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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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