the living languages, where there is danger of being overwhelmed by -the crowd of competitors; and pedantry has combined with ignorance -to cancel their unsatisfied claims.</p> - -<p class='c011'>We affect to wonder at Shakespear, and one or two more of that -period, as solitary instances upon record; whereas it is our own -dearth of information that makes the waste; for there is no time -more populous of intellect, or more prolific of intellectual wealth, -than the one we are speaking of. Shakespear did not look upon -himself in this light, as a sort of monster of poetical genius, or on his -contemporaries as ‘less than smallest dwarfs,’ when he speaks with -true, not false modesty, of himself and them, and of his wayward -thoughts, ‘desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope.’ We fancy -that there were no such men, that could either add to or take any -thing away from him, but such there were. He indeed overlooks -and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from the -<em>tableland</em> of the age in which he lived. He towered above his fellows, -‘in shape and gesture proudly eminent’; but he was one of a race of -giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful, and beautiful of -them; but it was a common and a noble brood. He was not something -sacred and aloof from the vulgar herd of men, but shook hands -with nature and the circumstances of the time, and is distinguished -from his immediate contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree and -greater variety of excellence. He did not form a class or species by -himself, but belonged to a class or species. His age was necessary -to him; nor could he have been wrenched from his place in the -edifice of which he was so conspicuous a part, without equal injury -to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, ‘that his soul -was like a star, and dwelt apart.’ This cannot be said with any -<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>propriety of Shakespear, who certainly moved in a constellation of -bright luminaries, and ‘drew after him a third part of the heavens.’ -If we allow, for argument’s sake (or for truth’s, which is better), -that he was in himself equal to all his competitors put together; -yet there was more dramatic excellence in that age than in the whole -of the period that has elapsed since. If his contemporaries, with -their united strength, would hardly make one Shakespear, certain it -is that all his successors would not make half a one. With the -exception of a single writer, Otway, and of a single play of his -(Venice Preserved), there is nobody in tragedy and dramatic poetry -(I do not here speak of comedy) to be compared to the great men -of the age of Shakespear, and immediately after. They are a -mighty phalanx of kindred spirits closing him round, moving in the -same orbit, and impelled by the same causes in their whirling and -eccentric career. They had the same faults and the same excellences; -the same strength and depth and richness, the same truth of character, -passion, imagination, thought and language, thrown, heaped, massed -together without careful polishing or exact method, but poured out in -unconcerned profusion from the lap of nature and genius in boundless -and unrivalled magnificence. The sweetness of Deckar, the thought -of Marston, the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher and his -young-eyed wit, Jonson’s learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton, -Heywood’s ease, the pathos of Webster, and Marlow’s deep designs, -add a double lustre to the sweetness, thought, gravity, grace, wit, -artless nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, and sublime conceptions of -Shakespear’s Muse. They are indeed the scale by which we can -best ascend to the true knowledge and love of him. Our admiration -of them does not lessen our relish for him: but, on the contrary, -increases and confirms it.—For such an extraordinary combination -and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned; -and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the -circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local -situation, and in the character of the men who adorned that period, -and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their -reach.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and -of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the poetry -of the country at the period of which I have to treat; independently -of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting, -but which, after all, have often the greatest share in determining the -most important results.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general -effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This -<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and -inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices -throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; -but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the -full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the -ground from under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish obedience; -and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed -hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never -yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, -and gave the watch-word; but England joined the shout, and echoed -it back with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy -shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius -of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. -There was a mighty fermentation: the waters were out; public -opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to -think and speak the truth. Men’s brains were busy; their spirits -stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes -were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with -curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them -free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and -bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and made the talismans -and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled -her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall -harmless from their necks.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. -It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and -morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed -the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired -teachers (such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. -It gave them a common interest in the common cause. Their hearts -burnt within them as they read. It gave a <em>mind</em> to the people, by -giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented -their union of character and sentiment: it created endless diversity -and collision of opinion. They found objects to employ their -faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached -to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the -most daring intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy -sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the -topics it discusses, and braces the will by their infinite importance. -We perceive in the history of this period a nervous masculine intellect. -No levity, no feebleness, no indifference; or if there were, it is a -relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its general -character. But there is a gravity approaching to piety; a seriousness -<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>of impression, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervour -and enthusiasm in their mode of handling almost every subject. The -debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough; but they -wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few: -they did not affect the general mass of the community. But the -Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions ‘to run and read,’ -with its wonderful table of contents from Genesis to the Revelations. -Every village in England would present the scene so well described -in Burns’s Cotter’s Saturday Night. I cannot think that all this -variety and weight of knowledge could be thrown in all at once upon -the mind of a people, and not make some impressions upon it, the -traces of which might be discerned in the manners and literature of -the age. For to leave more disputable points, and take only the -historical parts of the Old Testament, or the moral sentiments of the -New, there is nothing like them in the power of exciting awe and -admiration, or of rivetting sympathy. We see what Milton has made -of the account of the Creation, from the manner in which he has -treated it, imbued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of -which we speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic interest -and patriarchal simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and -rouses it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) equal to -the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachael and Laban, of -Jacob’s Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the descriptions in the book of -Job, the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their -captivity and return from Babylon? There is in all these parts of the -Scripture, and numberless more of the same kind, to pass over the -Orphic hymns of David, the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or -the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel, an originality, a vastness of conception, -a depth and tenderness of feeling, and a touching simplicity in the -mode of narration, which he who does not feel, need be made of no -‘penetrable stuff.’ There is something in the character of Christ too -(leaving religious faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness -and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man, -by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history, -whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime -humanity, such as was never seen on earth before, nor since. This -shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his -washing the Disciples’ feet the night before his death, that unspeakable -instance of humility and love, above all art, all meanness, and all -pride, and in the leave he took of them on that occasion, ‘My peace -I give unto you, that peace which the world cannot give, give I unto -you’; and in his last commandment, that ‘they should love one -another.’ Who can read the account of his behaviour on the cross, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>when turning to his mother he said, ‘Woman, behold thy son,’ and -to the Disciple John, ‘Behold thy mother,’ and ‘from that hour that -Disciple took her to his own home,’ without having his heart smote -within him! We see it in his treatment of the woman taken in -adultery, and in his excuse for the woman who poured precious -ointment on his garment as an offering of devotion and love, which is -here all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart. We see -it in his discourse with the Disciples as they walked together towards -Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them; in his sermon from -the Mount, in his parable of the good Samaritan, and in that of the -Prodigal Son—in every act and word of his life, a grace, a mildness, -a dignity and love, a patience and wisdom worthy of the Son of God. -His whole life and being were imbued, steeped in this word, <em>charity</em>; it -was the spring, the well-head from which every thought and feeling -gushed into act; and it was this that breathed a mild glory from his -face in that last agony upon the cross, ‘when the meek Saviour bowed -his head and died,’ praying for his enemies. He was the first true -teacher of morality; for he alone conceived the idea of a pure -humanity. He redeemed man from the worship of that idol, self, and -instructed him by precept and example to love his neighbour as himself, -to forgive our enemies, to do good to those that curse us and -despitefully use us. He taught the love of good for the sake of good, -without regard to personal or sinister views, and made the affections of -the heart the sole seat of morality, instead of the pride of the understanding -or the sternness of the will. In answering the question, -‘who is our neighbour?’ as one who stands in need of our assistance, -and whose wounds we can bind up, he has done more to humanize -the thoughts and tame the unruly passions, than all who have tried to -reform and benefit mankind. The very idea of abstract benevolence, -of the desire to do good because another wants our services, and of -regarding the human race as one family, the offspring of one common -parent, is hardly to be found in any other code or system. It was -‘to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.’ -The Greeks and Romans never thought of considering others, but as -they were Greeks or Romans, as they were bound to them by certain -positive ties, or, on the other hand, as separated from them by fiercer -antipathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines, -their vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain -with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in the -Christian religion, ‘we perceive a softness coming over the heart of a -nation, and the iron scales that fence and harden it, melt and drop off.’ -It becomes malleable, capable of pity, of forgiveness, of relaxing in its -claims, and remitting its power. We strike it, and it does not hurt -<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>us: it is not steel or marble, but flesh and blood, clay tempered with -tears, and ‘soft as sinews of the new-born babe.’ The gospel was -first preached to the poor, for it consulted their wants and interests, -not its own pride and arrogance. It first promulgated the equality of -mankind in the community of duties and benefits. It denounced the -iniquities of the chief Priests and Pharisees, and declared itself at -variance with principalities and powers, for it sympathizes not with -the oppressor, but the oppressed. It first abolished slavery, for it did -not consider the power of the will to inflict injury, as clothing it with -a right to do so. Its law is good, not power. It at the same time -tended to wean the mind from the grossness of sense, and a particle of -its divine flame was lent to brighten and purify the lamp of love!</p> - -<p class='c011'>There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the divine -mission of Christ, have taken an unaccountable prejudice to his -doctrines, and have been disposed to deny the merit of his character; -but this was not the feeling of the great men in the age of Elizabeth -(whatever might be their belief) one of whom says of him, with a -boldness equal to its piety:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>‘The best of men</div> - <div class='line'>That e’er wore earth about him, was a sufferer;</div> - <div class='line'>A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;</div> - <div class='line'>The first true gentleman that ever breathed.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This was old honest Deckar, and the lines ought to embalm his -memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, -or humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help thinking, that we may -discern the traces of the influence exerted by religious faith in the -spirit of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of exciting -terror and pity, in the delineation of the passions of grief, remorse, -love, sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the longings -after immortality, in the heaven of hope, and the abyss of despair it -lays open to us.<a id='r12' /><a href='#f12' class='c015'><sup>[12]</sup></a></p> - -<p class='c011'>The literature of this age then, I would say, was strongly influenced -(among other causes), first by the spirit of Christianity, and secondly -by the spirit of Protestantism.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy may be -seen in the writings and history of the next and of the following ages. -They are still at work, and will continue to be so. The effects on -the poetry of the time were chiefly confined to the moulding of the -character, and giving a powerful impulse to the intellect of the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>country. The immediate use or application that was made of religion -to subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an obvious ground -of separation) so direct or frequent, as that which was made of the -classical and romantic literature.</p> - -<p class='c011'>For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of -the Greek and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry -of Spain and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown -open in translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. This last -circumstance could hardly have afforded so much advantage to the -poets of that day, who were themselves, in fact, the translators, as it -shews the general curiosity and increasing interest in such subjects, as -a prevailing feature of the times. There were translations of Tasso -by Fairfax, and of Ariosto by Harrington, of Homer and Hesiod by -Chapman, and of Virgil long before, and Ovid soon after; there was -Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch, of which Shakespear has -made such admirable use in his Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar: and Ben -Jonson’s tragedies of Catiline and Sejanus may themselves be -considered as almost literal translations into verse, of Tacitus, Sallust, -and Cicero’s Orations in his consulship. Boccacio, the divine -Boccacio, Petrarch, Dante, the satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione, -and others, were familiar to our writers, and they make occasional -mention of some few French authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas; for -the French literature had not at this stage arrived at its Augustan -period, and it was the imitation of their literature a century afterwards, -when it had arrived at its greatest height (itself copied from the -Greek and Latin), that enfeebled and impoverished our own. But -of the time that we are considering, it might be said, without much -extravagance, that every breath that blew, that every wave that rolled -to our shores, brought with it some accession to our knowledge, which -was engrafted on the national genius. In fact, all the disposable -materials that had been accumulating for a long period of time, either -in our own, or in foreign countries, were now brought together, and -required nothing more than to be wrought up, polished, or arranged in -striking forms, for ornament and use. To this every inducement -prompted, the novelty of the acquisition of knowledge in many cases, -the emulation of foreign wits, and of immortal works, the want and -the expectation of such works among ourselves, the opportunity and -encouragement afforded for their production by leisure and affluence; -and, above all, the insatiable desire of the mind to beget its own image, -and to construct out of itself, and for the delight and admiration of -the world and posterity, that excellence of which the idea exists -hitherto only in its own breast, and the impression of which it would -make as universal as the eye of heaven, the benefit as common as the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>air we breathe. The first impulse of genius is to create what never -existed before: the contemplation of that, which is so created, is -sufficient to satisfy the demands of taste; and it is the habitual study -and imitation of the original models that takes away the power, and -even wish to do the like. Taste limps after genius, and from copying -the artificial models, we lose sight of the living principle of nature. -It is the effort we make, and the impulse we acquire, in overcoming -the first obstacles, that projects us forward; it is the necessity for -exertion that makes us conscious of our strength; but this necessity -and this impulse once removed, the tide of fancy and enthusiasm, -which is at first a running stream, soon settles and crusts into the -standing pool of dulness, criticism, and <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">virtù</span></i>.</p> - -<p class='c011'>What also gave an unusual <em>impetus</em> to the mind of man at this -period, was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of -voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, -as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite -the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. -Fairy land was realised in new and unknown worlds. ‘Fortunate -fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice happy isles,’ were found -floating ‘like those Hesperian gardens famed of old,’ beyond Atlantic -seas, as dropt from the zenith. The people, the soil, the clime, -everything gave unlimited scope to the curiosity of the traveller and -reader. Other manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of -knowledge, and new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is -from a voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shakespear has taken -the hint of Prospero’s Enchanted Island, and of the savage Caliban -with his god Setebos.<a id='r13' /><a href='#f13' class='c015'><sup>[13]</sup></a> Spenser seems to have had the same feeling -in his mind in the production of his Faery Queen, and vindicates his -poetic fiction on this very ground of analogy.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That all this famous antique history</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of some the abundance of an idle brain</div> - <div class='line in2'>Will judged be, and painted forgery,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Rather than matter of just memory:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Since none that breatheth living air, doth know</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where is that happy land of faery</div> - <div class='line in2'>Which I so much do vaunt, but no where show,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>But let that man with better sense avise,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That of the world least part to us is read:</div> - <div class='line in2'>And daily how through hardy enterprize</div> - <div class='line in2'>Many great regions are discovered,</div> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>Which to late age were never mentioned.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who ever heard of th’ Indian Peru?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or who in venturous vessel measured</div> - <div class='line in2'>The Amazons’ huge river, now found true?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Yet all these were when no man did them know,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet have from wisest ages hidden been:</div> - <div class='line in2'>And later times things more unknown shall show.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Why then should witless man so much misween</div> - <div class='line in2'>That nothing is but that which he hath seen?</div> - <div class='line in2'>What if within the moon’s fair shining sphere,</div> - <div class='line in2'>What if in every other star unseen,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of other worlds he happily should hear,</div> - <div class='line'>He wonder would much more; yet such to some appear.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Fancy’s air-drawn pictures after history’s waking dream shewed -like clouds over mountains; and from the romance of real life to the -idlest fiction, the transition seemed easy.—Shakespear, as well as -others of his time, availed himself of the old Chronicles, and of the -traditions or fabulous inventions contained in them in such ample -measure, and which had not yet been appropriated to the purposes of -poetry or the drama. The stage was a new thing; and those who -had to supply its demands laid their hands upon whatever came -within their reach: they were not particular as to the means, so that -they gained the end. Lear is founded upon an old ballad; Othello -on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch -tradition: one of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the -last in Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each, -are authenticated in the old Gothic history. There was also this -connecting link between the poetry of this age and the supernatural -traditions of a former one, that the belief in them was still extant, -and in full force and visible operation among the vulgar (to say no -more) in the time of our authors. The appalling and wild chimeras -of superstition and ignorance, ‘those bodiless creations that ecstacy is -very cunning in,’ were inwoven with existing manners and opinions, -and all their effects on the passions of terror or pity might be -gathered from common and actual observation—might be discerned in -the workings of the face, the expressions of the tongue, the writhings -of a troubled conscience. ‘Your face, my Thane, is as a book where -men may read strange matters.’ Midnight and secret murders too, -from the imperfect state of the police, were more common; and the -ferocious and brutal manners that would stamp the brow of the -hardened ruffian or hired assassin, more incorrigible and undisguised. -The portraits of Tyrrel and Forrest were, no doubt, done from the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>life. We find that the ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of -fire, the poisoned chalice, lean famine, the serpent’s mortal sting, and -the fury of wild beasts, were the common topics of their poetry, as -they were common occurrences in more remote periods of history. -They were the strong ingredients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, -to make it ‘thick and slab.’ Man’s life was (as it appears to me) -more full of traps and pit-falls; of hair-breadth accidents by flood and -field; more way-laid by sudden and startling evils; it trod on the -brink of hope and fear; stumbled upon fate unawares; while the -imagination, close behind it, caught at and clung to the shape of -danger, or ‘snatched a wild and fearful joy’ from its escape. The -accidents of nature were less provided against; the excesses of the -passions and of lawless power were less regulated, and produced more -strange and desperate catastrophes. The tales of Boccacio are -founded on the great pestilence of Florence, Fletcher the poet died of -the plague, and Marlow was stabbed in a tavern quarrel. The strict -authority of parents, the inequality of ranks, or the hereditary feuds -between different families, made more unhappy loves or matches.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The course of true love never did run even.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our elder -writers, was yet in considerable activity in the reign of Elizabeth. -‘The age of chivalry was not then quite gone, nor the glory of -Europe extinguished for ever.’ Jousts and tournaments were still -common with the nobility in England and in foreign countries: Sir -Philip Sidney was particularly distinguished for his proficiency in -these exercises (and indeed fell a martyr to his ambition as a soldier)—and -the gentle Surrey was still more famous, on the same account, -just before him. It is true, the general use of firearms gradually -superseded the necessity of skill in the sword, or bravery in the -person: and as a symptom of the rapid degeneracy in this respect, we -find Sir John Suckling soon after boasting of himself as one—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit</div> - <div class='line'>At bowls, above all the trophies of wit.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It was comparatively an age of peace,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Like strength reposing on his own right arm;’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the distance, the -spear glittered to the eye of memory, or the clashing of armour struck -on the imagination of the ardent and the young. They were -borderers on the savage state, on the times of war and bigotry, though -in the lap of arts, of luxury, and knowledge. They stood on the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>shore and saw the billows rolling after the storm: ‘they heard the -tumult, and were still.’ The manners and out-of-door amusements were -more tinctured with a spirit of adventure and romance. The war with -wild beasts, &c. was more strenuously kept up in country sports. I do -not think we could get from sedentary poets, who had never mingled in -the vicissitudes, the dangers, or excitements of the chase, such descriptions -of hunting and other athletic games, as are to be found in Shakespear’s -Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Fletcher’s Noble Kinsmen.</p> - -<p class='c011'>With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living of those times, -I cannot agree with an ingenious and agreeable writer of the present -day, that it was general or frequent. The very stress laid upon -certain holidays and festivals, shews that they did not keep up the -same Saturnalian licence and open house all the year round. They -reserved themselves for great occasions, and made the best amends -they could, for a year of abstinence and toil by a week of merriment -and convivial indulgence. Persons in middle life at this day, who can -afford a good dinner every day, do not look forward to it as any -particular subject of exultation: the poor peasant, who can only -contrive to treat himself to a joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it -as an event in the week. So, in the old Cambridge comedy of the -Returne from Parnassus, we find this indignant description of the -progress of luxury in those days, put into the mouth of one of -the speakers.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Why is ‘t not strange to see a ragged clerke,</div> - <div class='line'>Some stammell weaver, or some butcher’s sonne,</div> - <div class='line'>That scrubb’d a late within a sleeveless gowne,</div> - <div class='line'>When the commencement, like a morrice dance,</div> - <div class='line'>Hath put a bell or two about his legges,</div> - <div class='line'>Created him a sweet cleane gentleman:</div> - <div class='line'>How then he ‘gins to follow fashions.</div> - <div class='line'>He whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe,</div> - <div class='line'>Must take tobacco, and must wear a locke.</div> - <div class='line'>His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle,</div> - <div class='line'>But his sweet self is served in silver plate.</div> - <div class='line'>His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges</div> - <div class='line'>For one good Christmas meal on new year’s day,</div> - <div class='line'>But his mawe must be capon cramm’d each day.’</div> - <div class='line in36'><em>Act III. Scene 2.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This does not look as if in those days ‘it snowed of meat and -drink’ as a matter of course throughout the year!—The distinctions -of dress, the badges of different professions, the very signs of the -shops, which we have set aside for written inscriptions over the doors, -were, as Mr. Lamb observes, a sort of visible language to the imagination, -and hints for thought. Like the costume of different foreign -<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>nations, they had an immediate striking and picturesque effect, giving -scope to the fancy. The surface of society was embossed with -hieroglyphics, and poetry existed ‘in act and complement extern.’ -The poetry of former times might be directly taken from real life, as -our poetry is taken from the poetry of former times. Finally, the -face of nature, which was the same glorious object then that it is now, -was open to them; and coming first, they gathered her fairest flowers -to live for ever in their verse:—the movements of the human heart -were not hid from them, for they had the same passions as we, only -less disguised, and less subject to controul. Deckar has given an -admirable description of a mad-house in one of his plays. But it -might be perhaps objected, that it was only a literal account taken -from Bedlam at that time: and it might be answered, that the old -poets took the same method of describing the passions and fancies of -men whom they met at large, which forms the point of communion -between us: for the title of the old play, ‘A Mad World, my -Masters,’ is hardly yet obsolete; and we are pretty much the same -Bedlam still, perhaps a little better managed, like the real one, and -with more care and humanity shewn to the patients!</p> - -<p class='c011'>Lastly, to conclude this account; what gave a unity and common -direction to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country, -which was strong in these writers in proportion to their strength. -We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot help it; nor mend ourselves -if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when -we try to ape others. Music and painting are not our <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">forte</span></i>: for what -we have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed from -others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets and -philosophers. That’s something. We have had strong heads and -sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left -to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for truth and -freedom. That is our natural style; and it were to be wished we -had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a -certain cast of thought and character; and our liberty has enabled us -to make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into -every fashion, with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are slow to -think, and therefore impressions do not work upon us till they act in -masses. We are not forward to express our feelings, and therefore -they do not come from us till they force their way in the most -impetuous eloquence. Our language is, as it were, to begin anew, -and we make use of the most singular and boldest combinations to -explain ourselves. Our wit comes from us, ‘like birdlime, brains -and all.’ We pay too little attention to form and method, leave our -works in an unfinished state, but still the materials we work in are -<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>solid and of nature’s mint; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both -under and over-do, but we keep an eye to the prominent features, the -main chance. We are more for weight than show; care only about -what interests ourselves, instead of trying to impose upon others by -plausible appearances, and are obstinate and intractable in not conforming -to common rules, by which many arrive at their ends with -half the real waste of thought and trouble. We neglect all but the -principal object, gather our force to make a great blow, bring it down, -and relapse into sluggishness and indifference again. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Materiam -superabat opus</span></i>, cannot be said of us. We may be accused of grossness, -but not of flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; -of want of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. -Our literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal and -irregular; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, -but of great weight in the whole, and of incomparable value in the -best parts. It aims at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, -and is either very good indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This -character applies in particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, -which is its best period, before the introduction of a rage for French -rules and French models; for whatever may be the value of our own -original style of composition, there can be neither offence nor presumption -in saying, that it is at least better than our second-hand -imitations of others. Our understanding (such as it is, and must -remain to be good for any thing) is not a thoroughfare for common -places, smooth as the palm of one’s hand, but full of knotty points -and jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with brambles; -and I like this aspect of the mind (as some one said of the country), -where nature keeps a good deal of the soil in her own hands. Perhaps -the genius of our poetry has more of Pan than of Apollo; ‘but Pan -is a God, Apollo is no more!’</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE II<br /> <span class='small'>ON THE DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKESPEAR, LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, AND ROWLEY</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>The period of which I shall have to treat (from the Reformation to -the middle of Charles <span class='fss'>I.</span>) was prolific in dramatic excellence, even -more than in any other. In approaching it, we seem to be approaching -the <span class='fss'>RICH STROND</span> described in Spenser, where treasures of all kinds -<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>lay scattered, or rather crowded together on the shore in inexhaustible -but unregarded profusion, ‘rich as the oozy bottom of the deep in -sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.’ We are confounded with the -variety, and dazzled with the dusky splendour of names sacred in -their obscurity, and works gorgeous in their decay, ‘majestic, though -in ruin,’ like Guyon when he entered the Cave of Mammon, and was -shewn the massy pillars and huge unwieldy fragments of gold, covered -with dust and cobwebs, and ‘shedding a faint shadow of uncertain -light,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Such as a lamp whose light doth fade away,</div> - <div class='line'>Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night</div> - <div class='line'>Doth shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The dramatic literature of this period only wants exploring, to fill -the enquiring mind with wonder and delight, and to convince us that -we have been wrong in lavishing all our praise on ‘new-born gauds, -though they are made and moulded of things past;’ and in ‘giving -to dust, that is a little gilded, more laud than gilt o’er-dusted.’ In -short, the discovery of such an unsuspected and forgotten mine of -wealth will be found amply to repay the labour of the search, and it -will be hard, if in most cases curiosity does not end in admiration, and -modesty teach us wisdom. A few of the most singular productions -of these times remain unclaimed; of others the authors are uncertain; -many of them are joint productions of different pens; but of the best -the writers’ names are in general known, and obviously stamped on -the productions themselves. The names of Ben Jonson, for instance, -Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, are almost, though not quite, as -familiar to us, as that of Shakespear; and their works still keep -regular possession of the stage. Another set of writers included in -the same general period (the end of the sixteenth and the beginning -of the seventeenth century), who are next, or equal, or sometimes -superior to these in power, but whose names are now little known, -and their writings nearly obsolete, are Lyly, Marlow, Marston, -Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley, Heywood, Webster, Deckar, and -Ford. I shall devote the present and two following Lectures to the -best account I can give of these, and shall begin with some of the -least known.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The earliest tragedy of which I shall take notice (I believe the -earliest that we have) is that of Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc (as -it has been generally called), the production of Thomas Sackville, -Lord Buckhurst, afterwards created Earl of Dorset, assisted by one -Thomas Norton. This was first acted with applause before the -Queen in 1561, the noble author being then quite a young man. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>This tragedy being considered as the first in our language, is certainly -a curiosity, and in other respects it is also remarkable; though, perhaps, -enough has been said about it. As a work of genius, it may be -set down as nothing, for it contains hardly a memorable line or -passage; as a work of art, and the first of its kind attempted in the -language, it may be considered as a monument of the taste and skill -of the authors. Its merit is confined to the regularity of the plot and -metre, to its general good sense, and strict attention to common -decorum. If the poet has not stamped the peculiar genius of his age -upon this first attempt, it is no inconsiderable proof of strength of mind -and conception sustained by its own sense of propriety alone, to have -so far anticipated the taste of succeeding times, as to have avoided -any glaring offence against rules and models, which had no existence -in his day. Or perhaps a truer solution might be, that there were as -yet no examples of a more ambiguous and irregular kind to tempt him -to err, and as he had not the impulse or resources within himself to -strike out a new path, he merely adhered with modesty and caution -to the classical models with which, as a scholar, he was well -acquainted. The language of the dialogue is clear, unaffected, and -intelligible without the smallest difficulty, even to this day; it has -‘no figures nor no fantasies,’ to which the most fastidious critic can -object, but the dramatic power is nearly none at all. It is written -expressly to set forth the dangers and mischiefs that arise from the -division of sovereign power; and the several speakers dilate upon the -different views of the subject in turn, like clever schoolboys set to -compose a thesis, or declaim upon the fatal consequences of ambition, -and the uncertainty of human affairs. The author, in the end, -declares for the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; a -doctrine which indeed was seldom questioned at that time of day. -Eubulus, one of the old king’s counsellors, thus gives his opinion—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees,</div> - <div class='line'>That no cause serves, whereby the subject may</div> - <div class='line'>Call to account the doings of his prince;</div> - <div class='line'>Much less in blood by sword to work revenge:</div> - <div class='line'>No more than may the hand cut off the head.</div> - <div class='line'>In act nor speech, no nor in secret thought,</div> - <div class='line'>The subject may rebel against his lord,</div> - <div class='line'>Or judge of him that sits in Cæsar’s seat,</div> - <div class='line'>With grudging mind to damn those he mislikes.</div> - <div class='line'>Though kings forget to govern as they ought,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet subjects must obey as they are bound.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Yet how little he was borne out in this inference by the unbiassed -dictates of his own mind, may appear from the freedom and unguarded -<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>boldness of such lines as the following, addressed by a favourite to a -prince, as courtly advice.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law:</div> - <div class='line'>The Gods do bear and well allow in kings</div> - <div class='line'>The things that they abhor in rascal routs.</div> - <div class='line'>When kings on slender quarrels run to wars,</div> - <div class='line'>And then in cruel and unkindly wise</div> - <div class='line'>Command thefts, rapes, murder of innocents,</div> - <div class='line'>The spoil of towns, ruins of mighty realms;</div> - <div class='line'>Think you such princes do suppose themselves</div> - <div class='line'>Subject to laws of kind and fear of Gods?</div> - <div class='line'>Murders and violent thefts in private men</div> - <div class='line'>Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet none offence, but deck’d with noble name</div> - <div class='line'>Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The principal characters make as many invocations to the names of -their children, their country, and their friends, as Cicero in his -Orations, and all the topics insisted upon are open, direct, urged in -the face of day, with no more attention to time or place, to an enemy -who overhears, or an accomplice to whom they are addressed; in a -word, with no more dramatic insinuation or byeplay than the pleadings -in a court of law. Almost the only passage that I can instance, as -rising above this didactic tone of mediocrity into the pathos of poetry, -is one where Marcella laments the untimely death of her lover, Ferrex.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Ah! noble prince, how oft have I beheld</div> - <div class='line'>Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,</div> - <div class='line'>Shining in armour bright before the tilt;</div> - <div class='line'>And with thy mistress’ sleeve tied on thy helm,</div> - <div class='line'>And charge thy staff to please thy lady’s eye,</div> - <div class='line'>That bowed the head-piece of thy friendly foe!</div> - <div class='line'>How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace,</div> - <div class='line'>How oft in arms on foot to break the sword,</div> - <div class='line'>Which never now these eyes may see again!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There seems a reference to Chaucer in the wording of the following -lines—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Then saw I how he smiled with slaying knife</div> - <div class='line'>Wrapp’d under cloke, then saw I deep deceit</div> - <div class='line'>Lurk in his face, and death prepared for me.’<a id='r14' /><a href='#f14' class='c015'><sup>[14]</sup></a></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Sir Philip Sidney says of this tragedy: ‘Gorboduc is full of -stately speeches, and well sounding phrases, climbing to the height of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality; which it doth most -delightfully teach, and thereby obtain the very end of poetry.’ And -Mr. Pope, whose taste in such matters was very different from Sir -Philip Sidney’s, says in still stronger terms: ‘That the writers of -the succeeding age might have improved as much in other respects, -by copying from him a propriety in the sentiments, an unaffected -perspicuity of style, and an easy flow in the numbers. In a word, -that chastity, correctness, and gravity of style, which are so essential -to tragedy, and which all the tragic poets who followed, not excepting -Shakespear himself, either little understood, or perpetually neglected.’ -It was well for us and them that they did so!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates does his Muse more -credit. It sometimes reminds one of Chaucer, and at others seems -like an anticipation, in some degree, both of the measure and manner -of Spenser. The following stanzas may give the reader an idea of -the merit of this old poem, which was published in 1563.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘By him lay heauie Sleepe cosin of Death</div> - <div class='line'>Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,</div> - <div class='line'>A very corps, saue yeelding forth a breath.</div> - <div class='line'>Small keepe tooke he whom Fortune frowned on,</div> - <div class='line'>Or whom she lifted vp into the throne</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of high renowne, but as a liuing death,</div> - <div class='line in2'>So dead aliue, of life he drew the breath.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The bodies rest, the quiet of the hart,</div> - <div class='line'>The trauailes ease, the still nights feere was he.</div> - <div class='line'>And of our life in earth the better part,</div> - <div class='line'>Reuer of sight, and yet in whom we see</div> - <div class='line'>Things oft that tide, and oft that neuer bee.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Without respect esteeming equally</div> - <div class='line in2'>King <em>Crœsus</em> pompe, and <em>Irus</em> pouertie.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And next in order sad Old Age we found,</div> - <div class='line'>His beard all hoare, his eyes hollow and blind,</div> - <div class='line'>With drouping cheere still poring on the ground,</div> - <div class='line'>As on the place where nature him assign’d</div> - <div class='line'>To rest, when that the sisters had vntwin’d</div> - <div class='line in2'>His vitall thred, and ended with their knife</div> - <div class='line in2'>The fleeting course of fast declining life.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint</div> - <div class='line'>Rew with himselfe his end approaching fast,</div> - <div class='line'>And all for naught his wretched mind torment,</div> - <div class='line'>With sweete remembrance of his pleasures past,</div> - <div class='line'>And fresh delites of lustic youth forewast.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Recounting which, how would he sob and shreek?</div> - <div class='line in2'>And to be yong again of <em>Ioue</em> beseeke.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>But and the cruell fates so fixed be,</div> - <div class='line'>That time forepast cannot returne againe,</div> - <div class='line'>This one request of Ioue yet prayed he:</div> - <div class='line'>That in such withred plight, and wretched paine,</div> - <div class='line'>As <em>eld</em> (accompanied with lothsome traine)</div> - <div class='line in2'>Had brought on him, all were it woe and griefe,</div> - <div class='line in2'>He might a while yet linger forth his life,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And not so soone descend into the pit:</div> - <div class='line'>Where Death, when he the mortall corps hath slaine,</div> - <div class='line'>With wretchlesse hand in graue doth couer it,</div> - <div class='line'>Thereafter neuer to enioy againe</div> - <div class='line'>The gladsome light, but in the ground ylaine,</div> - <div class='line in2'>In depth of darknesse waste and weare to nought,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As he had nere into the world been brought.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But who had seene him, sobbing how he stood</div> - <div class='line'>Vnto himselfe, and how he would bemone</div> - <div class='line'>His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good</div> - <div class='line'>To talke of youth, all were his youth foregone,</div> - <div class='line'>He would haue musde and maruail’d much whereon</div> - <div class='line in2'>This wretched Age should life desire so faine,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And knowes ful wel life doth but length his paine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Crookebackt he was, toothshaken, and blere eyde,</div> - <div class='line'>Went on three feete, and sometime crept on foure,</div> - <div class='line'>With old lame bones, that ratled by his side,</div> - <div class='line'>His scalpe all pil’d, and he with eld forelore:</div> - <div class='line'>His withred fist still knocking at Deaths dore,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Fumbling and driueling as he drawes his breath,</div> - <div class='line in2'>For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>John Lyly (born in the Weold of Kent about the year 1553), -was the author of Midas and Endymion, of Alexander and Campaspe, -and of the comedy of Mother Bombie. Of the last it may be said, -that it is very much what its name would import, old, quaint, and -vulgar.—I may here observe, once for all, that I would not be understood -to say, that the age of Elizabeth was all of gold without any -alloy. There was both gold and lead in it, and often in one and the -same writer. In our impatience to form an opinion, we conclude, -when we first meet with a good thing, that it is owing to the age; or, -if we meet with a bad one, it is characteristic of the age, when, in -fact, it is neither; for there are good and bad in almost all ages, and -one age excels in one thing, another in another:—only one age may -excel more and in higher things than another, but none can excel -equally and completely in all. The writers of Elizabeth, as poets, -soared to the height they did, by indulging their own unrestrained -enthusiasm: as comic writers, they chiefly copied the manners of the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>age, which did not give them the same advantage over their successors. -Lyly’s comedy, for instance, is ‘poor, unfledged, has never -winged from view o’ th’ nest,’ and tries in vain to rise above the -ground with crude conceits and clumsy levity. Lydia, the heroine -of the piece, is silly enough, if the rest were but as witty. But the -author has shewn no partiality in the distribution of his gifts. To say -truth, it was a very common fault of the old comedy, that its humours -were too low, and the weaknesses exposed too great to be credible, -or an object of ridicule, even if they were. The affectation of their -courtiers is passable, and diverting as a contrast to present manners; -but the eccentricities of their clowns are ‘very tolerable, and not to be -endured.’ Any kind of activity of mind might seem to the writers -better than none: any nonsense served to amuse their hearers; any -cant phrase, any coarse allusion, any pompous absurdity, was taken for -wit and drollery. Nothing could be too mean, too foolish, too -improbable, or too offensive, to be a proper subject for laughter. Any -one (looking hastily at this side of the question only) might be -tempted to suppose the youngest children of Thespis a very callow -brood, chirping their slender notes, or silly swains ‘grating their lean -and flashy jests on scrannel pipes of wretched straw.’ The genius of -comedy looked too often like a lean and hectic pantaloon; love was -a slip-shod shepherdess; wit a parti-coloured fool like Harlequin, and -the plot came hobbling, like a clown, after all. A string of impertinent -and farcical jests (or rather blunders), was with great formality ushered -into the world as ‘a right pleasant and conceited comedy.’ Comedy -could not descend lower than it sometimes did, without glancing at -physical imperfections and deformity. The two young persons in the -play before us, on whom the event of the plot chiefly hinges, do in -fact turn out to be no better than changelings and natural idiots. -This is carrying innocence and simplicity too far. So again, the -character of Sir Tophas in Endymion, an affected, blustering, -talkative, cowardly pretender, treads too near upon blank stupidity -and downright want of common sense, to be admissible as a butt for -satire. Shakespear has contrived to clothe the lamentable nakedness -of the same sort of character with a motley garb from the wardrobe -of his imagination, and has redeemed it from insipidity by a certain -plausibility of speech, and playful extravagance of humour. But the -undertaking was nearly desperate. Ben Jonson tried to overcome the -difficulty by the force of learning and study: and thought to gain his -end by persisting in error; but he only made matters worse; for his -clowns and coxcombs (if we except Bobadil), are the most incorrigible -and insufferable of all others.—The story of Mother Bombie is little -else than a tissue of absurd mistakes, arising from the confusion of the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>different characters one with another, like another Comedy of Errors, -and ends in their being (most of them), married in a game at cross-purposes -to the persons they particularly dislike.</p> - -<p class='c011'>To leave this, and proceed to something pleasanter, Midas and -Endymion, which are worthy of their names and of the subject. The -story in both is classical, and the execution is for the most part elegant -and simple. There is often something that reminds one of the graceful -communicativeness of Lucian or of Apuleius, from whom one of -the stories is borrowed. Lyly made a more attractive picture of -Grecian manners at second-hand, than of English characters from his -own observation. The poet (which is the great merit of a poet in -such a subject) has transported himself to the scene of action, to -ancient Greece or Asia Minor; the manners, the images, the -traditions are preserved with truth and delicacy, and the dialogue -(to my fancy) glides and sparkles like a clear stream from the Muses’ -spring. I know few things more perfect in characteristic painting, -than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of -betraying the secret of Midas’s ears, fancy that ‘the very reeds bow -down, as though they listened to their talk’; nor more affecting in -sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to -Endymion, on waking from his long sleep, ‘Behold the twig to which -thou laidest down thy head, is now become a tree.’ The narrative -is sometimes a little wandering and desultory; but if it had been ten -times as tedious, this thought would have redeemed it; for I cannot -conceive of any thing more beautiful, more simple or touching, than -this exquisitely chosen image and dumb proof of the manner in which -he had passed his life, from youth to old age, in a dream, a dream of -love. Happy Endymion! Faithful Eumenides! Divine Cynthia! -Who would not wish to pass his life in such a sleep, a long, long -sleep, dreaming of some fair heavenly Goddess, with the moon shining -upon his face, and the trees growing silently over his head!—There -is something in this story which has taken a strange hold of my fancy, -perhaps ‘out of my weakness and my melancholy’; but for the -satisfaction of the reader, I will quote the whole passage: ‘it is silly -sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love, like the old age.’</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘<em>Cynthia.</em> Well, let us to Endymion. I will not be so stately (good -Endymion) not to stoop to do thee good; and if thy liberty consist in a -kiss from me, thou shalt have it. And although my mouth hath been -heretofore as untouched as my thoughts, yet now to recover thy life (though -to restore thy youth it be impossible) I will do that to Endymion, which -yet never mortal man could boast of heretofore, nor shall ever hope for -hereafter. (<em>She kisses him</em>).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Eumenides.</em> Madam, he beginneth to stir.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span><em>Cynthia.</em> Soft, Eumenides, stand still.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Eumenides.</em> Ah! I see his eyes almost open.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cynthia.</em> I command thee once again, stir not: I will stand behind him.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Panelion.</em> What do I see? Endymion almost awake?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Eumenides.</em> Endymion, Endymion, art thou deaf or dumb? Or hath -this long sleep taken away thy memory? Ah! my sweet Endymion, seest -thou not Eumenides, thy faithful friend, thy faithful Eumenides, who for -thy sake hath been careless of his own content? Speak, Endymion! -Endymion! Endymion!</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Endymion.</em> Endymion! I call to mind such a name.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Eumenides.</em> Hast thou forgotten thyself, Endymion? Then do I not -marvel thou rememberest not thy friend. I tell thee thou art Endymion, -and I Eumenides. Behold also Cynthia, by whose favour thou art awaked, -and by whose virtue thou shalt continue thy natural course.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cynthia.</em> Endymion! Speak, sweet Endymion! Knowest thou not -Cynthia?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Endymion.</em> Oh, heavens! whom do I behold? Fair Cynthia, divine -Cynthia?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cynthia.</em> I am Cynthia, and thou Endymion.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Endymion.</em> Endymion! What do I hear? What! a grey beard, hollow -eyes, withered body, and decayed limbs, and all in one night?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Eumenides.</em> One night! Thou hast slept here forty years, by what -enchantress, as yet it is not known: and behold the twig to which thou -laidest thy head, is now become a tree. Callest thou not Eumenides to -remembrance?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Endymion.</em> Thy name I do remember by the sound, but thy favour I do -not yet call to mind: only divine Cynthia, to whom time, fortune, death, -and destiny are subject, I see and remember; and in all humility, I regard -and reverence.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cynthia.</em> You shall have good cause to remember Eumenides, who hath -for thy safety forsaken his own solace.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Endymion.</em> Am I that Endymion, who was wont in court to lead my -life, and in justs, tourneys, and arms, to exercise my youth? Am I that -Endymion?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Eumenides.</em> Thou art that Endymion, and I Eumenides: wilt thou not -yet call me to remembrance?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Endymion.</em> Ah! sweet Eumenides, I now perceive thou art he, and that -myself have the name of Endymion; but that this should be my body, -I doubt: for how could my curled locks be turned to gray hair, and my -strong body to a dying weakness, having waxed old, and not knowing it?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cynthia.</em> Well, Endymion, arise: awhile sit down, for that thy limbs are -stiff and not able to stay thee, and tell what thou hast seen in thy sleep all -this while. What dreams, visions, thoughts, and fortunes: for it is -impossible but in so long time, thou shouldst see strange things.’</p> - -<div class='c016'><em>Act V. Scene 1.</em></div> - -<p class='c011'>It does not take away from the pathos of this poetical allegory on -the chances of love and the progress of human life, that it may be -<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>supposed to glance indirectly at the conduct of Queen Elizabeth to -our author, who, after fourteen years’ expectation of the place of -Master of the Revels, was at last disappointed. This princess took -no small delight in keeping her poets in a sort of Fool’s Paradise. -The wit of Lyly, in parts of this romantic drama, seems to have -grown spirited and classical with his subject. He puts this fine -hyperbolical irony in praise of Dipsas, (a most unamiable personage, -as it will appear), into the mouth of Sir Tophas:</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Oh what fine thin hair hath Dipsas! What a pretty low forehead! -What a tall and stately nose! What little hollow eyes! What great and -goodly lips! How harmless she is, being toothless! Her fingers fat and -short, adorned with long nails like a bittern! What a low stature she is, -and yet what a great foot she carrieth! How thrifty must she be, in whom -there is no waist; how virtuous she is like to be, over whom no man can -be jealous!’</p> - -<div class='c016'><em>Act III. Scene 3.</em></div> - -<p class='c011'>It is singular that the style of this author, which is extremely -sweet and flowing, should have been the butt of ridicule to his contemporaries, -particularly Drayton, who compliments Sidney as the -author that</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>‘Did first reduce</div> - <div class='line'>Our tongue from Lyly’s writing, then in use;</div> - <div class='line'>Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,</div> - <div class='line'>Playing with words and idle similes,</div> - <div class='line'>As the English apes and very zanies be</div> - <div class='line'>Of every thing that they do hear and see.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Which must apply to the prose style of his work, called ‘<cite>Euphues and -his England</cite>,’ and is much more like Sir Philip Sidney’s own manner, -than the dramatic style of our poet. Besides the passages above -quoted, I might refer to the opening speeches of Midas, and again to -the admirable contention between Pan and Apollo for the palm of -music.—His Alexander and Campaspe is another sufficient answer to -the charge. This play is a very pleasing transcript of old manners -and sentiment. It is full of sweetness and point, of Attic salt and -the honey of Hymettus. The following song given to Apelles, -would not disgrace the mouth of the prince of painters:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Cupid and my Campaspe play’d</div> - <div class='line'>At cards for kisses, Cupid paid;</div> - <div class='line'>He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows;</div> - <div class='line'>His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows;</div> - <div class='line'>Loses them too, then down he throws</div> - <div class='line'>The coral of his lip, the rose</div> - <div class='line'>Growing on’s cheek (but none knows how)</div> - <div class='line'>With these the chrystal of his brow,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>And then the dimple of his chin;</div> - <div class='line'>All these did my Campaspe win.</div> - <div class='line'>At last he set her both his eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>She won, and Cupid blind did rise,</div> - <div class='line'>O, Love! has she done this to thee?</div> - <div class='line'>What shall, alas! become of me?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The conclusion of this drama is as follows. Alexander addressing -himself to Apelles, says,</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Well, enjoy one another: I give her thee frankly, Apelles. Thou -shalt see that Alexander maketh but a toy of love, and leadeth affection in -fetters: using fancy as a fool to make him sport, or a minstrel to make him -merry. It is not the amorous glance of an eye can settle an idle thought -in the heart: no, no, it is children’s game, a life for sempsters and scholars; -the one, pricking in clouts, have nothing else to think on; the other, -picking fancies out of books, have little else to marvel at. Go, Apelles, -take with you your Campaspe; Alexander is cloyed with looking on that, -which thou wonderest at.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Apelles.</em> Thanks to your Majesty on bended knee; you have honoured -Apelles.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Campaspe.</em> Thanks with bowed heart; you have blest Campaspe. [<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Exeunt.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Alexander.</em> Page, go warn Clytus and Parmenio, and the other lords, to -be in readiness; let the trumpet sound, strike up the drum, and I will -presently into Persia. How now, Hephestion, is Alexander able to resist -love as he list?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hephestion.</em> The conquering of Thebes was not so honourable as the -subduing of these thoughts.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Alexander.</em> It were a shame Alexander should desire to command the -world, if he could not command himself. But come, let us go. And, -good Hephestion, when all the world is won, and every country is thine and -mine, either find me out another to subdue, or on my word, I will fall in -love.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Marlowe is a name that stands high, and almost first in this list of -dramatic worthies. He was a little before Shakespear’s time,<a id='r15' /><a href='#f15' class='c015'><sup>[15]</sup></a> and -has a marked character both from him and the rest. There is a lust -of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a -glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own -energies. His thoughts burn within him like a furnace with bickering -flames; or throwing out black smoke and mists, that hide the dawn -of genius, or like a poisonous mineral, corrode the heart. His Life -and Death of Doctor Faustus, though an imperfect and unequal -performance, is his greatest work. Faustus himself is a rude sketch, -but it is a gigantic one. This character may be considered as a -personification of the pride of will and eagerness of curiosity, sublimed -<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>beyond the reach of fear and remorse. He is hurried away, and, as -it were, devoured by a tormenting desire to enlarge his knowledge to -the utmost bounds of nature and art, and to extend his power with -his knowledge. He would realise all the fictions of a lawless -imagination, would solve the most subtle speculations of abstract -reason; and for this purpose, sets at defiance all mortal consequences, -and leagues himself with demoniacal power, with ‘fate and metaphysical -aid.’ The idea of witchcraft and necromancy, once the -dread of the vulgar and the darling of the visionary recluse, seems to -have had its origin in the restless tendency of the human mind, to -conceive of and aspire to more than it can atchieve by natural means, -and in the obscure apprehension that the gratification of this extravagant -and unauthorised desire, can only be attained by the sacrifice of -all our ordinary hopes, and better prospects to the infernal agents that -lend themselves to its accomplishment. Such is the foundation of the -present story. Faustus, in his impatience to fulfil at once and for a -moment, for a few short years, all the desires and conceptions of his -soul, is willing to give in exchange his soul and body to the great -enemy of mankind. Whatever he fancies, becomes by this means -present to his sense: whatever he commands, is done. He calls back -time past, and anticipates the future: the visions of antiquity pass -before him, Babylon in all its glory, Paris and Œnone: all the -projects of philosophers, or creations of the poet pay tribute at his -feet: all the delights of fortune, of ambition, of pleasure, and of -learning are centered in his person; and from a short-lived dream of -supreme felicity and drunken power, he sinks into an abyss of darkness -and perdition. This is the alternative to which he submits; the bond -which he signs with his blood! As the outline of the character is -grand and daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The thoughts -are vast and irregular; and the style halts and staggers under them, -‘with uneasy steps’;—‘such footing found the sole of unblest feet.’ -There is a little fustian and incongruity of metaphor now and then, -which is not very injurious to the subject. It is time to give a few -passages in illustration of this account. He thus opens his mind at -the beginning:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘How am I glutted with conceit of this?</div> - <div class='line'>Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please?</div> - <div class='line'>Resolve me of all ambiguities?</div> - <div class='line'>Perform what desperate enterprise I will?</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll have them fly to India for gold,</div> - <div class='line'>Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,</div> - <div class='line'>And search all corners of the new-found world,</div> - <div class='line'>For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>I’ll have them read me strange philosophy,</div> - <div class='line'>And tell the secrets of all foreign kings:</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,</div> - <div class='line'>And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll have them fill the public schools with skill,</div> - <div class='line'>Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,</div> - <div class='line'>And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,</div> - <div class='line'>And reign sole king of all the provinces:</div> - <div class='line'>Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war</div> - <div class='line'>Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge,</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'><em>Enter</em> Valdes <em>and</em> Cornelius.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius,</div> - <div class='line'>And make me blest with your sage conference.</div> - <div class='line'>Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,</div> - <div class='line'>Know that your words have won me at the last,</div> - <div class='line'>To practice magic and concealed arts.</div> - <div class='line'>Philosophy is odious and obscure;</div> - <div class='line'>Both Law and Physic are for petty wits;</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.</div> - <div class='line'>Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;</div> - <div class='line'>And I, that have with subtile syllogisms</div> - <div class='line'>Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,</div> - <div class='line'>And made the flow’ring pride of Wittenberg</div> - <div class='line'>Swarm to my problems, as th’ infernal spirits</div> - <div class='line'>On sweet Musæus when he came to hell;</div> - <div class='line'>Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose shadow made all Europe honour him.</div> - <div class='line in2'><em>Valdes.</em> These books, thy wit, and our experience</div> - <div class='line'>Shall make all nations to canonize us.</div> - <div class='line'>As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,</div> - <div class='line'>So shall the Spirits of every element</div> - <div class='line'>Be always serviceable to us three.</div> - <div class='line'>Like lions shall they guard us when we please;</div> - <div class='line'>Like Almain Rutters with their horsemen’s staves,</div> - <div class='line'>Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides:</div> - <div class='line'>Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,</div> - <div class='line'>Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows</div> - <div class='line'>Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.</div> - <div class='line'>From Venice they shall drag whole argosies,</div> - <div class='line'>And from America the golden fleece,</div> - <div class='line'>That yearly stuffs old Philip’s treasury;<a id='r16' /><a href='#f16' class='c015'><sup>[16]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line'>If learned Faustus will be resolute.</div> - <div class='line in2'><em>Faustus.</em> As resolute am I in this</div> - <div class='line'>As thou to live, therefore object it not.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>In his colloquy with the fallen angel, he shews the fixedness of his -determination:—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘What is great Mephostophilis so passionate</div> - <div class='line'>For being deprived of the joys of heaven?</div> - <div class='line'>Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,</div> - <div class='line'>And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Yet we afterwards find him faltering in his resolution, and struggling -with the extremity of his fate.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘My heart is harden’d, I cannot repent:</div> - <div class='line'>Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven:</div> - <div class='line'>Swords, poisons, halters, and envenom’d steel</div> - <div class='line'>Are laid before me to dispatch myself;</div> - <div class='line'>And long ere this I should have done the deed,</div> - <div class='line'>Had not sweet pleasure conquer’d deep despair.</div> - <div class='line'>Have I not made blind Homer sing to me</div> - <div class='line'>Of Alexander’s love and Œnon’s death?</div> - <div class='line'>And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes</div> - <div class='line'>With ravishing sounds of his melodious harp,</div> - <div class='line'>Made music with my Mephostophilis?</div> - <div class='line'>Why should I die then or basely despair?</div> - <div class='line'>I am resolv’d, Faustus shall not repent.</div> - <div class='line'>Come, Mephostophilis, let us dispute again,</div> - <div class='line'>And reason of divine astrology.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There is one passage more of this kind, which is so striking and -beautiful, so like a rapturous and deeply passionate dream, that -I cannot help quoting it here: it is the Address to the Apparition of -Helen.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Enter</em> Helen <em>again, passing over between two Cupids</em>.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Faustus.</em> Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,</div> - <div class='line'>And burned the topless tow’rs of Ilium?</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.</div> - <div class='line'>Her lips suck forth my soul! See where it flies.</div> - <div class='line'>Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.</div> - <div class='line'>Here will I dwell, for Heav’n is in these lips,</div> - <div class='line'>And all is dross that is not Helena.</div> - <div class='line'>I will be Paris, and for love of thee,</div> - <div class='line'>Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack’d;</div> - <div class='line'>And I will combat with weak Menelaus,</div> - <div class='line'>And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;</div> - <div class='line'>Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,</div> - <div class='line'>And then return to Helen for a kiss.</div> - <div class='line'>—Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air,</div> - <div class='line'>Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars:</div> - <div class='line'>Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>When he appear’d to hapless Semele;</div> - <div class='line'>More lovely than the monarch of the sky</div> - <div class='line'>In wanton Arethusa’s azure arms;</div> - <div class='line'>And none but thou shalt be my paramour.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The ending of the play is terrible, and his last exclamations betray -an anguish of mind and vehemence of passion, not to be contemplated -without shuddering.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>—‘Oh, Faustus!</div> - <div class='line'>Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,</div> - <div class='line'>And then thou must be damn’d perpetually.</div> - <div class='line'>Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heav’n,</div> - <div class='line'>That time may cease, and midnight never come.</div> - <div class='line'>Fair nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make</div> - <div class='line'>Perpetual day; or let this hour be but a year,</div> - <div class='line'>A month, a week, a natural day,</div> - <div class='line'>That Faustus may repent, and save his soul.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>(<em>The Clock strikes Twelve.</em>)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>It strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,</div> - <div class='line'>Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh soul! be chang’d into small water-drops,</div> - <div class='line'>And fall into the ocean; ne’er be found.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>(<em>Thunder. Enter the</em> Devils.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh! mercy, Heav’n! Look not so fierce on me!</div> - <div class='line'>Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!—</div> - <div class='line'>Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer!</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll burn my books! Oh! Mephostophilis.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Perhaps the finest <em>trait</em> in the whole play, and that which softens -and subdues the horror of it, is the interest taken by the two scholars -in the fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts to dissuade -him from his relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling -passion of this drama; and its indications are as mild and amiable in -them as its ungoverned pursuit has been fatal to Faustus.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Yet, for he was a scholar once admir’d</div> - <div class='line'>For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,</div> - <div class='line'>We’ll give his mangled limbs due burial;</div> - <div class='line'>And all the students, clothed in mourning black,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>So the Chorus:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Cut is the branch that might have grown full strait,</div> - <div class='line'>And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,</div> - <div class='line'>That sometime grew within this learned man.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>And still more affecting are his own conflicts of mind and agonising -doubts on this subject just before, when he exclaims to his friends; -‘Oh, gentlemen! Hear me with patience, and tremble not at my -speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have -been a student here these thirty years; oh! would I had never seen -Wittenberg, never read book!’ A finer compliment was never paid, -nor a finer lesson ever read to the pride of learning.—The intermediate -comic parts, in which Faustus is not directly concerned, are mean and -grovelling to the last degree. One of the Clowns says to another: -‘Snails! what hast got there? A book? Why thou can’st not tell -ne’er a word on’t.’ Indeed, the ignorance and barbarism of the -time, as here described, might almost justify Faustus’s overstrained -admiration of learning, and turn the heads of those who possessed it, -from novelty and unaccustomed excitement, as the Indians are made -drunk with wine! Goethe, the German poet, has written a drama on -this tradition of his country, which is considered a master-piece. -I cannot find, in Marlowe’s play, any proofs of the atheism or impiety -attributed to him, unless the belief in witchcraft and the Devil can -be regarded as such; and at the time he wrote, not to have believed -in both, would have been construed into the rankest atheism and -irreligion. There is a delight, as Mr. Lamb says, ‘in dallying with -interdicted subjects’; but that does not, by any means, imply either -a practical or speculative disbelief of them.</p> - -<p class='c011'><cite class='scite'>Lust’s Dominion</cite>; <em>or</em>, <cite class='scite'>the Lascivious Queen</cite>, is referable to the -same general style of writing; and is a striking picture, or rather -caricature, of the unrestrained love of power, not as connected with -learning, but with regal ambition and external sway. There is a -good deal of the same intense passion, the same recklessness of purpose, -the same smouldering fire within: but there is not any of the same -relief to the mind in the lofty imaginative nature of the subject; and -the continual repetition of plain practical villainy and undigested -horrors disgusts the sense, and blunts the interest. The mind is -hardened into obduracy, not melted into sympathy, by such bare-faced -and barbarous cruelty. Eleazar, the Moor, is such another character -as Aaron in Titus Andronicus, and this play might be set down -without injustice as ‘pue-fellow’ to that. I should think Marlowe -has a much fairer claim to be the author of Titus Andronicus than -Shakespear, at least from internal evidence; and the argument of -Schlegel, that it must have been Shakespear’s, because there was no -one else capable of producing either its faults or beauties, fails in each -particular. The Queen is the same character in both these plays; -and the business of the plot is carried on in much the same revolting -manner, by making the nearest friends and relatives of the wretched -<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>victims the instruments of their sufferings and persecution by an arch-villain. -To shew however, that the same strong-braced tone of -passionate declamation is kept up, take the speech of Eleazar on -refusing the proffered crown:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>‘What do none rise?</div> - <div class='line'>No, no, for kings indeed are Deities.</div> - <div class='line'>And who’d not (as the sun) in brightness shine?</div> - <div class='line'>To be the greatest is to be divine.</div> - <div class='line'>Who among millions would not be the mightiest?</div> - <div class='line'>To sit in godlike state; to have all eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues</div> - <div class='line'>Shouting loud prayers; to rob every heart</div> - <div class='line'>Of love; to have the strength of every arm;</div> - <div class='line'>A sovereign’s name, why ’tis a sovereign charm.</div> - <div class='line'>This glory round about me hath thrown beams:</div> - <div class='line'>I have stood upon the top of Fortune’s wheel,</div> - <div class='line'>And backward turn’d the iron screw of fate.</div> - <div class='line'>The destinies have spun a silken thread</div> - <div class='line'>About my life; yet thus I cast aside</div> - <div class='line'>The shape of majesty, and on my knee</div> - <div class='line'>To this Imperial state lowly resign</div> - <div class='line'>This usurpation; wiping off your fears</div> - <div class='line'>Which stuck so hard upon me.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This is enough to shew the unabated vigour of the author’s style. -This strain is certainly doing justice to the pride of ambition, and the -imputed majesty of kings.</p> - -<p class='c011'>We have heard much of ‘Marlowe’s mighty line,’ and this play -furnishes frequent instances of it. There are a number of single lines -that seem struck out in the heat of a glowing fancy, and leave a track -of golden fire behind them. The following are a few that might be -given.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I know he is not dead; I know proud death</div> - <div class='line'>Durst not behold such sacred majesty.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Hang both your greedy ears upon my lips,</div> - <div class='line'>Let them devour my speech, suck in my breath.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>——‘From discontent grows treason,</div> - <div class='line'>And on the stalk of treason, death.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>The two following lines—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Oh! I grow dull, and the cold hand of sleep</div> - <div class='line'>Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>are the same as those in King John—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And none of you will bid the winter come</div> - <div class='line'>To thrust his icy fingers in my maw.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>and again the Moor’s exclamation,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Now by the proud complexion of my cheeks,</div> - <div class='line'>Ta’en from the kisses of the amorous sun’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>is the same as Cleopatra’s—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘But I that am with Phœbus’ amorous pinches black’—&c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Eleazar’s sarcasm,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'>——‘These dignities,</div> - <div class='line'>Like poison, make men swell; this rat’s-bane honour,</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, ’tis so sweet! they’ll lick it till they burst’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>shews the utmost virulence of smothered spleen; and his concluding -strain of malignant exultation has been but tamely imitated by Young’s -Zanga.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Now tragedy, thou minion of the night,</div> - <div class='line'>Rhamnusia’s pewfellow,<a id='r17' /><a href='#f17' class='c015'><sup>[17]</sup></a> to thee I’ll sing,</div> - <div class='line'>Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones,</div> - <div class='line'>The proudest instrument the world affords:</div> - <div class='line'>To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks</div> - <div class='line'>Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee</div> - <div class='line'>I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It may be worth while to observe, for the sake of the curious, that -many of Marlowe’s most sounding lines consist of monosyllables, or -nearly so. The repetition of Eleazar’s taunt to the Cardinal, retorting -his own words upon him, ‘Spaniard or Moor, the saucy slave shall -die’—may perhaps have suggested Falconbridge’s spirited reiteration -of the phrase—‘And hang a calve’s skin on his recreant limbs.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>I do not think <cite class='scite'>the rich Jew of Malta</cite> so characteristic a -specimen of this writer’s powers. It has not the same fierce glow of -passion or expression. It is extreme in act, and outrageous in plot -and catastrophe; but it has not the same vigorous filling up. The -author seems to have relied on the horror inspired by the subject, and -the national disgust excited against the principal character, to rouse -the feelings of the audience: for the rest, it is a tissue of gratuitous, -unprovoked, and incredible atrocities, which are committed, one upon -<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>the back of the other, by the parties concerned, without motive, -passion, or object. There are, notwithstanding, some striking -passages in it, as Barabbas’s description of the bravo, Philia Borzo<a id='r18' /><a href='#f18' class='c015'><sup>[18]</sup></a>; -the relation of his own unaccountable villainies to Ithamore; his -rejoicing over his recovered jewels ‘as the morning lark sings over -her young;’ and the backwardness he declares in himself to forgive -the Christian injuries that are offered him,<a id='r19' /><a href='#f19' class='c015'><sup>[19]</sup></a> which may have given the -idea of one of Shylock’s speeches, where he ironically disclaims any -enmity to the merchants on the same account. It is perhaps hardly -fair to compare the Jew of Malta with the Merchant of Venice; for -it is evident, that Shakespear’s genius shews to as much advantage in -knowledge of character, in variety and stage-effect, as it does in point -of general humanity.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>Edward <span class='fss'>II.</span> is, according to the modern standard of composition, -Marlowe’s best play. It is written with few offences against the -common rules, and in a succession of smooth and flowing lines. The -poet however succeeds less in the voluptuous and effeminate descriptions -which he here attempts, than in the more dreadful and violent -bursts of passion. Edward <span class='fss'>II.</span> is drawn with historic truth, but -without much dramatic effect. The management of the plot is feeble -and desultory; little interest is excited in the various turns of fate; -the characters are too worthless, have too little energy, and their -punishment is, in general, too well deserved, to excite our commiseration; -so that this play will bear, on the whole, but a distant comparison -with Shakespear’s Richard <span class='fss'>II.</span> in conduct, power, or effect. But the -death of Edward II. in Marlow’s tragedy, is certainly superior to that -of Shakespear’s King; and in heart-breaking distress, and the sense -of human weakness, claiming pity from utter helplessness and conscious -misery, is not surpassed by any writer whatever.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘<em>Edward.</em> Weep’st thou already? List awhile to me,</div> - <div class='line'>And then thy heart, were it as Gurney’s is,</div> - <div class='line'>Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.</div> - <div class='line'>This dungeon, where they keep me, is the sink</div> - <div class='line'>Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.</div> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lightborn.</em> Oh villains.</div> - <div class='line in2'><em>Edward.</em> And here in mire and puddle have I stood</div> - <div class='line'>This ten days’ space; and lest that I should sleep,</div> - <div class='line'>One plays continually upon a drum.</div> - <div class='line'>They give me bread and water, being a king;</div> - <div class='line'>So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,</div> - <div class='line'>My mind’s distempered, and my body’s numbed:</div> - <div class='line'>And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein,</div> - <div class='line'>As doth this water from my tatter’d robes!</div> - <div class='line'>Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look’d not thus,</div> - <div class='line'>When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,</div> - <div class='line'>And there unhors’d the Duke of Cleremont.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There are some excellent passages scattered up and down. The -description of the King and Gaveston looking out of the palace -window, and laughing at the courtiers as they pass, and that of the -different spirit shewn by the lion and the forest deer, when wounded, -are among the best. The Song ‘Come, live with me and be my -love,’ to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an answer, is Marlowe’s.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Heywood I shall mention next, as a direct contrast to Marlowe in -everything but the smoothness of his verse. As Marlowe’s imagination -glows like a furnace, Heywood’s is a gentle, lambent flame that -<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>purifies without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There -is nothing supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He makes use -of the commonest circumstances of every-day life, and of the easiest -tempers, to shew the workings, or rather the inefficacy of the passions, -the <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vis inertiæ</span></i> of tragedy. His incidents strike from their very -familiarity, and the distresses he paints invite our sympathy, from the -calmness and resignation with which they are borne. The pathos -might be deemed purer from its having no mixture of turbulence or -vindictiveness in it; and in proportion as the sufferers are made to -deserve a better fate. In the midst of the most untoward reverses -and cutting injuries, good-nature and good sense keep their accustomed -sway. He describes men’s errors with tenderness, and their duties -only with zeal, and the heightenings of a poetic fancy. His style is -equally natural, simple, and unconstrained. The dialogue (bating the -verse), is such as might be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is -beautiful prose put into heroic measure. It is not so much that he -uses the common English idiom for everything (for that I think the -most poetical and impassioned of our elder dramatists do equally), -but the simplicity of the characters, and the equable flow of the -sentiments do not require or suffer it to be warped from the tone of -level speaking, by figurative expressions, or hyperbolical allusions. -A few scattered exceptions occur now and then, where the hectic -flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they are not the worse -for being rare. Thus, in the play called <cite class='scite'>A Woman killed with -Kindness</cite>, Wendoll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his -obligations to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>——‘Oh speak no more!</div> - <div class='line'>For more than this I know, and have recorded</div> - <div class='line'>Within the <em>red-leaved table</em> of my heart.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>And further on, Frankford, when doubting his wife’s fidelity, says, -with less feeling indeed, but with much elegance of fancy,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs,</div> - <div class='line'>Like morning dew upon the golden flow’rs.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>So also, when returning to his house at midnight to make the fatal -discovery, he exclaims,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in18'>——‘Astonishment,</div> - <div class='line'>Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart,</div> - <div class='line'>Even as a madman beats upon a drum.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It is the reality of things present to their imaginations, that makes -these writers so fine, so bold, and yet so true in what they describe. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them ‘invisible, -or dimly seen’ through a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such -poetical ornaments are however to be met with at considerable intervals -in this play, and do not disturb the calm serenity and domestic -simplicity of the author’s style. The conclusion of Wendoll’s -declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of -its general merits, both as to thought and diction.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful</div> - <div class='line'>Bluntly to give my life into your hand,</div> - <div class='line'>And at one hazard, all my earthly means.</div> - <div class='line'>Go, tell your husband: he will turn me off,</div> - <div class='line'>And I am then undone. I care not, I;</div> - <div class='line'>’Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he’ll kill me;</div> - <div class='line'>I care not; ’twas for you. Say I incur</div> - <div class='line'>The general name of villain thro’ the world,</div> - <div class='line'>Of traitor to my friend: I care not, I;</div> - <div class='line'>Poverty, shame, death, scandal, and reproach,</div> - <div class='line'>For you I’ll hazard all: why what care I?</div> - <div class='line'>For you I love, and for your love I’ll die.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to his wife, and her -repentant agony at parting with him, are already before the public, in -Mr. Lamb’s Specimens. The winding up of this play is rather -awkwardly managed, and the moral is, according to established usage, -equivocal. It required only Frankford’s reconciliation to his wife, -as well as his forgiveness of her, for the highest breach of matrimonial -duty, to have made a Woman Killed with Kindness a complete -anticipation of the Stranger. Heywood, however, was in that respect -but half a Kotzebue!—The view here given of country manners is -truly edifying. As in the higher walk of tragedy we see the -manners and moral sentiments of kings and nobles of former times, -here we have the feuds and amiable qualities of country ‘squires and -their relatives; and such as were the rulers, such were their subjects. -The frequent quarrels and ferocious habits of private life are well -exposed in the fatal rencounter between Sir Francis Acton and Sir -Charles Mountford about a hawking match, in the ruin and rancorous -persecution of the latter in consequence, and in the hard, unfeeling, -cold-blooded treatment he receives in his distress from his own -relations, and from a fellow of the name of Shafton. After reading -the sketch of this last character, who is introduced as a mere ordinary -personage, the representative of a class, without any preface or apology, -no one can doubt the credibility of that of Sir Giles Over-reach, who -is professedly held up (I should think almost unjustly) as a prodigy -of grasping and hardened selfishness. The influence of philosophy -<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>and prevalence of abstract reasoning, if it has done nothing for our -poetry, has done, I should hope, something for our manners. The -callous declaration of one of these unconscionable churls,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘This is no world in which to pity men,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>might have been taken as a motto for the good old times in general, -and with a very few reservations, if Heywood has not grossly libelled -them.—Heywood’s plots have little of artifice or regularity of design -to recommend them. He writes on carelessly, as it happens, and -trusts to Nature, and a certain happy tranquillity of spirit, for gaining -the favour of the audience. He is said, besides attending to his -duties as an actor, to have composed regularly a sheet a day. This -may account in some measure for the unembarrassed facility of his -style. His own account makes the number of his writings for the -stage, or those in which he had a main hand, upwards of 200. In -fact, I do not wonder at any quantity that an author is said to have -written; for the more a man writes, the more he can write.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The same remarks will apply, with certain modifications, to other -remaining works of this writer, the Royal King and Loyal Subject, -a Challenge for Beauty, and the English Traveller. The barb of -misfortune is sheathed in the mildness of the writer’s temperament, -and the story jogs on very comfortably, without effort or resistance, to -the <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">euthanasia</span></i> of the catastrophe. In two of these, the person -principally aggrieved survives, and feels himself none the worse for it. -The most splendid passage in Heywood’s comedies is the account of -Shipwreck by Drink, in the English Traveller, which was the -foundation of Cowley’s Latin Poem, <cite><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Naufragium Joculare</span></cite>.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The names of Middleton and Rowley, with which I shall conclude -this Lecture, generally appear together as two writers who frequently -combined their talents in the production of joint-pieces. Middleton -(judging from their separate works) was ‘the more potent spirit’ of -the two; but they were neither of them equal to some others. -Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable -quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried -almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the -comedy of A Woman never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, -with a pleasing simplicity and <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naiveté</span></i> equal to the novelty of the -conception. Middleton’s style was not marked by any peculiar -quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the -faults and excellences common to his contemporaries. In his Women -Beware Women, there is a rich marrowy vein of internal sentiment, -with fine occasional insight into human nature, and cool cutting irony -of expression. He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement -<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>of the story. It is like the rough draught of a tragedy, with a -number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but -it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, -as we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to -the whole. We have fine studies of heads, a piece of richly-coloured -drapery, ‘a foot, an hand, an eye from Nature drawn, that’s worth a -history’; but the groups are ill disposed, nor are the figures -proportioned to each other or the size of the canvas. The author’s -power is <em>in</em> the subject, not <em>over</em> it; or he is in possession of excellent -materials, which he husbands very ill. This character, though it -applies more particularly to Middleton, might be applied generally to -the age. Shakespear alone seemed to stand over his work, and to do -what he pleased with it. He saw to the end of what he was about, -and with the same faculty of lending himself to the impulses of -Nature and the impression of the moment, never forgot that he -himself had a task to perform, nor the place which each figure ought -to occupy in his general design.—The characters of Livia, of Bianca, -of Leantio and his Mother, in the play of which I am speaking, are -all admirably drawn. The art and malice of Livia shew equal want -of principle and acquaintance with the world; and the scene in -which she holds the mother in suspense, while she betrays the -daughter into the power of the profligate Duke, is a master-piece of -dramatic skill. The proneness of Bianca to tread the primrose path -of pleasure, after she has made the first false step, and her sudden -transition from unblemished virtue to the most abandoned vice, in -which she is notably seconded by her mother-in-law’s ready submission -to the temptations of wealth and power, form a true and striking -picture. The first intimation of the intrigue that follows, is given in -a way that is not a little remarkable for simplicity and acuteness. -Bianca says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Did not the Duke look up? Methought he saw us.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>To which the more experienced mother answers,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That’s every one’s conceit that sees a Duke.</div> - <div class='line'>If he looks stedfastly, he looks straight at them,</div> - <div class='line'>When he perhaps, good careful gentleman,</div> - <div class='line'>Never minds any, but the look he casts</div> - <div class='line'>Is at his own intentions, and his object</div> - <div class='line'>Only the public good.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It turns out however, that he had been looking at them, and not -‘at the public good.’ The moral of this tragedy is rendered more -impressive from the manly, independent character of Leantio in the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>first instance, and the manner in which he dwells, in a sort of doting -abstraction, on his own comforts, in being possessed of a beautiful and -faithful wife. As he approaches his own house, and already treads -on the brink of perdition, he exclaims with an exuberance of -satisfaction not to be restrained—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘How near am I to a happiness</div> - <div class='line'>That earth exceeds not! Not another like it:</div> - <div class='line'>The treasures of the deep are not so precious,</div> - <div class='line'>As are the conceal’d comforts of a man</div> - <div class='line'>Lock’d up in woman’s love. I scent the air</div> - <div class='line'>Of blessings when I come but near the house:</div> - <div class='line'>What a delicious breath marriage sends forth!</div> - <div class='line'>The violet-bed’s not sweeter. Honest wedlock</div> - <div class='line'>Is like a banquetting-house built in a garden,</div> - <div class='line'>On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight</div> - <div class='line'>To cast their modest odours; when base lust,</div> - <div class='line'>With all her powders, paintings, and best pride,</div> - <div class='line'>Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.</div> - <div class='line'>When I behold a glorious dangerous strumpet,</div> - <div class='line'>Sparkling in beauty and destruction too,</div> - <div class='line'>Both at a twinkling, I do liken straight</div> - <div class='line'>Her beautified body to a goodly temple</div> - <div class='line'>That’s built on vaults where carcasses lie rotting;</div> - <div class='line'>And so by little and little I shrink back again,</div> - <div class='line'>And quench desire with a cool meditation;</div> - <div class='line'>And I’m as well, methinks. Now for a welcome</div> - <div class='line'>Able to draw men’s envies upon man:</div> - <div class='line'>A kiss now that will hang upon my lip,</div> - <div class='line'>As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,</div> - <div class='line'>And full as long; after a five days’ fast</div> - <div class='line'>She’ll be so greedy now and cling about me:</div> - <div class='line'>I take care how I shall be rid of her;</div> - <div class='line'>And here ‘t begins.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This dream is dissipated by the entrance of Bianca and his Mother.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘<em>Bian.</em> Oh, sir, you’re welcome home.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Moth.</em> Oh, is he come? I am glad on ‘t.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> (<em>Aside.</em>) Is that all?</div> - <div class='line'>Why this is dreadful now as sudden death</div> - <div class='line'>To some rich man, that flatters all his sins</div> - <div class='line'>With promise of repentance when he’s old,</div> - <div class='line'>And dies in the midway before he comes to ‘t.</div> - <div class='line'>Sure you’re not well, Bianca! How dost, prithee?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> I have been better than I am at this time.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> Alas, I thought so.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> Nay, I have been worse too,</div> - <div class='line'>Than now you see me, sir.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span><em>Lean.</em> I’m glad thou mendst yet,</div> - <div class='line'>I feel my heart mend too. How came it to thee?</div> - <div class='line'>Has any thing dislik’d thee in my absence?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> No, certain, I have had the best content</div> - <div class='line'>That Florence can afford.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> Thou makest the best on ‘t:</div> - <div class='line'>Speak, mother, what ‘s the cause? you must needs know.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Moth.</em> Troth, I know none, son; let her speak herself;</div> - <div class='line'>Unless it be the same gave Lucifer a tumbling cast; that’s pride.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind;</div> - <div class='line'>I’d have some pleasant lodging i’ th’ high street, sir;</div> - <div class='line'>Or if ’twere near the court, sir, that were much better;</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman</div> - <div class='line'>To stand in a bay-window, and see gallants.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> Now I have another temper, a mere stranger</div> - <div class='line'>To that of yours, it seems; I should delight</div> - <div class='line'>To see none but yourself.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> I praise not that;</div> - <div class='line'>Too fond is as unseemly as too churlish:</div> - <div class='line'>I would not have a husband of that proneness,</div> - <div class='line'>To kiss me before company, for a world:</div> - <div class='line'>Beside, ’tis tedious to see one thing still, sir,</div> - <div class='line'>Be it the best that ever heart affected;</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, were ‘t yourself, whose love had power you know</div> - <div class='line'>To bring me from my friends, I would not stand thus,</div> - <div class='line'>And gaze upon you always; troth, I could not, sir;</div> - <div class='line'>As good be blind, and have no use of sight,</div> - <div class='line'>As look on one thing still: what’s the eye’s treasure,</div> - <div class='line'>But change of objects? You are learned, sir,</div> - <div class='line'>And know I speak not ill; ’tis full as virtuous</div> - <div class='line'>For woman’s eye to look on several men,</div> - <div class='line'>As for her heart, sir, to be fixed on one.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> Now thou com’st home to me; a kiss for that word.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> No matter for a kiss, sir; let it pass;</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis but a toy, we ‘ll not so much as mind it;</div> - <div class='line'>Let’s talk of other business, and forget it.</div> - <div class='line'>What news now of the pirates? any stirring?</div> - <div class='line'>Prithee discourse a little.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Moth.</em> (<em>Aside.</em>) I am glad he ‘s here yet</div> - <div class='line'>To see her tricks himself; I had lied monst’rously</div> - <div class='line'>If I had told ’em first.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> Speak, what ‘s the humour, sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>You make your lips so strange? This was not wont.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> Is there no kindness betwixt man and wife,</div> - <div class='line'>Unless they make a pigeon-house of friendship,</div> - <div class='line'>And be still billing? ’tis the idlest fondness</div> - <div class='line'>That ever was invented; and ’tis pity</div> - <div class='line'>It ‘s grown a fashion for poor gentlewomen;</div> - <div class='line'>There ‘s many a disease kiss’d in a year by ‘t,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>And a French court’sy made to’t: Alas, sir,</div> - <div class='line'>Think of the world, how we shall live, grow serious;</div> - <div class='line'>We have been married a whole fortnight now.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> How? a whole fortnight! why, is that so long?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Bian.</em> ’Tis time to leave off dalliance; ’tis a doctrine</div> - <div class='line'>Of your own teaching, if you be remember’d,</div> - <div class='line'>And I was bound to obey it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Moth.</em> (<em>Aside.</em>) Here’s one fits him;</div> - <div class='line'>This was well catch’d i’ faith, son, like a fellow</div> - <div class='line'>That rids another country of a plague,</div> - <div class='line'>And brings it home with him to his own house.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>[<em>A Messenger from the Duke knocks within.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Who knocks?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Lean.</em> Who’s there now? Withdraw you, Bianca;</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art a gem no stranger’s eye must see,</div> - <div class='line'>Howe’er thou ‘rt pleas’d now to look dull on me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in49'>[<em>Exit Bianca.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Witch of Middleton is his most remarkable performance; -both on its own account, and from the use that Shakespear has made -of some of the characters and speeches in his Macbeth. Though the -employment which Middleton has given to Hecate and the rest, in -thwarting the purposes and perplexing the business of familiar and -domestic life, is not so grand or appalling as the more stupendous -agency which Shakespear has assigned them, yet it is not easy to deny -the merit of the first invention to Middleton, who has embodied the -existing superstitions of the time, respecting that anomalous class of -beings, with a high spirit of poetry, of the most grotesque and fanciful -kind. The songs and incantations made use of are very nearly the -same. The other parts of this play are not so good; and the solution -of the principal difficulty, by Antonio’s falling down a trap-door, -most lame and impotent. As a specimen of the similarity of the -preternatural machinery, I shall here give one entire scene.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>‘<em>The Witches’ Habitation.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'><em>Enter</em> Heccat, Stadlin, Hoppo, <em>and other Witches</em>.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> The moon’s a gallant: see how brisk she rides.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Stad.</em> Here’s a rich evening, Heccat.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Aye, is ‘t not, wenches,</div> - <div class='line'>To take a journey of five thousand miles?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hop.</em> Our’s will be more to-night.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Oh, ‘twill be precious. Heard you the owl yet?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Stad.</em> Briefly, in the copse,</div> - <div class='line'>As we came thro’ now.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> ’Tis high time for us then.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Stad.</em> There was a bat hung at my lips three times</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>As we came thro’ the woods, and drank her fill:</div> - <div class='line'>Old Puckle saw her.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> You are fortunate still,</div> - <div class='line'>The very scritch-owl lights upon your shoulder,</div> - <div class='line'>And woos you like a pidgeon. Are you furnish’d?</div> - <div class='line'>Have you your ointments?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Stad.</em> All.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Prepare to flight then.</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll overtake you swiftly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Stad.</em> Hye then, Heccat!</div> - <div class='line'>We shall be up betimes.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> I’ll reach you quickly.</div> - <div class='line in49'>[<em>They ascend.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in26'><em>Enter</em> Firestone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> They are all going a birding to-night. They talk of fowls i’ th’ -air, that fly by day, I’m sure they’ll be a company of foul sluts there -to-night. If we have not mortality affeared, I’ll be hang’d, for they are -able to putrify it, to infect a whole region. She spies me now.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> What, Firestone, our sweet son?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> A little sweeter than some of you; or a dunghill were too good -for me.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> How much hast there?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> Nineteen, and all brave plump ones; besides six lizards, and three -serpentine eggs.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Dear and sweet boy! What herbs hast thou?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> I have some mar-martin, and man-dragon.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Marmarittin, and mandragora, thou would’st say.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> Here’s pannax, too. I thank thee; my pan akes, I am sure, with -kneeling down to cut ’em.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> And selago,</div> - <div class='line'>Hedge-hissop too! How near he goes my cuttings!</div> - <div class='line'>Were they all cropt by moon-light?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'> <em>Fire.</em> Every blade of ’em, or I’m a moon-calf, mother.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Hie thee home with ’em.</div> - <div class='line'>Look well to th’ house to-night: I’m for aloft.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> Aloft, quoth you! I would you would break your neck once, that -I might have all quickly (<em>Aside</em>).—Hark, hark, mother! They are above -the steeple already, flying over your head with a noise of musicians.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> They are indeed. Help me! Help me! I’m too late else.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>SONG, (<em>in the air above</em>).</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in11'>Come away, come away!</div> - <div class='line in11'>Heccat, Heccat, come away!</div> - <div class='line'><span class='c017'><em>Hec.</em></span> I come, I come, I come, I come,</div> - <div class='line in13'>With all the speed I may,</div> - <div class='line in13'>With all the speed I may.</div> - <div class='line in11'>Where’s Stadlin?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c018'>(<em>Above</em>).</span> Here.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span><span class='c017'><em>Hec.</em></span> Where’s Puckle?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c018'>(<em>Above</em>).</span> Here:</div> - <div class='line in11'>And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too:</div> - <div class='line in11'>We lack but you, we lack but you.</div> - <div class='line in11'>Come away, make up the count!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c017'><em>Hec.</em></span> I will but ‘noint, and then I mount.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>(<em>A Spirit descends in the shape of a Cat</em>).</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c018'>(<em>Above</em>).</span> There’s one come down to fetch his dues;</div> - <div class='line in11'>A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood;</div> - <div class='line in11'>And why thou stay’st so long, I muse, I muse,</div> - <div class='line in11'>Since th’ air’s so sweet and good?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c017'><em>Hec.</em></span> Oh, art thou come,</div> - <div class='line in11'>What news, what news?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c019'><em>Spirit.</em></span> All goes still to our delight,</div> - <div class='line in13'>Either come, or else</div> - <div class='line in17'>Refuse, refuse.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c017'><em>Hec.</em></span> Now I am furnish’d for the flight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c020'><em>Fire.</em></span> Hark, hark! The cat sings a brave treble in her own language.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Hec.</em> (<em>Ascending with the Spirit</em>).</div> - <div class='line in11'>Now I go, now I fly,</div> - <div class='line in11'>Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.</div> - <div class='line in11'>Oh, what a dainty pleasure ’tis</div> - <div class='line in13'>To ride in the air</div> - <div class='line in13'>When the moon shines fair,</div> - <div class='line in11'>And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss!</div> - <div class='line in13'>Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,</div> - <div class='line in13'>Over seas our mistress’ fountains,</div> - <div class='line in13'>Over steep towers and turrets,</div> - <div class='line in13'>We fly by night, ‘mongst troops of spirits.</div> - <div class='line in13'>No ring of bells to our ears sounds,</div> - <div class='line in13'>No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds:</div> - <div class='line in13'>No, not the noise of water’s breach,</div> - <div class='line in13'>Or cannon’s roar, our height can reach.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c018'>(<em>Above.</em>)</span> No ring of bells, &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c021'><em>Fire.</em> Well, mother, I thank you for your kindness. You must be gamboling i’ th’ air, and leave me here like a fool and a mortal.</p> -<div class='c016'>[<em>Exit.</em>’</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Incantation scene at the cauldron, is also the original of that -in Macbeth, and is in like manner introduced by the Duchess’s -visiting the Witches’ Habitation.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>‘<em>The Witches’ Habitation.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'><em>Enter</em> Duchess, Heccat, Firestone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> What death is’t you desire for Almachildes?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> A sudden and a subtle.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Then I’ve fitted you.</div> - <div class='line'>Here lie the gifts of both; sudden and subtle;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>His picture made in wax, and gently molten</div> - <div class='line'>By a blue fire, kindled with dead men’s eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Will waste him by degrees.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> In what time, pr’ythee?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Perhaps in a month’s progress.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> What? A month?</div> - <div class='line'>Out upon pictures! If they be so tedious,</div> - <div class='line'>Give me things with some life.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Then seek no farther.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> This must be done with speed, dispatched this night,</div> - <div class='line'>If it may possibly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> I have it for you:</div> - <div class='line'>Here’s that will do ‘t. Stay but perfection’s time,</div> - <div class='line'>And that’s not five hours hence.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> Can’st thou do this?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Can I?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> I mean, so closely.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> So closely do you mean too?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> So artfully, so cunningly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Worse and worse; doubts and incredulities,</div> - <div class='line'>They make me mad. Let scrupulous creatures know,</div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Cum volui, ripis ipsis mirantibus, amnes</span></i></div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">In fontes rediere suos: concussaque sisto,</span></i></div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello,</span></i></div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Nubilaque induco: ventos abigoque vocoque.</span></i></div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Vipereas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces;</span></i></div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Et silvas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere montes,</span></i></div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchres.</span></i></div> - <div class='line in8'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Te quoque luna traho.</span></i></div> - <div class='line'>Can you doubt me then, daughter?</div> - <div class='line'>That can make mountains tremble, miles of woods walk;</div> - <div class='line'>Whole earth’s foundations bellow, and the spirits</div> - <div class='line'>Of the entomb’d to burst out from their marbles;</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, draw yon moon to my involv’d designs?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> I know as well as can be when my mother’s mad, and our great -cat angry; for one spits French then, and th’ other spits Latin.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> I did not doubt you, mother.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> No? what did you?</div> - <div class='line'>My power’s so firm, it is not to be question’d.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Duch.</em> Forgive what’s past: and now I know th’ offensiveness</div> - <div class='line'>That vexes art, I’ll shun th’ occasion ever.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Leave all to me and my five sisters, daughter.</div> - <div class='line'>It shall be conveyed in at howlet-time.</div> - <div class='line'>Take you no care. My spirits know their moments;</div> - <div class='line'>Raven or scritch-owl never fly by th’ door,</div> - <div class='line'>But they call in (I thank ’em), and they lose not by ‘t.</div> - <div class='line'>I give ’em barley soak’d in infants’ blood:</div> - <div class='line'>They shall have <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">semina cum sanguine</span></i>,</div> - <div class='line'>Their gorge cramm’d full, if they come once to our house:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>We are no niggard.</div> - <div class='line in48'>[<em>Exit</em> Duchess.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> They fare but too well when they come hither. They ate up as -much t’ other night as would have made me a good conscionable pudding.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Give me some lizard’s brain: quickly, Firestone!</div> - <div class='line'>Where’s grannam Stadlin, and all the rest o’ th’ sisters?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> All at hand, forsooth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Give me marmaritin; some bear-breech. When?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> Here’s bear-breech and lizard’s brain, forsooth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Into the vessel;</div> - <div class='line'>And fetch three ounces of the red-hair’d girl</div> - <div class='line'>I kill’d last midnight.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> Whereabouts, sweet mother?</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Hip; hip or flank. Where is the acopus?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> You shall have acopus, forsooth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hec.</em> Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>A CHARM SONG,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'>(<em>The Witches going about the Cauldron</em>).</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Black spirits, and white; red spirits, and gray;</div> - <div class='line'>Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Liard, Robin, you must bob in.</div> - <div class='line'>Round, around, around, about, about;</div> - <div class='line'>All ill come running in; all good keep out!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c022'><em>1st Witch.</em></span> Here’s the blood of a bat.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c023'><em>Hec.</em></span> Put in that; oh, put in that.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c024'><em>2d Witch.</em></span> Here’s libbard’s-bane.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c023'><em>Hec.</em></span> Put in again.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c022'><em>1st Witch.</em></span> The juice of toad; the oil of adder.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c024'><em>2d Witch.</em></span> Those will make the yonker madder.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c023'><em>Hec.</em></span> Put in: there’s all, and rid the stench.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c025'><em>Fire.</em></span> Nay, here’s three ounces of the red-hair’d wench.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c026'><em>All.</em></span> Round, around, around, &c.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c023'><em>Hec.</em></span> See, see enough: into the vessel with it.</div> - <div class='line in15'>There; ‘t hath the true perfection. I’m so light</div> - <div class='line in15'>At any mischief: there’s no villainy</div> - <div class='line in15'>But is in tune, methinks.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fire.</em> A tune! ’Tis to the tune of damnation then. I warrant you that -song hath a villainous burthen.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='c023'><em>Hec.</em></span> Come, my sweet sisters; let the air strike our tune,</div> - <div class='line in15'>Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in27'>[<em>The Witches dance, and then exeunt</em>.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I will conclude this account with Mr. Lamb’s observations on the -distinctive characters of these extraordinary and formidable personages, -as they are described by Middleton or Shakespear.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>Macbeth and the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have -preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality -of Shakespear. His witches are distinguished from the witches of -Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man -or woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional -consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses -to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet Macbeth’s, he -is spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never -break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body; those -have power over the soul.—Hecate, in Middleton, has a son, a low -buffoon: the Hags of Shakespear have neither child of their own, nor -seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of -whom we know not whence they sprung, nor whether they have -beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they -seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and -lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them.—Except -Hecate, they have no names, which heightens their -mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties which -Middleton has given to his Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters -are serious things. Their presence cannot consist with mirth. But -in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations. -Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They “raise -jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o’er life.“’</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE III<br /> <span class='small'>ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, AND WEBSTER</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>The writers of whom I have already treated, may be said to have -been ‘no mean men’; those of whom I have yet to speak, are -certainly no whit inferior. Would that I could do them any thing -like justice! It is not difficult to give at least their seeming due to -great and well-known names; for the sentiments of the reader meet -the descriptions of the critic more than half way, and clothe what is -perhaps vague and extravagant praise with a substantial form and -distinct meaning. But in attempting to extol the merits of an obscure -work of genius, our words are either lost in empty air, or are ‘blown -stifling back’ upon the mouth that utters them. The greater those -merits are, and the truer the praise, the more suspicious and disproportionate -does it almost necessarily appear; for it has no relation to -any image previously existing in the public mind, and therefore looks -<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>like an imposition fabricated out of nothing. In this case, the only -way that I know of is, to make these old writers (as much as can be) -vouchers for their own pretensions, which they are well able to make -good. I shall in the present Lecture give some account of Marston -and Chapman, and afterwards of Deckar and Webster.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the -ground of comedy, and whose <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">forte</span></i> was not sympathy, either with the -stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation -against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself -either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. -He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him. -He was first on terms of great intimacy, and afterwards at open war, -with Ben Jonson; and he is most unfairly criticised in The Return -from Parnassus, under the name of Monsieur Kinsayder, as a mere -libeller and buffoon. Writers in their life-time do all they can to -degrade and vilify one another, and expect posterity to have a very -tender care of their reputations! The writers of this age, in general, -cannot however be reproached with this infirmity. The number of -plays that they wrote in conjunction, is a proof of the contrary; and -a circumstance no less curious, as to the division of intellectual labour, -than the cordial union of sentiment it implied. Unlike most poets, -the love of their art surmounted their hatred of one another. Genius -was not become a vile and vulgar pretence, and they respected in -others what they knew to be true inspiration in themselves. They -courted the applause of the multitude, but came to one another for -judgment and assistance. When we see these writers working -together on the same admirable productions, year after year, as was -the case with Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, with -Chapman, Deckar, and Jonson, it reminds one of Ariosto’s eloquent -apostrophe to the Spirit of Ancient Chivalry, when he has seated his -rival knights, Renaldo and Ferraw, on the same horse.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Oh ancient knights of true and noble heart,</div> - <div class='line'>They rivals were, one faith they liv’d not under;</div> - <div class='line'>Besides, they felt their bodies shrewdly smart</div> - <div class='line'>Of blows late given, and yet (behold a wonder)</div> - <div class='line'>Thro’ thick and thin, suspicion set apart,</div> - <div class='line'>Like friends they ride, and parted not asunder,</div> - <div class='line'>Until the horse with double spurring drived</div> - <div class='line'>Unto a way parted in two, arrived.’<a id='r20' /><a href='#f20' class='c015'><sup>[20]</sup></a></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Marston’s Antonio and Mellida is a tragedy of considerable force -and pathos; but in the most critical parts, the author frequently breaks -<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>off or flags without any apparent reason but want of interest in his -subject; and farther, the best and most affecting situations and bursts -of feeling are too evidently imitations of Shakespear. Thus the -unexpected meeting between Andrugio and Lucio, in the beginning -of the third act, is a direct counterpart of that between Lear and -Kent, only much weakened: and the interview between Antonio and -Mellida has a strong resemblance to the still more affecting one -between Lear and Cordelia, and is most wantonly disfigured by the -sudden introduction of half a page of Italian rhymes, which gives the -whole an air of burlesque. The conversation of Lucio and Andrugio, -again, after his defeat seems to invite, but will not bear a comparison -with Richard the Second’s remonstrance with his courtiers, who -offered him consolation in his misfortunes; and no one can be at a -loss to trace the allusion to Romeo’s conduct on being apprized of his -banishment, in the termination of the following speech.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘<em>Antonio.</em> Each man takes hence life, but no man death:</div> - <div class='line'>He’s a good fellow, and keeps open house:</div> - <div class='line'>A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate,</div> - <div class='line'>To his wide-mouthed porch: when niggard life</div> - <div class='line'>Hath but one little, little wicket through.</div> - <div class='line'>We wring ourselves into this wretched world</div> - <div class='line'>To pule and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail,</div> - <div class='line'>To fret and ban the fates, <em>to strike the earth</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>As I do now</em>. Antonio, curse thy birth,</div> - <div class='line'>And die.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The following short passage might be quoted as one of exquisite -beauty and originality—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>—‘As having clasp’d a rose</div> - <div class='line'>Within my palm, the rose being ta’en away,</div> - <div class='line'>My hand retains a little breath of sweet;</div> - <div class='line'>So may man’s trunk, his spirit slipp’d away,</div> - <div class='line'>Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.’</div> - <div class='line in40'><em>Act IV. Scene</em> 1.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The character of Felice in this play is an admirable satirical accompaniment, -and is the favourite character of this author (in all probability -his own), that of a shrewd, contemplative cynic, and sarcastic spectator -in the drama of human life. It runs through all his plays, is shared -by Quadratus and Lampatho in <cite class='scite'>What you Will</cite> (it is into the -mouth of the last of these that he has put that fine invective against -the uses of philosophy, in the account of himself and his spaniel, ‘who -still slept while he baus’d leaves, tossed o’er the dunces, por’d on -the old print’), and is at its height in the Fawn and Malevole, in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>his Parasitaster and Malcontent. These two comedies are his <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chef -d’œuvres</span></i>. The character of the Duke Hercules of Ferrara, disguised -as the Parasite, in the first of these, is well sustained throughout, with -great sense, dignity, and spirit. He is a wise censurer of men and -things, and rails at the world with charitable bitterness. He may put -in a claim to a sort of family likeness to the Duke, in Measure for -Measure: only the latter descends from his elevation to watch in -secret over serious crimes; the other is only a spy on private follies. -There is something in this cast of character (at least in comedy—perhaps -it neutralizes the tone and interest in tragedy), that finds a -wonderful reciprocity in the breast of the reader or audience. It -forms a kind of middle term or point of union between the busy -actors in the scene and the indifferent byestander, insinuates the plot, -and suggests a number of good wholesome reflections, for the sagacity -and honesty of which we do not fail to take credit to ourselves. We -are let into its confidence, and have a perfect reliance on its sincerity. -Our sympathy with it is without any drawback; for it has no part to -perform itself, and ‘is nothing, if not critical,’ It is a sure card -to play. We may doubt the motives of heroic actions, or differ about -the just limits and extreme workings of the passions; but the professed -misanthrope is a character that no one need feel any scruples -in trusting, since the dislike of folly and knavery in the abstract is -common to knaves and fools with the wise and honest! Besides the -instructive moral vein of Hercules as the Fawn or Parasitaster, which -contains a world of excellent matter, most aptly and wittily delivered; -there are two other characters perfectly hit off, Gonzago the old -prince of Urbino, and Granuffo, one of his lords in waiting. The -loquacious, good-humoured, undisguised vanity of the one is excellently -relieved by the silent gravity of the other. The wit of this last -character (Granuffo) consists in his not speaking a word through the -whole play; he never contradicts what is said, and only assents by -implication. He is a most infallible courtier, and follows the prince -like his shadow, who thus graces his pretensions.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘We would be private, only Faunus stay; he is a wise fellow, daughter, -a very wise fellow, for he is still just of my opinion; my Lord Granuffo, -you may likewise stay, for I know you’ll say nothing.’</p> - -<p class='c013'>And again, a little farther on, he says—</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Faunus, this Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent -discourse, and never speaks; his signs to me and men of profound reach -instruct abundantly; he begs suits with signs, gives thanks with signs, puts -off his hat leisurely, maintains his beard learnedly, keeps his lust privately, -makes a nodding leg courtly, and lives happily.’—‘Silence,’ replies Hercules, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>‘is an excellent modest grace; but especially before so instructing a wisdom -as that of your Excellency.’</p> - -<p class='c013'>The garrulous self-complacency of this old lord is kept up in a vein -of pleasant humour; an instance of which might be given in his -owning of some learned man, that ‘though he was no duke, yet he -was wise;’ and the manner in which the others play upon this foible, -and make him contribute to his own discomfiture, without his having -the least suspicion of the plot against him, is full of ingenuity and -counterpoint. In the last scene he says, very characteristically,</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Of all creatures breathing, I do hate those things that struggle to seem -wise, and yet are indeed very fools. I remember when I was a young man, -in my father’s days, there were four gallant spirits for resolution, as proper -for body, as witty in discourse, as any were in Europe; nay, Europe had -not such. I was one of them. We four did all love one lady; a most -chaste virgin she was: we all enjoyed her, and so enjoyed her, that, despite -the strictest guard was set upon her, we had her at our pleasure. I speak -it for her honour, and my credit. Where shall you find such witty fellows -now a-days? Alas! how easy is it in these weaker times to cross love-tricks! -Ha! ha! ha! Alas, alas! I smile to think (I must confess with -some glory to mine own wisdom), to think how I found out, and crossed, -and curbed, and in the end made desperate Tiberio’s love. Alas! good -silly youth, that dared to cope with age and such a beard!</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hercules.</em> But what yet might your well-known wisdom think,</div> - <div class='line'>If such a one, as being most severe,</div> - <div class='line'>A most protested opposite to the match</div> - <div class='line'>Of two young lovers; who having barr’d them speech,</div> - <div class='line'>All interviews, all messages, all means</div> - <div class='line'>To plot their wished ends; even he himself</div> - <div class='line'>Was by their cunning made the go-between,</div> - <div class='line'>The only messenger, the token-carrier;</div> - <div class='line'>Told them the times when they might fitly meet,</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, shew’d the way to one another’s bed?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of exulting dotage:</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing? Doth there -breathe such an egregious ass? Is there such a foolish animal in <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">rerum -natura</span></i>? How is it possible such a simplicity can exist? Let us not lose -our laughing at him, for God’s sake; let folly’s sceptre light upon him, -and to the ship of fools with him instantly.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dondolo.</em> Of all these follies I arrest your grace.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Molière has built a play on nearly the same foundation, which is -not much superior to the present. Marston, among other topics of -satire, has a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>who were ‘full of wise saws and modern instances.’ Thus he -freights his Ship of Fools:</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘<em>Dondolo.</em> Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them proved -themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were let go: there’s none left -now in our ship but a few citizens that let their wives keep their shop-books, -some philosophers, and a few critics; one of which critics has lost -his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus’ verses; another has vowed -to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true -orthography and pronunciation of laughing.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hercules.</em> But what philosophers ha’ ye?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dondolo.</em> Oh very strange fellows; one knows nothing, dares not aver he -lives, goes, sees, feels.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Nymphadoro.</em> A most insensible philosopher.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dondolo.</em> Another, that there is no present time; and that one man -to-day and to-morrow, is not the same man; so that he that yesterday -owed money, to-day owes none; because he is not the same man.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Herod.</em> Would that philosophy hold good in law?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hercules.</em> But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all the fools -shipped out of his dominions?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dondolo.</em> Marry, because he would play the fool alone without any rival.’</p> - -<div class='c016'><em>Act IV.</em></div> - -<p class='c011'>Molière has enlarged upon the same topic in his <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mariage Forcé</span></cite>, -but not with more point or effect. Nymphadoro’s reasons for devoting -himself to the sex generally, and Hercules’s description of the -different qualifications of different men, will also be found to contain -excellent specimens, both of style and matter.—The disguise of -Hercules as the Fawn, is assumed voluntarily, and he is comparatively -a calm and dispassionate observer of the times. Malevole’s disguise -in the Malcontent has been forced upon him by usurpation and -injustice, and his invectives are accordingly more impassioned and -virulent. His satire does not ‘like a wild goose fly, unclaimed of -any man,’ but has a bitter and personal application. Take him in -the words of the usurping Duke’s account of him.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever conversed -with Nature; a man, or rather a monster, more discontent than -Lucifer when he was thrust out of the presence. His appetite is unsatiable -as the grave, as far from any content as from heaven. His highest delight -is to procure others vexation, and therein he thinks he truly serves Heaven; -for ’tis his position, whosoever in this earth can be contented, is a slave, -and damned; therefore does he afflict all, in that to which they are most -affected. The elements struggle with him; his own soul is at variance -with herself; his speech is halter-worthy at all hours. I like him, faith; -he gives good intelligence to my spirit, makes me understand those -weaknesses which others’ flattery palliates.</p> - -<p class='c014'>Hark! they sing.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span><em>Enter</em> Malevole, <em>after the Song.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pietro Jacomo.</em> See he comes! Now shall you hear the extremity of a -Malcontent; he is as free as air; he blows over every man. And—Sir, -whence come you now?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Malevole.</em> From the public place of much dissimulation, the church.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pietro Jacomo.</em> What didst there?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Malevole.</em> Talk with a usurer; take up at interest.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pietro Jacomo.</em> I wonder what religion thou art of?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Malevole.</em> Of a soldier’s religion.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pietro Jacomo.</em> And what dost think makes most infidels now?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Malevole.</em> Sects, sects. I am weary: would I were one of the Duke’s -hounds.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pietro Jacomo.</em> But what’s the common news abroad? Thou dogg’st -rumour still.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Malevole.</em> Common news? Why, common words are, God save ye, -fare ye well: common actions, flattery and cozenage: common things, -women and cuckolds.’</p> - -<div class='c016'><em>Act I. Scene 3.</em></div> - -<p class='c011'>In reading all this, one is somehow reminded perpetually of Mr. -Kean’s acting: in Shakespear we do not often think of him, except -in those parts which he constantly acts, and in those one cannot -forget him. I might observe on the above passage, in excuse for -some bluntnesses of style, that the ideal barrier between names and -things seems to have been greater then than now. Words have -become instruments of more importance than formerly. To mention -certain actions, is almost to participate in them, as if consciousness -were the same as guilt. The standard of delicacy varies at different -periods, as it does in different countries, and is not a general test of -superiority. The French, who pique themselves (and justly, in -some particulars) on their quickness of tact and refinement of breeding, -say and do things which we, a plainer and coarser people, could -not think of without a blush. What would seem gross allusions to -us at present, were without offence to our ancestors, and many things -passed for jests with them, or matters of indifference, which would -not now be endured. Refinement of language, however, does not -keep pace with simplicity of manners. The severity of criticism -exercised in our theatres towards some unfortunate straggling phrases -in the old comedies, is but an ambiguous compliment to the immaculate -purity of modern times. Marston’s style was by no means more -guarded than that of his contemporaries. He was also much more of -a free-thinker than Marlowe, and there is a frequent, and not unfavourable -allusion in his works, to later sceptical opinions.—In the play of -the Malcontent we meet with an occasional mixture of comic gaiety, -to relieve the more serious and painful business of the scene, as in the -easy loquacious effrontery of the old <em>intriguante</em> Maquerella, and in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>the ludicrous facility with which the idle courtiers avoid or seek the -notice of Malevole, as he is in or out of favour; but the general tone -and import of the piece is severe and moral. The plot is somewhat -too intricate and too often changed (like the shifting of a scene), so -as to break and fritter away the interest at the end; but the part of -Aurelia, the Duchess of Pietro Jacomo, a dissolute and proud-spirited -woman, is the highest strain of Marston’s pen. The scene in particular, -in which she receives and exults in the supposed news of her -husband’s death, is nearly unequalled in boldness of conception and -in the unrestrained force of passion, taking away not only the -consciousness of guilt, but overcoming the sense of shame.<a id='r21' /><a href='#f21' class='c015'><sup>[21]</sup></a></p> - -<p class='c011'>Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose name is better -known as the translator of Homer than as a dramatic writer. He is, -like Marston, a philosophic observer, a didactic reasoner: but he has -both more gravity in his tragic style, and more levity in his comic -vein. His <span class='sc'>Bussy d’Ambois</span>, though not without interest or some -fancy, is rather a collection of apophthegms or pointed sayings in the -form of a dialogue, than a poem or a tragedy. In his verses the -oracles have not ceased. Every other line is an axiom in morals—a -libel on mankind, if truth is a libel. He is too stately for a wit, in -his serious writings—too formal for a poet. Bussy d’Ambois is -founded on a French plot and French manners. The character, -from which it derives its name, is arrogant and ostentatious to an -unheard-of degree, but full of nobleness and lofty spirit. His pride -and unmeasured pretensions alone take away from his real merit; and -by the quarrels and intrigues in which they involve him, bring about -the catastrophe, which has considerable grandeur and imposing effect, -in the manner of Seneca. Our author aims at the highest things in -poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination and passion, to fill up -the epic moulds of tragedy with sense and reason alone, so that he -often runs into bombast and turgidity—is extravagant and pedantic at -one and the same time. From the nature of the plot, which turns -upon a love intrigue, much of the philosophy of this piece relates to -the character of the sex. Milton says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The way of women’s will is hard to hit.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>But old Chapman professes to have found the clue to it, and winds -his uncouth way through all the labyrinth of love. Its deepest -recesses ‘hide nothing from his view.’ The close intrigues of court -policy, the subtle workings of the human soul, move before him like -a sea dark, deep, and glittering with wrinkles for the smile of beauty. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>Fulke Greville alone could go beyond him in gravity and mystery. -The plays of the latter (Mustapha and Alaham) are abstruse as the -mysteries of old, and his style inexplicable as the riddles of the Sphinx. -As an instance of his love for the obscure, the marvellous, and -impossible, he calls up ‘the ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus,’ -as prologue to one of his tragedies; a very reverend and inscrutable -personage, who, we may be sure, blabs no living secrets. Chapman, -in his other pieces, where he lays aside the gravity of the philosopher -and poet, discovers an unexpected comic vein, distinguished by equal -truth of nature and lively good humour. I cannot say that this -character pervades any one of his entire comedies; but the introductory -sketch of Monsieur D’Olive is the undoubted prototype of -that light, flippant, gay, and infinitely delightful class of character, -of the professed men of wit and pleasure about town, which we have -in such perfection in Wycherley and Congreve, such as Sparkish, -Witwoud and Petulant, &c. both in the sentiments and in the style of -writing. For example, take the last scene of the first act.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div>‘<em>Enter</em> D’Olive.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhoderique.</em> What, Monsieur D’Olive, the only admirer of wit and good -words.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Olive.</em> Morrow, wits: morrow, good wits: my little parcels of wit, I -have rods in pickle for you. How dost, Jack; may I call thee, sir, Jack -yet?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mugeron.</em> You may, sir; sir’s as commendable an addition as Jack, for -ought I know.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> I know it, Jack, and as common too.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Go to, you may cover; we have taken notice of your embroidered -beaver.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Look you: by heaven thou ‘rt one of the maddest bitter slaves in -Europe: I do but wonder how I made shift to love thee all this while.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Go to, what might such a parcel-gilt cover be worth?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> Perhaps more than the whole piece beside.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Good i’ faith, but bitter. Oh, you mad slaves, I think you had -Satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you, I must take pleasure in you, and -i’ faith tell me, how is’t? live I see you do, but how? but how, wits?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> By your wits?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> Nay, not turned poets neither.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Good in sooth! but indeed to say truth, time was when the sons -of the Muses had the privilege to live only by their wits, but times are -altered, Monopolies are now called in, and wit’s become a free trade for -all sorts to live by: lawyers live by wit, and they live worshipfully: soldiers -live by wit, and they live honourably: panders live by wit, and they live -honestly: in a word, there are but few trades but live by wit, only bawds -and midwives live by women’s labours, as fools and fiddlers do by making -<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>mirth, pages and parasites by making legs, painters and players by -making mouths and faces: ha, does’t well, wits?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as country gentlemen -follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Well, well, let’s leave these wit skirmishes, and say when shall -we meet?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> How think you, are we not met now?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Tush, man! I mean at my chamber, where we may take free -use of ourselves; that is, drink sack, and talk satire, and let our wits run -the wild-goose chase over court and country. I will have my chamber the -rendezvous of all good wits, the shop of good words, the mint of good -jests, an ordinary of fine discourse; critics, essayists, linguists, poets, and -other professors of that faculty of wit, shall, at certain hours i’ th’ day, -resort thither; it shall be a second Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences -of learning, honour, duellism, criticism, and poetry, shall be disputed: and -how, wits, do ye follow the court still?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Close at heels, sir; and I can tell you, you have much to answer -to your stars, that you do not so too.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> As why, wits? as why?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Why, sir, the court’s as ’twere the stage: and they that have a -good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press thither to grace them, and -receive their due merit.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Tush, let the court follow me: he that soars too near the sun, -melts his wings many times; as I am, I possess myself, I enjoy my liberty, -my learning, my wit: as for wealth and honour, let ’em go; I’ll not lose -my learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an alderman.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> Admirable D’Olive!</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> And what! you stand gazing at this comet here, and admire it, I -dare say.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> And do not you?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Not I, I admire nothing but wit.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> But I wonder how she entertains time in that solitary cell: does -she not take tobacco, think you?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> She does, she does: others make it their physic, she makes it her -food: her sister and she take it by turn, first one, then the other, and -Vandome ministers to them both.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece the Countess’s sister? -there were a paragon, Monsieur D’Olive, to admire and marry too.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Not for me.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> No? what exceptions lie against the choice?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Tush, tell me not of choice; if I stood affected that way, I would -choose my wife as men do Valentines, blindfold, or draw cuts for them, -for so I shall be sure not to be deceived in choosing; for take this of me, -there’s ten times more deceit in women than in horse-flesh; and I say still, -that a pretty well-pac’d chamber-maid is the only fashion; if she grows -full or fulsome, give her but sixpence to buy her a hand-basket, and send -her the way of all flesh, there’s no more but so.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> Indeed that’s the savingest way.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> O me! what a hell ’tis for a man to be tied to the continual -<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>charge of a coach, with the appurtenances, horses, men, and so forth: and -then to have a man’s house pestered with a whole country of guests, grooms, -panders, waiting-maids, &c. I careful to please my wife, she careless to -displease me; shrewish if she be honest; intolerable if she be wise; -imperious as an empress; all she does must be law, all she says gospel: -oh, what a penance ’tis to endure her! I glad to forbear still, all to keep -her loyal, and yet perhaps when all’s done, my heir shall be like my horse-keeper: -fie on’t! the very thought of marriage were able to cool the -hottest liver in France.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt coney’s wool, -we shall have you change your copy ere a twelvemonth’s day.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> We must have you dubb’d o’ th’ order; there’s no remedy: you -that have, unmarried, done such honourable service in the commonwealth, -must needs receive the honour due to ‘t in marriage.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> That he may do, and never marry.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> As how, wits? i’ faith as how?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> For if he can prove his father was free o’ th’ order, and that he -was his father’s son, then, by the laudable custom of the city, he may be a -cuckold by his father’s copy, and never serve for ‘t.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Ever good i’ faith!</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> Nay how can he plead that, when ’tis as well known his father -died a bachelor?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Bitter, in verity, bitter! But good still in its kind.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your forefathers.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> His forefathers? S’body, had he more fathers than one?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> Why, this is right: here’s wit canvast out on ‘s coat, into ‘s -jacket: the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too much o’ th’ frets: I -must love your wits, I must take pleasure in you. Farewell, good wits: -you know my lodging, make an errand thither now and then, and save -your ordinary; do, wits, do.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> We shall be troublesome t’ ye.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>D’Ol.</em> O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with wit: -I love a good wit as I love myself: if you need a brace or two of crowns -at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond -at all times: I carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your -call. Farewell, wits; farewell, good wits.</p> - -<div class='c016'>[<em>Exit.</em></div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Farewell the true map of a gull: by heaven he shall to th’ court! -’tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart; the compound of a poet and -a lawyer; he shall sure to th’ court.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> Nay, for God’s sake, let’s have no fools at court.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> He shall to ‘t, that’s certain. The Duke had a purpose to dispatch -some one or other to the French king, to entreat him to send for the -body of his niece, which the melancholy Earl of St. Anne, her husband, -hath kept so long unburied, as meaning one grave should entomb himself -and her together.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mug.</em> A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D’Olive is for an -embassador agent; and ’tis as suitable to his brain, as his parcel-gilt beaver -to his fool’s head.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rhod.</em> Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. Oh, ’tis a most -<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>accomplished ass; the mongrel of a gull, and a villain: the very essence of -his soul is pure villainy; the substance of his brain, foolery: one that -believes nothing from the stars upward; a pagan in belief, an epicure -beyond belief; prodigious in lust; prodigal in wasteful expense; in necessary, -most penurious. His wit is to admire and imitate; his grace is to -censure and detract; he shall to th’ court, i’ faith he shall thither: I will -shape such employment for him, as that he himself shall have no less contentment, -in making mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and the -whole court shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave, if he -be rich, is fit to make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, is fit to make -an intelligencer.</p> -<div class='c016'>[<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Exeunt.</span></i>’</div> - -<p class='c011'>His May-Day is not so good. All Fools, The Widow’s Tears, -and Eastward Hoe, are comedies of great merit, (particularly the -last). The first is borrowed a good deal from Terence, and the -character of Valerio, an accomplished rake, who passes with his -father for a person of the greatest economy and rusticity of manners, -is an excellent idea, executed with spirit. Eastward Hoe was -written in conjunction with Ben Jonson and Marston; and for his -share in it, on account of some allusions to the Scotch, just after the -accession of James I. our author, with his friends, had nearly lost his -ears. Such were the notions of poetical justice in those days! The -behaviour of Ben Jonson’s mother on this occasion is remarkable. -‘On his release from prison, he gave an entertainment to his friends, -among whom were Camden and Selden. In the midst of the entertainment, -his mother, more an antique Roman than a Briton, drank to -him, and shewed him a paper of poison, which she intended to -have given him in his liquor, having first taken a portion of it herself, -if the sentence for his punishment had been executed.’ This play -contains the first idea of Hogarth’s Idle and Industrious Apprentices.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It remains for me to say something of Webster and Deckar. For -these two writers I do not know how to shew my regard and admiration -sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Deckar, -how may I hope to ‘express ye unblam’d,’ and repay to your -neglected <em>manes</em> some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for proud -and soothing recollections? I pass by the Appius and Virginia of -the former, which is however a good, sensible, solid tragedy, cast in a -frame-work of the most approved models, with little to blame or praise -in it, except the affecting speech of Appius to Virginia just before he -kills her; as well as Deckar’s Wonder of a Kingdom, his Jacomo -Gentili, that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron, and Old -Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap, which last has the idle garrulity of -age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon its cheek and in -its heart. These go into the common catalogue, and are lost in the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>crowd; but Webster’s Vittoria Corombona I cannot so soon part -with; and old honest Deckar’s Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I shall -never forget! I became only of late acquainted with this last-mentioned -worthy character; but the bargain between us is, I trust, -for life. We sometimes regret that we had not sooner met with -characters like these, that seem to raise, revive, and give a new zest -to our being. Vain the complaint! We should never have known -their value, if we had not known them always: they are old, very old -acquaintance, or we should not recognise them at first sight. We -only find in books what is already written within ‘the red-leaved -tables of our hearts.’ The pregnant materials are there; ‘the pangs, -the internal pangs are ready; and poor humanity’s afflicted will -struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ But the reading of fine -poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or pour balm and consolation -into them, or sometimes even close them up for ever! Let -any one who has never known cruel disappointment, nor comfortable -hopes, read the first scene between Orlando and Hippolito, in Deckar’s -play of the Honest Whore, and he will see nothing in it. But I -think few persons will be entirely proof against such passages as some -of the following.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div>‘<em>Enter</em> Orlando Friscobaldo.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Omnes.</em> Signior Friscobaldo.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hipolito.</em> Friscobaldo, oh! pray call him, and leave me; we two have -business.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Carolo.</em> Ho, Signior! Signior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hipolito.</p> - -<div class='c016'>[<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Exeunt.</span></i></div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orlando.</em> My noble Lord! the Lord Hipolito! The Duke’s son! his -brave daughter’s brave husband! How does your honour’d Lordship? -Does your nobility remember so poor a gentleman as Signior Orlando -Friscobaldo? old mad Orlando?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Oh, Sir, our friends! they ought to be unto us as our jewels; as -dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as when we wear them in our -hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of your blood; for all -time’s sickle hath gone over you, you are Orlando still.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> Why, my Lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, and stript -bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again? Though my head be like -a leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade, green?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Scarce can I read the stories on your brow, -Which age hath writ there: you look youthful still.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have a -wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem! with a clear voice. * *</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> You are the happier man, Sir.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha? I have a -little, have all things, have nothing: I have no wife, I have no child, have -no chick, and why should I not be in my jocundare?</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span><em>Hip.</em> Is your wife then departed?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> She’s an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from me: -here, she’s here; a good couple are seldom parted.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> Oh, my Lord! this old tree had one branch, and but one branch, -growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was strait: I pruned it -daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, help’d it to the sun; yet for -all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore crabs: I hew’d it down. -What’s become of it, I neither know nor care.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Then can I tell you what’s become of it: that branch is wither’d.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> So ’twas long ago.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Her name, I think, was Bellafront; she’s dead.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> Ha! dead?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping, -Even in my sight, was thrown into a grave.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> Dead! my last and best peace go with her! I see death’s a good -trencherman; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the daintiest——Is -she dead?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> She’s turn’d to earth.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> Would she were turned to Heaven. Umph! Is she dead? I am -glad the world has lost one of his idols: no whoremonger will at midnight -beat at the doors: in her grave sleep all my shame and her own; and all -my sorrows, and all her sins.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><em>Hip.</em> I’m glad you are wax, not marble; you are made</div> - <div class='line'>Of man’s best temper; there are now good hopes</div> - <div class='line'>That all these heaps of ice about your heart,</div> - <div class='line'>By which a father’s love was frozen up,</div> - <div class='line'>Are thaw’d in those sweet show’rs fetch’d from your eye:</div> - <div class='line'>We are ne’er like angels till our passions die.</div> - <div class='line'>She is not dead, but lives under worse fate;</div> - <div class='line'>I think she’s poor; and more to clip her wings,</div> - <div class='line'>Her husband at this hour lies in the jail,</div> - <div class='line'>For killing of a man: to save his blood,</div> - <div class='line'>Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown,</div> - <div class='line'>The getting of his life preserves your own.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> In my daughter you will say! Does she live then? I am sorry -I wasted tears upon a harlot! but the best is, I have a handkerchief to -drink them up, soap can wash them all out again. Is she poor?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Trust me, I think she is.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> Then she’s a right strumpet. I never knew one of their trade rich -two years together; sieves can hold no water, nor harlots hoard up money: -taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, fiddlers, swaggerers, fools, and knaves, do -all wait upon a common harlot’s trencher; she is the gallypot to which -these drones fly: not for love to the pot, but for the sweet sucket in it, her -money, her money.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> I almost dare pawn my word, her bosom gives warmth to no such -snakes; when did you see her?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> Not seventeen summers.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Is your hate so old?</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span><em>Orl.</em> Older; it has a white head, and shall never die ‘till she be buried: -her wrongs shall be my bed-fellow.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out of the world; -I hate him for her: he taught her first to taste poison; I hate her for herself, -because she refused my physic.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Nay, but Friscobaldo.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> I detest her, I defy both, she’s not mine, she’s—</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Hear her but speak.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> I love no mermaids, I’ll not be caught with a quail-pipe.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> You’re now beyond all reason. Is’t dotage to relieve your child, -being poor?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> ’Tis foolery; relieve her? Were her cold limbs stretcht out upon -a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my nails, to buy her an hour’s -breath, nor give this hair, unless it were to choak her.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hip.</em> Fare you well, for I’ll trouble you no more.</p> - -<div class='c016'>[<em>Exit.</em></div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orl.</em> And fare you well, Sir, go thy ways; we have few lords of thy -making, that love wenches for their honesty.—‘Las, my girl, art thou poor? -Poverty dwells next door to despair, there’s but a wall between them: -despair is one of hell’s catchpoles, and lest that devil arrest her, I’ll to her; -yet she shall not know me: she shall drink of my wealth as beggars do of -running water, freely; yet never know from what fountain’s head it flows. -Shall a silly bird pick her own breast to nourish her young ones: and can -a father see his child starve? That were hard: the pelican does it, and -shall not I?’</p> - -<p class='c011'>The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning. The -execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and -masterly. There is the least colour possible used; the pencil drags; -the canvas is almost seen through: but then, what precision of outline, -what truth and purity of tone, what firmness of hand, what marking -of character! The words and answers all along are so true and -pertinent, that we seem to see the gestures, and to hear the tone with -which they are accompanied. So when Orlando, disguised, says to -his daughter, ‘You’ll forgive me,’ and she replies, ‘I am not marble, -I forgive you;’ or again, when she introduces him to her husband, -saying simply, ‘It is my father,’ there needs no stage-direction to -supply the relenting tones of voice or cordial frankness of manner -with which these words are spoken. It is as if there were some fine -art to chisel thought, and to embody the inmost movements of the -mind in every-day actions and familiar speech. It has been asked,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Oh! who can paint a sun-beam to the blind,</div> - <div class='line'>Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>But this difficulty is here in a manner overcome. Simplicity and -extravagance of style, homeliness and quaintness, tragedy and comedy, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>interchangeably set their hands and seals to this admirable production. -We find the simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry. The stalk -grows out of the ground; but the flowers spread their flaunting leaves -in the air. The mixture of levity in the chief character bespeaks the -bitterness from which it seeks relief; it is the idle echo of fixed -despair, jealous of observation or pity. The sarcasm quivers on the -lip, while the tear stands congealed on the eye-lid. This ‘tough -senior,’ this impracticable old gentleman softens into a little child; -this choke-pear melts in the mouth like marmalade. In spite of his -resolute professions of misanthropy, he watches over his daughter with -kindly solicitude; plays the careful housewife; broods over her lifeless -hopes; nurses the decay of her husband’s fortune, as he had supported -her tottering infancy; saves the high-flying Matheo from the gallows -more than once, and is twice a father to them. The story has all -the romance of private life, all the pathos of bearing up against silent -grief, all the tenderness of concealed affection:—there is much sorrow -patiently borne, and then comes peace. Bellafront, in the two parts -of this play taken together, is a most interesting character. It is an -extreme, and I am afraid almost an ideal case. She gives the play -its title, turns out a true penitent, that is, a practical one, and is the -model of an exemplary wife. She seems intended to establish the -converse of the position, that <em>a reformed rake makes the best husband</em>, -the only difficulty in proving which, is, I suppose, to meet with the -character. The change of her relative position, with regard to -Hippolito, who, in the first part, in the sanguine enthusiasm of youthful -generosity, has reclaimed her from vice, and in the second part, -his own faith and love of virtue having been impaired with the progress -of years, tries in vain to lure her back again to her former -follies, has an effect the most striking and beautiful. The pleadings -on both sides, for and against female faith and constancy, are managed -with great polemical skill, assisted by the grace and vividness of -poetical illustration. As an instance of the manner in which Bellafront -speaks of the miseries of her former situation, ‘and she has felt -them knowingly,’ I might give the lines in which she contrasts the -different regard shewn to the modest or the abandoned of her sex.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I cannot, seeing she’s woven of such bad stuff,</div> - <div class='line'>Set colours on a harlot bad enough.</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing did make me when I lov’d them best,</div> - <div class='line'>To loath them more than this: when in the street</div> - <div class='line'>A fair, young, modest damsel, I did meet;</div> - <div class='line'>She seem’d to all a dove, when I pass’d by,</div> - <div class='line'>And I to all a raven: every eye</div> - <div class='line'>That followed her, went with a bashful glance;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>At me each bold and jeering countenance</div> - <div class='line'>Darted forth scorn: to her, as if she had been</div> - <div class='line'>Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail;</div> - <div class='line'>’Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail.</div> - <div class='line'>She crown’d with reverend praises, pass’d by them;</div> - <div class='line'>I, though with face mask’d, could not ‘scape the hem;</div> - <div class='line'>For, as if heav’n had set strange marks on whores,</div> - <div class='line'>Because they should be pointing-stocks to man,</div> - <div class='line'>Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan,</div> - <div class='line'>Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet she’s betray’d by some trick of her own.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Perhaps this sort of appeal to matter of fact and popular opinion, is -more convincing than the scholastic subtleties of the Lady in Comus. -The manner too, in which Infelice, the wife of Hippolito, is made -acquainted with her husband’s infidelity, is finely dramatic; and in the -scene where she convicts him of his injustice by taxing herself with -incontinence first, and then turning his most galling reproaches to her -into upbraidings against his own conduct, she acquits herself with -infinite spirit and address. The contrivance, by which, in the first -part, after being supposed dead, she is restored to life, and married -to Hippolito, though perhaps a little far-fetched, is affecting and -romantic. There is uncommon beauty in the Duke her father’s -description of her sudden illness. In reply to Infelice’s declaration -on reviving, ‘I’m well,’ he says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thou wert not so e’en now. Sickness’ pale hand</div> - <div class='line'>Laid hold on thee, ev’n in the deadst of feasting:</div> - <div class='line'>And when a cup, crown’d with thy lover’s health,</div> - <div class='line'>Had touch’d thy lips, a sensible cold dew</div> - <div class='line'>Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept</div> - <div class='line'>To see such beauty altered.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Candido, the good-natured man of this play, is a character of -inconceivable quaintness and simplicity. His patience and good-humour -cannot be disturbed by any thing. The idea (for it is -nothing but an idea) is a droll one, and is well supported. He is not -only resigned to injuries, but ‘turns them,’ as Falstaff says of diseases, -‘into commodities.’ He is a patient Grizzel out of petticoats, or a -Petruchio reversed. He is as determined upon winking at affronts, -and keeping out of scrapes at all events, as the hero of the Taming of -a Shrew is bent upon picking quarrels out of straws, and signalizing -his manhood without the smallest provocation to do so. The sudden -turn of the character of Candido, on his second marriage, is, however, -as amusing as it is unexpected.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Matheo, ‘the high-flying’ husband of Bellafront, is a masterly -<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>portrait, done with equal ease and effect. He is a person almost -without virtue or vice, that is, he is in strictness without any moral -principle at all. He has no malice against others, and no concern for -himself. He is gay, profligate, and unfeeling, governed entirely by -the impulse of the moment, and utterly reckless of consequences. -His exclamation, when he gets a new suit of velvet, or a lucky run -on the dice, ‘do we not fly high,’ is an answer to all arguments. -Punishment or advice has no more effect upon him, than upon the -moth that flies into the candle. He is only to be left to his fate. -Orlando saves him from it, as we do the moth, by snatching it out of -the flame, throwing it out of the window, and shutting down the casement -upon it!</p> - -<p class='c011'>Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Deckar, -if he had the same originality; and perhaps is so, even without it. -His White Devil and Duchess of Malfy, upon the whole perhaps, -come the nearest to Shakespear of any thing we have upon record; -the only drawback to them, the only shade of imputation that can be -thrown upon them, ‘by which they lose some colour,’ is, that they -are too like Shakespear, and often direct imitations of him, both in -general conception and individual expression. So far, there is nobody -else whom it would be either so difficult or so desirable to imitate; -but it would have been still better, if all his characters had been -entirely his own, had stood out as much from others, resting only on -their own naked merits, as that of the honest Hidalgo, on whose -praises I have dwelt so much above. Deckar has, I think, more -truth of character, more instinctive depth of sentiment, more of the -unconscious simplicity of nature; but he does not, out of his own -stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of imagination, or the -same glowing colours of language. Deckar excels in giving expression -to certain habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much -the same in all circumstances, the simple uncompounded elements of -nature and passion:—Webster gives more scope to their various -combinations and changeable aspects, brings them into dramatic play -by contrast and comparison, flings them into a state of fusion by a -kindled fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of oscillation from -the impulse of unbridled passion, and carries both terror and pity to -a more painful and sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is contented -with the historic picture of suffering; Webster goes on to -suggest horrible imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and -for itself; the other adorns his sentiments with some image of tender -or awful beauty. In a word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or -Boccaccio; as Webster’s mind appears to have been cast more in the -mould of Shakespear’s, as well naturally as from studious emulation. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>The Bellafront and Vittoria Corombona of these two excellent -writers, shew their different powers and turn of mind. The one is -all softness; the other ‘all fire and air.’ The faithful wife of Matheo -sits at home drooping, ‘like the female dove, the whilst her golden -couplets are disclosed’; while the insulted and persecuted Vittoria -darts killing scorn and pernicious beauty at her enemies. This White -Devil (as she is called) is made fair as the leprosy, dazzling as the -lightning. She is dressed like a bride in her wrongs and her revenge. -In the trial-scene in particular, her sudden indignant answers to the -questions that are asked her, startle the hearers. Nothing can be -imagined finer than the whole conduct and conception of this scene, -than her scorn of her accusers and of herself. The sincerity of her -sense of guilt triumphs over the hypocrisy of their affected and official -contempt for it. In answer to the charge of having received letters -from the Duke of Brachiano, she says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Grant I was tempted:</div> - <div class='line'>Condemn you me, for that the Duke did love me?</div> - <div class='line'>So may you blame some fair and chrystal river,</div> - <div class='line'>For that some melancholic distracted man</div> - <div class='line'>Hath drown’d himself in ‘t.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>And again, when charged with being accessary to her husband’s -death, and shewing no concern for it—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘She comes not like a widow; she comes arm’d</div> - <div class='line'>With scorn and impudence. Is this a mourning habit?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>she coolly replies,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Had I foreknown his death as you suggest,</div> - <div class='line'>I would have bespoke my mourning.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>In the closing scene with her cold-blooded assassins, Lodovico and -Gasparo, she speaks daggers, and might almost be supposed to -exorcise the murdering fiend out of these true devils. Every word -probes to the quick. The whole scene is the sublime of contempt -and indifference.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Vittoria.</em> If Florence be i’ th’ Court, he would not kill me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Gasparo.</em> Fool! princes give rewards with their own hands,</div> - <div class='line'>But death or punishment by the hands of others.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lodovico</em> (<em>To</em> Flamineo). Sirra, you once did strike me; I’ll strike you</div> - <div class='line'>Unto the centre.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Flam.</em> Thou ‘lt do it like a hangman, a base hangman,</div> - <div class='line'>Not like a noble fellow; for thou see’st</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>I cannot strike again.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lod.</em> Dost laugh?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Flam.</em> Would’st have me die, as I was born, in whining?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Gasp.</em> Recommend yourself to Heaven.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Flam.</em> No, I will carry mine own commendations thither.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lod.</em> Oh! could I kill you forty times a-day,</div> - <div class='line'>And use ‘t four years together, ’twere too little:</div> - <div class='line'>Nought grieves, but that you are too few to feed</div> - <div class='line'>The famine of our vengeance. What do’st think on?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Flam.</em> Nothing; of nothing: leave thy idle questions—</div> - <div class='line'>I am i’ th’ way to study a long silence.</div> - <div class='line'>To prate were idle: I remember nothing;</div> - <div class='line'>There’s nothing of so infinite vexation</div> - <div class='line'>As man’s own thoughts.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lod.</em> O thou glorious strumpet!</div> - <div class='line'>Could I divide thy breath from this pure air</div> - <div class='line'>When ‘t leaves thy body, I would suck it up,</div> - <div class='line'>And breathe ‘t upon some dunghill.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Vit. Cor.</em> You my death’s-man!</div> - <div class='line'>Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough;</div> - <div class='line'>Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman:</div> - <div class='line'>If thou be, do thy office in right form;</div> - <div class='line'>Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lod.</em> O! thou hast been a most prodigious comet;</div> - <div class='line'>But I’ll cut off your train: kill the Moor first.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Vit. Cor.</em> You shall not kill her first; behold my breast;</div> - <div class='line'>I will be waited on in death: my servant</div> - <div class='line'>Shall never go before me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Gasp.</em> Are you so brave?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Vit. Cor.</em> Yes, I shall welcome death</div> - <div class='line'>As princes do some great embassadours;</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll meet thy weapon half way.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lod.</em> Thou dost not tremble!</div> - <div class='line'>Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Vit. Cor.</em> O, thou art deceiv’d, I am too true a woman!</div> - <div class='line'>Conceit can never kill me. I’ll tell thee what,</div> - <div class='line'>I will not in my death shed one base tear;</div> - <div class='line'>Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Gasp.</em> (<em>To</em> Zanche). Thou art my task, black fury.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Zanche.</em> I have blood</div> - <div class='line'>As red as either of theirs! Wilt drink some?</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis good for the falling-sickness: I am proud</div> - <div class='line'>Death cannot alter my complexion,</div> - <div class='line'>For I shall ne’er look pale.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lod.</em> Strike, strike,</div> - <div class='line'>With a joint motion.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Vit. Cor.</em> ’Twas a manly blow:</div> - <div class='line'>The next thou giv’st, murther some sucking infant,</div> - <div class='line'>And then thou wilt be famous.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>Such are some of the <em>terrible graces</em> of the obscure, forgotten -Webster. There are other parts of this play of a less violent, more -subdued, and, if it were possible, even deeper character; such is the -declaration of divorce pronounced by Brachiano on his wife:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Your hand I’ll kiss:</div> - <div class='line'>This is the latest ceremony of my love;</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll never more live with you,’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>which is in the manner of, and equal to, Deckar’s finest things:—and -others, in a quite different style of fanciful poetry and bewildered -passion; such as the lamentation of Cornelia, his mother, for the -death of Marcello, and the parting scene of Brachiano; which would -be as fine as Shakespear, if they were not in a great measure borrowed -from his inexhaustible store. In the former, after Flamineo has -stabbed his brother, and Hortensio comes in, Cornelia exclaims,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>‘Alas! he is not dead; he’s in a trance.</div> - <div class='line'>Why, here’s nobody shall get any thing by his death:</div> - <div class='line'>Let me call him again, for God’s sake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Hor.</em> I would you were deceiv’d.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Corn.</em> O you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me! How many have -gone away thus, for want of ‘tendance? Rear up ‘s head, rear up ‘s head; -his bleeding inward will kill him.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hor.</em> You see he is departed.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Corn.</em> Let me come to him; give me him as he is. If he be turn’d to -earth, let me but give him one hearty kiss, and you shall put us both into -one coffin. Fetch a looking-glass: see if his breath will not stain it; or -pull out some feathers from my pillow, and lay them to his lips. Will you -lose him for a little pains-taking?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hor.</em> Your kindest office is to pray for him.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Corn.</em> Alas! I would not pray for him yet. He may live to lay me -i’ th’ ground, and pray for me, if you’ll let me come to him.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div><em>Enter</em> Brachiano, <em>all armed, save the Bearer, with</em> Flamineo <em>and Page</em>.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Brach.</em> Was this your handy-work?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Flam.</em> It was my misfortune.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Corn.</em> He lies, he lies; he did not kill him. These have killed him, -that would not let him be better looked to.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Brach.</em> Have comfort, my griev’d mother.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Corn.</em> O, you screech-owl!</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hor.</em> Forbear, good madam.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Corn.</em> Let me go, let me go.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div>(<em>She runs to</em> Flamineo <em>with her knife drawn, and coming to him, lets it fall</em>).</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The God of Heav’n forgive thee! Dost not wonder</div> - <div class='line'>I pray for thee? I’ll tell thee what’s the reason:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes;</div> - <div class='line'>I’d not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well!</div> - <div class='line'>Half of thyself lies there; and may’st thou live</div> - <div class='line'>To fill an hour-glass with his moulder’d ashes,</div> - <div class='line'>To tell how thou should’st spend the time to come</div> - <div class='line'>In blest repentance.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Brach.</em> Mother, pray tell me,</div> - <div class='line'>How came he by his death? What was the quarrel?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Corn.</em> Indeed, my younger boy presum’d too much</div> - <div class='line'>Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words,</div> - <div class='line'>Drew his sword first; and so, I know not how,</div> - <div class='line'>For I was out of my wits, he fell with ‘s head</div> - <div class='line'>Just in my bosom.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Page.</em> This is not true, madam.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Corn.</em> I pr’ythee, peace.</div> - <div class='line'>One arrow’s graz’d already: it were vain</div> - <div class='line'>To lose this; for that will ne’er be found again.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This is a good deal borrowed from Lear; but the inmost folds of -the human heart, the sudden turns and windings of the fondest affection, -are also laid open with so masterly and original a hand, that it -seems to prove the occasional imitations as unnecessary as they are -evident. The scene where the Duke discovers that he is poisoned, -is as follows, and equally fine.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Brach.</em> Oh! I am gone already. The infection</div> - <div class='line'>Flies to the brain and heart. O, thou strong heart,</div> - <div class='line'>There’s such a covenant ‘tween the world and thee,</div> - <div class='line'>They ‘re loth to part.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Giovanni.</em> O my most lov’d father!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Brach.</em> Remove the boy away:</div> - <div class='line'>Where’s this good woman? Had I infinite worlds,</div> - <div class='line'>They were too little for thee. Must I leave thee?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in48'>(<em>To</em> Vittoria).</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What say you, screech-owls. (<em>To the Physicians</em>) Is the venom mortal?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Phy.</em> Most deadly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Brach.</em> Most corrupted politic hangman!</div> - <div class='line'>You kill without book; but your art to save</div> - <div class='line'>Fails you as oft as great men’s needy friends:</div> - <div class='line'>I that have given life to offending slaves,</div> - <div class='line'>And wretched murderers, have I not power</div> - <div class='line'>To lengthen mine own a twelve-month?</div> - <div class='line'>Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.</div> - <div class='line'>This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Francesco de Medici</em> (<em>in disguise</em>). Sir, be of comfort.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Brach.</em> Oh thou soft natural death! that art joint-twin</div> - <div class='line'>To sweetest slumber!—no rough-bearded comet</div> - <div class='line'>Stares on thy mild departure: the dull owl</div> - <div class='line'>Beats not against thy casement: the hoarse wolf</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse,</div> - <div class='line'>Whilst horror waits on princes.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Vit. Cor.</em> I am lost for ever.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Brach.</em> How miserable a thing it is to die</div> - <div class='line'>‘Mongst women howling! What are those?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Flam.</em> Franciscans.</div> - <div class='line'>They have brought the extreme unction.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Brach.</em> On pain of death let no man name death to me:</div> - <div class='line'>It is a word most infinitely terrible.</div> - <div class='line'>Withdraw into our cabinet.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The deception practised upon him by Lodovico and Gasparo, -who offer him the sacrament in the disguise of Monks, and then -discover themselves to damn him, is truly diabolical and ghastly. -But the genius that suggested it was as profound as it was lofty. -When they are at first introduced, Flamineo says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the crucifix.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>To which Vittoria answers,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Oh, hold it constant:</div> - <div class='line'>It settles his wild spirits; and so his eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Melt into tears.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Duchess of Malfy is not, in my judgment, quite so spirited or -effectual a performance as the White Devil. But it is distinguished -by the same kind of beauties, clad in the same terrors. I do not -know but the occasional strokes of passion are even profounder and -more Shakespearian; but the story is more laboured, and the horror -is accumulated to an overpowering and insupportable height. However -appalling to the imagination and finely done, the scenes of the -madhouse to which the Duchess is condemned with a view to unsettle -her reason, and the interview between her and her brother, where he -gives her the supposed dead hand of her husband, exceed, to my -thinking, the just bounds of poetry and of tragedy. At least, the -merit is of a kind, which, however great, we wish to be rare. -A series of such exhibitions obtruded upon the senses or the imagination -must tend to stupefy and harden, rather than to exalt the fancy -or meliorate the heart. I speak this under correction; but I hope -the objection is a venial common-place. In a different style altogether -are the directions she gives about her children in her last struggles;</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I prythee, look thou giv’st my little boy</div> - <div class='line'>Some syrop for his cold, and let the girl</div> - <div class='line'>Say her pray’rs ere she sleep. Now what death you please—’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>and her last word, ‘Mercy,’ which she recovers just strength enough -<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>to pronounce; her proud answer to her tormentors, who taunt her -with her degradation and misery—‘But I am Duchess of Malfy -still’<a id='r22' /><a href='#f22' class='c015'><sup>[22]</sup></a>—as if the heart rose up, like a serpent coiled, to resent the -indignities put upon it, and being struck at, struck again; and the -staggering reflection her brother makes on her death, ‘Cover her -face: my eyes dazzle: she died young!’ Bosola replies:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I think not so; her infelicity</div> - <div class='line'>Seem’d to have years too many.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Ferdinand.</em> She and I were twins:</div> - <div class='line'>And should I die this instant, I had liv’d</div> - <div class='line'>Her time to a minute.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This is not the bandying of idle words and rhetorical common-places, -but the writhing and conflict, and the sublime colloquy of -man’s nature with itself!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Revenger’s Tragedy, by Cyril Tourneur, is the only other -drama equal to these and to Shakespear, in ‘the dazzling fence of -impassioned argument,’ in pregnant illustration, and in those profound -reaches of thought, which lay open the soul of feeling. The play, on -the whole, does not answer to the expectations it excites; but the -appeals of Castiza to her mother, who endeavours to corrupt her -virtuous resolutions, ‘Mother, come from that poisonous woman there,’ -with others of the like kind, are of as high and abstracted an essence -of poetry, as any of those above mentioned.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In short, the great characteristic of the elder dramatic writers is, -that there is nothing theatrical about them. In reading them, you -only think how the persons, into whose mouths certain sentiments are -put, would have spoken or looked: in reading Dryden and others of -that school, you only think, as the authors themselves seem to have -done, how they would be ranted on the stage by some buskined hero -or tragedy-queen. In this respect, indeed, some of his more obscure -contemporaries have the advantage over Shakespear himself, inasmuch -as we have never seen their works represented on the stage; and there -is no stage-trick to remind us of it. The characters of their heroes -have not been cut down to fit into the prompt-book, nor have we ever -seen their names flaring in the play-bills in small or large capitals.—I -do not mean to speak disrespectfully of the stage; but I think -<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>higher still of nature, and next to that, of books. They are the -nearest to our thoughts: they wind into the heart; the poet’s verse -slides into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we -remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to -others; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be -had every where cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books: -we owe every thing to their authors, on this side barbarism; and we -pay them easily with contempt, while living, and with an epitaph, -when dead! Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps; Mrs. Siddons -has left the stage and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so, there -are neither picture-galleries nor theatres-royal on Salisbury-plain, -where I write this; but here, even here, with a few old authors, -I can manage to get through the summer or the winter months, -without ever knowing what it is to feel <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ennui</span></i>. They sit with me at -breakfast; they walk out with me before dinner. After a long walk -through unfrequented tracks, after starting the hare from the fern, or -hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my head, or being greeted -by the woodman’s ‘stern good-night,’ as he strikes into his narrow -homeward path, I can ‘take mine ease at mine inn,’ beside the -blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo, as -the oldest acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman, -Master Webster, and Master Heywood, are there; and seated round, -discourse the silent hours away. Shakespear is there himself, not in -Cibber’s manager’s coat. Spenser is hardly yet returned from a -ramble through the woods, or is concealed behind a group of nymphs, -fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an altar, never -taken up or laid down without reverence. Lyly’s Endymion sleeps -with the moon, that shines in at the window; and a breath of wind -stirring at a distance seems a sigh from the tree under which he grew -old. Faustus disputes in one corner of the room with fiendish faces, -and reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront soothes Matheo, -Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chapman repeats one of -the hymns of Homer, in his own fine translation! I should have no -objection to pass my life in this manner out of the world, not thinking -of it, nor it of me; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by -my friends; careless of the future, but sometimes dreaming of the -past, which might as well be forgotten! Mr. Wordsworth has -expressed this sentiment well (perhaps I have borrowed it from him)—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Books, dreams, are both a world; and books, we know,</div> - <div class='line'>Are a substantial world, both pure and good,</div> - <div class='line'>Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,</div> - <div class='line'>Our pastime and our happiness may grow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>Two let me mention dearer than the rest,</div> - <div class='line'>The gentle lady wedded to the Moor,</div> - <div class='line'>And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Blessings be with them and eternal praise,</div> - <div class='line'>The poets, who on earth have made us heirs</div> - <div class='line'>Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, might my name be number’d among theirs,</div> - <div class='line'>Then gladly would I end my mortal days!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I have no sort of pretension to join in the concluding wish of the -last stanza; but I trust the writer feels that this aspiration of his early -and highest ambition is already not unfulfilled!</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE IV<br /> <span class='small'>ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER.</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'><span class='sc'>Beaumont</span> and <span class='sc'>Fletcher</span>, with all their prodigious merits, appear to -me the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine -tragic style of the age of Shakespear. They thought less of their -subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a -great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and -passion; but they availed themselves too often of common-place -extravagances and theatrical trick. Men at first produce effect by -studying nature, and afterwards they look at nature only to produce -effect. It is the same in the history of other arts, and of other periods -of literature. With respect to most of the writers of this age, their -subject was their master. Shakespear was alone, as I have said -before, master of his subject; but Beaumont and Fletcher were the -first who made a play-thing of it, or a convenient vehicle for the -display of their own powers. The example of preceding or contemporary -writers had given them facility; the frequency of dramatic -exhibition had advanced the popular taste; and this facility of production, -and the necessity for appealing to popular applause, tended to -vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing to pamper that of -the public for novelty and extraordinary effect. There wants something -of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers. They do -not wait nature’s time, or work out her materials patiently and faithfully, -but try to anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They -would have a catastrophe in every scene; so that you have none at -<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>last: they would raise admiration to its height in every line; so that -the impression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. -They pitch the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust -themselves by the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find -all the prodigality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an -enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running riot, beauty -dissolving in its own sweetness. They are like heirs just come to -their estates, like lovers in the honey-moon. In the economy of -nature’s gifts, they ‘misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the Gods -amiss.’ Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the marks of -precocity and premature decay. Or they are two goodly trees, the -stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and with the verdure -springing at their feet; but they do not strike their roots far enough -into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the flowers!</p> - -<p class='c011'>It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and descriptive poets of -the first order; every page of their writings is a <em>florilegium</em>: they are -dramatic poets of the second class, in point of knowledge, variety, -vivacity, and effect; there is hardly a passion, character, or situation, -which they have not touched in their devious range, and whatever -they touched, they adorned with some new grace or striking feature; -they are masters of style and versification in almost every variety of -melting modulation or sounding pomp, of which they are capable: in -comic wit and spirit, they are scarcely surpassed by any writers of -any age. There they are in their element, ‘like eagles newly baited’; -but I speak rather of their serious poetry;—and this, I apprehend, -with all its richness, sweetness, loftiness, and grace, wants something—stimulates -more than it gratifies, and leaves the mind in a certain -sense exhausted and unsatisfied. Their fault is a too ostentatious and -indiscriminate display of power. Every thing seems in a state of -fermentation and effervescence, and not to have settled and found its -centre in their minds. The ornaments, through neglect or abundance, -do not always appear sufficiently appropriate: there is evidently a rich -wardrobe of words and images, to set off any sentiments that occur, -but not equal felicity in the choice of the sentiments to be expressed; -the characters in general do not take a substantial form, or excite a -growing interest, or leave a permanent impression; the passion does -not accumulate by the force of time, of circumstances, and habit, but -wastes itself in the first ebullitions of surprise and novelty.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Besides these more critical objections, there is a too frequent -mixture of voluptuous softness or effeminacy of character with horror -in the subjects, a conscious weakness (I can hardly think it wantonness) -of moral constitution struggling with wilful and violent situations, -like the tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame that dazzles -<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>and consumes it. In the hey-day of their youthful ardour, and the -intoxication of their animal spirits, they take a perverse delight in -tearing up some rooted sentiment, to make a mawkish lamentation -over it; and fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes into -forbidden grounds, to see how they will shoot up and vegetate into -luxuriance, to catch the eye of fancy. They are not safe teachers of -morality: they tamper with it, like an experiment tried <em>in corpore vili</em>; -and seem to regard the decomposition of the common affections, and -the dissolution of the strict bonds of society, as an agreeable study and -a careless pastime. The tone of Shakespear’s writings is manly and -bracing; theirs is at once insipid and meretricious, in the comparison. -Shakespear never disturbs the grounds of moral principle; but leaves -his characters (after doing them heaped justice on all sides) to be -judged of by our common sense and natural feeling. Beaumont and -Fletcher constantly bring in equivocal sentiments and characters, as if -to set them up to be debated by sophistical casuistry, or varnished -over with the colours of poetical ingenuity. Or Shakespear may be -said to ‘cast the diseases of the mind, only to restore it to a sound and -pristine health’: the dramatic paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher -are, to all appearance, tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity and -laxity of principle. I do not say that this was the character of the -men; but it strikes me as the character of their minds. The two -things are very distinct. The greatest purists (hypocrisy apart) are -often free-livers; and some of the most unguarded professors of a -general license of behaviour, have been the last persons to take the -benefit of their own doctrine, from which they reap nothing, but the -obloquy and the pleasure of startling their ‘wonder-wounded’ hearers. -There is a division of labour, even in vice. Some persons addict -themselves to the speculation only, others to the practice. The -peccant humours of the body or the mind break out in different ways. -One man <em>sows his wild oats</em> in his neighbour’s field: another on Mount -Parnassus; from whence, borne on the breath of fame, they may hope -to spread and fructify to distant times and regions. Of the latter -class were our poets, who, I believe, led unexceptionable lives, and -only indulged their imaginations in occasional unwarrantable liberties -with the Muses. What makes them more inexcusable, and confirms -this charge against them, is, that they are always abusing ‘wanton -poets,’ as if willing to shift suspicion from themselves.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also who laid the foundation -of the artificial diction and tinselled pomp of the next generation of -poets, by aiming at a profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by translating -the commonest circumstances into the language of metaphor -and passion. It is this misplaced and inordinate craving after striking -<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>effect and continual excitement that had at one time rendered our -poetry the most vapid of all things, by not leaving the moulds of -poetic diction to be filled up by the overflowings of nature and passion, -but by swelling out ordinary and unmeaning topics to certain preconceived -and indispensable standards of poetical elevation and grandeur.—I -shall endeavour to confirm this praise, mixed with unwilling -blame, by remarking on a few of their principal tragedies. If I have -done them injustice, the resplendent passages I have to quote will set -every thing to rights.</p> - -<p class='c011'><cite class='scite'>The Maid’s Tragedy</cite> is one of the poorest. The nature of the -distress is of the most disagreeable and repulsive kind; and not the -less so, because it is entirely improbable and uncalled-for. There is -no sort of reason, or no sufficient reason to the reader’s mind, why -the king should marry off his mistress to one of his courtiers, why he -should pitch upon the worthiest for this purpose, why he should, by -such a choice, break off Amintor’s match with the sister of another -principal support of his throne (whose death is the consequence), -why he should insist on the inviolable fidelity of his former mistress -to him after she is married, and why her husband should thus -inevitably be made acquainted with his dishonour, and roused to -madness and revenge, except the mere love of mischief, and gratuitous -delight in torturing the feelings of others, and tempting one’s own -fate. The character of Evadne, however, her naked, unblushing -impudence, the mixture of folly with vice, her utter insensibility to -any motive but her own pride and inclination, her heroic superiority -to any signs of shame or scruples of conscience from a recollection of -what is due to herself or others, are well described; and the lady is -true to herself in her repentance, which is owing to nothing but the -accidental impulse and whim of the moment. The deliberate voluntary -disregard of all moral ties and all pretence to virtue, in the -structure of the fable, is nearly unaccountable. Amintor (who is -meant to be the hero of the piece) is a feeble, irresolute character: -his slavish, recanting loyalty to his prince, who has betrayed and -dishonoured him, is of a piece with the tyranny and insolence of -which he is made the sport; and even his tardy revenge is snatched -from his hands, and he kills his former betrothed and beloved -mistress, instead of executing vengeance on the man who has destroyed -his peace of mind and unsettled her intellects. The king, however, -meets his fate from the penitent fury of Evadne; and on this account, -the Maid’s Tragedy was forbidden to be acted in the reign of -Charles <span class='fss'>II.</span> as countenancing the doctrine of regicide. Aspatia is a -beautiful sketch of resigned and heart-broken melancholy; and -Calianax, a blunt, satirical courtier, is a character of much humour -<span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>and novelty. There are striking passages here and there, but fewer -than in almost any of their plays. Amintor’s speech to Evadne, -when she makes confession of her unlooked-for remorse, is, I think, -the finest.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'>——‘Do not mock me:</div> - <div class='line'>Though I am tame, and bred up with my wrongs,</div> - <div class='line'>Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap,</div> - <div class='line'>Like a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness,</div> - <div class='line'>And do an outrage. Prithee, do not mock me!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>King and No King</span>, which is on a strangely chosen subject as -strangely treated, is very superior in power and effect. There is an -unexpected reservation in the plot, which, in some measure, relieves -the painfulness of the impression. Arbaces is painted in gorgeous, -but not alluring colours. His vain-glorious pretensions and impatience -of contradiction are admirably displayed, and are so managed as to -produce an involuntary comic effect to temper the lofty tone of -tragedy, particularly in the scenes in which he affects to treat his -vanquished enemy with such condescending kindness; and perhaps -this display of upstart pride was meant by the authors as an oblique -satire on his low origin, which is afterwards discovered. His pride -of self-will and fierce impetuosity, are the same in war and in love. -The haughty voluptuousness and pampered effeminacy of his character -admit neither respect for his misfortunes, nor pity for his errors. -His ambition is a fever in the blood; and his love is a sudden -transport of ungovernable caprice that brooks no restraint, and is -intoxicated with the lust of power, even in the lap of pleasure, and -the sanctuary of the affections. The passion of Panthea is, as it -were, a reflection from, and lighted at the shrine of her lover’s -flagrant vanity. In the elevation of his rank, and in the consciousness -of his personal accomplishments, he seems firmly persuaded (and by -sympathy to persuade others) that there is nothing in the world -which can be an object of liking or admiration but himself. The -first birth and declaration of this perverted sentiment to himself, -when he meets with Panthea after his return from conquest, fostered -by his presumptuous infatuation and the heat of his inflammable -passions, and the fierce and lordly tone in which he repels the -suggestion of the natural obstacles to his sudden phrenzy, are in Beaumont -and Fletcher’s most daring manner: but the rest is not equal. -What may be called the love-scenes are equally gross and commonplace; -and instead of any thing like delicacy or a struggle of different -feelings, have all the indecency and familiarity of a brothel. Bessus, -a comic character in this play, is a swaggering coward, something -between Parolles and Falstaff.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>The <cite class='scite'>False One</cite> is an indirect imitation of Antony and Cleopatra. -We have Septimius for Œnobarbas and Cæsar for Antony. Cleopatra -herself is represented in her girlish state, but she is made divine in</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Youth that opens like perpetual spring,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>and promises the rich harvest of love and pleasure that succeeds it. -Her first presenting herself before Cæsar, when she is brought in by -Sceva, and the impression she makes upon him, like a vision dropt -from the clouds, or</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>are exquisitely conceived. Photinus is an accomplished villain, well-read -in crooked policy and quirks of state; and the description of -Pompey has a solemnity and grandeur worthy of his unfortunate end. -Septimius says, bringing in his lifeless head,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘’Tis here, ’tis done! Behold, you fearful viewers,</div> - <div class='line'>Shake, and behold the model of the world here,</div> - <div class='line'>The pride and strength! Look, look again, ’tis finished!</div> - <div class='line'>That that whole armies, nay, whole nations,</div> - <div class='line'>Many and mighty kings, have been struck blind at,</div> - <div class='line'>And fled before, wing’d with their fear and terrors,</div> - <div class='line'>That steel War waited on, and Fortune courted,</div> - <div class='line'>That high-plum’d Honour built up for her own;</div> - <div class='line'>Behold that mightiness, behold that fierceness,</div> - <div class='line'>Behold that child of war, with all his glories,</div> - <div class='line'>By this poor hand made breathless!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>And again Cæsar says of him, who was his mortal enemy (it was -not held the fashion in those days, nor will it be held so in time to -come, to lampoon those whom you have vanquished)—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in15'>——‘Oh thou conqueror,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou glory of the world once, now the pity,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus?</div> - <div class='line'>What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on</div> - <div class='line'>To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian?</div> - <div class='line'>The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger,</div> - <div class='line'>That honourable war ne’er taught a nobleness,</div> - <div class='line'>Not worthy circumstance shew’d what a man was?</div> - <div class='line'>That never heard thy name sung but in banquets,</div> - <div class='line'>And loose lascivious pleasures? to a boy,</div> - <div class='line'>That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness,</div> - <div class='line'>No study of thy life to know thy goodness?</div> - <div class='line'>Egyptians, do you think your highest pyramids,</div> - <div class='line'>Built to outdure the sun, as you suppose,</div> - <div class='line'>Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes,</div> - <div class='line'>Are monuments fit for him! No, brood of Nilus,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;</div> - <div class='line'>No pyramids set off his memories,</div> - <div class='line'>But the eternal substance of his greatness,</div> - <div class='line'>To which I leave him.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It is something worth living for, to write or even read such poetry -as this is, or to know that it has been written, or that there have -been subjects on which to write it!—This, of all Beaumont and -Fletcher’s plays, comes the nearest in style and manner to Shakespear, -not excepting the first act of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which has -been sometimes attributed to him.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The <cite class='scite'>Faithful Shepherdess</cite> by Fletcher alone, is ‘a perpetual -feast of nectar’d sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.’ The author -has in it given a loose to his fancy, and his fancy was his most -delightful and genial quality, where, to use his own words,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘He takes most ease, and grows ambitious</div> - <div class='line'>Thro’ his own wanton fire and pride delicious.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout are luxuriant and -delicate in a high degree. He came near to Spenser in a certain -tender and voluptuous sense of natural beauty; he came near to -Shakespear in the playful and fantastic expression of it. The whole -composition is an exquisite union of dramatic and pastoral poetry; -where the local descriptions receive a tincture from the sentiments -and purposes of the speaker, and each character, cradled in the lap of -nature, paints ‘her virgin fancies wild’ with romantic grace and -classic elegance.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The place and its employments are thus described by Chloe to -Thenot:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in11'>——‘Here be woods as green</div> - <div class='line'>As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet</div> - <div class='line'>As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet</div> - <div class='line'>Face of the curled stream, with flow’rs as many</div> - <div class='line'>As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;</div> - <div class='line'>Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,</div> - <div class='line'>Arbours o’ergrown with woodbine; caves, and dells;</div> - <div class='line'>Chuse where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,</div> - <div class='line'>Or gather rushes, to make many a ring</div> - <div class='line'>For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,</div> - <div class='line'>How the pale Phœbe, hunting in a grove,</div> - <div class='line'>First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes</div> - <div class='line'>She took eternal fire that never dies;</div> - <div class='line'>How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,</div> - <div class='line'>His temples bound with poppy, to the steep</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,</div> - <div class='line'>Gilding the mountain with her brother’s light,</div> - <div class='line'>To kiss her sweetest.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There are few things that can surpass in truth and beauty of -allegorical description, the invocation of Amaryllis to the God of -Shepherds, Pan, to save her from the violence of the Sullen Shepherd, -for Syrinx’ sake:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in18'>——‘For her dear sake,</div> - <div class='line'>That loves the rivers’ brinks, and still doth shake</div> - <div class='line'>In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Or again, the friendly Satyr promises Clorin—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Brightest, if there be remaining</div> - <div class='line'>Any service, without feigning</div> - <div class='line'>I will do it; were I set</div> - <div class='line'>To catch the nimble wind, or get</div> - <div class='line'>Shadows gliding on the green.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>It would be a task no less difficult than this, to follow the flight of -the poet’s Muse, or catch her fleeting graces, fluttering her golden -wings, and singing in notes angelical of youth, of love, and joy!</p> - -<p class='c011'>There is only one affected and ridiculous character in this drama, -that of Thenot in love with Clorin. He is attached to her for her -inviolable fidelity to her buried husband, and wishes her not to grant -his suit, lest it should put an end to his passion. Thus he pleads to -her against himself:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'>——‘If you yield, I die</div> - <div class='line'>To all affection; ’tis that loyalty</div> - <div class='line'>You tie unto this grave I so admire;</div> - <div class='line'>And yet there’s something else I would desire,</div> - <div class='line'>If you would hear me, but withal deny.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh Pan, what an uncertain destiny</div> - <div class='line'>Hangs over all my hopes! I will retire;</div> - <div class='line'>For if I longer stay, this double fire</div> - <div class='line'>Will lick my life up.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This is paltry quibbling. It is spurious logic, not genuine feeling. -A pedant may hang his affections on the point of a dilemma in this -manner; but nature does not sophisticate; or when she does, it is to -gain her ends, not to defeat them.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Sullen Shepherd turns out too dark a character in the end, -and gives a shock to the gentle and pleasing sentiments inspired -throughout.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The resemblance of Comus to this poem is not so great as has -<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>been sometimes contended, nor are the particular allusions important -or frequent. Whatever Milton copied, he made his own. In -reading the Faithful Shepherdess, we find ourselves breathing the -moonlight air under the cope of heaven, and wander by forest side or -fountain, among fresh dews and flowers, following our vagrant fancies, -or smit with the love of nature’s works. In reading Milton’s Comus, -and most of his other works, we seem to be entering a lofty dome -raised over our heads and ascending to the skies, and as if nature and -every thing in it were but a temple and an image consecrated by the -poet’s art to the worship of virtue and pure religion. The speech of -Clorin, after she has been alarmed by the Satyr, is the only one of -which Milton has made a free use.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And all my fears go with thee,</div> - <div class='line'>What greatness or what private hidden power</div> - <div class='line'>Is there in me to draw submission</div> - <div class='line'>From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal:</div> - <div class='line'>The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal,</div> - <div class='line'>And she that bore me mortal: prick my hand,</div> - <div class='line'>And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and</div> - <div class='line'>The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink,</div> - <div class='line'>Makes me a-cold: my fear says, I am mortal.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet I have heard, (my mother told it me,</div> - <div class='line'>And now I do believe it), if I keep</div> - <div class='line'>My virgin flow’r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,</div> - <div class='line'>No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,</div> - <div class='line'>Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion</div> - <div class='line'>Draw me to wander after idle fires;</div> - <div class='line'>Or voices calling me in dead of night</div> - <div class='line'>To make me follow, and so tole me on</div> - <div class='line'>Thro’ mire and standing pools to find my ruin;</div> - <div class='line'>Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew</div> - <div class='line'>Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats</div> - <div class='line'>Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,</div> - <div class='line'>Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there’s a pow’r</div> - <div class='line'>In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast</div> - <div class='line'>All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites</div> - <div class='line'>That break their confines: then, strong Chastity,</div> - <div class='line'>Be thou my strongest guard, for here I’ll dwell,</div> - <div class='line'>In opposition against fate and hell!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Ben Jonson’s Sad Shepherd comes nearer it in style and spirit, but -still with essential differences, like the two men, and without any -appearance of obligation. Ben’s is more homely and grotesque, -Fletcher’s is more visionary and fantastical. I hardly know which -to prefer. If Fletcher has the advantage in general power and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>sentiment, Jonson is superior in <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naiveté</span></i> and truth of local colouring.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The <cite class='scite'>Two Noble Kinsmen</cite> is another monument of Fletcher’s -genius; and it is said also of Shakespear’s. The style of the first -act has certainly more weight, more abruptness, and more involution, -than the general style of Fletcher, with fewer softenings and fillings-up -to sheathe the rough projecting points and piece the disjointed -fragments together. For example, the compliment of Theseus to one -of the Queens, that Hercules</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Tumbled him down upon his Nemean hide,</div> - <div class='line'>And swore his sinews thaw’d’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>at sight of her beauty, is in a bolder and more masculine vein than -Fletcher usually aimed at. Again, the supplicating address of the -distressed Queen to Hippolita,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>——‘Lend us a knee:</div> - <div class='line'>But touch the ground for us no longer time</div> - <div class='line'>Than a dove’s motion, when the head’s pluck’d off’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>is certainly in the manner of Shakespear, with his subtlety and strength -of illustration. But, on the other hand, in what immediately follows, -relating to their husbands left dead in the field of battle,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Tell him if he i’ th’ blood-siz’d field lay swoln,</div> - <div class='line'>Shewing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,</div> - <div class='line'>What you would do’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>I think we perceive the extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher, not -contented with truth or strength of description, but hurried away by -the love of violent excitement into an image of disgust and horror, -not called for, and not at all proper in the mouth into which it is -put. There is a studied exaggeration of the sentiment, and an evident -imitation of the parenthetical interruptions and breaks in the line, -corresponding to what we sometimes meet in Shakespear, as in the -speeches of Leontes in the Winter’s Tale; but the sentiment is overdone, -and the style merely mechanical. Thus Hippolita declares, on -her lord’s going to the wars,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep,</div> - <div class='line'>When our friends don their helms, or put to sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Or tell of babes broach’d on the lance, or women</div> - <div class='line'>That have seethed their infants in (and after eat them)</div> - <div class='line'>The brine they wept at killing ’em; then if</div> - <div class='line'>You stay to see of us such spinsters, we</div> - <div class='line'>Should hold you here forever.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>One might apply to this sort of poetry what Marvel says of some -sort of passions, that it is</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Tearing our pleasures with rough strife</div> - <div class='line'>Thorough the iron gates of life.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It is not in the true spirit of Shakespear, who was ‘born only heir -to all humanity,’ whose horrors were not gratuitous, and who did not -harrow up the feelings for the sake of making mere <em>bravura</em> speeches. -There are also in this first act, several repetitions of Shakespear’s -phraseology: a thing that seldom or never occurs in his own works. -For instance,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'>——‘Past slightly</div> - <div class='line'><em>His careless execution</em>’—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>The very lees</em> of such, millions of rates</div> - <div class='line'>Exceed <em>the wine</em> of others’—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'>——‘Let <em>the event</em>,</div> - <div class='line'>That <em>never-erring arbitrator</em>, tell us’—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Like <em>old importment’s bastard</em>’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There are also words that are never used by Shakespear in a -similar sense:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>——‘All our surgeons</div> - <div class='line'><em>Convent</em> in their behoof’—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘We <em>convent</em> nought else but woes’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>In short, it appears to me that the first part of this play was -written in imitation of Shakespear’s manner; but I see no reason to -suppose that it was his, but the common tradition, which is however -by no means well established. The subsequent acts are confessedly -Fletcher’s, and the imitations of Shakespear which occur there (not -of Shakespear’s manner as differing from his, but as it was congenial -to his own spirit and feeling of nature) are glorious in themselves, and -exalt our idea of the great original which could give birth to such -magnificent conceptions in another. The conversation of Palamon -and Arcite in prison is of this description—the outline is evidently -taken from that of Guiderius, Arviragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline, -but filled up with a rich profusion of graces that make it his own -again.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Pal.</em> How do you, noble cousin?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> How do you, Sir?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> Why, strong enough to laugh at misery,</div> - <div class='line'>And bear the chance of war yet. We are prisoners,</div> - <div class='line'>I fear for ever, cousin.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span><em>Arc.</em> I believe it;</div> - <div class='line'>And to that destiny have patiently</div> - <div class='line'>Laid up my hour to come.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> Oh, cousin Arcite,</div> - <div class='line'>Where is Thebes now? where is our noble country?</div> - <div class='line'>Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more</div> - <div class='line'>Must we behold those comforts; never see</div> - <div class='line'>The hardy youths strive for the games of honour,</div> - <div class='line'>Hung with the painted favours of their ladies,</div> - <div class='line'>Like tall ships under sail: then start amongst ’em,</div> - <div class='line'>And as an east wind, leave ’em all behind us</div> - <div class='line'>Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite,</div> - <div class='line'>Even in the wagging of a wanton leg,</div> - <div class='line'>Outstript the people’s praises, won the garlands,</div> - <div class='line'>Ere they have time to wish ’em ours. Oh, never</div> - <div class='line'>Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,</div> - <div class='line'>Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses,</div> - <div class='line'>Like proud seas under us! Our good swords now</div> - <div class='line'>(Better the red-eyed God of war ne’er wore)</div> - <div class='line'>Ravish’d our sides, like age, must run to rust,</div> - <div class='line'>And deck the temples of those Gods that hate us:</div> - <div class='line'>These hands shall never draw ’em out like lightning,</div> - <div class='line'>To blast whole armies more.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> No, Palamon,</div> - <div class='line'>Those hopes are prisoners with us: here we are,</div> - <div class='line'>And here the graces of our youth must wither,</div> - <div class='line'>Like a too-timely spring: here age must find us,</div> - <div class='line'>And which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried;</div> - <div class='line'>The sweet embraces of a loving wife</div> - <div class='line'>Loaden with kisses, arm’d with thousand Cupids,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall never clasp our necks! No issue know us,</div> - <div class='line'>No figures of ourselves shall we e’er see,</div> - <div class='line'>To glad our age, and like young eaglets teach ’em</div> - <div class='line'>Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say,</div> - <div class='line'>Remember what your fathers were, and conquer!</div> - <div class='line'>The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments,</div> - <div class='line'>And in their songs curse ever-blinded fortune,</div> - <div class='line'>Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done</div> - <div class='line'>To youth and nature. This is all our world:</div> - <div class='line'>We shall know nothing here, but one another;</div> - <div class='line'>Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes;</div> - <div class='line'>The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it;</div> - <div class='line'>Summer shall come, and with her all delights,</div> - <div class='line'>But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> ’Tis too true, Arcite! To our Theban hounds,</div> - <div class='line'>That shook the aged forest with their echoes,</div> - <div class='line'>No more now must we halloo; no more shake</div> - <div class='line'>Our pointed javelins, while the angry swine</div> - <div class='line'>Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>Struck with our well-steel’d darts! All valiant uses</div> - <div class='line'>(The food and nourishment of noble minds)</div> - <div class='line'>In us two here shall perish; we shall die</div> - <div class='line'>(Which is the curse of honour) lazily,</div> - <div class='line'>Children of grief and ignorance.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> Yet, cousin,</div> - <div class='line'>Even from the bottom of these miseries,</div> - <div class='line'>From all that fortune can inflict upon us,</div> - <div class='line'>I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,</div> - <div class='line'>If the Gods please to hold here; a brave patience,</div> - <div class='line'>And the enjoying of our griefs together.</div> - <div class='line'>Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish</div> - <div class='line'>If I think this our prison!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> Certainly,</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes</div> - <div class='line'>Were twinn’d together; ’tis most true, two souls</div> - <div class='line'>Put in two noble bodies, let ’em suffer</div> - <div class='line'>The gall of hazard, so they grow together,</div> - <div class='line'>Will never sink; they must not; say they could,</div> - <div class='line'>A willing man dies sleeping, and all’s done.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> Shall we make worthy uses of this place,</div> - <div class='line'>That all men hate so much?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> How, gentle cousin?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> Let’s think this prison a holy sanctuary</div> - <div class='line'>To keep us from corruption of worse men!</div> - <div class='line'>We’re young, and yet desire the ways of honour:</div> - <div class='line'>That, liberty and common conversation,</div> - <div class='line'>The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,</div> - <div class='line'>Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing</div> - <div class='line'>Can be, but our imaginations</div> - <div class='line'>May make it ours? And here, being thus together,</div> - <div class='line'>We are an endless mine to one another;</div> - <div class='line'>We’re father, friends, acquaintance;</div> - <div class='line'>We are, in one another, families;</div> - <div class='line'>I am your heir, and you are mine; this place</div> - <div class='line'>Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor</div> - <div class='line'>Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience,</div> - <div class='line'>We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us:</div> - <div class='line'>The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas</div> - <div class='line'>Swallow their youth; were we at liberty,</div> - <div class='line'>A wife might part us lawfully, or business;</div> - <div class='line'>Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men</div> - <div class='line'>Crave our acquaintance; I might sicken, cousin,</div> - <div class='line'>Where you should never know it, and so perish</div> - <div class='line'>Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Or prayers to the Gods: a thousand chances,</div> - <div class='line'>Were we from hence, would sever us.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> You have made me</div> - <div class='line'>(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>With my captivity; what a misery</div> - <div class='line'>It is to live abroad, and every where!</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here,</div> - <div class='line'>I’m sure a more content; and all those pleasures,</div> - <div class='line'>That woo the wills of men to vanity,</div> - <div class='line'>I see thro’ now: and am sufficient</div> - <div class='line'>To tell the world, ’tis but a gaudy shadow</div> - <div class='line'>That old time, as he passes by, takes with him.</div> - <div class='line'>What had we been, old in the court of Creon,</div> - <div class='line'>Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance</div> - <div class='line'>The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,</div> - <div class='line'>Had not the loving Gods found this place for us,</div> - <div class='line'>We had died as they do, ill old men unwept,</div> - <div class='line'>And had their epitaphs, the people’s curses!</div> - <div class='line'>Shall I say more?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> I would hear you still.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> You shall.</div> - <div class='line'>Is there record of any two that lov’d</div> - <div class='line'>Better than we do, Arcite?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> Sure there cannot.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pal.</em> I do not think it possible our friendship</div> - <div class='line'>Should ever leave us.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arc.</em> Till our deaths it cannot.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>Thus they ‘sing their bondage freely:’ but just then enters Æmilia, -who parts all this friendship between them, and turns them to -deadliest foes.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The jailor’s daughter, who falls in love with Palamon, and goes -mad, is a wretched interpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy of -Ophelia. But they readily availed themselves of all the dramatic -common-places to be found in Shakespear, love, madness, processions, -sports, imprisonment, &c. and copied him too often in earnest, to -have a right to parody him, as they sometimes did, in jest.—The -story of the Two Noble Kinsmen is taken from Chaucer’s Palamon -and Arcite; but the latter part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic -power and interest, degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of -the principal events, and possesses little value or effect.—It is not -improbable that Beaumont and Fletcher’s having dramatised this -story, put Dryden upon modernising it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher’s dramas (52 -in number), but I have mentioned some of the principal, and the -excellences and defects of the rest may be judged of from these. -The Bloody Brother, A Wife for a Month, Bonduca, Thierry and -Theodoret, are among the best of their tragedies: among the comedies, -the Night Walker, the Little French Lawyer, and Monsieur Thomas, -come perhaps next to the Chances, the Wild Goose Chase, and Rule -<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>a Wife and Have a Wife.—Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding, is -one of the most admirable productions of these authors (the last I -shall mention); and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, -the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealousy of Philaster, are beyond -all praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty and high-wrought -passion that I might quote, are out of number. One only -must suffice, the account of the commencement of Euphrasia’s love -to Philaster.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in10'>——‘Sitting in my window,</div> - <div class='line'>Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God</div> - <div class='line'>I thought (but it was you) enter our gates;</div> - <div class='line'>My blood flew out, and back again as fast</div> - <div class='line'>As I had puffed it forth and suck’d it in</div> - <div class='line'>Like breath; then was I called away in haste</div> - <div class='line'>To entertain you. Never was a man</div> - <div class='line'>Heav’d from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais’d</div> - <div class='line'>So high in thoughts as I: you left a kiss</div> - <div class='line'>Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep</div> - <div class='line'>From you forever. I did hear you talk</div> - <div class='line'>Far above singing!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>And so it is our poets themselves write, ‘far above singing.’<a id='r23' /><a href='#f23' class='c015'><sup>[23]</sup></a> I am -loth to part with them, and wander down, as we now must,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Into a lower world, to theirs obscure</div> - <div class='line'>And wild—To breathe in other air</div> - <div class='line'>Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Ben Jonson’s serious productions are, in my opinion, superior to -his comic ones. What he does, is the result of strong sense and -painful industry; but sense and industry agree better with the grave -and severe, than with the light and gay productions of the Muse. -‘His plays were works,’ as some one said of them, ‘while others’ -works were plays.’ The observation had less of compliment than of -truth in it. He may be said to mine his way into a subject, like a -mole, and throws up a prodigious quantity of matter on the surface, -so that the richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and -rubbish we have. His fault is, that he sets himself too much to his -subject, and cannot let go his hold of an idea, after the insisting on -it becomes tiresome or painful to others. But his tenaciousness of -what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with -didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning -engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.</span></i>’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>He was equal, by an effort, to the highest things, and took the -same, and even more successful pains to grovel to the lowest. He -raised himself up or let himself down to the level of his subject, by -ponderous machinery. By dint of application, and a certain strength -of nerve, he could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less than to -mine Host of the New Inn. His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, -in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic. The principal -character gives one the idea of a lofty column of solid granite, -nodding to its base from its pernicious height, and dashed in pieces, -by a breath of air, a word of its creator—feared, not pitied, scorned, -unwept, and forgotten. The depth of knowledge and gravity of -expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked -out the historian’s outline, so that the vices and passions, the -ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisoned -atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described -in fuller or more glowing colours.—I am half afraid to give any -extracts, lest they should be tortured into an application to other -times and characters than those referred to by the poet. Some of -the sounds, indeed, may bear (for what I know), an awkward -construction: some of the objects may look double to squint-eyed -suspicion. But that is not my fault. It only proves, that the -characters of prophet and poet are implied in each other; that he -who describes human nature well once, describes it for good and -all, as it was, is, and I begin to fear, will ever be. Truth always -was, and must always remain a libel to the tyrant and the slave. -Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius Natta, two public informers -in those days, are described as</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Two of Sejanus’ blood-hounds, whom he breeds</div> - <div class='line'>With human flesh, to bay at citizens.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, debating the point of -his own character with two Senators whom he has entrapped, boldly -asserts, in a more courtly strain,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘——To be a spy on traitors,</div> - <div class='line'>Is honourable vigilance.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This sentiment of the respectability of the employment of a -government spy, which had slept in Tacitus for near two thousand -<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>years, has not been without its modern patrons. The effects of -such ‘honourable vigilance’ are very finely exposed in the following -high-spirited dialogue between Lepidus and Arruntius, two noble -Romans, who loved their country, but were not fashionable enough -to confound their country with its oppressors, and the extinguishers -of its liberty.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Arr.</em> What are thy arts (good patriot, teach them me)</div> - <div class='line'>That have preserv’d thy hairs to this white dye,</div> - <div class='line'>And kept so reverend and so dear a head</div> - <div class='line'>Safe on his comely shoulders?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Lep.</em> Arts, Arruntius!</div> - <div class='line'>None but the plain and passive fortitude</div> - <div class='line'>To suffer and be silent; never stretch</div> - <div class='line'>These arms against the torrent; live at home,</div> - <div class='line'>With my own thoughts and innocence about me,</div> - <div class='line'>Not tempting the wolves’ jaws: these are my arts.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arr.</em> I would begin to study ’em, if I thought</div> - <div class='line'>They would secure me. May I pray to Jove</div> - <div class='line'>In secret, and be safe? aye, or aloud?</div> - <div class='line'>With open wishes? so I do not mention</div> - <div class='line'>Tiberius or Sejanus? Yes, I must,</div> - <div class='line'>If I speak out. ’Tis hard, that. May I think,</div> - <div class='line'>And not be rack’d? What danger is’t to dream?</div> - <div class='line'>Talk in one’s sleep, or cough! Who knows the law?</div> - <div class='line'>May I shake my head without a comment? Say</div> - <div class='line'>It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the Gemonies? These now are things,</div> - <div class='line'>Whereon men’s fortunes, yea, their fate depends:</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing hath privilege ’gainst the violent ear.</div> - <div class='line'>No place, no day, no hour (we see) is free</div> - <div class='line'>(Not our religious and most sacred times)</div> - <div class='line'>From some one kind of cruelty; all matter,</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madman’s rage,</div> - <div class='line'>The idleness of drunkards, women’s nothing,</div> - <div class='line'>Jesters’ simplicity, all, all is good</div> - <div class='line'>That can be catch’d at.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>’Tis a pretty picture; and the duplicates of it, though multiplied -without end, are seldom out of request.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The following portrait of a prince besieged by flatterers (taken -from Tiberius) has unrivalled force and beauty, with historic -truth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in18'>——‘If this man</div> - <div class='line'>Had but a mind allied unto his words,</div> - <div class='line'>How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome?</div> - <div class='line'>Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>Under a virtuous prince. Wish’d liberty</div> - <div class='line'>Ne’er lovelier looks than under such a crown.</div> - <div class='line'>But when his grace is merely but lip-good,</div> - <div class='line'>And that, no longer than he airs himself</div> - <div class='line'>Abroad in public, there to seem to shun</div> - <div class='line'>The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within</div> - <div class='line'>Are lechery unto him, and so feed</div> - <div class='line'>His brutish sense with their afflicting sound,</div> - <div class='line'>As (dead to virtue) he permits himself</div> - <div class='line'>Be carried like a pitcher by the ears</div> - <div class='line'>To every act of vice; this is a case</div> - <div class='line'>Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh</div> - <div class='line'>And close approach of bloody tyranny.</div> - <div class='line'>Flattery is midwife unto princes’ rage:</div> - <div class='line'>And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant</div> - <div class='line'>Than that, and whisperers’ grace, that have the time,</div> - <div class='line'>The place, the power, to make all men offenders!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The only part of this play in which Ben Jonson has completely -forgotten himself, (or rather seems not to have done so), is in the -conversations between Livia and Eudemus, about a wash for her -face, here called a <em>fucus</em>, to appear before Sejanus. Catiline’s -Conspiracy does not furnish by any means an equal number of -striking passages, and is spun out to an excessive length with -Cicero’s artificial and affected orations against Catiline, and in -praise of himself. His apologies for his own eloquence, and -declarations that in all his art he uses no art at all, put one in -mind of Polonius’s circuitous way of coming to the point. Both -these tragedies, it might be observed, are constructed on the exact -principles of a French historical picture, where every head and figure -is borrowed from the antique; but somehow, the precious materials -of old Roman history and character are better preserved in Jonson’s -page than on David’s canvas.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Two of the most poetical passages in Ben Jonson, are the description -of Echo in Cynthia’s Revels, and the fine comparison of the -mind to a temple, in the New Inn; a play which, on the whole, -however, I can read with no patience.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with some account of -Massinger and Ford, who wrote in the time of Charles <span class='fss'>I.</span> I am -sorry I cannot do it <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">con amore</span></i>. The writers of whom I have -chiefly had to speak were true poets, impassioned, fanciful, ‘musical -as is Apollo’s lute;’ but Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford -finical and fastidious. I find little in the works of these two dramatists, -but a display of great strength and subtlety of understanding, -inveteracy of purpose, and perversity of will. This is not exactly what -<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>we look for in poetry, which, according to the most approved recipes, -should combine pleasure with profit, and not owe all its fascination over -the mind to its power of shocking or perplexing us. The Muses should -attract by grace or dignity of mien. Massinger makes an impression -by hardness and repulsiveness of manner. In the intellectual processes -which he delights to describe, ‘reason panders will:’ he fixes arbitrarily -on some object which there is no motive to pursue, or every motive -combined against it, and then by screwing up his heroes or heroines -to the deliberate and blind accomplishment of this, thinks to arrive -at ‘the true pathos and sublime of human life.’ That is not the way. -He seldom touches the heart or kindles the fancy. It is in vain to -hope to excite much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the will, or -intricate contrivances of the understanding, to obtain that which is -better left alone, and where the interest arises principally from the -conflict between the absurdity of the passion and the obstinacy with -which it is persisted in. For the most part, his villains are a sort -of <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">lusus naturæ</span></i>; his impassioned characters are like drunkards or -madmen. Their conduct is extreme and outrageous, their motives -unaccountable and weak; their misfortunes are without necessity, -and their crimes without temptation, to ordinary apprehensions. I -do not say that this is invariably the case in all Massinger’s scenes, -but I think it will be found that a principle of playing at cross-purposes -is the ruling passion throughout most of them. This is -the case in the tragedy of the Unnatural Combat, in the Picture, -the Duke of Milan, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and even in -the Bondman, and the Virgin Martyr, &c. In the Picture, Matthias -nearly loses his wife’s affections, by resorting to the far-fetched and -unnecessary device of procuring a magical portrait to read the slightest -variation in her thoughts. In the same play, Honoria risks her -reputation and her life to gain a clandestine interview with Matthias, -merely to shake his fidelity to his wife, and when she has gained -her object, tells the king her husband in pure caprice and fickleness -of purpose. The Virgin Martyr is nothing but a tissue of instantaneous -conversions to and from Paganism and Christianity. The only -scenes of any real beauty and tenderness in this play, are those -between Dorothea and Angelo, her supposed friendless beggar-boy, -but her guardian angel in disguise, which are understood to be by -Deckar. The interest of the Bondman turns upon two different -acts of penance and self-denial, in the persons of the hero and heroine, -Pisander and Cleora. In the Duke of Milan (the most poetical of -Massinger’s productions), Sforza’s resolution to destroy his wife, -rather than bear the thought of her surviving him, is as much out -of the verge of nature and probability, as it is unexpected and revolting, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>from the want of any circumstances of palliation leading to it. -It stands out alone, a pure piece of voluntary atrocity, which seems -not the dictate of passion, but a start of phrensy; as cold-blooded in -the execution as it is extravagant in the conception.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Again, Francesco, in this play, is a person whose actions we are -at a loss to explain till the conclusion of the piece, when the attempt -to account for them from motives originally amiable and generous, -only produces a double sense of incongruity, and instead of satisfying -the mind, renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours to seduce -the wife of his benefactor, he then (failing) attempts her death, -slanders her foully, and wantonly causes her to be slain by the hand -of her husband, and has him poisoned by a nefarious stratagem, and -all this to appease a high sense of injured honour, that ‘felt a stain -like a wound,’ and from the tender overflowings of fraternal affection, -his sister having, it appears, been formerly betrothed to, and afterwards -deserted by, the Duke of Milan. Sir Giles Overreach is -the most successful and striking effort of Massinger’s pen, and the -best known to the reader, but it will hardly be thought to form an -exception to the tenour of the above remarks.<a id='r24' /><a href='#f24' class='c015'><sup>[24]</sup></a> The same spirit of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>caprice and sullenness survives in Rowe’s Fair Penitent, taken from -this author’s Fatal Dowry.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some others, -from whose judgment I dissent with diffidence. It has been -lamented that the play of his which has been most admired (’Tis -Pity She’s a Whore) had not a less exceptionable subject. I do -not know, but I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is -that which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The repulsiveness -of the story is what gives it its critical interest; for it is a studiously -prosaic statement of facts, and naked declaration of passions. It was -not the least of Shakespear’s praise, that he never tampered with -unfair subjects. His genius was above it; his taste kept aloof from -it. I do not deny the power of simple painting and polished style in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>this tragedy in general, and of a great deal more in some few of the -scenes, particularly in the quarrel between Annabella and her husband, -which is wrought up to a pitch of demoniac scorn and phrensy with -consummate art and knowledge; but I do not find much other power -in the author (generally speaking) than that of playing with edged -tools, and knowing the use of poisoned weapons. And what confirms -me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency of his other plays. -Except the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I think extravagant—others -may think it sublime, and be right) they are merely -exercises of style and effusions of wire-drawn sentiment. Where they -have not the sting of illicit passion, they are quite pointless, and seem -painted on gauze, or spun of cobwebs. The affected brevity and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>division of some of the lines into hemistichs, &c. so as to make in one -case a mathematical stair-case of the words and answers given to -different speakers,<a id='r25' /><a href='#f25' class='c015'><sup>[25]</sup></a> is an instance of frigid and ridiculous pedantry. -An artificial elaborateness is the general characteristic of Ford’s -style. In this respect his plays resemble Miss Baillie’s more than -any others I am acquainted with, and are quite distinct from the -exuberance and unstudied force which characterised his immediate -predecessors. There is too much of scholastic subtlety, an innate -perversity of understanding or predominance of will, which either -seeks the irritation of inadmissible subjects, or to stimulate its own -faculties by taking the most barren, and making something out of -nothing, in a spirit of contradiction. He does not <em>draw along with</em> -the reader: he does not work upon our sympathy, but on our -antipathy or our indifference; and there is as little of the social or -gregarious principle in his productions as there appears to have been -in his personal habits, if we are to believe Sir John Suckling, who -says of him in the Sessions of the Poets—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘In the dumps John Ford alone by himself sat</div> - <div class='line'>With folded arms and melancholy hat.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I do not remember without considerable effort the plot or persons -of most of his plays—Perkin Warbeck, The Lover’s Melancholy, -Love’s Sacrifice, and the rest. There is little character, except of -the most evanescent or extravagant kind (to which last class we may -refer that of the sister of Calantha in the Broken Heart)—little -imagery or fancy, and no action. It is but fair however to give a -scene or two, in illustration of these remarks (or in confutation of -them, if they are wrong) and I shall take the concluding one of the -Broken Heart, which is held up as the author’s master-piece.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div>‘<span class='sc'>Scene</span>—<em>A Room in the Palace.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c028'><em>Loud Music.</em>—<em>Enter</em> Euphranea, <em>led by</em> Groneas <em>and</em> Hemophil: Prophilus, -<em>led by</em> Christalla <em>and</em> Philema: Nearchus <em>supporting</em> Calantha, Crotolon, -<em>and</em> Amelus.—(<em>Music ceases</em>).</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus; on whom attend they?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Crot.</em> My son, gracious princess,</div> - <div class='line'>Whisper’d some new device, to which these revels</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>Should be but usher: wherein I conceive</div> - <div class='line'>Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes,</div> - <div class='line'>Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes</div> - <div class='line'>Is with the king?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c029'><em>Crot.</em></span> He is.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c030'><em>Cal.</em></span> On to the dance!</div> - <div class='line'>Dear cousin, hand you the bride: the bridegroom must be</div> - <div class='line'>Entrusted to my courtship. Be not jealous,</div> - <div class='line'>Euphranea; I shall scarcely prove a temptress.</div> - <div class='line'>Fall to our dance!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>(<em>They dance the first change, during which enter</em> Armostes).</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arm.</em> (<em>in a whisper to</em> Calantha). The king your father’s dead.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> To the other change.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c031'><em>Arm.</em></span> Is’t possible?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'><em>Another Dance.</em>—<em>Enter</em> Bassanes.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Bass.</em> (<em>in a whisper to</em> Calantha). Oh! Madam,</div> - <div class='line'>Panthea, poor Panthea’s starv’d.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> Beshrew thee!</div> - <div class='line'>Lead to the next!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Bass.</em> Amazement dulls my senses.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'><em>Another Dance.</em>—<em>Enter</em> Orgilus.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Org.</em> Brave Ithocles is murder’d, murder’d cruelly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in42'>(<em>Aside to</em> Calantha).</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> How dull this music sounds! Strike up more sprightly:</div> - <div class='line'>Our footings are not active like our heart,<a id='r26' /><a href='#f26' class='c015'><sup>[26]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line'>Which treads the nimbler measure.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Org.</em> I am thunderstruck.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in11'><em>The last Change.</em>—<em>Music ceases.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> So; Let us breathe awhile. Hath not this motion</div> - <div class='line'>Rais’d fresher colours on our cheek?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Near.</em> Sweet princess,</div> - <div class='line'>A perfect purity of blood enamels</div> - <div class='line'>The beauty of your white.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> We all look cheerfully:</div> - <div class='line'>And, cousin, ’tis methinks a rare presumption</div> - <div class='line'>In any who prefers our lawful pleasures</div> - <div class='line'>Before their own sour censure, to interrupt</div> - <div class='line'>The custom of this ceremony bluntly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Near.</em> None dares, lady.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> Yes, yes; some hollow voice deliver’d to me</div> - <div class='line'>How that the king was dead.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Arm.</em> The king is dead,’ &c. &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in masquerade. -Nor is it, I think, accounted for, though it may be in part redeemed -by her solemn address at the altar to the dead body of her husband.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Cal.</em> Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow</div> - <div class='line'>Of my contracted lord! Bear witness all,</div> - <div class='line'>I put my mother’s wedding-ring upon</div> - <div class='line'>His finger; ’twas my father’s last bequest:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>(<em>Places a ring on the finger of</em> Ithocles).</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am:</div> - <div class='line'>Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords,</div> - <div class='line'>I but deceiv’d your eyes with antic gesture,</div> - <div class='line'>When one news strait came huddling on another</div> - <div class='line'>Of death, and death, and death: still I danc’d forward;</div> - <div class='line'>But it struck home and here, and in an instant.</div> - <div class='line'>Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries</div> - <div class='line'>Can vow a present end to all their sorrow’s,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.</div> - <div class='line'>They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings:</div> - <div class='line'>Let me die smiling.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Near.</em> ’Tis a truth too ominous.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Cal.</em> One kiss on these cold lips—my last: crack, crack:</div> - <div class='line'>Argos, now Sparta’s king, command the voices</div> - <div class='line'>Which wait at th’ altar, now to sing the song</div> - <div class='line'>I fitted for my end.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>And then, after the song, she dies.</p> - -<p class='c008'>This is the true false gallop of sentiment: any thing more artificial -and mechanical I cannot conceive. The boldness of the attempt, -however, the very extravagance, might argue the reliance of the -author on the truth of feeling prompting him to hazard it; but the -whole scene is a forced transposition of that already alluded to in -Marston’s Malcontent. Even the form of the stage directions is the -same.</p> - -<p class='c028'>‘<em>Enter</em> Mendozo <em>supporting the Duchess</em>; Guerrino; <em>the Ladies that are on -the stage rise</em>. Ferrardo <em>ushers in the</em> Duchess; <em>then takes a Lady to -tread a measure</em>.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Aurelia.</em> We will dance: music: we will dance....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in23'><em>Enter</em> Prepasso.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Who saw the Duke? the Duke?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Aurelia.</em> Music.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Prepasso.</em> The Duke? is the Duke returned?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Aurelia.</em> Music.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in25'><em>Enter</em> Celso.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span><em>Aurelia.</em> We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private retirement; -we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div><em>Enter a</em> Page.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Celso.</em> Boy, thy master? where’s the Duke?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Page.</em> Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless limbs; -he told me he was heavy, would sleep: bid me walk off, for the strength -of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams: I strait obeyed, nor ever saw -him since; but wheresoe’er he is, he’s sad.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Aurelia.</em> Music, sound high, as in our heart; sound high.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c027'> - <div><em>Enter</em> Malevole <em>and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Malevole.</em> The Duke? Peace, the Duke is dead.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Aurelia.</em> Music!’</p> - -<div class='c016'><em>Act IV. Scene 3.</em></div> - -<p class='c011'>The passage in Ford appears to me an ill-judged copy from this. -That a woman should call for music, and dance on in spite of the -death of her husband whom she hates, without regard to common -decency, is but too possible: that she should dance on with the same -heroic perseverance in spite of the death of her husband, of her -father, and of every one else whom she loves, from regard to common -courtesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The passions may -silence the voice of humanity, but it is, I think, equally against -probability and decorum to make both the passions and the voice of -humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form of -outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the strongest and most -uncontroulable feelings can only be justified from necessity, for some -great purpose, which is not the case in Ford’s play; or it must be -done for the effect and <em>eclat</em> of the thing, which is not fortitude but -affectation. Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy on this passage in -the Broken Heart has failed (as far as I can judge) in establishing -the parallel between this uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the -story of the Spartan Boy.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It may be proper to remark here, that most of the great men of -the period I have treated of (except the greatest of all, and one -other) were men of classical education. They were learned men in -an unlettered age; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age. -This circumstance should be taken into the account in a theory of -the dramatic genius of that age. Except Shakespear, nearly all of -them, indeed, came up from Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately -began to write for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to -London in those days must have had a singular effect upon a young -man of genius, almost like visiting Babylon or Susa, or a journey to -the other world. The stage (even as it then was), after the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>recluseness and austerity of a college-life, must have appeared like -Armida’s enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side</div> - <div class='line'>Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,</div> - <div class='line'>Or dreams he sees; while overhead the moon</div> - <div class='line'>Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth</div> - <div class='line'>Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance</div> - <div class='line'>Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:</div> - <div class='line'>At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>So our young novices must have felt when they first saw the magic of -the scene, and heard its syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the -scholar’s pride: and the joy that streamed from their eyes at that -fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all -its pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic throng, -still has left a long lingering glory behind it; and though now ‘deaf -the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue,’ lives in their eloquent -page, ‘informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die!’</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE V<br /> <span class='small'>ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC., THE FOUR P’S, THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS, GAMMER GURTON’S NEEDLE, AND OTHER WORKS.</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>I shall, in this Lecture, turn back to give some account of single -plays, poems, etc.; the authors of which are either not known or not -very eminent, and the productions themselves, in general, more -remarkable for their singularity, or as specimens of the style and -manners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poetical excellence. -There are many more works of this kind, however, remaining, than -I can pretend to give an account of; and what I shall chiefly aim at, -will be, to excite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to satisfy it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The <span class='sc'>Four P’s</span> is an interlude, or comic dialogue, in verse, between -a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each -exposes the tricks of his own and his neighbours’ profession, with -much humour and shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood, -the Epigrammatist, who flourished chiefly in the reign of Henry <span class='fss'>VIII.</span>, -was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems -to have had a congenial spirit, and died abroad, in consequence of his -<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>devotion to the Roman Catholic cause, about the year 1565. His -zeal, however, on this head, does not seem to have blinded his judgment, -or to have prevented him from using the utmost freedom and -severity in lashing the abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have -looked ‘with the malice of a friend.’ The Four P’s bears the date -of 1547. It is very curious, as an evidence both of the wit, the -manners, and opinions of the time. Each of the parties in the -dialogue gives an account of the boasted advantages of his own -particular calling, that is, of the frauds which he practises on credulity -and ignorance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In fact, they -all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the contest becomes a -jest, and it ends in a wager, who shall tell the greatest lie? when the -prize is adjudged to him, who says, that he had found a patient -woman.<a id='r27' /><a href='#f27' class='c015'><sup>[27]</sup></a> The common superstitions (here recorded) in civil and -religious matters, are almost incredible; and the chopped logic, which -was the fashion of the time, and which comes in aid of the author’s -shrewd and pleasant sallies to expose them, is highly entertaining. -Thus the Pardoner, scorning the Palmer’s long pilgrimages and -circuitous route to Heaven, flouts him to his face, and vaunts his own -superior pretensions.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Pard.</em> By the first part of this last tale,</div> - <div class='line'>It seemeth you came of late from the ale:</div> - <div class='line'>For reason on your side so far doth fail,</div> - <div class='line'>That you leave reasoning, and begin to rail.</div> - <div class='line'>Wherein you forget your own part clearly,</div> - <div class='line'>For you be as untrue as I:</div> - <div class='line'>But in one point you are beyond me,</div> - <div class='line'>For you may lie by authority,</div> - <div class='line'>And all that have wandered so far,</div> - <div class='line'>That no man can be their controller.</div> - <div class='line'>And where you esteem your labour so much,</div> - <div class='line'>I say yet again, my pardons are such,</div> - <div class='line'>That if there were a thousand souls on a heap,</div> - <div class='line'>I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep,</div> - <div class='line'>As you have brought yourself on pilgrimage,</div> - <div class='line'>In the last quarter of your voyage,</div> - <div class='line'>Which is far a this side heaven, by God:</div> - <div class='line'>There your labour and pardon is odd.</div> - <div class='line'>With small cost without any pain,</div> - <div class='line'>These pardons bring them to heaven plain:</div> - <div class='line'>Give me but a penny or two-pence,</div> - <div class='line'>And as soon as the soul departeth hence,</div> - <div class='line'>In half an hour, or three-quarters at the most,</div> - <div class='line'>The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>The Poticary does not approve of this arrogance of the Friar, and -undertakes, in mood and figure, to prove them both ‘false knaves.’ -It is he, he says, who sends most souls to heaven, and who ought, -therefore, to have the credit of it.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘No soul, ye know, entereth heaven-gate,</div> - <div class='line'>‘Till from the body he be separate:</div> - <div class='line'>And whom have ye known die honestly,</div> - <div class='line'>Without help of the Poticary?</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, all that cometh to our handling,</div> - <div class='line'>Except ye hap to come to hanging....</div> - <div class='line'>Since of our souls the multitude</div> - <div class='line'>I send to heaven, when all is view’d</div> - <div class='line'>Who should but I then altogether</div> - <div class='line'>Have thank of all their coming thither?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘If ye kill’d a thousand in an hour’s space,</div> - <div class='line'>When come they to heaven, dying out of grace?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>But the Poticary not so baffled, retorts—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied;</div> - <div class='line'>When come they to heaven, if they never died?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But when ye feel your conscience ready,</div> - <div class='line'>I can send you to heaven very quickly.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Pedlar finds out the weak side of his new companions, and -tells them very bluntly, on their referring their dispute to him, a piece -of his mind.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Now have I found one mastery,</div> - <div class='line'>That ye can do indifferently;</div> - <div class='line'>And it is neither selling nor buying,</div> - <div class='line'>But even only very lying.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>At this game of imposture, the cunning dealer in pins and laces -undertakes to judge their merits; and they accordingly set to work -like regular graduates. The Pardoner takes the lead, with an account -of the virtues of his relics; and here we may find a plentiful mixture -of Popish superstition and indecency. The bigotry of any age is by -no means a test of its piety, or even sincerity. Men seemed to make -themselves amends for the enormity of their faith by levity of feeling, -as well as by laxity of principle; and in the indifference or ridicule -with which they treated the wilful absurdities and extravagances to -which they hood-winked their understandings, almost resembled -children playing at blindman’s buff, who grope their way in the dark, -and make blunders on purpose to laugh at their own idleness and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>folly. The sort of mummery at which Popish bigotry used to play -at the time when this old comedy was written, was not quite so -harmless as blind-man’s buff: what was sport to her, was death to -others. She laughed at her own mockeries of common sense and -true religion, and murdered while she laughed. The tragic farce -was no longer to be borne, and it was partly put an end to. At -present, though her eyes are blindfolded, her hands are tied fast -behind her, like the false Duessa’s. The sturdy genius of modern -philosophy has got her in much the same situation that Count Fathom -has the old woman that he lashes before him from the robbers’ cave -in the forest. In the following dialogue of this lively satire, the most -sacred mysteries of the Catholic faith are mixed up with its idlest -legends by old Heywood, who was a martyr to his religious zeal -without the slightest sense of impropriety. The Pardoner cries out -in one place (like a lusty Friar John, or a trusty Friar Onion)—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen,</div> - <div class='line'>For ghostly riches they have no cousin;</div> - <div class='line'>And moreover, to me they bring</div> - <div class='line'>Sufficient succour for my living.</div> - <div class='line'>And here be relics of such a kind,</div> - <div class='line'>As in this world no man can find.</div> - <div class='line'>Kneel down all three, and when ye leave kissing,</div> - <div class='line'>Who list to offer shall have my blessing.</div> - <div class='line'>Friends, here shall ye see even anon,</div> - <div class='line'>Of All-Hallows the blessed jaw-bone.</div> - <div class='line'>Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper;</div> - <div class='line'>My friends unfeigned, here is a slipper</div> - <div class='line'>Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure.—</div> - <div class='line'>Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk:</div> - <div class='line'>Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work,</div> - <div class='line'>May happily lose part of his eye-sight,</div> - <div class='line'>But not all till he be blind outright.</div> - <div class='line'>Kiss it hardly with good devotion.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pot.</em> This kiss shall bring us much promotion:</div> - <div class='line'>Fogh, by St. Saviour I never kiss’d a worse.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For by All-Hallows, yet methinketh,</div> - <div class='line'>That All-Hallows’ breath stinketh.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Palm.</em> Ye judge All-Hallows’ breath unknown:</div> - <div class='line'>If any breath stink, it is your own.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pot.</em> I know mine own breath from All-Hallows,</div> - <div class='line'>Or else it were time to kiss the gallows.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pard.</em> Nay, Sirs, here may ye see</div> - <div class='line'>The great toe of the Trinity;</div> - <div class='line'>Who to this toe any money voweth,</div> - <div class='line'>And once may roll it in his mouth,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>All his life after I undertake,</div> - <div class='line'>He shall never be vex’d with the tooth-ache.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pot.</em> I pray you turn that relic about;</div> - <div class='line'>Either the Trinity had the gout;</div> - <div class='line'>Or else, because it is three toes in one,</div> - <div class='line'>God made it as much as three toes alone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Pard.</em> Well, let that pass, and look upon this:</div> - <div class='line'>Here is a relic that doth not miss</div> - <div class='line'>To help the least as well as the most:</div> - <div class='line'>This is a buttock-bone of Penticost.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Here is a box full of humble bees,</div> - <div class='line'>That stung Eve as she sat on her knees</div> - <div class='line'>Tasting the fruit to her forbidden:</div> - <div class='line'>Who kisseth the bees within this hidden,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall have as much pardon of right,</div> - <div class='line'>As for any relic he kiss’d this night....</div> - <div class='line'>Good friends, I have yet here in this glass,</div> - <div class='line'>Which on the drink at the wedding was</div> - <div class='line'>Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly:</div> - <div class='line'>If ye honour this relic devoutly,</div> - <div class='line'>Although ye thirst no whit the less,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless.</div> - <div class='line'>After which drinking, ye shall be as meet</div> - <div class='line'>To stand on your head as on your feet.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The same sort of significant irony runs through the Apothecary’s -knavish enumeration of miraculous cures in his possession.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘For this medicine helpeth one and other,</div> - <div class='line'>And bringeth them in case that they need no other.</div> - <div class='line'>Here is a <em>syrapus de Byzansis</em>,</div> - <div class='line'>A little thing is enough of this;</div> - <div class='line'>For even the weight of one scrippal</div> - <div class='line'>Shall make you as strong as a cripple....</div> - <div class='line'>These be the things that break all strife,</div> - <div class='line'>Between man’s sickness and his life.</div> - <div class='line'>From all pain these shall you deliver,</div> - <div class='line'>And set you even at rest forever.</div> - <div class='line'>Here is a medicine no more like the same,</div> - <div class='line'>Which commonly is called thus by name....</div> - <div class='line'>Not one thing here particularly,</div> - <div class='line'>But worketh universally;</div> - <div class='line'>For it doth me as much good when I sell it,</div> - <div class='line'>As all the buyers that take it or smell it.</div> - <div class='line'>If any reward may entreat ye,</div> - <div class='line'>I beseech your mastership be good to me,</div> - <div class='line'>And ye shall have a box of marmalade,</div> - <div class='line'>So fine that you may dig it with a spade.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>After these quaint but pointed examples of it, Swift’s boast with -respect to the invention of irony,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Which I was born to introduce,</div> - <div class='line'>Refin’d it first, and shew’d its use,’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>can be allowed to be true only in part.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The controversy between them being undecided, the Apothecary, -to clench his pretensions ‘as a liar of the first magnitude,’ by a <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">coup-de-grace</span></i>, -says to the Pedlar, ‘You are an honest man,’ but this home-thrust -is somehow ingeniously parried. The Apothecary and -Pardoner fall to their narrative vein again; and the latter tells a -story of fetching a young woman from the lower world, from which -I shall only give one specimen more as an instance of ludicrous and -fantastic exaggeration. By the help of a passport from Lucifer, -‘given in the furnace of our palace,’ he obtains a safe conduct from -one of the subordinate imps to his master’s presence.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘This devil and I walked arm in arm</div> - <div class='line'>So far, ‘till he had brought me thither,</div> - <div class='line'>Where all the devils of hell together</div> - <div class='line'>Stood in array in such apparel,</div> - <div class='line'>As for that day there meetly fell.</div> - <div class='line'>Their horns well gilt, their claws full clean,</div> - <div class='line'>Their tails well kempt, and as I ween,</div> - <div class='line'>With sothery butter their bodies anointed;</div> - <div class='line'>I never saw devils so well appointed.</div> - <div class='line'>The master-devil sat in his jacket,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the souls were playing at racket.</div> - <div class='line'>None other rackets they had in hand,</div> - <div class='line'>Save every soul a good fire-brand;</div> - <div class='line'>Wherewith they play’d so prettily,</div> - <div class='line'>That Lucifer laugh’d merrily.</div> - <div class='line'>And all the residue of the fiends</div> - <div class='line'>Did laugh thereat full well like friends.</div> - <div class='line'>But of my friend I saw no whit,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor durst not ask for her as yet.</div> - <div class='line'>Anon all this rout was brought in silence,</div> - <div class='line'>And I by an usher brought to presence</div> - <div class='line'>Of Lucifer; then low, as well I could,</div> - <div class='line'>I kneeled, which he so well allow’d</div> - <div class='line'>That thus he beck’d, and by St. Antony</div> - <div class='line'>He smiled on me well-favour’dly,</div> - <div class='line'>Bending his brows as broad as barn-doors;</div> - <div class='line'>Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs;</div> - <div class='line'>Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels;</div> - <div class='line'>Flashing the fire out of his nostrils;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously,</div> - <div class='line'>That methought time to fall to flattery,</div> - <div class='line'>Wherewith I told, as I shall tell;</div> - <div class='line'>Oh pleasant picture! O prince of hell!’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The piece concludes with some good wholesome advice from the -Pedlar, who here, as well as in the poem of the Excursion, performs -the part of Old Morality; but he does not seem, as in the latter -case, to be acquainted with the ‘mighty stream of Tendency.’ He -is more ‘full of wise saws than modern instances;’ as prosing, but -less paradoxical!</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘But where ye doubt, the truth not knowing,</div> - <div class='line'>Believing the best, good may be growing.</div> - <div class='line'>In judging the best, no harm at the least:</div> - <div class='line'>In judging the worst, no good at the best.</div> - <div class='line'>But best in these things it seemeth to me,</div> - <div class='line'>To make no judgment upon ye;</div> - <div class='line'>But as the church does judge or take them,</div> - <div class='line'>So do ye receive or forsake them.</div> - <div class='line'>And so be you sure you cannot err,</div> - <div class='line'>But may be a fruitful follower.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Nothing can be clearer than this.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The <span class='sc'>Return from Parnassus</span> was ‘first publicly acted,’ as the -title-page imports, ‘by the Students in St. John’s College, in -Cambridge.’ It is a very singular, a very ingenious, and as I think, -a very interesting performance. It contains criticisms on contemporary -authors, strictures on living manners, and the earliest -denunciation (I know of) of the miseries and unprofitableness of a -scholar’s life. The only part I object to in our author’s criticism -is his abuse of Marston; and that, not because he says what is -severe, but because he says what is not true of him. Anger may -sharpen our insight into men’s defects; but nothing should make -us blind to their excellences. The whole passage is, however, so -curious in itself (like the Edinburgh Review lately published for -the year 1755) that I cannot forbear quoting a great part of it. We -find in the list of candidates for praise many a name—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That like a trumpet, makes the spirits dance:’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>there are others that have long since sunk to the bottom of the -stream of time, and no Humane Society of Antiquarians and Critics -is ever likely to fish them up again.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Read the names,’ says Judicio.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span><em>‘Ingenioso.</em> So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Edmund Spenser,</div> - <div class='line'>Henry Constable,</div> - <div class='line'>Thomas Lodge,</div> - <div class='line'>Samuel Daniel,</div> - <div class='line'>Thomas Watson,</div> - <div class='line'>Michael Drayton,</div> - <div class='line'>John Davis,</div> - <div class='line'>John Marston,</div> - <div class='line'>Kit. Marlowe,</div> - <div class='line'>William Shakespear;’ and one Churchyard [who is consigned to an untimely grave.]</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'>‘Good men and true, stand together, hear your censure: what’s thy -judgment of Spenser?</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jud.</em> A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po;</div> - <div class='line'>A shriller nightingale than ever blest</div> - <div class='line'>The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.</div> - <div class='line'>Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,</div> - <div class='line'>While he did chaunt his rural minstrelsy.</div> - <div class='line'>Attentive was full many a dainty ear:</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,</div> - <div class='line'>While sweetly of his Faëry Queen he sung;</div> - <div class='line'>While to the water’s fall he tuned her fame,</div> - <div class='line'>And in each bark engrav’d Eliza’s name.</div> - <div class='line'>And yet for all, this unregarding soil</div> - <div class='line'>Unlaced the line of his desired life,</div> - <div class='line'>Denying maintenance for his dear relief;</div> - <div class='line'>Careless even to prevent his exequy,</div> - <div class='line'>Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Ing.</em> Pity it is that gentler wits should breed,</div> - <div class='line'>Where thick-skinn’d chuffs laugh at a scholar’s need.</div> - <div class='line'>But softly may our honour’d ashes rest,</div> - <div class='line'>That lie by merry Chaucer’s noble chest.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'>But I pray thee proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud of -myself, as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with thine. -Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jud.</em> Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear,</div> - <div class='line'>And lays it up in willing prisonment:</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage</div> - <div class='line'>War with the proudest big Italian,</div> - <div class='line'>That melts his heart in sugar’d sonnetting.</div> - <div class='line'>Only let him more sparingly make use</div> - <div class='line'>Of others’ wit, and use his own the more,</div> - <div class='line'>That well may scorn base imitation.</div> - <div class='line'>For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet subject to a critic’s marginal:</div> - <div class='line'>Lodge for his oar in every paper boat,</div> - <div class='line'>He that turns over Galen every day,</div> - <div class='line'>To sit and simper Euphues’ legacy.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Ing.</em> Michael Drayton.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jud.</em> Drayton’s sweet Muse is like a sanguine dye,</div> - <div class='line'>Able to ravish the rash gazer’s eye.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span><em>Ing.</em> However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times; and that -is this, he cannot swagger in a tavern, nor domineer in a hot-house. John -Davis—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jud.</em> Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,</div> - <div class='line'>That jerk in hidden charms these looser times:</div> - <div class='line'>Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,</div> - <div class='line'>Is graced with a fair and sweeping train.</div> - <div class='line'>John Marston—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jud.</em> What, Monsieur Kinsayder, put up man, put up for shame,</div> - <div class='line'>Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,</div> - <div class='line'>Withouten bands or garters’ ornament.</div> - <div class='line'>He quaffs a cup of Frenchman’s helicon,</div> - <div class='line'>Then royster doyster in his oily terms</div> - <div class='line'>Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe’er he meets,</div> - <div class='line'>And strews about Ram-alley meditations.</div> - <div class='line'>Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch’d terms,</div> - <div class='line'>Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?</div> - <div class='line'>Give him plain naked words stript from their shirts,</div> - <div class='line'>That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Ing.</em> Christopher Marlowe—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jud.</em> Marlowe was happy in his buskin’d Muse;</div> - <div class='line'>Alas! unhappy in his life and end.</div> - <div class='line'>Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,</div> - <div class='line'>Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Ing.</em> Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got</div> - <div class='line'>A tragic penman for a dreary plot.</div> - <div class='line'>Benjamin Jonson.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Jud.</em> The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ing.</em> A mere empirick, one that gets what he hath by observation, and -makes only nature privy to what he endites: so slow an inventor, that he -were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying, a blood whoreson, -as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of -a brick.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>William Shakespear.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jud.</em> Who loves Adonis’ love, or Lucrece’ rape,</div> - <div class='line'>His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life,</div> - <div class='line'>Could but a graver subject him content,</div> - <div class='line'>Without love’s lazy foolish languishment.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>This passage might seem to ascertain the date of the piece, as it -must be supposed to have been written before Shakespeare had -become known as a dramatic poet. Yet he afterwards introduces -Kempe the actor talking with Burbage, and saying, ‘Few (of the -University) pen plays well: they smell too much of that writer -Ovid, and of that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of -Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here’s our fellow Shakespear puts -them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson too.’—There is a good deal -<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>of discontent in all this; but the author complains of want of success -in a former attempt, and appears not to have been on good terms -with fortune. The miseries of a poet’s life form one of the -favourite topics of The Return from Parnassus, and are treated, as -if by some one who had ‘felt them knowingly.’ Thus Philomusus -and Studioso chaunt their griefs in concert.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Phil.</em> Bann’d be those hours, when ‘mongst the learned throng,</div> - <div class='line'>By Granta’s muddy bank we whilom sung.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Stud.</em> Bann’d be that hill which learned wits adore,</div> - <div class='line'>Where erst we spent our stock and little store.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Phil.</em> Bann’d be those musty mews, where we have spent</div> - <div class='line'>Our youthful days in paled languishment.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Stud.</em> Bann’d be those cozening arts that wrought our woe,</div> - <div class='line'>Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Phil.</em> Curst be our thoughts whene’er they dream of hope;</div> - <div class='line'>Bann’d be those haps that henceforth flatter us,</div> - <div class='line'>When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye,</div> - <div class='line'>From our first birth until our burying day.</div> - <div class='line'>In our first gamesome age, our doting sires</div> - <div class='line'>Carked and car’d to have us lettered:</div> - <div class='line'>Sent us to Cambridge where our oil is spent:</div> - <div class='line'>Us our kind college from the teat did tent,</div> - <div class='line'>And forced us walk before we weaned were.</div> - <div class='line'>From that time since wandered have we still</div> - <div class='line'>In the wide world, urg’d by our forced will;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor ever have we happy fortune tried;</div> - <div class='line'>Then why should hope with our rent state abide?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>‘Out of our proof we speak.’—This sorry matter-of-fact retrospect -of the evils of a college-life is very different from the hypothetical -aspirations after its incommunicable blessings expressed by a living -writer of true genius and a lover of true learning, who does not -seem to have been cured of the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of -classic lore, two hundred years after its vanity and vexation of spirit -had been denounced in the Return from Parnassus:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I was not train’d in Academic bowers;</div> - <div class='line'>And to those learned streams I nothing owe,</div> - <div class='line'>Which copious from those fair twin founts do flow:</div> - <div class='line'>Mine have been any thing but studious hours.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet can I fancy, wandering ‘mid thy towers,</div> - <div class='line'>Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap.</div> - <div class='line'>My brow seems tightening with the Doctor’s cap;</div> - <div class='line'>And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers.</div> - <div class='line'>Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech;</div> - <div class='line'>Old Ramus’ ghost is busy at my brain,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>And my skull teems with notions infinite:</div> - <div class='line'>Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach</div> - <div class='line'>Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen’s vein;</div> - <div class='line'>And half had stagger’d that stout Stagyrite.<a id='r28' /><a href='#f28' class='c015'><sup>[28]</sup></a></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Thus it is that our treasure always lies, where our knowledge does -not; and fortunately enough perhaps; for the empire of imagination -is wider and more prolific than that of experience.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The author of the old play, whoever he was, appears to have belonged -to that class of mortals, who, as Fielding has it, feed upon -their own hearts; who are egotists the wrong way, ‘made desperate -by too quick a sense of constant infelicity;’ and have the same -intense uneasy consciousness of their own defects that most men -have self-complacency in their supposed advantages. Thus venting -the dribblets of his spleen still upon himself, he prompts the Page -to say, ‘A mere scholar is a creature that can strike fire in the -morning at his tinder-box, put on a pair of lined slippers, sit reuming -till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings; one that -hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a licence to spit: or if you will -have him defined by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good -leg, one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly, one that cannot -ride a horse without spur-galling, one that cannot salute a woman, -and look on her directly, one that cannot——’</p> - -<p class='c011'>If I was not afraid of being tedious, I might here give the examination -of Signor Immerito, a raw ignorant clown (whose father -has purchased him a living) by Sir Roderick and the Recorder, -which throws considerable light on the state of wit and humour, -as well as of ecclesiastical patronage in the reign of Elizabeth. It -is to be recollected, that one of the titles of this play is A Scourge -for Simony.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘<em>Rec.</em> For as much as nature has done her part in making you a handsome -likely man—in the next place some art is requisite for the perfection -of nature: for the trial whereof, at the request of my worshipful friend, I -will in some sort propound questions fit to be resolved by one of your -profession. Say what is a person, that was never at the university?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> A person that was never in the university, is a living creature that -can eat a tythe pig.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rec.</em> Very well answered: but you should have added—and must be -officious to his patron. Write down that answer, to shew his learning in -logic.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> Yea, boy, write that down: very learnedly, in good faith. I -pray now let me ask you one question that I remember, whether is the -masculine gender or the feminine more worthy?</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span><em>Im.</em> The feminine, Sir.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> The right answer, the right answer. In good faith, I have -been of that mind always: write, boy, that, to shew he is a grammarian.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rec.</em> What university are you of?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> Of none.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> He tells truth: to tell truth is an excellent virtue: boy, make -two heads, one for his learning, another for his virtues, and refer this to -the head of his virtues, not of his learning. Now, Master Recorder, if it -please you, I will examine him in an author, that will sound him to the -depth; a book of astronomy, otherwise called an almanack.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rec.</em> Very good, Sir Roderick; it were to be wished there were no -other book of humanity; then there would not be such busy state-prying -fellows as are now a-days. Proceed, good Sir.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> What is the dominical letter?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> C, Sir, and please your worship.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> A very good answer, a very good answer, the very answer of -the book. Write down that, and refer it to his skill in philosophy. -How many days hath September?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, February -hath twenty-eight alone, and all the rest hath thirty and one.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> Very learnedly, in good faith: he hath also a smack in poetry. -Write down that, boy, to shew his learning in poetry. How many miles -from Waltham to London?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> Twelve, Sir.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> How many from New Market to Grantham?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> Ten, Sir.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> Write down that answer of his, to shew his learning in -arithmetic.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Page.</em> He must needs be a good arithmetician that counted [out] money -so lately.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> When is the new moon?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> The last quarter, the 5th day, at two of the clock, and thirty-eight -minutes in the morning.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> How call you him that is weather-wise?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rec.</em> A good astronomer.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> Sirrah, boy, write him down for a good astronomer. What -day of the month lights the queen’s day on?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> The 17th of November.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> Boy, refer this to his virtues, and write him down a good -subject.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Page.</em> Faith, he were an excellent subject for two or three good wits: -he would make a fine ass for an ape to ride upon.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> And these shall suffice for the parts of his learning. Now it -remains to try, whether you be a man of a good utterance, that is, whether -you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as also chide the -boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the dogs: let me hear your -voice.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> If any man or woman—</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span><em>Sir Rad.</em> That’s too high.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> If any man or woman—</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> That’s too low.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Im.</em> If any man or woman can tell any tidings of a horse with four feet, -two ears, that did stray about the seventh hour, three minutes in the forenoon, -the fifth day—</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> Boy, write him down for a good utterance. Master Recorder, -I think he hath been examined sufficiently.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rec.</em> Aye, Sir Roderick, ’tis so: we have tried him very thoroughly.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Page.</em> Aye, we have taken an inventory of his good parts, and prized -them accordingly.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Rad.</em> Signior Immerito, forasmuch as we have made a double trial of -thee, the one of your learning, the other of your erudition; it is expedient, -also, in the next place, to give you a few exhortations, considering the -greatest clerks are not the wisest men: this is therefore first to exhort you -to abstain from controversies; secondly, not to gird at men of worship, -such as myself, but to use yourself discreetly; thirdly, not to speak when -any man or woman coughs: do so, and in so doing, I will persevere to be -your worshipful friend and loving patron. Lead Immerito in to my son, -and let him dispatch him, and remember my tythes to be reserved, paying -twelve-pence a-year.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Gammer Gurton’s Needle<a id='r29' /><a href='#f29' class='c015'><sup>[29]</sup></a> is a still older and more curious relic; -and is a regular comedy in five acts, built on the circumstance of an -old woman having lost her needle, which throws the whole village -into confusion, till it is at last providentially found sticking in an -unlucky part of Hodge’s dress. This must evidently have happened -at a time when the manufacturers of Sheffield and Birmingham had -not reached the height of perfection which they have at present done. -Suppose that there is only one sewing-needle in a parish, that the -owner, a diligent notable old dame, loses it, that a mischief-making -wag sets it about that another old woman has stolen this valuable -instrument of household industry, that strict search is made every -where in-doors for it in vain, and that then the incensed parties sally -forth to scold it out in the open air, till words end in blows, and -the affair is referred over to the higher authorities, and we shall have -an exact idea (though perhaps not so lively a one) of what passes in -this authentic document between Gammer Gurton and her Gossip -Dame Chat, Dickon the Bedlam (the causer of these harms), -Hodge, Gammer Gurton’s servant, Tyb her maid, Cocke, her -‘prentice boy, Doll, Scapethrift, Master Baillie his master, Doctor -Rat, the Curate, and Gib the Cat, who may be fairly reckoned one -of the <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">dramatis personæ</span></i>, and performs no mean part.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>‘Gog’s crosse, Gammer’ (says Cocke the boy), ‘if ye will laugh, look in but at the door,</div> - <div class='line'>And see how Hodge lieth tumbling and tossing amidst the floor,</div> - <div class='line'>Raking there, some fire to find among the ashes dead’</div> - <div class='line in4'>[That is, to light a candle to look for the lost needle],</div> - <div class='line'>‘Where there is not a spark so big as a pin’s head:</div> - <div class='line'>At last in a dark corner two sparks he thought he sees,</div> - <div class='line'>Which were indeed nought else but Gib our cat’s two eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>Puff, quoth Hodge; thinking thereby to have fire without doubt;</div> - <div class='line'>With that Gib shut her two eyes, and so the fire was out;</div> - <div class='line'>And by and by them open’d, even as they were before,</div> - <div class='line'>With that the sparks appeared, even as they had done of yore:</div> - <div class='line'>And even as Hodge blew the fire, as he did think,</div> - <div class='line'>Gib, as he felt the blast, strait way began to wink;</div> - <div class='line'>Till Hodge fell of swearing, as came best to his turn;</div> - <div class='line'>The fire was sure bewitch’d, and therefore would not burn.</div> - <div class='line'>At last Gib up the stairs, among old posts and pins,</div> - <div class='line'>And Hodge he hied him after, till broke were both his shins;</div> - <div class='line'>Cursing and swearing oaths, were never of his making,</div> - <div class='line'>That Gib would fire the house, if that she were not taken.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Diccon the strolling beggar (or Bedlam, as he is called) steals a -piece of bacon from behind Gammer Gurton’s door, and in answer -to Hodge’s complaint of being dreadfully pinched for hunger, asks—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Why Hodge, was there none at home thy dinner for to set?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Hodge.</em> Gog’s bread, Diccon, I came too late, was nothing there to get:</div> - <div class='line'>Gib (a foul fiend might on her light) lick’d the milk-pan so clean:</div> - <div class='line'>See Diccon, ’twas not so well wash’d this seven year, I ween.</div> - <div class='line'>A pestilence light on all ill luck, I had thought yet for all this,</div> - <div class='line'>Of a morsel of bacon behind the door, at worst I should not miss:</div> - <div class='line'>But when I sought a slip to cut, as I was wont to do,</div> - <div class='line'>Gog’s souls, Diccon, Gib our cat had eat the bacon too.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Hodge’s difficulty in making Diccon understand what the needle -is which his dame has lost, shows his superior acquaintance with -the conveniences and modes of abridging labour in more civilised life, -of which the other had no idea.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Hodge.</em> Has she not gone, trowest now thou, and lost her neele?’ [So it is called here.]</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Dic.</em> (<em>says staring</em>). Her eel, Hodge! Who fished of late? That was a dainty dish.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Hodge.</em> Tush, tush, her neele, her neele, her neele, man, ’tis neither flesh nor fish:</div> - <div class='line'>A little thing with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller [silver],</div> - <div class='line'>Small, long, sharp at the point, and strait as any pillar.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Dic.</em> I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bring’st me more in doubt.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span><em>Hodge.</em> (<em>answers with disdain</em>). Know’st not with what Tom tailor’s man sits broching through a clout?</div> - <div class='line'>A neele, a neele, my Gammer’s neele is gone.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The rogue Diccon threatens to shew Hodge a spirit; but though -Hodge runs away through pure fear before it has time to appear, he -does not fail, in the true spirit of credulity, to give a faithful and -alarming account of what he did not see to his mistress, concluding -with a hit at the Popish Clergy.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘By the mass, I saw him of late call up a great black devil.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, the knave cried, ho, ho, he roared and he thunder’d;</div> - <div class='line'>And ye had been there, I am sure you’d murrainly ha’ wonder’d.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Gam.</em> Wast not thou afraid, Hodge, to see him in his place?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Hodge</em> (<em>lies and says</em>). No, and he had come to me, should have laid him on his face,</div> - <div class='line'>Should have promised him.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Gam.</em> But, Hodge, had he no horns to push?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Hodge.</em> As long as your two arms. Saw ye never Friar Rush,</div> - <div class='line'>Painted on a cloth, with a fine long cow’s tail,</div> - <div class='line'>And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nail?</div> - <div class='line'>For all the world (if I should judge) should reckon him his brother:</div> - <div class='line'>Look even what face Friar Rush had, the devil had such another.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>He then adds (quite apocryphally) while he is in for it, that ‘the -devil said plainly that Dame Chat had got the needle,’ which makes -all the disturbance. The same play contains the well-known good -old song, beginning and ending—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Back and side, go bare, go bare,</div> - <div class='line'>Both foot and hand go cold:</div> - <div class='line'>But belly, God send thee good ale enough,</div> - <div class='line'>Whether it be new or old.</div> - <div class='line'>I cannot eat but little meat,</div> - <div class='line'>My stomach is not good;</div> - <div class='line'>But sure I think, that I can drink</div> - <div class='line'>With him that wears a hood:</div> - <div class='line'>Though I go bare, take ye no care;</div> - <div class='line'>I nothing am a-cold:</div> - <div class='line'>I stuff my skin so full within</div> - <div class='line'>Of jolly good ale and old.</div> - <div class='line'>Back and side go bare, &c.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I love no roast, but a nut-brown toast,</div> - <div class='line'>And a crab laid in the fire:</div> - <div class='line'>A little bread shall do me stead,</div> - <div class='line'>Much bread I not desire.</div> - <div class='line'>No frost nor snow, no wind I trow,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>Can hurt me if I wolde,</div> - <div class='line'>I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt</div> - <div class='line'>In jolly good ale and old.</div> - <div class='line'>Back and side go bare, &c.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And Tib, my wife, that as her life</div> - <div class='line'>Loveth well good ale to seek;</div> - <div class='line'>Full oft drinks she, till ye may see</div> - <div class='line'>The tears run down her cheek:</div> - <div class='line'>Then doth she troll to me the bowl,</div> - <div class='line'>Even as a malt-worm sholde:</div> - <div class='line'>And saith, sweetheart, I took my part</div> - <div class='line'>Of this jolly good ale and old.</div> - <div class='line'>Back and side go bare, go bare,</div> - <div class='line'>Both foot and hand go cold:</div> - <div class='line'>But belly, God send thee good ale enough,</div> - <div class='line'>Whether it be new or old.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Such was the wit, such was the mirth of our ancestors:—homely, -but hearty; coarse perhaps, but kindly. Let no man despise it, for -‘Evil to him that evil thinks.’ To think it poor and beneath notice -because it is not just like ours, is the same sort of hypercriticism that -was exercised by the person who refused to read some old books, -because they were ‘such very poor spelling.’ The meagreness of -their literary or their bodily fare was at least relished by themselves; -and this is better than a surfeit or an indigestion. It is refreshing to -look out of ourselves sometimes, not to be always holding the glass -to our own peerless perfections: and as there is a dead wall which -always intercepts the prospect of the future from our view (all that -we can see beyond it is the heavens), it is as well to direct our eyes -now and then without scorn to the page of history, and repulsed in -our attempts to penetrate the secrets of the next six thousand years, -not to turn our backs on old long syne!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The other detached plays of nearly the same period of which -I proposed to give a cursory account, are Green’s Tu Quoque, -Microcosmus, Lingua, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Pinner -of Wakefield, and the Spanish Tragedy. Of the spurious plays -attributed to Shakespear, and to be found in the editions of his -works, such as the Yorkshire Tragedy, Sir John Oldcastle, The -Widow of Watling Street, &c. I shall say nothing here, because I -suppose the reader to be already acquainted with them, and because -I have given a general account of them in another work.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Green’s Tu Quoque, by George Cook, a contemporary of -Shakespear’s, is so called from Green the actor, who played the -part of Bubble in this very lively and elegant comedy, with the cant -<span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>phrase of <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Tu Quoque</span></i> perpetually in his mouth. The double change -of situation between this fellow and his master, Staines, each passing -from poverty to wealth, and from wealth to poverty again, is equally -well imagined and executed. A gay and gallant spirit pervades the -whole of it; wit, poetry, and morality, each take their turn in it. -The characters of the two sisters, Joyce and Gertrude, are very -skilfully contrasted, and the manner in which they mutually betray -one another into the hands of their lovers, first in the spirit of -mischief, and afterwards of retaliation, is quite dramatic. ‘If you -cannot find in your heart to tell him you love him, I’ll sigh it out -for you. Come, we little creatures must help one another,’ says -the Madcap to the Madonna. As to style and matter, this play has -a number of pigeon-holes full of wit and epigrams which are flying -out in almost every sentence. I could give twenty pointed conceits, -wrapped up in good set terms. Let one or two at the utmost -suffice. A bad hand at cards is thus described. Will Rash says to -Scattergood, ‘Thou hast a wild hand indeed: thy small cards shew -like a troop of rebels, and the knave of clubs their chief leader.’ -Bubble expresses a truism very gaily on finding himself equipped like -a gallant—‘How apparel makes a man respected! The very children -in the street do adore me.’ We find here the first mention of Sir -John Suckling’s ‘melancholy hat,’ as a common article of wear—the -same which he chose to clap on Ford’s head, and the first -instance of the theatrical <em>double entendre</em> which has been repeated ever -since of an actor’s ironically abusing himself in his feigned character.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Gervase.</em> They say Green’s a good clown.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Bubble.</em> (<em>Played by Green, says</em>) Green! Green’s an ass.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Scattergood.</em> Wherefore do you say so?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Bub.</em> Indeed, I ha’ no reason; for they say he’s as like me as ever he can look.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The following description of the dissipation of a fortune in the -hands of a spendthrift is ingenious and beautiful.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Know that which made him gracious in your eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>And gilded o’er his imperfections,</div> - <div class='line'>Is wasted and consumed even like ice,</div> - <div class='line'>Which by the vehemence of heat dissolves,</div> - <div class='line'>And glides to many rivers: so his wealth,</div> - <div class='line'>That felt a prodigal hand, hot in expence,</div> - <div class='line'>Melted within his gripe, and from his coffers</div> - <div class='line'>Ran like a violent stream to other men’s.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Microcosmus, by Thomas Nabbes, is a dramatic mask or allegory, -in which the Senses, the Soul, a Good and a Bad Genius, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>Conscience, &c. contend for the dominion of a man; and notwithstanding -the awkwardness of the machinery, is not without poetry, -elegance, and originality. Take the description of morning as a proof.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘What do I see? Blush, grey-eyed morn and spread</div> - <div class='line'>Thy purple shame upon the mountain tops:</div> - <div class='line'>Or pale thyself with envy, since here comes</div> - <div class='line'>A brighter Venus than the dull-eyed star</div> - <div class='line'>That lights thee up.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>But what are we to think of a play, of which the following is a -literal list of the <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">dramatis personæ</span></i>?</p> - -<p class='c032'>‘<span class='sc'>Nature</span>, a fair woman, in a white robe, wrought with birds, beasts, -fruits, flowers, clouds, stars, &c.; on her head a wreath of flowers interwoven -with stars.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Janus</span>, a man with two faces, signifying Providence, in a yellow robe, -wrought with snakes, as he is <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">deus anni</span></i>: on his head a crown. He is -Nature’s husband.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Fire</span>, a fierce-countenanced young man, in a flame-coloured robe, wrought -with gleams of fire; his hair red, and on his head a crown of flames. -His creature a Vulcan.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Air</span>, a young man of a variable countenance, in a blue robe; wrought -with divers-coloured clouds; his hair blue; and on his head a wreath of -clouds. His creature a giant or silvan.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Water</span>, a young woman in a sea-green robe, wrought with waves; her -hair a sea-green, and on her head a wreath of sedge bound about with -waves. Her creature a syren.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Earth</span>, a young woman of a sad countenance, in a grass-green robe, -wrought with sundry fruits and flowers; her hair black, and on her -head a chaplet of flowers. Her creature a pigmy.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Love</span>, a Cupid in a flame-coloured habit; bow and quiver, a crown of -flaming hearts &c.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Physander</span>, a perfect grown man, in a long white robe, and on his head -a garland of white lilies and roses mixed. His name <span lang="grc" xml:lang="grc">ἀπο τῆς φύσεος -καὶ τῶ ἀνδρος</span>.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Choler</span>, a fencer; his clothes red.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Blood</span>, a dancer, in a watchet-coloured suit.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Phlegm</span>, a physician, an old man; his doublet white and black; trunk hose.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Melancholy</span>, a musician: his complexion, hair, and clothes, black; a -lute in his hand. He is likewise an amorist.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Bellanima</span>, a lovely woman, in a long white robe; on her head a wreath -of white flowers. She signifies the soul.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Bonus Genius</span>, an angel, in a like white robe; wings and wreath white.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Malus Genius</span>, a devil, in a black robe; hair, wreath, and wings, black.</p> - -<p class='c032'>The Five Senses—<span class='sc'>Seeing</span>, a chambermaid; <span class='sc'>Hearing</span>, the usher of the -hall; <span class='sc'>Smelling</span>, a huntsman or gardener; <span class='sc'>Tasting</span>, a cook; <span class='sc'>Touching</span>, -a gentleman usher.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Sensuality</span>, a wanton woman, richly habited, but lasciviously dressed, -&c.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span><span class='sc'>Temperance</span>, a lovely woman, of a modest countenance; her garments plain, but decent, &c.</p> - -<table class='table1' summary=''> -<colgroup> -<col width='2%' /> -<col width='20%' /> -<col width='76%' /> -</colgroup> - <tr> - <td class='c033'> </td> - <td class='c034'>A Philosopher,</td> - <td class='blt c035' rowspan='4'>all properly habited.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c033'> </td> - <td class='c034'>An Eremite,</td> - - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c033'> </td> - <td class='c034'>A Ploughman,</td> - - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c033'> </td> - <td class='c034'>A Shepherd,</td> - - </tr> -</table> - -<p class='c032'>Three Furies as they are commonly fancied.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Fear</span>, the Crier of the Court, with a tipstaff.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Conscience</span>, the Judge of the Court.</p> - -<p class='c032'><span class='sc'>Hope</span> and <span class='sc'>Despair</span>, an advocate and a lawyer.</p> - -<p class='c032'>The other three Virtues, as they are frequently expressed by painters.</p> - -<p class='c032'>The Heroes, in bright antique habits, &c.</p> - -<p class='c032'>The front of a workmanship, proper to the fancy of the rest, adorned with -brass figures of angels and devils, with several inscriptions; the title is -an escutcheon, supported by an Angel and a Devil. Within the arch -a continuing perspective of ruins, which is drawn still before the other -scenes, whilst they are varied.</p> - -<table class='table2' summary=''> - <tr><td class='c009' colspan='2'>THE INSCRIPTIONS.</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Hinc gloria.</span></i></td> - <td class='c036'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Hinc pœna.</span></i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c006'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Appetitus boni.</span></i></td> - <td class='c036'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Appetitus Mali.</span></i>’</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p class='c011'>Antony Brewer’s Lingua (1607) is of the same cast. It is much -longer as well as older than Microcosmus. It is also an allegory -celebrating the contention of the Five Senses for the crown of -superiority, and the pretensions of Lingua or the Tongue to be -admitted as a sixth sense. It is full of child’s play, and old wives’ -tales; but is not unadorned with passages displaying strong good -sense, and powers of fantastic description.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages from it—the admirable -enumeration of the characteristics of different languages, ‘The -Chaldee wise, the Arabian physical,’ &c.; and the striking description -of the ornaments and uses of tragedy and comedy. The -dialogue between Memory, Common Sense, and Phantastes, is -curious and worth considering.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘<em>Common Sense.</em> Why, good father, why are you so late now-a-days?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Memory.</em> Thus ’tis; the most customers I remember myself to have, are, -as your lordship knows, scholars, and now-a-days the most of them are -become critics, bringing me home such paltry things to lay up for them, -that I can hardly find them again.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Phantastes.</em> Jupiter, Jupiter, I had thought these flies had bit none but -myself: do critics tickle you, i’faith?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mem.</em> Very familiarly: for they must know of me, forsooth, how every -idle word is written in all the musty moth-eaten manuscripts, kept in all -the old libraries in every city, betwixt England and Peru.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Common Sense.</em> Indeed I have noted these times to affect antiquities -more than is requisite.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span><em>Mem.</em> I remember in the age of Assaracus and Ninus, and about the -wars of Thebes, and the siege of Troy, there were few things committed -to my charge, but those that were well worthy the preserving; but now -every trifle must be wrapp’d up in the volume of eternity. A rich pudding-wife, -or a cobbler, cannot die but I must immortalize his name with an -epitaph; a dog cannot water in a nobleman’s shoe, but it must be sprinkled -into the chronicles; so that I never could remember my treasure more -full, and never emptier of honourable and true heroical actions.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>And again Mendacio puts in his claim with great success to many -works of uncommon merit.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘<em>Appe.</em> Thou, boy! how is this possible? Thou art but a child, and -there were sects of philosophy before thou wert born.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Men.</em> Appetitus, thou mistakest me; I tell thee three thousand -years ago was Mendacio born in Greece, nursed in Crete, and ever since -honoured every where: I’ll be sworn I held old Homer’s pen when he writ -his Iliads and his Odysseys.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Appe.</em> Thou hadst need, for I hear say he was blind.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Men.</em> I helped Herodotus to pen some part of his Muses; lent Pliny -ink to write his history; rounded Rabelais in the ear when he historified -Pantagruel; as for Lucian, I was his genius; O, those two books <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">de Vera -Historia</span></i>, however they go under his name, I’ll be sworn I writ them every -tittle.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Appe.</em> Sure as I am hungry, thou’lt have it for lying. But hast thou -rusted this latter time for want of exercise?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Men.</em> Nothing less. I must confess I would fain have jogged Stow and -great Hollingshed on their elbows, when they were about their chronicles; -and, as I remember, Sir John Mandevill’s travels, and a great part of the -Decad’s, were of my doing: but for the Mirror of Knighthood, Bevis of -Southampton, Palmerin of England, Amadis of Gaul, Huon de Bourdeaux, -Sir Guy of Warwick, Martin Marprelate, Robin Hood, Garagantua, -Gerilion, and a thousand such exquisite monuments as these, no doubt but -they breathe in my breath up and down.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Merry Devil of Edmonton which has been sometimes -attributed to Shakespear, is assuredly not unworthy of him. It is -more likely, however, both from the style and subject-matter to have -been Heywood’s than any other person’s. It is perhaps the first -example of sentimental comedy we have—romantic, sweet, tender, -it expresses the feelings of honour, of love, and friendship in their -utmost delicacy, enthusiasm, and purity. The names alone, Raymond -Mounchersey, Frank Jerningham, Clare, Millisent, ‘sound silver -sweet like lovers’ tongues by night.’ It sets out with a sort of story -of Doctor Faustus, but this is dropt as jarring on the tender chords -of the rest of the piece. The wit of the Merry Devil of Edmonton -is as genuine as the poetry. Mine Host of the George is as good -a fellow as Boniface, and the deer-stealing scenes in the forest between -<span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>him, Sir John the curate, Smug the smith, and Banks the miller, are -‘very honest knaveries,’ as Sir Hugh Evans has it. The air is -delicate, and the deer, shot by their cross-bows, fall without a groan! -Frank Jerningham says to Clare,</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘The way lies right: hark, the clock strikes at Enfield: what’s the -hour?</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Young Clare.</em> Ten, the bell says.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Jern.</em> It was but eight when we set out from Cheston: Sir John and -his sexton are at their ale to-night, the clock runs at random.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Y. Clare.</em> Nay, as sure as thou livest, the villainous vicar is abroad in the -chase. The priest steals more venison than half the country.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Jern.</em> Millisent, how dost thou?</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Mil.</em> Sir, very well.</div> - <div class='line'>I would to God we were at Brian’s lodge.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>A volume might be written to prove this last answer Shakespear’s, -in which the tongue says one thing in one line, and the heart contradicts -it in the next; but there were other writers living in the -time of Shakespear, who knew these subtle windings of the passions -besides him,—though none so well as he!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Pinner of Wakefield, or George a Greene, is a pleasant -interlude, of an early date, and the author unknown, in which kings -and coblers, outlaws and maid Marians are ‘hail-fellow well met,’ -and in which the features of the antique world are made smiling and -amiable enough. Jenkin, George a Greene’s servant, is a notorious -wag. Here is one of his pretended pranks.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jenkin.</em> This fellow comes to me,</div> - <div class='line'>And takes me by the bosom: you slave,</div> - <div class='line'>Said he, hold my horse, and look</div> - <div class='line'>He takes no cold in his feet.</div> - <div class='line'>No, marry shall he, Sir, quoth I,</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll lay my cloak underneath him.</div> - <div class='line'>I took my cloak, spread it all along,</div> - <div class='line'>And his horse on the midst of it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>George.</em> Thou clown, did’st thou set his horse upon thy cloak?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Jenk.</em> Aye, but mark how I served him.</div> - <div class='line'>Madge and he was no sooner gone down into the ditch</div> - <div class='line'>But I plucked out my knife, cut four holes in my cloak, and made his horse stand on the bare ground.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The first part of Jeronymo is an indifferent piece of work, and -the second, or the Spanish Tragedy by Kyd, is like unto it, except -the interpolations idly said to have been added by Ben Jonson, -relating to Jeronymo’s phrensy ‘which have all the melancholy -madness of poetry, if not the inspiration.’</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span> - <h3 class='c003'>LECTURE VI<br /> <span class='small'>ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, F. BEAUMONT, P. FLETCHER, DRAYTON, DANIEL, &C. SIR P. SIDNEY’S ARCADIA, AND OTHER WORKS.</span></h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'>I shall, in the present Lecture, attempt to give some idea of the -lighter productions of the Muse in the period before us, in order to -shew that grace and elegance are not confined entirely to later times, -and shall conclude with some remarks on Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I have already made mention of the lyrical pieces of Beaumont -and Fletcher. It appears from his poems, that many of these were -composed by Francis Beaumont, particularly the very beautiful ones -in the tragedy of the False One, the Praise of Love in that of -Valentinian, and another in the Nice Valour or Passionate Madman, -an Address to Melancholy, which is the perfection of this kind of -writing.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Hence, all you vain delights;</div> - <div class='line'>As short as are the nights</div> - <div class='line'>Wherein you spend your folly:</div> - <div class='line'>There’s nought in this life sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>If man were wise to see ‘t,</div> - <div class='line'>But only melancholy,</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, sweetest melancholy.</div> - <div class='line'>Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>A sight that piercing mortifies;</div> - <div class='line'>A look that’s fasten’d to the ground,</div> - <div class='line'>A tongue chain’d up without a sound;</div> - <div class='line'>Fountain heads, and pathless groves,</div> - <div class='line'>Places which pale passion loves:</div> - <div class='line'>Moon-light walks, when all the fowls</div> - <div class='line'>Are warmly hous’d, save bats and owls;</div> - <div class='line'>A midnight bell, a passing groan,</div> - <div class='line'>These are the sounds we feed upon:</div> - <div class='line'>Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley;</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>It has been supposed (and not without every appearance of good -reason) that this pensive strain, ‘most musical, most melancholy,’ -gave the first suggestion of the spirited introduction to Milton’s -Il Penseroso.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Hence, vain deluding joys,</div> - <div class='line'>The brood of folly without father bred!...</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy,</div> - <div class='line'>Hail, divinest melancholy,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose saintly visage is too bright</div> - <div class='line'>To hit the sense of human sight, &c.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The same writer thus moralises on the life of man, in a set of -similes, as apposite as they are light and elegant.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Like to the falling of a star,</div> - <div class='line'>Or as the flights of eagles are,</div> - <div class='line'>Or like the fresh spring’s gaudy hue,</div> - <div class='line'>Or silver drops of morning dew,</div> - <div class='line'>Or like a wind that chafes the flood,</div> - <div class='line'>Or bubbles which on water stood:</div> - <div class='line'>Even such is man, whose borrow’d light</div> - <div class='line'>Is straight call’d in and paid to night:—</div> - <div class='line'>The wind blows out, the bubble dies;</div> - <div class='line'>The spring intomb’d in autumn lies;</div> - <div class='line'>The dew’s dried up, the star is shot,</div> - <div class='line'>The flight is past, and man forgot.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>‘The silver foam which the wind severs from the parted wave’ is -not more light or sparkling than this: the dove’s downy pinion is not -softer and smoother than the verse. We are too ready to conceive -of the poetry of that day, as altogether old-fashioned, meagre, squalid, -deformed, withered and wild in its attire, or as a sort of uncouth -monster, like ‘grim-visaged comfortless despair,’ mounted on a -lumbering, unmanageable Pegasus, dragon-winged, and leaden-hoofed; -but it as often wore a sylph-like form with Attic vest, with faery feet, -and the butterfly’s gaudy wings. The bees were said to have come, -and built their hive in the mouth of Plato when a child; and the -fable might be transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont and -Fletcher! Beaumont died at the age of five and twenty. One of -these writers makes Bellario the Page say to Philaster, who threatens -to take his life—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in18'>——‘’Tis not a life;</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut -off like a flower in its summer-pride, or like ‘the lily on its stalk -green,’ which makes us repine at fortune and almost at nature, that -seem to set so little store by their greatest favourites. The life of -poets is or ought to be (judging of it from the light it lends to -ours) a golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, ‘lapt in -Elysium;’ and it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid -vision, by which they are attended in their path of glory, fade like -<span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>a vapour, and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand -of common mortals has run out. Fletcher too was prematurely cut -off by the plague. Raphael died at four and thirty, and Correggio -at forty. Who can help wishing that they had lived to the age of -Michael Angelo and Titian? Shakespear might have lived another -half-century, enjoying fame and repose, ‘now that his task was -smoothly done,’ listening to the music of his name, and better still, -of his own thoughts, without minding Rymer’s abuse of ‘the -tragedies of the last age.’ His native stream of Avon would then -have flowed with softer murmurs to the ear, and his pleasant birthplace, -Stratford, would in that case have worn even a more gladsome -smile than it does, to the eye of fancy!—Poets however have a sort -of privileged after-life, which does not fall to the common lot: the -rich and mighty are nothing but while they are living: their power -ceases with them; but ‘the sons of memory, the great heirs of fame’ -leave the best part of what was theirs, their thoughts, their verse, -what they most delighted and prided themselves in, behind them—imperishable, -incorruptible, immortal!—Sir John Beaumont (the -brother of our dramatist) whose loyal and religious effusions are -not worth much, very feelingly laments his brother’s untimely death -in an epitaph upon him.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thou should’st have followed me, but death to blame</div> - <div class='line'>Miscounted years, and measured age by fame:</div> - <div class='line'>So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines,</div> - <div class='line'>Their praise grew swiftly; so thy life declines.</div> - <div class='line'>Thy Muse, the hearer’s Queen, the reader’s Love,</div> - <div class='line'>All ears, all hearts (but Death’s) could please and move.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Beaumont’s verses addressed to Ben Jonson at the Mermaid, are -a pleasing record of their friendship, and of the way in which they -‘fleeted the time carelessly’ as well as studiously ‘in the golden age’ -of our poetry.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div>[<em>Lines sent from the Country with two unfinished Comedies, which deferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid.</em>]</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The sun which doth the greatest comfort bring</div> - <div class='line'>To absent friends, because the self-same thing</div> - <div class='line'>They know they see, however absent is,</div> - <div class='line'>(Here our best hay-maker, forgive me this,</div> - <div class='line'>It is our country style) in this warm shine</div> - <div class='line'>I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine:</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, we have water mixt with claret lees,</div> - <div class='line'>Drink apt to bring in drier heresies</div> - <div class='line'>Than here, good only for the sonnet’s strain,</div> - <div class='line'>With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain:—</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>Think with one draught a man’s invention fades,</div> - <div class='line'>Two cups had quite spoil’d Homer’s Iliads.</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis liquor that will find out Sutclift’s wit,</div> - <div class='line'>Like where he will, and make him write worse yet:</div> - <div class='line'>Fill’d with such moisture, in most grievous qualms<a id='r30' /><a href='#f30' class='c015'><sup>[30]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line'>Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms:</div> - <div class='line'>And so must I do this: and yet I think</div> - <div class='line'>It is a potion sent us down to drink</div> - <div class='line'>By special providence, keep us from fights,</div> - <div class='line'>Make us not laugh when we make legs to knights;</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,</div> - <div class='line'>A medicine to obey our magistrates.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Methinks the little wit I had is lost</div> - <div class='line'>Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest</div> - <div class='line'>Held up at tennis, which men do the best</div> - <div class='line'>With the best gamesters. What things have we seen</div> - <div class='line'>Done at the Mermaid! Hard words that have been</div> - <div class='line'>So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,</div> - <div class='line'>As if that every one from whence they came</div> - <div class='line'>Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,</div> - <div class='line'>And had resolv’d to live a fool the rest</div> - <div class='line'>Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown</div> - <div class='line'>Wit able enough to justify the town</div> - <div class='line'>For three days past, wit that might warrant be</div> - <div class='line'>For the whole city to talk foolishly,</div> - <div class='line'>Till that were cancell’d; and when that was gone,</div> - <div class='line'>We left an air behind us, which alone</div> - <div class='line'>Was able to make the two next companies</div> - <div class='line'>Right witty, though but downright fools more wise.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I shall not, in this place repeat Marlowe’s celebrated song, ‘Come -live with me and be my love,’ nor Sir Walter Raleigh’s no less -celebrated answer to it (they may both be found in Walton’s Complete -Angler, accompanied with scenery and remarks worthy of them); -but I may quote as a specimen of the high and romantic tone in -which the poets of this age thought and spoke of each other the -‘Vision upon the conceipt of the Fairy Queen,’ understood to be by -Sir Walter Raleigh.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,</div> - <div class='line'>Within that temple, where the vestal flame</div> - <div class='line'>Was wont to burn, and passing by that way</div> - <div class='line'>To see that buried dust of living fame,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept.</div> - <div class='line'>All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen:</div> - <div class='line'>At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;</div> - <div class='line'>And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen,</div> - <div class='line'>For they this queen attended, in whose stead</div> - <div class='line'>Oblivion laid him down on Laura’s hearse.</div> - <div class='line'>Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,</div> - <div class='line'>And groans of buried ghosts the Heav’ns did pierce,</div> - <div class='line'>Where Homer’s spright did tremble all for grief,</div> - <div class='line'>And curst th’ access of that celestial thief.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>A higher strain of compliment cannot well be conceived than this, -which raises your idea even of that which it disparages in the comparison, -and makes you feel that nothing could have torn the writer -from his idolatrous enthusiasm for Petrarch and his Laura’s tomb, -but Spenser’s magic verses and diviner Faery Queen—the one lifted -above mortality, the other brought from the skies!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The name of Drummond of Hawthornden is in a manner entwined -in cypher with that of Ben Jonson. He has not done himself or -Jonson any credit by his account of their conversation; but his -Sonnets are in the highest degree elegant, harmonious, and striking. -It appears to me that they are more in the manner of Petrarch than -any others that we have, with a certain intenseness in the sentiment, -an occasional glitter of thought, and uniform terseness of expression. -The reader may judge for himself from a few examples.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘I know that all beneath the moon decays,</div> - <div class='line'>And what by mortals in this world is wrought</div> - <div class='line'>In time’s great periods shall return to nought;</div> - <div class='line'>That fairest states have fatal nights and days.</div> - <div class='line'>I know that all the Muse’s heavenly lays,</div> - <div class='line'>With toil of spright which are so dearly bought,</div> - <div class='line'>As idle sounds, of few or none are sought;</div> - <div class='line'>That there is nothing lighter than vain praise.</div> - <div class='line'>I know frail beauty’s like the purple flow’r,</div> - <div class='line'>To which one morn oft birth and death affords:</div> - <div class='line'>That love a jarring is of minds’ accords,</div> - <div class='line'>Where sense and will bring under reason’s pow’r.</div> - <div class='line'>Know what I list, this all cannot me move,</div> - <div class='line'>But that, alas! I both must write and love.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Another—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Fair moon, who with thy cold and silver shine</div> - <div class='line'>Mak’st sweet the horror of the dreadful night,</div> - <div class='line'>Delighting the weak eye with smiles divine,</div> - <div class='line'>Which Phœbus dazzles with his too much light;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>Bright queen of the first Heav’n, if in thy shrine</div> - <div class='line'>By turning oft, and Heav’n’s eternal might,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou hast not yet that once sweet fire of thine,</div> - <div class='line'>Endymion, forgot, and lovers’ plight:</div> - <div class='line'>If cause like thine may pity breed in thee,</div> - <div class='line'>And pity somewhat else to it obtain,</div> - <div class='line'>Since thou hast power of dreams as well as he</div> - <div class='line'>That holds the golden rod and mortal chain;</div> - <div class='line'>Now while she sleeps,<a id='r31' /><a href='#f31' class='c015'><sup>[31]</sup></a> in doleful guise her show,</div> - <div class='line'>These tears, and the black map of all my woe.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This is the eleventh sonnet: the twelfth is full of vile and forced -conceits, without any sentiment at all; such as calling the Sun ‘the -Goldsmith of the stars,’ ‘the enameller of the moon,’ and ‘the -Apelles of the flowers.’ This is as bad as Cowley or Sir Philip -Sidney. Here is one that is worth a million of such quaint devices.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>‘<cite>To the Nightingale.</cite></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dear chorister, who from these shadows sends,<a id='r32' /><a href='#f32' class='c015'><sup>[32]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line'>Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light,</div> - <div class='line'>Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends</div> - <div class='line'>(Become all ear<a id='r33' /><a href='#f33' class='c015'><sup>[33]</sup></a>) stars stay to hear thy plight.</div> - <div class='line'>If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends,</div> - <div class='line'>Who ne’er (not in a dream) did taste delight,</div> - <div class='line'>May thee importune who like case pretends,</div> - <div class='line'>And seem’st to joy in woe, in woe’s despite:</div> - <div class='line'>Tell me (so may thou milder fortune try,</div> - <div class='line'>And long, long sing!) for what thou thus complains,<a href='#f32' class='c015'><sup>[32]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line'>Since winter’s gone, and sun in dappled sky</div> - <div class='line'>Enamour’d smiles on woods and flow’ry plains?</div> - <div class='line'>The bird, as if my questions did her move,</div> - <div class='line'>With trembling wings sigh’d forth, ‘I love, I love.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Or if a mixture of the Della Cruscan style be allowed to enshrine -the true spirit of love and poetry, we have it in the following address -to the river Forth, on which his mistress had embarked.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Slide soft, fair Forth, and make a chrystal plain,</div> - <div class='line'>Cut your white locks, and on your foamy face</div> - <div class='line'>Let not a wrinkle be, when you embrace</div> - <div class='line'>The boat that earth’s perfections doth contain.</div> - <div class='line'>Winds wonder, and through wondering hold your peace,</div> - <div class='line'>Or if that you your hearts cannot restrain</div> - <div class='line'>From sending sighs, feeling a lover’s case,</div> - <div class='line'>Sigh, and in her fair hair yourselves enchain.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>Or take these sighs, which absence makes arise</div> - <div class='line'>From my oppressed breast, and fill the sails,</div> - <div class='line'>Or some sweet breath new brought from Paradise.</div> - <div class='line'>The floods do smile, love o’er the winds prevails,</div> - <div class='line'>And yet huge waves arise; the cause is this,</div> - <div class='line'>The ocean strives with Forth the boat to kiss.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This to the English reader will express the very soul of Petrarch, -the molten breath of sentiment converted into the glassy essence of -a set of glittering but still graceful conceits.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,’ and the critic that -tastes poetry, ‘his ruin meets.’ His feet are clogged with its honey, -and his eyes blinded with its beauties; and he forgets his proper -vocation, which is to buz and sting. I am afraid of losing my way -in Drummond’s ‘sugar’d sonnetting;’ and have determined more -than once to break off abruptly; but another and another tempts the -rash hand and curious eye, which I am loth not to give, and I give -it accordingly: for if I did not write these Lectures to please -myself, I am at least sure I should please nobody else. In fact, -I conceive that what I have undertaken to do in this and former -cases, is merely to read over a set of authors with the audience, as -I would do with a friend, to point out a favourite passage, to explain -an objection; or if a remark or a theory occurs, to state it in illustration -of the subject, but neither to tire him nor puzzle myself with -pedantic rules and pragmatical <em>formulas</em> of criticism that can do no -good to any body. I do not come to the task with a pair of -compasses or a ruler in my pocket, to see whether a poem is round -or square, or to measure its mechanical dimensions, like a meter and -alnager of poetry: it is not in my bond to look after excisable -articles or contraband wares, or to exact severe penalties and forfeitures -for trifling oversights, or to give formal notice of violent -breaches of the three unities, of geography and chronology; or to -distribute printed stamps and poetical licences (with blanks to be -filled up) on Mount Parnassus. I do not come armed from top to -toe with colons and semicolons, with glossaries and indexes, to -adjust the spelling or reform the metre, or to prove by everlasting -contradiction and querulous impatience, that former commentators -did not know the meaning of their author, any more than I do, who -am angry at them, only because I am out of humour with myself—as -if the genius of poetry lay buried under the rubbish of the press; -and the critic was the dwarf-enchanter who was to release its airy -form from being stuck through with blundering points and misplaced -commas; or to prevent its vital powers from being worm-eaten and -consumed, letter by letter, in musty manuscripts and black-letter -<span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>print. I do not think that is the way to learn ‘the gentle craft’ -of poesy or to teach it to others:—to imbibe or to communicate its -spirit; which if it does not disentangle itself and soar above the -obscure and trivial researches of antiquarianism is no longer itself, -‘a Phœnix gazed by all.’ At least, so it appeared to me (it is for -others to judge whether I was right or wrong). In a word, I have -endeavoured to feel what was good, and to ‘give a reason for the -faith that was in me’ when necessary, and when in my power. This -is what I have done, and what I must continue to do.</p> - -<p class='c011'>To return to Drummond.—I cannot but think that his Sonnets -come as near as almost any others to the perfection of this kind of -writing, which should embody a sentiment and every shade of a -sentiment, as it varies with time and place and humour, with the -extravagance or lightness of a momentary impression, and should, -when lengthened out into a series, form a history of the wayward -moods of the poet’s mind, the turns of his fate; and imprint the -smile or frown of his mistress in indelible characters on the scattered -leaves. I will give the two following, and have done with this -author.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs,</div> - <div class='line'>To quench the fever burning in my veins:</div> - <div class='line'>In vain (love’s pilgrim) mountains, dales, and plains</div> - <div class='line'>I over-run; vain help long absence brings.</div> - <div class='line'>In vain, my friends, your counsel me constrains</div> - <div class='line'>To fly, and place my thoughts on other things.</div> - <div class='line'>Ah, like the bird that fired hath her wings,</div> - <div class='line'>The more I move the greater are my pains.</div> - <div class='line'>Desire, alas! desire a Zeuxis new,</div> - <div class='line'>From the orient borrowing gold, from western skies</div> - <div class='line'>Heavenly cinnabar, sets before my eyes</div> - <div class='line'>In every place her hair, sweet look and hue;</div> - <div class='line'>That fly, run, rest I, all doth prove but vain;</div> - <div class='line'>My life lies in those eyes which have me slain.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The other is a direct imitation of Petrarch’s description of the -bower where he first saw Laura.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Alexis, here she stay’d, among these pines,</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair:</div> - <div class='line'>Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,</div> - <div class='line'>More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines;</div> - <div class='line'>Here sat she by these musked eglantines;</div> - <div class='line'>The happy flowers seem yet the print to bear:</div> - <div class='line'>Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar’d lines,</div> - <div class='line'>To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend an ear.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>She here me first perceiv’d, and here a morn</div> - <div class='line'>Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face:</div> - <div class='line'>Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,</div> - <div class='line'>Here first I got a pledge of promised grace;</div> - <div class='line'>But ah! what serves to have been made happy so,</div> - <div class='line'>Sith passed pleasures double but new woe!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I should, on the whole, prefer Drummond’s Sonnets to Spenser’s; -and they leave Sidney’s, picking their way through verbal intricacies -and ‘thorny queaches,’<a id='r34' /><a href='#f34' class='c015'><sup>[34]</sup></a> at an immeasurable distance behind. -Drummond’s other poems have great, though not equal merit; and -he may be fairly set down as one of our old English classics.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Ben Jonson’s detached poetry I like much, as indeed I do all -about him, except when he degraded himself by ‘the laborious -foolery’ of some of his farcical characters, which he could not deal -with sportively, and only made stupid and pedantic. I have been -blamed for what I have said, more than once, in disparagement of -Ben Jonson’s comic humour; but I think he was himself aware of -his infirmity, and has (not improbably) alluded to it in the following -speech of Crites in Cynthia’s Revels.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Oh, how despised and base a thing is man,</div> - <div class='line'>If he not strive to erect his groveling thoughts</div> - <div class='line'>Above the strain of flesh! But how more cheap,</div> - <div class='line'>When even his best and understanding part</div> - <div class='line'>(The crown and strength of all his faculties)</div> - <div class='line'>Floats like a dead-drown’d body, on the stream</div> - <div class='line'>Of vulgar humour, mix’d with common’st dregs:</div> - <div class='line'>I suffer for their guilt now; and my soul</div> - <div class='line'>(Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes)</div> - <div class='line'>Is hurt with mere intention on their follies.</div> - <div class='line'>Why will I view them then? my sense might ask me:</div> - <div class='line'>Or is’t a rarity or some new object</div> - <div class='line'>That strains my strict observance to this point:</div> - <div class='line'>But such is the perverseness of our nature,</div> - <div class='line'>That if we once but fancy levity,</div> - <div class='line'>(How antic and ridiculous soever</div> - <div class='line'>It suit with us) yet will our muffled thought</div> - <div class='line'>Chuse rather not to see it than avoid it, &c.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Ben Jonson had self-knowledge and self-reflection enough to apply -this to himself. His tenaciousness on the score of critical objections -does not prove that he was not conscious of them himself, but the -contrary. The greatest egotists are those whom it is impossible to -offend, because they are wholly and incurably blind to their own -<span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span>defects; or if they could be made to see them, would instantly -convert them into so many beauty-spots and ornamental graces. Ben -Jonson’s fugitive and lighter pieces are not devoid of the characteristic -merits of that class of composition; but still often in the happiest of -them, there is a specific gravity in the author’s pen, that sinks him to -the bottom of his subject, though buoyed up for a time with art and -painted plumes, and produces a strange mixture of the mechanical and -fanciful, of poetry and prose, in his songs and odes. For instance, -one of his most airy effusions is the Triumph of his Mistress: yet -there are some lines in it that seem inserted almost by way of -burlesque. It is however well worth repeating.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘See the chariot at hand here of love,</div> - <div class='line'>Wherein my lady rideth!</div> - <div class='line'>Each that draws it is a swan or a dove;</div> - <div class='line'>And well the car love guideth!</div> - <div class='line'>As she goes all hearts do duty</div> - <div class='line in6'>Unto her beauty:</div> - <div class='line'>And enamour’d, do wish so they might</div> - <div class='line in2'>But enjoy such a sight,</div> - <div class='line'>That they still were to run by her side,</div> - <div class='line'>Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.</div> - <div class='line'>Do but look on her eyes, they do light</div> - <div class='line in2'>All that love’s world compriseth!</div> - <div class='line'>Do but look on her hair, it is bright</div> - <div class='line'>As love’s star when it riseth!</div> - <div class='line'>Do but mark, her forehead’s smoother</div> - <div class='line in6'>Than words that soothe her:</div> - <div class='line'>And from her arch’d brows, such a grace</div> - <div class='line in6'>Sheds itself through the face,</div> - <div class='line'>As alone there triumphs to the life</div> - <div class='line'>All the gain, all the good of the elements’ strife.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Have you seen but a bright lily grow,</div> - <div class='line'>Before rude hands have touch’d it?</div> - <div class='line'>Ha’ you mark’d but the fall of the snow</div> - <div class='line'>Before the soil hath smutch’d it?</div> - <div class='line'>Ha’ you felt <em>the wool of beaver</em>?</div> - <div class='line'>Or swan’s down ever?</div> - <div class='line'>Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the briar?</div> - <div class='line'>Or <em>the nard in the fire</em>?</div> - <div class='line'>Or have tasted the bag of the bee?</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, so white! Oh so soft! Oh so sweet is she!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>His Discourse with Cupid, which follows, is infinitely delicate and -<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">piquant</span></i>, and without one single blemish. It is a perfect ‘nest of -spicery.’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>‘Noblest Charis, you that are</div> - <div class='line'>Both my fortune and my star!</div> - <div class='line'>And do govern more my blood,</div> - <div class='line'>Than the various moon the flood!</div> - <div class='line'>Hear, what late discourse of you,</div> - <div class='line'>Love and I have had; and true.</div> - <div class='line'>‘Mongst my Muses finding me,</div> - <div class='line'>Where he chanc’t your name to see</div> - <div class='line'>Set, and to this softer strain;</div> - <div class='line'>‘Sure,’ said he, ‘if I have brain,</div> - <div class='line'>This here sung can be no other,</div> - <div class='line'>By description, but my mother!</div> - <div class='line'>So hath Homer prais’d her hair;</div> - <div class='line'>So Anacreon drawn the air</div> - <div class='line'>Of her face, and made to rise,</div> - <div class='line'>Just about her sparkling eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Both her brows, bent like my bow.</div> - <div class='line'>By her looks I do her know,</div> - <div class='line'>Which you call my shafts. And see!</div> - <div class='line'>Such my mother’s blushes be,</div> - <div class='line'>As the bath your verse discloses</div> - <div class='line'>In her cheeks, of milk and roses;</div> - <div class='line'>Such as oft I wanton in.</div> - <div class='line'>And, above her even chin,</div> - <div class='line'>Have you plac’d the bank of kisses,</div> - <div class='line'>Where you say, men gather blisses,</div> - <div class='line'>Rip’ned with a breath more sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>Than when flowers and west-winds meet.</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, her white and polish’d neck,</div> - <div class='line'>With the lace that doth it deck,</div> - <div class='line'>Is my mother’s! hearts of slain</div> - <div class='line'>Lovers, made into a chain!</div> - <div class='line'>And between each rising breast</div> - <div class='line'>Lies the valley, call’d my nest,</div> - <div class='line'>Where I sit and proyne my wings</div> - <div class='line'>After flight; and put new stings</div> - <div class='line'>To my shafts! Her very name</div> - <div class='line'>With my mother’s is the same.’—</div> - <div class='line'>‘I confess all,’ I replied,</div> - <div class='line'>‘And the glass hangs by her side,</div> - <div class='line'>And the girdle ‘bout her waste,</div> - <div class='line'>All is Venus: save unchaste.</div> - <div class='line'>But, alas! thou seest the least</div> - <div class='line'>Of her good, who is the best</div> - <div class='line'>Of her sex; but could’st thou, Love,</div> - <div class='line'>Call to mind the forms, that strove</div> - <div class='line'>For the apple, and those three</div> - <div class='line'>Make in one, the same were she.</div> - <div class='line'>For this beauty yet doth hide</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>Something more than thou hast spied.</div> - <div class='line'>Outward grace weak love beguiles:</div> - <div class='line'>She is Venus when she smiles,</div> - <div class='line'>But she’s Juno when she walks,</div> - <div class='line'>And Minerva when she talks.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>In one of the songs in Cynthia’s Revels, we find, amidst some -very pleasing imagery, the origin of a celebrated line in modern -poetry—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, &c.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This has not even the merit of originality, which is hard upon it. -Ben Jonson had said two hundred years before,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>‘Oh, I could still</div> - <div class='line'>(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill)</div> - <div class='line in14'>Drop, drop, drop, drop,</div> - <div class='line'>Since nature’s pride is now a wither’d daffodil.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>His Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morrison, -has been much admired, but I cannot but think it one of his most -fantastical and perverse performances.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I cannot, for instance, reconcile myself to such stanzas as these.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>—‘Of which we priests and poets say</div> - <div class='line'>Such truths as we expect for happy men,</div> - <div class='line'>And there he lives with memory; and Ben</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>THE STAND</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went</div> - <div class='line'>Himself to rest,</div> - <div class='line'>Or taste a part of that full joy he meant</div> - <div class='line'>To have exprest,</div> - <div class='line'>In this bright asterism;</div> - <div class='line'>Where it were friendship’s schism</div> - <div class='line'>(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry)</div> - <div class='line'>To separate these twi—</div> - <div class='line'>Lights, the Dioscori;</div> - <div class='line'>And keep the one half from his Harry.</div> - <div class='line'>But fate doth so alternate the design,</div> - <div class='line'>While that in Heaven, this light on earth doth shine.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This seems as if because he cannot without difficulty write smoothly, -he becomes rough and crabbed in a spirit of defiance, like those -persons who cannot behave well in company, and affect rudeness to -show their contempt for the opinions of others.</p> - -<p class='c011'>His Epistles are particularly good, equally full of strong sense and -sound feeling. They shew that he was not without friends, whom he -<span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>esteemed, and by whom he was deservedly esteemed in return. The -controversy started about his character is an idle one, carried on in -the mere spirit of contradiction, as if he were either made up entirely -of gall, or dipped in ‘the milk of human kindness.’ There is no -necessity or ground to suppose either. He was no doubt a sturdy, -plain-spoken, honest, well-disposed man, inclining more to the severe -than the amiable side of things; but his good qualities, learning, -talents, and convivial habits preponderated over his defects of temper -or manners; and in a course of friendship some difference of character, -even a little roughness or acidity, may relish to the palate; and olives -may be served up with effect as well as sweetmeats. Ben Jonson, -even by his quarrels and jealousies, does not seem to have been curst -with the last and damning disqualification for friendship, heartless -indifference. He was also what is understood by a <em>good fellow</em>, fond -of good cheer and good company: and the first step for others to -enjoy your society, is for you to enjoy theirs. If any one can do -without the world, it is certain that the world can do quite as well -without him. His ‘verses inviting a friend to supper,’ give us as -familiar an idea of his private habits and character as his Epistle to -Michael Drayton, that to Selden, &c., his lines to the memory of -Shakespear, and his noble prose eulogy on Lord Bacon, in his -disgrace, do a favourable one.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Among the best of these (perhaps the very best) is the address -to Sir Robert Wroth, which besides its manly moral sentiments, -conveys a strikingly picturesque description of rural sports and -manners at this interesting period.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth,</div> - <div class='line'>Whether by choice, or fate, or both!</div> - <div class='line'>And though so near the city and the court,</div> - <div class='line'>Art ta’en with neither’s vice nor sport:</div> - <div class='line'>That at great times, art no ambitious guest</div> - <div class='line'>Of sheriff’s dinner, or of mayor’s feast.</div> - <div class='line'>Nor com’st to view the better cloth of state;</div> - <div class='line'>The richer hangings, or the crown-plate;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor throng’st (when masquing is) to have a sight</div> - <div class='line'>Of the short bravery of the night;</div> - <div class='line'>To view the jewels, stuffs, the pains, the wit</div> - <div class='line'>There wasted, some not paid for yet!</div> - <div class='line'>But canst at home in thy securer rest,</div> - <div class='line'>Live with un-bought provision blest;</div> - <div class='line'>Free from proud porches or their guilded roofs,</div> - <div class='line'>‘Mongst lowing herds and solid hoofs:</div> - <div class='line'>Along the curled woods and painted meads,</div> - <div class='line'>Through which a serpent river leads</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>To some cool courteous shade, which he calls his,</div> - <div class='line'>And makes sleep softer than it is!</div> - <div class='line'>Or if thou list the night in watch to break,</div> - <div class='line'>A-bed canst hear the loud stag speak,</div> - <div class='line'>In spring oft roused for their master’s sport,</div> - <div class='line'>Who for it makes thy house his court;</div> - <div class='line'>Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year,</div> - <div class='line'>Divid’st upon the lesser deer;</div> - <div class='line'>In autumn, at the partrich mak’st a flight,</div> - <div class='line'>And giv’st thy gladder guests the sight;</div> - <div class='line'>And in the winter hunt’st the flying hare,</div> - <div class='line'>More for thy exercise than fare;</div> - <div class='line'>While all that follows, their glad ears apply</div> - <div class='line'>To the full greatness of the cry:</div> - <div class='line'>Or hawking at the river or the bush,</div> - <div class='line'>Or shooting at the greedy thrush,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou dost with some delight the day out-wear,</div> - <div class='line'>Although the coldest of the year!</div> - <div class='line'>The whil’st the several seasons thou hast seen</div> - <div class='line'>Of flow’ry fields, of copses green,</div> - <div class='line'>The mowed meadows, with the fleeced sheep,</div> - <div class='line'>And feasts that either shearers keep;</div> - <div class='line'>The ripened ears yet humble in their height,</div> - <div class='line'>And furrows laden with their weight;</div> - <div class='line'>The apple-harvest that doth longer last;</div> - <div class='line'>The hogs return’d home fat from mast;</div> - <div class='line'>The trees cut out in log; and those boughs made</div> - <div class='line'>A fire now, that lent a shade!</div> - <div class='line'>Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites,</div> - <div class='line'>Comus puts in for new delights;</div> - <div class='line'>And fills thy open hall with mirth and cheer,</div> - <div class='line'>As if in Saturn’s reign it were;</div> - <div class='line'>Apollo’s harp and Hermes’ lyre resound,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor are the Muses strangers found:</div> - <div class='line'>The rout of rural folk come thronging in,</div> - <div class='line'>(Their rudeness then is thought no sin)</div> - <div class='line'>Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace;</div> - <div class='line'>And the great heroes of her race</div> - <div class='line'>Sit mixt with loss of state or reverence.</div> - <div class='line'>Freedom doth with degree dispense.</div> - <div class='line'>The jolly wassail walks the often round,</div> - <div class='line'>And in their cups their cares are drown’d:</div> - <div class='line'>They think not then which side the cause shall leese,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor how to get the lawyer fees.</div> - <div class='line'>Such, and no other was that age of old,</div> - <div class='line'>Which boasts t’ have had the head of gold.</div> - <div class='line'>And such since thou canst make thine own content,</div> - <div class='line'>Strive, Wroth, to live long innocent.</div> - <div class='line'>Let others watch in guilty arms, and stand</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>The fury of a rash command,</div> - <div class='line'>Go enter breaches, meet the cannon’s rage,</div> - <div class='line'>That they may sleep with scars in age.</div> - <div class='line'>And show their feathers shot and colours torn,</div> - <div class='line'>And brag that they were therefore born.</div> - <div class='line'>Let this man sweat, and wrangle at the bar</div> - <div class='line'>For every price in every jar</div> - <div class='line'>And change possessions oftener with his breath,</div> - <div class='line'>Than either money, war or death:</div> - <div class='line'>Let him, than hardest sires, more disinherit,</div> - <div class='line'>And each where boast it as his merit,</div> - <div class='line'>To blow up orphans, widows, and their states;</div> - <div class='line'>And think his power doth equal Fate’s.</div> - <div class='line'>Let that go heap a mass of wretched wealth,</div> - <div class='line'>Purchas’d by rapine, worse than stealth,</div> - <div class='line'>And brooding o’er it sit, with broadest eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Not doing good, scarce when he dies.</div> - <div class='line'>Let thousands more go flatter vice, and win,</div> - <div class='line'>By being organs to great sin,</div> - <div class='line'>Get place and honour, and be glad to keep</div> - <div class='line'>The secrets, that shall breake their sleep:</div> - <div class='line'>And, so they ride in purple, eat in plate,</div> - <div class='line'>Though poyson, think it a great fate.</div> - <div class='line'>But thou, my Wroth, if I can truth apply,</div> - <div class='line'>Shalt neither that, nor this envy:</div> - <div class='line'>Thy peace is made; and, when man’s state is well,</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis better, if he there can dwell.</div> - <div class='line'>God wisheth none should wrack on a strange shelf;</div> - <div class='line'>To him man’s dearer than t’ himself.</div> - <div class='line'>And, howsoever we may think things sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>He alwayes gives what he knows meet;</div> - <div class='line'>Which who can use is happy: such be thou.</div> - <div class='line'>Thy morning’s and thy evening’s vow</div> - <div class='line'>Be thanks to him, and earnest prayer, to find</div> - <div class='line'>A body sound, with sounder mind;</div> - <div class='line'>To do thy country service, thy self right;</div> - <div class='line'>That neither want do thee affright,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor death; but when thy latest sand is spent,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou mayst think life a thing but lent.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Of all the poetical Epistles of this period, however, that of Daniel -to the Countess of Cumberland, for weight of thought and depth of -feeling, bears the palm. The reader will not peruse this effusion with -less interest or pleasure, from knowing that it is a favourite with -Mr. Wordsworth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘He that of such a height hath built his mind,</div> - <div class='line'>And rear’d the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame</div> - <div class='line'>Of his resolved pow’rs; nor all the wind</div> - <div class='line'>Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong</div> - <div class='line'>His settled peace, or to disturb the same:</div> - <div class='line'>What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may</div> - <div class='line'>The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!</div> - <div class='line in2'>And with how free an eye doth he look down</div> - <div class='line'>Upon these lower regions of turmoil,</div> - <div class='line'>Where all the storms of passions mainly beat</div> - <div class='line'>On flesh and blood: where honour, pow’r, renown,</div> - <div class='line'>Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;</div> - <div class='line'>Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet,</div> - <div class='line'>As frailty doth; and only great doth seem</div> - <div class='line'>To little minds, who do it so esteem.</div> - <div class='line in2'>He looks upon the mightiest monarch’s wars</div> - <div class='line'>But only as on stately robberies;</div> - <div class='line'>Where evermore the fortune that prevails</div> - <div class='line'>Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars</div> - <div class='line'>The fairest and the best-fac’d enterprize.</div> - <div class='line'>Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:</div> - <div class='line'>Justice, he sees (as if seduced) still</div> - <div class='line'>Conspires with pow’r, whose cause must not be ill.</div> - <div class='line in2'>He sees the face of right t’ appear as manifold</div> - <div class='line'>As are the passions of uncertain man.</div> - <div class='line'>Who puts it in all colours, all attires,</div> - <div class='line'>To serve his ends, and make his courses hold.</div> - <div class='line'>He sees, that let deceit work what it can,</div> - <div class='line'>Plot and contrive base ways to high desires;</div> - <div class='line'>That the all-guiding Providence doth yet</div> - <div class='line'>All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nor is he mov’d with all the thunder-cracks</div> - <div class='line'>Of tyrants’ threats, or with the surly brow</div> - <div class='line'>Of pow’r, that proudly sits on others’ crimes:</div> - <div class='line'>Charg’d with more crying sins than those he checks.</div> - <div class='line'>The storms of sad confusion, that may grow</div> - <div class='line'>Up in the present for the coming times,</div> - <div class='line'>Appal not him; that hath no side at all,</div> - <div class='line'>But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Although his heart (so near ally’d to earth)</div> - <div class='line'>Cannot but pity the perplexed state</div> - <div class='line'>Of troublous and distress’d mortality,</div> - <div class='line'>That thus make way unto the ugly birth</div> - <div class='line'>Of their own sorrows, and do still beget</div> - <div class='line'>Affliction upon imbecility:</div> - <div class='line'>Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,</div> - <div class='line'>He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done.</div> - <div class='line in2'>And whilst distraught ambition compasses,</div> - <div class='line'>And is encompass’d; whilst as craft deceives,</div> - <div class='line'>And is deceived; whilst man doth ransack man,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>And builds on blood, and rises by distress;</div> - <div class='line'>And th’ inheritance of desolation leaves</div> - <div class='line'>To great expecting hopes: he looks thereon,</div> - <div class='line'>As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,</div> - <div class='line'>And bears no venture in impiety.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion is a work of great length and of -unabated freshness and vigour in itself, though the monotony of the -subject tires the reader. He describes each place with the accuracy -of a topographer, and the enthusiasm of a poet, as if his Muse were -the very <em>genius loci</em>. His Heroical Epistles are also excellent. He -has a few lighter pieces, but none of exquisite beauty or grace. His -mind is a rich marly soil that produces an abundant harvest, and -repays the husbandman’s toil, but few flaunting flowers, the garden’s -pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous weeds.</p> - -<p class='c011'>P. Fletcher’s Purple Island is nothing but a long enigma, describing -the body of a man, with the heart and veins, and the blood circulating -in them, under the fantastic designation of the Purple Island.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The other Poets whom I shall mention, and who properly belong -to the age immediately following, were William Brown, Carew, -Crashaw, Herrick, and Marvell. Brown was a pastoral poet, with -much natural tenderness and sweetness, and a good deal of allegorical -quaintness and prolixity. Carew was an elegant court-trifler. -Herrick was an amorist, with perhaps more fancy than feeling, -though he has been called by some the English Anacreon. Crashaw -was a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, and erroneous in -both. Marvell deserves to be remembered as a true poet as well -as patriot, not in the best of times.—I will, however, give short -specimens from each of these writers, that the reader may judge for -himself; and be led by his own curiosity, rather than my recommendation, -to consult the originals. Here is one by T. Carew.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Ask me no more where Jove bestows,</div> - <div class='line'>When June is past, the fading rose:</div> - <div class='line'>For in your beauties, orient deep</div> - <div class='line'>These flow’rs, as in their causes, sleep.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ask me no more, whither do stray</div> - <div class='line'>The golden atoms of the day;</div> - <div class='line'>For in pure love, Heaven did prepare</div> - <div class='line'>Those powders to enrich your hair.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ask me no more, whither doth haste</div> - <div class='line'>The nightingale, when May is past;</div> - <div class='line'>For in your sweet dividing throat</div> - <div class='line'>She winters, and keeps warm her note.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>Ask me no more, where those stars light,</div> - <div class='line'>That downwards fall in dead of night;</div> - <div class='line'>For in your eyes they sit, and there</div> - <div class='line'>Fixed become, as in their sphere.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ask me no more, if east or west</div> - <div class='line'>The phœnix builds her spicy nest;</div> - <div class='line'>For unto you at last she flies,</div> - <div class='line'>And in your fragrant bosom dies.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Hue and Cry of Love, the Epitaphs on Lady Mary Villiers, -and the Friendly Reproof to Ben Jonson for his angry Farewell to the -stage, are in the author’s best manner. We may perceive, however, -a frequent mixture of the superficial and common-place, with far-fetched -and improbable conceits.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Herrick is a writer who does not answer the expectations I had -formed of him. He is in a manner a modern discovery, and so far -has the freshness of antiquity about him. He is not trite and threadbare. -But neither is he likely to become so. He is a writer of -epigrams, not of lyrics. He has point and ingenuity, but I think -little of the spirit of love or wine. From his frequent allusion to -pearls and rubies, one might take him for a lapidary instead of a poet. -One of his pieces is entitled</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<cite>The Rock of Rubies, and the Quarry of Pearls.</cite></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Some ask’d me where the rubies grew;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And nothing I did say;</div> - <div class='line'>But with my finger pointed to</div> - <div class='line in4'>The lips of Julia.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Some ask’d how pearls did grow, and where;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Then spoke I to my girl</div> - <div class='line'>To part her lips, and shew them there</div> - <div class='line in4'>The quarrelets of pearl.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Now this is making a petrefaction both of love and poetry.</p> - -<p class='c011'>His poems, from their number and size, are ‘like the motes that -play in the sun’s beams;’ that glitter to the eye of fancy, but leave -no distinct impression on the memory. The two best are a translation -of Anacreon, and a successful and spirited imitation of him.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>‘<cite>The Wounded Cupid.</cite></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Cupid, as he lay among</div> - <div class='line'>Roses, by a bee was stung.</div> - <div class='line'>Whereupon, in anger flying</div> - <div class='line'>To his mother said thus, crying,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>Help, oh help, your boy’s a dying!</div> - <div class='line'>And why, my pretty lad? said she.</div> - <div class='line'>Then, blubbering, replied he,</div> - <div class='line'>A winged snake has bitten me,</div> - <div class='line'>Which country-people call a bee.</div> - <div class='line'>At which she smiled; then with her hairs</div> - <div class='line'>And kisses drying up his tears,</div> - <div class='line'>Alas, said she, my wag! if this</div> - <div class='line'>Such a pernicious torment is;</div> - <div class='line'>Come, tell me then, how great’s the smart</div> - <div class='line'>Of those thou woundest with thy dart?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The Captive Bee, or the Little Filcher, is his own.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘As Julia once a slumbering lay,</div> - <div class='line'>It chanced a bee did fly that way,</div> - <div class='line'>After a dew or dew-like show’r,</div> - <div class='line'>To tipple freely in a flow’r.</div> - <div class='line'>For some rich flow’r he took the lip</div> - <div class='line'>Of Julia, and began to sip:</div> - <div class='line'>But when he felt he suck’d from thence</div> - <div class='line'>Honey, and in the quintessence;</div> - <div class='line'>He drank so much he scarce could stir;</div> - <div class='line'>So Julia took the pilferer.</div> - <div class='line'>And thus surpris’d, as filchers use,</div> - <div class='line'>He thus began himself to excuse:</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet lady-flow’r! I never brought</div> - <div class='line'>Hither the least one thieving thought;</div> - <div class='line'>But taking those rare lips of yours</div> - <div class='line'>For some fresh, fragrant, luscious flow’rs,</div> - <div class='line'>I thought I might there take a taste,</div> - <div class='line'>Where so much syrup ran at waste:</div> - <div class='line'>Besides, know this, I never sting</div> - <div class='line'>The flow’r that gives me nourishing;</div> - <div class='line'>But with a kiss or thanks, do pay</div> - <div class='line'>For honey that I bear away.</div> - <div class='line'>This said, he laid his little scrip</div> - <div class='line'>Of honey ‘fore her ladyship:</div> - <div class='line'>And told her, as some tears did fall,</div> - <div class='line'>That that he took, and that was all.</div> - <div class='line'>At which she smil’d, and bid him go,</div> - <div class='line'>And take his bag, but thus much know,</div> - <div class='line'>When next he came a pilfering so,</div> - <div class='line'>He should from her full lips derive</div> - <div class='line'>Honey enough to fill his hive.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Of Marvell I have spoken with such praise, as appears to me his -due, on another occasion: but the public are deaf, except to proof or -to their own prejudices, and I will therefore give an example of the -sweetness and power of his verse.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'><span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span>‘<cite>To his Coy Mistress.</cite></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Had we but world enough, and time,</div> - <div class='line'>This coyness, Lady, were no crime.</div> - <div class='line'>We would sit down, and think which way</div> - <div class='line'>To walk, and pass our long love’s day.</div> - <div class='line'>Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side</div> - <div class='line'>Should’st rubies find: I by the tide</div> - <div class='line'>Of Humber would complain. I would</div> - <div class='line'>Love you ten years before the flood;</div> - <div class='line'>And you should, if you please, refuse</div> - <div class='line'>Till the conversion of the Jews.</div> - <div class='line'>My vegetable love should grow</div> - <div class='line'>Vaster than empires, and more slow</div> - <div class='line'>An hundred years should go to praise</div> - <div class='line'>Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;</div> - <div class='line'>Two hundred to adore each breast;</div> - <div class='line'>But thirty thousand to the rest.</div> - <div class='line'>An age at least to every part,</div> - <div class='line'>And the last age should shew your heart.</div> - <div class='line'>For, Lady, you deserve this state;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor would I love at lower rate.</div> - <div class='line in2'>But at my back I always hear</div> - <div class='line'>Time’s winged chariot hurrying near:</div> - <div class='line'>And yonder all before us lye</div> - <div class='line'>Desarts of vast eternity.</div> - <div class='line'>Thy beauty shall no more be found;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor in thy marble vault shall sound</div> - <div class='line'>My echoing song: then worms shall try</div> - <div class='line'>That long preserved virginity:</div> - <div class='line'>And your quaint honour turn to dust;</div> - <div class='line'>And into ashes all my lust.</div> - <div class='line'>The grave’s a fine and private place,</div> - <div class='line'>But none, I think, do there embrace.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Now, therefore, while the youthful hue</div> - <div class='line'>Sits on thy skin like morning dew,</div> - <div class='line'>And while thy willing soul transpires</div> - <div class='line'>At every pore with instant fires,</div> - <div class='line'>Now let us sport us while we may;</div> - <div class='line'>And now, like amorous birds of prey,</div> - <div class='line'>Rather at once our time devour,</div> - <div class='line'>Than languish in his slow-chapp’d pow’r.</div> - <div class='line'>Let us roll all our strength, and all</div> - <div class='line'>Our sweetness, up into one ball;</div> - <div class='line'>And tear our pleasures with rough strife,</div> - <div class='line'>Thorough the iron gates of life.</div> - <div class='line'>Thus, though we cannot make our sun</div> - <div class='line'>Stand still, yet we will make him run.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span>In Brown’s Pastorals, notwithstanding the weakness and prolixity -of his general plan, there are repeated examples of single lines and -passages of extreme beauty and delicacy, both of sentiment and -description, such as the following Picture of Night.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd’s song,</div> - <div class='line'>And silence girt the woods: no warbling tongue</div> - <div class='line'>Talk’d to the echo; Satyrs broke their dance,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the upper world lay in a trance,</div> - <div class='line'>Only the curled streams soft chidings kept;</div> - <div class='line'>And little gales that from the green leaf swept</div> - <div class='line'>Dry summer’s dust, in fearful whisp’rings stirr’d,</div> - <div class='line'>As loth to waken any singing bird.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Poetical beauties of this sort are scattered, not sparingly, over the -green lap of nature through almost every page of our author’s writings. -His description of the squirrel hunted by mischievous boys, of the -flowers stuck in the windows like the hues of the rainbow, and -innumerable others might be quoted.</p> - -<p class='c011'>His Philarete (the fourth song of the Shepherd’s Pipe) has been -said to be the origin of Lycidas: but there is no resemblance, except -that both are pastoral elegies for the loss of a friend. The Inner -Temple Mask has also been made the foundation of Comus, with as -little reason. But so it is: if an author is once detected in borrowing, -he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after: and every writer that -finds an ingenious or partial editor, will be made to set up his claim -of originality against him. A more serious charge of this kind has -been urged against the principal character in Paradise Lost (that of -Satan), which is said to have been taken from Marino, an Italian -poet. Of this, we may be able to form some judgment, by a comparison -with Crashaw’s translation of Marino’s Sospetto d’Herode. -The description of Satan alluded to, is given in the following stanzas:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Below the bottom of the great abyss,</div> - <div class='line'>There where one centre reconciles all things,</div> - <div class='line'>The world’s profound heart pants; there placed is</div> - <div class='line'>Mischief’s old master; close about him clings</div> - <div class='line'>A curl’d knot of embracing snakes, that kiss</div> - <div class='line'>His correspondent cheeks; these loathsome strings</div> - <div class='line'>Hold the perverse prince in eternal ties</div> - <div class='line'>Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The judge of torments, and the king of tears,</div> - <div class='line'>He fills a burnish’d throne of quenchless fire;</div> - <div class='line'>And for his old fair robes of light, he wears</div> - <div class='line'>A gloomy mantle of dark flames; the tire</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>That crowns his hated head, on high appears;</div> - <div class='line'>Where seven tall horns (his empire’s pride) aspire;</div> - <div class='line'>And to make up hell’s majesty, each horn</div> - <div class='line'>Seven crested hydras horribly adorn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>His eyes, the sullen dens of death and night,</div> - <div class='line'>Startle the dull air with a dismal red;</div> - <div class='line'>Such his fell glances as the fatal light</div> - <div class='line'>Of staring comets, that look kingdoms dead.</div> - <div class='line'>From his black nostrils and blue lips, in spite</div> - <div class='line'>Of hell’s own stink, a worser stench is spread.</div> - <div class='line'>His breath hell’s lightning is; and each deep groan</div> - <div class='line'>Disdains to think that heaven thunders alone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>His flaming eyes’ dire exhalation</div> - <div class='line'>Unto a dreadful pile gives fiery breath;</div> - <div class='line'>Whose unconsum’d consumption preys upon</div> - <div class='line'>The never-dying life of a long death.</div> - <div class='line'>In this sad house of slow destruction</div> - <div class='line'>(His shop of flames) he fries himself, beneath</div> - <div class='line'>A mass of woes; his teeth for torment gnash,</div> - <div class='line'>While his steel sides sound with his tail’s strong lash.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This portrait of monkish superstition does not equal the grandeur -of Milton’s description.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>——‘His form had not yet lost</div> - <div class='line'>All her original brightness, nor appear’d</div> - <div class='line'>Less than archangel ruin’d and the excess</div> - <div class='line'>Of glory obscured.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the vulgar and physical -<em>insignia</em> of the devil, and clothed him with other greater and intellectual -terrors, reconciling beauty and sublimity, and converting the grotesque -and deformed into the <em>ideal</em> and classical. Certainly Milton’s mind -rose superior to all others in this respect, on the outstretched wings of -philosophic contemplation, in not confounding the depravity of the -will with physical distortion, or supposing that the distinctions of good -and evil were only to be subjected to the gross ordeal of the senses. -In the subsequent stanzas, we however find the traces of some of -Milton’s boldest imagery, though its effect is injured by the incongruous -mixture above stated.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Struck with these great concurrences of things,<a id='r35' /><a href='#f35' class='c015'><sup>[35]</sup></a></div> - <div class='line'>Symptoms so deadly unto death and him;</div> - <div class='line'>Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings</div> - <div class='line'>Eternally bind each rebellious limb.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings,</div> - <div class='line'>Which like two bosom’d sails<a id='r36' /><a href='#f36' class='c015'><sup>[36]</sup></a> embrace the dim</div> - <div class='line'>Air, with a dismal shade, but all in vain;</div> - <div class='line'>Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>While thus heav’n’s highest counsels, by the low</div> - <div class='line'>Footsteps of their effects, he traced too well,</div> - <div class='line'>He tost his troubled eyes, embers that glow</div> - <div class='line'>Now with new rage, and wax too hot for hell.</div> - <div class='line'>With his foul claws he fenced his furrow’d brow,</div> - <div class='line'>And gave a ghastly shriek, whose horrid yell</div> - <div class='line'>Ran trembling through the hollow vaults of night.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The poet adds—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The while his twisted tail he knaw’d for spite.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There is no keeping in this. This action of meanness and mere -vulgar spite, common to the most contemptible creatures, takes away -from the terror and power just ascribed to the prince of Hell, and -implied in the nature of the consequences attributed to his every -movement of mind or body. Satan’s soliloquy to himself is more -beautiful and more in character at the same time.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Art thou not Lucifer? he to whom the droves</div> - <div class='line'>Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given?</div> - <div class='line'>The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves?</div> - <div class='line'>The fairest and the first-born smile of Heav’n?</div> - <div class='line'>Look in what pomp the mistress planet moves,</div> - <div class='line'>Reverently circled by the lesser seven:</div> - <div class='line'>Such and so rich the flames that from thine eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Opprest the common people of the skies?</div> - <div class='line'>Ah! wretch! what boots it to cast back thine eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Where dawning hope no beam of comfort shews?’ &c.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This is true beauty and true sublimity: it is also true pathos and -morality: for it interests the mind, and affects it powerfully with the -idea of glory tarnished, and happiness forfeited with the loss of virtue: -but from the horns and tail of the brute-demon, imagination cannot -reascend to the Son of the morning, nor be dejected by the transition -from weal to woe, which it cannot, without a violent effort, picture to -itself.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In our author’s account of Cruelty, the chief minister of Satan, -there is also a considerable approach to Milton’s description of Death -and Sin, the portress of hell-gates.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Thrice howl’d the caves of night, and thrice the sound,</div> - <div class='line'>Thundering upon the banks of those black lakes,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>Rung through the hollow vaults of hell profound:</div> - <div class='line'>At last her listening ears the noise o’ertakes,</div> - <div class='line'>She lifts her sooty lamps, and looking round,</div> - <div class='line'>A general hiss,<a id='r37' /><a href='#f37' class='c015'><sup>[37]</sup></a> from the whole tire of snakes</div> - <div class='line'>Rebounding through hell’s inmost caverns came,</div> - <div class='line'>In answer to her formidable name.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Mongst all the palaces in hell’s command,</div> - <div class='line'>No one so merciless as this of hers,</div> - <div class='line'>The adamantine doors forever stand</div> - <div class='line'>Impenetrable, both to prayers and tears.</div> - <div class='line'>The wall’s inexorable steel, no hand</div> - <div class='line'>Of time, or teeth of hungry ruin fears.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>On the whole, this poem, though Milton has undoubtedly availed -himself of many ideas and passages in it, raises instead of lowering -our conception of him, by shewing how much more he added to it -than he has taken from it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Crashaw’s translation of Strada’s description of the Contention -between a nightingale and a musician, is elaborate and spirited, but -not equal to Ford’s version of the same story in his Lover’s Melancholy. -One line may serve as a specimen of delicate quaintness, and -of Crashaw’s style in general.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste. -As Mr. Burke said, ‘he could not love the French Republic’—so -I may say, that I cannot love the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, -with all my good-will to it. It will not do for me, however, to -imitate the summary petulance of the epigrammatist.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The reason why I cannot tell,</div> - <div class='line'>But I don’t like you, Dr. Fell.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>I must give my reasons, ‘on compulsion,’ for not speaking well of -a person like Sir Philip Sidney—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The soldier’s, scholar’s, courtier’s eye, tongue, sword,</div> - <div class='line'>The glass of fashion, and the mould of form;’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>the splendour of whose personal accomplishments, and of whose wide-spread -fame was, in his life time,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>——‘Like a gate of steel,</div> - <div class='line'>Fronting the sun, that renders back</div> - <div class='line'>His figure and his heat’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>a writer too who was universally read and enthusiastically admired for -a century after his death, and who has been admired with scarce less -enthusiastic, but with a more distant homage, for another century, -after ceasing to be read.</p> - -<p class='c011'>We have lost the art of reading, or the privilege of writing, -voluminously, since the days of Addison. Learning no longer -weaves the interminable page with patient drudgery, nor ignorance -pores over it with implicit faith. As authors multiply in number, -books diminish in size; we cannot now, as formerly, swallow libraries -whole in a single folio: solid quarto has given place to slender -duodecimo, and the dingy letter-press contracts its dimensions, and -retreats before the white, unsullied, faultless margin. Modern authorship -is become a species of stenography: we contrive even to read by -proxy. We skim the cream of prose without any trouble; we get -at the quintessence of poetry without loss of time. The staple -commodity, the coarse, heavy, dirty, unwieldy bullion of books is -driven out of the market of learning, and the intercourse of the -literary world is carried on, and the credit of the great capitalists -sustained by the flimsy circulating medium of magazines and reviews. -Those who are chiefly concerned in catering for the taste of others, -and serving up critical opinions in a compendious, elegant, and -portable form, are not forgetful of themselves: they are not scrupulously -solicitous, idly inquisitive about the real merits, the <i><span lang="co" xml:lang="co">bona fide</span></i> -contents of the works they are deputed to appraise and value, any -more than the reading public who employ them. They look no -farther for the contents of the work than the title page, and pronounce -a peremptory decision on its merits or defects by a glance at the name -and party of the writer. This state of polite letters seems to admit -of improvement in only one respect, which is to go a step further, -and write for the amusement and edification of the world, accounts of -works that were never either written or read at all, and to cry up or -abuse the authors by name, although they have no existence but in the -critic’s invention. This would save a great deal of labour in vain: -anonymous critics might pounce upon the defenceless heads of -fictitious candidates for fame and bread; reviews, from being novels -founded upon facts, would aspire to be pure romances; and we should -arrive at the <em>beau ideal</em> of a commonwealth of letters, at the euthanasia -of thought, and Millennium of criticism!</p> - -<p class='c011'>At the time that Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia was written, those -middle men, the critics, were not known. The author and reader -came into immediate contact, and seemed never tired of each other’s -company. We are more fastidious and dissipated: the effeminacy -of modern taste would, I am afraid, shrink back affrighted at the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>formidable sight of this once popular work, which is about as long -(<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">horresco referens!</span></i>) as all Walter Scott’s novels put together; but -besides its size and appearance, it has, I think, other defects of a -more intrinsic and insuperable nature. It is to me one of the greatest -monuments of the abuse of intellectual power upon record. It puts -one in mind of the court dresses and preposterous fashions of the time -which are grown obsolete and disgusting. It is not romantic, but -scholastic; not poetry, but casuistry; not nature, but art, and the -worst sort of art, which thinks it can do better than nature. Of the -number of fine things that are constantly passing through the author’s -mind, there is hardly one that he has not contrived to spoil, and to -spoil purposely and maliciously, in order to aggrandize our idea of -himself. Out of five hundred folio pages, there are hardly, I conceive, -half a dozen sentences expressed simply and directly, with the sincere -desire to convey the image implied, and without a systematic interpolation -of the wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom and everlasting -impertinence of the writer, so as to disguise the object, instead of -displaying it in its true colours and real proportions. Every page is -‘with centric and eccentric scribbled o’er;’ his Muse is tattooed and -tricked out like an Indian goddess. He writes a court-hand, with -flourishes like a schoolmaster; his figures are wrought in chain-stitch. -All his thoughts are forced and painful births, and may be said to be -delivered by the Cæsarean operation. At last, they become distorted -and ricketty in themselves; and before they have been cramped and -twisted and swaddled into lifelessness and deformity. Imagine a -writer to have great natural talents, great powers of memory and -invention, an eye for nature, a knowledge of the passions, much -learning and equal industry; but that he is so full of a consciousness -of all this, and so determined to make the reader conscious of it at -every step, that he becomes a complete intellectual coxcomb or nearly -so;—that he never lets a casual observation pass without perplexing -it with an endless, running commentary, that he never states a feeling -without so many <em>circumambages</em>, without so many interlineations and -parenthetical remarks on all that can be said for it, and anticipations -of all that can be said against it, and that he never mentions a fact -without giving so many circumstances and conjuring up so many -things that it is like or not like, that you lose the main clue of the -story in its infinite ramifications and intersections; and we may form -some faint idea of the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, which is spun -with great labour out of the author’s brains, and hangs like a huge -cobweb over the face of nature! This is not, as far as I can judge, -an exaggerated description: but as near the truth as I can make it. -The proofs are not far to seek. Take the first sentence, or open the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>volume any where and read. I will, however, take one of the most -beautiful passages near the beginning, to shew how the subject-matter, -of which the noblest use might have been made, is disfigured by the -affectation of the style, and the importunate and vain activity of the -writer’s mind. The passage I allude to, is the celebrated description -of Arcadia.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘So that the third day after, in the time that the morning did strew roses -and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming of the sun, the -nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most dainty -variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow) made them put off their sleep, -and rising from under a tree (which that night had been their pavilion) -they went on their journey, which by and by welcomed Musidorus’ eyes -(wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia) with welcome prospects. There -were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees: humble -valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver -rivers; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets, -which being lined with most pleasant shade were witnessed so to, by the -cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with -sheep feeding with sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating -oratory craved the dam’s comfort; here a shepherd’s boy piping, as though -he should never be old: there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal -singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and -her hands kept time to her voice-music. As for the houses of the country -(for many houses came under their eye) they were scattered, no two being -one by the other, and yet not so far off, as that it barred mutual succour; -a shew, as it were, of an accompaniable solitariness, and of a civil -wildness. I pray you, said Musidorus, (then first unsealing his long-silent -lips) what countries be these we pass through, which are so divers in shew, -the one wanting no store, the other having no store but of want. The -country, answered Claius, where you were cast ashore, and now are past -through is Laconia: but this country (where you now set your foot) is -Arcadia.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>One would think the very name might have lulled his senses to -delightful repose in some still, lonely valley, and have laid the restless -spirit of Gothic quaintness, witticism, and conceit in the lap of classic -elegance and pastoral simplicity. Here are images too of touching -beauty and everlasting truth that needed nothing but to be simply and -nakedly expressed to have made a picture equal (nay superior) to the -allegorical representation of the Four Seasons of Life by Georgioni. -But no! He cannot let his imagination or that of the reader dwell -for a moment on the beauty or power of the real object. He thinks -nothing is done, unless it is his doing. He must officiously and -gratuitously interpose between you and the subject as the Cicerone of -Nature, distracting the eye and the mind by continual uncalled-for -interruptions, analysing, dissecting, disjointing, murdering every thing, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>and reading a pragmatical, self-sufficient lecture over the dead body of -nature. The moving spring of his mind is not sensibility or imagination, -but dry, literal, unceasing craving after intellectual excitement, -which is indifferent to pleasure or pain, to beauty or deformity, and -likes to owe everything to its own perverse efforts rather than the -sense of power in other things. It constantly interferes to perplex -and neutralise. It never leaves the mind in a wise passiveness. In -the infancy of taste, the froward pupils of art took nature to pieces, -as spoiled children do a watch, to see what was in it. After taking -it to pieces they could not, with all their cunning, put it together -again, so as to restore circulation to the heart, or its living hue to the -face! The quaint and pedantic style here objected to was not -however the natural growth of untutored fancy, but an artificial -excrescence transferred from logic and rhetoric to poetry. It was -not owing to the excess of imagination, but of the want of it, that is, -to the predominance of the mere understanding or dialectic faculty -over the imaginative and the sensitive. It is in fact poetry -degenerating at every step into prose, sentiment entangling itself in -a controversy, from the habitual leaven of polemics and casuistry in -the writer’s mind. The poet insists upon matters of fact from the -beauty or grandeur that accompanies them; our prose-poet insists -upon them because they are matters of fact, and buries the beauty and -grandeur in a heap of common rubbish, ‘like two grains of wheat in -a bushel of chaff.’ The true poet illustrates for ornament or use: -the fantastic pretender, only because he is not easy till he can translate -every thing out of itself into something else. Imagination consists in -enriching one idea by another, which has the same feeling or set of -associations belonging to it in a higher or more striking degree; the -quaint or scholastic style consists in comparing one thing to another -by the mere process of abstraction, and the more forced and naked -the comparison, the less of harmony or congruity there is in it, the -more wire-drawn and ambiguous the link of generalisation by which -objects are brought together, the greater is the triumph of the false -and fanciful style. There was a marked instance of the difference -in some lines from Ben Jonson which I have above quoted, and -which, as they are alternate examples of the extremes of both in the -same author and in the same short poem, there can be nothing -invidious in giving. In conveying an idea of female softness and -sweetness, he asks—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Have you felt the wool of the beaver,</div> - <div class='line'>Or swan’s down ever?</div> - <div class='line'>Or smelt of the bud of the briar,</div> - <div class='line'>Or the nard in the fire?’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>Now ‘the swan’s down’ is a striking and beautiful image of the -most delicate and yielding softness; but we have no associations of -a pleasing sort with the wool of the beaver. The comparison is dry, -hard, and barren of effect. It may establish the matter of fact, but -detracts from and impairs the sentiment. The smell of ‘the bud of -the briar’ is a double-distilled essence of sweetness: besides, there -are all the other concomitant ideas of youth, beauty, and blushing -modesty, which blend with and heighten the immediate feeling: but -the poetical reader was not bound to know even what <em>nard</em> is (it is -merely a learned substance, a non-entity to the imagination) nor -whether it has a fragrant or disagreeable scent when thrown into the -fire, till Ben Jonson went out of his way to give him this pedantic -piece of information. It is a mere matter of fact or of experiment; -and while the experiment is making in reality or fancy, the sentiment -stands still; or even taking it for granted in the literal and scientific -sense, we are where we were; it does not enhance the passion to be -expressed: we have no love for the smell of nard in the fire, but we -have an old, a long-cherished one, from infancy, for the bud of the -briar. Sentiment, as Mr. Burke said of nobility, is a thing of -inveterate prejudice, and cannot be created, as some people (learned -and unlearned) are inclined to suppose, out of fancy or out of any -thing by the wit of man. The artificial and natural style do not -alternate in this way in the Arcadia: the one is but the Helot, the -eyeless drudge of the other. Thus even in the above passage, which -is comparatively beautiful and simple in its general structure, we have -‘the bleating oratory’ of lambs, as if anything could be more unlike -oratory than the bleating of lambs; we have a young shepherdess -knitting, whose hands keep time not to her voice, but to her -‘voice-music,’ which introduces a foreign and questionable distinction, -merely to perplex the subject; we have meadows enamelled with all -sorts of ‘eye-pleasing flowers,’ as if it were necessary to inform the -reader that flowers pleased the eye, or as if they did not please any -other sense: we have valleys refreshed ‘with <em>silver</em> streams,’ an -epithet that has nothing to do with the refreshment here spoken of: -we have ‘an accompaniable solitariness and a civil wildness,’ which -are a pair of very laboured antitheses; in fine, we have ‘want of -store, and store of want.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Again, the passage describing the shipwreck of Pyrochles, has been -much and deservedly admired: yet it is not free from the same -inherent faults.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘But a little way off they saw the mast (of the vessel) whose proud -height now lay along, like a widow having lost her mate, of whom she -held her honour;’ [This needed explanation] ‘but upon the mast they saw -<span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>a young man (at least if it were a man) bearing show of about eighteen -years of age, who sat (as on horseback) having nothing upon him but his -shirt, which being wrought with blue silk and gold, had a kind of resemblance -to the sea’ [This is a sort of alliteration in natural history] ‘on -which the sun (then near his western home) did shoot some of his beams. -His hair, (which the young men of Greece used to wear very long) was -stirred up and down with the wind, which seemed to have a sport to play -with it, as the sea had to kiss his feet; himself full of admirable beauty, set -forth by the strangeness both of his seat and gesture; for holding his head -up full of unmoved majesty, he held a sword aloft with his fair arm, which -often he waved about his crown, as though he would threaten the world -in that extremity.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>If the original sin of alliteration, antithesis, and metaphysical -conceit could be weeded out of this passage, there is hardly a more -heroic one to be found in prose or poetry.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Here is one more passage marred in the making. A shepherd is -supposed to say of his mistress,</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Certainly, as her eyelids are more pleasant to behold, than two white -kids climbing up a fair tree and browsing on his tenderest branches, and -yet are nothing, compared to the day-shining stars contained in them; -and as her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which -comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat -of summer; and yet is nothing compared to the honey-flowing speech that -breath doth carry; no more all that our eyes can see of her (though when -they have seen her, what else they shall ever see is but dry stubble after -clover grass) is to be matched with the flock of unspeakable virtues, laid up -delightfully in that best-builded fold.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Now here are images of singular beauty and of Eastern originality -and daring, followed up with enigmatical or unmeaning common-places, -because he never knows when to leave off, and thinks he can -never be too wise or too dull for his reader. He loads his prose -Pegasus, like a pack-horse, with all that comes and with a number -of little trifling circumstances, that fall off, and you are obliged to -stop to pick them up by the way. He cannot give his imagination a -moment’s pause, thinks nothing done, while any thing remains to do, -and exhausts nearly all that can be said upon a subject, whether good, -bad, or indifferent. The above passages are taken from the beginning -of the Arcadia, when the author’s style was hardly yet formed. The -following is a less favourable, but fairer specimen of the work. It is -the model of a love-letter, and is only longer than that of Adriano de -Armada, in Love’s Labour Lost.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Most blessed paper, which shalt kiss that hand, whereto all blessedness -is in nature a servant, do not yet disdain to carry with thee the woeful -<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>words of a miser now despairing: neither be afraid to appear before her, -bearing the base title of the sender. For no sooner shall that divine hand -touch thee, but that thy baseness shall be turned to most high preferment. -Therefore mourn boldly my ink: for while she looks upon you, your -blackness will shine: cry out boldly my lamentation, for while she reads -you, your cries will be music. Say then (O happy messenger of a most -unhappy message) that the too soon born and too late dying creature, -which dares not speak, no, not look, no, not scarcely think (as from his -miserable self unto her heavenly highness), only presumes to desire thee (in -the time that her eyes and voice do exalt thee) to say, and in this manner -to say, not from him, oh no, that were not fit, but of him, thus much unto -her sacred judgment. O you, the only honour to women, to men the only -admiration, you that being armed by love, defy him that armed you, in -this high estate wherein you have placed me’ [<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">i.e.</span></i> the letter] ‘yet let me -remember him to whom I am bound for bringing me to your presence: -and let me remember him, who (since he is yours, how mean soever he be) -it is reason you have an account of him. The wretch (yet your wretch) -though with languishing steps runs fast to his grave; and will you suffer a -temple (how poorly built soever, but yet a temple of your deity) to be -rased? But he dyeth: it is most true, he dyeth: and he in whom you -live, to obey you, dyeth. Whereof though he plain, he doth not complain, -for it is a harm, but no wrong, which he hath received. He dies, because -in woeful language all his senses tell him, that such is your pleasure: for -if you will not that he live, alas, alas, what followeth, what followeth of -the most ruined Dorus, but his end? End, then, evil-destined Dorus, -end; and end thou woeful letter, end: for it sufficeth her wisdom to know, -that her heavenly will shall be accomplished.’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lib. ii. p. 117.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>This style relishes neither of the lover nor the poet. Nine-tenths -of the work are written in this manner. It is in the very manner of -those books of gallantry and chivalry, which, with the labyrinths of -their style, and ‘the reason of their unreasonableness,’ turned the -fine intellects of the Knight of La Mancha. In a word (and not to -speak it profanely), the Arcadia is a riddle, a rebus, an acrostic -in folio: it contains about 4000 far-fetched similes, and 6000 -impracticable dilemmas, about 10,000 reasons for doing nothing at -all, and as many more against it; numberless alliterations, puns, -questions and commands, and other figures of rhetoric; about a score -good passages, that one may turn to with pleasure, and the most -involved, irksome, improgressive, and heteroclite subject that ever -was chosen to exercise the pen or patience of man. It no longer -adorns the toilette or lies upon the pillow of Maids of Honour and -Peeresses in their own right (the Pamelas and Philocleas of a later -age), but remains upon the shelves of the libraries of the curious in -long works and great names, a monument to shew that the author was -one of the ablest men and worst writers of the age of Elizabeth.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>His Sonnets, inlaid in the Arcadia, are jejune, far-fetched and -frigid. I shall select only one that has been much commended. It -is to the High Way where his mistress had passed, a strange subject, -but not unsuitable to the author’s genius.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be,</div> - <div class='line'>And that my Muse (to some ears not unsweet)</div> - <div class='line'>Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet</div> - <div class='line'>More oft than to a chamber melody;</div> - <div class='line'>Now blessed you bear onward blessed me</div> - <div class='line'>To her, where I my heart safe left shall meet;</div> - <div class='line'>My Muse, and I must you of duty greet</div> - <div class='line'>With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully.</div> - <div class='line'>Be you still fair, honour’d by public heed,</div> - <div class='line'>By no encroachment wrong’d, nor time forgot;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed;</div> - <div class='line'>And that you know, I envy you no lot</div> - <div class='line'>Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,</div> - <div class='line'>Hundreds of years you Stella’s feet may kiss.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>The answer of the High-way has not been preserved, but the -sincerity of this appeal must no doubt have moved the stocks and -stones to rise and sympathise. His Defence of Poetry is his most -readable performance; there he is quite at home, in a sort of special -pleader’s office, where his ingenuity, scholastic subtlety, and tenaciousness -in argument stand him in good stead; and he brings off poetry -with flying colours; for he was a man of wit, of sense, and learning, -though not a poet of true taste or unsophisticated genius.</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE VII<br /> <span class='small'>CHARACTER OF LORD BACON’S WORKS—COMPARED AS TO STYLE WITH SIR THOMAS BROWN AND JEREMY TAYLOR.</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>Lord Bacon has been called (and justly) one of the wisest of -mankind. The word <em>wisdom</em> characterises him more than any other. -It was not that he did so much himself to advance the knowledge of -man or nature, as that he saw what others had done to advance it, -and what was still wanting to its full accomplishment. He stood -upon the high ‘vantage ground of genius and learning; and traced, -‘as in a map the voyager his course,’ the long devious march of -human intellect, its elevations and depressions, its windings and its -<span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>errors. He had a ‘large discourse of reason, looking before and -after.’ He had made an exact and extensive survey of human -acquirements: he took the gauge and meter, the depths and soundings -of the human capacity. He was master of the comparative anatomy -of the mind of man, of the balance of power among the different -faculties. He had thoroughly investigated and carefully registered -the steps and processes of his own thoughts, with their irregularities -and failures, their liabilities to wrong conclusions, either from the -difficulties of the subject, or from moral causes, from prejudice, -indolence, vanity, from conscious strength or weakness; and he -applied this self-knowledge on a mighty scale to the general advances -or retrograde movements of the aggregate intellect of the world. He -knew well what the goal and crown of moral and intellectual power -was, how far men had fallen short of it, and how they came to miss -it. He had an instantaneous perception of the quantity of truth or -good in any given system; and of the analogy of any given result or -principle to others of the same kind scattered through nature or -history. His observations take in a larger range, have more profundity -from the fineness of his tact, and more comprehension from the extent -of his knowledge, along the line of which his imagination ran with -equal celerity and certainty, than any other person’s, whose writings -I know. He however seized upon these results, rather by intuition -than by inference: he knew them in their mixed modes, and combined -effects rather than by abstraction or analysis, as he explains them to -others, not by resolving them into their component parts and elementary -principles, so much as by illustrations drawn from other things -operating in like manner, and producing similar results; or as he -himself has finely expressed it, ‘by the same footsteps of nature -treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.’ He had great -sagacity of observation, solidity of judgment and scope of fancy; in -this resembling Plato and Burke, that he was a popular philosopher -and a philosophical declaimer. His writings have the gravity of -prose with the fervour and vividness of poetry. His sayings have -the effect of axioms, are at once striking and self-evident. He views -objects from the greatest height, and his reflections acquire a sublimity -in proportion to their profundity, as in deep wells of water we see the -sparkling of the highest fixed stars. The chain of thought reaches -to the centre, and ascends the brightest heaven of invention. Reason -in him works like an instinct: and his slightest suggestions carry the -force of conviction. His opinions are judicial. His induction of -particulars is alike wonderful for learning and vivacity, for curiosity -and dignity, and an all-pervading intellect binds the whole together in -a graceful and pleasing form. His style is equally sharp and sweet, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>flowing and pithy, condensed and expansive, expressing volumes in a -sentence, or amplifying a single thought into pages of rich, glowing, -and delightful eloquence. He had great liberality from seeing the -various aspects of things (there was nothing bigotted or intolerant or -exclusive about him) and yet he had firmness and decision from -feeling their weight and consequences. His character was then an -amazing insight into the limits of human knowledge and acquaintance -with the landmarks of human intellect, so as to trace its past history -or point out the path to future enquirers, but when he quits the ground -of contemplation of what others have done or left undone to project -himself into future discoveries, he becomes quaint and fantastic, instead -of original. His strength was in reflection, not in production: he -was the surveyor, not the builder of the fabric of science. He had -not strictly the constructive faculty. He was the principal pioneer -in the march of modern philosophy, and has completed the education -and discipline of the mind for the acquisition of truth, by explaining -all the impediments or furtherances that can be applied to it or cleared -out of its way. In a word, he was one of the greatest men this -country has to boast, and his name deserves to stand, where it is -generally placed, by the side of those of our greatest writers, whether -we consider the variety, the strength or splendour of his faculties, for -ornament or use.</p> - -<p class='c011'>His Advancement of Learning is his greatest work; and next to -that, I like the Essays; for the Novum Organum is more laboured -and less effectual than it might be. I shall give a few instances from -the first of these chiefly, to explain the scope of the above remarks.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Advancement of Learning is dedicated to James <span class='fss'>I.</span> and he -there observes, with a mixture of truth and flattery, which looks -very much like a bold irony,</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all, -but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not been, -since Christ’s time, any king or temporal monarch, which hath been so -learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human (as your majesty). -For let a man seriously and diligently revolve and peruse the succession of -the Emperours of Rome, of which Cæsar the Dictator, who lived some -years before Christ, and Marcus Antoninus were the best-learned; and so -descend to the Emperours of Grecia, or of the West, and then to the lines -of France, Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find his -judgment is truly made. For it seemeth much in a king, if by the compendious -extractions of other men’s wits and labour, he can take hold of -any superficial ornaments and shews of learning, or if he countenance and -prefer learning and learned men: but to drink indeed of the true fountain -of learning, nay, to have such a fountain of learning in himself, in a king, -and in a king born, is almost a miracle.’</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>To any one less wrapped up in self-sufficiency than James, the rule -would have been more staggering than the exception could have been -gratifying. But Bacon was a sort of prose-laureat to the reigning -prince, and his loyalty had never been suspected.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In recommending learned men as fit counsellors in a state, he thus -points out the deficiencies of the mere empiric or man of business in -not being provided against uncommon emergencies.—‘Neither,’ he -says, ‘can the experience of one man’s life furnish examples and -precedents for the events of one man’s life. For as it happeneth -sometimes, that the grand-child, or other descendant, resembleth the -ancestor more than the son: so many times occurrences of present -times may sort better with ancient examples, than with those of the -latter or immediate times; and lastly, the wit of one man can no -more countervail learning, than one man’s means can hold way with -a common purse.’—This is finely put. It might be added, on the -other hand, by way of caution, that neither can the wit or opinion -of one learned man set itself up, as it sometimes does, in opposition to -the common sense or experience of mankind.</p> - -<p class='c011'>When he goes on to vindicate the superiority of the scholar over -the mere politician in disinterestedness and inflexibility of principle, -by arguing ingeniously enough—‘The corrupter sort of mere -politiques, that have not their thoughts established by learning in the -love and apprehension of duty, nor never look abroad into universality, -do refer all things to themselves, and thrust themselves into the centre -of the world, as if all times should meet in them and their fortunes, -never caring in all tempests what becomes of the ship of estates, so -they may save themselves in the cock-boat of their own fortune, -whereas men that feel the weight of duty, and know the limits of -self-love, use to make good their places and duties, though with peril’—I -can only wish that the practice were as constant as the theory is -plausible, or that the time gave evidence of as much stability and -sincerity of principle in well-educated minds as it does of versatility -and gross egotism in self-taught men. I need not give the instances, -‘they will receive’ (in our author’s phrase) ‘an open allowance:’ -but I am afraid that neither habits of abstraction nor the want of -them will entirely exempt men from a bias to their own interest; -that it is neither learning nor ignorance that thrusts us into the centre -of our own little world, but that it is nature that has put a man -there!</p> - -<p class='c011'>His character of the school-men is perhaps the finest philosophical -sketch that ever was drawn. After observing that there are ‘two -marks and badges of suspected and falsified science; the one, the -novelty or strangeness of terms, the other the strictness of positions, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and -altercations’—he proceeds—‘Surely like as many substances in -nature which are solid, do putrify and corrupt into worms: so it is -the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify and dissolve -into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term -them) <em>vermiculate</em> questions: which have indeed a kind of quickness -and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. -This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the -school-men, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of -leisure, and small variety of reading; but their wits being shut up in -the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their -persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and -knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great -quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those -laborious webs of learning, which are extant in their books. For the -wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation -of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and -is limited thereby: but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh -his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of -learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no -substance or profit.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>And a little further on, he adds—‘Notwithstanding, certain it is, -that if those school-men to their great thirst of truth and unwearied -travel of wit, had joined variety and universality of reading and contemplation, -they had proved excellent lights, to the great advancement -of all learning and knowledge; but as they are, they are great undertakers -indeed, and fierce with dark keeping. But as in the inquiry -of the divine truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of God’s -word, and to varnish in the mixture of their own inventions; so in -the inquisition of nature, they ever left the oracle of God’s works, -and adored the deceiving and deformed images, which the unequal -mirror of their own minds, or a few received authors or principles -did represent unto them.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>One of his acutest (I might have said profoundest) remarks relates -to the near connection between deceiving and being deceived. -Volumes might be written in explanation of it. ‘This vice therefore,’ -he says, ‘brancheth itself into two sorts; delight in deceiving, -and aptness to be deceived, imposture and credulity; which although -they appear to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of -cunning, and the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the -most part concur. For as the verse noteth <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Percontatorem fugito, nam -garrulus idem est</span></i>; an inquisitive man is a prattler: so upon the like -reason, a credulous man is a deceiver; as we see it in fame, that he -<span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>that will easily believe rumours, will as easily augment rumours, and -add somewhat to them of his own, which Tacitus wisely noteth, -when he saith, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Fingunt simul creduntque</span></i>, so great an affinity hath -fiction and belief.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>I proceed to his account of the causes of error, and directions for -the conduct of the understanding, which are admirable both for their -speculative ingenuity and practical use.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘The first of these,’ says Lord Bacon, ‘is the extreme affection of two -extremities; the one antiquity, the other novelty, wherein it seemeth the -children of time do take after the nature and malice of the father. For as -he devoureth his children; so one of them seeketh to devour and suppress -the other; while antiquity envieth there should be new additions, and -novelty cannot be content to add, but it must deface. Surely, the advice -of the prophet is the true direction in this respect, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">state super vias -antiquas, et videte quænam sit via recta et bona, et ambulate in ea</span></i>. Antiquity -deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, and -discover what is the best way, but when the discovery is well taken, then -to take progression. And to speak truly,’ he adds, ‘<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Antiquitas seculi -juventus mundi</span></i>. These times are the ancient times when the world is -ancient; and not those which we count ancient <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">ordine retrogrado</span></i>, by a -computation backwards from ourselves.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Another error induced by the former, is a distrust that any thing -should be now to be found out which the world should have missed and -passed over so long time, as if the same objection were to be made to time -that Lucian makes to Jupiter and other the Heathen Gods, of which he -wondereth that they begot so many children in old age, and begot none -in his time, and asketh whether they were become septuagenary, or -whether the law <em>Papia</em> made against old men’s marriages had restrained -them. So it seemeth men doubt, lest time was become past children and -generation: wherein contrary-wise, we see commonly the levity and unconstancy -of men’s judgments, which till a matter be done, wonder that -it can be done, and as soon as it is done, wonder again that it was done -no sooner, as we see in the expedition of Alexander into Asia, which at -first was prejudged as a vast and impossible enterprise, and yet afterwards -it pleaseth Livy to make no more of it than this, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">nil aliud quam bene ausus -vana contemnere</span></i>. And the same happened to Columbus in his western -navigation. But in intellectual matters, it is much more common; as -may be seen in most of the propositions in Euclid, which till they be -demonstrate, they seem strange to our assent, but being demonstrate, our -mind accepteth of them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak) as if -we had known them before.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Another is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due -and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation -are not unlike the two ways of action, commonly spoken of by the -Ancients. The one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end -impassable: the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a -while fair and even; so it is in contemplation, if a man will begin with -<span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with -doubts, he shall end in certainties.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Another error is in the manner of the tradition or delivery of knowledge, -which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and not ingenuous -and faithful; in a sort, as may be soonest believed, and not -easiliest examined. It is true, that in compendious treatises for practice, -that form is not to be disallowed. But in the true handling of knowledge, -men ought not to fall either on the one side into the vein of Velleius the -Epicurean; <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">nil tam metuens quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur</span></i>: nor -on the other side, into Socrates his ironical doubting of all things, but to -propound things sincerely, with more or less asseveration; as they stand -in a man’s own judgment, proved more or less.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Lord Bacon in this part declares, ‘that it is not his purpose to -enter into a laudative of learning or to make a Hymn to the Muses,’ -yet he has gone near to do this in the following observations on the -dignity of knowledge. He says, after speaking of rulers and -conquerors:</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘But the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the commandment -over the will; for it is a commandment over the reason, belief, and -understanding of man, which is the highest part of the mind, and giveth -law to the will itself. For there is no power on earth which setteth a -throne or chair of estate in the spirits and souls of men, and in their -cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning. -And therefore we see the detestable and extreme pleasure that arch-heretics -and false prophets and impostors are transported with, when they -once find in themselves that they have a superiority in the faith and -conscience of men: so great, as if they have once tasted of it, it is seldom -seen that any torture or persecution can make them relinquish or abandon -it. But as this is that which the author of the Revelations calls the depth -or profoundness of Satan; so by argument of contraries, the just and -lawful sovereignty over men’s understanding, by force of truth rightly -interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to the similitude of the -Divine Rule.... Let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of -knowledge and learning in that whereunto man’s nature doth most aspire, -which is immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and -raising of houses and families; to this tendeth buildings, foundations, and -monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, -and in effect, the strength of all other humane desires; we see then how -far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments -of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer -continued twenty-five hundred years and more, without the loss of a -syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, -cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to have the -true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, no, nor of the kings, -or great personages of much later years. For the originals cannot last; -and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But the images of -men’s wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be -called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the -minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in -succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of the ship was thought so -noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and -consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how -much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships, pass through the -vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, -illuminations, and inventions the one of the other?’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Passages of equal force and beauty might be quoted from almost -every page of this work and of the Essays.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Sir Thomas Brown and Bishop Taylor were two prose-writers in -the succeeding age, who, for pomp and copiousness of style, might be -compared to Lord Bacon. In all other respects they were opposed -to him and to one another.—As Bacon seemed to bend all his -thoughts to the practice of life, and to bring home the light of -science to ‘the bosoms and businesses of men,’ Sir Thomas Brown -seemed to be of opinion that the only business of life, was to think, -and that the proper object of speculation was, by darkening -knowledge, to breed more speculation, and ‘find no end in wandering -mazes lost.’ He chose the incomprehensible and impracticable as -almost the only subjects fit for a lofty and lasting contemplation, or -for the exercise of a solid faith. He cried out for an <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">ob altitudo</span></i> -beyond the heights of revelation, and posed himself with apocryphal -mysteries, as the pastime of his leisure hours. He pushes a question -to the utmost verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the certainty -of doubt; and he removes an object to the greatest distance from -him, that he may take a high and abstracted interest in it, consider -it in its relation to the sum of things, not to himself, and bewilder -his understanding in the universality of its nature and the inscrutableness -of its origin. His is the sublime of indifference; a passion for -the abstruse and imaginary. He turns the world round for his -amusement, as if it was a globe of paste-board. He looks down on -sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station in one of the planets. -The Antipodes are next-door neighbours to him, and Dooms-day is -not far off. With a thought he embraces both the poles; the march -of his pen is over the great divisions of geography and chronology. -Nothing touches him nearer than humanity. He feels that he is -mortal only in the decay of nature, and the dust of long forgotten -tombs. The finite is lost in the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly -bodies or the history of empires are to him but a point in time or a -speck in the universe. The great Platonic year revolves in one of -his periods. Nature is too little for the grasp of his style. He -<span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>scoops an antithesis out of fabulous antiquity, and rakes up an epithet -from the sweepings of Chaos. It is as if his books had dropt from -the clouds, or as if Friar Bacon’s head could speak. He stands on -the edge of the world of sense and reason, and gains a vertigo by -looking down at impossibilities and chimeras. Or he busies himself -with the mysteries of the Cabbala, or the enclosed secrets of the -heavenly quincunxes, as children are amused with tales of the nursery. -The passion of curiosity (the only passion of childhood) had in him -survived to old age, and had superannuated his other faculties. He -moralizes and grows pathetic on a mere idle fancy of his own, as if -thought and being were the same, or as if ‘all this world were one -glorious lie.’ For a thing to have ever had a name is sufficient -warrant to entitle it to respectful belief, and to invest it with all the -rights of a subject and its predicates. He is superstitious, but not -bigotted: to him all religions are much the same, and he says that -he should not like to have lived in the time of Christ and the -Apostles, as it would have rendered his faith too gross and palpable.—His -gossipping egotism and personal character have been preferred -unjustly to Montaigne’s. He had no personal character at all but -the peculiarity of resolving all the other elements of his being into -thought, and of trying experiments on his own nature in an exhausted -receiver of idle and unsatisfactory speculations. All that -he ‘differences himself by,’ to use his own expression, is this moral -and physical indifference. In describing himself, he deals only in -negatives. He says he has neither prejudices nor antipathies to -manners, habits, climate, food, to persons or things; they were -alike acceptable to him as they afforded new topics for reflection; -and he even professes that he could never bring himself heartily to -hate the Devil. He owns in one place of the <cite>Religio Medici</cite>, that -‘he could be content if the species were continued like trees,’ and -yet he declares that this was from no aversion to love, or beauty, or -harmony; and the reasons he assigns to prove the orthodoxy of his -taste in this respect, is, that he was an admirer of the music of the -spheres! He tells us that he often composed a comedy in his -sleep. It would be curious to know the subject or the texture of -the plot. It must have been something like Nabbes’s Mask of -Microcosmus, of which the <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">dramatis personæ</span></i> have been already -given; or else a misnomer, like Dante’s Divine Comedy of Heaven, -Hell, and Purgatory. He was twice married, as if to shew his -disregard even for his own theory; and he had a hand in the -execution of some old women for witchcraft, I suppose, to keep a -decorum in absurdity, and to indulge an agreeable horror at his own -fantastical reveries on the occasion. In a word, his mind seemed -<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>to converse chiefly with the intelligible forms, the spectral apparitions -of things, he delighted in the preternatural and visionary, and he only -existed at the circumference of his nature. He had the most intense -consciousness of contradictions and non-entities, and he decks them -out in the pride and pedantry of words as if they were the attire of -his proper person: the categories hang about his neck like the gold -chain of knighthood, and he ‘walks gowned’ in the intricate folds -and swelling drapery of dark sayings and impenetrable riddles!</p> - -<p class='c011'>I will give one gorgeous passage to illustrate all this, from his Urn-Burial, -or Hydriotaphia. He digs up the urns of some ancient -Druids with the same ceremony and devotion as if they had contained -the hallowed relics of his dearest friends; and certainly we feel (as -it has been said) the freshness of the mould, and the breath of -mortality, in the spirit and force of his style. The conclusion of -this singular and unparalleled performance is as follows:</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he -hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all -conjecture. What time the persons of these Ossuaries entered the famous -nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit -a wide solution. But who were the proprietors of these bones, or what -bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarianism: not to -be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the -provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good -provision for their names, as they have done for their reliques, they had -not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, -and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, -which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found -unto themselves, a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, -as emblems of mortal vanities; antidotes against pride, vain glory, and -madding vices. Pagan vain-glories, which thought the world might last -for ever, had encouragement for ambition, and finding no Atropos unto -the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of -oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts -of their vain glories, who, acting early, and before the probable meridian -of time, have, by this time, found great accomplishment of their designs, -whereby the ancient heroes have already outlasted their monuments, and -mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of time we cannot -expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the -prophecy of Elias, and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live within two -Methuselah’s of Hector.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories -unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated -piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names -as some have done in their persons: one face of Janus holds no proportion -unto the other. ’Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of -the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend -<span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span>our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose -duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent -of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose generations -are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off -from such imaginations. And being necessitated to eye the remaining -particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next -world, and cannot excuseably decline the consideration of that duration, -which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that’s past a moment.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined -circle, must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against -the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things; our fathers -find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be -buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years: generations -pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To -be read by bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity -by enigmatical epithets, or first letters of our names, to be studied by -antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the -mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by -everlasting languages.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘To be content that times to come should only know there was such a -man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in -Cardan: disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself, -who cares to subsist like Hippocrates’ patients, or Achilles’ horses in -Homer, under naked nominations without deserts and noble acts, which -are the balsam of our memories, the Entelechia and soul of our subsistences. -To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The -Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias -with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, than -Pilate?</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals -with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who -can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt -the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it; time hath spared the -epitaph of Adrian’s horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we -compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad -have equal durations: and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon, -without the favour of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the -best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons -forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? -the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah’s long life -had been his only chronicle.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Oblivion is not to be hired: the greater part must be content to be as -though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the -record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the -recorded names ever since, contain not one living century. The number -of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far -surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour -adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And -since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt</p> -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>whether thus to live, were to die: since our longest sun sets at right -descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long -before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the -brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time that -grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration: diuturnity is a dream and -folly of expectation.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with -memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our -felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon -us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. -To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are -slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy -stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, -is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few -and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, -our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great -part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration -of their souls. A good way to continue their memories, while having the -advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable -in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, -make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than -be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into -the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, -which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original -again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, conserving their bodies in -sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, -feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or -time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, -Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from -oblivion, in preservations below the moon: Men have been deceived even -in their flatteries above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their -names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already -varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, -and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the -heavens, we find they are but like the earth; durable in their main bodies, -alterable in their parts: whereof beside comets and new stars, perspectives -begin to tell tales. And the spots that wander about the -sun, with Phaeton’s favour, would make clear conviction.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘There is nothing immortal, but immortality; whatever hath no -beginning may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent -being, and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that -necessary essence that cannot destroy itself; and the highest strain of -omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from -the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates -all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly -of posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our souls, and hath -assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly -promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, that the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long -subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, -splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and -Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, in the -infamy of his nature.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A -small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while -men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus; but -the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced -undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so -mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus; the man of God -lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by Angels, -and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing -humane discovery. Enoch and Elias without either tomb or burial, in an -anomalous state of being, are the great examples of perpetuity, in their -long and living memory, in strict account being still on this side death, -and having a late part yet to act on this stage of earth. If in the decretory -term of the world we shall not all die but be changed, according to received -translation; the last day will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections -will anticipate lasting sepultures; some graves will be opened before -they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared -to die shall groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the -second and living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when men -shall wish the covering of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilation -shall be courted.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined -them: and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not -acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus seems most subtle, who had -a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla that thought -himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones -thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, -who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them -in the next, who when they die, make no commotion among the dead, -and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, -and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous -resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride, and -sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, -unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in -angles of contingency.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little -more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay -obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. -And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian -annihilation, extasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of -the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they -have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the -world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>‘To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist -in their names, and prædicament of Chimeras, was large satisfaction unto -old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is -nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed is to be again -ourselves, which being not only an hope but an evidence in noble believers: -’tis all one to lie in St. Innocent’s church-yard, as in the sands of Egypt: -ready to be any thing, in the extasy of being ever, and as content with six -foot as the moles of Adrianus.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>I subjoin the following account of this extraordinary writer’s style, -said to be written in a blank leaf of his works by Mr. Coleridge.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Sir Thomas Brown is among my first favourites. Rich in -various knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits; contemplative, -imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style -and diction, though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and <em>hyperlatinistic</em>: -thus I might, without admixture of falshood, describe Sir T. -Brown; and my description would have this fault only, that it -would be equally, or almost equally, applicable to half a dozen other -writers, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the end of -the reign of Charles the Second. He is indeed all this; and what -he has more than all this, and peculiar to himself, I seem to convey -to my own mind in some measure, by saying, that he is a quiet and -sublime <em>enthusiast</em>, with a strong tinge of the <em>fantast</em>; the humourist -constantly mingling with, and flashing across the philosopher, as the -darting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he -has brains in his head, which is all the more interesting for a little -twist in the brains. He sometimes reminds the reader of Montaigne; -but from no other than the general circumstance of an egotism -common to both, which, in Montaigne, is too often a mere amusing -gossip, a chit-chat story of whims and peculiarities that lead to -nothing; but which, in Sir Thomas Brown, is always the result of -a feeling heart, conjoined with a mind of active curiosity, the natural -and becoming egotism of a man, who, loving other men as himself, -gains the habit and the privilege of talking about himself as familiarly -as about other men. Fond of the curious, and a hunter of oddities -and strangenesses, while he conceives himself with quaint and -humorous gravity, an useful inquirer into physical truths and fundamental -science, he loved to contemplate and discuss his own thoughts -and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men’s, that -<em>they</em>, too, were curiosities; and so, with a perfectly graceful interesting -ease, he put <em>them</em>, too, into his museum and cabinet of rarities. -In very truth, he was not mistaken, so completely does he see every -thing in a light of his own; reading nature neither by sun, moon, or -candle-light, but by the light of the fairy glory around his own head; -<span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>that you might say, that nature had granted to <em>him</em> in perpetuity, a -patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his <cite>Hydriotaphia</cite> -above all, and, in addition to the peculiarity, the exclusive <em>Sir Thomas -Browne-ness</em>, of all the fancies and modes of illustration, wonder -at, and admire, his <em>entireness</em> in every subject which is before him. -He is <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">totus in illo</span></i>, he follows it, he never wanders from it, and he -has no occasion to wander; for whatever happens to be his subject, -he metamorphoses all nature into it. In that Hydriotaphia, or -treatise on some urns dug up in Norfolk—how <em>earthy</em>, how redolent -of graves and sepulchres is every line! You have now dark mould; -now a thigh-bone; now a skull; then a bit of a mouldered coffin; -a fragment of an old tombstone, with moss in its <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">hic jacet</span></i>; a ghost, -a winding sheet; or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a -November wind: and the gayest thing you shall meet with, shall be -a silver nail, or gilt <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">anno domini</span></i>, from a perished coffin top!—The -very same remark applies in the same force, to the interesting, though -far less interesting treatise on the Quincuncial Plantations of the -Ancients, the same <em>entireness</em> of subject! Quincunxes in heaven -above; quincunxes in earth below; quincunxes in deity; quincunxes -in the mind of man; quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots -of trees, in leaves, in every thing! In short, just turn to the last -leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the seven last -paragraphs of chapter 5th, beginning with the words “<em>More considerable</em>.” -But it is time for me to be in bed. In the words of -Sir T. Brown (which will serve as a fine specimen of his manner), -“But the quincunxes of Heaven (the <em>hyades, or five stars about the -horizon, at midnight at that time</em>) run low, and it is time we close -the five parts of knowledge; we are unwilling to spin out our waking -thoughts into the phantoms of sleep, which often continue precogitations, -making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves. -To keep our eyes open longer, were to <em>act</em> our antipodes! The -huntsmen are up in Arabia; and they have already passed their first -sleep in Persia.” Think you, that there ever was such a reason given -before for going to bed at midnight; to wit, that if we did not, we -should be <em>acting</em> the part of our antipodes! And then, “<span class='fss'>THE -HUNTSMEN ARE UP IN ARABIA</span>,”—what life, what fancy! Does the -whimsical knight give us thus, the <em>essence</em> of gunpowder tea, and call -it an <em>opiate</em>?‘<a id='r38' /><a href='#f38' class='c015'><sup>[38]</sup></a></p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>Jeremy Taylor was a writer as different from Sir Thomas Brown -as it was possible for one writer to be from another. He was a -dignitary of the church, and except in matters of casuistry and controverted -points, could not be supposed to enter upon speculative -doubts, or give a loose to a sort of dogmatical scepticism. He had -less thought, less ‘stuff of the conscience,’ less ‘to give us pause,’ in -his impetuous oratory, but he had equal fancy—not the same vastness -and profundity, but more richness and beauty, more warmth and -tenderness. He is as rapid, as flowing, and endless, as the other is -stately, abrupt, and concentrated. The eloquence of the one is like a -river, that of the other is more like an aqueduct. The one is as -sanguine, as the other is saturnine in the temper of his mind. Jeremy -Taylor took obvious and admitted truths for granted, and illustrated -them with an inexhaustible display of new and enchanting imagery. -Sir Thomas Brown talks in sum-totals: Jeremy Taylor enumerates -all the particulars of a subject. He gives every aspect it will bear, -and never ‘cloys with sameness.’ His characteristic is enthusiastic -and delightful amplification. Sir Thomas Brown gives the beginning -and end of things, that you may judge of their place and magnitude: -Jeremy Taylor describes their qualities and texture, and enters into -all the items of the debtor and creditor account between life and -death, grace and nature, faith and good works. He puts his heart -into his fancy. He does not pretend to annihilate the passions and -pursuits of mankind in the pride of philosophic indifference, but treats -them as serious and momentous things, warring with conscience and -the soul’s health, or furnishing the means of grace and hopes of glory. -In his writings, the frail stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of -eternity. His Holy Living and Dying is a divine pastoral. He -writes to the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his -flock. He introduces touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life; -condescends to men of low estate; and his pious page blushes with -modesty and beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours -of the rainbow; it floats like the bubble through the air; it is like -<span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>innumerable dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble -as they glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but slides -upon ice, borne on the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he -throws upon objects is like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt -heaven and earth—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Where pure Niemi’s faery banks arise,</div> - <div class='line'>And fringed with roses Tenglio rolls its stream.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>His exhortations to piety and virtue are a gay <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">memento mori</span></i>. He -mixes up death’s-heads and amaranthine flowers; makes life a -procession to the grave, but crowns it with gaudy garlands, and ‘rains -sacrificial roses’ on its path. In a word, his writings are more like -fine poetry than any other prose whatever; they are a choral song in -praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the Universe. I shall -give a few passages, to shew how feeble and inefficient this praise is.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The Holy Dying begins in this manner:</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘A man is a bubble. He is born in vanity and sin; he comes into the -world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the air, -and conversing with their kindred of the same production, and as soon they -turn into dust and forgetfulness; some of them without any other interest -in the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents a little glad, -and very sorrowful. Others ride longer in the storm; it may be until seven -years of vanity be expired, and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon -their heads, and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of death -and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the bubble stands the -shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a child, of a careless -nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of being over-laid by a sleepy servant, -or such little accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble empty -and gay, and shines like a dove’s neck, or the image of a rainbow, which -hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical; -and so he dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a -storm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a drop -of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat, or -quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humour; and to preserve a man -alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle -as to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing, and at first to -draw him up from nothing, were equally the issues of an Almighty power.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>Another instance of the same rich continuity of feeling and -transparent brilliancy in working out an idea, is to be found in his -description of the dawn and progress of reason.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘Some are called <em>at age</em> at fourteen, some at one and twenty, some never; -but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and -insensibly. But as when the sun approaches towards the gates of the -morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to mattins, and -by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, -thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of -Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the -face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, -till he shews a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, -under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and -sets quickly: so is a man’s reason and his life.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>This passage puts one in mind of the rising dawn and kindling skies -in one of Claude’s landscapes. Sir Thomas Brown has nothing of -this rich finishing and exact gradation. The genius of the two men -differed, as that of the painter from the mathematician. The one -measures objects, the other copies them. The one shews that things -are nothing out of themselves, or in relation to the whole: the one, -what they are in themselves, and in relation to us. Or the one may -be said to apply the telescope of the mind to distant bodies; the -other looks at nature in its infinite minuteness and glossy splendour -through a solar microscope.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In speaking of Death, our author’s style assumes the port and -withering smile of the King of Terrors. The following are scattered -passages on this subject.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday or -a maid servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in that very -night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men, and many fools; -and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter -does not make him unable to die.’...</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, while living, often -refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends’ desire by -giving way that after a few days’ burial, they might send a painter to his -vault, and if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death <em>unto the life</em>. -They did so, and found his face half-eaten, and his midriff and back-bone -full of serpents; and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors.’...</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it -is visible to us, who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness of -youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness -and strong flexure of the joints of five and twenty, to the hollowness and dead -paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days’ burial, and we -shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so have -I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was -fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as the lamb’s fleece; -but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled -its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness and to -decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age, it bowed the head and -broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves, and all its -beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. So does the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you and me; and then -what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? What friends -to visit us? What officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome -cloud reflected upon our races from the sides of the weeping vaults, -which are the longest weepers for our funerals?’</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man -preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same -Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree -war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and their -glory shall sleep till time shall be no more: and where our kings have been -crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their -grandsires’ head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal -seed, the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs -to arched coffins, from living like Gods to die like men. There is enough -to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch -of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a -lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the -peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised -princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell -all the world that when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our -accounts easier, and our pains for our crimes shall be less.<a id='r39' /><a href='#f39' class='c015'><sup>[39]</sup></a> To my -apprehension, it is a sad record which is left by Athenæus concerning -Ninus the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up -in these words: “Ninus the Assyrian had an ocean of gold, and other -riches more than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars, -and perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the holy fire -among the Magi; nor touched his God with the sacred rod according to -the laws: he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the deity, nor -<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>administered justice, nor spake to the people; nor numbered them: but he -was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his wines, he threw -the rest upon the stones. This man is dead: behold his sepulchre, and -now hear where Ninus is. Sometime I was Ninus, and drew the breath of a -living man, but now am nothing but clay. I have nothing but what I -did eat, and what I served to myself in lust is all my portion: the wealth -with which I was blessed, my enemies meeting together shall carry away, -as the mad Thyades carry a raw goat. I am gone to hell: and when I -went thither, I neither carried gold nor horse, nor silver chariot. I that -wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust.“’</p> - -<p class='c011'>He who wrote in this manner also wore a mitre, and is now a heap -of dust; but when the name of Jeremy Taylor is no longer remembered -with reverence, genius will have become a mockery, and virtue -an empty shade!</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>LECTURE VIII<br /> <span class='small'>ON THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE—ON THE GERMAN DRAMA, CONTRASTED WITH THAT OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH</span></h3> - -<p class='c008'>Before I proceed to the more immediate subject of the present -Lecture, I wish to say a few words of one or two writers in our own -time, who have imbibed the spirit and imitated the language of our -elder dramatists. Among these I may reckon the ingenious author of -the Apostate and Evadne, who in the last-mentioned play, in particular, -has availed himself with much judgment and spirit of the tragedy of -the Traitor by old Shirley. It would be curious to hear the opinion -of a professed admirer of the Ancients, and captious despiser of the -Moderns, with respect to this production, before he knew it was a -copy of an old play. Shirley himself lived in the time of Charles <span class='fss'>I.</span> -and died in the beginning of Charles <span class='fss'>II.</span><a id='r40' /><a href='#f40' class='c015'><sup>[40]</sup></a>; but he had formed his style -on that of the preceding age, and had written the greatest number of -his plays in conjunction with Jonson, Deckar, and Massinger. He -was ‘the last of those fair clouds that on the bosom of bright honour -sailed in long procession, calm and beautiful.’ The name of Mr. -Tobin is familiar to every lover of the drama. His Honey-Moon is -evidently founded on The Taming of a Shrew, and Duke Aranza has -been pronounced by a polite critic to be ‘an elegant Petruchio.’ -The plot is taken from Shakespear; but the language and sentiments, -both of this play and of the Curfew, bear a more direct resemblance to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span>the flowery tenderness of Beaumont and Fletcher, who were, I -believe, the favourite study of our author. Mr. Lamb’s John -Woodvil may be considered as a dramatic fragment, intended for the -closet rather than the stage. It would sound oddly in the lobbies of -either theatre, amidst the noise and glare and bustle of resort; but -‘there where we have treasured up our hearts,’ in silence and in -solitude, it may claim and find a place for itself. It might be read -with advantage in the still retreats of Sherwood Forest, where it -would throw a new-born light on the green, sunny glades; the -tenderest flower might seem to drink of the poet’s spirit, and ‘the tall -deer that paints a dancing shadow of his horns in the swift brook,’ -might seem to do so in mockery of the poet’s thought. Mr. Lamb, -with a modesty often attendant on fine feeling, has loitered too long in -the humbler avenues leading to the temple of ancient genius, instead -of marching boldly up to the sanctuary, as many with half his -pretensions would have done: ‘but fools rush in, where angels fear to -tread.’ The defective or objectionable parts of this production are -imitations of the defects of the old writers: its beauties are his own, -though in their manner. The touches of thought and passion are -often as pure and delicate as they are profound; and the character of -his heroine Margaret is perhaps the finest and most genuine female -character out of Shakespear. This tragedy was not critic-proof: it -had its cracks and flaws and breaches, through which the enemy -marched in triumphant. The station which he had chosen was not -indeed a walled town, but a straggling village, which the experienced -engineers proceeded to lay waste; and he is pinned down in more -than one Review of the day, as an exemplary warning to indiscreet -writers, who venture beyond the pale of periodical taste and conventional -criticism. Mr. Lamb was thus hindered by the taste of the -polite vulgar from writing as he wished; his own taste would not -allow him to write like them: and he (perhaps wisely) turned critic -and prose-writer in his own defence. To say that he has written -better about Shakespear, and about Hogarth, than any body else, is -saying little in his praise.—A gentleman of the name of Cornwall, -who has lately published a volume of Dramatic Scenes, has met with -a very different reception, but I cannot say that he has <em>deserved</em> it. -He has made no sacrifice at the shrine of fashionable affectation or -false glitter. There is nothing common-place in his style to soothe -the complacency of dulness, nothing extravagant to startle the -grossness of ignorance. He writes with simplicity, delicacy, and -fervour; continues a scene from Shakespear, or works out a hint -from Boccacio in the spirit of his originals, and though he bows with -reverence at the altar of those great masters, he keeps an eye curiously -<span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>intent on nature, and a mind awake to the admonitions of his own -heart. As he has begun, so let him proceed. Any one who will -turn to the glowing and richly-coloured conclusion of the Falcon, -will, I think, agree with me in this wish!</p> - -<p class='c011'>There are four sorts or schools of tragedy with which I am -acquainted. The first is the antique or classical. This consisted, I -apprehend, in the introduction of persons on the stage, speaking, -feeling, and acting <em>according to nature</em>, that is, according to the -impression of given circumstances on the passions and mind of man in -those circumstances, but limited by the physical conditions of time -and place, as to its external form, and to a certain dignity of attitude -and expression, selection in the figures, and unity in their grouping, as -in a statue or bas-relief. The second is the Gothic or romantic, or -as it might be called, the historical or poetical tragedy, and differs -from the former, only in having a larger scope in the design and -boldness in the execution; that is, it is the dramatic representation of -nature and passion emancipated from the precise imitation of an -actual event in place and time, from the same fastidiousness in the -choice of the materials, and with the license of the epic and fanciful -form added to it in the range of the subject and the decorations of -language. This is particularly the style or school of Shakespear and -of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, and the one immediately -following. Of this class, or genus, the <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tragedie bourgeoise</span></i> is a variety, -and the antithesis of the classical form. The third sort is the French -or common-place rhetorical style, which is founded on the antique as -to its form and subject-matter; but instead of individual nature, real -passion, or imagination growing out of real passion and the circumstances -of the speaker, it deals only in vague, imposing, and laboured -declamations, or descriptions of nature, dissertations on the passions, -and pompous flourishes which never entered any head but the -author’s, have no existence in nature which they pretend to identify, -and are not dramatic at all, but purely didactic. The fourth and last -is the German or paradoxical style, which differs from the others in -representing men as acting not from the impulse of feeling, or as -debating common-place questions of morality, but as the organs and -mouth-pieces (that is, as acting, speaking, and thinking, under the -sole influence) of certain extravagant speculative opinions, abstracted -from all existing customs, prejudices and institutions.—It is my -present business to speak chiefly of the first and last of these.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Sophocles differs from Shakespear as a Doric portico does from -Westminster Abbey. The principle of the one is simplicity and -harmony, of the other richness and power. The one relies on form -or proportion, the other on quantity and variety and prominence of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>parts. The one owes its charm to a certain union and regularity of -feeling, the other adds to its effects from complexity and the combination -of the greatest extremes. The classical appeals to sense and -habit: the Gothic or romantic strikes from novelty, strangeness and -contrast. Both are founded in essential and indestructible principles -of human nature. We may prefer the one to the other, as we chuse, -but to set up an arbitrary and bigotted standard of excellence in consequence -of this preference, and to exclude either one or the other from -poetry or art, is to deny the existence of the first principles of the -human mind, and to war with nature, which is the height of weakness -and arrogance at once.—There are some observations on this subject -in a late number of the Edinburgh Review, from which I shall here -make a pretty long extract.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘The most obvious distinction between the two styles, the classical -and the romantic, is, that the one is conversant with objects that are -grand or beautiful in themselves, or in consequence of obvious and -universal associations; the other, with those that are interesting only -by the force of circumstances and imagination. A Grecian temple, -for instance, is a classical object: it is beautiful in itself, and excites -immediate admiration. But the ruins of a Gothic castle have no -beauty or symmetry to attract the eye; and yet they excite a more -powerful and romantic interest, from the ideas with which they are -habitually associated. If, in addition to this, we are told, that this is -Macbeth’s castle, the scene of the murder of Duncan, the interest -will be instantly heightened to a sort of pleasing horror. The -classical idea or form of any thing, it may also be observed, remains -always the same, and suggests nearly the same impressions; but the -associations of ideas belonging to the romantic character may vary -infinitely, and take in the whole range of nature and accident. Antigone, -in Sophocles, waiting near the grove of the Furies—Electra, -in Æschylus, offering sacrifice at the tomb of Agamemnon—are -classical subjects, because the circumstances and the characters have a -correspondent dignity, and an immediate interest, from their mere -designation. Florimel, in Spenser, where she is described sitting on -the ground in the Witch’s hut, is not classical, though in the highest -degree poetical and romantic: for the incidents and situation are in -themselves mean and disagreeable, till they are redeemed by the -genius of the poet, and converted, by the very contrast, into a source -of the utmost pathos and elevation of sentiment. Othello’s handkerchief -is not classical, though “there was magic in the web:”—it is -only a powerful instrument of passion and imagination. Even Lear -is not classical; for he is a poor crazy old man, who has nothing -sublime about him but his afflictions, and who dies of a broken heart</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>‘Schlegel somewhere compares the Furies of Æschylus to the -Witches of Shakespear—we think without much reason. Perhaps -Shakespear has surrounded the Weird Sisters with associations as -terrible, and even more mysterious, strange, and fantastic, than the -Furies of Æschylus; but the traditionary beings themselves are not so -petrific. These are of marble,—their look alone must blast the -beholder;—those are of air, bubbles; and though “so withered and -so wild in their attire,” it is their spells alone which are fatal. They -owe their power to metaphysical aid: but the others contain all that -is dreadful in their corporal figures. In this we see the distinct spirit -of the classical and the romantic mythology. The serpents that -twine round the head of the Furies are not to be trifled with, though -they implied no preternatural power. The bearded Witches in -Macbeth are in themselves grotesque and ludicrous, except as this -strange deviation from nature staggers our imagination, and leads us -to expect and to believe in all incredible things. They appal the -faculties by what they say or do;—the others are intolerable, even to -sight.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Our author is right in affirming, that the true way to understand -the plays of Sophocles and Æschylus, is to study them before the -groupes of the Niobe or the Laocoon. If we can succeed in -explaining this analogy, we shall have solved nearly the whole -difficulty. For it is certain, that there are exactly the same powers -of mind displayed in the poetry of the Greeks as in their statues. -Their poetry is exactly what their sculptors might have written. -Both are exquisite imitations of nature; the one in marble, the other -in words. It is evident, that the Greek poets had the same perfect -idea of the subjects they described, as the Greek sculptors had of the -objects they represented; and they give as much of this absolute -truth of imitation, as can be given by words. But in this direct and -simple imitation of nature, as in describing the form of a beautiful -woman, the poet is greatly inferior to the sculptor: it is in the power -of illustration, in comparing it to other things, and suggesting other -ideas of beauty or love, that he has an entirely new source of imagination -opened to him: and of this power, the moderns have made at -least a bolder and more frequent use than the ancients. The -description of Helen in Homer is a description of what might have -happened and been seen, as “that she moved with grace, and that the -old men rose up with reverence as she passed;” the description of -Belphœbe in Spenser is a description of what was only visible to the -eye of the poet.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Upon her eyelids many graces sat,</div> - <div class='line'>Under the shadow of her even brows.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>The description of the soldiers going to battle in Shakespear, “all -plumed like estriches, like eagles newly baited, wanton as goats, wild -as young bulls,” is too bold, figurative, and profuse of dazzling images, -for the mild, equable tone of classical poetry, which never loses sight -of the object in the illustration. The ideas of the ancients were too -exact and definite, too much attached to the material form or vehicle -by which they were conveyed, to admit of those rapid combinations, -those unrestrained flights of fancy, which, glancing from heaven to -earth, unite the most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest illustrations -from things the most remote. The two principles of imitation -and imagination, indeed, are not only distinct, but almost opposite.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘The great difference, then, which we find between the classical -and the romantic style, between ancient and modern poetry, is, that -the one more frequently describes things as they are interesting in -themselves,—the other for the sake of the associations of ideas connected -with them; that the one dwells more on the immediate -impressions of objects on the senses—the other on the ideas which -they suggest to the imagination. The one is the poetry of form, the -other of effect. The one gives only what is necessarily implied in -the subject, the other all that can possibly arise out of it. The one -seeks to identify the imitation with the external object,—clings to it,—is -inseparable from it,—is either that or nothing; the other seeks -to identify the original impression with whatever else, within the -range of thought or feeling, can strengthen, relieve, adorn or elevate -it. Hence the severity and simplicity of the Greek tragedy, which -excluded every thing foreign or unnecessary to the subject. Hence -the Unities: for, in order to identify the imitation as much as possible -with the reality, and leave nothing to mere imagination, it was -necessary to give the same coherence and consistency to the different -parts of a story, as to the different limbs of a statue. Hence the -beauty and grandeur of their materials; for, deriving their power over -the mind from the truth of the imitation, it was necessary that the -subject which they made choice of, and from which they could not -depart, should be in itself grand and beautiful. Hence the perfection -of their execution; which consisted in giving the utmost harmony, -delicacy, and refinement to the details of a given subject. Now, the -characteristic excellence of the moderns is the reverse of all this. -As, according to our author, the poetry of the Greeks is the same as -their sculpture; so, he says, our own more nearly resembles painting,—where -the artist can relieve and throw back his figures at pleasure,—use -a greater variety of contrasts,—and where light and shade, like -the colours of fancy, are reflected on the different objects. The -Muse of classical poetry should be represented as a beautiful naked -<span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>figure: the Muse of modern poetry should be represented clothed, -and with wings. The first has the advantage in point of form; the -last in colour and motion.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Perhaps we may trace this difference to something analogous in -physical organization, situation, religion, and manners. First, the -physical organization of the Greeks seems to have been more perfect, -more susceptible of external impressions, and more in harmony with -external nature than ours, who have not the same advantages of -climate and constitution. Born of a beautiful and vigorous race, with -quick senses and a clear understanding, and placed under a mild -heaven, they gave the fullest developement to their external faculties: -and where all is perceived easily, every thing is perceived in harmony -and proportion. It is the stern genius of the North which drives men -back upon their own resources, which makes them slow to perceive, -and averse to feel, and which, by rendering them insensible to the -single, successive impressions of things, requires their collective and -combined force to rouse the imagination violently and unequally. It -should be remarked, however, that the early poetry of some of the -Eastern nations has even more of that irregularity, wild enthusiasm, -and disproportioned grandeur, which has been considered as the distinguishing -character of the Northern nations.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Again, a good deal may be attributed to the state of manners and -political institutions. The ancient Greeks were warlike tribes -encamped in cities. They had no other country than that which was -enclosed within the walls of the town in which they lived. Each -individual belonged, in the first instance, to the state; and his -relations to it were so close, as to take away, in a great measure, all -personal independence and free-will. Every one was mortised to his -place in society, and had his station assigned him as part of the -political machine, which could only subsist by strict subordination and -regularity. Every man was, as it were, perpetually on duty, and his -faculties kept constant watch and ward. Energy of purpose and -intensity of observation became the necessary characteristics of such a -state of society; and the general principle communicated itself from -this ruling concern for the public, to morals, to art, to language, to -every thing.—The tragic poets of Greece were among her best -soldiers; and it is no wonder that they were as severe in their poetry -as in their discipline. Their swords and their styles carved out their -way with equal sharpness.—After all, however, the tragedies of -Sophocles, which are the perfection of the classical style, are hardly -tragedies in our sense of the word.<a id='r41' /><a href='#f41' class='c015'><sup>[41]</sup></a> They do not exhibit the -extremity of human passion and suffering. The object of modern -<span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span>tragedy is to represent the soul utterly subdued as it were, or at least -convulsed and overthrown by passion or misfortune. That of the -ancients was to shew how the greatest crimes could be perpetrated -with the least remorse, and the greatest calamities borne with the -least emotion. Firmness of purpose and calmness of sentiment are -their leading characteristics. Their heroes and heroines act and suffer -as if they were always in the presence of a higher power, or as if -human life itself were a religious ceremony, performed in honour of -the Gods and of the State. The mind is not shaken to its centre; -the whole being is not crushed or broken down. Contradictory -motives are not accumulated; the utmost force of imagination and -passion is not exhausted to overcome the repugnance of the will to -crime; the contrast and combination of outward accidents are not -called in to overwhelm the mind with the whole weight of unexpected -calamity. The dire conflict of the feelings, the desperate struggle -with fortune, are seldom there. All is conducted with a fatal composure; -prepared and submitted to with inflexible constancy, as if -Nature were only an instrument in the hands of Fate.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘This state of things was afterwards continued under the Roman -empire. In the ages of chivalry and romance, which, after a considerable -interval, succeeded its dissolution, and which have stamped -their character on modern genius and literature, all was reversed. -Society was again resolved into its component parts; and the world -was, in a manner, to begin anew. The ties which bound the citizen -and the soldier to the state being loosened, each person was thrown -back into the circle of the domestic affections, or left to pursue his -doubtful way to fame and fortune alone. This interval of time might -be accordingly supposed to give birth to all that was constant in -attachment, adventurous in action, strange, wild, and extravagant in -invention. Human life took the shape of a busy, voluptuous dream, -where the imagination was now lost amidst “antres vast and deserts -idle;” or suddenly transported to stately palaces, echoing with dance -and song. In this uncertainty of events, this fluctuation of hopes and -fears, all objects became dim, confused, and vague. Magicians, -dwarfs, giants, followed in the train of romance; and Orlando’s -enchanted sword, the horn which he carried with him, and which he -blew thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero’s winged horse, were not -sufficient to protect them in their unheard-of encounters, or deliver -them from their inextricable difficulties. It was a return to the -period of the early heroic ages; but tempered by the difference of -domestic manners, and the spirit of religion. The marked difference -in the relation of the sexes arose from the freedom of choice in -women; which, from being the slaves of the will and passions of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span>men, converted them into the arbiters of their fate, which introduced -the modern system of gallantry, and first made love a feeling of the -heart, founded on mutual affection and esteem. The leading virtues -of the Christian religion, self-denial and generosity, assisted in producing -the same effect.—Hence the spirit of chivalry, of romantic -love, and honour!</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘The mythology of the romantic poetry differed from the received -religion: both differed essentially from the classical. The religion -or mythology of the Greeks was nearly allied to their poetry: it was -material and definite. The Pagan system reduced the Gods to the -human form, and elevated the powers of inanimate nature to the same -standard. Statues carved out of the finest marble, represented the -objects of their religious worship in airy porticos, in solemn temples, -and consecrated groves. Mercury was seen “new-lighted on some -heaven-kissing hill;” and the Naiad or Dryad came gracefully forth -as the personified genius of the stream or wood. All was subjected -to the senses. The Christian religion, on the contrary, is essentially -spiritual and abstracted; it is “the evidence of things unseen.” In -the Heathen mythology, form is every where predominant; in the -Christian, we find only unlimited, undefined power. The imagination -alone “broods over the immense abyss, and makes it pregnant.” -There is, in the habitual belief of an universal, invisible principle of -all things, a vastness and obscurity which confounds our perceptions, -while it exalts our piety. A mysterious awe surrounds the doctrines of -the Christian faith: the infinite is everywhere before us, whether we -turn to reflect on what is revealed to us of the divine nature or our own.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘History, as well as religion, has contributed to enlarge the bounds -of imagination: and both together, by shewing past and future objects -at an interminable distance, have accustomed the mind to contemplate -and take an interest in the obscure and shadowy. The ancients were -more circumscribed within “the ignorant present time,”—spoke only -their own language,—were conversant only with their own customs,—were -acquainted only with the events of their own history. The -mere lapse of time then, aided by the art of printing, has served to -accumulate an endless mass of mixed and contradictory materials; -and, by extending our knowledge to a greater number of things, has -made our particular ideas less perfect and distinct. The constant -reference to a former state of manners and literature is a marked -feature in modern poetry. We are always talking of the Greeks and -Romans;—<em>they</em> never said any thing of us. This circumstance has -tended to give a certain abstract elevation, and ethereal refinement to -the mind, without strengthening it. We are lost in wonder at what -has been done, and dare not think of emulating it. The earliest -<span class='pageno' id='Page_354'>354</span>modern poets, accordingly, may be conceived to hail the glories of -the antique world, dawning through the dark abyss of time; while -revelation, on the other hand, opened its path to the skies. So Dante -represents himself as conducted by Virgil to the shades below; while -Beatrice welcomes him to the abodes of the blest.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>The French are the only people in modern Europe, who have professedly -imitated the ancients; but from their being utterly unlike the -Greeks or Romans, have produced a dramatic style of their own, -which is neither classical nor romantic. The same article contains -the following censure of this style:</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘The true poet identifies the reader with the characters he -represents; the French poet only identifies him with himself. There -is scarcely a single page of their tragedy which fairly throws nature -open to you. It is tragedy in masquerade. We never get beyond -conjecture and reasoning—beyond the general impression of the -situation of the persons—beyond general reflections on their passions—beyond -general descriptions of objects. We never get at that -something more, which is what we are in search of, namely, what we -ourselves should feel in the same situations. The true poet transports -you to the scene—you see and hear what is passing—you catch, from -the lips of the persons concerned, what lies nearest to their hearts;—the -French poet takes you into his closet, and reads you a lecture -upon it. The <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chef d’œuvres</span></i> of their stage, then, are, at best, only -ingenious paraphrases of nature. The dialogue is a tissue of common-places, -of laboured declamations on human life, of learned casuistry -on the passions, on virtue and vice, which any one else might make -just as well as the person speaking; and yet, what the persons themselves -would say, is all we want to know, and all for which the poet -puts them into those situations.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>After the Restoration, that is, after the return of the exiled family -of the Stuarts from France, our writers transplanted this artificial, -monotonous, and imposing common-place style into England, by -imitations and translations, where it could not be expected to take -deep root, and produce wholesome fruits, and where it has indeed -given rise to little but turgidity and rant in men of original force of -genius, and to insipidity and formality in feebler copyists. Otway is -the only writer of this school, who, in the lapse of a century and a -half, has produced a tragedy (upon the classic or regular model) of -indisputable excellence and lasting interest. The merit of Venice -Preserved is not confined to its effect on the stage, or to the opportunity -it affords for the display of the powers of the actors in it, of a -Jaffier, a Pierre, a Belvidera: it reads as well in the closet, and loses -little or none of its power of rivetting breathless attention, and stirring -<span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span>the deepest yearnings of affection. It has passages of great beauty in -themselves (detached from the fable) touches of true nature and -pathos, though none equal or indeed comparable to what we meet -with in Shakespear and other writers of that day; but the awful -suspense of the situations, the conflict of duties and passions, the -intimate bonds that unite the characters together, and that are violently -rent asunder like the parting of soul and body, the solemn march of -the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds up and closes -over all, give to this production of Otway’s Muse a charm and power -that bind it like a spell on the public mind, and have made it a proud -and inseparable adjunct of the English stage. Thomson has given it -due honour in his feeling verse, when he exclaims,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘See o’er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks,</div> - <div class='line'>Othello rages, poor Monimia mourns,</div> - <div class='line'>And Belvidera pours her soul in love.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>There is a mixture of effeminacy, of luxurious and cowardly -indulgence of his wayward sensibility, in Jaffier’s character, which is, -however, finely relieved by the bold intrepid villainy and contemptuous -irony of Pierre, while it is excused by the difficulties of his situation, -and the loveliness of Belvidera: but in the Orphan there is little -else but this voluptuous effeminacy of sentiment and mawkish distress, -which strikes directly at the root of that mental fortitude and heroic -cast of thought which alone makes tragedy endurable—that renders -its sufferings pathetic, or its struggles sublime. Yet there are lines -and passages in it of extreme tenderness and beauty; and few persons, -I conceive (judging from my own experience) will read it at a -certain time of life without shedding tears over it as fast as the -‘Arabian trees their medicinal gums.’ Otway always touched the -reader, for he had himself a heart. We may be sure that he -blotted his page often with his tears, on which so many drops have -since fallen from glistening eyes, ‘that sacred pity had engendered -there.’ He had susceptibility of feeling and warmth of genius; -but he had not equal depth of thought or loftiness of imagination, -and indulged his mere sensibility too much, yielding to the immediate -impression or emotion excited in his own mind, and not placing -himself enough in the minds and situations of others, or following -the workings of nature sufficiently with keenness of eye and strength -of will into its heights and depths, its strongholds as well as its weak -sides. The Orphan was attempted to be revived some time since -with the advantage of Miss O’Neill playing the part of Monimia. -It however did not entirely succeed (as it appeared at the time) from -the plot turning all on one circumstance, and that hardly of a nature -<span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span>to be obtruded on the public notice. The incidents and characters -are taken almost literally from an old play by Robert Tailor, called -<span class='sc'>Hog hath lost his Pearl</span>.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Addison’s Cato, in spite of Dennis’s criticism, still retains -possession of the stage with all its unities. My love and admiration -for Addison is as great as any person’s, let that other person -be who he will; but it is not founded on his Cato, in extolling -which Whigs and Tories contended in loud applause. The interest -of this play (bating that shadowy regret that always clings to and -flickers round the form of free antiquity) is confined to the declamation, -which is feeble in itself, and not heard on the stage. I have -seen Mr. Kemble in this part repeat the Soliloquy on Death without -a line being distinctly heard; nothing was observable but the thoughtful -motion of his lips, and the occasional extension of his hand in -sign of doubts suggested or resolved; yet this beautiful and expressive -dumb-show, with the propriety of his costume, and the elegance of -his attitude and figure, excited the most lively interest, and kept -attention even more on the stretch, to catch every imperfect syllable -or speaking gesture. There is nothing, however, in the play to -excite ridicule, or shock by absurdity, except the love-scenes which -are passed over as what the spectator has no proper concern with: -and however feeble or languid the interest produced by a dramatic -exhibition, unless there is some positive stumbling-block thrown in -the way, or gross offence given to an audience, it is generally suffered -to linger on to a <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">euthanasia</span></i>, instead of dying a violent and premature -death. If an author (particularly an author of high reputation) -can contrive to preserve a uniform degree of insipidity, he is nearly -sure of impunity. It is the mixture of great faults with splendid -passages (the more striking from the contrast) that is inevitable -damnation. Every one must have seen the audience tired out and -watching for an opportunity to wreak their vengeance on the author, -and yet not able to accomplish their wish, because no one part seemed -more tiresome or worthless than another. The philosophic mantle -of Addison’s Cato, when it no longer spreads its graceful folds on -the shoulders of John Kemble, will I fear fall to the ground; nor do -I think Mr. Kean likely to pick it up again, with dauntless ambition or -stoic pride, like that of Coriolanus. He could not play Cato (at least -I think not) for the same reason that he will play Coriolanus. He -can always play a living man; he cannot play a lifeless statue.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Dryden’s plays have not come down to us, except in the collection -of his printed works. The last of them that was on the list of -regular acting plays was Don Sebastian. The Mask of Arthur and -Emmeline was the other day revived at one of our theatres, without -<span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>much success. Alexander the Great is by Lee, who wrote some -things in conjunction with Dryden, and who had far more power -and passion of an irregular and turbulent kind, bordering upon -constitutional morbidity, and who might have done better things (as -we see from his Œdipus) had not his genius been perverted and -rendered worse than abortive by carrying the vicious manner of his -age to the greatest excess. Dryden’s plays are perhaps the fairest -specimen of what this manner was. I do not know how to describe -it better than by saying that it is one continued and exaggerated -common-place. All the characters are put into a swaggering attitude -of dignity, and tricked out in the pomp of ostentatious drapery. -The images are extravagant, yet not far-fetched; they are outrageous -caricatures of obvious thoughts: the language oscillates -between bombast and bathos: the characters are noisy pretenders -to virtue, and shallow boasters in vice; the versification is laboured -and monotonous, quite unlike the admirably free and flowing rhyme -of his satires, in which he felt the true inspiration of his subject, -and could find modulated sounds to express it. Dryden had no -dramatic genius either in tragedy or comedy. In his plays he -mistakes blasphemy for sublimity, and ribaldry for wit. He had -so little notion of his own powers, that he has put Milton’s Paradise -Lost into dramatic rhyme to make Adam look like a fine gentleman; -and has added a double love-plot to the Tempest, to ‘relieve the -killing languor and over-laboured lassitude’ of that solitude of the -imagination, in which Shakespear had left the inhabitants of his -Enchanted Island. I will give two passages out of Don Sebastian -in illustration of what I have said above of this mock-heroic style.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Almeyda advising Sebastian to fly from the power of Muley-Moluch -addresses him thus:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Leave then the luggage of your fate behind;</div> - <div class='line'>To make your flight more easy, leave Almeyda.</div> - <div class='line'>Nor think me left a base, ignoble prey,</div> - <div class='line'>Exposed to this inhuman tyrant’s lust.</div> - <div class='line'>My virtue is a guard beyond my strength;</div> - <div class='line'>And death my last defence within my call.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Sebastian answers very gravely:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Death may be called in vain, and cannot come:</div> - <div class='line'>Tyrants can tye him up from your relief:</div> - <div class='line'>Nor has a Christian privilege to die.</div> - <div class='line'>Alas, thou art too young in thy new faith:</div> - <div class='line'>Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls,</div> - <div class='line'>And give them furloughs for another world:</div> - <div class='line'>But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand,</div> - <div class='line'>In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_358'>358</span>Sebastian then urging her to prevent the tyrant’s designs by an -instant marriage, she says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘’Tis late to join, when we must part so soon.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Sebastian.</em> Nay, rather let us haste it, e’er we part:</div> - <div class='line'>Our souls for want of that acquaintance here</div> - <div class='line'>May wander in the starry walks above,</div> - <div class='line'>And, forced on worse companions, miss ourselves.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>In the scene with Muley-Moluch where she makes intercession -for Sebastian’s life, she says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘My father’s, mother’s, brother’s death I pardon:</div> - <div class='line'>That’s somewhat sure, a mighty sum of murder,</div> - <div class='line'>Of innocent and kindred blood struck off.</div> - <div class='line'>My prayers and penance shall discount for these,</div> - <div class='line'>And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me:</div> - <div class='line'>Behold what price I offer, and how dear</div> - <div class='line'>To buy Sebastian’s life.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Emperor.</em> Let after-reckonings trouble fearful fools;</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll stand the trial of those trivial crimes:</div> - <div class='line'>But since thou begg’st me to prescribe my terms,</div> - <div class='line'>The only I can offer are thy love;</div> - <div class='line'>And this one day of respite to resolve.</div> - <div class='line'>Grant or deny, for thy next word is Fate;</div> - <div class='line'>And Fate is deaf to Prayer.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Almeyda.</em> May heav’n be so</div> - <div class='line'>At thy last breath to thine: I curse thee not:</div> - <div class='line'>For who can better curse the plague or devil</div> - <div class='line'>Than to be what they are? That curse be thine.</div> - <div class='line'>Now do not speak, Sebastian, for you need not,</div> - <div class='line'>But die, for I resign your life: Look heav’n,</div> - <div class='line'>Almeyda dooms her dear Sebastian’s death</div> - <div class='line'>But is there heaven, for I begin to doubt?</div> - <div class='line'>The skies are hush’d; no grumbling thunders roll:</div> - <div class='line'>Now take your swing, ye impious: sin, unpunish’d.</div> - <div class='line'>Eternal Providence seems over-watch’d,</div> - <div class='line'>And with a slumbering nod assents to murder....</div> - <div class='line'>Farewell, my lost Sebastian!</div> - <div class='line'>I do not beg, I challenge Justice now:</div> - <div class='line'>O Powers, if Kings be your peculiar care,</div> - <div class='line'>Why plays this wretch with your prerogative?</div> - <div class='line'>Now flash him dead, now crumble him to ashes:</div> - <div class='line'>Or henceforth live confined in your own palace;</div> - <div class='line'>And look not idly out upon a world</div> - <div class='line'>That is no longer yours.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>These passages, with many like them, will be found in the first -scene of the third act.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The occasional striking expressions, such as that of souls at the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_359'>359</span>resurrection ‘fumbling for their limbs,’ are the language of strong -satire and habitual disdain, not proper to tragic or serious poetry.</p> - -<p class='c011'>After Dryden there is no writer that has acquired much reputation -as a tragic poet for the next hundred years. In the hands of his -successors, the Smiths, the Hughes, the Hills, the Murphys, the -Dr. Johnsons, of the reigns of George <span class='fss'>I.</span> and <span class='fss'>II.</span>, tragedy seemed -almost afraid to know itself, and certainly did not stand where it had -done a hundred and fifty years before. It had degenerated by regular -and studied gradations into the most frigid, insipid, and insignificant of -all things. It faded to a shade, it tapered to a point, ‘fine by -degrees, and beautifully less.’ I do not believe there is a single play -of this period which could be read with any degree of interest or even -patience, by a modern reader of poetry, if we except the productions -of Southern, Lillo and Moore, the authors of the Gamester, -Oroonoko, and Fatal Curiosity, and who instead of mounting on -classic stilts and making rhetorical flourishes, went out of the -established road to seek for truth and nature and effect in the -commonest life and lowest situations. In short, the only tragedy of -this period is that to which their productions gave a name, and which -has been called in contradistinction by the French, and with an -express provision for its merits and defects, the <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tragedie bourgeoise</span></i>. -An anecdote is told of the first of these writers by Gray, in one of -his Letters, dated from Horace Walpole’s country-seat, about the year -1740, who says, ‘Old Mr. Southern is here, who is now above 80: -a very agreeable old man, at least I think so when I look in his face, -and think of Isabella and Oroonoko.’ It is pleasant to see these -traits of attachment and gratitude kept up in successive generations of -poets to one another, and also to find that the same works of genius -that have ‘sent us weeping to our beds,’ and made us ‘rise sadder and -wiser on the morrow morn,’ have excited just the same fondness of -affection in others before we were born; and it is to be hoped, will -do so, after we are dead. Our best feelings, and those on which we -pride ourselves most, and with most reason, are perhaps the commonest -of all others.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Up to the present reign, and during the best part of it (with another -solitary exception, Douglas, which with all its feebleness and extravagance, -has in its style and sentiments a good deal of poetical and -romantic beauty) tragedy wore the face of the Goddess of Dulness in -the Dunciad, serene, torpid, sickly, lethargic, and affected, till it was -roused from its trance by the blast of the French Revolution, and by -the loud trampling of the German Pegasus on the English stage, -which now appeared as pawing to get free from its ancient trammels, -and rampant shook off the incumbrance of all former examples, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_360'>360</span>opinions, prejudices, and principles. If we have not been alive and -well since this period, at least we have been alive, and it is better to -be alive than dead. The German tragedy (and our own, which is -only a branch of it) aims at effect, and produces it often in the -highest degree; and it does this by going all the lengths not only of -instinctive feeling, but of speculative opinion, and startling the hearer -by overturning all the established maxims of society, and setting at -nought all the received rules of composition. It cannot be said of -this style that in it ‘decorum is the principal thing.’ It is the -violation of decorum, that is its first and last principle, the beginning, -middle, and end. It is an insult and defiance to Aristotle’s definition -of tragedy. The action is not grave, but extravagant: the fable is -not probable, but improbable: the favourite characters are not only -low, but vicious: the sentiments are such as do not become the -person into whose mouth they are put, nor that of any other person: -the language is a mixture of metaphysical jargon and flaring prose: -the moral is immorality. In spite of all this, a German tragedy is a -good thing. It is a fine hallucination: it is a noble madness, and as -there is a pleasure in madness, which none but madmen know, so -there is a pleasure in reading a German play to be found in no other. -The world have thought so: they go to see the Stranger, they go to -see Lovers’ Vows and Pizarro, they have their eyes wide open all -the time, and almost cry them out before they come away, and -therefore they go again. There is something in the style that hits -the temper of men’s minds; that, if it does not hold the mirrour up -to nature, yet ‘shews the very age and body of the time its form and -pressure.’ It embodies, it sets off and aggrandizes in all the pomp of -action, in all the vehemence of hyperbolical declamation, in scenery, -in dress, in music, in the glare of the senses, and the glow of -sympathy, the extreme opinions which are floating in our time, and -which have struck their roots deep and wide below the surface of the -public mind. We are no longer as formerly heroes in warlike enterprise; -martyrs to religious faith; but we are all the partisans of a -political system, and devotees to some theory of moral sentiments. -The modern style of tragedy is not assuredly made up of pompous -common-place, but it is a tissue of philosophical, political, and moral -paradoxes. I am not saying whether these paradoxes are true or -false: all that I mean to state is, that they are utterly at variance -with old opinions, with established rules and existing institutions; -that it is this tug of war between the inert prejudice and the startling -novelty which is to batter it down (first on the stage of the theatre, -and afterwards on the stage of the world) that gives the excitement -and the zest. We see the natural always pitted against the social -<span class='pageno' id='Page_361'>361</span>man; and the majority who are not of the privileged classes, take part -with the former. The hero is a sort of metaphysical Orson, armed -not with teeth and a club, but with hard sayings and unanswerable -sentences, ticketted and labelled with extracts and mottos from the -modern philosophy. This common representative of mankind is a -natural son of some feudal lord, or wealthy baron: and he comes to -claim as a matter of course and of simple equity, the rich reversion of -the title and estates to which he has a right by the bounty of nature -and the privilege of his birth. This produces a very edifying scene, -and the proud, unfeeling, unprincipled baron is hooted from the stage. -A young woman, a sempstress, or a waiting maid of much beauty and -accomplishment, who would not think of matching with a fellow of -low birth or fortune for the world, falls in love with the heir of an -immense estate out of pure regard to his mind and person, and thinks -it strange that rank and opulence do not follow as natural appendages -in the train of sentiment. A lady of fashion, wit, and beauty, -forfeits the sanctity of her marriage-vow, but preserves the inviolability -of her sentiments and character,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Pure in the last recesses of the mind’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c013'>and triumphs over false opinion and prejudice, like gold out of the -fire, the brighter for the ordeal. A young man turns robber and -captain of a gang of banditti; and the wonder is to see the heroic -ardour of his sentiments, his aspirations after the most godlike -goodness and unsullied reputation, working their way through the -repulsiveness of his situation, and making use of fortune only as a foil -to nature. The principle of contrast and contradiction is here made -use of, and no other. All qualities are reversed: virtue is always at -odds with vice, ‘which shall be which:’ the internal character and -external situation, the actions and the sentiments, are never in accord: -you are to judge of everything by contraries: those that exalt themselves -are abased, and those that should be humbled are exalted: the -high places and strongholds of power and greatness are crumbled in -the dust; opinions totter, feelings are brought into question, and the -world is turned upside down, with all things in it!—‘There is some -soul of goodness in things evil’—and there is some soul of goodness -in all this. The world and every thing in it is not just what it ought -to be, or what it pretends to be; or such extravagant and prodigious -paradoxes would be driven from the stage—would meet with sympathy -in no human breast, high or low, young or old. <em>There’s something -rotten in the state of Denmark.</em> Opinion is not truth: appearance is -not reality: power is not beneficence: rank is not wisdom: nobility -is not the only virtue: riches are not happiness: desert and success -<span class='pageno' id='Page_362'>362</span>are different things: actions do not always speak the character any -more than words. We feel this, and do justice to the romantic -extravagance of the German Muse.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In Germany, where this <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">outré</span></i> style of treating every thing -established and adventitious was carried to its height, there were, as -we learn from the Sorrows of Werter, seven-and-twenty ranks in -society, each raised above the other, and of which the one above did -not speak to the one below it. Is it wonderful that the poets and -philosophers of Germany, the discontented men of talent, who thought -and mourned for themselves and their fellows, the Goethes, the -Lessings, the Schillers, the Kotzebues, felt a sudden and irresistible -impulse by a convulsive effort to tear aside this factitious drapery of -society, and to throw off that load of bloated prejudice, of maddening -pride and superannuated folly, that pressed down every energy of their -nature and stifled the breath of liberty, of truth and genius in their -bosoms? These Titans of our days tried to throw off the dead -weight that encumbered them, and in so doing, warred not against -heaven, but against earth. The same writers (as far as I have seen) -have made the only incorrigible Jacobins, and their school of poetry -is the only real school of Radical Reform.</p> - -<p class='c011'>In reasoning, truth and soberness may prevail, on which side -soever they meet: but in works of imagination novelty has the -advantage over prejudice; that which is striking and unheard-of, over -that which is trite and known before, and that which gives unlimited -scope to the indulgence of the feelings and the passions (whether -erroneous or not) over that which imposes a restraint upon them.</p> - -<p class='c011'>I have half trifled with this subject; and I believe I have done so, -because I despaired of finding language for some old rooted feelings -I have about it, which a theory could neither give or can it take -away. The Robbers was the first play I ever read: and the effect -it produced upon me was the greatest. It stunned me like a blow, -and I have not recovered enough from it to describe how it was. -There are impressions which neither time nor circumstances can -efface. Were I to live much longer than I have any chance of -doing, the books which I read when I was young, I can never forget. -Five-and-twenty years have elapsed since I first read the translation -of the Robbers, but they have not blotted the impression from my -mind: it is here still, an old dweller in the chambers of the brain. -The scene in particular in which Moor looks through his tears at the -evening sun from the mountain’s brow, and says in his despair, ‘It -was my wish like him to live, like him to die: it was an idle thought, -a boy’s conceit,’ took fast hold of my imagination, and that sun has -to me never set! The last interview in Don Carlos between the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_363'>363</span>two lovers, in which the injured bride struggles to burst the prison-house -of her destiny, in which her hopes and youth lie coffined, and -buried, as it were, alive, under the oppression of unspeakable anguish, -I remember gave me a deep sense of suffering and a strong desire -after good, which has haunted me ever since. I do not like Schiller’s -later style so well. His Wallenstein, which is admirably and almost -literally translated by Mr. Coleridge, is stately, thoughtful, and -imaginative: but where is the enthusiasm, the throbbing of hope and -fear, the mortal struggle between the passions; as if all the happiness -or misery of a life were crowded into a moment, and the die was to -be cast that instant? Kotzebue’s best work I read first in Cumberland’s -imitation of it in the Wheel of Fortune; and I confess that -that style of sentiment which seems to make of life itself a long-drawn -endless sigh, has something in it that pleases me, in spite of rules and -criticism. Goethe’s tragedies are (those that I have seen of them, -his Count Egmont, Stella, &c.) constructed upon the second or -inverted manner of the German stage, with a deliberate design to -avoid all possible effect and interest, and this object is completely -accomplished. He is however spoken of with enthusiasm almost -amounting to idolatry by his countrymen, and those among ourselves -who import heavy German criticism into this country in shallow flat-bottomed -unwieldy intellects. Madame De Stael speaks of one -passage in his Iphigenia, where he introduces a fragment of an old -song, which the Furies are supposed to sing to Tantalus in hell, -reproaching him with the times when he sat with the Gods at their -golden tables, and with his after-crimes that hurled him from heaven, -at which he turns his eyes from his children and hangs his head in -mournful silence. This is the true sublime. Of all his works I like -his Werter best, nor would I part with it at a venture, even for the -Memoirs of Anastasius the Greek, whoever is the author; nor ever -cease to think of the times, ‘when in the fine summer evenings they -saw the frank, noble-minded enthusiast coming up from the valley,’ -nor of ‘the high grass that by the light of the departing sun waved in -the breeze over his grave.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>But I have said enough to give an idea of this modern style, compared -with our own early Dramatic Literature, of which I had to -treat.—I have done: and if I have done no better, the fault has been -in me, not in the subject. My liking to this grew with my knowledge -of it: but so did my anxiety to do it justice. I somehow felt it as -a point of honour not to make my hearers think less highly of some -of these old writers than I myself did of them. If I have praised an -author, it was because I liked him: if I have quoted a passage, it was -because it pleased me in the reading: if I have spoken contemptuously -<span class='pageno' id='Page_364'>364</span>of any one, it has been reluctantly. It is no easy task that a writer, -even in so humble a class as myself, takes upon him; he is scouted -and ridiculed if he fails; and if he succeeds, the enmity and cavils -and malice with which he is assailed, are just in proportion to his -success. The coldness and jealousy of his friends not unfrequently -keep pace with the rancour of his enemies. They do not like you a -bit the better for fulfilling the good opinion they always entertained of -you. They would wish you to be always promising a great deal, and -doing nothing, that they may answer for the performance. That -shows their sagacity and does not hurt their vanity. An author -wastes his time in painful study and obscure researches, to gain a little -breath of popularity, meets with nothing but vexation and disappointment -in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred; or when he thinks to -grasp the luckless prize, finds it not worth the trouble—the perfume -of a minute, fleeting as a shadow, hollow as a sound; ‘as often got -without merit as lost without deserving.’ He thinks that the attainment -of acknowledged excellence will secure him the expression of -those feelings in others, which the image and hope of it had excited -in his own breast, but instead of that, he meets with nothing (or -scarcely nothing) but squint-eyed suspicion, idiot wonder, and grinning -scorn.—It seems hardly worth while to have taken all the pains he -has been at for this!</p> - -<p class='c011'>In youth we borrow patience from our future years: the spring of -hope gives us courage to act and suffer. A cloud is upon our -onward path, and we fancy that all is sunshine beyond it. The -prospect seems endless, because we do not know the end of it. We -think that life is long, because art is so, and that, because we have -much to do, it is well worth doing: or that no exertions can be too -great, no sacrifices too painful, to overcome the difficulties we have to -encounter. Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and -to do what we cannot. But as we approach the goal, we draw in the -reins; the impulse is less, as we have not so far to go; as we see -objects nearer, we become less sanguine in the pursuit: it is not the -despair of not attaining, so much as knowing there is nothing worth -obtaining, and the fear of having nothing left even to wish for, that -damps our ardour, and relaxes our efforts; and if the mechanical -habit did not increase the facility, would, I believe, take away all -inclination or power to do any thing. We stagger on the few -remaining paces to the end of our journey; make perhaps one final -effort; and are glad when our task is done!</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div><span class='small'>End of <span class='sc'>Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth</span></span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_365'>365</span> - <h2 class='c005'>PREFACE AND CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS<br /> <span class='small'>FROM</span><br /> SELECT BRITISH POETS</h2> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_366'>366</span> - <h3 class='c003'>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'>The first edition of the <cite>Select British Poets</cite> (5¾ in. × 9 in.) was published in 1824 -with the following title-page: ‘Select British Poets, or New Elegant Extracts from -Chaucer to the Present Time, with Critical Remarks. By William Hazlitt. -Embellished with Seven Ornamented Portraits, after a Design by T. Stothard, R.A. -London: Published by Wm. C. Hall, and sold by all Booksellers. 1824.’ The -frontispiece bore the imprint ‘London. Published by T. Tegg, 73, Cheapside, -June 1824.’ This edition included selections from the works of living poets, and -was suppressed upon a threat of legal proceedings on behalf of some of the copyright -owners. There is a copy in the British Museum, but the volume is exceedingly -rare. In the following year (1825), a second edition was published with a -fresh title-page, the copyright poems being omitted. The title-page ran: ‘Select -Poets of Great Britain. To which are prefixed, Critical Notices of Each Author. -By William Hazlitt, Esq. Author of “Lectures on the English Poets,” “Characters -of Shakspeare’s Plays,” “Lectures on Dramatic Literature,” etc. London: Printed -by Thomas Davison, Whitefriars, for Thomas Tegg, 73, Cheapside; R. Griffin -and Co., Glasgow; also R. Milliken, Dublin; and M. Baudry, Paris. 1825.’ -The pages which follow are printed from the first (complete) edition of 1824.</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_367'>367</span> - <h3 class='c003'>PREFACE</h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'>The volume here presented to the public is an attempt to improve -upon the plan of the Elegant Extracts in Verse by the late Dr. -Knox. From the length of time which had elapsed since the first -appearance of that work, a similar undertaking admitted of considerable -improvement, although the size of the volume has been compressed -by means of a more severe selection of matter. At least, -a third of the former popular and in many respects valuable work -was devoted to articles either entirely worthless, or recommended -only by considerations foreign to the reader of poetry. The object -and indeed ambition of the present compiler has been to offer to the -public a <span class='sc'>Body of English Poetry</span>, from Chaucer to Burns, such as -might at once satisfy individual curiosity and justify our national -pride. We have reason to boast of the genius of our country for -poetry and of the trophies earned in that way; and it is well to have -a collection of such examples of excellence inwoven together as may -serve to nourish our own taste and love for the sublime or beautiful, -and also to silence the objections of foreigners, who are too ready to -treat us as behindhand with themselves in all that relates to the arts -of refinement and elegance. If in some respects we are so, it behoves -us the more to cultivate and cherish the superiority we can lay claim -to in others. Poetry is one of those departments in which we possess -a decided and as it were natural pre-eminence: and therefore no -pains should be spared in selecting and setting off to advantage the -different proofs and vouchers of it.</p> - -<p class='c011'>All that could be done for this object, has been attempted in the -present instance. I have brought together in one view (to the best -of my judgment) the most admired smaller pieces of poetry, and the -most striking passages in larger works, which could not themselves be -given entire. I have availed myself of the plan chalked out by my -predecessor, but in the hope of improving upon it. To possess a -<span class='pageno' id='Page_368'>368</span>work of this kind ought to be like holding the contents of a library -in one’s hand without any of the refuse or ‘baser matter.’ If it had -not been thought that the former work admitted of considerable -improvement in the choice of subjects, inasmuch as inferior and -indifferent productions not rarely occupied the place of sterling -excellence, the present publication would not have been hazarded. -Another difference is that I have followed the order of time, instead -of the division of the subjects. By this method, the progress of -poetry is better seen and understood; and besides, the real subjects of -poetry are so much alike or run so much into one another, as not -easily to come under any precise classification.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The great deficiency which I have to lament is the small portion -of Shakespear’s poetry, which has been introduced into the work; -but this arose unavoidably from the plan of it, which did not extend -to dramatic poetry as a general species. The extracts from the best -parts of Chaucer, which are given at some length, will, it is hoped, -be acceptable to the lover both of poetry and history. The quotations -from Spenser do not occupy a much larger space than in the Elegant -Extracts; but entire passages are given, instead of a numberless -quantity of shreds and patches. The essence of Spenser’s poetry -was a continuous, endless flow of indescribable beauties, like the -galaxy or milky way:—Dr. Knox has ‘taken him and cut him out -in little stars,’ which was repugnant to the genius of his writings. -I have made it my aim to exhibit the characteristic and striking -features of English poetry and English genius; and with this view -have endeavoured to give such specimens from each author as showed -his peculiar powers of mind and the peculiar style in which he -excelled, and have omitted those which were not only less remarkable -in themselves, but were common to him with others, or in which -others surpassed him, who were therefore the proper models in that -particular way. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Cuique tribuitur suum.</span></i> In a word, it has been -proposed to retain those passages and pieces with which the reader -of taste and feeling would be most pleased in the perusal of the -original works, and to which he would wish oftenest to turn again—and -which consequently may be conceived to conduce most beneficially -to form the taste and amuse the fancy of those who have not leisure -or industry to make themselves masters of the whole range of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_369'>369</span>English poetry. By leaving out a great deal of uninteresting and -common-place poetry, room has been obtained for nearly all that -was emphatically excellent. The reader, it is presumed, may here -revel and find no end of delight, in the racy vigour and manly -characteristic humour, or simple pathos of Chaucer’s Muse, in the -gorgeous voluptuousness and romantic tenderness of Spenser, in the -severe, studied beauty and awful majesty of Milton, in the elegance -and refinement and harmony of Pope, in the strength and satire and -sounding rhythm of Dryden, in the sportive gaiety and graces of -Suckling, Dorset, Gay, and Prior, in Butler’s wit, in Thomson’s -rural scenes, in Cowper’s terse simplicity, in Burns’s laughing eye -and feeling heart (among standard and established reputations)—and -in the polished tenderness of Campbell, the buoyant heart-felt levity -of Moore, the striking, careless, picturesque beauties of Scott, the -thoughtful humanity of Wordsworth, and Byron’s glowing rage -(among those whose reputation seems less solid and towering, -because we are too near them to perceive its height or measure its -duration). Others might be mentioned to lengthen out the list of -poetic names</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That on the steady breeze of honour sail</div> - <div class='line'>In long possession, calm and beautiful:’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>but from all together enough has been gleaned to make a ‘perpetual -feast of nectar’d sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.’ Such at -least has been my ardent wish; and if this volume is not pregnant -with matter both ‘rich and rare,’ it has been the fault of the -compiler, and not of the poverty or niggardliness of the <span class='sc'>English -Muse</span>.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>W. H.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_370'>370</span> - <h3 class='c003'>A CRITICAL LIST<br /> <span class='xsmall'>OF</span><br /> <span class='small'>AUTHORS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME</span></h3> -</div> - -<p class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chaucer</span> is in the first class of poetry (the <em>natural</em>) and one of the -first. He describes the common but individual objects of nature and -the strongest and most universal, because spontaneous workings of the -heart. In invention he has not much to boast, for the materials are -chiefly borrowed (except in some of his comic tales); but the -masterly execution is his own. He is remarkable for the degree -and variety of the qualities he possesses—excelling equally in the -comic and serious. He has little fancy, but he has great wit, great -humour, strong manly sense, great power of description, perfect -knowledge of character, occasional sublimity, as in parts of the -<cite>Knight’s Tale</cite>, and the deepest pathos, as in the story of <cite>Griselda</cite>, -<cite>Custance</cite>, <cite>The Flower and the Leaf</cite>, &c. In humour and spirit, <cite>The -Wife of Bath</cite> is unequalled.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Spenser</span> excels in the two qualities in which Chaucer is most -deficient—invention and fancy. The invention shown in his allegorical -personages is endless, as the fancy shown in his description of them is -gorgeous and delightful. He is the poet of romance. He describes -things as in a splendid and voluptuous dream. He has displayed no -comic talent, except in his <cite>Shepherd’s Calendar</cite>. He has little attempt -at character, an occasional visionary sublimity, and a pensive tenderness -approaching to the finest pathos. Nearly all that is excellent in -the <cite>Faery Queen</cite> is contained in the three first Books. His style is -sometimes ambiguous and affected; but his versification is to the last -degree flowing and harmonious.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Sir <span class='sc'>Philip Sidney</span> is an affected writer, but with great power of -thought and description. His poetry, of which he did not write -much, has the faults of his prose without its recommendations.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Drayton</span> has chiefly tried his strength in description and learned -narrative. The plan of the <cite>Poly-Olbion</cite> (a local or geographical -account of Great Britain) is original, but not very happy. The -<span class='pageno' id='Page_371'>371</span>descriptions of places are often striking and curious, but become -tedious by uniformity. There is some fancy in the poem, but little -general interest. His Heroic Epistles have considerable tenderness -and dignity; and, in the structure of the verse, have served as a -model to succeeding writers.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Daniel</span> is chiefly remarkable for simplicity of style, and natural -tenderness. In some of his occasional pieces (as the <cite>Epistle to the -Countess of Cumberland</cite>) there is a vast philosophic gravity and -stateliness of sentiment.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Sir <span class='sc'>John Suckling</span> is one of the most piquant and attractive of -the Minor poets. He has fancy, wit, humour, descriptive talent, -the highest elegance, perfect ease, a familiar style and a pleasing -versification. He has combined all these in his <cite>Ballad on a Wedding</cite>, -which is a masterpiece of sportive gaiety and good humour. His -genius was confined entirely to the light and agreeable.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>George Wither</span> is a poet of comparatively little power; though -he has left one or two exquisitely affecting passages, having a personal -reference to his own misfortunes.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Waller</span> belonged to the same class as Suckling—the sportive, the -sparkling, the polished, with fancy, wit, elegance of style, and easiness -of versification at his command. Poetry was the plaything of his -idle hours—the mistress, to whom he addressed his verses, was his -real Muse. His lines on the <cite>Death of Oliver Cromwell</cite> are however -serious, and even sublime.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Milton</span> was one of the four great English poets, who must -certainly take precedence over all others, I mean himself, Spenser, -Chaucer, and Shakespear. His subject is not common or <em>natural</em> -indeed, but it is of preternatural grandeur and unavoidable interest. -He is altogether a serious poet; and in this differs from Chaucer and -Shakespear, and resembles Spenser. He has sublimity in the highest -degree: beauty in an equal degree; pathos in a degree next to the -highest; perfect character in the conception of Satan, of Adam and -Eve; fancy, learning, vividness of description, stateliness, decorum. -He seems on a par with his subjects in <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>; to raise it, -and to be raised with it. His style is elaborate and powerful, and -his versification, with occasional harshness and affectation, superior in -harmony and variety to all other blank verse. It has the effect of a -piece of fine music. His smaller pieces, <cite>Lycidas</cite>, <cite>L’Allegro</cite>, <cite><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">Il -Penseroso</span></cite>, the Sonnets, &c., display proportionable excellence, from -their beauty, sweetness, and elegance.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_372'>372</span><span class='sc'>Cowley</span> is a writer of great sense, ingenuity, and learning; but as -a poet, his fancy is quaint, far-fetched, and mechanical, and he has -no other distinguishing quality whatever. To these objections his -Anacreontics are a delightful exception. They are the perfection of -that sort of gay, unpremeditated, lyrical effusion. They breathe the -very spirit of love and wine. Most of his other pieces should be -read for instruction, not for pleasure.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Marvell</span> is a writer almost forgotten: but undeservedly so. His -poetical reputation seems to have sunk with his political party. His -satires were coarse, quaint, and virulent; but his other productions -are full of a lively, tender, and elegant fancy. His verses leave an -echo on the ear, and find one in the heart. See those entitled -<cite class='scite'>Bermudas</cite>, <cite class='scite'>To his Coy Mistress</cite>, <cite class='scite'>On the Death of a Fawn</cite>, &c.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Butler</span> (the author of <cite>Hudibras</cite>) has undoubtedly more wit than -any other writer in the language. He has little besides to recommend -him, if we except strong sense, and a laudable contempt of absurdity -and hypocrisy. He has little story, little character, and no great -humour in his singular poem. The invention of the fable seems -borrowed from Don Quixote. He has however prodigious merit in -his style, and in the fabrication of his rhymes.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Sir <span class='sc'>John Denham’s</span> fame rests chiefly on his <cite>Cooper’s Hill</cite>. This -poem is a mixture of the descriptive and didactic, and has given birth -to many poems on the same plan since. His <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">forte</span></i> is strong, sound -sense, and easy, unaffected, manly verse.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Dryden</span> stands nearly at the head of the second class of English -poets, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">viz.</span></i> the <em>artificial</em>, or those who describe the mixed modes of -artificial life, and convey general precepts and abstract ideas. He -had invention in the plan of his Satires, very little fancy, not much -wit, no humour, immense strength of character, elegance, masterly -ease, indignant contempt approaching to the sublime, not a particle of -tenderness, but eloquent declamation, the perfection of uncorrupted -English style, and of sounding, vehement, varied versification. The -<cite>Alexander’s Feast</cite>, his <cite>Fables</cite> and <cite>Satires</cite>, are his standard and lasting -works.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Rochester</span>, as a wit, is first-rate: but his fancy is keen and caustic, -not light and pleasing, like Suckling or Waller. His verses cut and -sparkle like diamonds.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Roscommon</span> excelled chiefly as a translator; but his translation of -<cite>Horace’s Art of Poetry</cite> is so <em>unique</em> a specimen of fidelity and felicity, -that it has been adopted into this collection.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_373'>373</span><span class='sc'>Pomfret</span> left one popular poem behind him, <cite class='scite'>The Choice</cite>; the -attraction of which may be supposed to lie rather in the subject than -in the peculiar merit of the execution.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Lord <span class='sc'>Dorset</span>, for the playful ease and elegance of his verses, -is not surpassed by any of the poets of that class.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>J. Philips</span>‘s <span class='sc'>Splendid Shilling</span> makes the fame of this poet—it is -a lucky thought happily executed.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Halifax</span> (of whom two short poems are here retained) was the -least of the Minor poets—one of ‘the mob of gentlemen who wrote -with ease.’</p> - -<p class='c011'>The praise of <span class='sc'>Parnell</span>‘s poetry is, that it was moral, amiable, with -a tendency towards the pensive; and it was his fortune to be the -friend of poets.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Prior</span> is not a very moral poet, but the most arch, piquant, and -equivocal of those that have been admitted into this collection. He -is a graceful narrator, a polished wit, full of the delicacies of style -amidst gross allusions.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Pope</span> is at the head of the second class of poets, viz. the describers -of artificial life and manners. His works are a delightful, never-failing -fund of good sense and refined taste. He had high invention -and fancy of the comic kind, as in the <cite>Rape of the Lock</cite>; wit, as in -the <cite>Dunciad</cite> and <cite>Satires</cite>; no humour; some beautiful descriptions, as -in the <cite>Windsor Forest</cite>; some exquisite delineations of character (those -of Addison and Villiers are master-pieces); he is a model of elegance -everywhere, but more particularly in his eulogies and friendly epistles; -his ease is the effect of labour; he has no pretensions to sublimity, -but sometimes displays an indignant moral feeling akin to it; his -pathos is playful and tender, as in his Epistles to <cite>Arbuthnot</cite> and -<cite>Jervas</cite>, or rises into power by the help of rhetoric, as in the <cite>Eloisa</cite>, -and <cite>Elegy on the Death of an Unfortunate Lady</cite>; his style is polished -and almost faultless in its kind; his versification tires by uniform -smoothness and harmony. He has been called ‘the most sensible of -poets:’ but the proofs of his sense are to be looked for in his single -observations and hints, as in the <cite>Essay on Criticism</cite> and <cite>Moral Epistles</cite>, -and not in the larger didactic reasonings of the <cite>Essay on Man</cite>, which -is full of verbiage and bombast.</p> - -<p class='c011'>If good sense has been made the characteristic of Pope, good-nature -might be made (with at least equal truth) the characteristic of -<span class='sc'>Gay</span>. He was a satirist without gall. He had a delightful placid -<span class='pageno' id='Page_374'>374</span>vein of invention, fancy, wit, humour, description, ease and elegance, -a happy style, and a versification which seemed to cost him nothing. -His <cite>Beggar’s Opera</cite> indeed has stings in it, but it appears to have left -the writer’s mind without any.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The <cite>Grave</cite> of <span class='sc'>Blair</span> is a serious and somewhat gloomy poem, but -pregnant with striking reflections and fine fancy.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Swift</span>‘s poetry is not at all equal to his prose. He was actuated -by the spleen in both. He has however sense, wit, humour, ease, -and even elegance when he pleases, in his poetical effusions. But he -trifled with the Muse. He has written more agreeable nonsense than -any man. His <cite>Verses on his own Death</cite> are affecting and beautiful.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Ambrose Philips</span>‘s <cite>Pastorals</cite> were ridiculed by Pope, and their -merit is of an humble kind. They may be said rather to mimic -nature than to imitate it. They talk about rural objects, but do -not paint them. His verses descriptive of a <span class='sc'>Northern Winter</span> are -better.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Thomson</span> is the best and most original of our descriptive poets. -He had nature; but, through indolence or affectation, too often -embellished it with the gaudy ornaments of art. Where he gave -way to his genuine impulses, he was excellent. He had invention in -the choice of his subject (<cite>The Seasons</cite>), some fancy, wit and humour -of a most voluptuous kind; in the <cite>Castle of Indolence</cite>, great descriptive -power. His elegance is tawdriness; his ease slovenliness; he -sometimes rises into sublimity, as in his account of the <cite>Torrid</cite> and -<cite>Frozen Zones</cite>; he has occasional pathos too, as in his <cite>Traveller Lost -in the Snow</cite>; his style is barbarous, and his ear heavy and bad.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Collins</span>, of all our Minor poets, that is, those who have attempted -only short pieces, is probably the one who has shown the most of the -highest qualities of poetry, and who excites the most intense interest -in the bosom of the reader. He soars into the regions of imagination, -and occupies the highest peaks of Parnassus. His fancy is -glowing, vivid, but at the same time hasty and obscure. Gray’s -sublimity was borrowed and mechanical, compared to Collins’s, who -has the true inspiration, the <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">vivida vis</span></i> of the poet. He heats and -melts objects in the fervour of his genius, as in a furnace. See his -<cite>Odes to Fear</cite>, <cite>On the Poetical Character</cite>, and <cite>To Evening</cite>. The <cite>Ode -on the Passions</cite> is the most popular, but the most artificial of his -principal ones. His qualities were fancy, sublimity of conception, -and no mean degree of pathos, as in the <cite>Eclogues</cite>, and the <cite>Dirge in -Cymbeline</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_375'>375</span><span class='sc'>Dyer</span>‘s <cite>Grongar Hill</cite> is a beautiful moral and descriptive effusion, -with much elegance, and perfect ease of style and versification.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Shenstone</span> was a writer inclined to feebleness and affectation: but -when he could divest himself of sickly pretensions, he produces -occasional excellence of a high degree. His <span class='sc'>School-mistress</span> is the -perfection of <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naïve</span></i> description, and of that mixture of pathos and -humour, than which nothing is more delightful or rare.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Mallet</span> was a poet of small merit—but every one has read his -<cite>Edwin and Emma</cite>, and no one ever forgot it.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Akenside</span> is a poet of considerable power, but of little taste or -feeling. His thoughts, like his style, are stately and imposing, -but turgid and gaudy. In his verse, ‘<em>less</em> is meant than meets the -ear.’ He has some merit in the invention of the subject (the -<cite>Pleasures of Imagination</cite>) his poem being the first of a series of -similar ones on the faculties of the mind, as the <cite>Pleasures of Memory</cite>, -<em>of Hope</em>, &c.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Young</span> is a poet who has been much over-rated from the popularity -of his subject, and the glitter and lofty pretensions of his -style. I wished to have made more extracts from the <cite>Night Thoughts</cite>, -but was constantly repelled by the tinsel of expression, the false -ornaments, and laboured conceits. Of all writers who have gained -a great name, he is the most meretricious and objectionable. His is -false wit, false fancy, false sublimity, and mock-tenderness. At least, -it appears so to me.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Gray</span> was an author of great pretensions, but of great merit. He -has an air of sublimity, if not the reality. He aims at the highest -things; and if he fails, it is only by a hair’s-breadth. His pathos -is injured, like his sublimity, by too great an ambition after the -ornaments and machinery of poetry. His craving after foreign -help perhaps shows the want of the internal impulse. His <cite>Elegy -in a Country Churchyard</cite>, which is the most simple, is the best of -his productions.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Churchill</span> is a fine rough satirist. He had sense, wit, eloquence, -and honesty.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Goldsmith</span>, both in verse and prose, was one of the most delightful -writers in the language. His verse flows like a limpid stream. His -ease is quite unconscious. Every thing in him is spontaneous, unstudied, -unaffected, yet elegant, harmonious, graceful, nearly faultless. -Without the point or refinement of Pope, he has more natural tenderness, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_376'>376</span>a greater suavity of manner, a more genial spirit. Goldsmith -never rises into sublimity, and seldom sinks into insipidity, or stumbles -upon coarseness. His <cite>Traveller</cite> contains masterly national sketches. -The <cite>Deserted Village</cite> is sometimes spun out into a mawkish sentimentality; -but the characters of the <cite>Village Schoolmaster</cite>, and the -<cite>Village Clergyman</cite>, redeem a hundred faults. His <cite>Retaliation</cite> is a poem -of exquisite spirit, humour, and freedom of style.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Armstrong</span>‘s <cite>Art of Preserving Health</cite> displays a fine natural vein -of sense and poetry on a most unpromising subject.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Chatterton</span>‘s <cite>Remains</cite> show great premature power, but are chiefly -interesting from his fate. He discovered great boldness of spirit and -versatility of talent; yet probably, if he had lived, would not have -increased his reputation for genius.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Thomas Warton</span> was a man of taste and genius. His <span class='sc'>Sonnets</span> I -cannot help preferring to any in the language.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Cowper</span> is the last of the English poets in the first division of this -collection, but though last, not least. He is, after Thomson, the -best of our descriptive poets—more minute and graphical, but with -less warmth of feeling and natural enthusiasm than the author of <cite class='scite'>The -Seasons</cite>. He has also fine manly sense, a pensive and interesting -turn of thought, tenderness occasionally running into the most touching -pathos, and a patriotic or religious zeal mounting almost into -sublimity. He had great simplicity with terseness of style: his -versification is neither strikingly faulty nor excellent. His occasional -copies of verses have great elegance; and his <cite>John Gilpin</cite> is one of -the most humorous pieces in the language.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Burns</span> concludes the series of the <cite class='scite'>Illustrious Dead</cite>; and one -might be tempted to write an elegy rather than a criticism on him. -In <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naïveté</span></i>, in spirit, in characteristic humour, in vivid description of -natural objects and of the natural feelings of the heart, he has left -behind him no superior.</p> - -<p class='c008'>Of the living poets I wish to speak freely, but candidly.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Rogers</span> is an elegant and highly polished writer, but without much -originality or power. He seems to have paid the chief attention to -his style—<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Materiam superabat opus</span></i>. He writes, however, with an -admiration of the muse, and with an interest in humanity.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_377'>377</span><span class='sc'>Campbell</span> has equal elegance, equal elaborateness, with more power -and scope both of thought and fancy. His <cite>Pleasures of Hope</cite> is too -artificial and antithetical; but his <cite>Gertrude of Wyoming</cite> strikes at the -heart of nature, and has passages of extreme interest, with an air of -tenderness and sweetness over the whole, like the breath of flowers. -Some of his shorter effusions have great force and animation, and a -patriotic fire.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Bloomfield</span>‘s excellence is confined to a minute and often interesting -description of individual objects in nature, in which he is surpassed -perhaps by no one.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Crabbe</span> is a writer of great power, but of a perverse and morbid -taste. He gives the very objects and feelings he treats of, whether -in morals or rural scenery, but he gives none but the most uninteresting -or the most painful. His poems are a sort of funeral dirge over -human life, but without pity, without hope. He has neither smiles -nor tears for his readers.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Coleridge</span> has shewn great wildness of conception in his <cite>Ancient -Mariner</cite>, sublimity of imagery in his <cite>Ode to the Departing Year</cite>, -grotesqueness of fancy in his <cite>Fire, Famine, and Slaughter</cite>, and tenderness -of sentiment in his <cite>Genevieve</cite>. He has however produced -nothing equal to his powers.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. <span class='sc'>Wordsworth</span>‘s characteristic is one, and may be expressed in -one word;—a power of raising the smallest things in nature into -sublimity by the force of sentiment. He attaches the deepest and -loftiest feelings to the meanest and most superficial objects. His -peculiarity is his combination of simplicity of subject with profundity -and power of execution. He has no fancy, no wit, no humour, little -descriptive power, no dramatic power, great occasional elegance, with -continual rusticity and boldness of allusion; but he is sublime without -the Muse’s aid, pathetic in the contemplation of his own and man’s -nature; add to this, that his style is natural and severe, and his -versification sonorous and expressive.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. <span class='sc'>Southey</span>‘s talent in poetry lies chiefly in fancy and the -invention of his subject. Some of his oriental descriptions, characters, -and fables, are wonderfully striking and impressive, but there is an air -of extravagance in them, and his versification is abrupt, affected, and -repulsive. In his early poetry there is a vein of patriotic fervour, -and mild and beautiful moral reflection.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Sir <span class='sc'>Walter Scott</span> is the most popular of our living poets. His -<span class='pageno' id='Page_378'>378</span>excellence is romantic narrative and picturesque description. He has -great bustle, great rapidity of action and flow of versification, with -a sufficient distinctness of character, and command of the ornaments -of style. He has neither lofty imagination, nor depth or intensity of -feeling; <em>vividness of mind</em> is apparently his chief and pervading -excellence.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. <span class='sc'>C. Lamb</span> has produced no poems equal to his prose writings: -but I could not resist the temptation of transferring into this collection -his <cite>Farewell to Tobacco</cite>, and some of the sketches in his <cite>John Woodvil</cite>; -the first of which is rarely surpassed in quaint wit, and the last in -pure feeling.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Montgomery</span> is an amiable and pleasing versifier, who puts his -heart and fancy into whatever he composes.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Lord <span class='sc'>Byron</span>‘s distinguishing quality is intensity of conception and -expression. He <em>wills</em> to be sublime or pathetic. He has great -wildness of invention, brilliant and elegant fancy, caustic wit, but no -humour. Gray’s description of the poetical character—‘Thoughts -that glow, and words that burn,’—applies to him more than to any -of his contemporaries.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Thomas Moore</span> is the greatest wit now living. His light, ironical -pieces are unrivalled for point and facility of execution. His fancy -is delightful and brilliant, and his songs have gone to the heart of a -nation.</p> - -<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Leigh Hunt</span> has shewn great wit in his <cite>Feast of the Poets</cite>, elegance -in his occasional verses, and power of description and pathos in his -<cite>Story of Rimini</cite>. The whole of the third canto of that poem is as -chaste as it is classical.</p> - -<p class='c011'>The late Mr. <span class='sc'>Shelley</span> (for he is dead since the commencement of -this publication) was chiefly distinguished by a fervour of philosophic -speculation, which he clad in the garb of fancy, and in words of -Tyrian die. He had spirit and genius, but his eagerness to give effect -and produce conviction often defeated his object, and bewildered -himself and his readers.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Lord <span class='sc'>Thurlow</span> has written some very unaccountable, but some -occasionally good and feeling poetry.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. <span class='sc'>Keats</span> is also dead. He gave the greatest promise of genius -of any poet of his day. He displayed extreme tenderness, beauty, -originality, and delicacy of fancy; all he wanted was manly strength -<span class='pageno' id='Page_379'>379</span>and fortitude to reject the temptations of singularity in sentiment and -expression. Some of his shorter and later pieces are, however, as -free from faults as they are full of beauties.</p> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. <span class='sc'>Milman</span> is a writer of classical taste and attainments rather -than of original genius. <cite><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Poeta nascitur—non fit.</span></cite></p> - -<p class='c011'>Of <span class='sc'>Bowles</span>‘s sonnets it is recommendation enough to say, that they -were the favourites of Mr. Coleridge’s youthful mind.</p> - -<p class='c011'>It only remains to speak of Mr. <span class='sc'>Barry Cornwall</span>, who, both in -the drama, and in his other poems, has shewn brilliancy and tenderness -of fancy, and a fidelity to truth and nature, in conceiving the -finer movements of the mind equal to the felicity of his execution in -expressing them.</p> - -<p class='c008'>Some additions have been made in the Miscellaneous part of the -volume, from the Lyrical effusions of the elder Dramatists, whose -beauty, it is presumed, can never decay, whose sweetness can never -cloy!</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_381'>381</span> - <h2 class='c005'>NOTES</h2> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_383'>383</span> - <h3 class='c003'>LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS</h3> -</div> - -<h4 class='c037'>I. ON POETRY IN GENERAL</h4> - -<p class='c038'>Any differences between the text quoted by Hazlitt and the texts used for the -purposes of these notes which seem worth pointing out are indicated in square -brackets.</p> - -<p class='c011'>For Sergeant Talfourd’s impressions of these lectures, and other matters of -interest connected with their delivery, the reader may be referred to the <cite>Memoirs of -William Hazlitt</cite>, vol. i., pp. 236 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'>PAGE</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a>. <em>Spreads its sweet leaves.</em> <cite>Romeo and Juliet</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_2'>2</a>. <em>The stuff of which our life is made.</em> Cf. <cite>The Tempest</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mere oblivion.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Man’s life is poor as beast’s.</em> <cite>King Lear</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 4. [‘Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There is warrant for it.</em> Cf. <cite>Richard III.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 4, and <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Such seething brains</em> and <em>the lunatic</em>. <cite>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a>. <em>Angelica and Medoro.</em> Characters in Ariosto’s <cite>Orlando Furioso</cite> (1516).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Plato banished the poets.</em> <cite>The Republic</cite>, Book <span class='fss'>X.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ecstasy is very cunning in.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>According to Lord Bacon.</em> An adaptation of a passage in the <cite>Advancement of -Learning</cite>, Book <span class='fss'>II.</span>, Chap. xiii. (ed. Joseph Devey, <cite>Bohn</cite>, p. 97).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_4'>4</a>. <em>Our eyes are made the fools.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That if it would but apprehend.</em> <cite>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The flame o’ the taper.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>For they are old.</em> Cf. <cite>King Lear</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_5'>5</a>. <em>Nothing but his unkind daughters.</em> <cite>King Lear</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4. [‘Could have subdued -nature to such a lowness.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The little dogs.</em> <cite>King Lear</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>So I am.</em> <cite>King Lear</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>O now for ever.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_6'>6</a>. <em>Never, Iago.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>But there where I have garner’d.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Moore.</em> Edward Moore (1712–1757), author of <cite>The Gamester</cite> (1753).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lillo.</em> George Lillo (1693–1739), author of <cite>The London Merchant, or the -History of George Barnwell</cite> (1731).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_7'>7</a>. <em>As Mr. Burke observes.</em> <cite>Sublime and Beautiful</cite>, Part <span class='fss'>I.</span> § 15.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Masterless passion.</em> <cite>Merchant of Venice</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in22'>[‘for affection,</div> - <div class='line'>Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood.’]</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Satisfaction to the thought.</em> Cf. <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_8'>8</a>. <em>Now night descending.</em> <cite>Dunciad</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 89, 90.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_384'>384</span><a href='#Page_8'>8</a>. <em>Throw him on the steep.</em> <cite>Ode to Fear.</cite></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>[‘ridgy steep</div> - <div class='line'>Of some loose hanging rock to sleep.’]</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend.</em> <cite>King Lear</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 4. [‘More hideous, -when thou show’st thee in a child.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Both at the first and now.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_9'>9</a>. <cite>Doctor Chalmers’s Discoveries.</cite> Thomas Chalmers, D.D. (1780–1847), who -sought in his <cite>A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, viewed in -connection with Modern Astronomy</cite> (1817), to reconcile science with -current conceptions of Christianity. See <cite>The Spirit of the Age</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>III.</span> -p. 228 and note.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_10'>10</a>. <em>Bandit fierce.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, l. 426.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Our fell of hair.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Macbeth ... for the sake of the music.</em> Probably Purcell’s. It was written for -D’Avenant’s version and produced in 1672 (Genest). Cf. <cite>The Round Table</cite>, -vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 138 and note.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Between the acting.</em> <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1. [‘The Genius and the mortal -instruments.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_11'>11</a>. <em>Thoughts that voluntary move.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 37, 38.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The words of Mercury.</em> <cite>Love’s Labour’s Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 11. [‘The words of Mercury -are harsh after the songs of Apollo.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>So from the ground.</em> <cite>Faery Queene</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> vi. [‘With doubled Eccho.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_12'>12</a>. <em>The secret soul of harmony.</em> <cite>L’Allegro</cite>, l. 144. [‘The hidden soul of harmony.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The golden cadences of poetry.</em> <cite>Love’s Labour’s Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sailing with supreme dominion.</em> Gray’s <cite>Progress of Poesy</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_13'>13</a>. <em>Sounding always.</em> Prologue to the <cite>Canterbury Tales</cite>, l. 275.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Addison’s Campaign.</cite> 1705. Addison wrote it on Marlborough’s victory of -Blenheim. For its description as a ‘Gazette in Rhyme,’ see Dr. Joseph -Warton’s (1722–1800) <cite>An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope</cite> -(1756–82).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_14'>14</a>. <em>Married to immortal verse.</em> <cite>L’Allegro</cite>, l. 137.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dipped in dews of Castalie.</em> Cf. T. Heywood’s,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘And Jonson, though his learned pen</div> - <div class='line'>Was dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>The most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies.</em> Sophocles’s <cite>Philoctetes</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As I walked about.</em> Defoe’s <cite>Robinson Crusoe</cite>, Part I. p. 125, ed. G. A. Aitken.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_15'>15</a>. <em>Give an echo.</em> <cite>Twelfth Night</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Our poesy.</em> <cite>Timon of Athens</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1. [‘Which oozes.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_16'>16</a>. <em>All plumed like ostriches.</em> Adapted from the First Part of <cite>King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1. -[‘As full of spirit as the month of May.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth.</em> Cf. <cite>Psalms</cite>, cxxxix. 9–11.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_18'>18</a>. <em>Pope Anastasius the Sixth.</em> <cite>Inferno</cite>, <span class='fss'>XI.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Count Ugolino.</em> <cite>Inferno</cite>, <span class='fss'>XXXIII.</span> Neither was Lamb satisfied with the conception. -See his paper on ‘The Reynolds Gallery’ in <cite>The Examiner</cite>, June 6, -1813.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The lamentation of Selma.</em> Colma’s lament in the <cite>Songs of Selma</cite>.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>II. ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER.</h4> - -<p class='c038'>The Chaucer and Spenser references throughout are to Skeat’s <cite>Student’s Chaucer</cite>, -and to the <cite>Globe</cite> Edition of <cite>Spenser</cite> (Morris and Hales).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_19'>19</a>. <em>Chaucer.</em> Modern authorities date Chaucer’s birth from 1340. It is no -longer held as true that he had an university education. The story of his -plot against the king, his flight and his imprisonment, is also legendary.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_385'>385</span><a href='#Page_20'>20</a>. <em>Close pent up</em>, and the next quotation. <cite>King Lear</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Flowery tenderness.</em> <cite>Measure for Measure</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And as the new abashed nightingale.</em> <cite>Troilus and Criseyde</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 177.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Thus passeth yere by yere.</em> ll. 1033–9 [‘fairer of hem two’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_21'>21</a>. <em>That stondeth at a gap.</em> ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1639–42.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Have ye not seen.</em> ‘The Tale of the Man of Law,’ 645–51.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Swiche sorrow he maketh.</em> ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1277–80.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_22'>22</a>. <em>Babbling gossip of the air.</em> <cite>Twelfth Night</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There was also a nonne.</em> ‘The Prologue,’ 118–129 [‘Entuned in hir nose ful -semely’]; 137–155 [‘And held after the newe world the space’]; -165–178; 189–207.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_24'>24</a>. <cite>Lawyer Dowling.</cite> Book <span class='fss'>VIII.</span>, Chap. viii.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>No wher so besy a man.</em> ‘The Prologue,’ 321–2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Whose hous it snewed.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 345.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Who rode upon a rouncie.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 390.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Whose studie was but litel of the Bible.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 438.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>All whose parish.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 449–52.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Whose parish was wide.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 491.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A slendre colerike man.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 587.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men.</em> Cf. Wm. Blake’s -<cite>Descriptive Catalogue</cite>, III. ‘As Newton numbered the stars, and as -Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A Sompnoure.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 623–41. [‘Children were aferd,’ ‘oynons, and eek lekes,’ -‘A fewe termes hadde he’]; 663–669.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_25'>25</a>. <em>Ther maist thou se.</em> ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 2128–2151; 2155–2178; 2185–6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_27'>27</a>. <cite>The Flower and the Leaf.</cite> Most modern scholars regard the evidence which -attributes this poem to Chaucer as insufficient. The same few words -of Hazlitt’s were originally used in <cite>The Round Table</cite>, ‘Why the Arts are not -Progressive?’ vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 162.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_28'>28</a>. <em>Griselda.</em> ‘The Clerkes Tale.’ See <cite>The Round Table</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 162.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The faith of Constance.</em> ‘The Tale of the Man of Law.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_29'>29</a>. <em>Oh Alma redemptoris mater.</em> ‘The Prioress’s Tale.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Whan that Arcite.</em> ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1355–71. [‘His hewe falwe.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Alas the wo!</em> ll. 2771–9.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_30'>30</a>. <em>The three temples</em>, ll. 1918–2092.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dryden’s version</em>, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">i.e.</span></i> his ‘Palamon and Arcite.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Why shulde I not.</em> ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1967–9, 1972–80. [‘In which ther -dwelleth.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The statue of Mars.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 2041–2, 2047–8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That heaves no sigh.</em> ‘Heave thou no sigh, nor shed a tear,’ Prior: <cite>Answer to -Chloe</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Let me not like a worm.</em> ‘The Clerkes Tale,’ l. 880.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_31'>31</a>. <em>Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 197–245. [‘Sette his yë’]; -274–94 [‘Hir threshold goon’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_32'>32</a>. <em>All conscience and tender heart.</em> ‘The Prologue,’ 150.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>From grave to gay.</em> Pope, <cite>Essay on Man</cite>, Ep. <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 380.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_33'>33</a>. <cite>The Cock and the Fox.</cite> ‘The Nonne Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>January and May.</em> ‘The Marchantes Tale.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The story of the three thieves.</em> ‘The Pardoners Tale.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. West.</em> Benjamin West (1738–1820). See the article on this picture by -Hazlitt in <cite>The Edinburgh Magazine</cite>, Dec. 1817, where the same extract is -quoted.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_34'>34</a>. <em>Ne Deth, alas.</em> ‘The Marchantes Tale,’ 727–38.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_386'>386</span><a href='#Page_34'>34</a>. <em>Occleve.</em> Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (b. 1368), who expressed his grief at -his ‘master dear’ Chaucer’s death in his version of <cite><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">De Regimine Principum</span></cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘<em>Ancient Gower</em>’ John Gower (1330–1408), who wrote <cite>Confessio Amantis</cite> -(1392–3), and to whom Chaucer dedicated (‘O moral Gower’) his <cite>Troilus -and Criseyde</cite>. See <cite>Pericles</cite>, I.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lydgate.</em> John Lydgate (<em>c.</em> 1370–c. 1440), poet and imitator of Chaucer.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville.</em> Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), courtier and -poet; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1518–1547), who shares with Wyatt -the honour of introducing the sonnet into English verse; Thomas Sackville, -Earl of Dorset (c. 1536–1608), part author of the earliest tragedy in English, -<cite>Ferrex and Porrex</cite>, acted 1561–2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir John Davies</em> (1569–1626), poet and statesman. Spenser was sent to -Ireland in 1580 as private secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord -Deputy of Ireland. Davies was sent to Ireland as Solicitor-General in -1603, four years after Spenser’s death.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The bog of Allan.</em> <cite>The Faerie Queene</cite>, Book II. Canto <span class='fss'>IX.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>An ably written paper.</em> ‘A View of the Present State of Ireland,’ registered -1598, printed 1633.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>An obscure inn.</em> In King Street, Westminster, Jan. 13, 1599.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The treatment he received from Burleigh.</em> It has been suggested that the disfavour -with which Spenser was regarded by Burleigh—a disfavour that -stood in the way of his preferment—was because of Spenser’s friendship -with Essex, and Leicester’s patronage of him.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_35'>35</a>. <em>Clap on high.</em> <cite>The Faerie Queene</cite>, III. <span class='fss'>XII.</span> 23.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In green vine leaves.</em> I. <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 22.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Upon the top of all his lofty crest.</em> I. <span class='fss'>VII.</span> 32.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In reading the Faery Queen.</em> The incidents mentioned will be found in -Books <span class='fss'>III.</span> 9, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 7, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 6, and <span class='fss'>III.</span> 12, respectively.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_36'>36</a>. <em>And mask, and antique pageantry.</em> <cite>L’Allegro</cite>, 128.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And more to lull him.</em> I. <span class='fss'>I.</span> 41.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The honey-heavy dew of slumber.</em> <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Eftsoones they heard.</em> II. <span class='fss'>XII.</span> 70–1. [‘To read what manner.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The whiles some one did chaunt.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 74–8. [‘Bare to ready spoyl.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_38'>38</a>. <cite>The House of Pride.</cite> I. <span class='fss'>IV.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Cave of Mammon.</cite> II. <span class='fss'>VII.</span> 28–50.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Cave of Despair.</cite> I. <span class='fss'>IX.</span> 33–35.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The wars he well remember’d.</em> II. <span class='fss'>IX.</span> 56.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The description of Belphœbe.</em> II. <span class='fss'>III.</span> 21.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Florimel and the Witch’s son.</em> III. <span class='fss'>VII.</span> 12.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The gardens of Adonis.</em> III. <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 29.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The Bower of Bliss.</em> II. <span class='fss'>XII.</span> 42.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Poussin’s pictures.</em> Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). See Hazlitt’s <cite>Table Talk</cite>, -vol. <span class='fss'>VI.</span> p. 168, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And eke that stranger knight.</em> III. <span class='fss'>IX.</span> 20.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Her hair was sprinkled with flowers.</em> II. <span class='fss'>III.</span> 30.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The cold icicles.</em> III. <span class='fss'>VIII.</span> 35. [‘Ivory breast.’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That was Arion crowned.</em> IV. <span class='fss'>XI.</span> line 3, stanza 23, and line 1, stanza 24.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_39'>39</a>. <em>And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony.</em> I. <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 21–2. [‘In shape and life.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And next to him rode lustfull Lechery.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 24–6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_40'>40</a>. <em>Yet not more sweet.</em> Carmen Nuptiale, <cite>The Lay of the Laureate</cite> (1816), xviii. 4–6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The first was Fancy.</em> III. <span class='fss'>XII.</span> 7–13, 22–3. [‘Next after her.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_42'>42</a>. <em>The account of Satyrane.</em> I. <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 24.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Go seek some other play-fellows.</em> Stanza 28. [‘Go find.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_387'>387</span><a href='#Page_42'>42</a>. <em>By the help of his fayre horns.</em> III. <span class='fss'>X.</span> 47.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The change of Malbecco into Jealousy.</em> III. <span class='fss'>X.</span> 56–60.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That house’s form.</em> II. <span class='fss'>VII.</span> 28–9, 23.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That all with one consent.</em> <cite>Troilus and Cressida</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_43'>43</a>. <em>High over hill.</em> III. <span class='fss'>X.</span> 55.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pope, who used to ask.</em> In view of this remark, it may be of interest to quote -the following passage from Spence’s <cite>Anecdotes</cite> (pp. 296–7, 1820; Section -viii., 1743–4): ‘There is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly -in one’s old age, as it did in one’s youth. I read the <cite>Faerie Queene</cite>, when -I was about twelve, with infinite delight, and I think it gave me as much, -when I read it over about a year or two ago.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The account of Talus, the Iron Man.</em> V. <span class='fss'>I.</span> 12.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The ... Episode of Pastorella.</em> VI. <span class='fss'>IX.</span> 12.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a>. <em>In many a winding bout.</em> <cite>L’Allegro</cite>, 139–140.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>III. ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON</h4> - -<p class='c038'>The references are to the <cite>Globe</cite> Edition of Shakespeare, and Masson’s three-volume -edition of Milton’s <cite>Poetical Works</cite>. See <cite>The Round Table</cite>, ‘On Milton’s -Versification,’ vol. i. pp. 36 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i>, for passages used again for the purposes of this -lecture. See also <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">ibid.</span></i> ‘Why the Arts are not Progressive?’ pp. 160 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i>, and notes -to those two Essays.</p> - -<p class='c014'>PAGE</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_46'>46</a>. <em>The human face divine.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 44.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And made a sunshine in the shady place.</em> <cite>Faerie Queene</cite>, I. <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The fault has been more in their</em> [is not in our] <em>stars.</em> Cf. <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_47'>47</a>. <em>A mind reflecting ages past.</em> See vol. <span class='fss'>IV.</span> notes to p. 213.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>All corners of the earth.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> iv.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Nodded to him.</em> <cite>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His so potent art.</em> <cite>Tempest</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_48'>48</a>. <em>Subject</em> [servile] <em>to the same</em> [all] <em>skyey influences</em>. <cite>Measure for Measure</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His frequent haunts</em> [‘my daily walks’]. <cite>Comus</cite>, 314.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Coheres semblably together.</em>. Cf. <cite>2 Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Me and thy crying self.</em> <cite>The Tempest</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>What, man! ne’er pull your hat.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Man delights not me</em>, and the following quotation. Adapted from <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2. -Rosencraus should be Rosencrantz.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A combination and a form.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_49'>49</a>. <em>My lord, as I was reading</em> [sewing], <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1. [‘His stockings foul’d ... -so piteous in purport ... loosed out of hell.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There is a willow</em> [‘grows aslant’]. <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_50'>50</a>. <em>He’s speaking now.</em> <cite>Antony and Cleopatra</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>It is my birth-day.</em> <cite>Antony and Cleopatra</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 13.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_51'>51</a>. <em>Nigh sphered in Heaven.</em> Collins’s <cite>Ode on the Poetical Character</cite>, 66.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>To make society the sweeter welcome.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_52'>52</a>. <em>With a little act upon the blood</em> [burn] <em>like the mines of sulphur.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3. -[‘Syrups of the world.’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>While rage with rage.</em> <cite>Troilus and Cressida</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In their untroubled element.</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in14'>‘That glorious star</div> - <div class='line'>In its untroubled element will shine,</div> - <div class='line'>As now it shines, when we are laid in earth</div> - <div class='line'>And safe from all our sorrows.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>Wordsworth, <cite>The Excursion</cite>, <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 763–66.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_388'>388</span><a href='#Page_52'>52</a>. <em>Satan’s address to the sun.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 31 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_53'>53</a>. <em>O that I were a mockery king of snow</em> [standing before] <em>the sun of Bolingbroke.</em> -<cite>Richard II.</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His form had not yet lost.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 591–4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A modern school of poetry.</em> The Lake School.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>With what measure they mete.</em> <cite>St. Mark</cite>, iv. 24; <cite>St. Luke</cite>, vi. 38.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>It glances from heaven to earth.</em> <cite>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Puts a girdle.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_54'>54</a>. <em>I ask that I might waken reverence</em> [‘and bid the cheek’]. <cite>Troilus and -Cressida</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>No man is the lord of anything</em>, and the following quotation. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a>. <em>In Shakespeare.</em> Cf. ‘On application to study,’ <cite>The Plain Speaker</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Light thickens.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His whole course of love.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The business of the State.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Of ditties highly penned.</em> <cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And so by many winding nooks.</em> <cite>Two Gentlemen of Verona</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_56'>56</a>. <em>Great vulgar and the small.</em> Cowley’s <cite>Translation of Horace’s Ode</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His delights</em> [were] <em>dolphin-like.</em> <cite>Antony and Cleopatra</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_57'>57</a>. <em>Blind Thamyris.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 35–6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>With darkness.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>VII.</span> 27.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Piling up every stone.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>XI.</span> 324–5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>For after ... I had from my first years.</em> <cite>The Reason of Church Government</cite>, -Book <span class='fss'>II.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_58'>58</a>. <em>The noble heart.</em> <cite>Faerie Queene</cite>, I. <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Makes Ossa like a wart.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_59'>59</a>. <em>Him followed Rimmon.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 467–9.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As when a vulture.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>III.</span> 431–9.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The great vision.</em> <cite>Lycidas</cite>, 161.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The Pilot.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 204.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The wandering moon.</em> <cite><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">Il Penseroso</span></cite>, 67–70.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_60'>60</a>. <em>Like a steam.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 556.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>He soon saw within ken.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 621–44.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a>. <em>With Atlantean shoulders.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>II.</span> 306–7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lay floating many a rood.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 196.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That sea beast, Leviathan.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 200–202.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>What a force of imagination.</em> Cf. <cite>Notes and Queries</cite>, 4th Series, xi. 174, where -J. H. T. Oakley points out that Milton is simply translating a well-known -Greek phrase for the ocean.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His hand was known.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 732–47.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_62'>62</a>. <em>But chief the spacious hall.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 762–88.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Round he surveys.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>III.</span> 555–67.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_63'>63</a>. <em>Such as the meeting soul.</em> <cite>L’Allegro</cite>, 138–140.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The hidden soul.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 144.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>God the Father turns a school-divine.</em> Pope, 1st Epistle, <cite>Hor.</cite> Book <span class='fss'>II.</span> 102.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As when heaven’s fire.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 612–13.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_64'>64</a>. <em>All is not lost.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 106–9.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That intellectual being.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 147–8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Being swallowed up.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>II.</span> 149–50.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fallen cherub.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 157–8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rising aloft</em> [‘he steers his flight aloft’]. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 225–6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a>. <em>Is this the region.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 242–63.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_66'>66</a>. <em>His philippics against Salmasius.</em> In 1651 Milton replied in his <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Defensio pro -<span class='pageno' id='Page_389'>389</span>Populo Anglicano</span></i> to <cite><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Defensio Regia pro Carolo I.</span></cite> (1649) by Claudius -Salmasius or Claude de Saumaise (1588–1658), a professor at Leyden. The -latter work had been undertaken at the request of Charles <span class='fss'>II.</span> by Salmasius, -who was regarded as the leading European scholar of his day.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>With hideous ruin.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 46.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Retreated in a silent valley.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 547–50.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A noted political writer of the present day.</em> See <cite>Political Essays</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>III.</span> pp. 155, -<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i> ‘Illustrations of the Times Newspaper,’ and notes thereto. Dr. -Stoddart and Napoleon the Great are the persons alluded to. See also -Hone’s ‘Buonapartephobia, or the Origin of Dr. Slop’s Name,’ which had -reached a tenth edition in 1820.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Longinus.</em> <cite>On the Sublime</cite>, <span class='fss'>IX.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_67'>67</a>. <em>No kind of traffic.</em> Adapted from <cite>The Tempest</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The generations were prepared.</em> Wordsworth, <cite>The Excursion</cite>, <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 554–57.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The unapparent deep.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>VII.</span> 103.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Know to know no more.</em> Cf. Cowper, <cite>Truth</cite>, 327.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>They toiled not.</em> <cite>St. Matthew</cite>, <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 28, 29.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In them the burthen.</em> Wordsworth, ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern -Abbey,’ 38–41.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Such as angels weep.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 620.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_68'>68</a>. <em>In either hand.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>XII.</span> 637–47.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>IV. ON DRYDEN AND POPE</h4> - -<p class='c038'>The references throughout are to the <cite>Globe</cite> Editions of Pope and Dryden.</p> - -<p class='c014'>69–71. <em>The question, whether Pope was a poet.</em> In a slightly different form these -paragraphs appeared in <cite>The Edinburgh Magazine</cite>, Feb. 1818.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_70'>70</a>. <em>The pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow.</em> <cite>Romeo and Juliet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_71'>71</a>. <em>Martha Blount</em> (1690–1762). She was Pope’s life-long friend, to whom -he dedicated several poems, and to whom he bequeathed most of his -property.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In Fortune’s ray.</em> <cite>Troilus and Cressida</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The gnarled oak ... the soft myrtle.</em> <cite>Measure for Measure</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Calm contemplation and poetic ease.</em> Thomson’s <cite>Autumn</cite>, 1275.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_72'>72</a>. <em>More subtle web Arachne cannot spin.</em> <cite>Faerie Queene</cite>, II. <span class='fss'>XII.</span> 77.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Not with more glories.</em> <cite>The Rape of the Lock</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1–22.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_73'>73</a>. <em>From her fair head.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>III.</span> 154.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Now meet thy fate.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>V.</span> 87–96.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Lutrin of Boileau.</cite> Boileau’s account of an ecclesiastical dispute over a -reading-desk was published in 1674–81. It was translated into English by -Nicholas Rowe in 1708. <cite>The Rape of the Lock</cite> was published in 1712–14.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>’Tis with our judgments.</em> <cite>Essay on Criticism</cite>, 9–10.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_74'>74</a>. <em>Still green with bays.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 181–92.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His little bark with theirs should sail.</em> <cite>Essay on Man</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 383–6. [‘My little -bark attendant sail.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>But of the two, etc.</em> <cite>Essay on Criticism</cite>, See the <cite>Round Table</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 41, for -the first mention of these couplets by Hazlitt.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_75'>75</a>. <em>There died the best of passions.</em> <cite>Eloisa to Abelard</cite>, 40.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_76'>76</a>. <em>If ever chance.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 347–8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>He spins</em> [‘draweth out’] <em>the thread of his verbosity</em>. <cite>Love’s Labour’s Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The very words.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Now night descending.</em> <cite>The Dunciad</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 89–90.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Virtue may chuse.</em> <cite>Epilogue to the Satires</cite>, Dialogue <span class='fss'>I.</span>, 137–172.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_390'>390</span><a href='#Page_77'>77</a>. <em>His character of Chartres.</em> <cite>Moral Essays</cite>, Epistle <span class='fss'>III.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Where Murray.</em> <cite>Imitations of Horace</cite>, Epistle <span class='fss'>VI.</span>, To Mr. Murray, 52–3. -William Murray (1704–1793) was created Baron Mansfield in 1756.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Why rail they then.</em> <cite>Epilogue to the Satires</cite>, Dialogue <span class='fss'>II.</span> 138–9.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Despise low thoughts</em> [joys]. <cite>Imitations of Horace</cite>, Epistle <span class='fss'>VI.</span>, To Mr. Murray, -60–2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_78'>78</a>. <em>Character of Addison.</em> <cite>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</cite>, 193–214.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Alas! how changed.</em> <cite>Moral Essays</cite>, Epistle <span class='fss'>III.</span> 305–8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Why did I write?</em> <cite>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</cite>, 125–146.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Oh, lasting as those colours.</em> <cite>Epistle to Mr. Jervas</cite>, 63–78.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_79'>79</a>. <em>Who have eyes, but they see not.</em> <cite>Psalm</cite>, <span class='fss'>CXV.</span> 5, etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>I lisp’d in numbers.</em> <cite>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</cite>, 128.</p> - -<p class='c014'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Et quum conabar scribere, versus erat.</span></i> Ovid, <cite>Trist.</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> x. 25–26.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Sponte sua numeros carmen veniebat ad aptos;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Et quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_80'>80</a>. <em>Besides these jolly birds.</em> <cite>The Hind and the Panther</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 991–1025. [‘Whose -crops impure.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_81'>81</a>. <em>The jolly God.</em> <cite>Alexander’s Feast, or the power of music: A song in honour -of St. Cecilia’s Day</cite> 1697, 49–52. A few phrases from this criticism were -used in the Essay on Mr. Wordsworth, <cite>The Spirit of the Age</cite> (vol. <span class='fss'>IV.</span> p. 276).</p> - -<p class='c014'>For <em>for, as piece</em>, read <em>for, as a piece</em>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_82'>82</a>. <em>The best character of Shakespeare.</em> Dryden’s <cite>Essay of Dramatic Poesy</cite>, ed. Ker, -<span class='fss'>I.</span> 79–80.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Tancred and Sigismunda.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">i.e.</span></i> Sigismonda and Guiscardo.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Thou gladder of the mount.</em> <cite>Palamon and Arcite</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 145.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_83'>83</a>. <em>Donne.</em> John Donne (1573–1631), whose life was written by Izaak Walton, -and whom Ben Jonson described as ‘the first poet in the world in some -things,’ but who would not live ‘for not being understood.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Waller.</em> Edmund Waller’s (1605–1687) Saccharissa was Lady Dorothy Sidney, -daughter of the Earl of Leicester.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Marvel.</em> Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), ‘poet, patriot, and friend of -Milton.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Harsh, as the words of Mercury.</em> [‘The words of Mercury are harsh after the -songs of Apollo.’] <cite>Love’s Labour’s Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rochester.</em> John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Denham.</em> Sir John Denham (1615–1669). His <cite>Cooper’s Hill</cite> was published -in 1642.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Wither’s.</em> George Wither (1588–1667). See Lamb’s Essay on the Poetical -Works of George Wither. <cite>Poems, Plays, and Essays</cite>, ed. Ainger. The lines -quoted by Hazlitt are from ‘The Shepheards’ Hunting,’ (1615). [‘To be -pleasing ornaments.’ ‘Let me never taste of gladnesse.’]</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>V. ON THOMSON AND COWPER</h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_85'>85</a>. <em>Dr. Johnson makes it his praise.</em> ‘It is said by Lord Lyttelton, in the Prologue -to his posthumous play, that his works contained “no line which, dying, -he could wish to blot.“’ <cite>Life of Thomson.</cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Bub Doddington.</em> George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762), one of Browning’s -‘persons of importance in their day.’ His Diary was published in -1784.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Would he had blotted a thousand!</em> Said by Ben Jonson of Shakespeare, in his -<em>Timber.</em></p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_391'>391</span><a href='#Page_86'>86</a>. <em>Cannot be constrained by mastery.</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Love will not submit to be controlled</div> - <div class='line'>By mastery.’</div> - <div class='line in28'>Wordsworth, <cite>The Excursion</cite>, <span class='fss'>VI.</span></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Come, gentle Spring!</em> ‘Spring,’ 1–4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And see where surly Winter.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 11–25.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_88'>88</a>. <em>A man of genius.</em> Coleridge. See Hazlitt’s Essay, ‘My First Acquaintance -with the Poets.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A burnished fly.</em> <cite>The Castle of Indolence</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 64. [‘In prime of June.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>For whom the merry bells.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 62.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>All was one full-swelling bed.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 33.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The stock-dove’s plaint.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The effects of the contagion.</em> ‘Summer,’ 1040–51.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Of the frequent corse.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 1048–9.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Breath’d hot.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 961–979.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_89'>89</a>. <em>The inhuman rout.</em> ‘Autumn,’ 439–44.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There through the prison.</em> ‘Winter,’ 799–809.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Where pure Niemi’s fairy mountains rise.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 875–6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The traveller lost in the snow.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 925–35.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_90'>90</a>. <em>Through the hush’d air.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 229–64.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Enfield’s Speaker.</em> <cite>The Speaker</cite>, or Miscellaneous Pieces selected from the best -English Writers, 1775, and often reprinted. By William Enfield, LL.D., -(1741–1797).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Palemon and Lavinia.</em> ‘Autumn,’ 177–309.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Damon and Musidora.</em> ‘Summer,’ 1267–1370.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Celadon and Amelia.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> 1171–1222.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_91'>91</a>. <em>Overrun with the spleen.</em> Cf. ‘The lad lay swallow’d up in spleen.’—Swift’s -<em>Cassinus and Peter</em>, a Tragical Elegy, 1731.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Unbought grace.</em> Burke’s <cite>Reflections on the French Revolution</cite>: Select Works, -ed. Payne, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 89.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_92'>92</a>. <em>His Vashti.</em> <cite>The Task</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 715.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Crazy Kate, etc.</em> <cite>The Task</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 534, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Loud hissing urn.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 38.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The night was winter.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 57–117.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_94'>94</a>. <cite>The first volume of Cowper’s poems.</cite> This was published in 1782, and contained -<cite>Table Talk</cite>, <cite>The Progress of Error</cite>, <cite>Truth</cite>, <cite>Expostulation</cite>, <cite>Hope</cite>, <cite>Charity</cite>, <cite>Conversation</cite>, -<em>Retirement</em>, etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The proud and humble believer.</em> <cite>Truth</cite>, 58–70.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Yon cottager.</em> <cite>Truth</cite>, 317–36.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>But if, unblamable in word and thought.</em> <cite>Hope</cite>, 622–34.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_95'>95</a>. <em>Robert Bloomfield</em> (1766–1823). <cite>The Farmer’s Boy</cite> was written in a London -garret. It was published in 1800, and rapidly became popular.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_96'>96</a>. <em>Thomson, in describing the same image.</em> <cite>The Seasons</cite>, ‘Spring,’ 833–45.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>While yet the year.</em> [‘As yet the trembling year is unconfirm’d.’] <cite>The Seasons</cite>, -‘Spring,’ 18.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_97'>97</a>. <em>Burn’s Justice.</em> <cite>Justice of the Peace</cite>, by Richard Burn (1709–1785), the first -of many editions of which was issued in two vols., 1755.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Wears cruel garters.</em> <cite>Twelfth Night</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 5. [‘Cross-gartered.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A panopticon.</em> Jeremy Bentham’s name for his method of prison supervision. -See <cite>The Spirit of the Age</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>III.</span>, note to p. 197.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The latter end of his Commonwealth</em> [does not] <em>forget</em>[s] <em>the beginning</em>. <cite>The -Tempest</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_98'>98</a>. <cite>Mother Hubberd’s Tale.</cite> <cite>Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberd’s Tale.</cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_392'>392</span><a href='#Page_98'>98</a>. <em>The Oak and the Briar.</em> ‘Februarie,’ in <cite>The Shepheard’s Calender</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Browne.</em> William Browne (1591–?1643), pastoral poet. His chief work -was <cite>Britannia’s Pastorals</cite> (1613–6).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Withers.</em> See note to p. 83, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">ante</span></i>. The family name is occasionally spelt -Withers though the poet is generally known as Wither.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The shepherd boy piping.</em> Book <span class='fss'>I.</span> chap. ii.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like Nicholas Poussin’s picture.</em> See Hazlitt’s Essay ‘On a Landscape by -Nicolas Poussin’ in <cite>Table Talk</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>VI.</span> p. 168, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sannazarius’s Piscatory Eclogues.</em> Iacopo Sannazaro’s (1458–1530) <cite>Piscatory -Eclogues</cite>, translated by Rooke, appeared in England in 1726. See <cite>The Round -Table</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 56, ‘On John Buncle,’ for a similar passage on Walton.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_99'>99</a>. <em>A fair and happy milk-maid.</em> The quotation of the ‘Character’ from Sir -Thomas Overbury’s <cite>Wife</cite> was contributed to the notes to Walton’s <cite>Complete -Angler</cite> by Sir Henry Ellis, editor of Bagster’s edition, 1815. He took it -from the twelfth edition, 1627, of Sir Thomas Overbury’s book. The -following passages may be added between ‘curfew’ and ‘her breath’ to -make the note as quoted perfect:—‘In milking a cow, and straining the -teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk press makes the -milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glue or aromatic ointment -of her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her -feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners -by the same hand that felled them.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_100'>100</a>. <em>Two quarto volumes.</em> John Horne Tooke’s <cite>Diversions of Purley</cite> was published -in two volumes, 4to, in 1786–1805. See <cite>The Spirit of the Age</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>IV.</span> p. -231, on ‘The Late Mr. Horne Tooke.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The heart of his mystery.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rousseau in his Confessions ... a little spot of green.</em> Part I. Book <span class='fss'>III.</span> See -<cite>The Round Table</cite>, ‘On the Love of the Country,’ and notes thereto, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> -p. 17, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i> The greater part of that letter was used for the purposes of -this lecture.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_102'>102</a>. <em>Expatiates freely.</em> Pope’s <cite>Essay on Man</cite>, Epis. <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances.</em> Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), author of <cite>The Romance -of the Forest</cite> (1791), <cite>The Mysteries of Udolpho</cite> (1794), and other popular -stories of sombre mystery and gloom.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_103'>103</a>. <em>My heart leaps up.</em> Wordsworth.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>[‘So be it when I shall grow old,</div> - <div class='line'>Or let me die!</div> - <div class='line'>The Child is father of the Man;</div> - <div class='line'>And I could wish my days to be</div> - <div class='line'>Bound each to each by natural piety.’]</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah! voila de la pervenche.</span></i> <cite>Confessions</cite>, Part I. Book <span class='fss'>VI.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That wandering voice.</em> Wordsworth. <cite>To the Cuckoo.</cite></p> - -<h4 class='c037'>VI. ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_104'>104</a>. <em>Parnell.</em> Thomas Parnell (1679–1717). His poems were published by Pope, -and his life was written by Goldsmith.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Arbuthnot.</em> John Arbuthnot (1667–1735), physician and writer. He had the -chief share in the <cite>Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus</cite>, which was published -amongst Pope’s works in 1741. His <cite>History of John Bull</cite> was published -in 1712.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_105'>105</a>. <em>Trim ... the old jack-boots.</em> <cite>Tristram Shandy</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 20.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_393'>393</span><a href='#Page_106'>106</a>. <em>Prior.</em> Matthew Prior (1664–1721), diplomatist and writer of ‘occasional’ -verse. See Thackeray’s <cite>English Humourists</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sedley.</em> Sir Charles Sedley (1639–1701), Restoration courtier and poet.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Little Will.</em> An English Ballad on the taking of Namur by the King of -Great Britain, 1695.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_107'>107</a>. <em>Gay.</em> John Gay (1685–1732), the author of <cite>Fables</cite>, <cite>The Beggar’s Opera</cite>, so -often quoted by Hazlitt, and <cite>Black-eyed Susan</cite>. <cite>Polly</cite> was intended as a -sequel to <cite>The Beggar’s Opera</cite>, but it was prohibited from being played, -though permitted to be printed. See <cite>The Round Table</cite>, <cite>The Beggar’s Opera</cite>, -and notes thereto. That Essay was used as part of the present lecture.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Happy alchemy of mind.</em> See <cite>The Round Table</cite>, vol. i., p. 65. Cf. also -Lamb’s essay, ‘The Londoner,’ <cite>Morning Post</cite>, Feb. 1, 1802: ‘Thus an art -of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a town life, is -attained by the same well-natured alchemy, with which the Foresters of -Arden,’ etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>O’erstepping</em> [not] <em>the modesty of nature</em>. <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_108'>108</a>. <em>Miss Hannah More’s laboured invectives.</em> <cite>Thoughts on the Importance of the -Manners of the Great to General Society</cite>, 1788, and <cite>An Estimate of the -Religion of the Fashionable World</cite>, 1790. Each passed through several editions -before the close of the century. Of the first named, the third edition -is stated to have been sold out in four hours.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Richard Blackmore.</em> Court physician to William and Anne. He died in -1729, after having written six epics in sixty books.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_109'>109</a>. <em>Mr. Jekyll’s parody.</em> Joseph Jekyll (1754–1837), Master of Chancery. -The parody was published in the <cite>Morning Chronicle</cite>, Friday, Aug. 19, -1809.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A City Shower.</em> See <cite>The Tatler</cite>, No. 238.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_110'>110</a>. <em>Mary the cookmaid ... Mrs. Harris.</em> ‘Mary the Cook-maid’s letter to Dr. -Sheridan,’ 1723, which begins thus:—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Well, if ever I saw such another man since my mother bound my head!</div> - <div class='line'>You a gentleman! marry come up! I wonder where you were bred.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'>‘Mrs. Harris’s Petition,’ 1699, after the preliminaries—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Humbly sheweth,</div> - <div class='line'>That I went to warm myself in Lady Betty’s chamber, because I was cold;</div> - <div class='line'>And I had in a purse seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, besides farthings, in money and gold.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rector of Laracor.</em> Swift was appointed to the vicarage of Laracor, Trim, -West Meath, Ireland, in 1700.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Gulliver’s nurse.</em> In the Voyage to Brobdingnag.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>An eminent critic.</em> Jeffrey’s article on Scott’s <cite>Swift</cite>, <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, -No. 53, Sept. 1816, vol. xxvii. pp. 1 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_112'>112</a>. <em>Shews vice her own image.</em> [To shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own -image.] <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Indignatio facit versus.</span></i> [Facit indignatio versum.] Juvenal, <cite>Sat.</cite> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 79.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As dry as the remainder biscuit.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Reigned there and revelled.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 765.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As riches fineless.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_113'>113</a>. <em>Camacho’s wedding.</em> Part <span class='fss'>II.</span> chap. xx.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>How Friar John ... lays about him.</em> <cite>Gargantua</cite>, Book <span class='fss'>I.</span>, chap. xxvii.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>How Panurge whines in the storm.</em> <cite>Pantagruel</cite>, Book <span class='fss'>IV.</span> chap. xix., <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>How Gargantua mewls.</em> <cite>Gargantua</cite>, Book <span class='fss'>I.</span>, chap. vii.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_394'>394</span><a href='#Page_113'>113</a>. <em>The pieces of silver money in the Arabian Nights.</em> The Story of the Barber’s -Fourth Brother.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mortal consequences.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_114'>114</a>. <em>The dull product of a scoffer’s pen.</em> Wordsworth’s <cite>Excursion</cite>, Book <span class='fss'>II.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Nothing can touch him further.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Voltaire’s Traveller.</em> See <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Histoire des Voyages de Scarmentado.</span></cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Be wise to-day.</em> <cite>Night Thoughts</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 390–433.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_115'>115</a>. <em>Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it.</em> Cf. <cite>Characters of Shakespear’s Plays</cite>, -‘Othello,’ vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 209. Edward Young’s (1683–1765) <cite>Revenge</cite> was first -acted in 1721.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_116'>116</a>. <em>We poets in our youth.</em> Wordsworth, <cite>Resolution and Independence</cite>, 8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Read the account of Collins.</em> See Johnson’s life of him in his <cite>English Poets</cite>, -where the eighth verse of the ‘Ode to Evening’ is as follows:—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,</div> - <div class='line'>Or find some ruin ‘midst its dreary dells,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Whose Walls more awful nod,</div> - <div class='line in4'>By thy religious gleams.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'>And the last:—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘So long regardful of thy quiet rule,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Thy gentlest influence own,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And love thy favourite name!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_118'>118</a>. <em>Hammond.</em> James Hammond (1710–1741). See Johnson’s <cite>Lives of the Poets</cite>. -He seems to have died of love. His <cite>Love Elegies</cite>, in imitation of Tibullus, -were published posthumously.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. Coleridge</em> (<em>in his Literary Life</em>). See ed. Bohn, p. 19. ‘[I] felt almost as -if I had been newly couched, when by Mr. Wordsworth’s conversation, I -had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray’s celebrated -Elegy.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The still sad music of humanity.</em> Wordsworth’s <cite>Tintern Abbey</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Be mine ... to read eternal new romances.</em> Letter to Richard West, Thursday, -April 1742.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Don’t you remember Lords —— and ——.</em> Letter to Richard West, May 27, -1742.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Shenstone.</em> William Shenstone (1714–1763),the ‘water-gruel bard’ of Horace -Walpole.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_119'>119</a>. <em>Akenside.</em> Mark Akenside (1721–1770), physician and poet. The <cite>Pleasures -of the Imagination</cite> was begun in his eighteenth year, and was first published -in 1744.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Armstrong.</em> John Armstrong (1709–1779), also physician and poet, whose -<cite>Art of Preserving Health</cite>, a poem in four books, was also published in 1744.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Churchill.</em> Charles Churchill (1731–1764), satirist. His <cite>Rosciad</cite>, in which -the chief actors of the time were taken off, was published in 1761. <cite>The -Prophecy of Famine</cite>, a Scots Pastoral, inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq., in -which the Scotch are ridiculed, appeared in 1763.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Green.</em> Matthew Green (1696–1737). <cite>The Spleen</cite> (1737).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dyer.</em> John Dyer (?1700–1758), <cite>Grongar Hill</cite> (1727). See Johnson’s <cite>Lives -of the Poets</cite> and Wordsworth’s Sonnet to him.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His lot</em> [feasts] <em>though small</em>. <cite>The Traveller.</cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And turn’d and look’d.</em> <cite>The Deserted Village</cite>, 370. ‘Return’d and wept and -still return’d to weep.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_120'>120</a>. <em>Mr. Liston.</em> John Liston (1776–1846).</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_395'>395</span><a href='#Page_120'>120</a>. <em>His character of a country schoolmaster.</em> In <cite>The Deserted Village</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Warton.</em> Thomas Warton (1728–1790), author of <cite>The History of English -Poetry</cite> (1774–81). He succeeded William Whitehead as poet laureate.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Tedious and brief.</em> <cite>All’s Well that Ends Well</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3, etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_122'>122</a>. <em>Chatterton.</em> Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770). The verse of Wordsworth’s -quoted is in <cite>Resolution and Independence</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dr. Milles, etc.</em> Dr. Jeremiah Milles (1713–1784), whom Coleridge described -as ‘an owl mangling a poor dead nightingale.’ See Sir Herbert Croft’s -(1751–1816) <cite>Love and Madness</cite>, Letter 51 (1780). Vicesimus Knox, D.D. -(1752–1821), author of many volumes of Essays, Sermons, etc.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>VII. ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS</h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_123'>123</a>. <em>Unslacked of motion.</em> See vol. <span class='fss'>IV.</span>, note to p. 42.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Anderson.</em> Robert Anderson, M.D. (1751–1830), editor and biographer of -<em>British Poets</em>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. Malone.</em> Edmond Malone (1741–1812), the Shakespearian editor. He -did not believe in the ‘antiquity’ of Chatterton’s productions. See his -‘Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley,’ 1782.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dr. Gregory.</em> George Gregory, D.D. (1754–1808), author of <cite>The Life of -Thomas Chatterton, with Criticisms on his Genius and Writings, and a concise -view of the Controversy concerning Rowley’s Poems</cite>. 1789.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_124'>124</a>. <em>Annibal Caracci.</em> Annibale Caracci (1560–1609), painter of the Farnese -Gallery at Rome.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Essays</cite>, <em>p.</em> 144. The reference should be to Dr. Knox’s Essay, No. <span class='fss'>CXLIV.</span>, -not p. 144 (vol. iii. p. 206, 1787).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_127'>127</a>. <em>He was like a man made after supper.</em> <cite>2 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Some one said.</em> Cf. Hazlitt’s Essay, ‘Of Persons one would wish to have seen,’ -where Burns’s hand, held out to be grasped, is described as ‘in a burning fever.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Made him poetical.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Create a soul under the ribs of death.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 562.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_128'>128</a>. <em>A brazen candlestick tuned.</em> <cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In a letter to Mr. Gray.</em> January 1816.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Via goodman Dull.</em> <cite>Love’s Labour’s Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_129'>129</a>. <em>Out upon this half-faced fellowship.</em> <cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As my Uncle Toby.</em> Tristram Shandy, Book <span class='fss'>VI.</span>, chap. xxxii.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Drunk full after.</em> Chaucer’s <cite>The Clerkes Tale</cite>. ‘Wel ofter of the welle than -of the tonne she drank.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The act and practique part.</em> <cite>King Henry V.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The fly that sips treacle.</em> <cite>The Beggar’s Opera</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_131'>131</a>. <em>In a poetical epistle.</em> To a friend who had declared his intention of writing no -more poetry.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Self-love and social.</em> Pope’s <cite>Essay on Man</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 396.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Himself alone.</em> <cite>3 King Henry VI.</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>If the species were continued like trees.</em> Sir Thomas Browne’s <cite>Religio Medici</cite>, -Part <span class='fss'>II.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>This, this was the unkindest cut.</em> <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_132'>132</a>. <em>Launce’s account of his dog Crabbe.</em> <cite>Two Gentlemen of Verona</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_135'>135</a>. <em>Tam o’ Shanter.</em> [For ‘light cotillon,’ read ‘cotillon, brent.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_137'>137</a>. <em>The bosom of its Father.</em> Gray’s <cite>Elegy</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Cotter’s Saturday Night.</cite> [For ‘carking cares,’ read ‘kiaugh and care.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_139'>139</a>. <em>The true pathos and sublime of human life.</em> Burns, ‘Epistle to Dr. Blacklock.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_140'>140</a>. <em>O gin my love.</em> [‘O my luv’s like a red, red rose.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_396'>396</span><a href='#Page_140'>140</a>. <em>Thoughts that often lie.</em> Wordsworth’s <cite>Intimations of Immortality</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles.</em> Part II., Chap. <span class='fss'>IX.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_141'>141</a>. <em>Archbishop Herring.</em> Thomas Herring (1693–1757), Archbishop of Canterbury. -<cite>Letters to William Duncombe, Esq.</cite>, 1728–1757 (1777), Letter <span class='fss'>XII.</span>, -Sept. 11, 1739.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Auld Robin Gray ... Lady Ann Bothwell’s lament.</em> Lady Anne Barnard -(1750–1825) did not acknowledge her authorship of ‘Auld Robin Gray’ (to -Sir Walter Scott) until 1823.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_142'>142</a>. <em>O waly, waly.</em> This ballad was first published in Allan Ramsay’s <cite>Tea Table -Miscellany</cite>, 1724.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>[<span class='fss'>I.</span> 8. ‘Sae my true love did lichtlie me.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='fss'>II.</span> 5–8. ‘O wherefore should I busk my heid,</div> - <div class='line in11'>Or wherefore should I kame my hair?</div> - <div class='line in9'>For my true love has me forsook,</div> - <div class='line in11'>And says he’ll never lo’e me mair.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='fss'>III.</span> 2, 8. ‘The sheets sall ne’er be press’d by me</div> - <div class='line in13'>For of my life I am wearie.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='fss'>V.</span> 7–8. ‘And I mysel’ were dead and gane,</div> - <div class='line in10'>And the green grass growing over me!‘]</div> - <div class='line in24'>William Allingham’s <cite>Ballad Book</cite>, p. 41.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Braes of Yarrow.</cite> By William Hamilton, of Bangour (1704–1754).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a>. <em>Turner’s History of England.</em> Sharon Turner (1768–1847), <cite>History of England -from the Norman Conquest to the Death of Elizabeth</cite> (1814–1823). The story -is a pretty one, but the Eastern lady was not the mother of the Cardinal.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>J. H. Reynolds.</em> John Hamilton Reynolds (1796–1852).</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>VIII. ON THE LIVING POETS</h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a>. <em>No more talk where God or angel guest.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>IX.</span> 1–3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_146'>146</a>. <em>The Darwins, the Hayleys, the Sewards.</em> Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather -of Charles Darwin, and author of <cite>The Loves of the Plants</cite> (1789), a -poem parodied by Frere in <cite>The Anti-Jacobin</cite> as ‘The Loves of the Triangles.’ -William Hayley (1745–1820), who wrote <cite>The Triumphs of Temper</cite> and a -<em>Life of Cowper</em>. Anna Seward (1747–1809), the ‘Swan of Lichfield.’ She -wrote poetical novels, sonnets and a life of Dr. Darwin.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Face-making.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mrs. Inchbald.</em> Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821), novelist, dramatist and -actress.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Thank the Gods.</em> Cf. <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mrs. Leicester’s School.</em> Ten narratives, seven by Mary, three by Charles, -Lamb (1807).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The next three volumes of the Tales of My Landlord.</em> <cite>The Heart of Midlothian</cite> -(second series of the <cite>Tales</cite>) was published in 1818, and the third series, -consisting of <cite>The Bride of Lammermoor</cite> and <cite>A Legend of Montrose</cite>, in 1819.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_147'>147</a>. <em>Mrs. Barbauld.</em> Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825), daughter of the Rev. -John Aitken, D.D., joint-author, with her brother John Aitken, of <cite>Evenings -at Home</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mrs. Hannah More</em> (1745–1833). Her verses and sacred dramas were -published in the first half of her life: she gradually retired from London -society, and this may have led to Hazlitt’s doubtful remark as to her being -still in life.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_397'>397</span><a href='#Page_147'>147</a>. <em>Miss Baillie.</em> Joanna Baillie (1762–1851). <cite>Count Basil</cite> is one of her <cite>Plays -of the Passions</cite> (1798–1802), and is concerned with the ‘passion’ of love. -<em>De Montfort</em> was acted at Drury Lane in 1800 by Mrs. Siddons and -Kemble.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Remorse, Bertram, and lastly Fazio.</em> Coleridge’s <cite>Remorse</cite> (1813), for twenty -nights at Drury Lane. C. R. Maturin’s <cite>Bertram</cite> (1816), successful at -Drury lane. Dean Milman’s <cite>Fazio</cite> (1815), acted at Bath and then at -Covent Garden.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A man of no mark.</em> <cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Make mouths</em> [in them]. <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory.</em> Published in 1792.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Election.</cite> Genest says it was performed for the third time on June 10, -1817.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_148'>148</a>. <em>The Della Cruscan.</em> The sentimental and affected style, initiated in 1785 by -some English residents at Florence, and extinguished by Gifford’s satire in -the <cite>Baviad</cite> (1794), and <cite>Maeviad</cite> (1796).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>To show that power of love</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘He knows who gave that love sublime,</div> - <div class='line'>And gave that strength of feeling great</div> - <div class='line'>Above all human estimate.’</div> - <div class='line in36'>Wordsworth’s <cite>Fidelity</cite>.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_149'>149</a>. <em>Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope.</em> Published in 1799, <cite>Gertrude of Wyoming</cite> in 1809.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Some hamlet shade.</em> <cite>Pleasures of Hope</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 309–10.</p> - -<p class='c014'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Curiosa infelicitas.</span></i> ‘<span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Curiosa felicitas Horatii.</span>’ <cite>Petronius Arbiter</cite>, § 118.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Of outward show elaborate.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>VIII.</span> 538.</p> - -<p class='c014'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Tutus nimium, timidusque procellarum.</span></i> Horace, <cite>De Arte Poet.</cite>, 128.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_150'>150</a>. <em>Like morning brought by night.</em> <cite>Gertrude of Wyoming</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> xiii.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like Angels’ visits.</em> <cite>Pleasures of Hope</cite>, Part II., l. 378. Cf. <cite>The Spirit of the -Age</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>III.</span> p. 346.</p> - -<p class='c014'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus.</span></i> Horace, <cite><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">De Arte Poetica</span></cite>, 191.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_151'>151</a>. <em>So work the honey-bees.</em> <cite>Henry V.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Around him the bees.</em> From the Sixth Song in <cite>The Beggar’s Opera</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Perilous stuff.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_152'>152</a>. <em>Nest of spicery.</em> <cite>King Richard III.</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Therefore to be possessed with double pomp.</em> <cite>King John</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_153'>153</a>. <em>Nook monastic.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>He hath a demon.</em> Cf. ‘He hath a devil,’ <cite>St. John</cite> <span class='fss'>X.</span> 20.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>House on the wild sea.</em> Coleridge’s <cite>The Piccolomini</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> iv. 117.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_154'>154</a>. <em>Looks on tempests.</em> <cite>Shakespeare’s Sonnets</cite>, <span class='fss'>CXVI.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Great princes’ favourites.</em> Shakespeare’s <cite>Sonnets</cite>, <span class='fss'>XXV.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_155'>155</a>. <em>Their mortal consequences.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The warriors in the Lady of the Lake.</em> Canto <span class='fss'>V.</span> 9.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Goblin Page.</cite> Canto <span class='fss'>II.</span> 31.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. Westall’s pictures.</em> Richard Westall (1765–1836). He designed numerous -drawings to illustrate Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_156'>156</a>. <em>Robinson Crusoe’s boat.</em> <cite>The Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe</cite>, p. 138, -ed. G. A. Aitken.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>I did what little I could.</em> Hazlitt reviewed <cite>The Excursion</cite> in <cite>The Examiner</cite> -(see <cite>The Round Table</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> pp. 111–125).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_162'>162</a>. <em>Coryate’s Crudites.</em> <cite>Hastily gobled up in Five Moneths’ Travells in France, etc.</cite> -(1611), by Thomas Coryate (? 1577–1617).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The present poet-laureate.</em> Southey.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Neither butress nor coign of vantage.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_398'>398</span><a href='#Page_162'>162</a>. <em>Born so high.</em> <cite>King Richard III.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In their train</em> [‘his livery’] <em>walked crowns</em>. <cite>Antony and Cleopatra</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_163'>163</a>. <em>Meek daughters.</em> Coleridge’s <cite>The Eolian Harp</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Owls and night-ravens flew.</em> Cf. <cite>Titus Andronicus</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3. ‘The nightly owl -or fatal raven.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Degrees, priority, and place.</em> <cite>Troilus and Cressida</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>No figures nor no fantasies.</em> <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'>[No] <em>trivial fond records</em>. Hamlet, <span class='fss'>I.</span> v.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The marshal’s truncheon</em>, and the next quotation. <cite>Measure for Measure</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Metre ballad-mongering.</em> <cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The bare trees and mountains bare.</em> Wordsworth, ‘To my Sister.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>He hates conchology.</em> See <cite>The Spirit of the Age</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>IV.</span> p. 277.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_164'>164</a>. <cite>The Anti-Jacobin Review.</cite> Not <cite>The Anti-Jacobin Review</cite> (1798–1821) but -<cite>The Anti-Jacobin</cite>, wherein will be found Canning and Frere’s parodies, the -best-known of which is the one on Southey’s <cite>The Widow</cite>, entitled ‘The -Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>When Adam delved.</em> See <cite>Political Essays</cite>, ‘Wat Tyler,’ Vol. <span class='fss'>III.</span> pp. 192 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et -seq.</span></i>, and notes thereto.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Rejected Addresses.</cite> By Horace and James Smith (1812).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Richard Blackmore.</em> See p. 108 and note thereto <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">ante</span></i>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_166'>166</a>. <em>Is there here any dear friend of Caesar?</em> <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Conceive of poetry.</em> ‘Apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken -sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come,’ -<cite>Measure for Measure</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>It might seem insidious.</em> Probably a misprint for ‘invidious.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_167'>167</a>. <em>Schiller! that hour.</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>[‘Lest in some after moment aught more mean ...</div> - <div class='line'>Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene.’]</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>His Conciones ad Populum.</em> Two addresses against Pitt, 1795, republished in -‘Essays on his Own Times.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Watchman.</cite> A Weekly Miscellany lasted from March 1, 1796, to May -13, 1796.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>His Friend.</cite> Coleridge’s weekly paper lived from June 1, 1809, to March 15, -1810.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>What though the radiance.</em> <cite>Intimations of Immortality.</cite></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>[‘Of splendour in the grass; of glory in the flower;</div> - <div class='line'>We will grieve not, rather find.’]</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c003'>NOTES ON LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH</h3> - -<h4 class='c037'>I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT</h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_170'>170</a>. Add, to the Bibliographical Note: ‘The volume was printed by B. M’Millan, -Bow Street, Covent Garden.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_175'>175</a>. <em>Coke.</em> Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), the jurist.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_176'>176</a>. <em>Mere oblivion.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Poor, poor dumb names</em> [mouths.] <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Webster.</em> John Webster (? d. 1625).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Deckar.</em> Thomas Dekker (<em>c.</em> 1570–<em>c.</em> 1637).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Marston.</em> John Marston (? 1575–1634).</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_399'>399</span><em>Marlow.</em> Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Chapman.</em> George Chapman (? 1559–1634).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Heywood.</em> Thomas Heywood (c. 1575–c. 1641).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Middleton.</em> Thomas Middleton (c. 1570–1627).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Jonson.</em> Ben Jonson (1572/3–1637).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Beaumont.</em> Francis Beaumont (1584–1616).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fletcher.</em> John Fletcher (1579–1625).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rowley.</em> William Rowley (c. 1585–c. 1642) is chiefly remembered as a -collaborator with the better-known Elizabethan Dramatists.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>How lov’d, how honour’d once.</em> Pope’s <cite>Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate -Lady.</cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Draw the curtain of time.</em> Cf. <cite>Twelfth Night</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5. ‘Draw the curtain and -shew you the picture.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Of poring pedantry.</em> ‘Of painful pedantry the poring child.’ Warton: -<em>Sonnet written in a blank leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon</em>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_177'>177</a>. <em>The sacred influence of light.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1034.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pomp of elder days.</em> Warton’s sonnet referred to above.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Nor can we think what thoughts.</em> Dryden’s <cite>The Hind and the Panther</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 315.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_178'>178</a>. <em>Think ... there’s livers out of Britain.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>By nature’s own sweet and cunning hand.</em> <cite>Twelfth Night</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Where Pan, knit with the Graces</em> [‘while universal Pan.’] <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> -<a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There are more things between</em> [in] <em>heaven and earth</em>. <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_179'>179</a>. <em>Matchless, divine, what we will.</em> Pope, <cite>Imitations of Horace</cite>, Epis. <span class='fss'>I.</span>, -Book <span class='fss'>II.</span> 70.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_180'>180</a>. <em>Less than smallest dwarfs.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 779.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Desiring this man’s art.</em> Shakspeare’s <cite>Sonnets</cite>, <span class='fss'>XXIV.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In shape and gesture proudly eminent.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 590.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His soul was like a star.</em> Wordsworth’s <cite>London</cite>, 1802.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_181'>181</a>. <em>Drew after him.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 692.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Otway ... Venice Preserved.</em> Thomas Otway’s (1651–85) play was -published in 1682.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Jonson’s learned sock.</em> Milton’s <cite>L’Allegro</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_183'>183</a>. <em>To run and read.</em> <cite>Habakkuk</cite>, ii. 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Penetrable stuff.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>My peace I give unto you</em> [‘not as the world giveth.’] <cite>St. John</cite>, xiv. 27.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That they should love one another.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>XV.</span> 12.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_184'>184</a>. <em>Woman behold thy son.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> <span class='fss'>XIX.</span> 26–7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>To the Jews.</em> <cite>1 Cor.</cite> <span class='fss'>I.</span> 23.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_185'>185</a>. <em>Soft as sinews of the new-born babe.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The best of men.</em> Dekker’s <cite>The Honest Whore</cite>. Part <span class='fss'>I.</span> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_186'>186</a>. <em>Tasso by Fairfax.</em> Edward Fairfax’s translation of <cite>Jerusalem Delivered</cite> was -published in 1600.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ariosto by Harrington.</em> Sir John Harington’s translation of <cite>Orlando Furioso</cite> -was published in 1591.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Homer and Hesiod by Chapman.</em> A part of George Chapman’s translation of -Homer’s <cite>Iliad and Odyssey</cite> appeared in 1598 and the rest at various dates to -1615; <cite>Hesiod</cite> in 1618.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Virgil long before.</em> Possibly Gawin Douglas’s version of the <cite>Æneid</cite> (1512–53) -is in mind.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ovid soon after.</em> (?) Arthur Golding’s <cite>Ovid</cite> (1565–75).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>North’s translation of Plutarch.</em> In 1579, by Sir Thomas North.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Catiline and Sejanus.</cite> Acted in 1611 and 1603 respectively.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_400'>400</span><em>The satirist Aretine.</em> Pietro Aretino (1492–1557), the ‘Scourge of Princes.’ -<em>Machiavel.</em> <cite>The Arte of Warre</cite> and <cite>The Florentine Historie</cite> appeared in -English in 1560 and 1594 respectively.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Castiglione.</em> Count Baldasare Castiglione’s <cite>Il Cortegiano</cite>, a Manual for -Courtiers, was translated in 1561 by Sir Thomas Hoby.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ronsard.</em> Pierre de Ronsard (1524–85), ‘Prince of Poets.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Du Bartas.</em> Guillaume de Saluste Seigneur du Bartas (1544–1590), soldier, -statesman and precursor of Milton as a writer on the theme of creation. -His ‘Diuine Weekes and Workes’ were Englished in 1592 and later by ‘yt -famous Philomusus,’ Joshua Sylvester (1563–1618). See Dr. Grosart’s -edition of his works.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_187'>187</a>. <em>Fortunate fields and groves, etc.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 568–70.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Prospero’s Enchanted Island.</em> Modern editors give Eden’s <cite>History of Travayle</cite>, -1577, as the probable source of Setebos, etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Right well I wote.</em> <cite>The Faerie Queene</cite>, Stanzas <span class='fss'>I.–III.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_188'>188</a>. <em>Lear ... old ballad.</em> Or rather from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s <cite>Historia -Britonum</cite>, c. 1130. The ballad of <cite>King Leir</cite> (Percy’s <cite>Reliques</cite>) is probably -of later date than Shakespeare.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Othello ... Italian novel.</em> The Heccatommithi of Giraldi Cinthio. The -work may have been known in England through a French translation.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Those bodiless creations.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Your face, my Thane.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Tyrrel and Forrest.</em> In <cite>King Richard III.</cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_189'>189</a>. <em>Thick and slab.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Snatched a</em> [wild and] <em>fearful joy</em>. Gray’s <cite>Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton -College</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The great pestilence of Florence.</em> In 1348. The plague forms but the artificial -framework of the tales; to escape it certain Florentines retire to a country -house and, in its garden, they tell the tales that form the book.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The course of true love never did run even</em> [smooth.] <cite>A Midsummer Night’s -Dream</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The age of chivalry.</em> ‘The age of chivalry is gone ... and the glory of -Europe is extinguished for ever.’ Burke’s <cite>Reflections on the French -Revolution</cite>. Select Works, ed. Payne, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 89.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The gentle Surrey.</em> Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (<em>c.</em> 1517–1547) whose -Songs and Sonnets are in Tottel’s <cite>Miscellany</cite> (1557).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir John Suckling</em>, 1609–42. Besides writing <cite>A ballad upon a wedding</cite> Sir -John was the best player at bowls in the country and he ‘invented’ -cribbage.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Who prized black eyes.</em> <cite>The Session of the Poets</cite>, Ver. 20.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like strength reposing.</em> ‘’Tis might half slumbering on it own right arm.’</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Keats’ <cite>Sleep and Poetry</cite>, 237.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_190'>190</a>. <em>They heard the tumult.</em> Cowper’s <cite>The Task</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 99–100.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>‘I behold</div> - <div class='line'>The tumult and am still.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fletcher’s Noble Kinsmen.</em> <cite>The Two Noble Kinsmen</cite>, 1634. Although -Fletcher was certainly one of the two authors of the play, it is not known -who was the other. Scenes have been attributed, with some probability, to -Shakespeare.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Return from Parnassus.</cite> 1606. See <em>post</em>, p. 280.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>It snowed of meat and drink.</em> <cite>Canterbury Tales</cite>, Prologue, 345.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As Mr. Lamb observes.</em> Cf. <cite>Specimens of English Dramatic Poets</cite>, Lamb’s -note attached to Marston’s <cite>What you will</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_401'>401</span><a href='#Page_191'>191</a>. <em>In act and complement</em> [compliment] <em>extern</em>. <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Description of a madhouse.</em> In <cite>The Honest Whore</cite>, Part I. Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A Mad World, my Masters.</em> The title of one of Middleton’s comedies, -1608.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like birdlime, brains and all.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in18'>‘My invention</div> - <div class='line'>Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frize;</div> - <div class='line'>It plucks out brains and all.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_192'>192</a>. <em>But Pan is a God.</em> Lyly’s <cite>Midas</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Materiam superabat opus.</span></i> Ovid, <cite>Met.</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 5.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>II. ON LYLY, MARLOW, <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></h4> - -<p class='c038'>It is not possible to give references to thoroughly satisfactory texts of the -Elizabethan dramatists for the simple reason that, unfortunately, few exist. For -reading purposes the volumes of select plays in ‘The Mermaid Series’ and a few -single plays in ‘The Temple Dramatists’ may be mentioned.</p> - -<p class='c014'>PAGE</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_192'>192</a>. <em>The rich strond.</em> <cite>The Faerie Queene</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> iv. 20, 34.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_193'>193</a>. <em>Rich as the oozy bottom.</em> <cite>King Henry V.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2. [‘sunken wreck.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Majestic though in ruin.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 300.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The Cave of Mammon.</em> <cite>The Faerie Queene</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> vii. 29.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>New-born gauds, etc.</em> <cite>Troilus and Cressida</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ferrex and Porrex.</em> By Thomas Norton (1532–1584), and Thomas Sackville, -Lord Buckhurst (1536–1608). Acted Jan. 18, 1561–2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_194'>194</a>. <em>No figures nor no fantasies.</em> <cite>Julius Caesar</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_195'>195</a>. <em>Sir Philip Sidney says.</em> In his <cite>Apologie for Poetrie</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_196'>196</a>. <em>Mr. Pope ... says.</em> See Spence, Letter to the Earl of Middlesex, prefixed to -Dodsley’s edition of <cite>Gorboduc</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His Muse.</em> Thomas Sackville wrote the Induction (1563).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>John Lyly.</em> The Euphuist (c. 1554–1606), a native of the Kentish Weald. -<cite>Midas</cite> (1592), <cite>Endymion</cite> (1591), <cite>Alexander and Campaspe</cite> (1584), <cite>Mother -Bombie</cite> (1594).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_198'>198</a>. <em>Poor, unfledged.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Very</em> [most] <em>tolerable</em>. <cite>Much Ado about Nothing</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Grating their lean and flashy jests.</em> <cite>Lycidas</cite>, 123–4.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>‘their lean and flashy songs</div> - <div class='line'>Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Bobadil.</em> Captain Bobadil, in <cite>Every Man in his Humour</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_199'>199</a>. <em>The very reeds bow down.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Out of my weakness.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>It is silly sooth.</em> <cite>Twelfth Night</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_201'>201</a>. <em>Did first reduce.</em> Elegy to Henry Reynolds, Esquire, 91 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Euphues and his England.</em> <cite>Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit</cite>, appeared in 1579 -and <cite>Euphues and his England</cite> the year following. They may be read in -Arber’s reprint.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pan and Apollo.</em> <cite>Midas</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_202'>202</a>. <em>Note.</em> Marlowe died in 1593. He was stabbed in a tavern quarrel at -Deptford.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.</em> Printed 1604, 1616. See the editions of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_402'>402</span>Dr. A. W. Ward and Mr. Israel Gollancz. The latter is a ‘contamination’ -of the two texts.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_202'>202</a>. <em>Fate and metaphysical aid.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_203'>203</a>. <em>With uneasy steps.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 295.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Such footing</em> [resting.] <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 237–8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>How am I glutted.</em> <cite>Life and Death of Doctor Faustus</cite>, Scene <span class='fss'>I.</span> [public schools -with silk.]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_205'>205</a>. <em>What is great Mephostophilis.</em> Scene <span class='fss'>III.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>My heart is harden’d.</em> Scene <span class='fss'>VI.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Was this the face?</em> Scene <span class='fss'>XVII.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_206'>206</a>. <em>Oh, Faustus.</em> Scene <span class='fss'>XIX.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Yet, for he was a scholar.</em> And the next quotation. Scene <span class='fss'>XX.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_207'>207</a>. <em>Oh, gentlemen?</em> Scene <span class='fss'>XIX.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Snails! what hast got there.</em> Cf. Scene <span class='fss'>VIII.</span></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Come, what dost thou with that same book?</div> - <div class='line'>Thou can’st not read.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>As Mr. Lamb says.</em> Lamb’s <cite>Specimens of English Dramatic Poets</cite>, ed. -Gollancz, Vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 43. (Published originally in 1808).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lust’s Dominion.</em> Published 1657. The view now seems to be that Dekker -had a hand in it: in the form in which we have it it cannot be Marlowe’s. -See also W. C. Hazlitt’s <cite>Manual of Old Plays</cite>, 1892.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pue-fellow</em> [pew-fellow.] <cite>Richard III</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The argument of Schlegel.</em> Cf. <cite>Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature</cite> (Bohn, -1846), pp. 442–4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_208'>208</a>. <em>What, do none rise?</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Marlowe’s mighty line.</em> The phrase is Ben Jonson’s, in his lines ‘To the -Memory of my Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath -left us,’ originally prefixed to the First Folio of Shakespeare, 1623.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>I know he is not dead.</em> <cite>Lust’s Dominion</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hang both your greedy ears</em>, and the next quotation. <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ibid.</span></i> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Tyrants swim safest.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_209'>209</a>. <em>Oh! I grow dull.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And none of you.</em> <cite>King John</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Now by the proud complexion.</em> <cite>Lust’s Dominion</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>But I that am.</em> <cite>Antony and Cleopatra</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>These dignities.</em> <cite>Lust’s Dominion</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Now tragedy.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Spaniard or Moor.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And hang a calve’s [calf’s] skin.</em> <cite>King John</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The rich Jew of Malta.</em> <cite>The Jew of Malta</cite>, acted 1588.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_209'>209</a>. Note <em>Falstaff</em>. Cf. ‘minions of the moon,’ <cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_210'>210</a>. <em>The relation.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As the morning lark.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In spite of these swine-eating Christians.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>One of Shylock’s speeches.</em> <cite>Merchant of Venice</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_211'>211</a>. <cite>Edward II.</cite> 1594.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Weep’st thou already?</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The King and Gaveston.</em> Cf. Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The lion and the forest deer.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The Song.</em> See p. 298 and note.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_212'>212</a>. <cite>A Woman killed with Kindness.</cite> 1603.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Oh, speak no more.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_403'>403</span><em>Cold drops of sweat.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Astonishment.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_213'>213</a>. <em>Invisible, or dimly seen.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 157.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fair, and of all beloved.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The affecting remonstrance.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Stranger.</cite> Benjamin Thompson’s (1776?–1816) translation of Kotzebue’s -(1761–1819) <cite><span lang="de" xml:lang="de">Menschenhass und Reue</span></cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Giles Over-reach.</em> In Massinger’s <cite>A New Way to Pay Old Debts</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_214'>214</a>. <em>This is no world in which to pity men.</em> <cite>A Woman killed with Kindness</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> -3 (ed. Dr. Ward).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His own account.</em> See his address ‘To the Reader’ in <cite>The English Traveller</cite>, -printed 1633.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Royal King and Loyal Subject.</cite> 1637.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>A Challenge for Beauty.</cite> 1636.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Shipwreck by Drink.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Fair Quarrel.</cite> 1617.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>A Woman never Vexed.</cite> 1632.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Women beware Women.</cite> 1657.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_215'>215</a>. <em>She holds the mother in suspense.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Did not the Duke look up?</em> Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_216'>216</a>. <em>How near am I.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_218'>218</a>. <cite>The Witch.</cite> No date can be given for this play.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The moon’s a gallant.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3. [‘If we have not mortality after ‘t’] [‘leave -me to walk here.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_220'>220</a>. <em>What death is ‘t you desire?</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_222'>222</a>. <em>Mr. Lamb’s Observations.</em> The same extract from the <cite>Specimens</cite> is quoted -in <cite>Characters of Shakespear’s Plays</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 194 [cannot co-exist with -mirth.]</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>III. ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a>. <em>Blown stifling back.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>XI.</span> 313.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_224'>224</a>. <em>Monsieur Kinsayder.</em> This was the <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">nom-de-plume</span></i> under which John Marston -published his <cite>Scourge of Villanie</cite>, 1598.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Oh ancient Knights.</em> Sir John Harington’s translation of <cite>Orlando Furioso</cite> -was published in 1591.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Antonio and Mellida.</cite> 1602.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_225'>225</a>. <em>Half a page of Italian rhymes.</em> Part I. Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Each man takes hence life.</em> Part I. Act <span class='fss'>III.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>What you Will.</cite> 1607.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Who still slept.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Parasitaster and Malcontent.</em> <cite>Parasitaster; or The Fawn</cite>, 1606. <cite>The Malcontent</cite>, -1604.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_226'>226</a>. <em>Is nothing, if not critical.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>We would be private.</em> <cite>The Fawn</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Faunus, this Granuffo.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_227'>227</a>. <em>Though he was no duke.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Molière has built a play.</em> <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’École des Maris.</span></cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Full of wise saws.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_228'>228</a>. <em>Nymphadoro’s reasons.</em> <cite>The Fawn</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>III.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hercules’s description.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like a wild goose fly.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_230'>230</a>. <cite>Bussy d’Ambois.</cite> 1607.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_404'>404</span><em>The way of women’s will.</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,</div> - <div class='line'>Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,</div> - <div class='line'>That woman’s love can win, or long inherit,</div> - <div class='line'>But what it is hard is to say,</div> - <div class='line'>Harder to hit....’</div> - <div class='line in18'><cite>Samson Agonistes</cite>, 1010 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hide nothing.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 27.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_231'>231</a>. <em>Fulke Greville.</em> Lord Brooke (1554–1628). <cite>Alaham and Mustapha</cite> were -published in the folio edition of Brooke, 1633. He was the school friend, -and wrote the Life, of Sir Philip Sidney. His self-composed epitaph reads, -‘Fulke Grevill, servant to Queene Elizabeth, councellor to King James, -frend to Sir Philip Sidney.’ See Hazlitt’s Essay ‘Of Persons one would -wish to have seen.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The ghost of one of the old kings.</em> <cite>Alaham.</cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Monsieur D’Olive.</cite> 1606.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sparkish.</em> In Wycherley’s <cite>Country Wife</cite> (1675).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Witwoud and Petulant.</em> In Congreve’s <cite>The Way of the World</cite> (1700).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_234'>234</a>. <cite>May-Day.</cite> 1611.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>All Fools.</cite> 1605.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Widow’s Tears.</cite> 1612.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Eastward Hoe.</cite> 1605. Ben Jonson accompanied his two friends to prison -for this voluntarily. Their imprisonment was of short duration.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>On his release from prison.</em> See Drummond’s Conversations, <span class='fss'>XIII.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Express ye unblam’d.</em> Paradise Lost, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Appius and Virginia.</em> Printed 1654.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The affecting speech.</em> <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">I.e.</span></i> that of Virginius to Virginia, Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Wonder of a Kingdom.</em> Published 1636.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Jacomo Gentili.</em> In the above play.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Old Fortunatus.</cite> 1600.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_235'>235</a>. <em>Vittorio Corombona.</em> <cite>The White Devil</cite>, 1612.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Signior Orlando Friscobaldo.</em> In <cite>The Honest Whore</cite>, Part II., 1630.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The red-leaved tables.</em> Heywood’s <cite>A Woman killed with Kindness</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The pangs.</em> Wordsworth’s <cite>Excursion</cite>, <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 554.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Honest Whore.</cite> In two Parts, 1604 and 1630.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Signior Friscobaldo.</em> The Second Part, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_237'>237</a>. <em>You’ll forgive me.</em> The Second Part, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>It is my father.</em> The Second Part, Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Oh! who can paint.</em></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_238'>238</a>. <em>Tough senior.</em> <cite>Love’s Labour’s Lost</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>And she has felt them knowingly.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>I cannot.</em> <cite>The Honest Whore</cite>, Second Part, Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_239'>239</a>. <em>The manner too.</em> The Second Part, Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>I’m well.</em> The First Part, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3 [‘midst of feasting’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Turns them.</em> <cite><span class='fss'>II.</span> Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Patient Grizzel.</em> Griselda in Chaucer’s <cite>Clerke’s Tale</cite>. Dekker collaborated -in a play entitled <cite>The Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissill</cite> (1603).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The high-flying.</em> <cite>The Honest Whore</cite>, Second Part, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1. etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_240'>240</a>. <cite>White Devil.</cite> 1612.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Duchess of Malfy.</cite> 1623.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>By which they lose some colour.</em> Cf. <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1. ‘As it may lose some -colour.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_405'>405</span><a href='#Page_241'>241</a>. <em>All fire and air.</em> <cite>Henry V.</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 7, ‘he is pure air and fire,’ and <cite>Antony and -Cleopatra</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2, ‘I am fire and air.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like the female dove.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1, ‘As patient as the female dove, when that -her golden couplets are disclosed.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The trial scene</em> and the two following quotations, <cite>The White Devil.</cite> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_243'>243</a>. <em>Your hand I’ll kiss.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The lamentation of Cornelia.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The parting scene of Brachiano.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_245'>245</a>. <em>The scenes of the madhouse.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The interview.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>I prythee</em>, and the three following quotations and note on p. 246. <cite>The Duchess -of Malfy</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_246'>246</a>. <cite>The Revenger’s Tragedy.</cite> 1607.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The dazzling fence.</em> Cf. the ‘dazzling fence’ of rhetoric, <cite>Comus</cite>, 790–91.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The appeals of Castiza.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1., and Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_247'>247</a>. <em>Mrs. Siddons has left the stage.</em> Mrs. Siddons left the stage in June 1819. -See <cite>The Round Table</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span>, Note to p. 156.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>On Salisbury-plain.</em> At Winterslow Hut. See <cite>Memoirs of W. Hazlitt</cite>. 1867, -vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 259.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Stern good-night.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2. ‘The fatal bellman which gives the -stern’st good night.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Take mine ease.</em> <cite>1 Henry IV.</cite> <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cibber’s manager’s coat.</em> Colley Cibber (1671–1757), actor, dramatist, and -manager. See the <cite>Apology for his Life</cite> (1740).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Books, dreams.</em> <cite>Personal Talk.</cite> [‘Dreams, books, are each a world.... Two -shall be named pre-eminently dear ... by heavenly lays....’]</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>IV. ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_249'>249</a>. <em>Misuse</em> [praise] <em>the bounteous Pan</em>. <cite>Comus</cite>, 176–7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like eagles newly baited.</em> Cf.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘All plumed like estridges that with the wind</div> - <div class='line'>Baited like eagles having lately bathed.’</div> - <div class='line in38'><cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_250'>250</a>. <em>Cast the diseases of the mind.</em> Cf.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ... cast</div> - <div class='line'>The water of my land, find her disease,</div> - <div class='line'>And purge it to a sound and pristine health?’</div> - <div class='line in50'><cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Wonder-wounded.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Wanton poets.</em> Cf. Marlowe’s <cite>Edward II.</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1., and Beaumont and -Fletcher’s <cite>The Maid’s Tragedy</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_251'>251</a>. <cite>The Maid’s Tragedy.</cite> Acted 1609–10, printed 1619.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_252'>252</a>. <em>Do not mock me.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>King and No King.</em> Licensed 1611, printed 1619.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>When he meets with Panthea.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_253'>253</a>. <cite>The False One.</cite> 1619.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Youth that opens.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like</em> [‘I should imagine’] <em>some celestial sweetness</em>. Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'>‘<em>Tis here</em>, and the next quotation. Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1. [‘Egyptians, dare ye think.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_254'>254</a>. <cite>The Faithful Shepherdess.</cite> Acted 1610.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A perpetual feast.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 479–80.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_406'>406</span><em>He takes most ease.</em> <cite>The Faithful Shepherdess</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Her virgin fancies wild.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 296–7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Here he woods.</em> <cite>The Faithful Shepherdess</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_255'>255</a>. <em>For her dear sake.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Brightest.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>If you yield.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_256'>256</a>. <em>And all my fears.</em> Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Sad Shepherd.</cite> 1637.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_257'>257</a>. <em>Tumbled him</em> [He tumbled] <em>down</em>, and the two following quotations. <cite>The Two -Noble Kinsmen</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>We have been soldiers.</em> Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_258'>258</a>. <em>Tearing our pleasures.</em> <cite>To his Coy Mistress</cite>, 43 and 44.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>How do you.</em> <cite>The Two Noble Kinsmen</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2. [‘lastly, children of grief -and ignorance.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_261'>261</a>. <em>Sing their bondage.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Bloody Brother</cite>, 1624; <cite>A Wife for a Month</cite>, 1623; <cite>Bonduca</cite>, acted -<em>c.</em> 1619; <cite>Thierry and Theodoret</cite>, 1621; <cite>The Night Walker</cite>, 1625; <cite>The Little -French Lawyer</cite>, <em>c.</em> 1618; <cite>Monsieur Thomas</cite>, <em>c.</em> 1619; <cite>The Chances</cite>, <em>c.</em> 1620; -<cite>The Wild Goose Chase</cite>, acted 1621; <cite>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</cite>, 1624.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_262'>262</a>. <cite>Philaster.</cite> Acted <em>c.</em> 1608.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sitting in my window.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Into a lower world.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>XI.</span> 283–5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His plays were works.</em> Suckling’s <cite>The Session of the Poets</cite>, ver. 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'>Note, <em>Euphrasia</em>. <cite>Philaster</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_263'>263</a>. <em>Miraturque.</em> Virgil, <cite>Georgics</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 82.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The New Inn.</cite> Acted 1630.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Fall of Sejanus.</cite> Acted 1603.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Two of Sejanus’ bloodhounds.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>To be a spy.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_264'>264</a>. <em>What are thy arts.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>If this man.</em> Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2 [‘blood and tyranny.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_265'>265</a>. <em>The conversations between Livia.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Catiline’s Conspiracy.</cite> Acted 1611.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>David’s canvas.</em> Jacques Louis David (1748–1825), historical painter.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The description of Echo.</em> Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1. <cite>Cynthia’s Revels</cite> was acted in 1600 and -printed the year after.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The fine comparison ... the New Inn.</em> Cf. Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Massinger and Ford.</em> Philip Massinger (1583–1640) and John Ford (1586–? -1656).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Musical as is Apollo’s lute.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 478.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_266'>266</a>. <em>Reason panders will.</em> Hamlet, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The true pathos.</em> Burns, <cite>Epistle to Dr. Blacklock</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Unnatural Combat</cite>, 1639; <cite>The Picture</cite>, licensed 1629; <cite>The Duke of Milan</cite>, -1623; <cite>A New Way to Pay Old Debts</cite>, 1633; <cite>The Bondman</cite>, 1624; <cite>The -Virgin Martyr</cite>, 1622.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_267'>267</a>. <em>Felt a stain like a wound.</em> Burke, <cite>Reflections on the French Revolution</cite>, ed. -Payne, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 89.</p> - -<p class='c014'>Note. See <cite>A View of the English Stage</cite>, and notes thereto.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_268'>268</a>. <cite>Rowe’s Fair Penitent.</cite> 1703. Nicholas Rowe (1673–1718).</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Fatal Dowry.</cite> 1632.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.</em> 1633.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_269'>269</a>. <em>Annabella and her husband.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Broken Heart.</cite> 1633.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_407'>407</span><a href='#Page_270'>270</a>. <em>Miss Baillie.</em> See p. 147 and notes thereto.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Perkin Warbeck.</cite> 1634.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Lover’s Melancholy.</cite> 1628.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Love’s Sacrifice.</cite> 1633.</p> - -<p class='c014'>Note. <em>Soft peace.</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The concluding one.</em> Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2 and 3 [‘court new pleasures’.]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_272'>272</a>. <em>Already alluded to.</em> See p. 230.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_273'>273</a>. <em>Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy.</em> <cite>Specimens</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>II.</span> p. 199.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_274'>274</a>. <em>Armida’s enchanted palace.</em> The sorceress who seduces the Crusaders. Tasso’s -<cite>Jerusalem Delivered</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fairy elves.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 781 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>‘Like that Pygmean race</div> - <div class='line'>Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Deaf the praised ear.</em> Pope’s <cite>Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady</cite>.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>V. ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></h4> - -<p class='c038'><cite>The Four P’s.</cite> ? 1530–3.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>John Heywood.</em> (<em>c.</em> 1497–<em>c.</em> 1575). He was responsible for various collections -of Epigrams, containing six hundred proverbs.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_276'>276</a>. <em>False knaves.</em> <cite>Much Ado about Nothing</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_277'>277</a>. <em>Count Fathom.</em> Chap. <span class='fss'>XXI.</span></p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Friar John.</em> Rabelais’ <cite>Gargantua</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 27.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_278'>278</a>. L. 5 from foot. <em>Take</em> [taste].</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_279'>279</a>. <em>Which I was born to introduce.</em> Swift’s lines <cite>On the Death of Dr. Swift</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>As a liar of the first magnitude.</em> Congreve’s <cite>Love for Love</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_280'>280</a>. <em>Mighty stream of Tendency.</em> <cite>The Excursion</cite>, <span class='fss'>IX.</span> 87.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Full of wise saws.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c011'><cite>The Return from Parnassus.</cite> 1606.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Like the Edinburgh Review.</em> Only two numbers were published, which were -reprinted (8vo) 1818.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Read the names.</em> <cite>The Return from Parnassus</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_282'>282</a>. <em>Kempe the actor.</em> William Kempe, fl. <em>c.</em> 1600.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Burbage.</em> Richard Burbage (<em>c.</em> 1567–1618), the builder of the Globe -Theatre, and a great actor therein.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Few</em> (<em>of the University</em>). Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_283'>283</a>. <em>Felt them knowingly.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Philomusus and Studioso.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1, Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Out of our proof we speak.</em> <cite>Cymbeline</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>I was not train’d.</em> Charles Lamb’s Sonnet, written at Cambridge, August 15, -1819.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_284'>284</a>. <em>Made desperate.</em> <cite>The Excursion</cite>, <span class='fss'>VI.</span> 532–3, quoted from Jeremy Taylor’s -<em>Holy Dying</em>, Chap. 1, § <span class='fss'>V.</span></p> - -<p class='c011'><em>A mere scholar.</em> <cite>Return from Parnassus</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 6.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>The examination of Signor Immerito.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_286'>286</a>. <cite>Gammer Gurton’s Needle.</cite> Printed 1575. John Still (1543–1607), afterwards -Bishop of Bath and Wells, is supposed to be its author.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a>. <em>Gog’s crosse</em>, and the following quotations. Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c011'><a href='#Page_289'>289</a>. <em>Such very poor spelling.</em> Cf. Lamb’s story of Randal Norris, who once remarked -after trying to read a black-letter Chaucer, ‘in those old books, -Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent spelling.’ See</p> -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_408'>408</span>Lamb’s Letter to H. Crabb Robinson, Jan. 20, 1827; Hone’s <cite>Table Book</cite>, -Feb. 10, 1827; and the first edition of the Last Essays of Elia, 1833. -<em>A Death-Bed</em>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Yorkshire Tragedy.</cite> 1604 (attributed to Shakespeare); <cite>Sir John Oldcastle</cite>, -1600, (? by Munday and Drayton); <cite>The Widow of Watling Street</cite>, -[<cite>The Puritan, or The Widow, etc.</cite>], 1607 (? by Wentworth Smith). See <cite>The -Round Table</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 353, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i>, for Schlegel and Hazlitt on these.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Green’s Tu Quoque, by George Cook.</em> Greene’s ‘Tu Quoque,’ 1614, by Joseph -Cooke (fl. <em>c.</em> 1600). Greene, the comedian, after whom the play is called, -died 1612.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_290'>290</a>. <em>Suckling’s melancholy hat.</em> Cf. p. 270 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">ante</span></i>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Microcosmus, by Thomas Nabbes.</cite> 1637. Thomas Nabbes flourished in the -time of Charles <span class='fss'>I.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_291'>291</a>. <em>What do I see?</em> Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_292'>292</a>. <cite>Antony Brewer’s Lingua.</cite> 1607. This play is now said to be by John -Tomkins, Scholar of Trinity, Cambridge (1594–8).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages.</em> <cite>Specimens</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> pp. 99–100.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_292'>292</a>. <em>Why, good father.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_293'>293</a>. <em>Thou, boy.</em> Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Merry Devil of Edmonton.</cite> 1608. The author is unknown.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sound silver sweet.</em> <cite>Romeo and Juliet</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The deer-stealing scenes.</em> <cite>The Merry Devil of Edmonton</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1, etc.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a>. <em>Very honest knaveries.</em> <cite>Merry Wives of Windsor</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The way lies right.</em> <cite>The Merry Devil of Edmonton</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Pinner of Wakefield.</cite> By Robert Greene (1560–1592). His works have -been edited by Dr. Grosart, and by Mr. Churton Collins.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Hail-fellow well met.</em> Cf. Swift’s <cite>My Lady’s Lamentation</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Jeronymo.</cite> 1588. <cite>The Spanish Tragedy</cite> (? 1583–5), licensed and performed -1592. See Prof. Schick’s edition in ‘The Temple Dramatists.’ Thomas -Kyd, baptised November 6, 1558, died before 1601.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Which have all the melancholy madness of poetry.</em> Junius: Letter No 7. to Sir -W. Draper.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>VI. ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Etc.</h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_295'>295</a>. <cite>The False One.</cite> 1619.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Valentinian.</em> Produced before 1619. ‘Now the lusty spring is seen,’ -Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman.</cite> Published 1647.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Most musical.</em> <cite>Il Penseroso</cite>, 62.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_296'>296</a>. <em>The silver foam.</em> Cowper’s <cite>Winter’s Walk at Noon</cite>, ll. 155–6—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf</div> - <div class='line'>That the wind severs from the broken wave.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>Grim-visaged, comfortless despair.</em> Cf. ‘grim visag’d war.’ <cite>Richard III.</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1; -and ‘grim and comfortless despair.’ <cite>Comedy of Errors</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Beaumont died.</em> His years were thirty-two (1584–1616).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>’Tis not a life.</em> <cite>Philaster</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2. See p. 262.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The lily on its stalk green.</em> Chaucer, <cite>The Knighte’s Tale</cite>, 1036.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lapt in Elysium.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 257.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Raphael.</em> Raphael’s years were thirty-seven (1483–1520).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_297'>297</a>. <em>Now that his task.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 1012.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_409'>409</span><em>Rymer’s abuse.</em> See Thomas Rymer’s (1641–1713) <cite>The Tragedies of the Last -Age Considered</cite> (1678). He was called by Pope ‘the best’ and by Macaulay -‘the worst’ English critic.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The sons of memory.</em> Milton’s <cite>Sonnet on Shakespeare</cite>, 1630.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir John Beaumont</em> (1582–1628), the author of <cite>Bosworth Field</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fleeted the time carelessly.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1. [‘golden world.’]</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_298'>298</a>. <cite>Walton’s Complete Angler.</cite> Third Day, chap. iv.</p> - -<p class='c014'>Note. Rochester’s <cite>Epigram</cite>. Sternhold and Hopkins were the joint authors -of the greater number of the metrical versions of the Psalms (1547–62) -which used to form part of the <cite>Book of Common Prayer</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'>299–300. <em>Drummond of Hawthornden.</em> William Drummond (1585–1649). His -<cite>Conversations with Ben Jonson</cite> were written of a visit paid him by Jonson in -1618. Mention might be made of Mr. W. C. Ware’s edition of his Poems -(1894), wherein many variations from Hazlitt’s text of the sonnets may be -noted, too numerous to detail here.</p> - -<p class='c014'>Note. <em>I was all ear.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 560.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_301'>301</a>. <em>The fly that sips treacle.</em> Gay’s <cite>Beggar’s Opera</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sugar’d sonnetting.</em> Cf. Francis Meres’ <cite>Palladis Tamia</cite>, 1598, concerning -Shakespeare’s ‘sugred Sonnets,’ and Judicio in <cite>The Return from Parnassus</cite> -(see p. 281 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">ante</span></i>), ‘sugar’d sonnetting.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_302'>302</a>. <em>The gentle craft.</em> The sub-title of a play of T. Dekker’s: <cite>The Shoemaker’s -Holiday, or the Gentle Craft</cite> (1600). The phrase has long been associated -with that handicraft.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A Phœnix gazed by all.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 272.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Give a reason for the faith that was in me.</em> Cf. Sydney Smith’s—‘It is always -right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is -within him.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_303'>303</a>. <em>Oh, how despised.</em> Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_304'>304</a>. <em>The Triumph of his Mistress.</em> <cite>The Triumph of Charis.</cite></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Nest of spicery.</em> <cite>Richard III.</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Oh, I could still.</em> <cite>Cynthia’s Revels</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_306'>306</a>. <em>A celebrated line.</em> See Coleridge’s Tragedy <cite>Osorio</cite>, Act iv., Sc. 1., written -1797, but not published in its original form until 1873. Coleridge’s <cite>Poetical -Works</cite>, ed. Dykes Campbell, p. 498.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Drip! drip! drip! drip! in such a place as this</div> - <div class='line'>It has nothing else to do but drip! drip! drip!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'>Recast and entitled <cite>Remorse</cite>, the tragedy was performed at Drury Lane, -Jan. 23, 1813, and published in pamphlet form. In the Preface Coleridge -relates the story of Sheridan reading the play to a large company, and -turning it into ridicule by saying—</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Drip! drip! drip! there’s nothing here but dripping.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'>Hazlitt’s quotation is taken, of course, from this Preface to <cite>Remorse</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_307'>307</a>. <em>The milk of human kindness.</em> Macbeth, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_309'>309</a>. <em>Daniel.</em> Samuel Daniel, 1562–1619.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_311'>311</a>. <em>Michael Drayton</em> (1563–1631). His Polyolbion, or ‘chorographicall’ description -of England in thirty books was issued in 1612–22. See the Spenser -Society’s editions of Drayton’s works.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>P. Fletcher’s Purple Island.</em> Phineas Fletcher (1582–1650). <cite>The Purple Island</cite>, -1633. The poem has been topographically catalogued under ‘Man, -Isle of’!</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Brown.</em> William Browne (1591–<em>c.</em> 1643). <cite>Britannia’s Pastorals</cite>, 1613–16; -a third book (in <span class='fss'>MSS.</span>) was printed in 1852.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_410'>410</span><em>Carew.</em> Thomas Carew (<em>c.</em> 1594–<em>c.</em> 1639).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Herrick.</em> Robert Herrick (1591–1674). His poems were edited by Dr. -Grosart in 1876.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Crashaw.</em> Richard Crashaw (? 1612–1649), the English Mystic. See Dr. -Grosart’s edition, 1872.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Marvell.</em> Andrew Marvell (1621–1678). See Dr. Grosart’s edition, -1872–74.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_312'>312</a>. <em>Like the motes.</em> ‘The gay motes that people the sunbeams.’ Milton’s <cite><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">Il -Penseroso</span></cite>, 8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_313'>313</a>. <em>On another occasion.</em> See <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">ante</span></i> p. 83.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_315'>315</a>. <em>Clamour grew dumb.</em> <cite>Pastorals</cite>, Book <span class='fss'>II.</span> Song 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The squirrel.</em> Book <span class='fss'>I.</span> Song 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The hues of the rainbow.</em> Book <span class='fss'>II.</span> Song 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Shepherd’s Pipe</cite>, 1614.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Inner Temple Mask</cite>, 1620.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Marino.</em> Giambattista Marini (1569–1625).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His form had not yet lost.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 591.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sir Philip Sidney</em> (1554–86). See Grosart’s edition of the Poems and Arber’s -editions of the <cite>Apologie</cite> and <cite>Astrophel and Stella</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_318'>318</a>. <em>Ford’s Version.</em> See Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1. <cite>The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia</cite> was published -in 1690.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>On compulsion.</em> <cite><span class='fss'>I.</span> Henry IV.</cite> <span class='fss'>II.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The soldier’s.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Like a gate of steel.</em> <cite>Troilus and Cressida</cite> <span class='fss'>III.</span> 3. [‘receives and renders’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_320'>320</a>. <em>With centric.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>VIII.</span> 83.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_321'>321</a>. <em>So that the third day.</em> Book <span class='fss'>I.</span> chap. ii. [‘delightful prospects’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Georgioni</em>, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">i.e.</span></i> Giorgione, or Giorgio Barbarella (1477–1511), the great -Venetian painter.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_322'>322</a>. <em>Like two grains of wheat.</em> <cite>The Merchant of Venice</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1. [‘hid in two -bushels’].</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Have you felt the wool.</em> In <cite>The Triumph of Charis</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_323'>323</a>. <em>As Mr. Burke said of nobility.</em> Cf. <cite>Reflections on the Revolution in France</cite>, ed. -Payne, vol. <span class='fss'>II.</span> p. 163. ‘To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, -opinions and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice -of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The shipwreck of Pyrochles.</em> Book <span class='fss'>I.</span> chap. i.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_324'>324</a>. <em>Certainly, as her eyelids.</em> Book <span class='fss'>I.</span> chap. i.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Adriano de Armada, in Love’s Labour Lost.</em> See the two characteristic -letters of Don Adriano de Armado, in <cite>Love’s Labour’s Lost</cite>, Act <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1., and -<span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_325'>325</a>. <em>The reason of their unreasonableness.</em> <cite>Don Quixote</cite>, l. 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pamelas and Philocleas.</em> Heroines of the <cite>Arcadia</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_326'>326</a>. <em>Defence of Poetry.</em> <cite>An Apologie for Poetry</cite>, 1595.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>VII. CHARACTER OF LORD BACON’S WORKS, <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></h4> - -<p class='c039'><em>One of the wisest.</em> Pope’s <cite>Essay on Man</cite>, Epis. iv. 282.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As in a map.</em> Cowper’s <cite>Task</cite>, vi. 17.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_327'>327</a>. <em>Large discourse.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_331'>331</a>. <em>Sir Thomas Brown.</em> Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_333'>333</a>. <em>The bosoms and businesses.</em> Dedication to Bacon’s <cite>Essays</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Find no end.</em> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 561.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_411'>411</span><em>Oh altitudo.</em> <cite>Religio Medici</cite>, Part I. ‘I love to lose myself in a mystery, to -pursue my reason to an O altitudo!’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_334'>334</a>. <em>Differences himself by.</em> <cite>Religio Medici</cite>, Part I. ‘But (to difference my self -nearer, and draw into a lesser Circle).’</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>He could be content if the species were continued like trees.</em> <cite>Religio Medici</cite>, -Part II.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_335'>335</a>. <em>Walks gowned.</em> Lamb’s <cite>Sonnet</cite>, written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>As it has been said.</em> Cf. the passage quoted later (p. 340) from Coleridge.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_339'>339</a>. <em>Mr. Coleridge.</em> See Coleridge’s <cite>Literary Remains</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1836. On p. 340, -l. 4 the phrase, as written by Coleridge, should be ‘Sir-Thomas-Brownness.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_341'>341</a>. <em>Stuff of the conscience.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>To give us pause.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> I.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cloys with sameness.</em> Cf. Shakespeare’s <cite>Venus and Adonis</cite>, <span class='fss'>XIX.</span>, ‘cloy thy lips -with loathed satiety.’</p> - -<p class='c014'>Note. <em>One of no mark.</em> <cite>1 Henry IV.</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Without form and void.</em> <cite>Genesis</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>He saw nature in the elements of its chaos.</em> <cite>Religio Medici</cite>, Part I.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_342'>342</a>. <em>Where pure Niemi’s faery banks</em> [mountains]. Thomson’s <cite>Winter</cite>, 875–6.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rains sacrificial roses</em> [whisperings]. <cite>Timon of Athens</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Some are called at age.</em> Chap. i. § 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_343'>343</a>. <em>It is the same.</em> Chap. iii. § 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>I have read</em>, and the next two quotations. Chap. i. § 2.</p> - -<h4 class='c037'>VIII. ON THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE, <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></h4> - -<p class='c039'><a href='#Page_345'>345</a>. <em>The Apostate and Evadne.</em> <cite>The Apostate</cite> (1817) by Richard Lalor Sheil (1791–1851), -<em>Evadne</em> (1819).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The Traitor by old Shirley.</em> James Shirley’s (1596–1666) <cite>The Traitor</cite> (1637).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The last of those fair clouds.</em></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. Tobin.</em> John Tobin (1770–1804). The <cite>Honey-Moon</cite> was produced at -Drury Lane, Jan. 31, 1805. See <cite>Characters of Shakespear’s Plays</cite>, -vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 344.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Curfew.</cite> Tobin’s play was produced at Drury Lane, Feb. 19, 1807.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_346'>346</a>. <em>Mr. Lamb’s</em> <cite>John Woodvil.</cite> Published 1802.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There where we have treasured.</em> Cf. <cite>St. Matt.</cite> vi. 21.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The tall</em> [and elegant stag] <em>deer that paints a dancing shadow of his horns in the -swift brook</em> [in the water, where he drinks].</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lamb’s <cite>John Woodvil</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> ii. 195–7.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c014'><em>But fools rush in.</em> Pope’s <cite>Essay on Criticism</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 66.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>To say that he has written better.</em> Lamb’s articles in Leigh Hunt’s <cite>Reflector</cite> -on Hogarth and Shakespeare’s tragedies, appeared in 1811.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>A gentleman of the name of Cornwall.</em> Bryan Waller Procter’s (Barry -Cornwall 1787–1874), <cite>Dramatic Scenes</cite> were published in 1819.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_347'>347</a>. <em>The Falcon.</em> Boccaccio’s <cite>Decameron</cite>, 5th day, 9th story. See <cite>Characters of -Shakespear’s Plays</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 331, and <cite>The Round Table</cite>, vol. <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 163.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_348'>348</a>. <em>A late number of the Edinburgh Review.</em> The article is by Hazlitt himself, in -the number for Feb. 1816, vol. 26, pp. 68, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Florimel in Spenser.</em> Book <span class='fss'>III.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There was magic.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_349'>349</a>. <em>Schlegel somewhere compares.</em> Cf. <cite>Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature</cite> -(Bohn, 1846) p. 407.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_412'>412</span><em>So withered.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The description of Belphœbe.</em> <cite>The Faerie Queene</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> iii. 21 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_350'>350</a>. <em>All plumed like estriches.</em> Cf. <cite>1 King Henry IV.</cite> <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_352'>352</a>. <em>Antres vast.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 3.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Orlando ... Rogero.</em> In Ariosto’s <cite>Orlando Furioso</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a>. <em>New-lighted.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The evidence of things unseen.</em> <cite>Hebrews</cite>, xi. 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Broods over the immense</em> [vast] <em>abyss</em>. <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 21.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The ignorant present time.</em> <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_355'>355</a>. <em>See o’er the stage.</em> Thomson’s <cite>Winter</cite>, ll. 646–8.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>The Orphan.</cite> By Otway, 1680.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Arabian trees.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>V.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>That sacred pity.</em> <cite>As You Like It</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 7.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Miss O’Neill.</em> Eliza O’Neill (1791–1872).</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_356'>356</a>. <cite>Hog hath lost his Pearl.</cite> 1613.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Addison’s Cato.</cite> 1713.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Dennis’s Criticism.</em> John Dennis’s (1657–1734) <cite>Remarks on Cato</cite>, 1713.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Don Sebastian.</cite> 1690.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The mask of Arthur and Emmeline.</em> <cite>King Arthur, or the British Worthy</cite> -1691, a Dramatic Opera with music by Purcell.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_357'>357</a>. <em>Alexander the Great ... Lee.</em> <cite>The Rival Queens</cite> (1677) by Nathaniel Lee -(1655–92).</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Œdipus.</cite> 1679.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Relieve the killing languor.</em> Burke’s <cite>Reflections on the Revolution in France</cite> -(Select Works, ed. Payne, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 120).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Leave then the luggage</em>, and the two following quotations. <cite>Don Sebastian</cite>, -Act <span class='fss'>II.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_359'>359</a>. <em>The Hughes.</em> John Hughes (1677–1720) author of <cite>The Siege of Damascus</cite> -1720, and one of the contributors to <cite>The Spectator</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The Hills.</em> Aaron Hill (1684–1749) poet and dramatist.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>The Murphys.</em> Arthur Murphy (1727–1805) dramatist and biographer.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Fine by degrees.</em> Matthew Prior’s <cite>Henry and Emma</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Southern.</em> Thomas Southerne (1660/1–1746), who wrote <cite>Oroonoko, or the -Royal Slave</cite> (1696).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lillo.</em> George Lillo (1693–1739), <cite>Fatal Curiosity</cite>, 1737.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Moore.</em> Edward Moore (1712–1757), <cite>The Gamester</cite>, 1753.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>In one of his Letters.</em> See the letter dated September, 1737.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Sent us weeping.</em> <cite>Richard II.</cite> <span class='fss'>V.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rise sadder.</em> Coleridge’s <cite>Ancient Mariner</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Douglas.</em> A tragedy by John Home (1724–1808), first played at Edinburgh -in 1756.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_360'>360</a>. <em>Decorum is the principal thing.</em> ‘What Decorum is, which is the grand -Master-piece to observe.’ Milton on Education, Works, 1738, <span class='fss'>I.</span> p. 140.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Aristotle’s definition of tragedy.</em> In the <cite>Poetics</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lovers’ Vows.</em> Mrs. Inchbald’s adaptation from Kotzebue, 1800.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pizarro.</em> Sheridan’s adaptation from Kotzebue’s <cite>The Spaniard in Peru</cite>, 1799.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Shews the very age.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_361'>361</a>. <em>Orson.</em> In the fifteenth century romance, <cite>Valentine and Orson</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pure in the last recesses.</em> Dryden’s translation from the Second Satire of -<em>Persius</em>, 133.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There is some soul of goodness.</em> <cite>Henry V.</cite>, <span class='fss'>IV.</span> 1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>There’s something rotten.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 4.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_362'>362</a>. <cite>The Sorrows of Werter.</cite> Goethe’s <cite>Sorrows of Werther</cite> was finished in 1774.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_413'>413</span><cite>The Robbers.</cite> By Schiller, 1781.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>It was my wish.</em> Act <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_363'>363</a>. <cite>Don Carlos.</cite> 1787.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>His Wallenstein.</em> Schiller’s, 1799; Coleridge’s, 1800.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Cumberland’s imitation.</em> Richard Cumberland’s (1732–1811) <cite>Wheel of Fortune</cite> -(1779).</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Goethe’s tragedies.</em> <cite>Count Egmont</cite>, 1788; <cite>Stella</cite>, 1776; <cite>Iphigenia</cite>, 1786.</p> - -<p class='c014'><cite>Memoirs of Anastasius the Greek.</cite> Thomas Hope’s (1770–1831) Eastern -romance was published in 1819 and was received with enthusiasm by the -<cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>When in the fine summer evenings.</em> Werther (ed. Bohn), p. 337.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_364'>364</a>. <em>As often got without merit.</em> <cite>Othello</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 3.</p> - -<h3 class='c003'>SELECT BRITISH POETS</h3> - -<p class='c008'>Dates, etc., are not given of those writers mentioned earlier in the present -volume.</p> - -<p class='c011'>See W. C. Hazlitt’s <cite>Memoirs of William Hazlitt</cite>, <span class='fss'>II.</span> 197–8, for the few details -that are known concerning the origin of this work. It was the opinion of Edward -Fitzgerald that ‘Hazlitt’s Poets is the best selection I have ever seen.’</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_367'>367</a>. <em>Dr. Knox.</em> Vicesimus Knox, D.D. (1752–1821), a voluminous and able -author, preacher, and compiler. See Boswell’s <cite>Johnson</cite>, ed. G. B. Hill, iv. -390–1.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_368'>368</a>. <em>Baser matter.</em> <cite>Hamlet</cite>, <span class='fss'>I.</span> 5.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Taken him.</em> <cite>Romeo and Juliet</cite>, <span class='fss'>III.</span> 2.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_369'>369</a>. <em>Perpetual feast.</em> <cite>Comus</cite>, 480.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Rich and rare.</em> Cf. Pope, Prologue to <cite>Satires</cite>, 171.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_371'>371</a>. <em>Daniel.</em> Samuel Daniel, 1562–1619.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_372'>372</a>. <em>Cowley.</em> Abraham Cowley, 1618–1667.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Roscommon.</em> Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, 1634–1685. His -translation of Horace’s <cite>Art of Poetry</cite> was published in 1680.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Pomfret.</em> John Pomfret, 1667–1703. <cite>The Choice</cite>, 1699.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lord Dorset.</em> Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (<em>c.</em> 1536–1608), author of -the <cite>Induction to a Mirror for Magistrates</cite>, and joint-author with Thomas -Norton of the tragedy <cite>Ferrex and Porrex</cite> (Gorboduc). See p. 193, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">et seq.</span></i></p> - -<p class='c014'><em>J. Philips.</em> John Philips, 1676–1708. <cite>The Splendid Shilling</cite>, 1705.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Halifax.</em> Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, 1661–1715, joint-author with -Matthew Prior of the parody on Dryden’s <cite>Hind and Panther</cite>, entitled <cite>The -Town and Country Mouse</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_373'>373</a>. <em>The mob of gentlemen.</em> Pope, <cite>Epis. Hor.</cite> Ep. <span class='fss'>I.</span> Book <span class='fss'>II.</span> 108.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Parnell.</em> Thomas Parnell, 1679–1717. He was a friend of Swift and of -Pope.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Prior.</em> Matthew Prior, 1664–1721.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_374'>374</a>. <em>Blair.</em> Robert Blair, 1699–1746. <cite>The Grave</cite>, 1743.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Ambrose Philips’s Pastorals.</em> These appeared in Tonson’s <cite>Miscellany</cite> (1709). -Ambrose Philips’s dates are ? 1675–1749. He has his place in <cite>The -Dunciad</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_375'>375</a>. <em>Mallet.</em> David Mallet, 1700–1765, is best remembered for his fusion of two -old ballads into his <cite>William and Margaret</cite>, and for his possible authorship -of <cite>Rule Britannia</cite>.</p> - -<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_414'>414</span><em>Less is meant.</em> Cf. Milton’s <cite>Il Penseroso</cite>, 120.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_378'>378</a>. <em>Thoughts that glow</em> [breathe]. Gray’s <cite>Progress of Poesy</cite>, 110.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Lord Thurlow.</em> Edward, second Lord Thurlow (1781–1829), a nephew of -the Lord Chancellor, published <cite>Verses on Several Occasions</cite> (1812), <cite>Ariadne</cite> -(1814), and other volumes of poems.</p> - -<p class='c014'><a href='#Page_379'>379</a>. <em>Mr. Milman.</em> Henry Hart Milman, 1791–1868, of <cite>Latin Christianity</cite> -fame was also the author of several dramas and dramatic poems, and of -several well-known hymns.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Bowles.</em> William Lisle Bowles, 1762–1850.</p> - -<p class='c014'><em>Mr. Barry Cornwall.</em> Bryan Waller Procter (1787–1874).</p> - -<hr class='c040' /> -<div class='footnote' id='f1'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r1'>1</a>. Burke’s writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the fancy, -because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, but artificial. The -difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the one is the eloquence of the -imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade -the will, and convince the reason: poetry produces its effect by instantaneous -sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in -general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not -to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants the -forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of our -own poetry which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in the -studied use of poetic diction.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f2'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r2'>2</a>. Taken from Tasso.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f3'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r3'>3</a>. This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser sometimes -took with language.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f4'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r4'>4</a>. .sp 1</p> -<div class='lg-container-b c027'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,</div> - <div class='line'>Tho’ they are made and moulded of things past,</div> - <div class='line'>And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,</div> - <div class='line'>More laud than gold o’er-dusted.’</div> - <div class='line in38'><cite>Troilus and Cressida.</cite></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f5'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r5'>5</a>. ‘To begin then with Shakspeare: he was the man who of all modern, and -perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the -images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but -luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. -Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: -he was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read -nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say, he is every where -alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of -mankind. He is many times flat, and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into -clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some -great occasion is presented to him. No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for -his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Quantum lenta solent inter Viburna Cupressi.</span></i>’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f6'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r6'>6</a>. Written in the Fleet Prison.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f7'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r7'>7</a>. Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post which stood -in the court-yard before the house where he was brought up.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f8'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r8'>8</a>. Burns.—These lines are taken from the introduction to Mr. Wordsworth’s -poem of the <span class='sc'>Leech-gatherer</span>.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f9'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r9'>9</a>. Sonnet on Sherwood Forest, by J. H. Reynolds, Esq.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f10'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r10'>10</a>. There is the same idea in Blair’s Grave.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>‘——Its visits,</div> - <div class='line'>Like those of angels, short, and far between.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c011'>Mr. Campbell in altering the expression has spoiled it. ‘Few,’ and ‘far -between,’ are the same thing.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f11'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r11'>11</a>. .sp 1</p> -<div class='lg-container-b c027'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘O reader! hast thou ever stood to see</div> - <div class='line in8'>The Holly Tree?</div> - <div class='line'>The eye that contemplates it well perceives</div> - <div class='line in8'>Its glossy leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>Ordered by an intelligence so wise</div> - <div class='line'>As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen</div> - <div class='line in8'>Wrinkled and keen;</div> - <div class='line'>No grazing cattle through their prickly round</div> - <div class='line in8'>Can reach to wound;</div> - <div class='line'>But as they grow where nothing is to fear,</div> - <div class='line'>Smooth and unarm’d the pointless leaves appear.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I love to view these things with curious eyes,</div> - <div class='line in8'>And moralize;</div> - <div class='line'>And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree</div> - <div class='line in8'>Can emblems see</div> - <div class='line'>Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,</div> - <div class='line'>Such as may profit in the after time.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So, though abroad perchance I might appear</div> - <div class='line in8'>Harsh and austere,</div> - <div class='line'>To those who on my leisure would intrude</div> - <div class='line in8'>Reserved and rude,</div> - <div class='line'>Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be,</div> - <div class='line'>Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And should my youth, as youth is apt I know,</div> - <div class='line in8'>Some harshness show,</div> - <div class='line'>All vain asperities I day by day</div> - <div class='line in8'>Would wear away,</div> - <div class='line'>Till the smooth temper of my age should be</div> - <div class='line'>Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And as when all the summer trees are seen</div> - <div class='line in8'>So bright and green,</div> - <div class='line'>The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display</div> - <div class='line in8'>Less bright than they,</div> - <div class='line'>But when the bare and wintry woods we see,</div> - <div class='line'>What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So serious should my youth appear among</div> - <div class='line in8'>The thoughtless throng,</div> - <div class='line'>So would I seem amid the young and gay</div> - <div class='line in8'>More grave than they,</div> - <div class='line'>That in my age as cheerful I might be</div> - <div class='line'>As the green winter of the Holly Tree.’—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f12'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r12'>12</a>. In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the place of the -translation of the Bible: and this dumb art arose in the silence of the written -oracles.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f13'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r13'>13</a>. See a Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f14'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r14'>14</a>. .sp 1</p> -<div class='lg-container-b c027'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘The smiler with the knife under his cloke.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Knight’s Tale.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f15'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r15'>15</a>. He died about 1594.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f16'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r16'>16</a>. An anachronism.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f17'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r17'>17</a>. This expression seems to be ridiculed by Falstaff.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f18'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r18'>18</a>. .sp 1</p> -<div class='lg-container-b c027'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘He sent a shaggy, tattered, staring slave,</div> - <div class='line'>That when he speaks, draws out his grisly beard,</div> - <div class='line'>And winds it twice or thrice about his ear;</div> - <div class='line'>Whose face has been a grind-stone for men’s swords:</div> - <div class='line'>His hands are hack’d, some fingers cut quite off,</div> - <div class='line'>Who when he speaks, grunts like a hog, and looks</div> - <div class='line'>Like one that is employ’d in catzerie,</div> - <div class='line'>And cross-biting; such a rogue</div> - <div class='line'>As is the husband to a hundred whores;</div> - <div class='line'>And I by him must send three hundred crowns.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Act IV.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f19'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r19'>19</a>. .sp 1</p> -<div class='lg-container-b c027'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘In spite of these swine-eating Christians</div> - <div class='line'>(Unchosen nation, never circumcised;</div> - <div class='line'>Such poor villains as were ne’er thought upon,</div> - <div class='line'>Till Titus and Vespasian conquer’d us)</div> - <div class='line'>Am I become as wealthy as I was.</div> - <div class='line'>They hoped my daughter would have been a nun;</div> - <div class='line'>But she’s at home, and I have bought a house</div> - <div class='line'>As great and fair as is the Governor’s:</div> - <div class='line'>And there, in spite of Malta, will I dwell,</div> - <div class='line'>Having Ferneze’s hand; whose heart I’ll have,</div> - <div class='line'>Aye, and his son’s too, or it shall go hard.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>I am not of the tribe of Levi, I,</div> - <div class='line'>That can so soon forget an injury.</div> - <div class='line'>We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please;</div> - <div class='line'>And when we grin we bite; yet are our looks</div> - <div class='line'>As innocent and harmless as a lamb’s.</div> - <div class='line'>I learn’d in Florence how to kiss my hand,</div> - <div class='line'>Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog,</div> - <div class='line'>And duck as low as any bare-foot Friar:</div> - <div class='line'>Hoping to see them starve upon a stall,</div> - <div class='line'>Or else be gather’d for in our synagogue,</div> - <div class='line'>That when the offering bason comes to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Even for charity I may spit into it.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f20'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r20'>20</a>. Sir John Harrington’s translation.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f21'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r21'>21</a>. See the conclusion of Lecture IV.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f22'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r22'>22</a>. ‘Am I not thy Duchess?</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Bosola.</em> Thou art some great woman, sure; for riot begins to sit on thy forehead -(clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry milkmaid’s. Thou -sleep’st worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up his lodging in a cat’s -ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as -if thou wert the more unquiet bed-fellow.</p> - -<p class='c011'><em>Duch.</em> I am Duchess of Malfy still.’</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f23'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r23'>23</a>. Euphrasia as the Page, just before speaking of her life, which Philaster -threatens to take from her, says,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>——‘’Tis not a life;</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.’</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What exquisite beauty and delicacy!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f24'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r24'>24</a>. The following criticism on this play has appeared in another publication, but -may be not improperly inserted here:</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘A New Way to Pay Old Debts is certainly a very admirable play, and highly -characteristic of the genius of its author, which was hard and forcible, and calculated -rather to produce a strong impression than a pleasing one. There is -considerable unity of design and a progressive interest in the fable, though the -artifice by which the catastrophe is brought about, (the double assumption of the -character of favoured lovers by Wellborn and Lovell), is somewhat improbable, -and out of date; and the moral is peculiarly striking, because its whole weight -falls upon one who all along prides himself in setting every principle of justice and -all fear of consequences at defiance.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘The character of Sir Giles Overreach (the most prominent feature of the play, -whether in the perusal, or as it is acted) interests us less by exciting our sympathy -than our indignation. We hate him very heartily, and yet not enough; for he -has strong, robust points about him that repel the impertinence of censure, and -he sometimes succeeds in making us stagger in our opinion of his conduct, by -throwing off any idle doubts or scruples that might hang upon it in his own mind, -‘like dew-drops from the lion’s mane.’ His steadiness of purpose scarcely stands -in need of support from the common sanctions of morality, which he intrepidly -breaks through, and he almost conquers our prejudices by the consistent and determined -manner in which he braves them. Self-interest is his idol, and he makes -no secret of his idolatry: he is only a more devoted and unblushing worshipper at -this shrine than other men. Self-will is the only rule of his conduct, to which he -makes every other feeling bend: or rather, from the nature of his constitution, he -has no sickly, sentimental obstacles to interrupt him in his headstrong career. -He is a character of obdurate self-will, without fanciful notions or natural -affections; one who has no regard to the feelings of others, and who professes -an equal disregard to their opinions. He minds nothing but his own ends, and -takes the shortest and surest way to them. His understanding is clear-sighted, -and his passions strong-nerved. Sir Giles is no flincher, and no hypocrite; and -he gains almost as much by the hardihood with which he avows his impudent and -sordid designs as others do by their caution in concealing them. He is the demon -of selfishness personified; and carves out his way to the objects of his unprincipled -avarice and ambition with an arm of steel, that strikes but does not feel the blow -it inflicts. The character of calculating, systematic self-love, as the master-key to -all his actions, is preserved with great truth of keeping and in the most trifling -circumstances. Thus ruminating to himself he says, “I’ll walk, to get me an -appetite: ’tis but a mile; and exercise will keep me from being pursy!”—Yet -to show the absurdity and impossibility of a man’s being governed by any such -pretended exclusive regard to his own interest, this very Sir Giles, who laughs at -conscience, and scorns opinion, who ridicules every thing as fantastical but wealth, -solid, substantial wealth, and boasts of himself as having been the founder of his -own fortune, by his contempt for every other consideration, is ready to sacrifice the -whole of his enormous possessions—to what?—to a title, a sound, to make his -daughter “right honourable,” the wife of a lord whose name he cannot repeat -without loathing, and in the end he becomes the dupe of, and falls a victim to, -that very opinion of the world which he despises!</p> - -<p class='c011'>The character of Sir Giles Overreach has been found fault with as unnatural; -and it may, perhaps, in the present refinement of our manners, have become in a -great measure obsolete. But we doubt whether even still, in remote and insulated -parts of the country, sufficient traces of the same character of wilful selfishness, -mistaking the inveteracy of its purposes for their rectitude, and boldly appealing to -power as justifying the abuses of power, may not be found to warrant this an -undoubted original—probably a fac-simile of some individual of the poet’s actual -acquaintance. In less advanced periods of society than that in which we live, if -we except rank, which can neither be an object of common pursuit nor immediate -attainment, money is the only acknowledged passport to respect. It is not merely -valuable as a security from want, but it is the only defence against the insolence of -power. Avarice is sharpened by pride and necessity. There are then few of the -arts, the amusements, and accomplishments that soften and sweeten life, that raise -or refine it: the only way in which any one can be of service to himself or -another, is by his command over the gross commodities of life; and a man is -worth just so much as he has. Where he who is not ‘lord of acres’ is looked -upon as a slave and a beggar, the soul becomes wedded to the soil by which its -worth is measured, and takes root in it in proportion to its own strength and -stubbornness of character. The example of Wellborn may be cited in illustration -of these remarks. The loss of his land makes all the difference between “young -master Wellborn” and “rogue Wellborn;” and the treatment he meets with in -this latter capacity is the best apology for the character of Sir Giles. Of the two -it is better to be the oppressor than the oppressed.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘Massinger, it is true, dealt generally in extreme characters, as well as in very -repulsive ones. The passion is with him wound up to its height at once, and he -never lets it down afterwards. It does not gradually arise out of previous circumstances, -nor is it modified by other passions. This gives an appearance of -abruptness, violence, and extravagance to all his plays. Shakespear’s characters -act from mixed motives, and are made what they are by various circumstances. -Massinger’s characters act from single motives, and become what they are, and -remain so, by a pure effort of the will, in spite of circumstances. This last author -endeavoured to embody an abstract principle; labours hard to bring out the same -individual trait in its most exaggerated state; and the force of his impassioned -characters arises for the most part, from the obstinacy with which they exclude -every other feeling. Their vices look of a gigantic stature from their standing -alone. Their actions seem extravagant from their having always the same fixed -aim—the same incorrigible purpose. The fault of Sir Giles Overreach, in this -respect, is less in the excess to which he pushes a favourite propensity, than in the -circumstance of its being unmixed with any other virtue or vice.</p> - -<p class='c011'>‘We may find the same simplicity of dramatic conception in the comic as in the -tragic characters of the author. Justice Greedy has but one idea or subject in his -head throughout. He is always eating, or talking of eating. His belly is always -in his mouth, and we know nothing of him but his appetite; he is as sharpset as -travellers from off a journey. His land of promise touches on the borders of the -wilderness: his thoughts are constantly in apprehension of feasting or famishing. -A fat turkey floats before his imagination in royal state, and his hunger sees -visions of chines of beef, venison pasties, and Norfolk dumplings, as if it were -seized with a calenture. He is a very amusing personage; and in what relates to -eating and drinking, as peremptory as Sir Giles himself.—Marrall is another -instance of confined comic humour, whose ideas never wander beyond the ambition -of being the implicit drudge of another’s knavery or good fortune. He sticks to -his stewardship, and resists the favour of a salute from a fine lady as not entered -in his accounts. The humour of this character is less striking in the play than in -Munden’s personification of it. The other characters do not require any particular -analysis. They are very insipid, good sort of people.’</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f25'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r25'>25</a>. </p> -<div class='lg-container-l c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘<em>Ithocles.</em> Soft peace enrich this room.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c030'><em>Orgilus.</em></span> How fares the lady?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Philema.</em> Dead!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c019'><em>Christalla.</em></span> Dead!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c041'><em>Philema.</em></span> Starv’d!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c031'><em>Christalla.</em></span> Starv’d!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='c042'><em>Ithocles.</em></span> Me miserable!’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f26'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r26'>26</a>. ‘High as our heart.’—See passage from the Malcontent.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f27'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r27'>27</a>. Or never known one otherwise than patient.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f28'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r28'>28</a>. Sonnet to Cambridge, by Charles Lamb.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f29'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r29'>29</a>. The name of Still has been assigned as the author of this singular production, -with the date of 1566.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f30'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r30'>30</a>. So in Rochester’s Epigram.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms,</div> - <div class='line'>When they translated David’s Psalms.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f31'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r31'>31</a>. His mistress.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f32'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r32'>32</a>. Scotch for send’st, for complain’st, &c.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f33'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r33'>33</a>. ‘I was all ear,’ see Milton’s Comus.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f34'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r34'>34</a>. Chapman’s Hymn to Pan.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f35'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r35'>35</a>. Alluding to the fulfilment of the prophecies and the birth of the Messiah.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f36'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r36'>36</a>. ‘He spreads his sail-broad vans.’—Par. Lost, b. ii. l. 927.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f37'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r37'>37</a>. See Satan’s reception on his return to Pandemonium, in book <span class='fss'>X.</span> of Paradise -Lost.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f38'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r38'>38</a>. Sir Thomas Brown has it, ‘The huntsmen are up in America,’ but Mr. -Coleridge prefers reading Arabia. I do not think his account of the Urn-Burial -very happy. Sir Thomas can be said to be ‘wholly in his subject,’ only because he -is <em>wholly out of it</em>. There is not a word in the Hydriotaphia about ‘a thigh-bone, or -a skull, or a bit of mouldered coffin, or a tomb-stone, or a ghost, or a winding-sheet, or an echo,’ nor is ‘a silver nail or a gilt <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">anno domini</span></i> the gayest thing you -shall meet with.’ You do not meet with them at all in the text; nor is it possible, -either from the nature of the subject, or of Sir T. Brown’s mind, that you should! -He chose the subject of Urn-Burial, because it was ‘one of no mark or likelihood,’ -totally free from the romantic prettinesses and pleasing poetical common-places -with which Mr. Coleridge has adorned it, and because, being ‘without form and -void,’ it gave unlimited scope to his high-raised and shadowy imagination. The -motto of this author’s compositions might be—‘<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">De apparentibus et non existentibus -eadem est ratio.</span></i>’ He created his own materials: or to speak of him in his own -language, ‘he saw nature in the elements of its chaos, and discerned his favourite -notions in the great obscurity of nothing!‘</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f39'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r39'>39</a>. The above passage is an inimitably fine paraphrase of some lines on the tombs -in Westminster Abbey by F. Beaumont. It shows how near Jeremy Taylor’s -style was to poetry, and how well it weaves in with it.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c012'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>‘Mortality, behold, and fear,</div> - <div class='line'>What a charge of flesh is here!</div> - <div class='line'>Think how many royal bones</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep within this heap of stones:</div> - <div class='line'>Here they lie, had realms and lands,</div> - <div class='line'>Who now want strength to stir their hands.</div> - <div class='line'>Where from their pulpits seal’d in dust,</div> - <div class='line'>They preach “In greatness is no trust.”</div> - <div class='line'>Here’s an acre sown indeed</div> - <div class='line'>With the richest, royal’st seed</div> - <div class='line'>That the earth did e’er suck in,</div> - <div class='line'>Since the first man died for sin.</div> - <div class='line'>Here the bones of birth have cried,</div> - <div class='line'>Though Gods they were, as men they died.</div> - <div class='line'>Here are sands, ignoble things,</div> - <div class='line'>Dropp’d from the ruin’d sides of kings.</div> - <div class='line'>Here’s a world of pomp and state</div> - <div class='line'>Buried in dust, once dead by fate.’</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f40'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r40'>40</a>. He and his wife both died from fright, occasioned by the great fire of London -in 1665, and lie buried in St. Giles’s church-yard.</p> -</div> -<div class='footnote' id='f41'> -<p class='c011'><a href='#r41'>41</a>. The difference in the tone of moral sentiment is the greatest of all others.</p> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='small'>Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. <span class='sc'>Constable</span></span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c004' /> -</div> -<div class='tnotes'> - -<div class='section ph2'> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - - <ol class='ol_1 c002'> - <li>P. <a href='#t20'>20</a>, changed “was an effeminate as” to “was as effeminate as”. - - </li> - <li>P. <a href='#t89'>89</a>, changed “that that of the torrid zone” to “than that of the torrid zone”. - - </li> - <li>P. <a href='#t150'>150</a>, changed “Procustes” to “Procrustes”. - - </li> - <li>Other spelling errors were left uncorrected. - - </li> - <li>Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last - chapter. - </li> - </ol> - -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT, VOL. 05 (OF 12) ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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